rivers

Scientists have discovered that the tiny green organisms often referred to as “pond scum” offer a low-tech, low-cost method of cleaning domestic sewage in place of expensive wastewater treatment facilities. All over the world, water is cleaned using large wastewater plants designed to remove chemical, biological and physical contaminants from domestic wastewater or industrial effluent. […]

Testing of English and Welsh rivers by volunteers from angling groups has revealed that 34 percent of freshwater sites tested breach the upper limit of phosphate levels. The anglers are using the data they collected to push for change in the treatment of rivers, but, according to environmental consultancy the Angling Trust, in collaboration with […]

Extremely low river levels in the UK recently have experts concerned about an impending drought. The UK is also experiencing its driest spring since 1961, as BBC News reported. According to data from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the UK received just 43% of the average rainfall in March, and some rivers […]

European countries dismantled a record 542 dams, culverts, weirs and sluices that had been blocking rivers in 2024 — up 11 percent from the previous year — according to a new report from Dam Removal Europe. Last year 23 countries in Europe removed a river barrier, and for four of them — Croatia, Turkey, Bosnia […]

A new study has found that roughly 8,500 tons of antibiotics — almost a third of what is consumed by humans each year — ends up in the world’s rivers, even after much have passed through wastewater systems. The researchers warned that river systems globally have been contaminated with levels of antibiotic pollution high enough […]

University of Albany researchers have presented the first recorded evidence that surface waters in the Adirondack Mountains have made an almost complete recovery — 90 percent — from metal pollution since enactment of the Clean Air Act. Amended in the decades since it first passed in 1963, the Clean Air Act was one of the […]

Snowfall in Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region has reached its lowest level in 23 years, threatening almost two billion people who depend on snowmelt for water, a new report warns. The most recent Snow Update Report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said the region experienced its third below-normal snow year […]

According to the 40th annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers report by American Rivers, half the rivers in the United States contain unsafe pollution levels, with freshwater species becoming extinct faster than land or ocean species. The Mississippi River topped the list, with federal flood management changes putting the health of the river at risk, jeopardizing […]