Lake Erie: Canary in the Coal Mine

Back in the 1970′s, Lake Erie was often referred to as the Great Lakes’ “canary in the coal mine.” Today, a combination of old and new challenges to the lake’s health is leading to more monitoring by federal, state, and international officials, as well as private citizens from the area. Amy Jo Klei, the Ohio [...]

US EPA’s Climate Ready Water Utilities Initiative

Climate change has affected the U.S. in many ways in 2012. The U.S. EPA has created the Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT) software to assist drinking water and wastewater utilities in assessing their risk to climate change impacts and in developing adaptation strategies in response. In addition to evaluating risk at a utility, [...]

USGS Samples Hurricane Sandy’s Damage

The U.S. Geological Survey is monitoring the water quality of areas most affected by Hurricane Sandy’s devastation, and looking for traces of nutrients, pesticides, and bacteria. This sampling effort is part of the federal government’s broad efforts to ensure public health and to support the state, tribal and local response to the storm. While taking [...]

Beer Crafting: Taste Your Watershed

There are roughly 2,000 breweries in the United States. The size and market share of the breweries range from local microbreweries to large internationally known brands. Many brewers will tell you that one of the most important ingredients flavoring beer is water. Water supports the yeast which eats sugars and turns it into alcohol. Water [...]

A New Path for Clean Water: Magnetic Soap?

A team of international scientists at Bristol University has created the world’s first magnetic soap by adding iron atoms to the detergent molecules. The soap is composed of long molecules that have one end that is attracted to water and the other is repelled by it. The soap is able to attach to oily, grimy [...]

A Call to Farms

As we celebrate the bounty of the season, pitchforks and storm clouds are gathering throughout the country and the nation’s capital over agriculture and water policy and the potential collisions between the two. On the water quantity side, some of the fresh wrangling is over subsidies that distort the real cost of water, ground water [...]

America’s Top 10 Endangered Rivers Announced

For 26 years, American Rivers, an important partner of the U.S. Water Alliance, has sounded the alarm on hundreds of rivers throughout the U.S. in their annual report America’s Most Endangered Rivers. This year, the report identifies rivers at risk from mining, gas drilling, untreated wastewater, roads, bridges and overuse. American Rivers took advantage of [...]

U.S. Army: Net Zero Water Initiative

Last month the U.S. Army launched a new sustainability initiative, called Net Zero, to improve management of natural resources at its instillations. The U.S. Army identified six of its facilities last week to become Net Zero water installations. Consumption of freshwater resources will be limited and water will be returned back to the same watershed [...]

New York Experiments with Giant “Sponges” to Clean Up Hudson River

For the last 18 months, research engineers and a New York state utility have been using a Hudson River contamination site as a laboratory, testing a new way to remove coal tar pollution from riverbeds. Late last year utility workers from Central Hudson Gas & Electric and engineers from the Electric Power Research Institute began [...]

iPhone App Helps Improve Watershed Stewardship

As California continues its efforts to balance the budget, the state’s environmental agencies are feeling the strain. Now the public can now help pick up the slack. IBM is offering Creek Watch Database, an iPhone app which allows users to track the level, flow and volume of debris in their local watershed. The feature was [...]