The city of Fort Bragg, Calif., has ordered restaurants to drastically reduce the amount of dishwashing by serving customers with disposable plates, cups and flatware. Emily Bogle/NPR hide caption
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Children of fishermen in Pakistan's Sindh Province travel across the desert for two hours to fetch water. Mustafah Abdulaziz hide caption
In this photo, obtained from ABC7 News in Los Angeles, the shade balls are released into the reservoir. ABC7 Los Angeles hide caption
Rudy Mussi's family has farmed in the Sacramento Delta region for nearly a century. Mussi worries that more water transfers will deplete the fragile Delta ecosystem and wipe out family farms like his. Kirk Siegler/NPR hide caption
Coca-Cola cans on a production line at a bottling plant near New Delhi in 2013. The company decided in April 2015 not to build an $81 million bottling plant in southern India because local farmers said it might exhaust groundwater supplies. Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Mountain tops in Sierra Nevada, normally covered in snow this time of year, are seen nearly barren, near the Sequoia National Park during an aerial survey of the snowpack done by the California Department of Water Resources. Rich Pedroncelli/AP hide caption
The San Luis Reservoir in central California is the largest "off-channel" reservoir in the U.S. It is currently at less than 30 percent of its normal capacity. Kirk Siegler/NPR hide caption
The restoration's goal is to put as much of the Kissimmee as possible back to the way it was. This photo shows the river after restoration. Courtesy the South Florida Water Management District hide caption
Images from August 2000 (left) and August 2014 (right) show the drop in water levels in the Aral Sea. NASA hide caption
Before opening a plant in North Carolina in early 2014, Sierra Nevada took water samples from all over the region and analyzed them. It realized it needed to add salt and prepare for fermentation. Steve R/Flickr hide caption