News
Drought can hit almost anywhere: How 5 cities that nearly ran dry got water use under control
In 2024, the U.S. Northeast faced severe drought, prompting lessons on water management from cities like Cape Town and São Paulo. Proactive conservation and planning can mitigate future crises.
Sara Hughes, University of Michigan and Michael Wilson, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Water scarcity is often viewed as an issue for the arid American West, but the U.S. Northeast’s experience in 2024 shows how severe droughts can occur in just about any part of the country.
Cities in the Northeast experienced record-breaking drought conditions in the second half of 2024 after a hot, dry summer in many areas. Wildfires broke out in several states that rarely see them.
By December, much of the region was experiencing moderate to severe drought. Residents in New York City and Boston were asked to reduce their water use, while Philadelphia faced risk to its water supply due to saltwater coming up the Delaware River.
Before the drought, many people in the region weren’t prepared for water shortages or even paying much attention to their water use.
As global temperatures rise, cities throughout the U.S. are more likely to experience hotter, drier conditions like this. Those conditions increase evaporation, drying out vegetation and soil and lowering groundwater tables.
The Northeast drought was easing in much of the region in early 2025, but communities across the U.S. should take note of what happened. They can learn from the experiences of cities that have had to confront major water supply crises – such as Cape Town, South Africa; São Paulo, Brazil; Melbourne, Australia; Las Vegas; and New Orleans – and start planning now to avoid the worst impacts of future droughts.
Lessons from cities that have seen the worst
Our new analysis of these five cities’ experiences provides lessons on how to avoid a water supply crisis or minimize the effects through proactive policies and planning.
Many cities have had to confront major water supply crises in recent years. Perhaps the most well-known example is Cape Town’s “Day Zero.”
After three years of persistent drought in the region, Cape Town officials in fall 2017 began a countdown to Day Zero – the point at which water supplies would likely run so low that water would be turned off in neighborhoods and residents would need to fetch a daily allocation of water at public distribution points. Initially it was forecast to occur in April 2018.
Water rates were raised, and some households installed flow restrictors, which would automatically limit the amount of water that could be used. Public awareness and conservation efforts cut water consumption in half, allowing the city to push back its estimate for when Day Zero would arrive. And when the rains finally came in summer 2018, Day Zero was canceled.
A second example is São Paulo, which similarly experienced a severe drought between 2013 and 2015. The city’s reservoirs were reduced to just 5% of their capacity, and the water utility reduced the pressure in the water system to limit water use by residents.
Water pricing adjustments were used to penalize high water users and reward water conservation, and a citywide campaign sought to increase awareness and encourage conservation. As in Cape Town, the crisis ended with heavy rains in 2016. Significant investments have since been made in upgrading the city’s water distribution infrastructure, preventing leaks and bringing water to the city from other river basins.
Planning ahead can reduce the harm
The experiences of Cape Town and São Paulo – and the other cities in our study – show how water supply crises can affect communities.
When major changes are made to reduce water consumption, they can affect people’s daily lives and pocketbooks. Rapidly designed conservation efforts can have harmful effects on poor and vulnerable communities that may have fewer alternatives in the event of restrictions or shutoffs or lack the ability to pay higher prices for water, forcing tough choices for households between water and other necessities.
Planning ahead allows for more thoughtful policy design.
For example, Las Vegas has been grappling with drought conditions for the past two decades. During that time, the region implemented water-conservation policies that focus on incentivizing and even requiring reduced water consumption.
Since 2023, the Las Vegas Valley Water District has implemented water rates that encourage conservation and can vary with the availability of water supplies during droughts. In its first year alone, the policy saved 3 billion gallons of water and generated US$31 million in fees that can be used by programs to detect and repair leaks, among other conservation efforts. A state law now requires businesses and homeowner associations in the Las Vegas Valley to remove their decorative grass by the end of 2026.
Since 2002, per capita water use in Las Vegas has dropped by an impressive 58%.
Solutions and strategies for the future
Most of the cities we studied incorporated a variety of approaches to building water security and drought-proofing their community – from publishing real-time dashboards showing water use and availability in Cape Town to investing in desalination in Melbourne.
But we found the most important changes came from community members committing to and supporting efforts to conserve water and invest in water security, such as reducing lawn watering.
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There are also longer-term actions that can help drought-proof a community, such as fixing or replacing water- and energy-intensive fixtures and structures. This includes upgrading home appliances, such as showers, dishwashers and toilets, to be more water efficient and investing in native and drought-tolerant landscaping.
Prioritizing green infrastructure, such as retention ponds and bioswales, that help absorb rain when it does fall and investing in water recycling can also diversify water supplies.
Taking these steps now, ahead of the next drought, can prepare cities and lessen the pain.
Sara Hughes, Adjunct Professor of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan and Michael Wilson, Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
News
How healthy is Sodastream?
The SodaStream Sparkling Water Maker is a device that forces carbon dioxide (CO2) gas (stored under pressure in a cylinder) into water, making it sparkling (fizzy)
Sodastream machines have been gaining popularity in recent years as an alternative to store-bought soft drinks. Not only are they more environmentally friendly, but they also offer several health benefits compared to traditional sodas.
Reduced Sugar Intake
One of the most significant health benefits of using a Sodastream machine is reducing sugar intake. Traditional sodas are loaded with sugar, and excessive sugar intake can lead to weight gain, obesity, and other health problems such as Type 2 diabetes. With a Sodastream machine, you can control the amount of sugar you add to your drink, allowing you to enjoy a refreshing beverage without the harmful effects of excessive sugar consumption.
No Artificial Sweeteners
Many store-bought soft drinks contain artificial sweeteners, which can have negative health effects such as headaches and digestive problems. Sodastream machines, on the other hand, allow you to use natural sweeteners such as fruit extracts, honey or agave nectar, giving you a healthier and more natural alternative.
No Preservatives
Another advantage of using a Sodastream machine is that you can avoid preservatives commonly found in store-bought soft drinks. Preservatives such as sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate have been linked to health problems such as cancer and allergies. By making your own drinks, you can avoid these harmful additives and enjoy a healthier, preservative-free beverage.
Eco-Friendly
In addition to the health benefits, using a Sodastream machine is also environmentally friendly. Traditional soft drinks are packaged in plastic bottles or cans, which contribute to environmental pollution. With a Sodastream machine, you can reuse the same bottle multiple times, reducing waste and helping to reduce your carbon footprint.
Variety
Finally, Sodastream machines offer a wide variety of flavors and options, allowing you to customize your drink to your liking. You can mix and match different flavors or create your own unique blends, giving you a healthier and more enjoyable alternative to traditional sodas.
In conclusion, Sodastream machines offer several health benefits compared to traditional store-bought soft drinks. By reducing sugar intake, avoiding artificial sweeteners and preservatives, and being eco-friendly, they offer a healthier and more sustainable alternative to traditional soft drinks. Moreover, with a wide variety of flavors and options, you can customize your drink to your liking, making it a fun and enjoyable way to stay healthy.
Consumer Corner
Behind the Product: What Sustainability Looks Like in Beauty Development
Beauty Development: Shoppers want to know what ingredients are used, how items are packaged and whether the production process includes thoughtful choices. Beauty brands are taking note, and sustainability is increasingly shaping decisions across sourcing, packaging, production, shipping, storage and replenishment.
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(Feature Impact) Shoppers are paying closer attention to the products they bring into their homes. They want to know what ingredients are used, how items are packaged and whether the production process includes thoughtful choices. Beauty brands are taking note, and sustainability is increasingly shaping decisions across sourcing, packaging, production, shipping, storage and replenishment.
Responsible product lines rarely come from sweeping change. They are built through smaller, connected choices made throughout development. Packaging, ingredient sourcing and production planning influence how a product performs, how much waste it creates and how sustainably products can be produced.
Consider this beauty sustainability information from Laura Badcock, Chief Operating Officer of NourishUs Naturals.
Why packaging matters beyond appearance
“Packaging is often the first thing shoppers notice,” Badcock said. “It can shape how someone feels about a product before they ever try what’s inside.”
A package should look appealing, though appearance is only part of the equation. It also needs to protect the product, travel safely, store well and hold up through regular use. Once the product is finished, the packaging should allow easy recycling, refilling or responsible disposal.
There is no single packaging option that works best for every beauty product. A lightweight container may reduce shipping weight. A refillable option may stay in use longer. A recyclable material may work well in one area but create challenges in another if local recycling systems cannot process it. Even packaging that appears sustainable can create problems in practice if it leaks, breaks or requires excess shipping materials.
Why ingredient sourcing matters
“Ingredient lists have become an important part of how people evaluate beauty products,” Badcock said. “Shoppers often look for familiar oils, butters, botanical extracts and information about how ingredients were sourced, which plays a major role in the environmental impact.”
A product’s environmental footprint is influenced by many factors, including shipping distance, processing methods, storage conditions and supplier practices.
These factors can also affect product consistency and ingredient availability over time. Beauty brands working with wholesale skin care suppliers or private label manufacturers often need to balance ingredient goals with sourcing reliability and production needs.
How better planning can lead to less waste
“Packaging and ingredients are usually the first things people associate with sustainability, but how much product gets made, stored and discarded matters, too,” Badcock said.
Overproduction is one of the biggest hidden sources of waste in beauty and personal care. Products that sit too long in storage may eventually expire or remain unsold. Excess inventory can also create additional packaging waste, warehousing needs and disposal costs.
Smaller batch sizes give producers more room to adjust as trends or demand shift, and producing closer to expected sales windows helps reduce long storage periods and unnecessary waste. Testing new products in smaller volumes and restocking based on actual demand makes overproduction less likely.
How sustainable beauty choices are connected
Packaging, ingredient sourcing and production planning are closely connected throughout development.
“A packaging choice can affect shipping weight, storage needs and whether a package can be refilled,” Badcock said. “Ingredient choices can influence sourcing timelines and how products need to be stored. Production planning affects how much material gets used and how much product could eventually go unsold.”
Beauty shoppers want more transparency around sustainability claims
Sustainability claims carry less weight when those claims aren’t explained in practice.
This shift is pushing many beauty brands to focus more heavily on traceability, supplier relationships and clearer product information. Transparency is becoming part of the customer experience itself.
More responsible product lines are built over time
Responsible beauty products come together through ongoing choices around packaging, sourcing, production and inventory planning. For shoppers, those choices influence the products they bring into their homes.
“The brands that build sustainability into early decisions tend to have the easiest time maintaining it later,” Badcock said. “Once supplier relationships, packaging formats and production routines are in place, small adjustments are far easier than major changes. Treating sustainability as part of product development from the beginning, rather than something to fix later, is what makes it work in practice.”
To find more information on the intersection of beauty and sustainability, visitNourishUsNaturals.com.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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Automotive
EPA removal of vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles, but will make it harder, slower and more expensive
The EPA’s move to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding” and roll back vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles—but it will slow adoption, raise costs, and increase climate and public health harms.
Alan Jenn, University of California, Davis
The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it had been prioritizing, along with state governments, since the 1970s.
The latest move came on Feb. 12, 2026, when President Donald Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule rescinding the landmark “endangerment finding,” and reversing various emissions limits on cars and trucks. The 2009 finding stated that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. If the new rule stands up in court and is not overruled by Congress, it would undo a key part of the long-standing effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasn’t changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening people’s health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPA’s ruling.
Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies.
That is why I believe the EPA’s move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.
Putting carmakers in a bind
The most recent EPA rule about vehicle emissions was finalized in 2024. It set emissions limits that can realistically only be met by a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.
Over the past decade and a half, automakers have been building up their capability to produce electric vehicles to meet these fleet requirements, and a combination of regulations such as California’s zero-emission-vehicle requirements have worked together to ensure customers can get their hands on EVs. The zero-emission-vehicle rules require automakers to produce EVs for the California market, which in turn make it easier for the companies to meet their efficiency and emissions targets from the federal government. These collectively pressure automakers to provide a steady supply of electric vehicles to consumers.
The new EPA move would undo the 2024 EPA vehicle-emissions rule and other federal regulations that also limit emissions from vehicles, such as the heavy-duty vehicle emissions rule.
The possibility of a regulatory reversal puts automakers into a state of uncertainty. Legal challenges to the EPA’s shift are all but guaranteed, and the court process could take years.
For companies making decade-long investment decisions, regulatory stability matters more than short-term politics. Disrupting that stability undermines business planning, erodes investor confidence and sends conflicting signals to consumers and suppliers alike.
A slower roll
The Trump administration has taken other steps to make electric vehicles less attractive to carmakers and consumers.
The White House has already suspended key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that provided tax credits for purchasing EVs and halted a US$5 billion investment in a nationwide network of charging stations. And Congress has retracted the federal waiver that allowed California to set its own, stricter emissions limits. In combination, these policies make it hard to buy and drive electric vehicles: Fewer, or no, financial incentives for consumers make the purchases more expensive, and fewer charging stations make travel planning more challenging.
Overturning the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal basis for regulating climate pollution from vehicles altogether.
But U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles has been growing, and automakers have already made massive investments to produce electric vehicles and their associated components in the U.S. – such as Hyundai’s EV factory in Georgia and Volkswagen’s Battery Engineering Lab in Tennessee.
Global markets, especially in Europe and China, are also moving decisively toward electrifying large proportions of the vehicles on the road. This move is helped in no small part due to aggressive regulation by their respective governments. The results speak for themselves: Sales of EVs in both the European Union and China have been growing rapidly.
But the pace of change matters. A slower rollout of clean vehicles means more cumulative emissions, more climate damage and more harm to public health.
The EPA’s move seeks to slow the shift to electric vehicles, removing incentives and raising costs – even though the market has shown that cleaner vehicles are viable, the public has shown interest, and the science has never been clearer. But even such a major policy change can’t stop the momentum of those trends.
This is an updated version of an article originally published Aug. 5, 2025.
Alan Jenn, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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