Climate News

Thawing permafrost turns an Arctic town's tap water undrinkable: Svalbard as an early warning

Residents of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, have been told not to drink their tap water because of heavy metal contamination that scientists link to thawing permafrost, The Guardian reported on October 19. The town gets its main supply from Isdammen, a 2.5km dammed lake known as the "ice pond". In September last year, manganese was found at 25 times the recommended limit; sulphate and nickel later went over limits too, so the advice still stands.

Korean broadcaster SBS News picked up the story the next day, giving the Norwegian health threshold for manganese as 50 micrograms per litre and noting that the town is warming five to seven times faster than the global average. Residents now collect purified water from a local brewery. According to SBS and The Guardian, the mayor says the whole water system may need to be rebuilt, with filtration at the lake, desalination, or both, all of them costly in sub-zero conditions.

The suspected cause is geological: thawing ground exposes pyrite-bearing shale, and when pyrite meets water and oxygen it produces acid that dissolves metals into the lake. Gizmodo stressed that this is not yet confirmed and that the research institute SINTEF is still studying how water moves through the ground.

"We don't know for sure how the water channels and water quality will change as the permafrost thaws." — Hanne Kvitsand, SINTEF, via Gizmodo

A Guardian feature two days later widened the lens: in one of the fastest-warming places on Earth, melting glaciers and thawing ground are causing problems from tap water to housebuilding to landslides.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the contamination as a warning for other Arctic communities, then a wider look at how the town can adapt.
• SBS News — the numbers and the costly fixes and a photo from the Korea Polar Research Institute.
• Gizmodo — a town already living through change, and a cause that scientists say is still unproven.

Where the numbers differ: SBS puts Longyearbyen's population at about 2,600; Gizmodo says about 2,400. Gizmodo also reports that manganese has since dropped and is no longer seen as a direct health concern, although it is still above safe limits.

What we don't know yet: which new water source the town will choose, what it will cost, and whether towns in northern Canada and Alaska with similar rock will face the same problem.