Kenya Family Stricken After Drinking Foul Water

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Photo by Zachary Ochieng


By Zachary Ochieng

NAIROBI - Michael Onyango, 26, a resident of one of Nairobi’s poorer neighborhoods, groans on his bed at the Kenyatta National Hospital, East Africa’s largest teaching and referral institution.  In another ward, his wife, Jane, and two-year-old daughter, Magdalene, wait patiently for the nurses to do their rounds.
The Onyangos have been admitted here following a diagnosis of

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Rainy Season Brings Return of Cholera; Disease Rages Next Door In Zimbabwe

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Photo by: Richard Mulonga

By Timothy Kasonde Kasolo

LUSAKA, Zambia – The rainy season has begun here in southern Africa and once again cholera has broken out.

Officials here in Zambia, one of the poorest countries in the world, said that 176 cases of cholera and at least four deaths had been reported in the capital city of Lusaka by mid-December. But they said…

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Scarcity

South African Family Struggles to Get Water As Safari Parks Replace Farms

By Hayley Mueller, Xoli Matomela and Joe Edmeades

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GRAHAMSTOWN, South Africa - Nomsimelelo Mekane wakes up every morning wondering where the water supply for the day will come from.  Bathing, cooking, drinking, cleaning and washing have all become luxuries.  Usually, she has water only when she can coax people nearby to give her some.  Some days, when no one is feeling charitable, she says, she has to resort to stealing.

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Video: Norway Expert on World Water Crisis

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Photo by Charlotte Southern

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Book Shelf

A Writer’s Everglades

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Photo Courtesy The International Sea Keepers Society


In her work, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), Marjory Stoneman Douglas painted a literary portrait of the Everglades that emblazoned images of this vast system into the public mind, which resulted in federal protection of significant sections of this unique area.

Stoneman Douglas depicted the Everglades, beginning at the shore of Lake Okeechobee, as a vast river of grass, dominated by

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From the book, Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration, edited by Mary Doyle and Cynthia A. Drew, University of Miami faculty

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Pollution

Northern Peru: Jungle Rivers Where the Sweet Water No Longer Flows

By Kelly Hearn

Nueva Jerusalén, Peru - Tomas Carijano sat at the front of the canoe, whittling the wooden dart to a deadly point, a blowgun propped against his knee. Then, with a nod, he gave the signal.

On the Macusari River, whose muddy waters flow into the Amazon River here in northern Peru, the pilot cut the engine, letting the canoe slip silently into a tiny inlet. The Indians pushed with poles, and then dipped gourds into the amber water.

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Corruption

Provision of Clean Water Threatened

By Joy Elliott

UNITED NATIONS, New York—From bribes of a few dollars to kickbacks and embezzlement running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, corruption relating to water is undermining the health and well-being of billions of people around the world.

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Dr. Huguette
Labelle,
Transparency
International

That’s the conclusion of a book-length study by Transparency International, an organization with headquarters in Berlin that has been tracking corruption in business and government for years.

In the new study, “The Global Corruption Report 2008: Corruption in the Water Sector,” Transparency International concentrated for the first time on water. The theme of its global report last year was corruption in the judiciary. 

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Pollution

SEATTLE:  A River Runs Through it; But What A River It Is

By Jessica Partnow

SEATTLE – The Duwamish River is Seattle’s industrial backbone, a source of much of the city’s history, and one of the country’s most contaminated chemical waste sites.  Gary Thomsen, a high school history teacher who has devoted much of his career to studying the history of the river, says the now-polluted river valley once boasted “the most fertile soil in the world, second only to the Amazon River.”

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The Power of Water:

Miami Herald Photographs Capture Flood Devastation in Haiti

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Miami Herald: Full Haiti Coverage

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Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor; On the Surface, She’s a Beauty

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Photo by Paul Santos


By Violet Law

HONG KONG - Of the nearly 7 million people in Hong Kong, Sing Lai has one of the best views of the city’s dazzling Victoria Harbor.

As a skipper on the Star Ferry line for more than 30 years, he has shuttled thousands of commuters across the jade green harbor, rimmed with gleaming skyscrapers and steep verdant hills. He has come to know the waters like an old friend and he says he has seen remarkable change for the better. He spots less driftwood and garbage, he said, and more fish. “The currents still sweep the trash in,” Mr. Lai said, “but a ...

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Going to War over Water; Preventive Steps At The U.N.

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WHERE THE WATER IS: The blue areas on this United Nations map of Africa show concentrations of underground water, in some cases crossing several national borders. The brown areas have limited underground water. The areas in green are somewhere in between. 
See the full map.

The Latest on Water
From Our Worldwide Water Columnist,
Venkata Vemuri

Water knows no boundaries, but nations do. And what if two neighboring nations go to war over the use of water beneath their boundaries? Even the United Nations has no answer in the absence of an international treaty that would spell out the terms for fairly sharing water in underground lakes or aquifers. But that is changing. 

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Spreading the Word On Clean Water In Rural India

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Villagers getting purified water
Photo Courtesy Pentair Inc.



By Dee DePass

NEW DELHI – In the small town of Arugolanu, 900 miles southeast of here, a young barefoot woman has become an evangelist for clean water.

To Manu Anand, an engineer who has been involved in water purification for much of his life, the woman symbolizes his work in trying to improve sanitation and health in rural India, the world’s second most populous country after China with 1.2 billion people.

Mr. Anand does not know the barefoot woman’s name. But he knows the story of how clean water changed her life and how she

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Uganda: Precious Water

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Photo by Charlotte Southern


KALUNGI, Uganda – A young girl in this small village in East Africa washes with a few drops of water. There is no running water in the village. It is a 45-minute walk to the nearest water, a stagnant pond. Of the world’s 6.6 billion people, 1.2 billion live their lives, like the woman here, with limited access to water. Sanitation is poor. Illness is widespread and often fatal, especially among the youngest children. 

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Villagers: Air War Against Cocaine ‘Ruins Our Water;’ Officials Say No

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Photo by: Kelly Hearn

Amazon Region

By Kelly Hearn

PUERTO NUEVO, Ecuador - Climbing to the metal lip of the 60-foot water tower here, Orlando Gomez huffed, out of breath and drenched in an Amazonian sweat. Mr. Gomez is in charge of drinking water for this little town deep in the rain forest, a two hour’s drive by beat-up road from an oil town called Lago Agrio.

From the tower, Mr. Gomez could see the dirt roads and little tin-roofed wooden houses of this gritty river settlement. He turned slightly toward a distant green wall of mahogany and cedar trees and the muddy San Miguel River, which marks the border between Ecuador and Colombia.

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The Business of Water In An East African Shanty Town

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By Sarah Stuteville

NAIROBI, Kenya--As day breaks over the rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes of the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, the water sellers are already at their water tanks, waiting for their first customers.

Selling water in one of the world’s largest slums is a good business. On most days the vendors charge 5 cents for five gallons, 100 times the cost of piped water provided by the city. But the city does not send water to the residents of Kibera--at any price.

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You can lend your voice to discussions taking place online about global water issues. 1H2o is partnering with helium.com in another effort to bring awareness of the global water crisis through the creation of media on the subject. Click on one of the titles below to participate and compete in the 1H2o Citizen Journalism Awards Contest.

Current Contest Question

How does the health of a river affect the vitality of a region?

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By David Gittlin

The earth is one big ecosystem. Think of it as a human body. Every cell every organ every system of organs is interdependent. Think of the water in the earth's rivers as blood in the body's circulatory system. What happens to the body when infection invades the blood stream? What happens when the body cannot produce enough cells to maintain a sufficient systemic blood level? The answer of course is illness. Industrialization urbanization and global warming have adversely affected
Read all answers.


Current Helium Citizen Journalism Winners

Question: Is corporate involvement in the world water crisis good for society?

By John DeVera

The crisis over the availability of potable water in the world is tremendously complicated. The poisoning of aquifers is endemic. The shortage of waste water treatment plants means that polluted water often contaminates the uncontaminated ground water. Global climate change has made certain areas arid and global unrest has made the transport of clean water to these arid areas problematic. So far the corporate world has had very little positive influence on the matter, but that is a dynamic that must change.

Corporations obsessed with short term goals and temporary profits are sometimes part of the problem.

Read more at Helium.com...

Click here for previous winners

Author’s statement:

I am very pleased to have won your 1H2O.org writing contest on the topic of "Is corporate involvement in the world water crisis good for society?" The current and emerging water crisis is a threat to our lives and public consciousness is necessary if we are to meet this challenge with appropriate and visionary solutions.

Bio:

John DeVera is an English teacher in California. He has a Bachelor of Art's degree in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Master of Arts degree in Literature from Fresno Pacific University.

Click here for more author's statements

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the articles published on the websites of Helium, 1H2O.org and the Knight Center for International Media are those of the authors alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of the Knight Center, its partners or its staff.



One Water the Movie

Editor's Blog

Joseph B. Treaster: Water and The World

James Bond
Discovers Water,
But He’s Not Preaching

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COCONUT GROVE, Fla. – I drove over to see the new James Bond movie the other day and it turned into a business trip.  James Bond had discovered water.

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In the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace, water is one of the main plot lines. The villain is a character cutely named Dominic Greene who runs an organization called Greene Planet and is plotting to seize control of the fresh water in – of all places, Bolivia - and sell it back to the government as public drinking water, at double the…

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Bottled Water:
The Distinction May
Be In the Ad Campaign

Bottled water is convenient and has gained a reputation for being especially pure and healthy.  But a lot of research indicates that bottled water may not be as special as people think.

For example, by some accounts, up to 40 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is merely filtered and packaged tap water.  Some marketing experts say it is…

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Corruption Key Factor
in Worldwide Water Problems

UNITED NATIONS, New York - Corruption was the theme. Water was the focus. It was a different take on the worldwide water problem.

Often discussions on water problems hover within the sphere of the environment. But a panel of experts on water and corruption convened at the United Nations recently with the objective of illuminating an ambitious study showing that corruption was a…

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Bottled Water: Signs That People Are Backing Away

MIAMI - The campaign by environmentalists against bottled water may be gaining traction, with a considerable helping hand from the slumping world economy. 

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The latest evidence comes from Pepsi Cola, one of the biggest players in the field.  Pepsi says its most recent quarterly…

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Honduras, Where Floods Keep Killing

Honduras is in the news again these days with more flooding, more deaths and more people with obliterated homes - and weeks if not months of picking up the pieces.

The loses this time are nothing like the nearly 10,000 killed in flooding caused by Hurricane Mitch…

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Tropical Storm Fay: The Problem Solver

CORAL GABLES, Fla., - Tropical Storm Fay turned out to be a blessing for South Florida. 

The storm dumped enough water on the region in August to fill Lake Okeechobee and, at least for the moment, ease a two-year drought. Yet the rain fall was not so heavy that houses were inundated…

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You Can Hear the Splash of Dolphins

MIAMI, Fla. – It’s been an unusual summer in the north end of Biscayne Bay: Blessedly quiet.

For years, I’ve been watching life on the bay from my apartment in a little place half way between Miami and Miami Beach.  Elegant homes and a few condo towers rise…

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More Blogs & Sites

Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin
WaterDoc.org

World News

BBC
BBC: Science/Nature
The New York Times
The New York Times: Science
The Washington Post
Associated Press
Associated Press: Science
Reuters
Reuters: Environment
Al Jazeera: English
National Geographic

Videos

Ethiopia: Water, Climate Change and Conflict

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Global climate change is making a bad situation worse. As we see in this report from the rugged region of southern Ethiopia, where drought is drying up wells, threatening an ancient way of life and fueling conflict.

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Innovate or Die - Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle

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The Aquaduct is a pedal powered vehicle that transports water and filters it while in motion.

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Lifestraw

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In an effort to combat water related diseases the Lifestaw purifies water while it is being consumed.

View Video...