(April 21, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
A severe drought gripping Texas is causing unusually salty conditions along the Gulf Coast, upsetting the region’s ecological balance and threatening coastal wildlife including oysters, crabs and whooping cranes, the most endangered crane species.
The drought is one of the driest on record for Texas and is currently the worst [...]
(April 17, 2009, The New York Times)
There are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks each year in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Aging Water Infrastructure Research Program, and some water experts fear that the problem is getting worse.
(Original Article Here)
(Feb. 26, 2009, The Guardian)
The world’s pre-eminent climate scientists produced a blunt assessment of the impact of global warming on the US yesterday, warning of droughts that could reduce the American south-west to a wasteland and heatwaves that could make life impossible even in northern cities.
In an update on the latest science on climate change, [...]
(March 5, 2009, Business Insider)
While we don’t have a smart grid for electricity in place yet, there’s already talks that we need a smart grid for water. Implementing a smarter system that could monitor water usage would save the the US as much as 30% to 50% of its water used each year, estimates Mark [...]
(Jan. 27, 2009, The Kansas City Star)
America’s roads, public transit and aviation have gotten worse in the past four years. Water and sewage systems are dreadful. The basic physical backbone of American society is barely above failing, a report by top engineers says.
It’ll cost $2.2 trillion to fix America’s ailing infrastructure, according to highlights of [...]
(Jan. 21, 2009, The International Herald Tribune)
U.S. and Iraqi officials opened a water treatment plant in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum on Wednesday three and a half years after they began it, a sign that the area is finally quiet enough for long-promised reconstruction work.
The $65 million (47 million pound) plant provides water for 200,000 people — [...]
(Jan. 15, 2009, WaterWired)
Here’s another missive for soon-to-be President Obama from the American Water Works Association (AWWA), Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA), National Association of Water Companies (NAWC), and the National Rural Water Association (NRWA).
Download National Agenda for Drinking Water
Issues discussed include:
Economic stimulus through water infrastructure investment
Long-term water infrastructure investment
Safe drinking water standards
Source water protection
Climate change [...]
(Jan. 12, 2009, BoingBoing)
Researchers at the Southern Nevada Water Authority analyzed tap water from 19 US water utilities. New Scientist shares the list of the top 11 detected compounds, fortunately all of which were “found at extremely low concentrations.” According the Environmental Protection Agency, there’s no cause for alarm but there could be risk “especially [...]
