Category: Salt water

  • Hawaiʻi’s Corals Were Struggling To Survive. Then Came The Mud Floods

    Hawaiʻi’s Corals Were Struggling To Survive. Then Came The Mud Floods

    Coral reefs already face a litany of threats. Experts say storm runoff from the recent Kona lows will only make matters worse for Hawaii coral. Last week’s powerful Kona low storms, which caused catastrophic flooding on land, might also have devastated much of Hawaiʻi’s nearshore corals and reef fish, smothering them in tons of mud…

  • Saltwater intrusion will taint 77% of coastal aquifers by century’s end, modeling study finds

    Saltwater intrusion will taint 77% of coastal aquifers by century’s end, modeling study finds

    Watersheds on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard will be among the areas most affected by underground saltwater intrusion by the year 2100 due to sea level rise and changes in groundwater supplies, according to a NASA-DOD study. NASA’s Terra satellite captured Credit: NASA Seawater will infiltrate underground freshwater supplies in about three of every four coastal areas…

  • One of Santa Cruz County’s largest water sources is ‘critically overdrafted’; fixes are on the way

    One of Santa Cruz County’s largest water sources is ‘critically overdrafted’; fixes are on the way

    A worker finishes installing the Pure Water Soquel purification facility’s start-and-stop unit. (Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz) More than 50,000 residents of Santa Cruz County are reliant on a single water source: the dwindling Mid-County Groundwater Basin, which the state deemed “critically overdrafted” nearly a decade ago. Now local agencies are embarking on efforts…

  • Keeping score on Earth’s sea-level-rise

    An international collaboration among dozens of scientists has come within less than a millimeter of attaining a long-sought goal: accounting for all the jostling, overlapping, and constantly changing contributions to global sea-level rise. A just-published paper assembles virtually all the puzzle pieces – melting ice, warming and expanding waters, sinking coastlines and a stew of…

  • What’s stopping desalination from going mainstream?

    What’s stopping desalination from going mainstream?

    POLITICO illustration/Photos by iStock, Getty, Food & Water Watch Panic over saltwater intrusion in the Mississippi River threatening drinking water supplies in major cities and an ongoing drought parching the West have some officials weighing a controversial solution — desalination. But the process of removing salt from water to make it potable comes with a…