Water

Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir. The mineral-stained canyon walls are a growth chart in reverse, showing where the lake surface has been. Photo - J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

ecowatch.com - by Brett Walton - July 7, 2014

Lake Mead—America’s largest reservoir, Las Vegas’ main water source and an important indicator for water supplies in the Southwest—will fall this week to its lowest level since 1937 when the manmade lake was first being filled, according to forecasts from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. . .

. . . the steadily draining lake does signal an era of new risks and urgency for an iconic and ebbing watershed that provides up to 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico with a portion of their drinking water. The rules governing the river are complex, but the risk equation is straightforward: less supply due to a changing climate, plus increasing demands from new development, leads to greater odds of shortages.

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Firefighters have worried that in the event of a fracking chemical spill, without information on the chemicals they would not know the best way to respond. Photo courtesy Kaye Bewley, flickr creative commons

Legislators are pushing for a rule that would require fracking operators to provide information about the chemical contents of fracking fluid in the event of a spill.

northcarolinahealthnews.org - by Gabe Rivin - May 16, 2014

North Carolina - First responders are applauding a recent legislative proposal that would allow state officials to retain confidential information about hydraulic-fracturing chemicals, with the intention that the information reach those first responders quickly during an emergency.

Under restrictions, a Mumford, Tex., farm on the Brazos River could not draw water from it, while cities and power plants could. Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Michael Wines - March 16, 2014

MUMFORD, Tex. — Across the parched American West, the long drought has set off a series of fierce legal and political battles over who controls an increasingly dear treasure — water.

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Photo by Gail Langellotto / Flickr.

yesmagazine.org - by Molly Rusk - February 18, 2014

Some residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia lost access to clean drinking water on January 9, when a coal-processing facility spilled roughly 10,000 gallons of crude MCHM—a chemical used to treat coal—into the Elk River and surrounding land. The spill affected the water supply for more than 300,000 people.

The quality of the water remains in question, but residents aren't satisfied with a choice between expensive bottled water from the store and possibly polluted water from the tap. Increasingly, they're going for a sustainable and self-sufficient alternative: rainwater harvesting.

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