With record-setting heat waves, bush fires and drought, Australians are increasingly convinced they are facing the early impacts of global warming. Their growing concern about climate change has led to a consensus that the nation must now act boldly to stave off the crisis. ... read more >>

A Superior Court judge has issued a tentative ruling ordering the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to repay its customers nearly $30 million that city officials had hoped to spend on other services. ... read more >>

EPA may help the protection of water by reviving a much-discussed but ill-fated rule to regulate water pollution from non-point sources. ... read more >>

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is soliciting proposals from eligible applicants for technical assistance and support that will enhance communication and coordination between EPA and the states to protect groundwater and that will develop and expand the capability of state Underground Injection Control (UIC) programs (Class I-V and proposed Class VI), tribes with UIC primary enforc ... read more >>

Amid growing pressure from international organisations, experts and NGOs, world ministers declined on Sunday (22 March 2009) to recognise water as a basic human right, instead acknowledging it as a "basic need". The week-long World Water Forum in Istanbul closed at the weekend on World Water Day (Sunday) with the adoption of the Istanbul Ministerial Declaration.

Over the weekend, ministers fro ... read more >>

This week, David G. Victor is answering questions submitted by readers about climate change and the potential role of geoengineering in counteracting the effects of global warming. Victor is a Professor at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ... read more >>

As the Fifth World Water Forum ended recently in Istanbul, a number of stories came out, each of which might have emerged as the main water story of the week. But in fact, to see the most important story of the Forum you have to look beyond the Forum itself. Here's what happened.

Father Miguel d'Escoto, President of the UN General Assembly, and an outspoken critic of water privatizat ... read more >>

If you've been a semi-faithful reader of this pages, you've noted that I have posted very little on the California water situation, in particular, the Bay-Delta issue. The latter is an extremely complicated issue, one on which I have not really spent much time. But two days ago we (Oregon State University) had Dr. Jeffrey Mount of the UC-Davis Department of Geology and Co-Director of UCD's Center ... read more >>

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), in conjunction with Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) today released 2008 bottled water statistics, compiled by BMC, a research, consulting, and financial services firm dedicated to the global beverage industry (www.beveragemarketing.com). These numbers show that overall consumption of bottled water as a percentage of the beverage category ma ... read more >>

When University of California Cooperative Extension irrigation specialist David Goldhamer began toying with the concept of deficit irrigation in the early 1980s, even he never imagined the potential.

Traditionally in irrigated agriculture, farmers want to give crops all the water they can drink. Goldhamer's three decades of research has shown that knowing when to withhold water from tree crops ... read more >>