The Nature researchers found that the most severe depletion is concentrated "in a few regions that rely significantly on overexploited aquifers to grow crops, mainly the USA, Mexico, the Middle East and North Africa, India, Pakistan and China, including almost all the major breadbaskets and population centres of the planet."
The group mapped global food trade flows from these areas with the most-stressed aquifers—places like the California Central Valley, the Midwest’s High Plains (where farmers have for years been draining the Ogallala aquifer to grow corn and cotton), India’s breadbasket, the Punjab, and China’s main growing region, the North Plain.
Note that the group was looking at data from a period just before the onset of California’s recent drought (2011-2016), which triggered a massive frenzy of water-pump drilling and an epic drawdown of aquifers.
The new study underlines a point I’ve made before: Water reserves in California’s Central Valley are in a long-term state of decline—aquifer recharge during wet years never fully replaces all that was taken away during dry times.
Of those seven countries that use massive amounts of water from dwindling aquifers to grow crops, just three are major exporters of those crops: the United States, Mexico, and Pakistan.
They also looked at countries that rely most on imported food grown with fossil water.
The researchers found that a "vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops, highlighting risks for global food and water security."
Along with Mexico, Iran, and China, the researchers placed the United States among a handful of countries that are "particularly exposed" to the risks of groundwater scarcity "because they both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers."
The paper isn’t trying to make the point that food trade is somehow bad.
Rather, it’s that global food trade hinges increasingly on a vanishing resource, and that the water footprint of our food supply is largely invisible to both end consumers and policymakers.

India, conserving rainwater in subsurface soil to fight water scarcity.
Indigenous communities in India’s Rayagada district mitigate the challenges of water scarcity by storing rainwater in subsurface soil.
A cheap and concrete solution to a global problem.
Rainwater in subsurface soil “The success and impact of this project on basin ecosystems are still in doubt.
1,869 km3 of water flows through rivers whilst most of the rest for evaporates according to WRIS data.
The villagers explain the impact this has had on their agricultural activities: “It’s been a year since we did this.
But it’s early summer and I’m now growing tomato and vegetables,” says Majibani Praska of Chichimi village, “some even cultivate rice now”.
Another woman farmer, Almati Praska, says “production has also increased by 50-100 per cent”.
“By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages.
At such a crucial moment, the intuition of conserving rainwater in subsurface soil bears enormous hope for humanity and the world to escape the dangers of water scarcity.

Water supply woes in Bhubaneswar.
Bhubaneswar: Many areas in the capital city are yet to get pipelines, specially in slums.
As per Public Health Department, the city needs around 70 million litres per day which is fulfilled with water from Mahanadi, Kuakhai, Daya rivers and borewells.
But at least 90 million litres of water is wasted every day which has created imbalance in water supply.
The water treatment plant at Palasuni that treats Kuakhai river provides 108 million litres water despite its capacity of 90 million litres.
But Daya and Kuakhai are drying in summer and more so because of the daily water supply to Bhubaneswar.
Now, the city depends on Puri canal for water supply.
To avoid water woes, there is a planning to built a checkdam in Kuakhai which is not going ahead because of financial constraints as well as lack of co-ordination between various departments.
At present, a sand bag embankment has been made to collect water.
But this cannot be a long term solution.

Water and Wastewater Utilities Leverage IIoT.
Water utilities are being challenged to operate more efficiently, lower operating costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Water scarcity has become a universal issue and reducing nonrevenue water has reached critical mass at utilities worldwide.
This is particularly true in arid regions that rely on costly desalinated water as their primary source of potable water.
The utilities are turning to SCADA to increase operator efficiency, engineering efficiency, and process optimization, while also being more responsive to the needs of their customers.
The latest generation of SCADA platforms provide the capability to collect, sort, and analyze data quickly and display it on executive dashboards.
A surge of new hardware and software technologies emerging in the industrial sector are disrupting the way systems are designed and organizations operate.
Some of the key disruptive technologies being incorporated into SCADA systems include the cloud, virtualization, mobility, Big Data analytics, and other Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies.
Some key findings from ARC Advisory Group’s recent market study on SCADA for water & wastewater include: External forces like regulations, aging infrastructure, and overall sustainability force the introduction of new technology solutions Cybersecurity continues to grow as a major concern The industry is beginning to accept cloud-based solutions ARC Advisory Group clients can view the complete report at ARC Client Portal on Office 365 or Box.com If you would like to buy this report or obtain information about how to become a client, please Contact Us Keywords: SCADA, Water, Wastewater, IIoT, Cloud, Cybersecurity, ARC Advisory Group.

Water level at 91 major Indian reservoirs drops one per cent in a week.
With the onset of summer, water scarcity is looming large in parts of India with the as Ministry of Water Resources saying that water level at 91 major reservoirs in the county has gone down by one per cent in one week.
"The water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country for the week ending on April 6 was 50.435 billion cubic meter (BCM), which is 32 per cent of total storage capacity of these reservoirs.
This percentage was at 33 per cent for the week ending on March 30, 2017," said a ministry official.
The ministry also issued a statement saying that the level of water until April 6 this year was 129 per cent of the water stored in the same period last year and 105 per cent of the average water stored in the last ten years.
"The total storage capacity of these 91 reservoirs is 157.799 BCM," the ministry added.
Out of these 91, 37 reservoirs are outfitted with hydropower abilities with an installed capacity of more than 60 MW.
ALSO READ | Ahead of Bangladesh PM’s visit, Mamata claims there is no water in Teesta river

66 percent of the world faces water shortages every year.
0 Share this article While it has been known for some time that the world water crisis is among the top three global problems, we now have a more accurate number and percentage of people who are currently facing this problem.
According to the The Huffington Post, it was previously believed through earlier studies that an estimate between "1.7 and 3.1 billion people lived with moderate to severe water scarcity for at least a month out of the year."
Here are the five facts you need to know about Hoekstra’s study and his findings published in the Science Advances Journal.
66 percent of the world population (about 4 billion people) live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least one month of the year.
India and China are the two countries with the largest populations of people facing severe water scarcity.
In India, 1 billion people face severe water shortages each year, while 0.9 billion face severe water scarcity in China.
Some areas have begun to pump so much ground water that we are now facing a new problem, global sea level rises.
Among those ideas is relying on rain-fed agriculture and less on irrigated crops, improving the efficiency of the water we do have and sharing the resources that we do have among each other.
Of these three options given, the third seems to make the most sense, yet seems to be the most difficult challenge yet.

New technology could be a game-changer for the future of drinking water.
A team at The University of Manchester has developed a new graphene ‘sieve’ that can take the salt out of sea water.
It has several useful characteristics, like unusual strength and permeability.
A team led by Professor Rahul Nair, however, has developed a chemical form of graphene, graphene oxide, that can be produced comparatively cheaply in the lab.
This has previously been challenging, because the holes required are extremely small.
Nair is confident that this will make desalination (salt removal) affordable, as it is currently a prohibitively expensive solution to water scarcity.
Changing the future of water supplies This development has potentially revolutionary consequences for the availability of fresh drinking water.
Water resources are under increasing pressure as a result of growing global population, sea level rise, and climate change.
With more people on the planet, the demand for resources like water will inevitably grow.
And technologies like the graphene sieve could be part of the answer.

ISLAMABAD: Water scarcity and high water salinity were forcing poor farmers in the Indus basin to migrate to urban centres.
This was stated by Dr Daanish Mustafa, reader in the Department of Geography at King’s College London while delivering a lecture on Hydro-hazardscapes of Climate Change in Pakistan organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Wednesday.
He added that water issues in Pakistan’s context cannot be seen in isolation, but have to be dealt with while considering their economic, political and cultural aspects.
Contrary to the popular view of mitigating climate change and its impact, Dr Mustafa was of the view that this was not the correct strategy.
Instead, he suggested that immediate issues of the people should be addressed, including contemporary problems which the people were facing in the country such as water scarcity.
Moreover, the water table was dropping in some areas to such an extent that plants can no longer grow in the soil.
Noting that people in the saline groundwater zone were facing an urgent problem, Dr Mustafa said that small farmers were bearing most of the brunt of water scarcity.
“This phenomenon is contributing to an urbanisation rate which is higher than anywhere else in South Asia,” he explained.
He added that the debate on water issues in Pakistan had become a source of mistrust between the people from different provinces.
While the real water and security challenges were substantial, the cultural and social capital realised through water must not be underestimated, he concluded.

Govt buses in Bellary to provide drinking water to passengers to beat the heat.
Summers are never happy if you are in certain parts of South India.
Given the high dependence of the region on rain, water scarcity takes a terrible shape and makes livelihood difficult.
This year, too, it has been no different.
With water levels in dams across Karnataka already showing signs of alarming fall and experts cautioning that the state could face a crisis similar to the one it met four decades ago, the people of the state would have to prepare for a bleak scenario this season.
But amid all the bad news, the government authorities have taken a valuable initiative in Bellary, a district in Karnataka facing severe water crisis.
The government bus service has decided to provide drinking water on board the vehicles in Bellary, a report by News 9 has said.
Water containers have been installed in every bus to give passengers relief and prevent them from suffering heat stroke and dehydration, the report added.
These containers are also refilled regularly.
The local people have thanked the state’s transport department for coming up with a noble initiative.

Despite Efforts, Clean Water Is Scarce In India’s Industrial Gujarat State.
In late February, the country’s Supreme Court mandated that all polluting industries must ensure that waste water discharges meet quality standards by installing effective primary effluent treatment facilities by March 31 2017.
River and lake pollution is a major problem across much of India, and regulatory inertia toward industrial waste water has exacerbated the situation.
In Gujarat, even regions with otherwise plentiful surface water sources are affected as creeks and rivers turn into black cesspools thanks to increasing municipal waste and insufficient sewage treatment plants.
The Gujarat Pollution Control Board forced non-compliant industrial units to implement a time-bound action plan, including a series of strategies to mitigate water and air pollution within the industrial clusters.
These steps are beginning to show some results.
According to the agency’s 2014-15 annual report, industrial use of pollution-abatement technologies and upgrades in common effluent treatment plants have mitigated chemical oxygen demand and ammoniac nitrogen in water sources, both measures of industrial pollution.
And neither state nor national environmental controls have improved the quality of water in Gujarat’s rivers, lakes, creeks and coastal areas outside the specified industrial clusters.
And given the many new Gujarat government incentives aimed at improving industrial environmental governance, the investment required to upgrade environmental protections no longer looks quite so unprofitable.
Such innovation is not only now financially feasible, it could also help industries to insulate themselves against future water scarcity in the state.