Every day the most important news on water and sanitation from around the world, compiled by the Blue Community Network, defending water as a common, public good and a human right.
Today: Afghanistan, Aotearoa-NewZealand, China, Cholera, CostaRica, DRCongo, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Europe, France, Germany, Italy, IvoryCoast, Morocco, PFAS, Poland, Privatisation, Publication, PublicWater, Right2Water, Sanitation, SouthAfrica, Uganda, UK, UN, US, WaterConflicts, WaterCrisis, WaterJustice
Is Kabul heading towards a water apocalypse? What you need to know
By 2030, Kabul’s aquifers may be dry, displacing millions. Contamination is widespread, impacting the poor most severely.
Kabul, home to over six million people, is facing a growing water crisis. A new report by nonprofit Mercy Corps has warned that the Afghan capital might be the first modern city to completely run out of water within the next five years.
According to reports, the city’s groundwater levels have been falling rapidly due to overuse and the impacts of climate change. According to the Mercy Corps report published in April, Kabul’s aquifers have dropped by 25 to 30 metres over the past 10 years.
All the places in Europe where it IS safe to drink tap water – after one French region banned it
A French region recently banned residents from drinking tap water over chemicals found in the water.
Alsace in eastern France sent 60,000 residents a letter back in April telling them that their water was contaminated and as a result from May, at risk groups should not drink tap water.
Here are the countries in Europe where tap water is considered safe and unsafe to drink…
Poland: The Vistula River is at a historic low in Warsaw, prompting a drought alert and raising concerns about water and energy supplies.
With the river level in Warsaw reaching a historic low of just 19 centimetres, fears are growing over the impact on water and energy supplies as Europe grapples with a heatwave and lack of rainfall.
On Friday 4 July, the Vistula River, Poland’s longest, recorded an all-time low water level of just 19 centimetres in Warsaw, marking a new critical threshold in the history of national hydrological measurements. This exceptional drop in water levels, which has broken last year’s record, is a direct consequence of an unprecedented drought affecting Poland and Central Europe as a whole. According to forecasts, the situation could worsen further in the coming days, with levels potentially falling below 15 centimetres — well below the seasonal average of between 105 and 250 centimetres.
Uganda: Water crisis ignites outrage in Kyenjojo
Residents of Kihura Sub-county and nearby communities in Kyenjojo District are calling on the government for urgent action to improve access to clean, safe water. Despite previous efforts by the government and development partners, many villages still lack adequate water sources, forcing residents to depend on unsafe alternatives.
Monitor / Uganda – Right2Water
France: New water restrictions. Which areas are affected and what changes for residents
Warnings are being raised from north to south with the exception of the south-west (for now).
More drought alerts are being issued across France, as southern and northern departments alike see restrictions toughened on water usage.
Successive heatwaves in June saw a dramatic increase in drought warnings across the month, and recent high temperatures have exacerbated the situation.
Droughts tied to climate change are pushing water, food, and ecosystems to the brink
A new United Nations-backed report warns that climate-fueled droughts are becoming more deadly and far-reaching, intensifying hunger, displacing wildlife, and upending daily life from Africa to Latin America.
The UN’s “Drought Hotspots Around the World” report describes a surge in drought severity from 2023 to 2025, worsened by climate change and El Niño, with some regions seeing record-low water levels and agricultural collapse.
Somalia faces crisis-level food insecurity, and in Eastern Africa, drought conditions drove desperate measures such as forced child marriages and people digging for contaminated water.
Europe and the Americas also suffered: Spain’s olive harvest was halved, endangered Amazonian wildlife died, and Panama Canal shipping slowed due to low water levels.
EHN Environmental Health News / WaterCrisis – UN – Publication
Rising tensions in the Horn of Africa
Geopolitical ambitions, ethnic divisions and contested access to the sea and fresh water are intensifying anxieties in Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Tigray region.
Tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea have intensified this year, fueled by regional disputes and instability in the Tigray region. These developments raise concerns about the possible resurgence of conflict in the strategic Horn of Africa and in Tigray, an area rich in gold where war recently claimed over 600,000 lives and caused widespread displacement and infrastructure destruction.
South Africa: Cape Town’s sewage treatment isn’t coping. Scientists are worried about what the city is telling the public
Urban water bodies – rivers, lakes and oceans – are in trouble globally. Large sewage volumes damage the open environment, and new chemicals and pharmaceutical compounds don’t break down on their own. When they are released into the open environment, they build up in living tissues all along the food chain, bringing with them multiple health risks.
The city of Cape Town, South Africa, is no exception. It has 300km of coastline along two bays and a peninsula, as well as multiple rivers and wetlands. The city discharges more than 40 megalitres of raw sewage directly into the Atlantic Ocean every day. In addition, large volumes of poorly treated sewage and runoff from shack settlements enter rivers and from there into both the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
Water is a public good that must be protected, not a commodity for the market.
“Prompted by my own reflections and careful observation of what has happened in various agricultural areas of the Lucanian territory, I realised that the water problem did not arise now, but a decade ago, with a deeper awareness of what should have happened ten years ago.” This is how a note released by Don Giuseppe Ditolve on the water issue begins. He urges us not to be complicit in the mismanagement of this precious resource and adds: ‘Some scientists, in collaboration with Pope Francis, have denounced what will happen between now and 2050. Over the last ten years, we have witnessed various phenomena of environmental degradation, violations of international law and inefficiencies in public health, as well as large-scale migration.’
DR Congo: Félix Tshisekedi has expressed alarm over the cholera situation in Kinshasa.
The capital of the DRC, Kinshasa, has been hit hard by a worrying cholera epidemic. At Friday’s cabinet meeting, the main focus was on this issue, and the minutes were released on Sunday, 6 July 2025. To date, more than 700 deaths have been recorded in the country since January, including around 30 in Kinshasa.
Officially, three-quarters of the health zones in this megacity, which has a population of between 17 and 20 million, are affected. It is the inhabitants of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods who are most at risk.
President Félix Tshisekedi believes that the rapid spread of the disease is due to recent floods, which have damaged sanitation infrastructure, contaminated drinking water sources and displaced thousands of people, exposing them to crowded and unsanitary conditions.
UK: Public ownership of water in England and Wales is best way to improve industry, people’s commission finds
Public ownership of the water industry in England and Wales is the best way to cut bills, reduce pollution and invest in repairing infrastructure, according to a wide-ranging people’s commission into the industry.
Set up by four academics with expertise in economics, water governance and the law to “fill the gaps” of the government-appointed Cunliffe commission, the inquiry will present its findings to MPs on Monday.
Ewen McGaughey, a professor of law at King’s College London who is one of the academics involved, said: “We all want clean water, and in the latest YouGov poll 82% of the British public said that we should bring our water into public ownership.
UK: Millions of tonnes of toxic sewage sludge spread on UK farmland every year
Exclusive: Experts call for stricter regulation as current rules set in 1989 require testing for only a few heavy metals.
Millions of tonnes of treated sewage sludge is spread on farmland across the UK every year despite containing forever chemicals, microplastics and toxic waste, and experts say the outdated current regulations are not fit for purpose.
An investigation by the Guardian and Watershed has identified England’s sludge-spreading hotspots and shown where the practice could be damaging rivers.
The Guardian / UK – Sanitation
Despite the drought in Germany: Industry continues to use water without restriction.
While crops are drying up and allotment gardeners and citizens are being asked to use less water, companies are still allowed to pump it. According to a CORRECTIV survey, federal states are permitting their coal, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies to use water without restriction.
While Germany is suffering from the scorching heat and drought, companies don’t have to worry when water becomes scarce. According to a CORRECTIV survey of all state environmental agencies, not a single one has reduced industrial water consumption to date. Nor have they raised prices significantly enough to motivate large-scale water users, such as the coal mining, chemical and paper industries, to conserve water. In contrast, the population in some parts of the country has to restrict its consumption.
France: Letter to MPs: ‘Do not vote for this harmful health and environmental law.’
Associations have sent an open letter to Alsatian MPs, urging them to vote against the Duplomb law. Debated in the National Assembly on 8 July, the law provides for the reauthorisation of banned pesticides and facilitates intensive farming.
Dear Members of Parliament,
As our country experiences one of the most intense heatwaves in its history, environmental warning signs are multiplying. We have exceeded seven of the nine planetary boundaries. In France, a third of drinking water catchments have closed in the last 30 years due to chemical pollution. The air we breathe is making us ill, and pollinators and biodiversity are disappearing, which puts 84% of crops that depend on pollination at risk.
Ecuador: Loja in emergency. 70% of the city has no access to drinking water.
The canton authorities have declared a state of emergency in the area.
This was after the collapse of the drinking water system left 70% of the population without service.
Following the declaration of a state of emergency in the canton, local and government authorities are working together.
While repairs are being carried out, tankers are distributing water to vulnerable neighbourhoods. This measure will remain in place until the supply returns to normal, although no definite date has been set.
Costa Rica: Environmentalists are demanding the repeal of the reform that allows for the presence of pesticide residues in drinking water.
On Monday, the Civic Environmental Parliament (PCA) issued a strong statement rejecting the recent amendment to the ‘Regulations for Drinking Water Quality’ (No. 38924-S), promoted by the Ministry of Health, which permits the presence of pesticide residues, including the agrochemical chlorothalonil, in drinking water.
In a public statement supported by the Water Resources Commission and in line with Agreement 19-25, the PCA denounced this regulatory change as ‘a serious setback’ to the protection of human rights, public health, and the environment.
Ivory Coast: Persistent drinking water shortage in Guitry
According to the AIP, the municipality of Guitry and several surrounding villages are facing a persistent drinking water shortage that is plunging the population into deep distress.
Despite the presence of two boreholes intended to supply residential areas, access to this vital resource remains extremely precarious.
The Kôkô 1 and 2 neighbourhoods, the Dida neighbourhood, and the Premier Campement are particularly affected. In these areas, residents are forced to travel long distances to draw water from unhygienic artisanal wells.
South Africa: We Are Drowning, Not Just in Water – But in Inequality
Cape Town is drowning. Not just from winter’s rains, but in the floodwaters of institutional neglect, infrastructural racism, and political indifference. As storm clouds settle over our city, they expose not only our weather vulnerabilities, but our moral ones too.
Once again, it is the Cape Flats, the backyards, and the informal settlements that bear the brunt. While the Atlantic Seaboard lights flicker over cozy homes warmed by underfloor heating, families in Crossroads, Manneberg, Phillipi, Delft, and Khayelitsha huddle in wet blankets, their homes invaded by water, their dignity washed away by a cruel DA city council that has long stopped caring.
And the City’s response? A mop. A photo-op. A press statement. No structural plan. No investment surge. There is no emergency deployment of resources that matches the scale of crisis. It’s just another rainy season for the poor. And another PR exercise for the DA.
Morocco – Taounate and Chefchaouen: These provinces have large dams, but their inhabitants still have no access to water.
Entire villages in these provinces are facing a critical situation. A combination of persistent heatwaves and a lack of concrete solutions has plunged many villages into an acute water crisis. Exasperated by the ongoing water shortage, the inhabitants have decided to make their voices heard by sending distress calls to local and regional authorities, particularly the relevant provincial governors.
Hespress (French) / Morocco – Right2Water
Read also: Maroc : appel au roi Mohammed VI. Face aux difficultés liées à l’accès d’eau potable, les habitants du douar Ghres Ali, situé dans la réfion de Taounate, appellent le roi Mohammed VI au secours. Bladi.net
Kosovo: Peqan village with water supply network and without water
There are 630 houses in the village of Peqan in Suhareka that have not been connected to the water supply for years. Residents say they have been forced to dig wells to be supplied with drinking water. They complain that despite investments, no solution has been found. And the Municipality of Suhareka and the KRU “Hidroregjioni Jugor” said that residents prevented the installation of water meters.
The village of Peqan, located three kilometers from the city of Suhareka, has been facing a shortage of drinking water for years. Its residents complain that despite investments made in the network, the supply does not reach 630 homes with approximately 3000 inhabitants.
KOHA / Kosovo – Right2Water
US: Trump administration pulls clean water funding from pesticide-contaminated California towns
For decades, residents in Monterey County’s agricultural communities have lacked safe drinking water due to pesticide pollution. Now, a federal grant meant to fix the problem has been revoked by the Trump administration.
In December 2024, the Biden administration awarded a $20 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Community Change grant to expand access to clean water in rural, Latino-majority towns in Monterey County, where groundwater is tainted with nitrates and the carcinogen 1,2,3-trichloropropane.
The EPA canceled the grant in May 2025, calling environmental justice funding wasteful and politically driven. The state will proceed with a partial upgrade, but thousands remain without safe water access.
Pesticides like Telone and chloropicrin, widely used in local strawberry fields, have polluted wells and air. Despite known cancer risks, use of these fumigants continues in densely populated areas near homes and schools.
Aotearoa – New Zealand: Luxon’s freshwater regulation changes are bad news – here’s why.
The Luxon Government has made their intentions clear. They want to change freshwater regulations to make it easier for the intensive dairy sector to pollute lakes, rivers and drinking water. They’re pulling out all the stops to make this happen as quickly as possible, in what we’ve labelled their ‘freshwater pollution plan’.
The Government is proposing major changes to freshwater regulations. These changes would strip away key protections, giving big polluters more power and leaving communities and ecosystems exposed.
US: State says there is an ‘immediate health risk’ involving Wyandotte water system
The State of Michigan is calling attention to an immediate health risk for the drinking water system in Wyandotte.
State regulators said they found a variety of troubling issues that date back years, despite the city insisting the water is safe to drink.
People in Wyandotte tell me they’re troubled by the new review by the state involving water safety, specifically some of the findings, and they say they want more answers.
US: Decade of Delay. Flint’s Lead Pipes Are Still in the Ground
Bishop Bernadette L. Jefferson still remembers the taste of that water. Not the clean, cool tap water Flint once took pride in—but the one that left a film in her mouth and a sinking feeling in her gut. It was April 25, 2014. Her grandson handed her a glass, and something wasn’t right. “It was bubbling,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you run the water?’ He said, ‘I did, Granny.’” That moment, down to the residue it left behind, never left her spirit. It became her alarm, one that would soon echo throughout Flint and far beyond.
Eleven years later, the state says Flint is nearing the end of its lead pipe replacement efforts. But ask any longtime resident—especially those who were first to speak out—and that claim doesn’t hold. Not when pipes under vacant homes remain untouched. Not when residents say they were skipped, lied to, or misled. Not when trauma lives in bodies, homes, schools, and water lines still standing after a decade of delay.
China: Poisoned water and scarred hills. The price of the rare earth metals the world buys from China
When you stand on the edge of Bayan Obo, all you see is an expanse of scarred grey earth carved into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
Dark dust clouds rise from deep craters where the earth’s crust has been sliced away over decades in a search of modern treasure.
You may not have heard of this town – but life as we know it could grind to a halt without Bayan Obo.
UK: Council leader hits out at South East Water after days of disruption
It is just not good enough.
That’s the message from Leader of the Council Cllr Alan Baldock in an open letter to South East Water Chief Executive David Hinton after days of no water for hundreds of people in parts of the district.
Cllr Alan Baldock tells Mr Hinton that the disruption has seriously disrupted the lives of hardworking families, put the vulnerable at serious risk of harm, sparked serious concerns for the health of animals and livestock and deeply damaged the businesses affected at a time when they need help not hindrance.
It asks the water company to outline how people can claim compensation and asks for it to pay for increased recycling collections caused by huge volumes of empty plastic water bottles.
