After 10-year drought, rivers and dams fail Australia towns

By JOSEPHINE TOVEYNovember 26, 2009 NEXT month Viv Lemottee will have to make a choice between his animals and his washing machine. One of about 130 residents of the tiny hamlet of Euabalong, in the Lachlan Valley in the state’s west, he’s about to receive his daily ration of water by truck: just 150 litres […]

Wetlands disaster at the mouth of Australia’s Murray River

By MARIAN WILKINSON ENVIRONMENT EDITORNovember 23, 2009 THE collapse of the Coorong wetlands at the mouth of the Murray River is shaping up to be one of the Australia’s worst environmental disasters, an author of a report on the region said yesterday. Bird numbers in the region have fallen dramatically and freshwater turtles continue to […]

Kenya: Rangers demolish houses in Mau Forest

Nairobi — Houses left behind by Mau settlers were demolished on Thursday in a clear indication that the government would not allow the evicted squatters to return to the forest. The Kenya Forest Service has also sent more rangers to the South Western Mau to ensure that the families that leave the country’s largest source […]

Kiribati: Land of the rising sea

On the front line of climate change, the people of the Pacific Islands are desperately looking for higher ground. Adam Morton reports from Kiribati. When a coconut tree dies the decay starts at the top. The leaves fall, then the fruit. All that is left is a desiccated trunk, cut off at half-mast. In areas […]

Kenya evicts thousands of forest squatters in attempt to save Rift valley

Tourism, tea and energy industries threatened after a quarter of huge Mau forest destroyed in 20 years By Xan Rice in Nairobi, www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 November 2009 22.48 GMT Several thousand people who had settled illegally in Kenya’s most important forest have left their homes at the beginning of an eviction plan designed to end […]

Texas officials: We're running out of water

By JOHN McFARLAND,  Associated Press Writer FORT WORTH, Texas — With the Texas population expected to nearly double over the next 50 years, lawmakers and water experts gathered Monday to convey an important message: We’re running out of water. There is no shortage of alarming statistics to make that point. Texas’ population of about 24.3 […]

Severe drought threatens Bolivian water supply, Lake Titicaca recedes to historic low

  A severe drought believed to have been caused by the El Niño phenomenon has threatened water supplies in Bolivia, and has depleted the water level in Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is very close to reaching its lowest level ever recorded since 2003. [Felix Trujillo, Employee, National Meteorology and Hydrology Service]: “…The lowest level in […]

Man-made ponds linked to arsenic in Bangladesh water

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Man-made ponds and rice fields irrigated using groundwater may be responsible for arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, a study has found. Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical poisonous to humans and is known to cause skin lesions and cancers of the bladder, kidney, lung and skin. While it is known […]

Nuclear scars: Tainted water runs beneath Nevada desert

By Ralph Vartabedian, November 13, 2009 Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. – A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada. Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the […]

Evictions in Mau a constant cycle

By GEORGE SAYAGIE and JOHN NGIRACHU Posted Friday, November 13 2009 at 22:00 One moment you are in, the next, you are out. For some of the people moving out of the south western part of the Mau Forest Complex, this has come to be a familiar pattern of their lives. It is not the […]

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