Groundwater11
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Can We Have Our Water and Drink It, Too? Exploring the Water Quality-Quantity Nexus
Water quantity and quality have generally been considered as separate problems and have usually been treated as such in policy-making and environmental restoration efforts. Increasingly, however, research and experience is beginning to show a strong link between water quantity and quality.
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‘Troubled Waters’ Wreaking Havoc, from Minnesota to Mexico
On October 5th, ‘Troubled Waters’, a documentary produced by the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum, was screened for the first time on the U’s main campus in St. Paul.
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Phytoremediation: Can It Solve the Brownfield Problem?
Brownfields, born from defunct industrial facilities, are a growing problem in the world today. Current cleanup techniques are invasive, expensive, energy dependent, and restrictive. Perhaps a better and more innovative solution to the problem is a form of bioremediation called phytoremediation.
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Safe Water or Abundant Energy? Take Your Pick
In the recent documentary Gasland, Josh Fox investigate the rapidly growing practice of hydraulic fracturing or “hydrofracking” that natural gas companies have developed to produce gas from underground shale deposits.
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Let’s Take a Break: NY Senate Passes Moratorium on Hydraulic Fracturing
Fracking is an interesting example of a topic we talk about frequency at the Columbia Water Center – the water-energy nexus. In this case, the link relates water quality to energy supply. While fracking in the Marcellus Shale could provide significant supplies of relatively clean energy (natural gas), it also creates a huge risk for…
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Global Population Growth and Water Scarcity Q&A
Russell Sticklor with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program in Washington, DC. recently contacted me requesting my thoughts on a number of issues for an article he is writing on global population growth and water scarcity for the magazine, Outdoor America. I thought some of the comments might be interesting to our blog…
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DRBC Gives Tentative Go Ahead to Fracking in PA — New York Skips the Meeting
According to the Delaware River Basin Commission, over 15 million people—about five percent of the nation’s population—rely on the Delaware River Basin for “drinking, agricultural, and industrial use.” New York City alone gets half its water from reservoirs located on tributaries of the Delaware. It’s no understatement, then, to suggest that the commission—a regional body…
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No More Pavement! The Problem of Impervious Surfaces
Recent research, according to the New York Times, indicates that urban areas are about to get hotter — much hotter. Not exactly what blistering New Yorkers want to hear after one of the more brutal, record-breaking heat waves in memory. Of course climatologists (and most of the rest of us) have known for a long…
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The PlayPump: What Went Wrong?
Earlier this week, PBS’s Frontline ran a story about the PlayPump, a technology that was supposed to bring drinking water to thousands of African communities by harnessing the power of children at play. Now dozens of PlayPumps in Mozambique sit idle, and in many villages PlayPumps have been removed, and hand pumps reinstalled.
