When wildfires tear through forests, their destruction doesn’t end when the flames go out. A groundbreaking study reveals these fires leave a toxic legacy in waterways that can last nearly a decade, posing serious challenges for drinking water supplies and ecosystems. Scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder found that contaminants from wildfires can degrade water quality for up to eight years after a fire. This first-ever large-scale assessment, published in June 2025 in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, analyzed over 100,000 water samples from more than 500 watersheds across … Continue reading Wildfires Contaminate Water for 8 Years: Study Reveals Sediment Levels 2000x Higher in Some Streams