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For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?

To find out, all it takes is a prick of the finger, a small letting of blood. If tests come back positive, the potentially severe consequences are far more difficult to discern.

That’s how lead works. It leaves its mark quietly, with a virtually invisible trail. But years later, when a child shows signs of a learning disability or behavioral issues, lead’s prior presence in the bloodstream suddenly becomes inescapable.

There are lots of ways water in the West is being mismanaged: farming subsidies for water-intensive crops; arcane laws encouraging waste; leaky infrastructure. But none may be more significant than refusing to accept the fact that the West’s water resources are interconnected.

Willingly overlooking that fact amounts to a fundamental failure of water management that has left states more vulnerable to drought and less prepared to adapt to the effects of climate change. Moreover, it has left them blind to an honest accounting of their total supply. How can anyone plan for the future if there isn’t agreement about something as basic as how much water there actually is?

In much of California and Arizona — two of the states with arguably the most severe water crises and water management challenges in the nation — state and local authorities continue to count the sources of water as if they were entirely separate, two distinct bank accounts.

262,000 sq ft Coca-Cola manufacturing facility has buzzed with activity,

Detroit has been questioned about the potential health risk of water shutoffs before. In August 2014, residents who had their taps turned off argued in cour

What’s more, most bottled water sold in the US comes from the same municipal sources that supply tap water – a fact probably unknown to most consumers. Coca-Cola makes Dasani at the company’s Detroit plant by purchasing, treating and bottling municipal water before selling it at a significant mark-up to consumers. Pepsi bottles its Aquafina water brand in Detroit the same way.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver on Tuesday outlined  an estimated $55-million public works project expected to begin within a month to remove Flint's lead-contaminated pipes from the water distribution system.

First priority will be given to high-risk households with pregnant women and children, Weaver said at a news conference at City Hall.

Last week, Weaver called for the immediate removal of the city's lead-contaminated pipes and announced a plan that included help from Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, who has offered technical assistance from the Lansing Board of Water and Light. Lansing has removed about 13,500 lead pipes in the city.

England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says.

Water companies will have to reduce the quantity of water they take out of rivers, lakes and the ground by more than 1bn litres a day, creating huge shortfalls in the coming decades, the NAO warned.

The total supply is forecast to drop by 7% by 2045 because of the climate crisis and the need to scale back the amount of water taken out of England’s waterways and soils.

Few places on the planet are more at risk from the climate crisis than south Florida, where more than 8 million residents are affected by the convergence of almost every modern environmental challenge – from rising seas to contaminated drinking water, more frequent and powerful hurricanes, coastal erosion, flooding and vanishing wildlife and habitat.

Below are some of the biggest threats posed by the climate crisis to south Florida today, along with solutions under consideration. Some of these solutions will have a lasting impact on the fight. Others, in many cases, are only delaying the inevitable. But in every situation, doing something is preferable to doing nothing at all.

Sea level rise The threat: By any estimation, Florida is drowning. In some scenarios, sea levels will rise up to 31in by 2060, a devastating prediction for a region that already deals regularly with tidal flooding and where an estimated 120,000 properties on or near the water are at risk. The pace of the rise is also hastening, scientists say – it took 31 years for the waters around Miami to rise by six inches, while the next six inches will take only 15 more.

Iran is facing a water shortage potentially so serious that officials are making contingency plans for rationing in the greater Tehran area, home to 22 million, and other major cities around the country. President Hassan Rouhani has identified water as a national security issue, and in public speeches in areas struck hardest by the shortage he is promising to “bring the water back.”

Iran’s water troubles extend far beyond Lake Urmia, which as a salt lake was never fit for drinking or agricultural use. Other lakes and major rivers have also been drying up, leading to disputes over water rights, demonstrations and even riots.

Dam construction was given renewed emphasis under Mr. Rouhani’s predecessor as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as an engineer had a weakness for grand projects. Another driving force is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which through its engineering arm, Khatam al-Anbia Construction, builds many of the dams in Iran and surrounding countries.

It’s not just lead that’s poisoning the water. It’s also politics.

Lead poisoning, low water pressure and contamination of water sources are widespread problems in Mexican cities. Aging, decaying infrastructure is the problem — in some cities, water infrastructure is more than 70 years old.

1) Maintaining water infrastructure = high financial cost and high political cost.

In 2014, the state switched the city's water source to the Flint River to save money and residents began to complain about the quality of tap water. Michigan officials insisted it was safe to drink, even though an internal memo at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services warned that lead poisoning rates were higher than usual for children under 16.

The state continued to say the water was safe until a Flint pediatrician reported in September that there was an unusually high level of lead in Flint children.

Snyder has apologized for the incident, activated the national guard, called for President Barack Obama to declare an emergency and accepted the resignation of the head of the state's Department of Environmental Quality. Obama declared an emergency on Saturday.

Of the many indirect consequences of Covid-19, growing gender inequality is an area of grave concern where the world is falling grievously behind. While women labor at the frontlines, comprising 70% of the world's healthcare workers, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), they are also leaving the workforce at a much higher rate than men, and doing over three-quarters of all unpaid care work, including the care of children.

according to the WHO, 2.2 billion people don't have 2faccess to safe drinking water and, according to UN Water, 4.2 billion don't have a safe place to use the toilet.

As healthcare facilities are overburdened during this pandemic, one study projects that 2fwithin six months, the world could see up to an additional 57,000 maternal and 1.2 million child deaths.

Sweeping restrictions on outdoor water use go into effect on Wednesday for more than 6 million residents in Southern California as officials work to conserve water during a severe drought.The conservation rules, among the strictest ever imposed in the state, were set by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the largest water distributors in the country.

The megadrought in the U.S. West has produced the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years. Conditions are likely to continue through 2022 and could persist for years. Researchers publishing in the journal Nature Climate Change have estimated that 42% of the drought’s severity is attributable to human-caused climate change.

During the state’s drought from 2012 to 2016, former Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a mandatory 25% cutback in water use, during which many residents responded by switching to drought-tolerant landscaping.Gov. Gavin Newsom has not imposed such mandatory restrictions, but requested last year that residents curb household water consumption by 15%. Officials also have urged people to use recycled water for outside projects, take shorter showers and only run dishwashers and washing machines when full.

Clean drinking water is so widely available today that many people take it for granted.

their continual efforts in obtaining clean drinking water have led to the development of many innovations that make water treatment more successful today.

On the walls of the tombs of Egyptian rulers Amenophis II and Rameses II, which date back to the 15th and 13th century B.C.

The Romans built the aqueducts at the turn of the first millennium to deliver water to the cities, and vases or animal skins were used to transport water in smaller quantites. Other containers were made from clay or woven materials.

At first, these companies sold their water in glass bottles. Although a certain form of plastic was invented by Leonardo DaVinci during the Renaissance, plastic did not become widely used commercially for water until the mid-20th century. This was due to the high cost of manufacturing the material. Once high-density polyethylene was introduced, plastic become the preferred choice starting in the late 1960s.

Nearly 25 percent of bottled water sold in the United States originated from a ground water source, according to a study conducted from 2004 to 2008 by the National Resources Defense Council. The study concluded, "there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap."

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded. From Our Advertisers .story-link { position: relative; display: block; text-decoration: none; padding: 6px 0; min-height: 65px; min-width: 300px; } .story-link:hover { background-color: #eeeeec; } .story-kicker, .story-heading, .summary { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .thumb { position: absolute; left: 0; top: 6px; } .thumb-hover, .story-link:hover .thumb-main { display: none } .thumb-main, .story-link:hover .thumb-hover { display: block } .story-body { padding-left: 75px; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 400; color: #000; } .story-body .story-kicker { font-family: 'nyt-franklin', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; font-weight: 400; color: #5caaf3; } .story-heading { font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 700; padding: 5px 0 0; } Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation Changing Charity Younger donors are finding new ways to give. <noscript class=&quot;MOAT-nytdfp348531439194?moatClientLevel1=31074278&amp;amp;moatClientLevel2=343740158&amp;amp;moatClientLevel3=58584518&amp;amp;moatClientLevel4=94015704638&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer1=28390358&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer2=30706478&amp;amp;zMoatPR=n

The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.

An E.P.A. official on Tuesday disputed the finding. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities,” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At no point did the E.P.A. encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature.”

Through the marshlands along the Oregon-California border, the federal government a century ago carved a whole new landscape, draining lakes and channeling rivers to build a farming economy that now supplies alfalfa for dairy cows and potatoes for Frito-Lay chips.

this year’s historic drought has heightened the stakes, with salmon dying en masse and Oregon’s largest lake draining below critical thresholds for managing fish survival.

The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the region.

People of color in some of America’s wealthiest cities are significantly more likely to live in houses without indoor plumbing essential for running water, new research reveals.

. Yet access to running water is not universal in the United States, ostensibly the richest country in the world.

Nationwide, almost half a million homes do not have piped water, with the majority – 73% – located in urban areas. In fact, almost half the houses without plumbing are located in the country’s top 50 cities.

A Republican U.S. senator from Utah is holding up a federal funding package worth more than $100 million which could help address the issue of high lead levels found in Flint’s water, saying in a statement on Friday that no federal aid is needed at this time.

U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, both D-Mich., represented a “federalizing” of water infrastructure, objected to the bill, arguing the state has not directly asked Congress for any emergency spending and has its own surplus to spend if it needs money.

Stabenow, who worked with Peters for weeks to secure a group of Republican and Democratic cosponsors for the legislation, expressed surprise that Lee has placed a hold on the measure, which effectively keeps the Senate from voting on it, even though it is fully paid for.

In the latest evidence of the pervasiveness of “forever chemicals,” a new study from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that these contaminants now taint nearly half of the nation’s tap water.

PFAS refers to more than 12,000 chemicals that persist in the environment and can build up in the body. They are widely used in industry and consumer products, ranging from clothing and cosmetics to fast-food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags.

Exposure to PFAS has been associated with severe health risks, including some kinds of cancers, developmental delays in children and reproductive effects in pregnant people,

the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise. As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

In Chiapas, Mexico, a recent drought has partially dried up the Grijalva river, only to reveal a hidden wonder.&nbsp; The Nezahualcoyotl reservoir water levels have dropped by nearly 100 feet, exposing the Temple of Santiago, a 16th&nbsp;century church also known as the Temple of Quechula.

Nezahualcoyotl reservoir was created with the construction of a dam in 1966, which resulted in the submersion of the church. The temple has been exposed only once since then, in 2002, when water levels dropped so dramatically, visitors were able to walk around inside the church.

Both then and now, local fishermen have&nbsp;taken visitors on tours of the colonial architectural jewel, catching and cooking local fish for the curious visitors.