Guest Post by Kip Hansen
I could not let this bit of silliness in the New York Times pass without comment as I have recently spent seven years in the Dominican Republic, doing various charity projects and humanitarian work on everything from a national to neighborhood scale, and specifically worked on projects in the very area mentioned. I tried emailing the author of the piece, Randal C. Archibold, but as of this evening, have received no response.
The story concerns Lago Enriquillo, in the very southwest corner of the Dominican Republic, and Lac Azeui, in the very southeast corner of Haiti, both on the island of Hispaniola.
Of course, as usual, the people mentioned in the story lived on the local mud flats, probably 50 or 100 year flood plains, right up to the edge of the water. Until the advent of government and international NGO help with irrigation schemes, this part of the country was empty desert — with almost no population and no agriculture. The banana plantations and other agriculture there all depend on INDRHI (water resources department) irrigation water only recently available.
Here are excerpts from the NY Times story…the usual unprecedenteds, suicide of a loved one, ‘must be climate change’, quite silly really, except for the local misery.
Rising Tide Is a Mystery That Sinks Island Hopes
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD JAN. 11, 2014
(Ezra Fieser contributed reporting from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.)
“LAGO ENRIQUILLO, Dominican Republic — Steadily, mysteriously, like in an especially slow science fiction movie, the largest lake in the Caribbean has been rising and rising, devouring tens of thousands of acres of farmland, ranches and whatever else stands in its way.
Lago Enriquillo swallowed Juan Malmolejos’s banana grove. It swamped Teodoro Peña’s yuccas and mango trees. In the low-lying city of Boca de Cachon, the lake so threatens to subsume the entire town that the government has sent the army to rebuild it from scratch on a dusty plain several miles away.
“Jose Joaquin Diaz believes that the lake took the life of his brother, Victor. Victor committed suicide, he said, shortly after returning from a life abroad to see the family cattle farm, the one begun by his grandfather, underwater.”
“He could not believe it was all gone, and the sadness was too much,” Mr. Diaz said, as a couple of men rowed a fishing boat over what had been a pasture.
“Theories abound, but a conclusive answer remains elusive as to why the lake — as well as its nearby sibling in Haiti, Lac Azuei, which now spills over the border between the two on the island of Hispaniola — has risen so much. Researchers say the surge may have few if any precedents worldwide.”
“The lakes, salty vestiges of an ancient oceanic channel known for their crocodiles and iguanas, have always had high and low periods, but researchers believe they have never before gotten this large. The waters began rising a decade ago, and now Enriquillo has nearly doubled in size to about 135 square miles, Mr. Gonzalez said, roughly the size of Atlanta, though relatively light rains in the past year have slowed its expansion. Azuei has grown nearly 40 percent in that time, to about 52 square miles, according to the consortium.”
“The scientists, partly financed by the National Science Foundation, are focusing on changing climate patterns as the main culprit, with a noted rise in rainfall in the area attributed to warming in the Caribbean Sea.”
“In reports, they have noted a series of particularly heavy storms in 2007 and 2008 that swamped the lakes and the watersheds that feed them, though other possible contributing factors are also being studied, including whether new underground springs have emerged.”
“People talk about climate change adaptation, well, this is what’s coming, if it’s coming,” said Yolanda Leon, a Dominican scientist working on the lake research.”
“Olgo Fernandez, the director of the country’s hydraulic resources institute **, waved off the criticism and said the government had carefully planned the new community and plots to ensure the area remains an agriculture hotbed. It will be completed this year, officials said, though on a recent afternoon there was much work left to be done.”
“These will be lands that will produce as well as, if not better than, the lands they previously had,” Mr. Fernandez said.”
** = This is the National Institute for the Development of Water Resources (Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de los Recursos Hidraulicos – INDRHI) http://tinyurl.com/ltnmsm3
In all this drama, the journalist for the NY Times, apparently writing from the comfort of Mexico City, where he is bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, failed to mention the most important facts about Lago Enriquillo. It is famous for its ups and downs, water levels rising and falling with the rains and droughts.
Oh, and it is 140 feet below sea level.
Oh, you didn’t get that from the story? That’s because they didn’t mention it. Maybe Mr. Archibold didn’t know, maybe he didn’t think it was important. What that means of course is that any water that comes in, stays in — until it evaporates or is pumped out. They don’t pump it, it is salty as all get out, like the Dead Sea.
I have worked with Mr. Fernandez’s INDRHI on fresh water-well projects in the area and with the Dominican NGO <i>Sur Futuro — Future of the South</i> on reforestation projects. They are quite aware of what the most probable cause there is — deforestation. [The southwest of the DR is known as ‘El Sur — The South’] The hills have been progressively denuded, both in the DR and across the border in Haiti, when it rains, when the hurricanes and tropical storms come, the hills send ALL the water hurling down into the streambeds and rivers, they lead downhill — at the bottom of <b>this</b> watershed is Lago Enriquillo. Once the water arrives down there, it can’t get out again. Milder (yes, check the records for this locality) milder temperatures the last few years have meant less evaporation, adding to the problem. (For local reporting, see http://tinyurl.com/l9co6dv — in Spanish.) There is the added factor, detailed in the Spanish language reporting, the sediments which are washed down in the raging waters from the denuded hills are filling up the lake from the bottom, raising the water level as well. There is not much science being done on this, as far as I can tell, despite the “consortium of scientists”, none is reported in the NY Times piece.
On the social side, you see a whole little town of concrete block homes built on the sand to relocate the citizens of some threatened village on the lake shore. They are horrific — both the original and the replacement — but typical of government solutions in the DR. It is, however, better than the housing the people currently have. Those houses in the photo probably have bathrooms, for instance.
There is, really, no mystery. When you keep adding water to a bathtub, and take less out than comes in, it keeps filling up.
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Global warming has lead to local cooling, in other words, so that evaporation is less.
The amount the lake has risen, aside from its areal increase, was not mentioned. That would give us an idea of whether filling in from the bottom was significant, which I suspect it is not.
Anthony …do you get the feeling that fixing “climate change” isn’t the goal?
these are what I would call fellow travelers. the stalinist kind. remember the battle isn’t climate change ..the battle is socialism/communism.
Looks like they are looking hard to find global warming stories.
Since the only outlet is evaporation, it seems there has been less of that. And the necessary ingredient for evaporation? heat.
Now I know why they hate the pause/haitus/stoppage.
You also mentioned new, and increased irrigation in the area. It seems pretty obvious that any runoff from those operations is bound to end up in the lakes, and that will be water being added to the system that wasn’t there before.
Here’s an idea – let the area go back to desert and move all the people out! I’ll bet everything will be back in balance before they know it. Although that’s not so good a solution for the people of the DR, is it?
Go to Youtube and watch the video “Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet.” At the 15-minute mark he talks about DR/Haiti and how renewables have led to almost total deforestation in Haiti.
This climate change is so powerful it obviates rational thought. Something terrible is happening; it must be climate change. End of discussion.
Even the obvious isn’t when filtered through the lens of climate change.
Thank you for this excellent post. There is nothing better than a factual account from knowledgeable people who have worked on the ground to counter the fiction of journalists who think that truth should never get in the way of a good story. The shrinkage of Lake Chad in Africa has also been portrayed as an example of the effects of CAGW, but a closer look reveals the role of an expanding human population extracting the water for agriculture and animal husbandry to feed all the extra mouths.
@wws: “You also mentioned new, and increased irrigation in the area. It seems pretty obvious that any runoff from those operations is bound to end up in the lakes, and that will be water being added to the system that wasn’t there before.”
This could be a story about the Imperial Valley of California and the fate of the below sea level Salton Sea. First it was growing and growing. Then better water management of irrigation slowed the inflows. Now everyone is opining on why it is shrinking!
On the other hand, deforestation in (especially) Haiti and the Dominican Republic is horrific and no doubt part of the problem. Most of the wood goes for cooking fires. But it is “carbon neutral” at least.
Reply to the [couple] of comments so far ==> There was a study done by a couple of CVornell Masters students back in 2011, mostly using satellite images, that made a stab at this issue, which I didn’t find every [satisfying]. See http://tinyurl.com/mwkwrgv They tried to verify their Forestation guess-itmates by satellite — “ground-truthing” — but their map shows they just drove two major hiways (some of [which] I am positive are not in the watershed, those near Barahona, are on the coast).
wws ==> In the middle of the night, I woke up with the thought that maybe INDRHI was accidentally filling up the lake by bringing irrigation water from the next watershed to the east in ditches, to grow those bananas one sees in the truck in the NY Times story. I have sent out a query to associates who work [in] the field there to see if this could possibly be the case, and to get their on the ground opinions. Like the Imperial Valley of California, these lands are terrifically fruitful if one can get reliable water to them, which is what INDRHI does. Even Dominicans have a right to be productive, work hard to feed themselves and their families, and have enough to export to the rest of the world in exchange for other goods.
Doug ==> There is some data in the report mentioned in the [first] part of this comment. Since the purpose of the NY Times article was propagandistic, they did not supply any real data.
Kip, write the NYT Public Editor, and cc the author if you like; that might get his attention.
Maybe the NYT should dump an editor or two in the DR or Costa Rica for a week to see the effect of deforestration and greed.
I stood above the banks of a river in Costa Rica watching the walls and refrigerators of the workers who lived in houses (shacks) by the river race by me as the result of a real downpour. Culprit? American loggers had illegally clearcut about 1.5 acres one or two miles upstream, destroying the fragile ecosystem that prevented these floods. My companion’s parents owned one of those shacks. She watched her mother’s refrigerator tumble by like an empty milk carton as we reached the edge of the cliff. We’d been there only three days before to pick up the tamales her mother made each Sunday.
I was stunned to know that 1.5 acres of deforestation could have such a devastating effect. It was like something out of a movie for me.
“Milder (yes, check the records for this locality) milder temperatures the last few years have meant less evaporation, adding to the problem.”
Ah ha! So it is due to climate change!!!
/sarc
Gads! Sorry all, I promise to use a text editor to tame my jittery fingers today before posting comments…they seem to be living as life of their own today. Forgive me. (This seems better already.)
Apparently there are multiple possible causes. My favorite is less evaporation, due to cooler winters.
What is going on?
There are multiple theories about the flooding of the Lake Enriquillo. Sometimes complemented, at times even contradict each other. Some accuse natural reasons, while others accuse the man’s hand. By themselves or together, these are the elements that scientists are:
Rains: global warming would be causing a greater evaporation from the oceans, resulting in more rains that would feed the main aquifers supplying Lake.
Changes in coverage and use of soil: deforestation caused by human settlement would be causing a greater drag lake sediments, with its consequent flood.
Reduction on the evaporation from the surface of the Lake: the long winters would be interfering in the evaporation of water from the Enriquillo.
Geological faults: the waters of Lake Sumatre would be filtering to the Lake Enriquillo through failures caused by earthquakes.
Natural flood: Lake would grow naturally, as I would have done in the past.
Deviation of the flow rate of the Yaque River to Lake Enriquillo: the demolition of the dam Trujillo would have meant a greater flow of water from the River to the Lake
http://www.diariolibre.com/destacada/2012/01/16/i318627_actualidad-lago-enriquillo.html
Kip-
Thank you for the fascinating look at the details. Superb!
Your post needs to get some eyeball space over at the New York Times. I recommend that you contact Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth to see if he would publish your piece as a “Your Dot” contribution on his Opinion blog.
All the author really had to do was go as far as the Wikipedia article…
“Reasons for the flooding are being debated, but may be a combination of several, including increases in rainfall in the region in recent years, increase of sediments going into the lake from run-off due to deforestation that are contributing to raising the lakebed, and milder temperatures, which are reducing the surface evaporation rate.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Enriquillo
The post’s author mentions irrigation and water supply. Nothing new but in several coastal areas around the world “sea level rise” is occurring instead because of ground water withdrawals. In ‘confined’ aquifers land subsidence occurs (due to compaction of sand material as water is withdrawn — much of the San Joaquin Valley has subsided 50 feet or so). I wonder if this isn’t happening here, too, in addition to the aforementioned runoff and sedimentation.
Willis had an article last year about the DR and eco-loons, seems like it’s still going on:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/25/how-environmental-organizations-are-destroying-the-environment/
The contrast between Haiti and the DR is telling…NYT is not letting the facts get in the
way of a good story again.
Great post Kip, and good on you for all the charity work you’re doing!
Reply to Policycritic ==> The type of deforestation in the DR is somewhat greed (the valuable Dominican mahogany is nearly gone, but that is mostly a local crime, harvested and turned into tourist trinkets) but mostly it is the heating fuel issue – those who live in the countryside mostly burn wood and brush for cooking. They have burned almost all of it close to their homes, and they range far and wide for it. They burn off a hillside to plant yucca and corn, all on a critical slope, and the trees cannot get reestablished.
Reply to Les Johnson ==> Yes, that’s the English translation of the Spanish-language report from the Diario Libre, a free newspaper from Santo Domingo. Lake Sumatre = Lac Azeui. Both are below sea level. The water comes in from somewhere. In the next watershed over to the east, we worked to reforest the hills to prevent the annual flooding in the valleys which would wash away towns and crops. Those same deforestation caused floods in the Lago Enriquillo watershed fill the lake with water (and sand and rock) I am puzzled by the assertion that the Rio Yaque del Sur could possibly have been diverted to run into Lago Enriquillo. It runs into the sea just north of Barahona.
Thanks Kip, a good article.
It seems to me like the NYT is running out of convenient stories (and of customers).
Precipitation variability is well documented to far back in the historical record. In fact a few folks even think it might be associated with temperature changes; much to the chagrin of the “Sect of the Sacred Trees”!.
Reply to Jeff ==> The hills in Haiti are stripped to burn into charcoal to sell in the cities there. The charcoal burners dare not cross the line into the DR. The poor in the DR also burn wood for cooking fuel, but do not go close to the border, because it is too dangerous, thus the visible contrast. Conditions on either side of the border are no different for the people or their children. Neither you nor anyone you know would live there willingly, on either side.
Reply to Joel McDade ==> The Lago Enriquillo is about 140 feet below sea level, like Dead Sea. These master’s students at Cornell did a study in 2011 with a lot of satellite data, including altitudes, at http://tinyurl.com/mwkwrgv , which might answer the subsidence question. More interesting is whether the federal water resources institute, INDRHI, is accidentally filling the lake by bringing irrigation water in from another watershed.
“Kip, write the NYT Public Editor, and cc the author if you like; that might get his attention.”
I’ve written to the NYT Public Editor half a dozen times. I might as well have written to a pile of rocks for all the response i’ve gotten. They’re all in the same, all enveloping warmist fog over there..
Still, perhaps Kip will have better luck.
Doug Proctor says:
January 14, 2014 at 8:18 am
Global warming has lead to local cooling, in other words, so that evaporation is less.
The amount the lake has risen, aside from its areal increase, was not mentioned. That would give us an idea of whether filling in from the bottom was significant, which I suspect it is not.
Strange statements. I would had assumed the first was sarcasm until I read the entire post. Doug, whether the bottom filling is significant would depend on the original shape of the lake and the flateness surrounding it, wouldn’t you think? So unless you know these things, which I suspect you don’t, your opinon of the significance might be suspect as best.