Protesters from around the world attacked mining company Rio Tinto for a string for alleged environmental and human rights breaches during a fiery meeting with shareholders in London on Thursday. Native Mongolian herders claimed that a $5bn (£3.3bn) expansion of the company's Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the Gobi desert threatened the fresh water supply of hundreds of nomadic people and the ... read more >>

Substandard" construction is being blamed for the collapse of an eight-story factory in Bangladesh on Wednesday. At least 150 people died and 1,000 were injured, according to early reports. A weak foundation could account for the collapse, as could a lack of sufficient reinforcing columns in open space, says Henri Gavin, a civil and environmental engineer at Duke University. Another possibility i ... read more >>

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday wrestled with the sensitive issue of whether a thirsty Texas water district has the right to access water across the Oklahoma state line. The case arose under the Red River Compact, an agreement between Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma that apportioned water within the Red River basin. The compact was approved by Congress in 1980. The Tarrant Regional Wate ... read more >>

The second phase of water release from the left bank canal of the Palkhed division for towns like Manmad and Yeola in Nashik district, which was scheduled for Friday has been put on hold.

This was done following a high court order regarding water release for the Jayakwadi dam in Aurangabad. Officials, meanwhile, removed more than 1,500 pipes from the bed of the left bank canal placed by farme ... read more >>

It shows the value of industrial projects to the water and wastewater treatment market: the construction and operation of industrial installations is set to generate just under a third of all revenues in the sector in 2013. On the municipal side, the growth in water and wastewater infrastructure spending is set to be driven by the Asia Pacific market, with China overtaking the US as the world’s l ... read more >>

Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.
Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report that, as far as I can tell, we ... read more >>

Earth was cooling until the end of the 19th century and a hundred years later, the planet's surface was on average warmer than at any time in the previous 1,400 years, according to climate records presented on Sunday.
In a study spanning two millennia published in Nature Geoscience, scientists said a "long-term cooling trend" around the world swung into reverse in the late 19th century.
In the ... read more >>

Some 60% to 80% of fossil fuel reserves owned by listed firms could be classed as unburnable if politicians stick to CO2 emission limits, a report warns.

The research by the London School of Economics and NGO Carbon Tracker says firms spend billions of pounds of shareholders' money on exploration.

It says 200 listed firms spent £440bn in 2012 chasing more coal, oil and gas.

It says if th ... read more >>

Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant halted cooling of a spent fuel pool at the site on Monday to remove two dead rats, the third time cooling equipment has gone offline in five weeks because of rodents. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it halted cooling of the No. 2 unit pool, which stores spent uranium fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site, for a few hours to remove the ra ... read more >>

Climate change is affecting weather patterns and the world’s ecosystem and, in particular, posing serious challenges to the world’s water supply. Climate change is having a profound effect on how communities can reliably access clean water, causing poor water quality and scarcity and putting significant stress on the water infrastructure,

For US water providers, addressing the impact of clim ... read more >>