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Introducing Watermark, a New Series on All Things Water
Credit: Amy Palko on Flickr Water. The most basic condition for life on this planet. Without it, nothing we know is possible. The understanding and management of water is a defining characteristic of...
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Texas’s Disappearing Lakes
Photo credit: Albert Mock Lake Meredith, in the Texas Panhandle, was born in 1965, the product of a federal dam project on the Canadian River. For a generation, the water from this reservoir in the...
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Fighting Floodwater to Grow a Garden — and a Healthy New Orleans
Credit: Magellan Street Garden on Facebook The Magellan Street Garden, in the Algiers section of New Orleans, was trying to grow. But this plot of community land, tended by a retired electrician and...
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When the Wells Run Dry
A well digging truck in New Mexico. The town of Magdalena, N.M. had to drill a new well after its existing water source ran dry in June. Credit: Jared Tarbell on Flickr For three painful years, the...
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For Some in the Southwest, It’s Come to Selling Water to Fracking Companies
Hydrofracking requires up to 6 million gallons of water per well. Credit: Helen Slottje via Ari Moore on Flickr Under the dry soil of Texas and New Mexico, there is shale oil. It’s a natural resource...
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Despite Progress, Political Dams Still Block Everglades Restoration
Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. Credit: Sarah Goodyear Well over a century has passed since developers started mucking up the Everglades, trying to turn this vast, watery wilderness into a...
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New Orleans Has Not Fixed Its Flooding Problem
A broken pipe spewing water in New Orleans’ Carrollton neighborhood in January. Credit: Infrogmation of New Orleans On August 29, 2005 — eight years ago on Thursday — Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf...
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Yosemite Fire Threatens Hetch Hetchy, the Bay Area’s Super-Pure Water Source
The Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Credit: Amit Patel on Flickr As the Rim Fire blazed out of control in California’s Yosemite National Park last month, the people of the San Francisco Bay Area, 167 miles...
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Why Canada Wasn’t Prepared for Its Summer of Flooding
The July 8 flooding in Toronto. Credit: Angelina Earley on Flickr “This has been the summer we suddenly talk about water.” That’s columnist Shawn Micallef writing in the Toronto Star last week about...
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The California Valley That Grows Your Produce Can’t Drink Its Own Water
The San Joaquin Valley. Credit: Flickr user brewbooks If you eat food in the U.S., you almost certainly eat fruits and vegetables grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a productive agricultural...
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The World Loses $260 Billion Each Year Because People Can’t Find a Good Toilet
Credit: The World Bank The lack of proper sanitation infrastructure across the globe takes a huge toll on human health and the environment. It also costs a tremendous amount of money. Figures released...
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INTERVIEW: Conserving Water, Texas-Style
Medina Lake near San Antonio, Texas, which has seen low water levels during the drought. Credit: Kelly Lynn James A lot of what Laura Huffman cares about comes down to the question of water. Since...
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Wisconsin Town, Facing a Water Crisis, Asks to Divert a Little Bit of Lake...
Lake Michigan has seen historically low water levels in recent years. Credit: Tom Gill on Flickr You may not usually think of the upper Midwest — land of the Great Lakes as well as thousands of...
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A Key Tool for Flood Control Are the Rivers Under Our Feet
The River Medlock in Manchester, U.K. Credit: Gene Hunt on Flickr When cities of the industrial age were being built, their planners often saw rivers as a problem or nuisance. If a waterway couldn’t...
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China May Substitute One Environmental Threat for Another
Credit: Andrew Maddocks Winter is smog season in northern China, and this year it’s already off to a grim start. The air pollution in the region’s cities has been thicker than ever in the past week....
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Why IKEA, a New Urbanist Development and a Park-in-the-Making All Withstood...
The Red Hook IKEA. Credit: Flickr user Ham Hock When morning broke after Hurricane Sandy swept through New York City last October, the IKEA parking lot on the Brooklyn waterfront was filled with...
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Republicans Criticize EPA Move to Protect Streams and Wetlands
Credit: EPA.gov The reaction from the far right on a recent action by the Environmental Protection Agency was apoplectic. “GOP lawmakers grill EPA on water reg ‘power grab’,” was the headline on Fox...
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Mapping Water’s Role in New Orleans, the ‘Unfathomable City’
The identity of New Orleans is as fluid, murky and powerful as the Mississippi River itself. This is a city of controlled chaos as ineluctable as any hurricane, a constantly shifting human landscape...
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What If States Had Developed Around Watersheds?
Credit: John Lavey In 1869, a man named John Wesley Powell made a legendary journey down the Green and Colorado rivers. Powell, a soldier, abolitionist and geologist, was awed by the power of the...
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VIDEO: New Report Shows the Terrible Effects of Zimbabwe’s Crumbling Water...
Marian Magumise, 39, pumps water from an NGO-funded borehole in northwestern Zimbabwe with her infant son on her back. Credit: The funding NGO, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), on...
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