Alberta

Canada Oil Sands An unknown volume of water has been released from a holding pond at Suncor Energy’s oil sands project in Alberta, Reuters reported. The water was released into the Athabasca River, though it is unclear if the water contained toxic materials. China Water Pollution Another wave of dead animals has hit China’s waterways, [...]

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Canada Oil Sands An unknown volume of water has been released from a holding pond at Suncor Energy’s oil sands project in Alberta, Reuters reported. The water was released into the Athabasca River, though it is unclear if the water contained toxic materials. China Water Pollution Another wave of dead animals hit China’s waterways Sunday, [...]

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Business An ‘new gold’ for the 21st century, banking on scarcer supplies and an exploding global population to drive demand, MarketWatch reported. North America The Premier of British Columbia has said that the Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine, which could pollute one of the last pristine wild salmon fisheries in the world. A Mexican town is [...]

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Push-back on the transportation of tar sands equipment through a wilderness corridor reflects civic resistance to North American fossil fuel boom.

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Dr. Subir Bhattacharjee in his laboratory at the University of Alberta

Subir Bhattacharjee — a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta and one of Canada’s top water quality experts — tells Circle of Blue about the water cycle of the tar sands while he attends a high-level conference in Alberta, Canada.

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Water scarcity will likely create conflict in regions around the world within the next decade, according to a report from the United States Director of National Intelligence, launched March 22 in Washington. The report, available here, predicts that water-linked instability is most likely to occur in South Asia and the Middle East. Providing enough water [...]

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Drought and Water Access A forest fire in China’s Yunnan province was brought under control Tuesday after burning for two days and coming within 40 kilometers (25 miles) of the provincial capital, Xinhua reported. The fire was linked to drought conditions that have plagued Yunnan for the past three years. The Guardian looks at the [...]

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A year after the devastating tsunami in Japan, communities in the affected regions are slowly repairing their towns. On the one-year anniversary of the disaster, the Guardian features a series of montages that press agencies have created by combining pictures taken during or just after the tsunami hit with images taken up to a year [...]

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Droughts South-East England is officially in a state of drought, the Press Association reported, citing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Guardian has mapped out the affected regions. As rivers and reservoirs in England and Wales are running low after two dry winters, water industry executives have again called for regulatory reforms [...]

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The proposed pipeline could be approved on a much shorter timeline than was laid out by President Barack Obama, after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday giving approval power for the project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Senate has not yet considered the bill.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that shale gas production would undermine the still-emerging renewable energy sector in the United States, according to Yale Environment 360. Meanwhile, two groups of scientists at Cornell University are dueling over whether the climate impact of shale gas is bigger or smaller than coal’s, Associated Press [...]

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Unlike the other oil-rich, water-poor Gulf states, by 2024 Qatar plans to produce up to 70 percent of its food domestically, by spending massively to boost crop yields and convert semi-desert into farmland, Reuters reported. But many economists and agricultural experts say Qatar’s plans do not make economic sense. There isn’t enough research on the [...]

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Global carbon emissions are likely to continue increasing at a rate of 3 percent each year, EurActiv reported, citing a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by 5.9 percent in 2010. The booming shale gas industry could create 870,000 jobs and $118 billion in economic growth [...]

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Jobs created by the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline wouldn’t be worth the health and safety consequences if a spill contaminated water supplies, U.S. President President Barack Obama said in an interview with an Omaha television station, according to Bloomberg. What does this mean for the fate of the $7 billion project? An influential U.S. [...]

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More Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water, according to a recent Nielsen survey. Why isn’t basic infrastructure keeping up with South Africa’s technological revolution, and are other African countries following in these footsteps? Asia The president of a major Chinese company warned that Myanmar’s decision last week to halt construction [...]

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In serious drought conditions, Texas does not and will not have enough water to meet the needs of its people, businesses, and agricultural enterprises, according to a draft plan by the Texas Water Development Board. Poland will likely veto any attempt by the European Union to limit shale gas development with EU-wide regulation, Reuters reported, [...]

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The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Project, designed to carry crude from the oil sands in Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, will have minimal impact on the environment, according to the final environmental impact assessment report released last Friday by the U.S. State Department, Politico reported. But the State Department insists the fate of the [...]

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There are about 6,000 toxins that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not got around to regulating in municipal drinking water systems, according to Forbes. While EPA has begun to develop regulations to remove these chemicals from tap and bottled water, the industry has made efforts to delay or prevent their implementation. Hydropower Despite calls [...]

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If the Republican-sponsored bill passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, the final decision could come by the beginning of November.

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The U.S. Department of State will hold public meetings in five states before it decides whether to grant permission for the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport Canadian oil sands petroleum to refiners in Texas, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert argues that “just about every decision that [the Obama] Administration has made [...]

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