When Lakes Go Bad

Stories

15 Stories

June 2008
- Floods Breach Des Moines Levee
  
  Associated Press | Jun 14, 08 11:07 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Floodwaters breached a levee and a temporary barrier today near a residential neighborhood in Des Moines, forcing authorities to call for a mandatory evacuation of 270 homes, the AP reports. “There’s not anything else we can do,” said a city official. Storms throughout the region have killed nine, and officials have cut power service and are bracing for the worst. More »
- Draining Quake Lake Floods China Town
  
  Reuters | Jun 10, 08 6:44 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - A town devastated by the Sichuan earthquake was flooded today as soldiers worked to drain a dangerous quake lake, reports Reuters. Water whooshed into Beichuan after explosives and missiles were used to blast holes in the dam created by the earthquake. Some 250,000 people downstream had already been evacuated. More »
- Rain-Wrecked Dam Destroys Wis. Homes
  
  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Jun 10, 08 4:10 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Luxury homes around a Wisconsin lake were torn apart after heavy rain cut a channel through an earthen dam and drained the water. Lake Delton is a tourist center, and businesses that depend on it face ruin, reports the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel . The region was one of several pummeled by days of heavy rains that have caused widespread flooding in three states. More »
April 2008
- Melting Empties Chile Lake
  
  Associated Press | Apr 11, 08 3:58 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Melting ice in a remote Chilean lake caused it to swell and suddenly empty, creating a “river tsunami,” the AP reports. Water from a melting glacier filled the lake and tunneled through the ice, emptying into a nearby river. More »
February 2008
- Lake Mead May Vanish by 2021
  
  LiveScience | Feb 13, 08 3:24 AM CST
  
  (Newser) - Lake Mead, the giant man-made lake behind the Hoover Dam and a major source of water for millions of people, is rapidly drying up, reports Live Science. A new study predicts a 50% chance the lake will be too low to produce hydroelectric power by 2017, and a 50% chance that it will vanish by 2021. More »
December 2007
- Old Town Resurfaces as Drought Dries Ga. Lake
  
  Associated Press | Dec 24, 07 10:03 PM CST
  
  (Newser) - The brutal drought hitting Georgia is drying up an artificial lake and exposing the long-dead town that lies beneath—along with mountains of trash. "It's horrendous, it's unbelievable," said one local resident. Lake Lanier's receding shores have exposed debris of all shapes and sizes, including an old dirt racing track, foundations of buildings, sunken cars and boats, even a stretch of Georgia Highway 53. More »
August 2007
- Cancer Cures Hiding in Poisonous Lake
  
  Wired | Aug 28, 07 6:47 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Two scientists may be fishing cancer cures out of an abandoned, poisonous lake, Wired reports. Don and Andrea Stierle are finding microbes in the green goup of an old Montana pit lake that don’t exist anywhere else – and happen to make compounds that inhibit a lung cancer and an ovarian cancer. So far Big Pharma hasn’t taken enough notice to fund a full investigation of the underwater slime. More »
- Great Lake Getting Less Superior
  
  Reuters | Aug 15, 07 4:45 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Water levels in Lake Superior are down a whole foot this year, and scientists say man is to blame. The world's largest body of fresh water by surface area has suffered an on-and-off drought for four years, but levels may reach an all-time low this summer. Climate change is partially responsible, but one environmental group points to another culprit: the constant dredging of the St. Clair River for navigation. More »
July 2007
- Darfur Lake Is Dried Up, Draining Hope
  
  BBC | Jul 20, 07 4:41 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Hopes for an enormous underground lake discovered recently in Darfur might supply enough water to end starvation and violence in the area were dimmed by a second opinion from a French geologist. The area receives too little rain and has the wrong type of rocks for water storage, said a specialist in mineral and water exploration: the lake probably dried up thousands of years ago. More »
- Darfur Hopes Lie in Hidden Lake
  
  BBC | Jul 18, 07 3:34 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - A giant lake discovered beneath Darfur could lead to resolution of the conflict in the region, where genocide has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Darfuris and 2 million people have been left homeless since 2003, the BBC reports. Radar revealed the ancient body of water, comparable in size to Lake Erie, which could supply 1,000 wells, researchers say. More »
- Don't Think Pink: Factory Threatens Flamingo Species
  
  Guardian (UK) | Jul 12, 07 5:17 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - An Indian company's plans to build a plant to harvest soda ash, or sodium carbonate, from Lake Natron in northern Tanzania could spell the end for the endangered lesser flamingo, the smallest of the six flamingo species. The lake is the only major breeding site, and half a million of the pink birds flock to the lake every summer. More »
- Polluted Fish Swamp Great Lakes
  
  Globe and Mail | Jul 6, 07 4:23 PM CDT
  
  (Newser) - Industrial chemicals contaminate many species of fish that populate the Great Lakes, making them too hazardous for safe human consumption, says a Canadian conservation group. "The lakes continue to be polluted to such an extent that human health is threatened," says a report released yesterday that lists industrial pollutants such as dioxins, PCBs, and methyl mercury among the contaminants. More »
- Missing Lake Mystery Solved
  
  BBC | Jul 5, 07 4:58 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - A Chilean lake that mysteriously went missing between March and May was a casualty of global warming, says the lead scientist investigating its disappearance. Melting glaciers created a stream of water that cracked one of the lake's ice walls, sending the water pouring into an adjoining fjord and, eventually, out to sea. More »
June 2007
- Missing: Five-Acre Lake
  
  CNN | Jun 22, 07 4:25 AM CDT
  
  (Newser) - A 100-foot-deep lake in the Chilean Andes vanished sometime between March and May, and scientists are stumped. The best guess in the case of the missing body of water is that it drained through cracks in the lakebed, but geologists have no idea where those cracks, usually caused by earthquakes, could have come from. More »
December 1985
- The 'killer lake' of Cameroon. (lethal natural cloud generated in Lake Monoun)
  
  Science News | Dec 7, 85
  
  In the early morning hours of Aug. 16, 1984, a parish priest, a young man named Foubouh Jean and others were riding in a van past Lake Monoun in the Republic of Cameroon, when they noticed a man on the roadside who appeared to be asleep on his motorcycle. But when the priest drew near the motorcycle, he discovered that the man was dead. As he turned back toward the van, he, too, collapsed. Jean and a companion, smelling a strange odor like that of car battery fluid, realized the air was deadly and began to run away. Jean's companion soon succumbed, but Jean managed to escape to the nearby village...