Archive for July 9th, 2014

Texas city using treated wastewater for drinking

Associated Press: As much of Texas grapples with lingering drought, a second city in the Lone Star State has begun reusing treated wastewater in a state-approved recycling process to bolster drinking supplies. Wichita Falls, near the Oklahoma border, on Wednesday began reusing millions of gallons of water at the River Road Waste Treatment plant that's been purified to meet government drinking standards. The water is then sent by a 12-mile pipeline to the Cypress Water Treatment Plant for additional purification....

California Drought Proves Laws of Nature Absolute

EcoWatch: One peril of being human is that we often respond poorly to crises. I`m sure we all have examples--personal to global--where the heat of the moment pushed us in the wrong direction. Because we now face one of the worst droughts in California history, the stage is set to flirt with error on a scale as colossal as the crisis itself. The House of Representatives, for example, passed H.R. 3964 in February to indiscriminately move additional northern California water southward, to abandon restoration...

Fracking Wastewater Injection Wells Blamed for Oklahoma’s Recent String of Earthquakes

EcoWatch: Oklahoma has had a whole lot of shaking going on during the last six years. Seismic activity in the state has risen dramatically, from just more than a dozen earthquakes recorded back in 2008 to more than 100 in 2013. And here we are only halfway through 2014, and already the number of Oklahoma quakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or higher has surpassed the number of such earthquakes in California--a state famous for its big temblors. What on Earth (or under it) could be causing the Sooner State to...

You Can’t Have a Tea Party Without Clean Water

EcoWatch: People like to breathe. Rich people, poor people, Tea Party Republicans, progressive Democrats, old people, young people, Americans, people from other countries--all are united in the biological necessities of being human. Water, food and air are all better when they are not filled with toxic substances. The political support for environmental protection is derived from this fundamental fact, along with the equally-fundamental awareness that all of these resources are at risk on a crowded and increasingly...

Drought Drains Lake Mead to Lowest Level as Nevada Senator Calls for Govt Audit

EcoWatch: As the largest reservoir in the U.S. falls to its lowest water level in history, Nevada State Sen. Tick Segerblom introduced a bill title and issued a press release on July 8 calling for an “independent scientific and economic audit of the Bureau of Reclamation’s strategies for Colorado River management.” Sen. Segerblom’s position represents the growing political impatience with the current management system for the river. He takes hard aim at the Bureau of Reclamation as being responsible for...