The town’s impervious surfaces have increased over the years, impacting lands’ ability to absorb rainwater. Atlantic Beach’s Watershed Restoration and Stormwater Resilience Plan has been approved by the state of North Carolina. This comes after a collaborative planning effort to address flooding and polluted runoff caused by heavy rains, reported The Coastal Review. According to […]
Through the state revolving fund loan, Postville, Iowa, received funding to improve its water quality, storm water management and public education Those are just a couple adjectives that come to mind when Paul Berland talks about the former Northeast Iowa Resources Conservation and Demonstration parking lot. The lot is in a prominent location – a […]
After the two driest consecutive years in much of California in nearly half a century, reservoir levels are dropping. Lawns are brown. Water restrictions are increasing. And Californians are getting worried. Asked to name the environmental issue they are most concerned about, more California residents cited water shortages and drought than any other, according to a […]
The water purification problem is compounded even more because drinking water also is contaminated daily by industry, antiquated lead pipe delivery systems, and weakening government oversight. An estimated 105 million people receive water from public water systems that use groundwater, and one federal agency proclaims that an estimated 22 percent of public wells for those […]
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity — the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s — even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon. Unlike mighty storms or thundering eruptions, droughts slink into our lives invisibly, unannounced. It can […]
Photo: Rooftop Garden by Gregg Willett We build roads that allow vehicles to move safely, while channeling rainfall “away.” Our impervious developments require more infrastructure to convey stormwater “away.” We tear down buildings and throw them “away.” But there is no “away.” Our built environment burdens communities with externalities, taxpayers with costs, and future generations […]
