Word: aridity
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...million to Mexico's national development agency to expand municipal water systems in the Yucatan Peninsula and irrigate 53,000 acres of farmland in arid central and western sections...
Suddenly, the light rain became a cloudburst-the worst in arid Petra's recorded history. Within half an hour, torrential floods were streaming down from the hills and cliffs and pouring into the Siq as into a funnel. One Italian pilgrim said, "We heard shrieks and cries within the ravine, as the muddy cascade of water rushed by us. We saw the little car with the four women and the driver swept along by the torrent and then submerged. In an instant, they all disappeared in the floodwaters raging along at perhaps 60 miles an hour...
When Mauritania won its independence in 1960, sovereignty and sand were about all it had. Sprawled across the lower Sahara on Africa's Atlantic hump, the arid nation is twice the size of France but has only 800,000 people and an average per-capita income of less than $80 yearly. Nonetheless, since 1956 Morocco has been struggling to annex "the stolen sands of Mauritania," which it claims were illegally taken from colonial Morocco by French Army surveyors. Under the late King Mohammed V, a "Moroccan Liberation Army" even tried to "free" Mauritania; with support from Russia, Morocco managed...
Meeting His Fate. At the end of his rounds Mysovsky is dog-tired and depressed, stops off at the recreation hall for a drink, and promptly gets plastered. While drunk he promises the workers 30% of the harvest instead of the regulation 10%, arid lo and behold, with that incentive, they are out in the fields early next day. Next morning, Mysovsky wakes up with a hangover, rubs his eyes at the sight of workers' kerchiefs bobbing like daisies in the fields. Then he remembers...
...WATER. Every part of the country will have to watch its water supply but for different reasons. In the humid East and Pacific Northwest, there will be enough water for all reasonable demands. The main problem will be to keep it from being wasted or polluted. In the arid West, where irrigation agriculture absorbs nearly all the available water, cities and industries can continue to grow only by taking water away from a few farmers...