Speed Blogging

• Some clever researchers have found the source of arsenic contaminating well water in Bangladesh: human-built ponds. This is great news -- the first step to ending one of the greatest poisonings in history.
  
  
• Put these guys in charge (they understand risk): "Citing fears of rising costs from climate change, insurance companies have begun changing the terms of their policies to encourage customers to act more green."
  
  
• Hazardous waste in water and air, and how the government caused it. (22 pages -- take your time :)
  
  
• A researcher has made a measuring device that indicates if industrial water is "clean enough," which promises to cut demand for water by up to 50 percent.
  
  
• China is uprooting 330,000 people (and "paying" them) as it begins digging canals to bring water to Beijing (Delivery -- but not the end of their water problems -- in 2012) Sounds like they might like to do the Peripheral Canal!
  
  
• Chris Brooks compares water use in New Mexico and Texas (same basin and dirt, different property rights) and finds [doc] that "significantly more water is pumped to irrigate lots more land under the rule of capture [TX] than under prior appropriation [NM]."
  
  
• Field trials of (GMO'd) drought-tolerant maize have begun in South Africa. Speaking of that, here's a 3pp Economist article on Monsanto.

hattips to DL and DW