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Water's foundational economic role and the significant needs of its infrastructure can provide a leveraged economic and social benefit as we work towards a post pandemic recovery.

World Economic Forum article highlights the social and economic risk posed by increased global water security shortfalls.

Netflix In partnership with Vox Media Studios and Vox - This enlightening explainer series will take viewers deep inside a wide range of culturally relevant topics, questions, and ideas. Each episode will explore current events and social trends pulled from the zeitgeist, touching topics across politics, science, history and pop culture -- featuring interviews with some of the most...

In some western river basins, over 50 percent of the water goes to cattle feed, fodder for cows that end up as burgers in major U.S. cities. To save rivers, scientists suggest paying farmers to not farm.

New laboratory tests confirm that drinking water in dozens of cities across the United States is contaminated with toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at levels exceeding what independent experts consider safe for human consumption. The findings suggest that previous studies have dramatically underestimated the number of consumers exposed to PFAS...

New laboratory tests commissioned by EWG have for the first time found the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS in the drinking water of dozens of U.S. cities, including major metropolitan areas. The results confirm that the number of Americans exposed to PFAS from contaminated tap water has been dramatically underestimated by previous studies, both from the Environmental Protection...

Centuries before New York City sprawled into a skyscraping, five-borough metropolis, the island of Manhattan was a swampy woodland. Ponds and creeks flowed around hills and between trees, sustaining nomadic Native Americans and wildlife. But after the Dutch established a colony in 1624, water shortages and pollution began threatening the island’s natural supply, sparking a crisis...

With climate change, plants of the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according toWith climate change, plants of the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a Dartmouth-led study in...

When it comes to global warming’s one-two punch of inundation and drought, the presence of too much water has had the most impact on U.S. agriculture this year, with farmers in the Midwest swamped by flooding throughout the  Mississippi Basin . But in the Southwest, it’s the increasing lack of water that’s threatening the agricultural economy, as well as...

BANGALORE, India — Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, meaning they are using almost all the water they have, according to new World Resources Institute data...

A bill that would authorize the federal government to enact a drought plan for Colorado River basin states in times of shortage has passed Congress and is on its way to the White House for the president's signature. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., fast-tracked the measure, clearing a final hurdle for the drought plan, a product of years of...

It almost goes without saying that clean water is a basic human need. It's essential for virtually every aspect of human health, wellbeing and prosperity, from drinking, hygiene, and health to growing food and producing goods. But while it is obvious to everyone that water is crucial to life, less appreciated is its importance to business. All companies rely on plentiful,...

Matt Diserio and his partners started Water Asset Management about a decade ago, convinced that private capital could help solve environmental problems while making good returns. So far they have. But Matt doesn’t think every “sustainable” investment will prove to be a winner. He likes water more than renewable energy, for example. Edited excerpts of our...

As climate change alters the world around us, scientists are warning that the impacts on groundwater reserves could take a century to catch up – which means it'll be our grandchildren dealing with the fallout of the effects on their water supply. Groundwater – fresh water cached underground in soil and between rocks – takes much longer to respond to temperature...

With the Southwest locked in a 19-year drought and climate change making the region increasingly drier, water managers and users along the Colorado River are facing a troubling question: Are we in a new, more arid era when there will never be enough water? In the basement of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, the fragrant smell of pine hangs in the...

Along with a warming climate and intensified human activities, recent water storage in global landlocked basins has undergone a widespread decline. A new study reveals this decline has aggravated local water stress and caused potential sea level rise. The study, "Recent Global Decline in Endorheic Basin Water Storage," was carried out by a team of scientists from six...

With cities like Cape Town facing ‘day zero’ crises, Monika Freyman explains why investors need to be alive to water risks Harvard’s $37bn (€32.5bn) endowment took a $1.1bn write-down last year after withering criticism about its farmland acquisitions and water-use practices in Brazil, California and other resource-sensitive regions. More mining projects in...

This story is part of What Happens Next , our complete guide to understanding the future. Read more predictions about the Future of Water . When the ancient Romans built their first aqueduct, they set into motion an enduring idea: A modern city needs to build infrastructure that pumps water over, through, and around mountain ranges. Most of today’s cities route this water...

When the thousands of water lorry drivers who shore up parched Chennai's overtaxed water delivery system went on strike for three days last month, to protest a ruling restricting their access to groundwater, a water crisis ensued. Hotels and malls shut. Taps ran dry in residential districts of the city. "My phone rang incessantly," remembers Sarvanan...

LIKE RUST SLOWLY consuming the body of a car, drought has spread upstream on the Colorado River. The river’s Upper Basin – generally north of Lake Powell – has been largely insulated from the 19-year drought afflicting the giant watershed, thanks to the region’s relatively small water demand and heavy snows that bury Colorado’s 14,000ft peaks each...

The Colorado River system’s ongoing 19-year drought could trigger unprecedented water rationing among its southern states by mid-2020, a new study warns. The river, which supplies 40 million people, is going through the longest dry spell in recorded history and one of the driest in the past 1,200 years, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. Over this summer, Reclamation...

Nevada’s Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir in the West, is on track to fall below a critical threshold in 2020, according to a new forecast by the Bureau of Reclamation. In a prediction released Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation, a multistate agency that manages water and power in the West, said there is a 52% probability that water levels will fall below a threshold of 1,075...

At issue are falling water levels at the West’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead. Having already dropped by more than 150 feet over the past two decades to 1,077 feet, the Nevada reservoir is two feet shy of falling below a federal threshold that can trigger mandatory cutbacks by U.S. officials. Nevada, California—and Mexico—have mostly agreed to a regional Drought...

A cascade of failures mean that Pennsylvanians can no longer take clean water, a right so important it's enshrined in the state constitution, for granted. Utilities across the state struggle to maintain aging water delivery and treatment systems that need at least $16.8 billion in upgrades over the next two decades. Meanwhile, a decade of budget cuts handed down by successive...

The Colorado River has for years been locked in a pattern of chronic overuse, with much more water doled out to cities and farmlands than what’s flowing into its reservoirs. The river basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, has been drying out during what scientists say is one of the driest 19-year periods in the past 1,200 years. Its largest reservoir, Lake Mead,...

AUSTIN, Texas — Less than eight months after Hurricane Harvey pelted the Texas Gulf Coast with torrential rainfall, drought has returned to Texas and other parts of the West, Southwest and Southeast, rekindling old worries for residents who dealt with earlier waves of dry spells and once again forcing state governments to reckon with how to keep the water flowing.

The New “Normal” for Water in the West, "  After 20 years of drought conditions, some scientists are calling for better terminology to describe the impact of rising temperatures in the region.  APRIL IS OFTEN a time of abundance in the mountains of the American West, when snowpack is at or near its peak, and forecasters work to determine how much runoff...

A March 2018 UN report on water risks concludes that water needs to be properly valued, measured and managed.  The United Nations and World Bank Group convened a High Level Panel on Water (HLPW) to provide leadership in tackling one of the world’s most pressing challenges – an approaching global water crisis. As leaders of organizations, the challenge put before the...

Between droughts and floods, the last decade has offered water managers in the southwest a preview of how climate change could impact a supply largely dependent on winter snow. This year’s disappointing snowpack has them worried again. "Water and climate change are joined at the hip,” said Brad Udall, a researcher at Colorado State University who published a paper...

UNITED NATIONS — Nigeria. Syria. Somalia. And now Iran. In each country, in different ways, a water crisis has triggered some combination of civil unrest, mass migration, insurgency or even full-scale war. In the era of climate change, their experiences hold lessons for a great many other countries. The World Resources Institute warned this month of the rise of water stress...

Rising temperatures are undermining the source of one third of Southern California’s drinking water: the Colorado River. A new study by the US Geological Survey finds the river’s flow has shrunk by about seven percent over the past 30 years. As air temperature rises due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, more water is sucked into the atmosphere from the snowpack...

Fresh water is vital for human survival and health, the production of food and energy, industrial activity, and the functioning of the entire global economy, as well as for the survival of other animals, plants, and natural ecosystems. Water scarcity, whatever its cause–natural catastrophes, pollution, poor water management, or theft and smuggling—can have grave consequences.

In a new report released Wednesday by the Value of Water Campaign, an economic impact analysis examines how investments in the nation’s water infrastructure affect economic growth and employment. The report, “The Economic Benefits of Investing in Water Infrastructure” was shared for the first time as part of a World Water Day briefing on Capitol Hill. Among the...

In the 21st century, water availability in many regions can no longer be taken for granted, and water security has emerged as a key catalyst of sustainable development. To better reflect the salience of water security and be more responsive to rapidly changing contexts, water economists and development practitioners need to identify the linkages to other sectors and issues, and...

Cities need to safeguard water sources

The question is no longer just whether climate change will kill us, but also whether climate change will make us kill each other. Almost 25 percent of armed conflicts in ethnically divided countries occur around the same time as climate-related disasters. This is the main take-away of a new study by researchers that adds crucial data to a debate...

The water level in Lake Shasta, California’s largest reservoir, had plunged to less than a third of normal by the end of last year. Then came the El  Niño  rainfall, which by April had tripled the volume of water in the lake. The story is similar in Trinity Lake, part of the same network of federal projects in the far northern portion of the state that regulate...

For the next two months, the news from Lake Mead could sound like a broken record. The nation’s largest man-made reservoir slipped to a new record low sometime after 7 p.m. Wednesday, and forecasters from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation expect see its surface drop another 2 feet through the end of June. The latest dip into record-low territory comes as officials in...

As the U.S. labor market continues to gain momentum , concerns over wage stagnation and income inequality persist, especially at a regional level . In response, many public, private, and civic leaders across a variety of metropolitan areas are forging new collaborations and launching innovative strategies to support greater economic opportunity . Infrastructure investment represents a...

The impacts of climate change will be channeled primarily through the water cycle, with consequences that could be large and uneven across the globe. Water-related climate risks cascade through food, energy, urban, and environmental systems. Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will converge upon a world where the demand for water rises exponentially, while supply...

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. Since 1998, America’s infrastructure has earned persistent D averages, and the failure to close the investment gap with needed maintenance and improvements has...

Arizona, California and Nevada negotiators are moving toward a major agreement triggering cuts in Colorado River water deliveries to Southern and Central Arizona to avert much more severe cuts in the future. As state water officials now envision the agreement, it would also ultimately require California to cut its use of river water. That’s despite a 48-year-old law that says...

The California drought is not over. The great hope for major replenishment of California's surface and groundwater supplies — the “Godzilla” El Niño — has failed thus far to live up to its super-sized hype, delivering only average amounts of rain and snow, primarily to the northern half of the state. Average, however, is welcome. Average means...

El Niño has brought much-needed rain back to California, but this doesn’t mean we should stop talking about water policy as the state can quickly veer back into drier conditions. Dealing with the problem that lies at the heart of the water crisis now will help ensure the state is able to prosper through the toughest times, because the state has plenty of water — it...

Some 1 billion people in Asia could be without water by 2050, according to new research. A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says there is a "high risk of severe water stress" across large patches of Asia, home to a big chunk of the world's population. The primary driver of this water stress will not necessarily be climate change,...

It’s infrastructure season: Every candidate in America deplores the country’s “crumbling” highways, bridges, railroads, mass transit, electrical grid, drinking-water systems, sewage-treatment plants, waterways, and seaports. It sometimes sounds like potholes are the only growth sector in the U.S. economy. The American Society of Civil...

Tuesday is World Water Day, an annual celebration started as part of a United Nations campaign to raise awareness about water scarcity and safety issues around the world. But while water covers almost three-fourths of the Earth’s surface, it makes up a small portion of the global conversation.

Few people realize the important role water plays in our daily energy use, or the energy required to heat, treat, and supply water. Powering one 60-watt bulb for 12 hours a day over the course of a year can require 3,000 to 6,000 gallons of water  — enough to fill a large tanker truck. Meanwhile, the electricity used for water treatment can be as much as one-third of a...

For many westerners, concerns over the future of water are as important as the economy and unemployment, according to results from Colorado College's 2016 Conservation in the West poll. The sixth annual State of the Rockies Project poll of thousands of residents in seven western states shows many people fear for the future of water in the West. The sentiment might come from a...

FRIANT , Calif. — Californians suffering through the fourth year of a punishing drought have a new worry. With fierce storms predicted for the winter, they are bracing for floods by stockpiling sandbags and rushing to buy insurance. Yet those who need water the most, farmers , are in a poor position to take advantage of any deluge. If El Niño floods pour into the...

Whate ver the conclusion of COP21 , adapting to climate change will only become more urgent, as its impacts become harsher. These impacts are, and will be, felt primarily through water: rising sea-levels, dwindling snowpack , droughts, and floods.  As countries all over the world grapple with these challenges , there’s been a lot of talk about innovative...

Few places would benefit more from a winter of El Niño-driven rainstorms than this massive, rapidly depleting reservoir in the desert 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles. On Thursday, a new federal forecast said El Niño is continuing to strengthen, with experts saying it's on track to produce potentially record rainfall. The new forecast is particularly...

The Owens lake bed lies between the Sierra Nevada to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east. Spanning 110 square miles, the bed is vast enough that, observed from a helicopter, you cannot make out its shape. (In satellite images, its form looks something like the outline of South America, if South America were melting in the desert heat.) As you fly clockwise around the...

All week, we've been looking at how our relationship to water will likely change in the hotter, drier, more populous California of the year 2040. Today, we look at water rights; who can use water and how much. Much of California's arcane system of water rights stretches back to the Gold Rush. Basically, people who first claimed access to a water source have the first right to...

Land degradation, such as a spread of deserts in parts of Africa, costs the world economy trillions of dollars a year and may drive tens of millions of people from their homes, a U.N.-backed study said on Tuesday. Worldwide, about 52 percent of farmland is already damaged, according to the report by The Economics of Land Degradation ( ELD ), compiled by 30 research groups around...

Water used in fracking makes up less than 1 percent of total industrial water use nationwide, study finds Durham, NC - Energy companies used nearly 250 billion gallons of water to extract unconventional shale gas and oil from hydraulically fractured wells in the United States between 2005 and 2014, a new Duke University study finds. During the same period, the fracked...

Water supplies across the Middle East will deteriorate over 25 years, threatening economic growth and national security and forcing more people to move to already overcrowded cities, a  new analysis suggests . As the region, which is home to over 350 million people, begins to recover from a series of deadly heatwaves which have seen temperatures rise to record levels for...

FOLSOM, Calif. — Evert W. Palmer has a vision for this city famous for its state prison: 10,200 new homes spread across the rolling hills to the south, bringing in a flood of new jobs, new business and 25,000 more people. Yes, Mr. Palmer, the city manager, is well aware that Folsom Lake, the sole source of water for this Gold Rush outpost near Sacramento, is close to...

The Texas Water Development Board is poised to approve nearly $4 billion in financing for dozens of projects to increase water supplies across the state, and a handful to promote conservation. But even environmental groups are praising the board for embracing every conservation project that sought state help, which they hope will   inspire...

IMF Warns that water is  underpriced  globally, fostering shortages. The International Monetary Fund has already declared the world isn’t paying enough to emit greenhouse gases and energy consumption.  Now it is worried that water isn’t priced right either. Governments should be charging consumers higher prices to...

The Santa Ana River is a robust and beautiful sight these days. Five miles west of the Prado Dam in  Yorba  Linda, the water has cut a narrow channel in a sandy bed and courses briskly over submerged rocks and tree limbs. The water is a complicated cocktail that comes from many sources. As it flows 96 miles from its headwaters to the ocean, it provides a glimpse of the...

Our pilot, David Kunkel , asked me to retrieve his oxygen bottle from under my seat, and when I handed it to him he gripped the plastic breathing tube with his teeth and opened the valve. We had taken off from Boulder that morning, and were flying over Rocky Mountain National Park, about thirty miles to the northwest. We were in a Maule M-7, a single-engine “backcountry”...

FRESNO, Calif. — When residents of this parched California city opened their water bills for April, they got what Mayor Ashley Swearengin called “a shock to the system.” The city had imposed a long-delayed, modest rate increase — less than the cost of one medium latte from Starbucks for the typical household, and still leaving the price of water in Fresno among...

Authorities in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, recently announced that if current drought conditions persisted, they would be forced to restrict water availability for the city of 20 million to only two days per week. The economic and social implications of such a decision are staggering. One senior water official admitted that residents might have to “get out of...

Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California's winter was as well. As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since...

California water agencies are on track to satisfy a state mandate to reduce water consumption 20 percent by 2020. But according to their own projections, that savings won’t be enough to keep up with population growth just a decade later. A 2009 state law requires urban water agencies to reduce per-capita water consumption 20 percent by 2020, compared with use at the start of the...

The water main break that flooded Nowita Place in 2013 wasn't the kind of spectacle that brought TV cameras. Water sprayed a foot in the air through a hole in the buckled asphalt, leaving residents in the Venice neighborhood without water service for hours. But the break fit an increasingly common pattern for L.A.'s aging waterworks: The pipe was more than 80 years old. It was...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week.  A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan ’s water...

Around the world cities are creating dramatic water savings with water metres , pressure management, groundwater conservation and more. But is it enough?  From fixing leaks in Johannesburg, to topping up groundwater in Salisbury, to flushing toilets with seawater in Hong Kong, municipalities around the world are working to save water and make their distribution systems more...

THOSE of us who live in the United States are fortunate; generally we don’t have to give a lot of thought to the safety of our tap water. This makes our collective experience with water very different from that of hundreds of millions of people across the globe who lack access to clean water.

In the first installment of a series on the threat of water scarcity, Pilita Clark describes the cost to companies.  The river Nar , a minor waterway is barely known and at first glance it is hard to understand why anyone would want to have anything to do with it.

Arizona could be forced to cut water deliveries to its two largest cities unless states that tap the dwindling Colorado River find ways to reduce water consumption and deal with a crippling drought, officials of the state’s canal network said Tuesday. The warning comes as the federal Bureau of Reclamation forecasts that Lake Mead, a Colorado River reservoir that is the...

According to Professor Mike Young of Adelaide Australia. Young was the keynote speaker at a luncheon hosted at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth April 25, sponsored by Water Asset Management, LLC . Young holds a Research Chair in Water and Environmental Policy at the University of Adelaide, and for the past academic year, served as the Gough Whitlam and Malcom Fraser...

Americans have flocked to Texas in search of a piece of the state's booming economy as much of the rest of the country struggled.  Now, the state's largest cities are seeing crowded highways, strained water supplies and other pressures that have come with the growth. And Texas politicians—protective of the small-government, low-tax policies many of them believe are at the...

Farmland is parched. Companies are worried. The global demand for water will soon outstrip supply. What's the solution? Simple, say some business leaders and economists: Make people pay more for the most precious commodity on earth.  

Hood, California, is a farming town of 200 souls, crammed up against a levee that protects it from the Sacramento River. The eastern approach from I-5 and the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove is bucolic. Cows graze. An abandoned railroad track sits atop a narrow embankment. Cross it, and the town comes into view: a fire station, five streets, a tiny park. The last three utility poles on...

THE first rule for staying alive in a desert is not to pour the contents of your water flask into the sand. Yet that, bizarrely, is what the government has encouraged farmers to do in the drought-afflicted south-west. Agriculture accounts for 80% of water consumption in California, for example, but only 2% of economic activity. Farmers flood the land to grow rice, alfalfa and other thirsty...

LAKE MEAD, Nev. — The sinuous Colorado River and its slew of man-made reservoirs from the Rockies to southern Arizona are being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years. The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white...

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Record-low precipitation in 2013 has worsened California's drought, draining reservoirs, forcing farmers to keep fallow thousands of acres of fields and leaving some ski resorts high and dry during the busy holiday season.Urban and agricultural customers, including Southern California's huge Metropolitan Water District, have been told by the state to expect to...

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the nation, is shrinking drastically—with consequences that could ripple across the West. More than a decade into a drought that has plagued the Southwest, federal officials for the first time plan a sharp cut in the amount of Colorado River water that flows 360 miles from Lake Powell into Lake Mead. In the year starting Oct. 1, officials at...

Chairman Udall and members of the Subcommittee, I am Michael Connor, Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) at the Department of the Interior (Department). Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee today regarding the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study (Study). The Colorado River Basin (Basin) is one of the most critical sources of...

Lester Brown says grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to 'peak water' Wells are drying up and underwater tables falling so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, one of the world's leading resource analysts has warned.

As population rises, overpumping means some nations have reached peak water, which threatens food supply, says Lester Brown Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water. We drink on average four quarts (4.5 litres) of...

SOMETHING odd happened here last week. It rained. But the relief, an answer to desperate prayers, is likely to be short-lived. The drought that has gripped much of Texas since the fall of 2010 shows few signs of abating soon. The latest forecasts say that parched West and South Texas will remain dry, and that the state is likely to see above-average temperatures this spring,...

On February 8, 2013, Goldman Sachs (GS), General Electric (GE), and World Resources Institute (WRI) convened a summit on "Water: Emerging Risks & Opportunities." More than 250 representatives from private sector companies; local, state and federal agencies; investors; as well as non-governmental organizations participated to help address key questions related to the...

After several years of the Great Recession, America’s underground infrastructure – already stretched thin before the economic crash – is rapidly approaching crisis levels, say city respondents to the 15th Annual Underground Construction Municipal Sewer & Water Survey. However, a majority of the survey participants believe that their city’s financial woes...

Concrete patches on the canals snaking through Nico Greeff’s vineyards betray constant repairs to an outmoded irrigation system that’s the lifeblood of farming in South Africa’s arid west. “The water infrastructure is about 60 years old and the lifespan of a surfaced canal is about 40 years,” Greeff, 55, said on his farm near Vredendal, north of Cape...

BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.” Until recently, many...

As predicted by many the coming decades not only are we running short of resources but the warming of the globe will cause even more shortages and migrations of huge populations for survival!

Water management will play an increasingly crucial role in energy globally as well as in the US, experts at Deloitte LLP’s 2012 Washington area energy conference forecast on May 21. Their assessments came as the financial services firm released a report, "No water, no energy, No energy, no water." as the conference got under way at National Harbor outside Washington, DC.

Isn’t it interesting that the Arab awakening began in Tunisia with a fruit vendor who was harassed by police for not having a permit to sell food — just at the moment when world food prices hit record highs? And that it began in Syria with farmers in the southern village of  Dara’a , who were demanding the right to buy and sell land near the border, without...

With a crucial water rights decision already pending, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is asking the state to let it increase by almost 80 percent the amount of groundwater it can draw from rural areas north of Las Vegas.

The reuse of municipal wastewater will be important to meeting future demand for freshwater in the United States, a new report from the National Academy of Sciences says.

Dependable water remains a mirage. The facts of the dispute are not comforting.

If solar energy is eventually going to matter — that is, generate a significant portion of the nation’s electricity — the industry must overcome a major stumbling block, experts say: finding a way to store it for use when the sun isn’t shining. That challenge seems to be creating an opening for a different form of power, solar thermal, which makes electricity...

Jeff Sterba, President and CEO of American Water (NYSE: AWK), the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater company, cited the American Society of Civil Engineers' newest report, Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Water and Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure as further evidence that public and private sectors must come together to address water...

Chicago Mayor Emanuel launches 10-year effort to replace 900 miles of century-old water pipe, a water-main-modernization that he promised would be the largest public-works initiative by any city in the country.

This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues. Glaciers like those on Vulture Peak in Montana's Glacier National Park are receding around the world, putting critical water supplies at risk.

Jeff Sterba, President and CEO of American Water (NYSE: AWK), the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater company, cited the American Society of Civil Engineers' newest report, Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Water and Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure as further evidence that public and private sectors must come together to address water...

The state of water and wastewater infrastructure in the United States is a much discussed and lamented topic these days. With funding needs estimated in the ballpark of $600 billion over the next 20 years, coupled with the economic downturn and reduced federal funding, the task of repairing our aging infrastructure seems daunting if not insurmountable.

From the cotton field in rural India to the local rag bin, a typical pair of blue jeans consumes 919 gallons of water during its life cycle, Levi Strauss & Company says, or enough to fill about 15 spa-size bathtubs. It fears that water shortages caused by climate change may jeopardize the company’s very existence in the coming decades by making cotton too expensive or...

Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (Harvard MBA ’87) helped to transform Manila’s rundown metropolitan water system from an inefficient public utility into a model public-private partnership

California farmers share water - the challenges and benefits. Three generations of Al Kalin’s family have worked their 2,000 acres of carrots and sugar beets, wheat and alfalfa for almost a century in the Imperial Valley, a scorching swath of Southern California desert that was unfit for farming until water from the Colorado River...

The Chinese government hopes to become a force in yet another environment-related industry: supplying the world with desalinated water. There are large-scale desalination projects centralized all up and down the east coast of China,” ERI’s chief executive officer, Thomas S. Rooney Jr., said in an interview. “Our company has the most advanced technology in the entire...

This report estimates the economic and job creation impact of a major investment in water infrastructure in the U.S. An investment of $188.4 billion --is the amount necessary, as estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency, to manage stormwater and preserve water quality. The $188.4 billion investment, spread equally over the next five years, would generate $265.6 billion in economic...

The report analyzes the nature and scale of the global water challenge and proposes solutions to close the demand/supply gap. It ranks the solutions on the basis of cost, and produces a "water cost curve," that can be used by policy makers as well as investors, to arrive at low-cost solutions to water security.  In-depth studies were conducted in...

Special Report.   This paper discusses the impact of water resources in every type of power plant and describes the different aspects of the water-energy nexus.

The 72 year-old, financial analyst  Jeremy Grantham, has been noticed for what some call economic doomsday predictions, typically in open letters to investors.  He argues that the late-18th-century doomsayer Thomas Malthus was pretty much right but just had bad timing with his predictions...