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Kings County agencies and growers may face probation and millions of dollars in fines — which could be the first step toward the state wresting control of groundwater.

Humans pumped so much groundwater out of the Earth that the planet has begun to wobble detectably on its axis, a new study has found. On its own terms, the magnitude of the new wobble is slight — a matter of millimeters, which puts it in the same approximate speed category as Earth’s slowly drifting continents. But the findings published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters show the extent to which human action — in the form of dam construction, groundwater drilling and the burning of fossil fuels — are impacting the very position of the Earth. They also...

top official of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Administrator Michael Regan touring the contaminated area created by last week’s catastrophic Norfolk Southern Railroad derailment, subsequent chemical spill, and fire had a message for Ohioans that, in light of FEMA’s recent refusal to assist them, has raised many eyebrows. According to The Associated Press, Regan walked along a creek described as reeking of chemicals and spoke to reporters attempting to convince the people of East Palestine that the water is fit to drink and the air is safe to breathe. “I’m asking they trust the government. I know that’s hard. We...

Amid a megadrought plaguing the American West, more rural communities are losing access to groundwater as heavy pumping depletes underground aquifers that aren’t being replenished by rain and snow.

... Though biofuels have been touted for their ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, assessing the environmental impact of bioethanol requires including greenhouse gas emissions related to the crops needed for its production. And "the carbon balance of ethanol relative to gasoline isn't as good as it was originally anticipated," Tyler Lark, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told AFP. In 2005, Congress passed a "Renewable Fuel Standard," which required transportation fuel to include a volume of biofuel that increased over time. The law was further expanded in 2007. As a result, 2.8 million additional hectares of corn were...

It’s not just producers and farmers who are getting hit with rising costs and growing shortages of water. When it comes to H2O, everyone better get prepared to pay more and get less. In its long history, water has never been more precious, more controversial, more expensive or more essential to agriculture and commerce than it is right now. A symbol of purity in cosmetic ads, a stand-in for quality in beer ads, the poster boy for violence and destruction during floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, water is currently so scarce out West that it threatens to decimate the nation’s most...

Drought-stricken California is not the only place draining underground aquifers in the hunt for fresh water. It’s happening across the world, according to two new studies by U.S. researchers released Tuesday. ---snip--- ......groundwater reserves take thousands of years to accumulate and only slowly recharge with water from snowmelt and rains. Now, as drilling for water has taken off across the globe, the hidden water reservoirs are being stressed. Underground aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water...

A $150,000 prize has been awarded to the “Water Gandhi of India” for his wildly successful work that turns abandoned, impoverished “dust bowls” into lush villages bustling with life again using an ancient method of rainwater harvesting. For teaching thousands of villagers in India’s most arid region how to build earthen dams to catch the monsoon rains and revitalize their land, Rajendra Singh was honored Friday with the 2015 Stockholm Water Prize. 30 years ago, Singh went to the poverty-stricken state of Rajasthan with the aim of setting up health clinics. He was told by villagers, however, that their greatest...

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders will propose more than $1 billion in drought-relief spending for California as it heads into a fourth dry year, according to a legislative staffer who has been briefed on the package. The staffer tells The Associated Press that the vast majority of the package to be announced Thursday accelerates spending that voters have already approved for water and flood projects, including last year’s $7.5 billion bond measure. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the staffer is not authorized to speak to the media. The package would provide immediate aid to communities...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed historic groundwater legislation Tuesday, imposing new rules in the Golden State that could limit how much water commercial and residential users are allowed to pump from underground aquifers — a move decades in the works, spurred this year by California’s drought. The new laws, which take effect in January, will require local government officials to ensure use of groundwater basins is sustainable, protecting underground reserves and averting other environmental damage. The regulations could have a ripple effect on thousands of farmers and ranchers across the North Coast.

a debate is emerging between the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency over the potential disaster if the 89-year-old Mountain Tunnel, which supplies 2.6 million Bay Area homes and businesses with water, collapses. The PUC acknowledges that the tunnel does have a chance of "catastrophic collapse," which would require repairs costing $100 million or total replacement, costing up to $630 million. But the PUC’s 10-year-old 4.6 billion water system improvement program did not include the Mountain Tunnel in its plans. ... The risk right now is that the tunnel lining could...

Mountain Tunnel, a key part of the Hetch Hetchy water system - which supplies 2.6 million Bay Area residences and businesses - is at risk of a "catastrophic collapse" and will cost more than $100 million to repair or up to $630 million to replace, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. City officials have known for 25 years that significant work is needed on the 19-mile-long tunnel just outside Yosemite National Park in a steep, hard-to-access wilderness area. They considered making it part of the PUC's decade-old, $4.6 billion water system improvement program, which is now more than...

After fomenting fears of fracking and fossil fuels, the administration's campaign to put food in our gas tanks has wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies. Ethanol was supposed to save the earth and pave the way to energy independence. It has done neither. We are getting closer to energy independence but it is thanks to the technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has unleashed our vast reserves of oil and natural gas formerly trapped in shale formations underneath much of the U.S. Fracking was supposed to be environmentally dangerous, a...

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing. So it must be OK to frack now. In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades. Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value...

Drought-stricken Kenya is sitting on 250-trillion liters of groundwater With the world as thoroughly mapped and monitored as it is, it's easy to forget the Earth still harbors its fair share of secrets. Case in point: yesterday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that Kenya's drought-striken Turkana County sits, rather ironically, atop a staggeringly huge reserve of subterranean water. Following an extensive groundwater mapping project that incorporated satellite observations, seismic information and remote sensing, five vast aquifers have been identified hiding beneath the country's arid northern region. Preliminary estimates put the aquifers' contents at roughly 250-trillion liters...

A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said. Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that...

Chemical analysis links methane in drinking wells to shale-gas extraction. As shale-gas operations expand across the United States, industry officials and environmentalists are at loggerheads over whether or not shale-gas extraction can contaminate groundwater. Now researchers have traced low levels of methane and other contaminants to a source of shale gas: the sprawling Marcellus Formation, which lies beneath much of New York state, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio (see ‘On tap’) . The study, led by researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, expands on an earlier analysis of drinking water in northeastern Pennsylvania, where energy companies have used...

The Civil Authority and the IDF has cleared out 20,000 cubic tons of trash from an illegal Arab dump in Samaria, after ongoing appeals from an environmental organization. The Yarok Achshav (“Green Now”) group expressed its satisfaction at the resolution of the issue, preventing further damage to the environment by Arabs in the area. The site of the dump, near the Arab village of Kafr Duma, was situated right atop a well that tapped directly in into the large aquifer that runs under Samaria. As such, there was a strong danger that the groundwater throughout the entire region would have...

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

Groundwater flowing into Fukushima nuclear plant TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday it suspects that 200 to 500 tons a day of groundwater might be flowing through pits and wall cracks into reactor and turbine buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The suspicion is based on the fact that a decline in water levels in these buildings has slowed down. "The suspected groundwater inflow is now unlikely to cause problems as the plant is capable of treating nearly 1,000 tons of radiation-contaminated water," said an official at the...