March 18, 2025

World Water Day Ingredients Need Big Dash of Urgency

by Keith Schneider0

From east to west, ever since the world began, there was water. Plentiful. Clean. Always available. None of those descriptions apply to water today.  Though the condition of the world’s water is perilous, and job-producing opportunities for conservation and efficiency are abundant, water’s ranking on the list of public priorities and attention typically is not near the top. It’s not for a lack of effort from the water wonks. In 1993, a year after international …

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U.S. Ports Modernize While Water Supply and Quality Deteriorate

by Keith Schneider0

SAVANNAH, Ga. — There’s not much about water infrastructure that gets America’s lawmakers excited these days unless it’s a big coastal port. The New York/New Jersey port, with a big assist from the federal government, is spending $1.3 billion to lift the 84-year-old Bayonne Bridge high enough to allow a new generation of super-sized cargo vessels to pass underneath. Charleston, S.C., with state and federal support, is spending $2 billion to deepen the harbor and …

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Stanley Heckadon-Moreno is Panama’s Great Conservationist and Patriot

by Keith Schneider0

COLON, Panama – Across the expanse of a half-century-long career as an ecologist, reformer, and skilled raconteur, Stanley Heckadon-Moreno saw his native Panama engulfed by one spasm of political transition after another. A weak democracy and resentment of American ownership of the Panama Canal in the 1960s begat the corrupt military dictatorship of the 1980s. A damaging American invasion in 1989 gave rise to a decade of hardship and confusion in the 1990s. Even the …

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Along Ohio River, Big Data Lifts Cincinnati

by Keith Schneider0

CINCINNATI – This 226-year-old Ohio River city came unglued in early April 2001, when three nights of riots and a plunge in the number of residents and businesses followed the death of an unarmed black man shot by the police. Fourteen years later Cincinnati is climbing to the top of the heap of American midsize cities in real estate construction — a surge in investment and new buildings fostered not only by the hard work …

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Panama’s Hydropower Development Defined By Fierce Resistance and Tough Choices

by Keith Schneider0

CHANGUINOLA, Panama – Rain clouds regularly settle atop the 1800-meter (5900-foot) summits of the Cordillera de Talamanca, the mountain spine that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean in Panama’s Bocas del Toro province. When the mist clears, the full measure of the blue sea, powerful rivers, and splendid forests full of toucans and cacao trees is visible and stunning. In the five centuries since Christopher Columbus alighted on the beaches of Bocas del Toro …

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Meghalaya Documentary — “Broken Landscape” — Premieres At Big Sky Film Festival

by Keith Schneider0

Sean Peoples, a filmmaker with the Wilson Center, arrived today in Missoula, Montana to attend tomorrow’s premiere of “Broken Landscape” at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The 13-minute documentary, which Sean co-produced with Michael Miller, explores the aftermath of the unexpected court-ordered shutdown of one of the word’s most lawless and dangerous coal fields, in Meghalaya, India. Judges have already recognized “Broken Landscape” as one of the ten best documentaries among the 125 films …

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This Is Panama — Ambitious, Gorgeous, And Independent At Last

by Keith Schneider3

PANAMA CITY, Panama — The Spanish explorer, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, was so inspired by Christopher Columbus’s four voyages to the new world, including Columbus’s last trip in 1502 to Central America, that Balboa undertook his own expedition. In 1510 Balboa and his men set ashore in the Caribbean rainforest near present day Colombia and established Santa María la Antigua del Darién, the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. Three years later Balboa, setting …

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Panama Canal Expansion Will Have Big Effect on Energy, Water, and Grain in U.S. and China

by Keith Schneider1

PANAMA CITY, Panama – It was an elaborate, even theatrical display of national pride and elite engineering. On January 19, Panama’s four-quarter,  red and blue star flag gleamed in bright morning sunlight as a 2,300-ton steel gate slid into place inside a colossal new lock of the Panama Canal. It was the first of eight mammoth gates, ranging in height from seven to nine stories, to be installed in the three concrete locking chambers near …

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India’s Economy Slows As Condition of Water, Land, and Cities Deteriorates

by Keith Schneider0

At the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Barack Obama arrives on Sunday in New Delhi, the first American president to honor Republic Day, the day that India’s Constitution took effect in 1950. During the three-day visit, the president and the prime minister are expected to talk about trade, and technology, and diplomacy. There could even be some kind of statement on climate-changing emissions. India is the planet’s third largest producer of coal, behind …

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Boquete, Panama Is Banquet of Coffee, Flowers, Water, and Rainbows

by Keith Schneider2

BOQUETE, Panama — A mile high in the western highlands, near the border of Costa Rica and in the shadow of 3,474-meter (11,398 feet) Volcan Baru, a dormant volcano that is Panama’s tallest peak, lies a convergence of water, sun, soil, and altitude that produces superb coffee. The very same union of God-given natural bounty also yields a prodigious bounty of beautiful flowers and an afternoon banquet of rainbows that arc, mountain range to mountain …

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