The Stream, July 19: Pricing, Pollution and a Warming Planet

Regulatory measures
The Clean Water Act has largely fallen short in the Pacific Northwest and much of the nation, according to a new investigation by EarthFix and InvestigateWest.

A pump replacement program in Islamabad will augment the city’s water supply and save enough electricity to power 4,500 Pakistani households, Bloomberg reported.

Some restaurant owners in Vienna are lobbying to put a price tag on tap water after a charity campaign to fund clean water access in Sierra Leone encouraged Vienna citizens to pay a voluntary fee for tap at select eateries, Associated Press reported.

Climate change
A large chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan has detached from northwest Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, The Washington Post reported. These NASA images show the formation of the giant iceberg, which some researchers blame on climate change.

Some 1,297 counties across 29 U.S. states are experiencing drought, Reuters reported. The dry weather will cut this year’s harvest of corn and soybeans, and will almost certainly drive up food prices, according to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has created an animated visualization via satellite imaging that traces the effects of droughts on vegetation, providing an easily comprehendible means of measuring and understanding drought.

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