BP ratcheted up the rhetoric around multi-billion dollar claims from the Gulf oil spill by warning it would "vigorously" contest lawsuits over one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

While reiterating BP's "bias for settling" at hearings scheduled later this month, CEO Bob Dudley said he would only do so "on fair and reasonable terms."

As he unveiled higher fourth quarter profit on Tuesday and a rise in the dividend, which he said showed BP was putting the spill behind it, Dudley acknowledged the lawsuits were the biggest uncertainty facing the British oil major.

A recent study discovered that many Tel Aviv wells are polluted beyond suitability as drinking water sources. Data collected by the Health Ministry and Water Authority showed that 96 of a total 166 wells in the Tel Aviv area were closed due to contamination. Nearly two-thirds of the wells have been shuttered since 1980, when all 166 were in full operation. The pollution has been caused by two types of activities. First, contaminants from armament manufacturing, agricultural runoff and sewage systems seep into the groundwater table.

Garbage from Adityapur has found a new address — the banks of Kharkai, which is one of the major tributaries of Singhbhum’s lifeline Subernarekha.
Two truckloads of domestic waste, equivalent to 400 cubic feet, are being emptied on the waterfront every day, turning the erstwhile oasis into an eyesore and olfactory challenge.

If a research project of the IIT-Madras bears fruit, clean drinking water might just become an affordable commodity for the poor. The project, aimed at coming up with a low-cost, low-maintenance water filtration system to filter water and remove pathogens from it, seems to have achieved just that. What’s more, researchers say their solution is so simple that every household can build its own unit.

They are setting up sewage and effluent treatment plants

Many industrial estates in the city are setting up sewage and effluent treatment plants in an effort to promote eco-friendly practices and reduce burden on civic agencies. The industrial estate in Ambattur is the forerunner among the estates with two sewage treatment plants set up in north and south phase.

SALEPUR: There is just one tubewell in Budukunia village under Mahanga gram panchayat to cater to a population of 150 people. However, the tubewell discharges water with high iron content which is unfit for consumption. A long-standing demand for a tubewell has gone unheeded. Under these circumstances, people are forced to drink polluted water from natural water channels.

Businesses related to water may lack the glamour of sunrise sectors like education and healthcare, but it has attracted over 500 crore in private equity in the past year. The trickle will turn into a flood, says Ahona Ghosh. The inability of the state to deliver on basic services has nurtured many a business: inverters and bottled water, to name just two. A third one is beginning to flourish: water purification and waste-water treatment.

China has ordered relocation of all smelting plants in a southwestern city in five years after a spill of toxic cadmium in a river threatened drinking water supplies for millions of people.

Metals companies that refuse to move out of town would be shut down, said Mr Liao Jincheng, Director of the Development and Reform Commission of Hechi city in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Selenium contamination from a phosphate mine in southeastern Idaho is linked to fish deformities such as two-headed trout, and the problem would worsen if discharge limits were eased, a new government report found.

The findings come as Smoky Canyon Mine, run by the J.R. Simplot Company near the Wyoming border, is asking the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to relax restrictions on the amount of selenium that the mine may drain into tributaries of the Snake River, a world-class trout stream.

Bandipora—In occupied Kashmir, the level of water contamination in various blocks of Bandipora district has increased three-fold making it unfit for human consumption.