This Week in Water

The U.S. Central Plains and South-West are facing potential unprecedented drought risk this century according to climate models based on historical soil moisture, rainfall, and evaporation records and data sampled across North America, perhaps the worst in 1000 years and greater than those of the last few years.

Drought-stricken Sao Paulo, Brazil, has only 100 days of water left in its reservoirs.

Rising seas are threatening South Florida's seemingly plentiful drinking water.

An oil pipeline burst in Montana spilled up to 50,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River effecting downstream drinking water.

Vantage Energy Appalachia LLC, a shale gas drilling operator, was penalized for environmental violations resulting from illegal waste disposal and a landslide that covered and diverted two small streams in Western Pennsylvania.

The disastrous Duke Energy coal ash spill into North Carolina's Dan River could have been prevented.

Not only was 2014 the hottest year on record, breaking highs of 2005 and 2010, global warming has continued unabated and ocean temperatures are rising at alarming rates.

Massive amounts of methane gases are being released from the seabed off Siberia as the permafrost continues to thaw.

Unprecedented floods across Southern Africa have affected the lives of nearly a million people, and aid is slow reaching them. Food, water, sanitation, and the spread of waterborne diseases are the most urgent needs.

UN peacekeepers from Nepal are immune from a U.S. lawsuit even though they discharged raw sewage into a major river likely causing a cholera outbreak in Haiti.

Elites at this years gathering of business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, are urging quick action to alter the disastrous effects of climate change.

UN delegates have agreed to develop the first legally-binding agreement to conserve marine life in the high seas and international seabeds.

One energy company in New England believes it can convert oceanic pollution into clean energy and has teamed with the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut to show how.

One company hopes to store surplus energy in giant balloons under Lake Ontario.

Abu Dhabi is funding first-class research to explore the potential for solar-powered seawater desalination (long a favored technology here at WoW).

Qatar is continuing to explore technological means to restore growth in the Sahara Desert and deserts around the world, incorporating solar power, saltwater greenhouses, evaporative hedges, desalination, salt production, salt-loving plant species, and algae production

Governor Chris Christie signed a law allowing for fast-tracking the privatization of New Jersey's public water systems. Folks around the world are mobilizing against these power grabs.

After powerful storms swept through the West, waterfalls began flowing again in Yosemite.

The world's rivers constitute only about 20% of the water that flows yearly into the oceans. The rest apparently comes from underground estuaries.