Hydraulic engineering

How groundwater is saving California farmers during drought

Environment

Steve Arthur has been in the well-drilling business for decades and says he’s never seen anything quite like what’s happening now in California’s San Joaquin Valley. “People just call and say, ‘Put me on the list.’ I can’t keep up with the demand, “ Arthur says. “I met with two customers yesterday, and ended up […]

Kenyans Drink a Little Easier With Discovery of 50 Billion Gallon Aquifer

Arts, Culture & Media

Australia’s Great Artesian Basin: A Life-Giving Resource in the Unforgiving Outback

The World

Science Note/ Candles

The World

Gold Rush Legacy, Part II

The World

Gold Rush Legacy, Part I

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Cheryl Colopy of member station KQED in San Francisco reports on the legacy of the Gold Rush on a landscape that was virtually untouched before gold was discovered.

The Living on Earth Almanac

This week, facts about…the California Gold Rush and mining.

The World

Middle East Troubled Waters: Mountain Aquifer

Water is a source of conflict between Isreal and nearly all its neighbors. The struggle over land could just as easily be called a struggle over water, for without water, land produces little. In part one of our special series examining water in the Middle East, “Troubled Waters”, Living On Earth’s Sandy Tolan examines how […]

The World

Still a Few Bugs in the System

Living on Earth’s George Homsy reports from Boston on the problems of Combined Sewer Overflows, which plague 1200 communities around the country. Remnants of the days before sewage treatment plants, CSOs allow sewers to overflow into local waterways during heavy rainstorms. Municipalities are appealing to Washington for help in meeting the estimated $200 billion cost […]

Few Large Dams Still Being built

Though hydropower provides nearly one-fifth of the world’s electricity, fewer and fewer large dams are being built. Steve asks the World Resources Institute’s Mohammed El Ashry if the dream of plentiful electricity is vanishing.