World News for Students of English

08-11-2021 07:00

This year was very dry, and experts said that 40% of the US had a drought.

Mendocino, California, is a small town which lies near Lake Mendocino, one of the biggest water reservoirs in the area. Sadly, lakes are running out of water, and so local hotels and restaurants cannot be open. Tourists cannot use toilets because there is not enough water to flush them. The town is buying water from nearby cities, but the cities do not want to sell water anymore because they do not have enough, either.

The town’s officials must quickly find ways about how to solve the problem. They hope that there will be enough rain to fill the reservoirs, but the possibility of rain is bad. Some people say that it will be necessary to build a desalination plant which will turn sea water into drinking water. It will take a lot of time because there are no pipes to get sea water from the ocean to the town.

Difficult words: drought (a long period of time when there is little or no rain), reservoir (a place where people store something), flush (to empty out with water, and then fill it again).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.