How much water does it take to turn on a light? It took 10,000 litres to make your jeans. Another three big bathtubs of water was needed for your two-eggs-toast-coffee breakfast this morning.
We are surrounded by an unseen world of water: furniture, houses, cars, roads, buildings – practically everything we use and make needs water.
Yet another radioactive water leak has been detected at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials announced Tuesday, as the nuclear catastrophe continues to unfold more than two years after a massive earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns at the plant.
The new leak marks the third of seven underground radioactive water pools that are leaking since Saturday, and follows two failures of the plant's cooling system in a month.
CLARKSVILLE, Mo. — Those fighting floods in several communities along the Mississippi River were mostly successful Sunday despite the onslaught of water, but an ominous forecast and the growing accumulation of snow in the upper Midwest tempered any feelings of victory.
Bicholim river, one of the important tributaries of River Mandovi is on its way of being turned into a big gutter due to apathy from the government as well as from the communities and if no serious efforts are done at the earliest to protect the river, there is hardly any hope for the survival of this lifeline of Bicholim town.
Exxon Mobil Corp. says crews are working to contain and clean up an oil spill near Mayflower, Arkansas, after its Pegasus pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon.
The pipeline carries Canadian heavy crude oil from Patoka, Illinois to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast.
Exxon Mobil issued a release saying the company was responding to a spill of more than 10,000 barrels — or 1.59 million litres — of oil, and that some 4,500 barrels of oil and water had been recovered.
China’s coastal waters are experiencing severe pollution, with the size of the worst affected areas up 50% on last year according to The State Oceanic Administration (SOA).
The SOA, found that 68,000 square kilometers (26,300 square miles) had the worst official pollution rating, up 24,000 square kilometers on 2011, it was reported by the China Daily Thursday.
Affected waters are deemed unsuitable for swimming, fish-farming, port use and are not even fit for some industrial purposes under this classification.
Peru has declared an environmental state of emergency in a remote part of its northern Amazon rainforest, home for decades to one of the country's biggest oil fields, currently operated by the Argentinian company Pluspetrol.
Achuar and Kichwa indigenous people living in the Pastaza river basin near Peru's border with Ecuador have complained for decades about the pollution, while successive governments have failed to deal with it. Officials indicate that for years the state lacked the required environmental quality standards.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the results of the first comprehensive survey looking at the health of thousands of stream and river miles across the country, finding that more than half – 55 percent – are in poor condition for aquatic life.
The Msukaligwa municipality in Mpumalanga has declared the town of Ermelo a disaster area amid a looming water crisis. Mayor Sipho Bongwe says the drop of water levels in the Brummer and Douglas dams is affecting more than 45 000 households. He says the municipality has developed measures to increase water levels in the dams and adjacent reservoirs.
Water is very complicated. It’s affected by large-scale issues like climate change and globalization. International commerce moves virtual water (the water it takes to grow or produce a product) from farms in Brazil to grocery stores in China and Egypt.
But water is also inherently local, impacted by site-specific weather, geography, and other environmental and land use conditions. Managing and using water, then, requires understanding it in its full geographic context.
In part due to the fact that Minnesota is prime farm land, many of the state's inhabitants now face the problem of having elevated levels of nitrogen in their drinking water. The conversion of grasslands and pastures into chemical-driven, industrial crop land has eliminated much of the natural filtering of ground water that such native landscapes typically provide.
A shortage of water will hit Taiwan by 2030 due to serious buildup of silt in the country's reservoirs, Interior Minister Lee Hong-yuan said.
The 50 reservoirs in Taiwan have seen their capacity decreased over the years due to severe silt buildup and by 2030 will see their capacity further decrease to a degree hardly able to sustain the 23 million people in Taiwan, Lee said.
Nearly two years after the onset of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, over 220,000 metric tons of contaminated water have been collected and stored on site, still another 75,000 tons remains in the reactor buildings. Every day at least another 40 tons of contaminated water are created, requiring additional storage tanks to be constructed.
The Colorado River won’t be able to support the growing population of Western states including California, says a federal study released Wednesday.
The study—conducted by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation over the course of three years—says the river will be an estimated 3.2 million acre-feet short of meeting demand by 2060.
A national survey has revealed shocking statistics about China's coastal environment -- wetlands, coral reefs and mangrove swamps are rapidly shrinking, massive algae blooms regularly attack ecosystems and coastal cities often experience water shortages.
The risk of flooding and water shortage in 2013 has increased because the Government is too slow in changing the way we manage our water, environmental leaders warn.
The authors of the ‘Blueprint for Water’ report say that after two dry winters, it took Britain’s wettest ever summer to narrowly avert a serious drought. They warn that despite this summer’s flooding, another series of dry winters would put Britain right back under serious risk of drought.
The state-funded Water Research Commission issued a new report that says the South African government has already issued fracking exploration permits in six of the nine provinces.
The report warns government about the serious risk of water pollution from cancer-causing chemicals and radioactive compounds from future underground “fracking” operations across huge swaths of the country.
The worst drought in more than 200 years has paralysed shipping on the Danube river, including popular pleasure cruises, as shrinking water levels expose bombs and debris from the Second World War.
The level of Europe's second largest river has fallen to a trickle in places as result of a lack of rain in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. An estimated 80 cargo ships are stranded on the Hungary-Serbia border.
