• Water

    Simultaneously attaining a reliable water supply for California and protecting and rehabilitating its Bay-Delta ecosystem cannot be realized until better planning can identify how trade-offs between these two goals will be managed when water is limited

  • Water

    Researchers begin developing prototype device for harvesting energy and clean drinking water from human waste; the device proposal beat more than 2,000 other proposals to receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

  • Water

    As precipitation becomes less frequent due to climate change, lake and reservoir levels will drop and people will increasingly turn to groundwater for agricultural, industrial, and drinking water needs; the resource accounts for nearly half of all drinking water worldwide, but recharges at a much slower rate than aboveground water sources and in many cases is nonrenewable

  • Water

    Thousands of people die each year in developing countries from drinking arsenic-contaminated water; researchers develop inexpensive filters made from the modified protein (keratin) in poultry feathers to remove arsenic from drinking water

  • Water

    More than 1 in 3 counties in the United States could face a “high” or “extreme” risk of water shortages due to climate change by the middle of the twenty-first century; 7 in 10 of the more than 3,100 U.S. counties could face “some” risk of shortages of fresh water for drinking, farming, and other uses

  • Water

    President Obama’s latest proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 cuts $105 million from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget, primarily from funds aimed at treating wastewater and drinking water

  • Water

    Decontaminating polluted waste water costs millions, but a new discovery by scientists at the University of Brighton could result in huge savings as well as delivering safer, cleaner water

  • Water

    Simply collecting rainwater could save U.S. residents millions of dollars each year on their water bills and drastically cut down on water consumption; a new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council examined the potential cost-savings in eight U.S. cities and found that residents could collectively save $90 million or more annually

  • Water

    Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) involves the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals into a shale seam, which causes the rock to shatter, releasing natural gas; preliminary findings from a study on the use of hydraulic fracturing in shale gas development suggest no direct link to reports of groundwater contamination

  • Water

    A recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study found that groundwater in aquifers on the East Coast and in the Central United States has the highest risk of contamination from radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element and known carcinogen

  • Water

    Photocatalysis involves the acceleration of chemical reactions using the power of light; researchers experiment with different types of photocatalysts to reduce nitrates in water

  • Infrastructure protection

    A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the bulk of U.S. critical infrastructure is inadequately protected as operators lack a coherent set of guidelines

  • Water

    The UN estimates that about 1.1 billion people currently lack access to safe water; forecasts suggest that freshwater may become the “oil” of the twenty-first century — expensive, scarce, and the cause of geo-political conflicts; scientists show a new method for purifying water

  • Water

    Biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs; because bacteria are sensitive to many kinds of environmental pollutants and organisms, the scientists believe this approach could be used to design low cost bacterial biosensors capable of detecting an array of heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms

  • Water

    Intensive agriculture practices developed during the past century have helped improve food security for many people but have also added to nitrate pollution in surface and ground waters

  • Water

    Engineers at Brown University have developed a system that cleanly and efficiently removes trace heavy metals from water; in experiments, the researchers showed the system reduced cadmium, copper, and nickel concentrations, returning contaminated water to near or below federally acceptable standards; the technique is scalable and has viable commercial applications, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields

  • Water security

    Aside from possible cyberatacks on water utilities, security officials are worried that terrorists could contaminate water supplies with volatile chemicals that can poison thousands of individuals and even cause explosions; DHS warned local water utilities of “backpressure” — a simple tactic terrorists could use to introduce a chemical or biological agent into the water supply and spread it over long distances without immediate detection

  • Water

    Researchers are working to develop a portable wastewater treatment system that could improve the military’s efficiency; the solar-bio-nano project also will generate energy and produce drinking water, thus providing a potential blueprint for the future of municipal/agricultural wastewater treatment systems

  • Infrastructure protection

    DHS agents and local authorities in New Jersey are investigating a series of attacks on the West Milford water system; since July there have been more than fifteen attacks on local water and sewage facilities that in some instances have resulted in sewage flooding the street or losses in service all together

  • Sterilizing water

    Scientists show that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial; these plasma devices could be life-savers in developing countries, disaster areas, or on the battlefield where sterile water for medical use is in short supply and expensive to produce