Entries by Cody Pope

Commentary: Bottled water for dogs?

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Bottled water — now considered an extravagance by many — remains a growing market in the United States and its newest economic niche seems to have taken the product to the height of indulgence: bottled water for dogs. At least four companies have begun marketing the product for pets. Often fortified with vitamins and flavored, […]

Aquatic canaries – using fish to test city water

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Taipei, Taiwan – Singaporean scientists have developed a simple automated way to monitor city water supplies: use a computer to watch fish. The fishcam monitors water quality by observing the number of dead fish in aquariums filled with city water. Updates to the system will allow the fishcam’s computer software to not only detect deaths, […]

Lake Victoria beset by environmental problems

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Kisumu, Kenya – Lake Victoria, the largest freshwater lake in Africa, is shrinking, dropping some six feet in the last four years. Over 30 million people in three East African nations depend on the lake’s water for their livelihoods and biologists fear that if the overdraw from the lake doesn’t decrease, Victoria could surfer from […]

Despite promises, Sacramento tops U.S. daily average for water use

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Sacramento, CA – Even after promising to reduce water consumption significantly in 2000, the majority Sacramento’s water regions failed to meet the 16 conservation goals set-up. Only one region met all the goals and collectively they failed meet even half the goals. Instead, water consumption in Sacramento actually increased in the last eight years, topping […]

California drought forces farmers to take extreme action

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CALIFORNIA – In the midst of the worst drought in 15 years, California farmers are taking drastic measures to save their crops and their livelihoods, Bloomberg reports. Even as Governor Schwarzenegger called for more water aid for agriculture, struggling farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have begun abandoning crops and spending millions on short term […]

Vanishing Lake Chad — A Water Crisis in Central Africa

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by C.T. Pope Once the third-largest source of freshwater in Africa, Lake Chad is disappearing according to new satellite images — putting millions of people in four Central African countries at risk of losing their primary water supply. The vast shallow lake, with a surface area equivalent to Lake Erie only 40 years ago, is […]

Mars probe expected to find water, possibly signatures of life

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By C.T. Pope Circle of Blue Past, present, and possible future life on Mars may depend on water that’s most likely locked near the planet’s north pole. For the first time in human history, NASA’s Phoenix Lander will reach out and, scientists expect, touch extraterrestrial water – analyzing it for critical amino acids and other […]

New tool visualizes freshwater ecoregions

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by C.T. Pope Circle of Blue In South America alone, over 465 new freshwater fish species have been discovered in the last five years. That’s the equivalent of finding a new species every four days. Many of these newly discovered fish species are in limited ranges and exist nowhere else on the planet. Globally, freshwater […]

Water key to ending poverty and hunger in Africa, UN report says

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by C.T. Pope Circle of Blue Almost two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural poor could benefit from investment in water, a new UN report finds. The jointly commissioned report, Water and the Rural Poor, was presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) at the […]

Biofuels: Choice of fuel, food or water?

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Nations make tradeoffs to feed ever-increasing energy needs By C.T. Pope Circle of Blue With fuel prices still on the rise, President Bush held a press conference on Tuesday to call for an increase in U.S. biofuel production in order to mitigate the country’s dependence on foreign oil. “[T]he high price of gasoline is going […]

The Perfect Drought – Water Disaster in the American West?

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Is the American West facing a water disaster? Reporter Jon Gertner paints a dry future in his Oct 21, 2007 cover story, “The Perfect Drought,” in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Required reading for anyone working in water. “…if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, ‘an Armageddon.’” Cody […]