Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and congressmen Dave Reichert and Adam Smith are asking the federal government for more help predicting possible flooding in the Green River Valley.

They have asked the Departments of Commerce and Interior to provide weather forecasting and river monitoring resources to the National Weather Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

The Corps of Engineers says ... read more >>

The UK has gone too far in authorising frequent and excessive spillages of untreated waste water and several Spanish cities still fail to properly clean their dirty water, the European Commission said, stepping up legal action against the two countries.

The EU Directive on Urban Waste Water Treatmentexternal (1991) required member states to put in place adequate waste water collecting systems ... read more >>

Ground clearing to start in weeks for the $508 million project after decades of debate.

A controversial, $508 million water treatment plant is now all but certain to be built this spring by the City of Austin after nearly a quarter-century of debate.

A split Austin City Council voted Thursday in favor of the project, targeted for a site near the Oasis restaurant along Lake Travis.

A four ... read more >>

While a drought has put Caracas under widespread water rationing for the first time in years, for Venezuelans in this hillside slum it's just more of the same.

Every two weeks, Naisi Obando and her children join the crowd at the water truck when it rumbles up a dusty road into their shantytown. They bring barrels to be filled with a gushing stream from the truck, and use garden hoses to siphon ... read more >>

Firefighters from both the Rural Fire Service and the N.S.W Fire Brigade and two water bombing helicopters work to contain a grass fire in the Western Sydney Parklands in West Hoxton, Sydney, Australia on 16 November 2009. The fire came within 200m of fifty houses which border the parklands ... read more >>

A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors.

Now, in a study appearing in this week’s Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.

Ma ... read more >>

Earlier this month, a federal health agency backed away from its earlier findings that decades of explosive detonations by the Navy on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques posed no health hazards to residents.

It was the second time this year that the agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, changed its mind in a highly publicized case. Last April the agency, charged with a ... read more >>

Hydrogen is a promising alternative energy carrier that can be efficiently converted into electrical energy in fuel cells. One hurdle to the introduction of sustainable hydrogen technology is the fact that the large-scale industrial production of hydrogen through reforming processes is still largely based on fossil fuels, and thus is not carbon neutral. ... read more >>

A section of the Trinity River levee has collapsed, and that is raising new concerns about the integrity of the system that shields the city from flood waters.

The collapse is just off Interstate 35E at Regal Row.

City of Dallas officials say that unlike most levee collapses they see, this one was caused by a water leak.

A Dallas Water Utilities water line runs across the top of the Trin ... read more >>

Three people with keen interest in the deadly accident at Russia's Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower station believe they were intentionally prevented from asking Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin questions about the station during his annual televised call-in show on December 3, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

The Sayano-Shushenskaya station, the largest power plant in Russia, suffered a c ... read more >>