In Colombia, Amazon River's extreme drought falls hard on Indigenous communities
LETICIA, Colombia (AP) — Marciano Flores stood knee-deep in the Amazon River with the rest of his crew, ready to haul in a giant net as a man in a canoe circled in an attempt to drive fish their way. At 69, after a life of working the river, Flores can tell at a glance just the right spots to seek a catch he can sell at the market. But standing here a year ago would have been impossible, with the river far above his head. Flores has never seen the Amazon so low, and the men’s net came up...
Writers on the Range: Acidic mine drainage haunts Western rivers
In the summer of 2015, the Animas River in southern Colorado turned such a garish orange-gold that it made national news. The metallic color came from the Gold King Mine, near the town of Silverton in the San Juan Range. The abandoned mine had been plugged by an earthen and rock dam known as a bulkhead, behind which orange, highly acidic drainage water accumulated. But after a federal Environmental Protection Agency employee breached the plug during an unauthorized excavation, 3.5 million gallons of acid runoff rushed downstream over three weeks.