"Hydrologist David Evetts drove north from his office in Boise, Idaho, to the former prospecting town of Elk City on May 2. Fifty miles down a dead-end mountain road, he stopped at a gray metal box on a bridge over the South Fork Clearwater River. Reaching inside, he turned off the satellite feed that once relayed the river's water-level measurements from stream gauge number 13337500 every 15 minutes."

"Grand Rapids, Mich., is placing a bet that restoring the white water that gave the city its name will make it a destination for kayakers and other outdoors enthusiasts."

"Just a year after Congress imposed significant changes in the government's oft-criticized flood insurance program, howls of protest from homeowners facing higher premiums have coastal lawmakers pressing for delays that would preserve below-cost rates for hundreds of thousands of people in flood-risk areas."

"Babies whose mothers consume nitrates in drinking water have a higher risk of spina bifida, cleft palate and other birth defects, according to a large study of children in Texas and Iowa. Used as fertilizers on crops, nitrates are one of the most widespread chemical contaminants in aquifers around the world. The study is the first to compare birth defects in kids to their mothers’ consumption of nitrates-tainted drinking water during pregnancy."

"A meeting of 24 nations and the European Union in mid-July will decide the fate of two proposed ocean reserves in Antarctica."

"The shale drilling boom that has helped create a huge supply of cheap natural gas continues to bring more and more fracking waste into Ohio."

"Drought, heavy rain increase amount of chemical in rivers."

"From California to the Great Lakes, persistent water pollution shows that no beach is an island when it comes to public health threats like hepatitis, dysentery and stomach flu."

"A tiny wedge of land jammed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean sea, the Gaza Strip is heading inexorably into a water crisis that the United Nations says could make the Palestinian enclave unliveable in just a few years."