Oleksiy Kolesnik waded ashore and stood, trembling, on dry land for the first time in hours, rescued on Wednesday morning after spending the predawn sitting on top of a cabinet in his flooded living room. “The water came really quickly,” said Mr. Kolesnik, who was so weak he had to be helped out of a […]
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You don’t need me to tell you that the Grand Canyon is magnificent. Otherworldly. Sublime. But, having rafted through 90 miles of the canyon with a group of scientists and grad students, I can tell you that it’s quite a bit more fragile, and less permanent, than you might think. I wrote an article about […]
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A critical dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine was split in half overnight Tuesday, posing significant risks to the safety of a nearby nuclear power plant and surrounding communities. It was not immediately clear who caused the damage. Ukrainian officials on Tuesday began evacuating thousands of residents living downstream from the dam in the Kherson region as […]
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Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the future housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies. […]
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Since New Year’s, storm after storm had pummeled the state, dropping epic quantities of water and snow. The water made its way toward the bottom of the valley, as it always had, coursing through waterways held in by earthen levees that, during drought years, grew desiccated and weak, pocked with squirrel burrows. In some parts […]
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For days, Venetians have wondered what caused a swath of their city’s famous Grand Canal to turn bright green. On Monday, the authorities had an answer: Test samples of the water confirmed that the canal’s bright new hue was caused by fluorescein, a chemical often used to find leaks during underwater construction. Now, Italian officials […]
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Justice Elena Kagan also added a concurrence-turned-dissent of her own, expressing her enthusiastic support for Kavanaugh’s criticism of Alito while also adding her own twist to it. “The majority shelves the usual rules of interpretation—reading the text, determining what the words used there mean, and applying that ordinary understanding even if it conflicts with judges’ […]
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The court decision follows twice-impeached, criminally indicted, and liable for sexual abuse former President Donald Trump rolling back updates to the CWA made under President Obama. Trump limited federal protection to cover only “permanent” bodies of water, and not other smaller but still significant waterways, like streams of water that flow only part of the […]
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The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to police water pollution, ruling that the Clean Water Act does not allow the agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water. The court held that law covers only wetlands “with a continuous surface connection” to those waters, Justice Samuel A. […]
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Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River, a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supply for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland. The agreement, […]
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Today, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) announced its ninth round of seed grants to support innovative research projects at MIT. The grants are designed to fund research efforts that tackle challenges related to water and food for human use, with the ultimate goal of creating meaningful impact as the world […]
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When Brigette Ramirez and her family drove to Houston for a Taylor Swift concert, she made a very important pit stop. Three, actually: T.J. Maxx, T.J. Maxx and T.J. Maxx. Mx. Ramirez, 33, an 11th-grade U.S. history teacher, was on the hunt for the sugar-free syrups that her fellow flavored-water enthusiasts had cleaned out from […]
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RIO VERDE FOOTHILLS, Ariz. When interviewing people in their homes here, I didn’t have the heart to ask them if I could use the bathroom. There’s no water to spare, so some families flush only once a day. As for showers, they’re rationed and timed: “You get in, you soap up, you turn the water […]
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A century ago, before it was called sparkling water or club soda, and before it was sold as LaCroix and Spindrift, it was called seltzer. No plastic bottles or aluminum cans magically appeared on grocery shelves. Instead, factories across New York City pumped fizzy water into heavy siphon bottles that were distributed by deliverymen. Nearly […]
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A computational tool developed by researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change pinpoints specific counties within the United States that are particularly vulnerable to economic distress resulting from a transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. By combining county-level data on employment in fossil fuel (oil, natural […]
Read MorePhoto: Discover Boating Some people have all the luck. Howard University’s Bison Swim & Diving Team hasn’t missed yet. They made headlines and history gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated back in February. Monday, they were invited to an exclusive event by Discover Boating to learn first-hand how to boat on the water, a recreational […]
Read MorePhoto: Discover Boating Some people have all the luck. Howard University’s Bison Swim & Diving Team hasn’t missed yet. They made headlines and history gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated back in February. Monday, they were invited to an exclusive event by Discover Boating to learn first-hand how to boat on the water, a recreational […]
Read MoreWhen I was a kid, one of the biggest dunks you could bestow on someone was loudly asking a person using the drinking fountain, “Are you gonna drink the whole Mississippi or what?” It was a guaranteed grand slam, one of the funniest things that could possibly be said to another person. That is, unless […]
Read MoreAccording to MIT’s charter, established in 1861, part of the Institute’s mission is to advance the “development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.” Today, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) is one of the driving forces behind water and food-related research on campus, much […]
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As water scarcity becomes an increasingly pressing issue in North America (and around the world), Spout Ventures emerges as a beacon of hope; the company specializes in designing atmospheric water generators, and groundbreaking machines that condense potable water from the surrounding air’s humidity. Today (05/08/2023) marks the launch of their inaugural consumer product: a compact […]
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By Brett Anderson Photographs by Adam Riding Brett Anderson and Adam Riding traveled more than 450 miles throughout southern Arizona to report this article. Kim Elle had never grown anything more complicated than houseplants when she and her husband moved from Georgia to suburban Phoenix in 2021. Faced with a sizable yard in a well-groomed […]
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The thunder of artillery echoes night and day over the mighty Dnipro River as it winds its way through southern Ukraine. With Russian and Ukrainian forces squared off on opposite banks, fighters have replaced fishermen, surveillance drones circle overhead and mines line the marshy embankments. Carving an arc through Ukraine from its northern border to […]
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Industrial mining in the deep ocean is on the horizon. Despite several countries including Germany, France, Chile, and Canada calling for a pause on the field’s development, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the organization tasked with both regulating and permitting deep-sea mining efforts, is nearing the deadline to finalize rules for how companies will operate. Companies, meanwhile, are […]
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Hidden in the ebb and flow of the tides is a wealth of energy. Primarily generated by the gravitational pull of the moon, tidal power is more predictable than wind, and it works well alongside solar power, generating electricity at night when the sun is down but when people fire up their computers, televisions, and […]
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The Curiosity Unbounded podcast is a conversation between MIT President Sally Kornbluth and newly-tenured faculty members. President Kornbluth invites us to listen in as she dives into the research happening in MIT’s labs and in the field. Along the way, she and her guests discuss pressing issues, as well as what inspires the people running […]
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The vast majority of absorbent materials will lose their ability to retain water as temperatures rise. This is why our skin starts to sweat and why plants dry out in the heat. Even materials that are designed to soak up moisture, such as the silica gel packs in consumer packaging, will lose their sponge-like properties […]
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The Interior Department last summer dropped a bomb on the seven states that depend upon the Colorado River for water. It declared an emergency over the two-decade drought that was parching the West and instructed these states, already scrambling to conserve water, to come up with a plan to cut consumption of as much a […]
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After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes, and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are in […]
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In 2017, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) initiated the J-WAFS Fellowship Program for outstanding MIT PhD students working to solve humankind’s water-related challenges. Since then, J-WAFS has awarded 18 fellowships to students who have gone on to create innovations like a pump that can maximize energy efficiency even with changing […]
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Many birds’ feathers are remarkably efficient at shedding water — so much so that “like water off a duck’s back” is a common expression. Much more unusual are the belly feathers of the sandgrouse, especially Namaqua sandgrouse, which absorb and retain water so efficiently the male birds can fly more than 20 kilometers from a […]
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WASHINGTON — After months of fruitless negotiations between the states that depend on the shrinking Colorado River, the Biden administration on Tuesday proposed to put aside legal precedent and save what’s left of the river by evenly cutting water allotments, reducing the water delivered to California, Arizona and Nevada by as much as one-quarter. The […]
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