The boom in US oil and gas production due to fracking spurred the explosion in water use and wastewater in basins where the extraction is occurring—and the industry is trying to keep up with the waste. Now the Trump EPA is weighing an end to the oil and gas wastewater ban so that it can […]
A new report found that 75 percent of large US slaughterhouses broke the federal Clean Water Act by overstepping water pollution limits issued in their state permits at least once between January 2016 to June 30, 2018, according to Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). EIP scoured EPA and state records for those pertaining to the 98 […]
People will go out of their way to avoid threats to their existence, but not climate change, which, let’s face it, is starting to threaten a lot of people. Change involves a combination of factors that make it hard for people to get motivated: First, acting on climate change represents a trade-off between short-term and […]
Researchers analyzed the water footprint of 65 mid- to large-sized US cities. They analyzed agricultural, livestock and industrial commodity flows using data from the USDA, USGS and the USDOT, then used these values to calculate an overall water footprint for each city. According to Caitlin Grady, one of the study’s authors, “We looked at the overall picture […]
Whether in English or en Español, if you are in the US and want to estimate your water footprint, there is only one place to turn: GRACE’s Water Footprint Calculator. A recent article by Expok, a Mexico-based social responsibility news site, showcases the Spanish-language calculator to explain the importance of not only accounting for tap […]
In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, Rick Dove, co-founder of Waterkeeper Alliance, took aerial photos of North Carolina’s flooded agricultural areas that are heavily populated by hog and poultry CAFOs (aka, factory farms). In this Washington Post piece, Dove describes the devastation shown with swamped hog and chicken houses and inundated manure lagoons that poured […]
The Tampa Bay Times is a member of the Florida Waters Stewardship Program, which is a seven-week course that teaches residents how to do their part to protect the Sunshine State’s famous waters. The course used our own GRACE Water Footprint Calculator as a teaching tool, and based on its effectiveness, the news outlet […]
It takes about 728 gallons (2,757 liters) of water to produce the food an average British person eats every day. This comes from a new study conducted by European Commission entitled, “The water footprint of different diets within European sub-national geographical entities.” Food generally comprises the largest part of a person’s water footprint, and meat […]
As millions of ‘data miners’ the world over rush to extract wealth from cyber currencies, the wealth comes at a potentially high price – the water it takes to generate each invisible unit. A recent back-of-an-envelope calculation – a single transaction burns as much electricity as a household consumes in a week – suggests bitcoin’s escalating demand […]
