Saving for the future is not a new idea. But one family in Austin, Texas has put a new twist on meeting their water needs. With a homebuilt water barn, Michael McElveen and his wife, Kathy, now use rainwater to satisfy all their water needs for drinking, irrigating their organic garden and orchard, and supplying their fish pond and swimming pool.
Steller sea lions were once the primary prey of the killer whale. Now this marine mammal, protected under the Endangered Species Act, may face an even more threatening foe: the Canadian fish farmer. Driven by a shortage of pollock and herring stocks, sea lions are infiltrating coastal fish farms, where plentiful salmon are easy prey. […]
To a java junkie, there is no such thing as too much coffee, but when it comes to the world’s coffee industry, the opposite is true. The massive overproduction of coffee presently glutting world markets is causing a crisis of historic proportions. Currently selling for approximately 45 cents per pound, the price of coffee beans […]
Native Americans across the continent continue to struggle against environmental and social injustice. Tribal lands are disproportionately ravaged by mining and forestry industries, and every site in America currently proposed to store nuclear waste is on Native lands, according to the advocacy group Honor the Earth. Along with the destruction of traditional culture and the […]
Rameshwari Devi sits in front of a pit of smoldering coal, roasting shoes. Plumes of acrid smoke rise from the oven as the plastic soles begin to melt. She coughs incessantly as she strips the soles and tosses them in a heap, discarding the leather uppers.
The Real Pests? Joe Crozier and Yvette Maiangowi thought that, like many other Americans, they were simply developing seasonal allergies. Within months of moving into their Arizona home, the symptoms began: asthma, headaches and fatigue. Worst affected was four-year-old James: He ground his teeth at night and vomited frequently. “At first we thought these [problems] […]
Last September, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a recommended drainage plan for the Yazoo Backwater Area, affecting a significant portion of the Mississippi River floodplain. The $181 billion Yazoo Backwater Pumps would become the world’s largest hydraulic pumping plant, with a target area of 200,000 acres of wetlands to be drained for agricultural […]
Nova Scotia’s Solar Sewage Solution One of Bear River, Nova Scotia’s biggest tourist attractions is its sewage treatment plant. Pleasing to the eye and almost completely odorless, the 80,000-gallon facility is located right in the heart of the small town’s tourist district. Every year, close to 2,000 people visit the plant. Bear River became the […]
Four hundred years ago, according to legend, Spanish mustangs swam from shipwrecks to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Today, untamed descendants of these horses still run free in small herds along Shackleford Banks, an undeveloped island off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina.
Anchors Away? The word “anchor” suggests the sea, not the land-locked expanse of our nation’s wilderness. But for the past two years, the anchors issue has forced the Forest Service to ride a growing swell of stormy debate over their on-shore use. The anchors invading our wildest places are tinyonly a few bolts, or a […]
