Mike Joy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
A long-awaited NZ$700 million package to clean up New Zealand’s rivers and lakes has disappointed some of the government’s expert advisers – especially a delay on setting clear pollution limits.
If we’re not careful, water may not be clean enough or available when we need it.
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Good news – underground aquifers could be a reliable source of drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa even as the climate warms.
Micha Berry of the city of Fresno, Calif., which relies heavily on groundwater for its drinking water supply, repairs a groundwater well pump in 2013.
AP Photo/Gosia Wozniacka
Debra Perrone, University of California, Santa Barbara and Scott Jasechko, University of California, Santa Barbara
Millions of Americans rely on groundwater for their lives and livelihoods, but regulation is piecemeal. A new study maps groundwater wells nationwide and finds that they are drilling steadily deeper.
The Galilee waterhole is part of the area potentially affected by Adani’s Carmichael mine.
Stop Adani
Adani’s request for the names of individual scientists reviewing their groundwater management plan has chilling implications for scientific independence.
Adani Australia CEO Lucas Dow has now collected all the necessary approvals.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
It’s been years in the making, but Adani’s controversial Queensland coal mine is finally shovel-ready. Yet significant scientific questions remain, such as the impact on the region’s aquifers.
The Carmichael coal mine could cause irreversible environmental damage.
Dan Peled/AAP
The Ogalalla Aquifer is a vast underground lake that irrigates farms across the US Great Plains. It took thousands of years to fill, but human use could drain it in roughly a century.
The more the market is willing to pay, the harder it is to regulate water use.
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Residents of a small Victorian town realised that delicious water can be a curse as well as a blessing, when they lost a legal battle to stop a local farmer shipping groundwater to a nearby bottling plant.
Which council has Australia’s best-tasting water?
Arthur Chapman/Flickr
Perth, unlike Cape Town, faces no prospect of its tapwater running out. But other problems lurk beneath the surface, as the city’s drying climate puts increasing pressure on irrigation and wetlands.