Word: waterways
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Perhaps this is why the possibility of a new, Venice-like waterway in the heart of Brooklyn held such appeal. Against all odds, for the past several years Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration has lobbied to turn the borough's Gowanus Canal - a foul, PCB-laden channel that winds for nearly two miles (about 3 km) - into a destination spot for condo dwellers and upscale retail developers. On March 2, however, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offered the city a reality check when it designated the Gowanus a Superfund site. The distinction is reserved for the country's most hazardous...
After the waterway was carved out of wetlands in the 1860s, oil refineries, tanneries and chemical plants moved in and spewed noxious waste into the canal, where it mixed with raw sewage. Before long, Gowanus was a cesspool. Today the surface can appear brown, green, black and sometimes purple, earning the canal the moniker Lavender Lake. Neighborhood residents whisper that the bottom is littered with bodies dumped there by the Mafia. (See pictures of New York City...
...when the Red River is at its lowest, Hanoi's skilled captains manage to negotiate their flat-bottomed boats through its shallow waters. But this year, with a drought gripping the entire country and water levels at record lows, the river is eerily quiet. What is normally a bustling waterway is becoming a winding river of sand, and farmers who depend upon the river for irrigation are watching the expanding sandbars as nervously as the boat captains. "If there is no water in the coming days," says 59-year-old farmer Vu Thi La, who just put in her spring...
...pipeline accident just before New Year's Eve that dumped a massive amount of diesel fuel into two tributaries of China's Yellow River has exposed how far the country has to go before it can ensure the health of its imperiled waterways. An estimated 40,000 gal. (150,000 L) of diesel fuel spilled from a China National Petroleum Corp. pipeline in northwestern Shaanxi province, some two-thirds of which flowed into the Wei and Chishui rivers. Hundreds of workers have set up a series of temporary barriers in an effort to prevent the fuel from reaching the Yellow...
...Such comments echo those heard in 2007 after Iran's Revolutionary Guards detained 15 U.K. servicemen in the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway that runs between Iran and Iraq. Back then, Tehran accused the Brits of trespassing in its waters. (London insisted the personnel had been patrolling Iraqi seas.) The 15 were pardoned and released by Ahmadinejad after being held for two weeks. Three years earlier, eight British servicemen snatched in the same area were also accused of trespassing. In both cases, the British military personnel were paraded on Iranian television. "Whether it's premeditated or the actions...