Groundwater is one of America’s most precious resources. The water that fills wells, stored naturally in underground aquifers, allowed vast cities to emerge and turned the nation into an agricultural powerhouse. But the country’s stewardship of groundwater relies on a patchwork of state and local rules so lax and outdated that in many places, oversight…
Drought-like conditions in the Midwest over the summer have created a growing water problem in the New Orleans area this fall. Water levels of the Mississippi River have dropped low enough to make the river less resistant to a mass of saltwater flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. This circumstance, known as saltwater intrusion,…
Hours before the wildfire became an inferno that wiped out the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, officials at the West Maui Land Company reached out to the state with an urgent request. The company, a real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of Lahaina, took note of the dangerous combination of high winds…
During the frantic moments on Tuesday after a wildfire jumped containment near a residential neighborhood in Lahaina, Hawaii, firefighters rushing to slow the spread were distressed to find that their hydrants were starting to run dry. Hoping to control the blaze as it took root among homes along the hillside nearly a mile above the…
Here at the far edge of Cape Cod, where hills of white sand border a vast and empty shore, 19 rough-hewed shacks — tiny and unadorned, with no electricity or running water — sit within a windswept federal preserve. The dune shacks of Truro and Provincetown have long stood apart from the Cape’s soaring real…
On a blistering morning this week, the kitchen sink in Kathy Quilatan’s house was delivering only sputtering water. With temperatures climbing into triple digits most afternoons these days, she knew exactly what she had to do to keep her two young children, ages 2 and 6, from overheating. She gathered several plastic containers and set…
Philadelphia officials on Sunday evening stepped back from a suggestion earlier in the day that residents consider using bottled water rather than tap water for drinking and cooking after a chemical leaked into a tributary of the Delaware River, a source of drinking water for about 14 million people across four states. The previous advisory,…
RIO VERDE, Ariz. — Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door. Then the water got cut off. Earlier this month, the…