Portal:Water/Selected article

L 1: What is the Marcellus Shale and what is "Fracking"?

L 2: Drilling the Marcellus Shale:  The Next Gold Rush?

L 3: The Marcellus Shale Coalition:  The New Lobbyist Conglomerate Rolls into Town

L 4: T. Boone Pickens, the Pickens Plan, and the Marcellus Shale

In our article on the global water management think tank Third World Centre for Water Management, we highlight President Asit Biswa's criticism of recent World Health Organization figures claiming global progress towards improving water access. The problem with the recent assessment is that it measures infrastructure development instead of improvements to water quality-- “If somebody has a well in a town or village in the developing world and we put concrete around the well – nothing else – it becomes an ‘improved source of water’" for purposes of the statistics.

Our United Water article highlights recent problems with privatizing water resources. The article discusses a recent report from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch criticizing United Water New York's plans to build a desalination facility for the Hudson River. "[The facility] is a classic example of how the interests of private water companies starkly conflict with the needs of the customers to whom they are providing this essential resource,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. The United Water article also reports on a lawsuit and counter-suit between the private water provider and the City of Camden over allegations of wasting taxpayer dollars and exposing the population to health risks.

Our Marcellus Shale article includes a discussion of the Halliburton loophole and the environmental hazards of hydrofracking. Efforts to extract the natural gas associated with the Marcellus Formation in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and neighboring states pose significant health hazards including both wasting fresh water and contaminating drinking water, according to the article and related sources. The article notes that the dangers of hydrofracking were expunged from the Dick Cheney energy task force report in 2001 and were downplayed in a 2004 report by the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency, which led in part to exempting hydrofracking from regulation under the Clean Water Drinking Act, as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act that passed as one of the major legislative initiatives of President Bush's second term.

You can also help by adding more information to SourceWatch pages about United Water Inc, the Halliburton loophole, hydrofracking, and natural gas extraction wells in your neighborhood.

World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, recently closed with a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December. "Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt," the statement stresses. Yet some criticize World Water Week for increased corporate influence, as PR Watch reported.