Water scarcity has long been a problem. But climate change, a growing global population and economic growth are putting the natural resource under even more stress.
Brown with rust two ships stand like stone upright in the yellow sand. The wind swirls salty air around the the trawlers, silence ...
In 1922, seven Western states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming and California — drew up an agreement on how to divide the waters of the Colorado River. But there was one big problem with the plan: They overestimated how much water the river could provide.
As a result, each sta...
As California endures its fourth year of drought, water restrictions are taking effect across the state. On April 1, Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order implementing a mandatory 25 percent water cutback in cities and towns across the state from 2013 usage levels. It took effect June 1.
B...
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is awarding $1 million in grants to strengthen the capacity of states and tribes to protect and restore wetlands. The National Wetland Program Development Grants provide interstate agencies, intertribal consortia, and non-profit organizatio...
Earth recently hit several remarkable records — but not in a good way
The amount of carbon dioxide gas, a global warming pollutant, has risen to the highest level in at least 800,000 years. Monthly average Arctic sea ice extent in March was the lowest in the satellite record. So far, 2015 has seen ...
In the wake of California Gov. Jerry Brown's decision to enact mandatory restrictions on the use of water given the state's ongoing, historic drought, people nationwide have become obsessed with almonds. Not in the sense that people are buying and eating lots of almonds, mind you. In the sense that ...
Colorado is looking for 163 billion gallons of water, and a long-awaited state plan for finding it calls for increased conservation, reusing treated wastewater and diverting more water from the Western Slope.
The plan, ordered by Gov. John Hickenlooper to deal with a massive projected water shortfa...
Global warming is likely playing a bigger role than previously thought in dead zones in oceans, lakes and rivers around the world and it's only going to get worse, according to a new study.
Dead zones occur when fertilizer runoff clogs waterways with nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphor...
China’s central government will boost spending on projects to conserve water this year as the world’s most-populous nation grapples with ways to ensure adequate supply of the vital resource, an official said.
Water conservation investments totaled 439.7 billion yuan ($73 billion) in 2013, w...
How is a warming climate impacting life in the oceans? Fish can move to cooler areas, but coral reefs are anchored in place.
Late-summer water temperatures near the Florida Keys were warmer by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last several decades compared to a century earlier, according to a new ...
REUTERS/Danny Moloshok
A broken water main spilled 20 million gallons of water onto the streets near the University of California, Los Angeles, Tuesday. To put that into perspective, here are some other things the water could have been used for:
20 million gallo...
Imagine a smog-free Los Angeles, where electric cars ply silent freeways, solar panels blanket rooftops and power plants run on heat from beneath the earth, from howling winds and from the blazing desert sun.
A new Stanford study finds that it is technically and economically feasible to con...
Removal of river water for irrigation and habitat fragmentation by irrigation dams were shown to be the principal factors contributing to the decline of the Indus river dolphin, according to a study published July 16, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gill Braulik from the Wildli...
An increase in marijuana growing on the West Coast is straining water supplies in drought-stricken California and imperiling the region’s salmon populations, environmental groups claim.
Prodigious Water NeedsMarijuana plants require up to six gallons of water per day, putting tremendous strain on w...
WWF welcomes the Lao Government's decision to have the Don Sahong hydropower project undergo a formal consultation process, a decision likely to delay construction of the project. The consultation process requires Laos to hold inter-governmental consultations before proceeding with the dam, and...
Clean water is life’s most basic need, yet one in eight people of the world’s population do not have access to it. In Cambodia, a country of 14.8 million, there are over 9,000,000 cases of diarrhea. Bad water accounts for 13% of the deaths and 14.8% of the health burden. Without a better water sourc...
KPCC waded into the state's water crisis Wednesday, March 19. KPCC NEXT Science series host Matt Kaplan spoke with a panel that included a scientist, a policy expert and a water professional and asked them to weigh in on the problems facing California as it undergoes its most severe drought in decad...
Sustainability at MillerCoors requires brewing great beer while using less water in our processes. Three of our eight major breweries and parts of our agricultural supply chain are located in or near water-stressed regions, so we emphasize advancing water efficiency initiatives at these locations.
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Water scarcity was, until recently, considered by most of the developed world to be like James Hilton's Lost Horizon: "far away, at the very limit of distance." However, the convergence of aquifer depletion from increasing agricultural, industrial and municipal water use with more frequent and...
