"Caves are home to some of the planet's most unusual creatures and important drinking water supplies. Now these underground resources are being polluted by surface activities, ranging from sewage spills to old factories. Experts call the problem 'extensive and serious.' Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Crevice Cave in Missouri and Whispering Canyon Cave in Alaska are examples. 'People need to be aware that there’s a subterranean ecosystem and that what happens on the surface impacts these unique ecosystems in a very real way,' said David Culver, a biologist at American University."

"Crops are wilting in the countryside, and the capital's water shortage has turned dire as Mexico grapples with its worst drought in more than half a century."

"U.S. scientists say persistent winds and a weakened current contributed to higher than normal June and July sea levels along the Eastern Seaboard."

"Dam projects by neighbouring states are drastically reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates and helping to turn a once-fertile plain into desert."

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke asking them to reverse the federal government’s restrictions on water use intended to protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta."

"On New Year’s Day, 2009, in the tiny northeast Pennsylvania town of Dimock, a drinking-water well blew up because of a methane leak associated with natural-gas drilling nearby."

"San Francisco Bay and the delta are dying. Salmon runs are collapsing. Droughts are getting worse. And big agriculture still wants more water."

"Scientists who returned to the Bay Area this week after an expedition to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" brought piles of plastic debris they pulled out of the ocean — soda bottles, cracked patio chairs, Styrofoam chunks, old toys, discarded fishing floats and tangled nets."

"The Environmental Protection Agency should move immediately to adopt enforceable limits on the release of nutrient pollutants -- such as fertilizer and sewage -- into rivers and streams to halt the creation of dangerously low oxygen areas in water bodies, and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico should be one of its first targets, the agency's Office of Inspector General said in a report made public today."

Shallow rivate wells in part of West Palm Beach, drilled illegally by contractors, may be exposing homeowners there to drinking water contamination. People there fear a possible cancer cluster.

"A major problem facing municipalities around Albany County: sewer systems that are often overrun by heavy rain and governments that don't have the millions of dollars needed to upgrade often antiquated systems."

"A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq's civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water."

"The Environmental Protection Agency says it's putting the Chesapeake Bay on a pollution diet. The federal agency used the Twitter social networking site to 'tweet' the message Friday to its followers on the site."

"A dangerous oil spill off the far north coast of Western Australian will take at least seven weeks to clean up and cost the company that owns the drilling rig tens of millions of dollars."

"Alaska's marine waters -- source of 60 percent of the United States' seafood harvest -- show surprising impact as greenhouse emissions undermine the base of the food web."