Water & Oceans

"Crops are wilting in the countryside, and the capital's water shortage has turned dire as Mexico grapples with its worst drought in more than half a century."

"Dam projects by neighbouring states are drastically reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates and helping to turn a once-fertile plain into desert."

"U.S. scientists say persistent winds and a weakened current contributed to higher than normal June and July sea levels along the Eastern Seaboard."

"On New Year’s Day, 2009, in the tiny northeast Pennsylvania town of Dimock, a drinking-water well blew up because of a methane leak associated with natural-gas drilling nearby."

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke asking them to reverse the federal government’s restrictions on water use intended to protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta."

"Scientists who returned to the Bay Area this week after an expedition to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" brought piles of plastic debris they pulled out of the ocean — soda bottles, cracked patio chairs, Styrofoam chunks, old toys, discarded fishing floats and tangled nets."

"San Francisco Bay and the delta are dying. Salmon runs are collapsing. Droughts are getting worse. And big agriculture still wants more water."

"A major problem facing municipalities around Albany County: sewer systems that are often overrun by heavy rain and governments that don't have the millions of dollars needed to upgrade often antiquated systems."

Shallow rivate wells in part of West Palm Beach, drilled illegally by contractors, may be exposing homeowners there to drinking water contamination. People there fear a possible cancer cluster.