We've known for a while that fracking was doing some funny things to our drinking water. Now the EPA has come out of the closet on the issue and made it official. In a landmark report released this week, the EPA declared that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is causing groundwater pollution in the Wind River aquifer, located in the Pavillion region of Wyoming, where locals have complained of......read more
Across the world, oceanic ecosystems are in peril. Overfishing, pollution, and climate change are have pushed oceans worldwide to the precipice of disaster. One Ocean One World, an effort launched last October by Greg MacGillivray of MacGillivray Freeman Films, is urging people to act to save our troubled seas. "The ocean is our planet's life support system, yet in my travels and at......read more
In "America's Dead Sea," award-winning photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo serves up a beautiful but disturbing document of the Salton Sea, the heavily polluted saline lake southeast of Los Angeles. Lo Scalzo manages to find a fresh perspective on the notorious, much photographed sea, which was formed in a desert basin when the Colorado River flooded just over 100 years ago. With no outflow, and......read more
Adventurer extraordinaire and record-setting cyclist James Bowthorpe is busy prepping for his next madcap quest: a journey down the 315-mile length of the Hudson River in a kayak made of NYC construction waste. "We see cities as something separate from the wilderness, but the former evolved from the latter," says Bowthorpe, who undertook a similar expedition down the Thames. "I’m......read more
Here is the trailer for Last Call at the Oasis, the highly anticipated new documentary from Academy Award-winning director Jessica Yu. Inspired by Alex Prud'homme's book The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the 21st Century, the film is a thorough examination ofthe global water crisis, with a focus on industrial and agricultural pollution in America and the drying of the Southwest. Last......read more
In an announcement that's as laden with symbolism as rivers are with sediment, American Rivers has named the Potomac River, which flows through the nation's capital, the most endangered river in the United States. "America’s Most Endangered Rivers," the annual report from the clean water advocacy group, noted that the Potomac is under increasing threat from pollution caused by urban......read more
Is it just us or are teens doing more and more impressive stuff these days? 19-year-old Dutch university student Boyan Slat adds to the youth movement with his ingenious Ocean Cleanup Array, a green tech concept aimed at addressing the immense problem of oceanic plastic pollution. Comprised of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms, is said to be capable of removing up to......read more
Biologists Kai Tiedemann and Anne Lummerich are finding ingenious ways to help people living in arid regions find and develop new sources of water. Bellavista, a small, hillside settlement near Lima, Peru that is unconnected to the municipal water supply is enveloped in fog through most of the winter. There, the pair designed a fog-catching system that captures and collects fog-water for use by......read more
What's the number one cause of disease in the world, causing more death than all forms of violence combined? If you guessed unsafe water, you're correct. Your reward is this sweet charity: water PSA. Check out the time lapse at 1:30, fantastic! ...read more
This is the discovery that could put the College of Wooster on the map: glass that swells like a sponge. Put together like a nano-matrix, the new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight. The glass binds with gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds but it does not bind with water, so it acts like a “smart†sponge, capable of picking and......read more