Wildfires that have devastated Australia in the last few weeks pose a risk to drinking water for millions of people. Credit: Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data/Gallo Images via Getty Images Even as bushfires push into new swaths of Australia, the communities close to and within the nearly 30 million acres that have already burned are starting to reckon with a complex, expensive aftermath: fire’s threat to their drinking water. It’s a vexing problem that a growing number of people around the world have had to cope with over the last two decades, as climate change fuels hotter, bigger fires that destroy forested catchments and consume towns and their water systems, engineers and scientists said. More than a year after a 2016 wildfire turned into the costliest disaster in Canadian history, Fort McMurray, Alberta allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding to remove ash from drinking water sources. In […]