I had barely unbuckled my seat belt and was already wondering if I had driven six hours through Texas for nothing. A once in a lifetime river adventure had seemingly evaporated with disappointing news.

It was the promise of a four-day, 33-mile canoe trip in Big Bend National Park, winding through awe-inspiring canyons on a mighty river, that had lured me across the state. My partner’s brother, Michael Stangl, who is an occasional guide Hidden Dagger Adventures, had offered to take me down the Rio Grande, one of the nation’s longest rivers, stretching from central Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. I had previously only visited Big Bend on foot and I was excited to see it from the water.

The moment I pulled into Michael’s driveway in Alpine, Texas, after driving there from Austin last April, he told me, we weren’t going through the park again.

“Unless you want to take a canoe hike, we’ll have to navigate a different part of the river,” he said. When he first returned from that stretch of river—between Rio Grande Village, a small campground in Big Bend, and Heath Canyon Ranch, just outside the park—he said it had been “more work than fun,” and that he dragged the canoe a quarter mile at a time over nearly dry riverbeds.

Instead, we would do the Temple Canyon Route: an 11-mile, two-night, three-day stretch of the Rio Grande along the U.S.-Mexico border, more than 30 miles from where our original trip would begin. This other river segment, entirely outside and downstream of Big Bend, was instead located in a desert bighorn sheep recovery area known as Black Gap.

Although I was disappointed, I learned that last-minute changes were common in adventures around the Rio Grande.

“If the river were a heart, it would be flatlining”

The Rio Grande is in danger: its water is being depleted by farmers and cities, while a causes climate change megadrought that has parched the American Southwest for more than two decades threatens hopes of recovery. In 2022, the river ran dry in Albuquerque for the first time in four decades. The same year also saw the appearance of the picturesque Santa Elena Canyon, one of the most popular sights in Big Bend ran dry for the first time in at least 15 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If the river were a heart, it would flatten out,” says Samuel Sandoval-Solis, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies water management.

For West Texas river guides, it’s just another precarious reality of life in the Chihuahuan Desert. “I expect that river trips will no longer be feasible in my lifetime,” says Charlie Angell Angell Expeditionsa guide service based in Redford, Texas.

For now, those booking paddle trips on the Rio Grande can expect a last-minute transfer if they want their boats to actually float.

“When guests book by phone, we tell them, ‘You go where we go,’” says Mike Naccarato, founder of Outfitters of Far West Texas, an adventure company based in Presidio, Texas. “And if they still insist on wanting to go to Big Bend National Park when the water levels are low, we tell them it’s their choice: we can do it by towing the boat up and down the river, or we can very much do this. , very nice trip outside the park, but still on the Rio Grande.”

While the peak season for river trips typically runs from March to May, and after the monsoon season from September to November, local tour operators have difficulty predicting when water levels will be high enough.

“These days it is very difficult to say that everything is normal. We are now calling it a ‘not soon’ season,” said Mr. Naccarato.

Drag, zigzag and headbutt

After an hour-long ride with canoes tied to Michael’s truck, we stood at the edge of the river outside Heath Canyon Ranch and stared at a decommissioned bridge that spanned the border with Mexico. While the sun was hidden behind the clouds, I was already soaking wet with sweat from lugging the gear-filled canoes to the shore.

It soon became clear that our ‘easier’ 11 mile journey would still be tough work due to the river’s lower than normal water levels.

Within about 30 seconds of pushing off, Michael and I reached our first fast section and I, a newbie to the river, was ill-prepared. The lower water levels had left protruding rocks that we had to pass through. Michael jumped out of his canoe and grabbed my bow. “You need to turn the nose directly toward the Y, where the river splits and turns white, and then tilt the nose quickly to the right, then quickly to the left,” he instructed.

My canoe got stuck on a gravel bottom and I was forced to bump it over rocks until the river deepened. It happened again and again: on almost every fast section – and it felt like every time I started to gain confidence, one came along – my boat ended up on the beach. I must have spent more time pushing than paddling.

Even in parts where the river deepened, it was not easy. Instead of the current pulling us quickly into the center, the lower water levels forced our boats to drift back and forth across the banks of the river in a tortuous formation. The banks posed another problem: For most of our trip, the right bank of the river – the Mexican side – was dominated by carrizorite. Also known as border bamboo or giant reed, the reed, an invasive species, stretched along the bank to a height I estimated as high as 15 feet.

The turbulent and narrow river dragged my boat straight into the reeds, cutting open my arms and legs and leaving me clotheslined in the water. Michael instructed me to – counterintuitively – lean forward into the stick, not away from it. When I followed his advice, my (without helmet) head became a blunt object and the cane broke itself in half. It was considerably better than capsizing.

That night, blistered, bruised and damp, I asked Michael as we sat on our sleeping mats if sailing the Rio was always so strenuous and full of obstacles. “Not when there’s real water,” he said. As I later discovered, most of the difficulties I encountered (apart from stepping in cow dung near the campsite) could be attributed to the river’s lower water levels and signs of the landscape changing as a result, said Jeff Bennett, a hydrologist. for the Rio Grande joint venturea conservation group that aims to protect river habitat.

“Stones, gravel, sand and these invasive reeds are no longer washed downstream,” Mr. Bennett said in a telephone interview. “A flood would fix all that.”

A journey worth the bruises

On the last morning of the trip, we pulled a few soggy sandwiches from the bottom of our coolers and shifted away. The river was calm for the few miles we had left, and we saw turtles called Big Bend sliders sunbathing on the rocks.

The final challenge the river presented us was leaving it. We floated right past the take-out, which was shrouded in reeds, and had to paddle back upstream a quarter mile.

Unlike the previous spots on the river where we had pulled our canoes ashore, this one was surprisingly deep, with the river up to my chest. Instead of a gentle slope like the places we camped during our trip, the takeout location was more or less a 60-degree sand dune stretching for twenty yards.

After dragging my boat through the sand, I collapsed, wet, bruised and exhausted, with just enough energy left to dissociate in the cloudless sky.

“We think the river has changed, but actually we have changed the river,” said Dr. Sandoval-Solis, an associate professor at UC Davis, months later, back home in the comfort of my home, adding that he believed it. It was still possible to return the river to its once mighty state through good water management practices. “The river has a much better memory than we do.”

He is right about his memory: when the rain comes, the river remembers his identity as an ancient gorge sculptor, even though we know him only as a panting, shrinking giant.

He is also right about our poor memory. Because when I think about my journey, the stick hitting me, the stepping in cow manure or the change of plans isn’t the first thing I remember first. Instead, I think of lying under a blanket of stars, passing a bottle of mezcal back and forth between hands of cards, listening to the braying of donkeys echoing from cliff to cliff, gorge to gorge, shore to shore . And I want to do it – everything – again. I just hope there’s enough river for next time.

Two New Jersey men who owned a 25-foot boat that capsized in the Hudson River, killing two people, including a 7-year-old boy, were arrested Thursday and charged with Prosecutors say misconduct and negligence caused the deaths.

The men, Richard Cruz and Jaime Pinilla Gomez, took paying customers on boat rides on the ship despite lacking the required credentials and certifications, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Mr. Cruz charged about $200 an hour for the tours, prosecutors said.

When the boat capsized, prosecutors said, there were more people on board than allowed and the boat was traveling “at high speed” on a day of high winds and heavy seas.

The ship, named “Stimulus Money,” was carrying 13 people after a tour around the Statue of Liberty on July 12, 2022, when it overturned and threw all the passengers overboard, according to a criminal complaint. Lindelia Vasquez, 47, and Julian Vasquez, 7, were trapped under the boat and drowned, the complaint said. Several others, including a 51-year-old woman, were hospitalized.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement Thursday that federal regulations and safety protocols are in place to protect passengers.

“The defendants are alleged to have ignored these regulations, recklessly disregarded safety protocols, operated the vessel at an unsafe speed in dangerous conditions and overloaded the vessel with too many passengers on board,” he said. “And the outcome was tragic: a young boy and a woman became trapped under the ship and drowned after the ship capsized.”

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Gomez were each charged with misconduct and neglect of a ship’s officer resulting in death, which prosecutors said carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

A lawyer for Mr. Cruz, Kristoff Williams, with the Federal Defenders of New York, declined to comment on the allegations Thursday evening. A lawyer for Mr. Gomez, Thomas H. Nooter, also had no comment.

A sign at the helm of Stimulus Money stated that the ship’s maximum capacity was 12 people, prosecutors said.

Under regulations, a ship carrying more than six passengers can only be operated if it has undergone a valid inspection, prosecutors said. The boat’s owner and captain, 32-year-old Cruz, had purchased the vessel about three months earlier and never requested or received proper inspections, they said.

Mr. Gomez, 25, who was piloting the boat, had “insufficient experience” and operated it in a “dangerous manner, including rapidly accelerating one of the vessel’s engines just before capsizing,” prosecutors said.

On the summer day when the boat capsized, a small craft advisory was in effect for New York Harbor at the mouth of the Hudson River, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s New York office. According to the group, there were wind gusts of 15 to 20 kilometers per hour.

According to the complaint, after the tour, the ship was traveling north on the Hudson River on its way back to Carteret, NJ, and capsized just north of Pier 79 in Midtown Manhattan.

Captain Anthony Ryan, of the New York Waterway ferry company, was preparing to depart the dock on his boat, Garden State, for its afternoon route when he was alerted to the emergency.

The scene he saw, he said days later in an interview, was one he would never forget.

“We see people waving their arms and they were in distress,” he said at the time. “They were panicking, they were scared.” He said he heard shouts in Spanish, “and just a lot of shouting.”

Ms. Vasquez had lived in Elizabeth, N.J., for about 20 years, having moved there from Medellín, Colombia, a niece, Lina Vasquez, said in an interview shortly after her aunt’s death. Police said at the time that both victims were of Colombian descent; it was unclear whether they were related.

Lindelia Vasquez worked as a manager at Kanela’s Lounge, a restaurant and catering venue in downtown Elizabeth, and had a cheerful, managerial personality, her niece said. She had three children – two young adults and a teenager – who were in the boat with her and survived.

Several freight train cars derailed Saturday on the banks of the Lehigh River, a tributary of the Delaware River, in Pennsylvania, authorities said. No injuries or spills were reported.

Northampton County Emergency Management Services and the Lehigh County Hazardous Materials Team responded to the derailment in Lower Saucon Township, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles east of Allentown, and were assessing damage.

There were “no evacuations, no injuries and no leaks from containers,” Northampton County reported this on its Facebook page.

Photos of the derailment, which occurred just before 8 a.m., shared on social media show two locomotives on the banks of the river, one of which is partially submerged, and several container wagons derailed.

“The most important thing we can do for our first responders is to stay away from the scene,” the county wrote in all caps.

Northampton County Emergency Management Services did not immediately respond to a request for information.

Norfolk Southern, the railroad that operated the train, also was at the scene of the derailment and was conducting an investigation, the county said. Norfolk Southern, which owns the Lehigh Line, a major freight railroad that winds through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Lehigh River provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people, and as a tributary to the Delaware River, it contributes drinking water to 15 million people, according to American Rivers, an environmental nonprofit.

In January, Norfolk Southern agreed to participate in a federal safety reporting program following an investigation into the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. In that accident, dozens of freight cars carrying hazardous materials derailed and caught fire, destroying the city enveloped in toxic smoke and contaminating drinking water supplies.

From 2018 to 2022, Northampton County recorded 26 rail accidents or incidents, resulting in 13 reported injuries and no fatalities. under a dangerous mitigation plan.

A historically agricultural region, the Lehigh Valley has emerged in recent years as a warehouse hub.

Nancy Wallace, who toiled tirelessly to clean up the only freshwater river flowing in New York City, the Bronx, and reclaim it for recreation and as a natural habitat, died on February 15 at her home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. 93.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Lane Wallace.

Ms. Wallace lived in White Plains, N.Y., in the 1980s and launched a broad campaign to save the river, then a 23-mile (37-kilometer) inaccessible watercourse that contained more wreckage, such as the carcasses of junked cars and rusted refrigerators, than wildlife .

The river is largely tidal and brackish from East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx to where Hunts Point meets the salty East River, but is generally considered fresh because it flows south from its source near Kensico Dam in Westchester County .

Although “naturally fresh” is a phrase not typically associated with the Bronx, New York’s only borough on the US mainland is in fact home to Pelham Bay Park, the city’s largest, as well as the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo. and the Hunts Point Produce Market – and a mainly freshwater river runs through it.

Mrs. Wallace, a career educator and civic leader, joined the board of the Bronx River Restoration in 1982. The following year, when the executive director left, she agreed to fill in temporarily. She held the job for 22 years until retiring in 2006 — a year before biologists at the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Bronx reported their first beaver sighting in the river in two centuries.

Mrs Wallace almost single-handedly raised money from local authorities, charities and private individuals for the restoration; won the support of officials in the Bronx and Westchester County; persuaded local businesses to donate construction equipment and supplies; and recruited Boy Scouts and the City Volunteer Corps, among others, to assist with the cleanup and restoration.

“For the long term, the fundamental thing we need to do is change people’s attitudes toward the river,” she told The New York Times in 1988. “After all, it only became a problem because of what people did with it.”

The Bronx River Restoration and the Bronx River Alliance tried to turn an eyesore – for anyone who could find it along the Bronx River Parkway, the nation’s first – into a place where you can hike and canoe. Conservationists have reclaimed the riverbank to create unlikely oases Starlight Park, along the Sheridan Expressway near East 173rd Street. The city’s parks department now calls the park “a vital link along the Bronx River Greenway.”

Ann Seaver Coolidge Upton was born September 2, 1930 in Marblehead. Her mother, Anna (Pennypacker) Upton, ran the welfare department in Marblehead, and her father, Edward, was a lawyer. Ann was called Nancy, in keeping with a family tradition of giving children an informal name.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1951 and briefly interrupted her master’s studies to marry Bruce A. Wallace, a mechanical engineer, whom she had met while working with inner-city teenagers in Paterson, NJ.

She legally changed her name to Ann U. Wallace in 1977, when she successfully ran for the Common Council in White Plains, although she was still known as Nancy Wallace.

After teaching and traveling after her husband completed his service in the U.S. Army, the couple settled in White Plains in 1959. She worked with the local Parent Teachers Association on a plan to desegregate the local public school system and, as a member of the Common Council, led the city’s groundbreaking, anti-discriminatory Fair Housing Law.

In 1982, she was urged to join the board of Bronx River Restoration, which she immediately accepted.

“I have always been interested in environmental issues and causes; even my children learned to fold their paper lunch bags very carefully and take them home so we could reuse them,” she said in 2005.

In addition to her daughter Lane, Mrs. Wallace is survived by her husband; another daughter, Gail Wallace; a son, David; her sister, Lane Upton Serota; and three grandchildren. In 2012, she moved back to her hometown with her husband.

The river restoration project had been underway for nearly a decade before Ms. Wallace joined the board. It started as a partnership between Anthony Bouza, a Bronx police captain who wanted to divert teenagers from delinquency, and Ruth Anderberg, who had entertained the idea of ​​a restoration for a decade and eventually left her job as a secretary at Fordham University to help start it. to get going.

Ms. Wallace’s staunchest supporters included José E. Serrano, then a state commissioner from the Bronx before he became a U.S. representative; Bea Castiglia-Catullo, fellow member of the River Restoration Council; and then-New York City Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, who predicted in 1988 that the river would one day be “what it should be: a place for the modern Huckleberry Finns.”

In helping to save the river, Ms. Wallace combined political acumen, a talent for consensus building, and community organizing skills to find common ground between Westchester’s suburban towns and its less affluent towns. neighborhoods bordering the river from the Bronx border at 242nd Street to the East River eight miles south.

“We’re not hoping we’ll drink the water or anything,” she told The Times in 1988. “But we hope to get it clean enough that the fish will want to come back.”

They did, including American eel and the endangered herring.

Rain fell from an atmospheric river in parts of California early Monday as another storm began testing the state's preparedness, weeks after a deadly deluge caused power outages and devastating mudslides.

Flood warnings were in effect through Wednesday for millions of people, mainly in California, as the possibility of thunderstorms, strong winds and rain continued to threaten the central and southern coasts.

“So the soil is quite sensitive,” said Brian Hurley, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service, referring to the significant rainfall the state has endured in recent weeks. “So that's why you're seeing a lot of flood watches right now.”

The state emergency service announced this on Sunday it had deployed emergency servicesincluding helicopters and rapid water rescue teams, in 14 provinces before the expected impact of the atmospheric river.

This was reported by the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles expected precipitation totals of three to five inches for much of Southern California, with a greater range of four to eight inches expected in the mountains and their foothills.

Urban flooding and mudslides were possible in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties during periods of heavy rainfall, the National Weather Service said, adding that there were high chance of thunder.

Officials in Santa Barbara County this weekend issued an evacuation warning through Wednesday for select communities.

Communities in Los Angeles County, where relatively less rain was expected, still was in danger of mudslides and debris on roads because that area “suffered the brunt of the latest storm,” the weather service said.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass residents pleaded this weekend to prepare.

Homeowners and workers in the city's hilly neighborhoods spent Sunday preparing sandbags and laying plastic tarps over muddy hills that still bore the scars of the last storm.

Some residents, including Staci Broussard, 58, made sure to fortify their properties shortly after the storm ended. Ms. Broussard's home in Baldwin Hills Estates, a neighborhood overlooking South Los Angeles, was damaged by the previous atmospheric river that flowed through the city.

The slope behind Ms. Broussard's house crumbled, toppling part of the iron fence in her backyard, sending mud and vegetation down the hill from her neighbor's house, on a hill above.

Ms. Broussard and her neighbor have secured tarps over the hill to prevent more mud from sliding down.

“As you can see, we have tarps everywhere because unfortunately this is happening all over the area,” she said on Sunday.

The Los Angeles Weather Service warned boaters of dangerous sea conditions, indicating they remain in port. The storm also threatened to erode the coast and damage structures there, officials said.

Farther north, forecasters said thunderstorms, gusty winds and lightning were possible in the Bay Area on Monday afternoon. The San Francisco Peninsula, which includes the city of San Francisco, was expected to receive up to eight inches of rain. The Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur coast could receive three to five and three to six inches, respectively.

Much of the Sacramento Valley was underwater a wind advisory until Tuesday morning. That's what the weather service in Sacramento said heavy thunderstorms accompanied by “short tornadoes” were possible in the area on Monday afternoon.

Vik Jolly contributed reporting from California.

The West Coast braced for more flooding on Sunday as heavy rain from an atmospheric river was forecast to spread across California starting Sunday, in the latest round of storms to hit the state this month.

A milder storm moved across California's northern and central coast Saturday night, kicking off a period of rain for the nation's most populous state. Forecasters said it was a precursor to a stronger system on Sunday, which was expected to bring most of the precipitation.

“Sunday evening and Monday alone, we'll see areas of two to six inches of rain along the coast south of the Bay Area all the way to Santa Barbara,” said Brian Hurley, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

More than 37 million people across the country were under flood watch on Sunday. Most were in California, where the watch was in effect through Wednesday, according to the Weather Service.

Atmospheric river is the name given to the narrow bands of moisture blown over the west coast by Pacific winds. They are the cause of California's heaviest rains and floods.

“Weather conditions will vary drastically from Sunday morning to Sunday evening,” The weather service said this on Sunday. “A heavy storm is coming today. It will start to rain around noon and will remain heavy throughout the night. Moderate to major impacts from this storm will continue through Monday with heavy rain, high winds, high surf, thunderstorms and flooding potential.”

While the system was largely expected to be a rainmaker even in mountain communities, Mr. Hurley said, some areas above 7,000 feet, such as Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada, could get more than four feet of snow.

The California Office of Emergency Services said Saturday that it had deployed emergency responders, including two rapid water rescue teams, to six counties ahead of the storm.

Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and San Jose, were expected to receive this aid between one and two centimeters according to the San Francisco Bay Area Weather Service office.

The system may bring hail, thunder and gusty winds 30 to 45 miles per hour to parts of the Bay Area and the Central Coast on Sunday, the Weather Service said.

Further south, the risk of flooding was high in the coastal communities of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, northwest of Los Angeles.

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles said the region can expect five to five inches of rain, with up to eight inches of rain in the mountains, accompanied by damaging wind gusts of 40 to 60 km/hour at higher altitudes and elsewhere at speeds of 20 to 40 mph.

Santa Barbara County officials issued an evacuation warning on Saturday for some areas. The warning, which was in effect until Wednesday, implored residents to leave as soon as possible.

The city of Santa Barbara said so would offer free emergency parking on a plot in the city center for residents in flood-prone areas.

An inch to two inches of rain was forecast to fall in Los Angeles Monday evening through Tuesday, Mr. Hurley said.

Although rainfall in Los Angeles was not expected to reach the levels of the destructive storm that hit the city two weeks ago, Mr Hurley said the loosened ground caused by that storm meant the area was not in the “best position” to absorb water. heavy precipitation.