"Last Call on the Oasis" is a playful title for a film that couldn't be more deadly serious. A thorough examination of the epic crises threatening the world's water supply, crises that few people are paying attention to, this documentary tells you to be afraid, very afraid.

In a tranquil state park in Central Texas, workers are busily piecing together massive yellow pipes that spell salvation for this city. The pipes run along a park road, slither between trees, cross a street to avoid an ancient cemetery, hug a state-owned easement and then land at a treatment plant. Without it, what everyone fears most would come true: The water will stop running.

As the soggy East tries to dry out from flooding and Texas prays for rain that doesn't come, you might ask: Isn't there some way to ship all that water from here to there? It's an idea that has tempted some, but reality gets in the way.

Investing as little as 0.16 percent of the world’s gross domestic product — or $198 billion per year — could give half a billion people regular access to safe drinking water within four years, a U.N. official said Friday. That would halve the number of people who risk serious illness and death on a daily basis, the United Nations Environment Program said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and World Bank President Robert Zoellick Tuesday signed an unprecedented memorandum of understanding that harnesses their strengths to improve water security in developing countries and reduce tension between nations over shared waters. The agreement was signed at the World Bank headquarters in Washington in recognition of World Water Day.

A host of federal, state and local officials and business leaders today celebrated the start of construction on a $28 million underground link between two Central Valley canals south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

In Washington, Monday Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar pledged that the Obama administration would help California to solve its water problems.

A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land. The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperiled.