Global water reservoir volumes decline despite construction boom, study says Global reservoir volumes fell during the last 20 years despite a construction boom that drove up storage capacity, a new study showed on Tuesday, suggesting that new dams will not be enough to solve growing strain on the world's water supplies. David Stanway Reuters

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CLICK HERE - World Resources Institute (WRI) - Aqueduct Tools

theguardian.com - by Emily Holden and Vidhi Doshi - August 6, 2019

A quarter of the world’s population across 17 countries are living in regions of extremely high water stress, a measure of the level of competition over water resources, a new report reveals.

Experts at the World Resources Institute (WRI) warned that increasing water stress could lead to more “day zeroes” – a term that gained popularity in 2018 as Cape Town in South Africa came dangerously close to running out of water . . .

 . . . Although the US did not have high levels of water stress overall, a handful of states – including New Mexico and California – were found to be facing significant strains on their water supplies that will only intensify with global heating.

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Waste ash from hundreds of coal-fired power plants has contaminated groundwater in 39 states with toxic substances such as arsenic, lithium and mercury, according to a report by two environmental groups. SOURCE: CNN

CLICK HERE - REPORT - Coal’s Poisonous Legacy - Groundwater Contaminated by Coal Ash Across the U.S. (80 page .PDF report)

cnn.com - by Gregory Wallace - March 4, 2019

Waste ash from hundreds of coal-fired power plants has contaminated groundwater in 39 states with toxic substances like arsenic, lithium and mercury, according to a report by two environmental groups that was based on data the plants reported to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The report, released Monday by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, highlights more than a dozen instances in which those substances have reached drinking water supplies. The full extent of the effect on drinking water supplies is not known because private sources of drinking water are not tested, the report said.

Image: Manure lagoons on hog farms like this one in eastern North Carolina flooded after Hurricane Floyd swept through in 1999, creating environmental and health concerns for nearby rivers. Farmers are worried that the scenario will repeat after Hurricane Florence hits this week. John Althouse/AFP/Getty Images

npr.org - September 11th 2018 - Dan Charles

Just inland from the North Carolina coast, right in the path of Hurricane Florence, there's an area where there are many more pigs than people. Each big hog farm has one or more open-air "lagoons" filled with manure, and some could be vulnerable to flooding if the hurricane brings as much rain as feared.