London's new mayor has withdrawn a legal challenge launched by his predecessor over a desalination plant. The new

In recent years, scarcity and pollution of water have become the paramount environmental woe in China. Numerous reports and books have exposed China's water crisis, depicting a nation suffering in the face of black-running rivers and dried-up waterways. Nationwide, the per capita availability of fresh water is only one-quarter of the world average.

Darjeeling: The Bengal government is working on a war footing to inaugurate a long-delayed drinking water project in Darjeeling by November next year. The Darjeeling Water Supply Scheme is expected to supply enough potable water to all parts of the town, solving a 30-year-old problem. The Rs 55.86-crore scheme, first conceived in 1995-96, was sent to the backburner for more than a decade before it was revived in 2006.

The Left Front government may claim to give equal importance to both industrialisation and agriculture, but nearly 30,000 villagers of 20 villages in Uluberia do not believe them. For they have to incur huge financial losses every year as their crops are damaged by contaminated water used for irrigation. The water they use comes from the Hangar canal, which they say has become contaminated with poisonous residue, left over by "illegal" liquor factories.

Rihan Daimary, Minister, PHE Department, Government of Assam inaugurated a piped water supply scheme at Amlighat, 8 km from here under Jagiroad LAC in Morigaon district on Saturday. Amlighat PWSS is situated at the foothills of Karbi Anglong district. The inhabitants of Karbi Anglong district suffer badly due to the presence of fluoride as well as arsenic in ground water and there is every possibility for contamination of fluoride and arsenic consequent to which there is a strong public opinion in favour of supply of surface water.

Efforts are on worldwide to make desalination units more energy efficient and environment-friendly. Water has always been a volatile topic in Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent. Yet, protesters are complaining that a planned desalination facility outside Melbourne, Victoria, will generate too much freshwater. The $3-billion government-owned plant will produce more than 300,000 cubic meters of drinkable water a day when it opens in 2011, placing it among the world's biggest.

Farmers in south Punjab, who get water from the Indus River, continue facing exceptionally high shortage because of a flawed water distribution mechanism, and are facing difficulties in getting even drinking water, leaving alone sowing cotton. Dwellers of three districts

NAZIRA

To augment the supply of drinking water to the city, particularly the southern fringes of Kolkata, Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) will be setting up a water treatment plant along with a 2.5 million gallon capacity underground reservoir cum pumping station at Garden Reach. The decision was taken at a meeting of the works and tender committee held in the conference room of Unnayan Bhavan, recently. The project will be constructed on turn key basis. The committee has advised the wing resposible for setting up the pumping station to invite fresh tenders.

Reacting to the Telugu Desam (TD) allegations over drawing water from the Somasila project to address the needs of Kadapa district, the minister for information and public relations and touri-sm, Mr Anam Ramnarayana Reddy, justified the move on the plea that it was the duty of the government to supply drinking water to people by shifting surplus water from any project, even while asserting that the government had not taken any decision to take Somasila water to Kadapa.