Tag: dams
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As New Mexico Reservoirs Hit Bottom, Worries Grow Over the Future
The state’s reservoirs have done their job to help water users survive record drought in 2018. Now they are almost totally dry, and tensions are building over the year ahead. ‘Climate change is really happening,’ one water official says. Elephant Butte Reservoir, the largest in New Mexico, photographed on Sept. 10, 2018, when it was…
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Hurricane Florence breaches manure lagoon, coal ash pit in North Carolina
RALEIGH, N.C. — Flooded rivers from Florence’s drenching rains have swamped coal ash dumps and low-lying hog farms, raising pollution concerns as the swollen waterways approach their crests Monday. North Carolina environmental regulators say several open-air manure pits at hog farms have failed, spilling pollution. State officials also were monitoring the ongoing threat from the…
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River Revives After Largest Dam Removal in USA History
In August 2014, workers completed the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, as the final part of the 210-foot-high (64-meter-high) Glines Canyon Dam was dismantled on the Elwha River in northwestern Washington State. The multistage project began in 2011 with the blessing of the U.S. National Park Service, which administers the surrounding Olympic National…
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Nature is teaching … are we learning?
The three major challenges in the water sector can be summed up as too little, too much or too dirty. Water use over the last century has been growing by more than twice the rate of population increase. A central challenge for sustainable development is how to balance the competing uses of water; ensure that…
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NASA building new tools to manage water as climate dangers grow
After an unusually dry winter, a late-season storm finally soaked California in early March, piling up several feet of snow across the high granite reservoirs of the Sierra Nevada mountains. On the Sunday morning after the weather cleared, a pair of NASA researchers loaded onto a small plane at the Mammoth Yosemite Airport, a single-runway…
