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Raining oil in Louisiana? Video suggests Gulf oil spill causing crude rain
Raining oil? A video purports to show the aftermath of an oily rain that has left a rainbow sheen on the streets of River Ridge, Louisiana. The EPA says that an oily rain is highly unlikely.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0624/Raining-oil-in-Louisiana-Video-suggests-Gulf-oil-spill-causing-crude-rain
By Eoin O'Carroll, CSMonitor.com / June 24, 2010
If it were raining Corexit 9500 in River Ridge, that would be very bad news. Calling the dispersant unnecessarily toxic, the EPA has ordered BP to stop spraying it on the slick, an order that the oil company has so far ignored.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0520/EPA-scolds-BP-in-Gulf-oil-spill-dispersant-is-too-toxic-change-it
States surrounding U.S.Great Lakes fighting to prevent water exports to foreign countries--
http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/great_lakes_water_export.htm
futr
Peak water?
by Lakis Polycarpou
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/water/2010/06/02/peak-water/
Oil Guru: The Real Nightmare Will Be When A Hurricane Picks Up The Oil And Paints The Gulf Coast Black
Joe Weisenthal | Jun. 7, 2010, 10:15 PM
Don't watch this video of oil guru Matthew Simmons on Dylan Ratigan if you're in the US and you're about to go to sleep.
The Houston energy banker and author of Twilight in the Desert says we basically have two options: Let the well run dry (taking 30 years, and probably ruining the Atlantic ocean) or nuking the well. Barring those things, the best move would be to use supertankers to suck up as much oil as possible ahead of hurricane season, when the oil will be picked up, and will paint the Gulf Coast black. (via TheOilDrum)
http://www.businessinsider.com/matthew-simmons-on-oil-hurricane-2010-6#ixzz0qGe2JoPq
The water pollution could never be undone...
Water shortages ‘could plunge the world into conflict’Ben Marlow
June 6, 2010
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7144733.ece
WATER could be the cause of large armed conflicts in the next 20 to 30 years if governments do not take immediate action to manage the world’s water resources more efficiently, an expert has warned.
Wars over oil have been fought for decades, but water could be the next source of conflict unless governments deal with access to the commodity that some commentators now call “liquid gold”.
Fears are mounting that the cost of water will rocket as the global economy wakes up to the strains being placed on supplies in some parts of the world.
“Water is a precious resource that we take for granted,” said Ben Braga, vice-president of the World Water Council. “Governments need to wake up and adopt policies towards efficient water use.” Water wars are likely in areas where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country, said Braga.
The flashpoints could be some of the world’s biggest rivers, such as the Amazon, Nile, Zambezi or Tigris.
The total volume of the Earth’s water is about 200m cubic metres, or 200m tonnes, per person.
Only 1% of fresh water is usable and more than one billion people lack access to reliable, safe drinking water. About 2.6 billion people do not have lavatories or other forms of sanitation. Some experts predict that by 2015 two-thirds of the world’s people will live in water-stressed countries.
Agriculture absorbs about 70% of water. As developing economies move towards a more western diet, even more strain will be put on the supply.
“The lack of access to basic levels of water and sanitation is primarily due to exclusion and neglect of the poor, not lack of sufficient water resources or lack of technical solutions. The problem is not of quantity, more of management,” said Braga.
Last week the sixth World Water Forum was held in Marseilles. It was attended by more than 400 government ministers and policymakers as well as some 30,000 delegates.
Loic Fauchon, president of the World Water Council, told the forum: “We are not talking only about water scarcity or pollution, we are talking about practical solutions to problems like water access for billions of people, the international management of rivers, lakes and seas and the rational use of water for food production and public-private co-operation.”
From Aqua America - Efficient Water Use:
https://www.aquaamerica.com/Pages/EfficientWaterUse.aspx
Water is connected to all aspects of our lives. We use water not only to bathe and garden, but we also drink water for nourishment and use it for cooking. That’s why it’s essential that we all use water efficiently. On this page you’ll find tips on how to use water wisely in and outside your home, how to detect costly water leaks and detailed information on responsible landscaping solutions.
Ways to Water Smart Outside
Water your lawn only when it needs it. Simply walk across the grass to see if it needs water. If you leave footprints, it's time to water.
Water in the early morning. Nearly 30 percent of water can evaporate when watering at midday. Don’t water your lawn on windy days.
Deep soak your lawn instead of frequent sprinklings that evaporate quickly.
Set your lawn mower one notch higher to limit evaporation.
Check sprinkler heads and valves for leaks and adjust the timer according to seasonal water needs and weather conditions.
Plant for your climate. Native and drought-tolerant plants might have lower water needs. A local nursery can help you plan a water-wise garden.
Use mulch around plants and shrubs to save moisture.
When using a hose, control the flow with an automatic shut-off nozzle.
Use a broom, instead of a hose, to clean sidewalks and driveways.
When washing your car, use soap and water from a bucket, along with a sponge and hose with a shut-off valve.
Disconnect hoses and make sure outdoor water is shut off during cold weather to prevent leaks.
If you have a swimming pool, get a cover. You'll cut the loss of water by evaporation by 90 percent.
Ways to Water Smart Inside
Run only full loads in your dishwasher and clothes washer. When that's not possible, adjust the water level or cycle to match the size of your load.
When shopping, look for efficiency. High-efficiency plumbing fixtures and appliances can save about 30 percent of indoor water usage.
Choose appliances with different cycles to allow you to match your cleaning needs to the right cycle.
Keep a pitcher of cold tap water in the refrigerator. You'll save money compared to buying bottled water, and avoid running the tap until the water is cold.
Install low flow faucet aerators and showerheads.
Shorten showers to reduce water usage.
Turn off water while brushing your teeth or shaving.
Detecting Leaks
Detecting a leak is simple; follow these tips to help save water and money.
A quick check for a leaky toilet can save you unnecessarily high water and sewer bills. A leaky toilet, which is often the most common source of water leakage in your home, can result in the loss of hundreds of gallons of water per day.
Ask yourself the following to determine if your toilet is leaking:
1. Do you find yourself jiggling the handle to stop noise?
2. Do you hear any strange, intermittent noises from the toilet?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, your toilet is probably leaking. Toilets generally leak in two places. First, if the float assembly is not shutting off the water, it allows the water to escape into the overflow pipe. This problem can often be remedied by adjusting the float ball. Second, if the flush ball is worn or not sitting properly, water will leak into the toilet bowl. You can check for possible flush ball leakage by using food coloring, or by using the attached dye tablets.
· Drop food color (or dye tablets) into the toilet tank. DO NOT FLUSH.
· Wait 15 to 20 minutes.
· If color appears in the toilet bowl, the toilet is leaking and necessary repairs should be made.
Leaks don’t disappear. In fact, they either become worse quickly, or occur intermittently, such as only when a toilet is flushed. Most leaks run 24 hours a day. That’s approximately 736 hours a month, 2,208 hours in a billing period and more than 8,800 hours per year.
If you have a leak in a hot water faucet, it can be twice as expensive because you are wasting the water, and the energy used to heat it. If your faucet drips after being turned off firmly, turn off the supply line, take the faucet apart and replace the washer. With faucets of simple design, these repairs are usually not difficult.
To check for leaks in other parts of your home, simply turn off all water inside and outside. Locate your water meter, jot down the reading and note the position of the 10-gallon red indicator, if present. Wait 20 to 30 minutes and read it again. If the indicator or numbers on the dial position have changed, there is a good chance you have a leak somewhere in your plumbing system.
Water: Will There Be Enough?
by Sandra Postel
Published Jun 4 2010 by Yes! Magazine, Archived Jun 4 2010
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53007
Not just oil: US hit peak water in 1970 and nobody noticed
By John Timmer | Last updated about 4 hours ago
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/not-just-oil-us-hit-peak-water-in-1970-and-nobody-noticed.ars
The concept of peak oil, where the inaccessibility of remaining deposits ensures that extraction rates start an irreversible decline, has been the subject of regular debate for decades. Although that argument still hasn't been settled—estimates range from the peak already having passed us to its arrival being 30 years in the future—having a better sense of when we're likely to hit it could prove invaluable when it comes to planning our energy economy. The general concept of peaking has also been valuable, as it applies to just about any finite resource. A new analysis suggests that it may be valuable to consider applying it to a renewable resource as well: the planet's water supply.
The analysis, performed by staff at the Pacific Institute, recognizes that there are some significant differences between petroleum and water. For oil, using it involves a chemical transformation that won't be reversed except on geological time scales. Using water often leaves it in its native state, with a cycle that returns it to the environment in a geologic blink of an eye. Still, the authors make a compelling argument that, not only can there be a peak water, but the US passed this point around 1970, apparently without anyone noticing.
They make their case based on three ways in which water can run up against limits on its use. The first is peak renewable water, for sources that rapidly replenish, like river basins or snow melt. The classic example here is the Colorado River where, for most years since 1960, essentially no water has reached the ocean. Although actual water use is governed by a series of interstate and international agreements, these simply serve to allocate every drop of water. Similar situations are taking place in other river basins, such as the Jordan.
The second is what they term peak nonrenewable water, as exemplified by the use of aquifers that replenish on time scales that make them closer to a finite resource. (This issue is so well recognized that it has a Wikipedia entry.) At the moment, the Ogallala and Central Valley Aquifers in the US, along with a number in China and India, are being drained at a rate that far exceeds their recharge. Ultimately, usage will necessarily peak and start dropping, as it gets harder to get access to the remainder. Eventually, these water supplies will tail off to something in the neighborhood of their recharge rate.
The final issue the authors consider is peak ecological water. The gist here is that we've accepted the elimination of the Colorado near its terminus. For a wide variety of other water sources—think the Hudson or the Rhine—we'll never tolerate the equivalent. This is because of the potential economic impact of eliminating the use of the waterway, and because we're no longer likely to accept wiping out species that rely on the habitats created by the rivers.
Combined, these three peaks set a hard limit on the sustainable water use. We can exceed them for a while, but we will eventually have to drop down to something near the limit, unless we're willing to start paying substantially more for our water supply.
There are really two ways to do this. The first is to simply make more of the water accessible that's currently off limits. So, for example, there are a lot of areas where we could change our habits of dumping industrial and municipal waste into the environment, and clean up the existing watershed in order to make that supply available for other uses.
The authors consider this analogous to what economists have termed a "backstop" technology for other finite resources. For example, renewable energy acts as a backstop for fossil fuels. Although some forms of renewable energy are currently expensive in comparison with fossil fuels, the latter's scarcity will ultimately cause its price to rise until some the renewable backstops become competitive; further scarcity will ultimately bring more backstops into play until use of the nonrenewable resource becomes negligible.
In an analogous manner, cleaning up existing renewable water sources acts as one backstop for the post-peak water scenario. But, as the authors note, "the ultimate water backstop is still water." Long distance transport is still possible, as is large-scale desalinization, which currently is largely confined to island nations and the Mideast.
Is large-scale desalinization inevitable? The authors make the case that it's not, based on the US. Although they caution that water-use figures, which are notoriously fragmented, aren't entirely reliable, they use them to suggest that US water use roughly paralleled GDP growth for most of the 20th century. The two separated around 1970, as water use tailed off, peaking around 1975. After a short period of decline, water use has remained stable even as both GDP and population have continued to climb.
This pattern, the authors suggest, is a lot like what they expect peak water to look like. And, if that really was the peak, the experience of the US might provide valuable lessons for economic planning.
Water is the coming crisis
Bob Doyle, Columnist
Cumberland Times-News
May 8, 2010
http://times-news.com/columns/x892950064/Water-is-the-coming-crisis
By now, many of us are getting jaded about the threats we face.
For about a decade, some geologists and oil experts have cautioned that we are at peak oil, having harvested about half of the “easy” oil over the past 150 years.
At the rate we are now extracting oil, there may be less than half of a century of available oil left. (Most oil wells when dry leave about half of their oil in the ground.)
Then most recently, there have been the threat of global warming. The predictions coming out of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) suggest that in three or four decades, the ocean levels will rise, covering up many coastal cities and low lying areas of densely populated countries (such as Bangladesh and southern China).
But there is a crisis coming even sooner involving the most precious resource, absolutely vital to life — water.
And when water becomes scarce, there will be inadequate food as plants are pretty thirsty. How can this be, when about 70 percent of our planet is covered by ocean water?
Most plants, animals and people can’t drink salt water, needing fresh water. 70 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen on top of Antarctica.
Most of the remaining fresh water is deep inside the Earth in huge underground lakes called aquifers.
Only 0.3 percent of the world’s fresh water lies on the surface. Rivers and streams hold only 0.006 percent of the world’s fresh water. Lakes hold 40 times as much fresh water as the rivers.
The big problem today is that the food we prefer to eat requires a lot of water to grow.
For instance, to harvest a ton of wheat, we need 1,000 tons of water.
In the U.S. about 36 percent of the grain we grow is used to feed farm livestock.
Of the common livestock we eat, it takes seven pounds of grain to get one pound of beef, three pounds of grain for one pound of pork (now the world’s favorite meat), two pounds of grain for one pound of chicken and a little less than two pounds of grain for one pound of fish from a fish farm (aquaculture as opposed to agriculture on land).
So as long as the water is available, we can eat as much meat as we like. (The average American consumes 900 kilograms (about 2,000 pounds) of grain a year through a varied diet of meat, dairy products, bread, fruits and vegetables.)
The actual amount of grain we directly consume is about 200 kilograms a year in the form of bread, pastries, buns, pasta, etc.
This is about the amount of grain consumed by an average Indian (Asia), who avoids eating meat.
To grow this much grain, we need a lot of water, diverting river water for irrigation and pumping down a huge western aquifer that stretches from the Midwest into the western U.S.
In some agricultural areas of California, the ground level has dropped 30 feet from excessive draining of aquifers.
The Colorado River no longer empties into the Gulf of California (Mexico) as all of its water has been taken by irrigation.
Decades from now, when there will be little snow pack in the Northwestern states, some large western rivers will have even less flow, and large U.S. hydroelectric facilities in the West will no longer supply much of their current electric power.
Overseas, the water shortages are worse.
Yemen’s aquifers around some of its cities are nearly gone.
Saudi Arabia is phasing out its wheat crop as its large aquifer will be nearly exhausted in a decade.
In upper China, the large fossil aquifer (which is not easily recharged) is being drawn down several meters a year.
Near Beijing, water wells go down a kilometer (0.6 mile) to get water for the city’s inhabitants.
It is even worse in India as many wells have gone dry and in some regions, half of the electricity is being used to pull up water for people and crops.
Widespread shortages of water may lead to huge movements of many millions of people, even crossing international borders to quench their thirst.
The moon will be reappearing as a slender crescent in the coming weekend. Venus is a splendid sight in the western dusk. Nearly overhead is the bright golden star Arcturus.
Now featured at the Frostburg State Planetarium is “Are There Other Universes?”, a program covering the basics of our universe and the possibility of other universes.
Our free public programs will be at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. this Sunday and next. The Planetarium is in Tawes 302, just off the front lobby of Tawes Hall.
Please come a little early as it is awkward to seat late comers.
Go to our FSU website (www.frostburg.edu) to view a campus map to see Tawes and nearby free parking areas.
Bob Doyle invites any readers comments and questions. E-mail him at rdoyle@frostburg.edu . He is available as a speaker on his column topics.
DROUGHTS CONTINUE
04/12/2010
ASPO-USA
#msg-48845012
China’s drought
The drought in southwestern China which began last fall continues to intensify and may be starting to impact world energy prices. So far as many as 25 million people, 20 million acres of crops, and 12 million head of livestock have been affected.
Moreover, the drought stricken area, which is usually well-watered by monsoon rains, is the watershed for the bulk of China’s hydro-electric generating capacity, which in turn provides a substantial share of the power for the industrial plants along the southeast coast. Press reports speak of hydro power output having falling from 70 to 90 percent in some regions. Officials note that unless heavy rains come in the next month, many reservoirs will be empty and power stations will have to close down. For a country attempting to grow its GDP by 11 percent this year, electricity shortages that could run to 10 of 15 percent of national production could be a disaster.
Sixty years ago China could simply let remote villagers suffer whatever befell them, but today’s highly organized industrial China, sitting on trillions in foreign reserves, must do whatever it takes to mitigate the effects of the worst drought in 100 years.
Last year Beijing, the world’s largest coal producer, imported 100 million tons of coal and will likely to increase this total in 2010. In Hubei province where 30 percent of electric power comes from hydro, lower water levels behind the Three Gorges dam has already caused a shortage of 500 million KWh. In March, China increased its crude oil imports by 29 percent year over year to nearly 5 million b/d.
The course of drought conditions is difficult to predict, and the El Niño in the central Pacific which may be behind the drought seems to be disappearing. At the same time, the Chinese are reporting that drought conditions far to the north in Inner Mongolia are worsening.
Should the droughts persist, with hydro-power and food production continuing to fall over the next few months, there are likely to be major repercussions -- particularly efforts to step up energy and food imports. All this suggests that the rapid increase in Chinese oil imports that we have seen in recent months may not be over.
Venezuela’s power crisis
The situation continues to deteriorate with the water level at the Guri dam falling another meter last week and three large thermo-electric generators going out of service. President Chavez announced it had started raining in the Guri watershed, though the national meteorological service said it was only a passing storm and that conditions necessary for heavy summer rains have not yet formed.
With 736 megawatts of thermal generating capacity going out of service in the last month, the situation at the hydro dams becomes even more critical. Government officials continue to reassure the public that the generators will be repaired soon and that new capacity will be installed this year, but most are skeptical. A Venezuelan newspaper reports that last week a group of government-owned generating plants were only operating at 20 percent of rated capacity. If heavy rains do not come by mid-May, there will likely be serious trouble affecting the oil industry by the end of May.
Droughts
by Tom Whipple
Published Apr 8 2010 by ASPO-USA
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=48760486
With no significant rain in recent days or in the forecast for the rest of April, the water level at Venezuela’s Guri dam continues to drift down by nearly a meter a week. Daily statistics show that the government has cut back generation at the dam, suggesting that either voluntary conservation efforts are working or more likely that rolling blackouts are getting longer. A major thermal generating plant is now listed as out of service after rumors of a fire over the weekend. Unless this plant comes back on line in the next month or so, it will only compound the problem should the hydro power start to falter. The best guess of experienced reservoir observers is that the summer rains will come in the nick of time to prevent a catastrophe.
Over in southwestern China, there is no end in sight to the six-month-long drought. Some 61 million people and 5 million hectares have been affected, while 25 million people and 11 million farm animals have little or nothing to drink. The Peoples Liberation Army is active in five provinces delivering water. The government continues its reassurances that the drought will have minimal impact on this year’s food production.
China has an extensive array of hydro-generating stations in the region affected by the drought. There are reports that some of these plants are producing way below capacity and may have to close. Other reports mention that hundreds of thousands of extra tons of coal will have to be imported to keep up electricity production if China is to keep growing at 10 percent a year.
This situation suggests that China’s need for energy imports to mitigate the drought conditions may be larger than is generally realized and may be behind the recent price increases.
The water wars: California’s salmon vs. agribiz interests
Published Mar 15 2010 by Grist
by Paul Johnson
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/51988
Peter Gleick: Water Scofflaws — Go Soak your Heads (Under a Low-flow Showerhead)
March 1, 2010
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/peter-gleick-water-scofflaws-go-soak-your-heads-under-a-low-flow-showerhead/
After years of inaction, blatant and willful violations of federal law, and lack of enforcement by previous administrations, the U.S. Department of Energy has just announced that they intend to pursue enforcement actions against the manufacturers of water-using appliances that violate national water and energy savings laws that have been on the books for nearly 20 years.
A number of very simple, but important, water-using fixtures can be designed to work beautifully and yet save enormous amounts of water. That was the idea behind the water-efficiency standards that passed with the National Energy Policy Act of 1992 (yes, 1992!). That law put in place rules for manufacturers of toilets, showerheads, and faucets. And since those rules went into effect, a huge amount of water, and energy, and money has been saved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.
Read his full bio…But like all rules and regulations, they are only as good as society’s willingness to follow them and government’s willingness to enforce them. Almost all of the major manufacturers have done a great job in producing high-quality fixtures that meet the standards. But a few manufacturers have flouted the law by either failing to ensure that their water fixtures met the national standards, or by failing to prove it to federal regulators. And until recently, federal regulators looked the other way, or didn’t look at all. (Of course, this isn’t the only instance of the complete failure of the federal government to enforce rules already in place to protect the environment, nor is it the most egregious). Five years ago, the Plumbing Manufacturers Institute, California Urban Water Conservation Council, East Bay Municipal Utilities District, and the City of Seattle notified federal and state agencies of independent test results for some commercial showerheads showing blatant violations of the National Energy Policy Act. Yet no action was taken at the time.
That is changing. A couple of weeks ago, the US Department of Energy’s Office of the General Counsel issued “Notices of Proposed Civil Penalties” to four manufacturers of showerheads for failing to certify that their products meet the standard flow rate of 2.5 gallons per minute. Unless the manufacturers satisfy the DoE within thirty days, the Department will file action either in District Court or with an Administrative Law Judge.
Water Number: $3,475,120. This is the total of the proposed civil penalties the Department of Energy will impose on these four manufacturers if they fail to certify that their products meet the conservation standards of the law. The cost to society in lost water, higher energy use, unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, and money out of pocket for homeowners is far, far higher.
Why is this such a big deal, beyond the fact that the law is the law? Water-efficient fixtures save water, energy, wastewater treatment costs, water purification costs, and money for homeowners. When water utility demand is reduced by improvements in efficiency, new costly investment in water supply can be delayed or even prevented. And the numbers add up:
A ten-minute shower using a showerhead that uses 5 gallons per minute, as opposed to one that meets the standard of 2.5 gallons per minute, will use an extra 25 gallons of water. If you take a shower every other day, this could save as much as 4500 gallons of water per year. 4500 gallons would cost me around $30, including my water and wastewater and local sewer costs. But it would also cost me another $14 in natural gas costs just to heat that extra water. That’s around $44 a year in savings from an efficient showerhead, which typically costs just a few tens of dollars to buy and install. And these savings come year after year after year. And some of the showerheads found to be violating the standards used 12 or 13 gallons per minute, not just 5. [Another problem is plumbers and architects who are starting to install shower "systems" with multiple showerheads. Each single showerhead might meet the federal standard, but this loophole is certainly a violation of the spirit of the law.]
Multiply that waste over the population of California, or the United States, and the water and energy savings are massive. In the Pacific Institute’s 2003 report on the potential for urban water efficiency improvements, we estimated that if all remaining inefficient California showerheads were swapped out for water-efficient models, they would save 40 billion gallons a year now being used wastefully for showers. And some of the newest, well-designed showerheads flow at 1.5 gallons per minute — another massive improvement even over the federal standard of 2.5 gpm.
Some studies suggest that shower length can go up when low-flow showerheads are installed, though others actually have found a drop in shower duration. And no doubt some readers will complain about how crummy their showers feel. But well-designed showerheads, even low-flow showerheads, feel great. If you don’t like your low-flow showerhead because of the feel, get a good one and maintain it — the expense is small.
Here are some websites and groups that talk about the savings, review low-flow showerheads, or provide other useful water efficiency information:
Alliance for Water Efficiency - http://www.allianceforwaterefficiency.org/
California Urban Water Conservation Council - http://www.cuwcc.org/
Metaefficient (The Guide to Highly Efficient Things) - http://www.metaefficient.com/shower-heads/low-flow-showerheads.html
Flex Your Power - http://www.fypower.org/res/tools/products_results.html?id=100160
Peter Gleick
Bought the berkey light with the free PF-2 filters. I've had it for about a year and really love it.
beerthirty,
Which model did you purchase.
I'm leaning toward the Big Berky.
sumi
Thats why I have one of these.
http://www.berkeyfilters.com/
Money well spent.
>So, to summarize the global water future, we will have decreased water supply and increased infestation.
In my 64 plus years on this earth, I am no longer surprised at these adverse developments, but I am increasingly saddened by the rape of the planet.
Mother Earth has a carrying capacity before it destroys itself. Collectively mankind has made a decision, known and unknown, to move toward a destructive phase.
Thanks for sharing about the "six main diseases -- diarrhea, schistosomiasis, or trachoma, or infestation with ascaris, guinea worm, or hookworm-- associated with poor drinking water and inadequate sanitation."
I had known about poor drinking water issues dating back to the mid 1950s, as my Grandfather was our town's water commissioner. He would preach to me about water quality. He was also arrested twice at protests involved with the water issues of that time. I would say that he had an "excellent water footprint."
sumi
The World Health Organization says that at any time, up to half of humanity has one of the six main diseases -- diarrhea, schistosomiasis, or trachoma, or infestation with ascaris, guinea worm, or hookworm -- associated with poor drinking water and inadequate sanitation.
I have taken a deeper look at each of these at the World Water Crisis board... prepare to be amazed and saddened.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=14650
'Peak water' could flush civilisation
The Irish Times - Saturday, January 23, 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0123/1224262897804.html
A farmer takes water from a dried-up pond to water his vegetables in China's Jiangxi province. Population growth and desire for western lifestyles put immense demands on water in countries such as China and India.
Photograph: Reuters
FORGET PEAK OIL. Forget climate change. Peak water is where it’s at, according to Scottish journalist and broadcaster, Alexander Bell, who has just written a fascinating book, Peak Water (Luath Press, Scotland).
“It’s the coming issue of our age,” says Bell. “Civilisation is thirsty. It has never stopped to think about what would happen if the water ran out.” And while Bell acknowledges tackling climate change is important, he firmly states peak water would have happened with or without it.
“You could say that it’s a re-framing of the climate change [issues] and what we are doing with the planet. With climate change, we’ve become conditioned to the idea of disaster but by focusing on water, you can’t say there is nothing you can do. Water is a precious resource that is running out in various parts of the world and even if it’s not running out in Ireland or Scotland, we will lose food, clothing and stability of the world order as we know it because of water shortages.”
Writing for the non-expert reader, Bell offers a fascinating journey through civilisations, charting how important access to water was in their growth and, in many cases, their demise. He brings us back to ancient civilisations in Persia, Egypt, China and Peru, with details of canal transport, aqueducts, dams and irrigation schemes. Bell argues that when humankind began to lose its connection to the river, we got the water to follow us rather than us following it.
“The triumph of the early empires is that they tame unpredictable flows but from about 1,000 BC on, civilisation begins to take the control of water for granted and something that has been magical becomes a given. It is still the source of power and the determinant to an empire’s success but the gradual process of burying water under the complexity of the state begins,” he writes.
This process, according to Bell, was evident in Greek and Roman civilisations where the source of food moved farther from the cities, and water became more associated with cleanliness than with basic survival.
“Two thousand years ago, places to wash in Rome were as common as coffee shops today,” he writes. “And a whole body of jurisprudence existed to govern the ownership and rights to water flow.” Some of the current problems with water shortages stem from our luxurious approach to water, particularly in places where there is very little. Bell is particularly fascinated by Dubai, which “has the highest water consumption per capita in the world. It sucks up water for construction, agriculture and industry. It gulps in the name of luxury and cleanliness,” he writes.
He also cites the excessive use of water in the US, particularly in places such as Las Vegas where there is very little. “In gated communities, huge structures look out over green lawns and rolling golf courses and artificial lakes. Never mind that the water for Las Vegas is piped from miles away – this is 20th century civilisation, where water follows man – no matter the lunacy of the destination.” And while he acknowledges that the Las Vegas city council now offers incentives for planting desert grass and fines for wasting water, Bell predicts that cities such as Las Vegas will die by ecocide.
The great rivers of the world are already running dry. The Colorado doesn’t make it to the Pacific Ocean for half the year. The rivers that made China, the Yellow and the Yangtze, also fail to reach the sea for stretches of the year. It’s the same story with the Nile and the Ganges. As Bell puts it, “the iconic rivers of our imagination are drying up. The rivers are the visible, potent symbols of our deluded belief in water control. With them come wetlands, flood plains, natural irrigation and the steady, if slow, replenishment of underground water reserves.”
Bell argues that while the great empires of the east used water to establish a consistent food supply, the northern countries used it “to lubricate the growth of capital.
“In the east, water control meant simple social structures of a ruling elite and a labouring class. In the north, water helped create a more complex hierarchy, based on wealth and skill. This liberal society found water could drive the mills that kick-started major industries. This created factories and the lure of urban living and higher wages to draw people from the countryside. It could move barges full of coal and cotton. Steam powered larger engines, pumps, trains and then ships.” And while Bell acknowledges that some of our current crises are caused by global warming, he argues that unsustainable water usage is a key reason the ways of the world have to change.
LIKE BELL, MANY writers have raised the point that when population growth in places such as India and China is coupled with the desire for a more western lifestyle, this puts further pressure on natural resources including water. This is where the idea of valuing water as a precious resource links right into the same issues raised by climate change.
In fact, the idea of an individual water footprint has already been raised. A water footprint encompasses the reality that we affect water beyond our borders when countries that have a short supply of water grow and make things that have a heavy demand on water.
Bell suggests that revaluing water across the globe would take a radical shift. He explains how, because water is growing scarce in traditional wheat-, rice- and maize-growing areas of the US, India and Pakistan, it should be possible that the wet north could replace production, in part.
He also suggests that the north European (and now North American) model of industrialised, liberal, capitalist society may be best suited to wet countries. Secondly, he suggests we are quite used to making naturally occurring materials such as coal or oil into assets, so why not water? There is already a price on water in some places but putting a price on water that changes people’s usage habits (both personal and agricultural) is a broader issue.
Bell says: “We should be the ones who build new houses with composting toilets and reed beds to clean the waste water. We should instigate rainwater collection on a large scale . . . We should ensure that more food is grown for local consumption. The wet world should grow vital food for the dry world.”
BELL ALSO BRINGS up the widely held belief that the next wars to be fought in the world will be over water. In fact, he states that such wars have already occurred in some places – for example, between Pakistan and India. And the investment bank Goldman Sacks has dubbed water the petroleum for the next century.
“With the Cold War over and the threat from mass nuclear deployment apparently gone, we have switched our fears to a water war,” he writes.
According to Bell, what both threats show is that we fear our capacity to self-destruct (many would argue that much of the rhetoric around climate change comes from the same place).
He adds: “the reality of changing our water use is colossal. It calls for a new kind of civilisation built on global co-operation. The penalty for not doing this will be widespread social chaos.”
Moen Water Saving Showerhead
In my pursuit of saving water in a Peak Water Era, a friend installed this showerhead. Readers might want to investigate this alternative, if you have not done so already.
Manufacturer Info
Moen Inc.
25 W. Prospect Avenue, Suite 1500
Cleveland, OH 44115 USA
1-800-289-6636
http://www.moen.com
The Moen Water Saving Showerhead reduces the amount of water used to 1.7 gallons per minute versus the industry-standard of 2.5 gallons per minute. It reduces water consumption, energy cost, and hot water use. Unlike other low-flow showerheads that only restrict water, Moen uses an optimized spray-pattern that increases the velocity and coverage of the water stream so it feels like a full-flow showerhead but limits water consumption. Available in finishes: chrome, LifeShine® brushed nickel, and oil rubbed bronze.
Yangtze River drought poses a risk to Three Gorges reservoir and people
www.chinaview.cn 2010-01-06 11:08:34
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2010-01/06/content_12763842.htm
BEIJING, Jan. 6 -- A severe drought around the Yangtze River has caused the water level in the Three Gorges Reservoir to stay much lower than the anticipated level of 175 meters and that could complicate plans for farmers and millions of others who rely on the river to survive.
The Yangtze, which stretches 6,300 kilometers across most of China, has been feeling the effects of the drought that began in October.
The low level has hindered the flow of traffic.
"The reservoir started reserving water in advance from September 15 of last year in order to reach the goal, but now the water level has only reached 169 meters," Xu Ming, an ecosystem expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told the Global Times Tuesday after returning from the dam site this week.
The high level is important for power generation and navigation purposes to ensure that the Three Gorges project fulfill its intended goals. Water is important to ensure smooth water traffic, replenish the lower reaches of the river and to generate electricity.
At 8 am Sunday, the water level in the upper reaches of the Three Gorges Dam stood at 162.26 meters, a decline of 2.17 meters, compared with the maximum water level of 171.43 recorded last year.
The water level in the Yangtze River continued to drop because of poor rainfall and the water storage problem of the Three Gorges Reservoir. The water level in Wuhu Lake, in the river's lower stream, reached 0.97 meters on Sunday.
According to anhuinews. com, there is a distance of 200 to 500 meters between the water and the levee in Wuhu Lake, meaning the river course has narrowed.
Some vessels are unable to dock and the marshland along the water is cracking.
"The water level of Wuhu Lake only reached 0.55 meters on last January 25, breaking the record for decades," said Wang Yuhong who works in the office that oversees Wuhu Lake. "The level dropped to below 2 meters for 122 days in 2009, compared with fewer than 110 days each year from 2006 to 2008."
He said Wuhu usually enters the dry season in November but now the dry season comes a month earlier and the high tide season during the spring has virtually disappeared.
Dongting Lake, the second largest freshwater lake in China located along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, has seen its water level drop by more than 90 percent compared with its average capacity during the flood season, local residents said.
"The dry season arrived in early November last year, earlier than in 2008, and will continue till this March. It influences our business and affects our production," Xiang Zaisheng, a fish farm owner in Dongting Lake, told the Global Times Tuesday.
Ma Dechao, director of the freshwater project at the World Wide Fund, said last month that the ecosystem in the Yangtze River has experienced significant changes after the completion of the Three Gorges Dam.
CAS's Xu said measures should be taken to deal with the impact caused by the project.
"Experts from the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research are doing research on how to optimize the scheduling of the Three Gorges project to improve water traffic and solve ecosystem problems," he added.
(Source: Global Times)
This BBC Site has a lot of great links to water issues--
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2000/world_water_crisis/default.stm
futr
Freshwater Crisis Not Included in Final Copenhagen Accord Despite Calls For Action
January 4, 2010
Wow, this headline kills me -
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/freshwater-crisis-not-included-in-final-copenhagen-accord-despite-calls-for-action/
International climate groups band together in Copenhagen to keep water on the negotiating table.
By Andrew Maddocks
Circle of Blue
The current climate accord negotiated at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen is dangerously inadequate, asserted a team of international environmental organizations.
During a talk at the Bella Center, where the climate conference was held, the Global Water Partnership, Global Public Policy Network on Water Management, Stockholm International Water Institute, and the Stakeholder Forum teamed up to warn that stakeholders were about to make a dangerous mistake – not mentioning the freshwater crisis at all in the historic negotiating text.
As parties embraced a final climate change accord, water was included in one sentence within the latest draft of the treaty and then dropped entirely in the final text. Over the past few months, water-specific language has appeared and disappeared from drafts of the UN climate change adaptation text. In the last preliminary climate talks in Barcelona, water was eliminated from the negotiating texts.
Vulnerable People
Generations of people living in vulnerable coastal nations or farmers face volatile rainfall and could be left unprepared for decades if the treaty’s language isn’t carefully crafted into the next international climate treaty, said GPPN Secretariat Hannah Stoddart, one of the speakers at the “Bridging the Water and Climate Change Agendas” event. Presenters on the panel explored the disconnect between climate and water contingents in the build-up to COP15, and hoped to apply more pressure to integrate water into the treaty.
In Copenhagen, the GPPN and its allies tried to step up the pressure on leaders by putting water in powerful introductory videos and speeches about climate and water-related damage happening around the world.
Though representatives from the GPPN network — which includes partners from SIWI, the GWP and the World Wildlife Fund —had modest expectations for changes to the UN text, they were determined to stress the connections between water and climate change to the 33,000 accredited attendees at the conference, including more than 120 heads of state that attended the 13-day United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which ended on December 19.
Ainun Nishat, a senior climate change adviser for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, opened the panel discussion with a quick summary of the challenges facing Bangladesh — severe weather events, rising sea levels, shifting rainfall patterns and a fragile food supply.
“I feel very ashamed the international community has not done anything about that,” Nishat said.
Demands For Recognition
Nishat gave first-hand examples that supported the GPPN’s central agenda — urgent demand for action, regional and international guidance on water-related issues and a long-term strategy for adaptation by the United Nations.
The subsequent speakers moved through a series of warnings and guidance measures for climate leaders.
Managing water resources will be critical, Stoddart said. She added that effective management requires broad-based cooperation, which starts at the international treaty level. Identifying a disconnect between climate and water advocates, speakers at the event encouraged everyone at the climate conference to break out of their specialities and engage in interdisciplinary discussions and solutions.
Other organizations like the World Water Council suggested that the Copenhagen Accord and its successor climate pacts include an international fund for water.
Many of the panel members’ goals looked beyond Copenhagen.
John Matthews of the World Wildlife Fund supervises freshwater and climate adaptation issues, and has worked with water across cities, energy sectors and fisheries. The scale of potential problems, Matthews said, will require additional resources that are better integrated amongst regions to local institutions. He highlighted transboundary rivers, such as the Rio Grande, which crosses from the U.S. into Mexico, as a key area to bridge both organizations as well as water issues such as mitigation and adaptation to find comprehensive, exemplary solutions.
Treaty Language Neglected
After the prepared speeches, moderator Mike Muller, Special Advisor to the Global Water Partnership opened the floor for questions, which revealed urgent calls for amended treaty language, all of which were subsequently ignored in the final accord. Negotiators in the room anticipated that water might be left out because environmental ministers, rather than water administrators, usually handle these agreements.
But the sense of urgency and pressure for ongoing planning are strong. Environmental ministers from both South Africa and Uganda who attended the event said they would take these messages back to their private delegation meetings.
“We really have to understand water is a key element for the poor and vulnerable,” said Karin Lexen, a project director with the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). “If you talk to a woman in Mali, the first thing she will probably ask for is water. That’s why we have a commitment to trying to do our best.”
Aubrey Parker, a reporter for Circle of Blue, contributed to this report. Andrew Maddocks, a contributing writer for Circle of Blue, he can be reached at andrew@circleofblue.org. Follow more of Circle of Blue’s Copenhagen coverage here.
The original version of this article incorrectly identified the moderator as Felix Dodds, who was replaced with Mike Muller due to illness. This article has since been corrected.
Peter Gleick: The Real Climate Hoax
December 23, 2009
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/world/peter-gleick-the-real-climate-hoax/
In all of the recent news about climate change, leaked emails, complex negotiations, and watered-down agreements in Copenhagen, one fact has’t received enough attention. The climate “hoax” is real. The only problem is that the real hoax is the effort by climate change deniers who argue that the climate isn’t changing, or that it isn’t because of human actions. It is, and it is. The science is unambiguous. The climate is changing, rapidly, and it is doing so because of our emissions of greenhouse gases.
I know many people have said this. I’ve been saying it for twenty-five years in my research and writings. But if the phrase “climate hoax” is going to enter the public vernacular, it should do so in the right way. So from now on, I intend to use it to refer to the efforts of climate change deniers to misinform the public and our policy makers. Some, like Senator James Inhofe (of Oklahoma), love the phrase “climate hoax.” Fine, but since he is a major elected official perpetrating this hoax (actually, I think he is probably both a hoax-er and a hoax-ee), let the words represent his own actions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.
Read his full bio…He and the other deniers are foisting a hoax on the American people by misusing and abusing science and by misrepresenting facts for narrow ideological purposes. If he and the other climate hoaxers don’t think we ought to do anything about climate change because they fear it will hurt the economy, or they just can’t bear for the government to do anything at all, fine, they should make that argument. But instead they pretend the science isn’t firm.
It is. There are plenty of uncertainties about how bad climate change is going to get, and how fast, and how the impacts will be distributed. But not about whether the climate is changing or whether humans are driving those changes.
Water Number: Because my blog is called “Water Numbers,” here is the number for today’s post. 20%. This is the expected decrease in recharge of the vitally important Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains of the United States (including important parts of Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), if temperatures increase by 2.5 degrees C, which they almost certainly will. (”Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” IPCC Working Group II, 4th Assessment, 2007).
But there is more bad news for Oklahoma. As temperature and rainfall patterns begin to rapidly change from climate change, the yields of two of the most important crops in the United States, corn and soybeans, are expected to be severely damaged (including in Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), according a 2009 scientific paper by Schlenker and Roberts from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This study suggests that average yields could decrease by 30 to 46% before the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario and decrease by 63 to 82% under the most rapid warming scenario. And the recent lack of action in Copenhagen pretty much ensures we’re going to see the most rapid warming scenario. The warming the planet is already experiencing already exceeds that worst scenario.
So it is time to call what the climate deniers are doing by its real name: the climate hoax: denying the reality of climate change.
Peter Gleick
Look at the volume and price on the PHO weekly chart - this ETF is consolidating way up high and not a pullback going into the end of the year... This is a hot sector now and will probably be this way going forward without an end in sight - in my belief!
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=10682
farmers were laying feilds in fallow, letting fruit and nut trees die. food prices increases will eventually increase.
They are basically growing crops in a desert. The Gov. want to build more dams to create storage. If the farmers take all the water there will be nothing left for southern Cal.
Then there was an esturary protected by old earten levies. If they fail all the fresh water around the delta will become salty - It will be cal's katrine.
----
80 islands and 1,600 miles of levees in the Central Valley are reaching their breaking point, and action needs to be taken. Experts throughout the day took the podium and offered bleak outlooks on the future of the Delta, and their respective views on the recent water package passed by the state legislature. Multiple speakers said the Delta cannot and will not be restored to the way it was in the mid-1850s or even several decades ago and California's water system needs to be overhauled and climate change must be accounted for when deciding future Delta projects.
Cost estimates for a long-sought but hotly debated canal to carry water around the Delta have doubled in the past year, increasing to the point that boring tunnels may be an attractive and less controversial project.
The numbers are preliminary, but the cost of buying the land, designing and building a Peripheral Canal around the Delta's eastern flank has soared from $4.2 billion to between $7.9 billion and $8.5 billion, according to state Department of Water Resources. The latest figures are closing in on a roughly $10 billion cost of sending the water through a pair of tunnels beneath the Delta.
http://www.sfestuary.org/pages/home.php
bummer, my Internet service was down most of the day, so I missed the show, but I'm happy that the news is covering the California water problem.
sumi
Ah, you beat me to it! Was gonna post about that.
water problems in Cal on 60mins right now
"Running Dry"
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6014526n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Peter Gleick: Giving Desalination Another Black Eye — Poseidon’s Financial Shell Game
November 11, 2009
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/world/peter-gleick-giving-desalination-another-black-eye-poseidons-financial-shell-game/
Last week, I wrote about the demand by the Poseidon Group to receive two major public subsidies to build a private desalination plant at Carlsbad near San Diego. After years of claiming that they needed no public support to build this plant, this claim has finally been proven false. The private profits they need will only be possible with public subsidies.
Water Number: $350 million in public subsidies to a private group. Earlier this week, one of the subsidies demanded by Poseidon was granted. The Metropolitan Water Board approved a subsidy of up to $250 per acre foot per year for 25 years, which will make MWD customers pay more for water than they would otherwise have paid, with the profits going to a private company. Up to $350 million over 25 years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.
Read his full bio…This decision by MWD effectively proves two things: first, that desalination, as envisioned and designed by Poseidon, remains a premature and expensive choice for California. Second, that for all of Southern California’s claims of improved efficiency, it is still easier for water agencies to spend $2 (or $3 or $4) to build a water-supply project than to spend $1 to get the same water through water-efficiency programs.
I’ve argued before, and I say again, I believe this project will give a black eye to the reputation of desalination, all because of intensive efforts to gain private financial benefit on the backs of the public.
In the end, it was clear the project would not go ahead without public subsidy. “The project will not be financeable,” said Steve Howard of Barclays Capital, which is advising Poseidon on financing. He admitted that the MWD subsidy would provide 15% to 20% of the project’s revenue in its early years, without which the profit Poseidon has promised its private financers would not materialize. In fact, this money is probably almost exactly the profit Poseidon has to generate for its investors.
Mitch Dion, a director of one of the water districts buying the expensive water, said, “Without it [the MWD subsidy], the project will die.”
It should die. Until a proposal for desalination is made that meets all environmental standards, is financially sound, economically superior to alternatives, and actually reduces dependence on other, unsustainable sources of water, projects should be rejected. Public subsidies for these private projects should be rejected as well. And the MWD Board should be ashamed.
In the meantime, it would be interested to see exactly what financial returns have been promised to Poseidon and its funders — money that will come from water ratepayers and MWD. Is that information and the details of the financing agreements available to the public that is throwing in so much money? What salaries are being drawn by Poseidon executives, and how do they compare to the salaries of the public water agencies that should build our water systems? Don’t hold your breath that this information will be forthcoming.
Michigan Looks Forward and Sees a New, Blue Economy
November 11, 2009
http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/business/michigan-looks-forward-and-sees-a-new-blue-economy/
Business and government leaders in Southeast Michigan want to move beyond the green economy to a blue one, leveraging the state’s plentiful freshwater access for its economic advantage.
And the state’s lieutenant governor plans to make that pitch overseas when he heads to the Middle East Saturday.
At a conference outside Detroit Tuesday morning, the Engineering Society of Detroit and the University Of Michigan-Dearborn hosted a presentation called “Blue Economy: Turning Michigan’s Freshwater Into Renewed Prosperity.” Panelists included Lt. Governor John Cherry, who spoke about the potential to turn the Great Lakes state into a global freshwater supplier status.
“It has been said that ‘water is the oil of the 21st Century’,” Cherry said in his remarks to the conference. “And so the Great Lakes state and its great learning and research institutions can also be at the center of developing the water conservation, management, cleaning and treatment technologies the world needs.”
“Water technology and tools to conserve, treat, measure, monitor and smartly manage this precious, finite fuel for life is a growing, $500 billion global business,” he added. “Ninety percent of China’s urban water is polluted, and they are looking for help. Las Vegas in the West and Georgia in the East are crying for water, and wasting what they have.”
“All of these circumstances are an opportunity for Michigan and the Great Lakes to lead the way in solving regional and national problems of water and sustainability; to develop the new technologies and jobs based on cleaning and stewardship of this precious resource.”
Cherry noted that the opportunity carries responsibilities to also safeguard the state’s freshwater.
“As we put our water to use in the Great Lakes, we also put this life-giving resource at risk—through pollution, toxins, water-fouling plants and brownfield sites,” he warned. “For example, our trade with the world also brought in exotic species that changed the complexion of these waters.”
Any use of water for economic growth, according to Cherry, must be accompanied by four goals: water that is not toxic or quarantined by past damage; beaches that are not closed due to sewer overflows; native Great Lakes fish that are abundant and safe to eat; and wetlands, dunes and beaches to filter damaging sediments and afford public access and enjoyment.
Cherry and other state officials head to Israel and the United Arab Emirates this weekend on a week-long trip to deliver that message in person to Israeli businesses, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. Cherry will be accompanied by officials with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The trip follows Cherry’s announcement of a “Green Jobs for Blue Waters” initiative earlier this year to market Michigan’s water management expertise, workforce and manufacturing base.
Cherry’s Middle East trip also follows an investment mission by Governor Jennifer Granholm. Last year Granhom met with Israeli government and company officials to form water-technology partnerships and encourage investment in Michigan.
Panel participants at Tuesday’s conference talked about creating an organization called NextWater to shepherd the development of the new “blue economy.” The name and mission are modeled after NextEnergy, a nonprofit launched in Detroit in 2002 to serve as a research catalyst and business accelerator for alternative and renewable energy.
Crain’s Detroit Business quoted Christopher Webb, co-director of the Engineering Society Of Detroit Institute, as saying that Michigan’s water resources can promote growth in battery, semiconductor, biotechnology and other industries.
“The world is thirsty for water, and Michigan is thirsty for jobs,” Webb said.
Sources: Crain’s Detroit Business, WWJ Newsradio 950, Lt. Governor John Cherry
Hard Lessons From Oil Industry May Help Address Burgeoning Groundwater Crisis
Declining groundwater in Mississippi has prompted a $1 billion lawsuit against Memphis.
by Staff Writers
Corvallis OR (SPX) Nov 03, 2009
Although declining streamflows and half-full reservoirs have gotten most of the attention in water conflicts around the United States, some of the worst battles of the next century may be over groundwater, experts say - a critical resource often taken for granted until it begins to run out.
Aquifers are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished in many places, wells are drying up, massive lawsuits are already erupting and the problems have barely begun. Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill are being drained in decades, placing both agricultural and urban uses in peril. Groundwater that supplies drinking water for half the world's population is now in jeopardy.
A new analysis by researchers at Oregon State University outlines the scope of this problem, but also points out that some tools may be available to help address it, in part by borrowing heavily from lessons learned the hard way by the oil industry.
"It's been said that groundwater is the oil of this century," said Todd Jarvis, associate director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at OSU.
"Part of the issue is it's running out, meaning we're now facing 'peak water' just the way the U.S. encountered 'peak oil' production in the 1970s. But there are also some techniques developed by the oil industry to help manage this crisis, and we could learn a lot from them."
Jarvis just presented an outline of some of these concepts, called "unitization," at a professional conference in Kyoto, Japan, and will also explore them in upcoming conference in Stevenson, Wash., and Xi'an, China.
Other aspects of the issue have been analyzed in a new documentary film on the special problems facing the Umatilla Basin of eastern Oregon, a classic case of declining groundwater problems.
The problems are anything but simple, Jarvis said, and are just now starting to get the attention needed.
"In the northern half of Oregon from Pendleton to the Willamette Valley, an aquifer that took 20,000 years to fill is going down fast," Jarvis said.
"Some places near Hermiston have seen water levels drop as much as 500 feet in the past 50-60 years, one of the largest and fastest declines in the world.
"I know of a well in Utah that lost its original capacity after a couple years," he said.
"In Idaho people drawing groundwater are being ordered to work with other holders of stream water rights as the streams begin to dwindle. Mississippi has filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the City of Memphis because of declining groundwater. You're seeing land subsiding from Houston to the Imperial Valley of California. This issue is real and getting worse."
In the process, Jarvis said, underground aquifers can be irrevocably damaged - not unlike what happened to oil reservoirs when that industry pumped them too rapidly. Tiny fractures in rock that can store water sometimes collapse when it's rapidly withdrawn, and then even if the aquifer had water to recharge it, there's no place for it to go.
"The unitization concept the oil industry developed is built around people unifying their rights and their goals, and working cooperatively to make a resource last as long as possible and not damaging it," Jarvis said. "That's similar to what we could do with groundwater, although it takes foresight and cooperation."
Water laws, Jarvis said, are often part of the problem instead of the solution. A "rule of capture" that dates to Roman times often gives people the right to pump and use anything beneath their land, whether it's oil or water.
That's somewhat addressed by the "first in time, first in right" concept that forms the basis of most water law in the West, but proving that someone's well many miles away interferes with your aquifer or stream flow is often difficult or impossible. And there are 14 million wells just in the United States, tapping aquifers that routinely cross state and even national boundaries.
Regardless of what else takes place, Jarvis said, groundwater users must embrace one concept the oil industry learned years ago - the "race to the pump" serves no one's best interest, whether the concern is depleted resources, rising costs of pumping or damaged aquifers.
One possible way out of the conundrum, experts say, is maximizing the economic value of the water and using it for its highest value purpose. But even that will take new perspectives and levels of cooperation that have not often been evident in these disputes. Government mandates may be necessary if some of the "unitization" concepts are to be implemented. Existing boundaries may need to be blurred, and ways to share the value of the remaining water identified.
"Like we did with peak oil, everyone knows were running out, and yet we're just now getting more commitment to alternative energy sources," Jarvis said. "Soon we'll be facing peak water, the only thing to really argue over is the date when that happens. So we will need new solutions, one way or the other."
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Hard_Lessons_From_Oil_Industry_May_Help_Address_Burgeoning_Groundwater_Crisis_999.html
Lessons from oil industry may help address groundwater crisis
Posted In: Environment
By EurekAlert
Friday, October 30, 2009
http://www.rdmag.com/News/Feeds/2009/10/environment-lessons-from-oil-industry-may-help-address-groundw/
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Although declining streamflows and half-full reservoirs have gotten most of the attention in water conflicts around the United States, some of the worst battles of the next century may be over groundwater, experts say a critical resource often taken for granted until it begins to run out.
Aquifers are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished in many places, wells are drying up, massive lawsuits are already erupting and the problems have barely begun. Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill are being drained in decades, placing both agricultural and urban uses in peril. Groundwater that supplies drinking water for half the world's population is now in jeopardy.
A new analysis by researchers at Oregon State University outlines the scope of this problem, but also points out that some tools may be available to help address it, in part by borrowing heavily from lessons learned the hard way by the oil industry.
"It's been said that groundwater is the oil of this century," said Todd Jarvis, associate director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at OSU. "Part of the issue is it's running out, meaning we're now facing 'peak water' just the way the U.S. encountered 'peak oil' production in the 1970s. But there are also some techniques developed by the oil industry to help manage this crisis, and we could learn a lot from them."
Jarvis just presented an outline of some of these concepts, called "unitization," at a professional conference in Kyoto, Japan, and will also explore them in upcoming conference in Stevenson, Wash., and Xi'an, China. Other aspects of the issue have been analyzed in a new documentary film on the special problems facing the Umatilla Basin of eastern Oregon, a classic case of declining groundwater problems. (DVD copies of the documentary are available free upon request, by calling 541-737-4032.)
The problems are anything but simple, Jarvis said, and are just now starting to get the attention needed.
"In the northern half of Oregon from Pendleton to the Willamette Valley, an aquifer that took 20,000 years to fill is going down fast," Jarvis said. "Some places near Hermiston have seen water levels drop as much as 500 feet in the past 50-60 years, one of the largest and fastest declines in the world.
"I know of a well in Utah that lost its original capacity after a couple years," he said. "In Idaho people drawing groundwater are being ordered to work with other holders of stream water rights as the streams begin to dwindle. Mississippi has filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the City of Memphis because of declining groundwater. You're seeing land subsiding from Houston to the Imperial Valley of California. This issue is real and getting worse."
In the process, Jarvis said, underground aquifers can be irrevocably damaged – not unlike what happened to oil reservoirs when that industry pumped them too rapidly. Tiny fractures in rock that can store water sometimes collapse when it's rapidly withdrawn, and then even if the aquifer had water to recharge it, there's no place for it to go.
"The unitization concept the oil industry developed is built around people unifying their rights and their goals, and working cooperatively to make a resource last as long as possible and not damaging it," Jarvis said. "That's similar to what we could do with groundwater, although it takes foresight and cooperation."
Water laws, Jarvis said, are often part of the problem instead of the solution. A "rule of capture" that dates to Roman times often gives people the right to pump and use anything beneath their land, whether it's oil or water. That's somewhat addressed by the "first in time, first in right" concept that forms the basis of most water law in the West, but proving that someone's well many miles away interferes with your aquifer or stream flow is often difficult or impossible. And there are 14 million wells just in the United States, tapping aquifers that routinely cross state and even national boundaries.
Regardless of what else takes place, Jarvis said, groundwater users must embrace one concept the oil industry learned years ago – the "race to the pump" serves no one's best interest, whether the concern is depleted resources, rising costs of pumping or damaged aquifers.
One possible way out of the conundrum, experts say, is maximizing the economic value of the water and using it for its highest value purpose. But even that will take new perspectives and levels of cooperation that have not often been evident in these disputes. Government mandates may be necessary if some of the "unitization" concepts are to be implemented. Existing boundaries may need to be blurred, and ways to share the value of the remaining water identified.
"Like we did with peak oil, everyone knows were running out, and yet we're just now getting more commitment to alternative energy sources," Jarvis said. "Soon we'll be facing peak water, the only thing to really argue over is the date when that happens. So we will need new solutions, one way or the other."
Water scarcity will create global security concerns
Public release date: 6-Oct-2009
Contact: Laura Snyder
laura@dickjonescomm.com
347-240-4745
Dick Jones Communications
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/djc-wsw100609.php
'We have very little time,' says Nobel winner
Water scarcity as a result of climate change will create far-reaching global security concerns, says Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Pachauri spoke this morning at the 2009 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.
"At one level the world's water is like the world's wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others," he says. "With 31 percent of global freshwater resources, Latin America has 12 times more water per person than South Asia. Some places, such as Brazil and Canada, get far more water than they can use; others, such as countries in the Middle East, get much less than they need."
And the effects of a warmer world will likely include changes in water availability.
"Up to 1.2 billion people in Asia, 250 million Africans and 81 million Latin Americans will be exposed to increased water stress by 2020," Pachauri says. Water shortages have an enormous impact of human health, including malnutrition, pathogen or chemical loading, infectious disease from water contamination, and uncontrolled water reuse.
"Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change," Pachauri says.
When communities fight over water resources, there's a great danger for a disruption of peace and security. "That water scarcity plays a role in creating the preconditions of desperation and discontent is undeniable," he says. Competition for water from the river Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war. India has been in dispute with Pakistan over the Indus and with Bangladesh over the Ganges.
"Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries," he says. "As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to trans-boundary tensions."
"We live on a small planet where communication and influences go from one corner of the Earth to another," he says. "If there's a major disruption to peace in one part of the globe, no other part is insulated from it. We need to look at what happens to the rest of the world with some degree of alarm; these influences have very dangerous implications for the rest of the world."
Societies so far have been able to adapt to changes in weather and climate – via crop diversification, irrigation, disaster risk management, and insurance – but climate change might go beyond what our traditional coping mechanisms can handle, Pachauri suggests.
Even societies with "high adaptive capacity" are vulnerable to climate change, variability and extremes, he says, citing examples of the 2003 heat wave that took the lives of many elderly in European cities and 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
"A technological society has two choices," Pachauri says. "It can wait until catastrophic failures expose systemic deficiencies, distortion and self-deceptions, or the culture can provide social checks and balances to correct for systemic distortion prior to catastrophic failures."
"Global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to decline by 2015. If we can achieve that, we may be able to avoid the worst effects of climate change," he says. "The costs of this are not high. A major mitigation would only postpone growth domestic product growth by one year at most over the medium term. That's not a high price to pay for the world."
"There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet," he says. "We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don't come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace."
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The 45th annual Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, Oct. 6-7, 2009, is titled H2O: Uncertain Resource and focuses on global issues surrounding water resources. For more than four decades, Gustavus has organized and hosted the two-day Nobel Conference, which draws about 6,000 people to the college campus in St. Peter, Minn. The conference links a general audience, including high school students and teachers, with the world's foremost scholars and researchers in discussion centered on contemporary issues relating to the natural and social sciences.
For more information, contact Chuck Niederriter, director of the Nobel Conference, at (507) 933-7315 or chuck@gustavus.edu. You can watch live coverage of the Nobel Conference at: http://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/
World's river deltas sinking due to human activity, says new study led by CU-Boulder
24 of world's 33 major deltas sinking, 85 percent have experienced severe flooding recently
Public release date: 20-Sep-2009
Contact: Albert Kettner
kettner@colorado.edu
303-735-5486
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uoca-wrd091809.php
Caption: Deltas around the world are sinking, according to a new study led by CU-Boulder. This image of the Pearl River Delta in China taken was by NASA's space shuttle Endeavour, with the areas below sea level shown in purple.
[Credit: Image courtesy NASA, CSDMS, University of Colorado.]
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk.
While the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded many river deltas are at risk from sea level rise, the new study indicates other human factors are causing deltas to sink significantly. The researchers concluded the sinking of deltas from Asia and India to the Americas is exacerbated by the upstream trapping of sediments by reservoirs and dams, man-made channels and levees that whisk sediment into the oceans beyond coastal floodplains, and the accelerated compacting of floodplain sediment caused by the extraction of groundwater and natural gas.
The study concluded that 24 out of the world's 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas.
Published in the Sept. 20 issue of Nature Geoscience, the study was led by CU-Boulder Professor James Syvitski, who is directing a $4.2 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation to model large-scale global processes on Earth like erosion and flooding. Known as the Community Surface Dynamic Modeling System, or CSDMS, the effort involves hundreds of scientists from dozens of federal labs and universities around the nation.
The Nature Geoscience authors predict that global delta flooding could increase by 50 percent under current projections of about 18 inches in sea level rise by the end of the century as forecast by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The flooding will increase even more if the capture of sediments upstream from deltas by reservoirs and other water diversion projects persists and prevents the growth and buffering of the deltas, according to the study.
"We argue that the world's low-lying deltas are increasingly vulnerable to flooding, either from their feeding rivers or from ocean storms," said CU-Boulder Research Associate Albert Kettner, a co-author on the study at CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and member of the CSDMS team. "This study shows there are a host of human-induced factors that already cause deltas to sink much more rapidly than could be explained by sea level alone."
Other study co-authors include CU-Boulder's Irina Overeem, Eric Hutton and Mark Hannon, G. Robert Brakenridge of Dartmouth College, John Day of Louisiana State University, Charles Vorosmarty of City College of New York, Yoshiki Saito of the Geological Survey of Japan, Liviu Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Robert Nichols of the University of Southampton in England.
The team used satellite data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which carried a bevy of radar instruments that swept more than 80 percent of Earth's surface during a 12-day mission of the space shuttle Endeavour in 2000. The researchers compared the SRTM data with historical maps published between 1760 and 1922.
"Every year, about 10 million people are being affected by storm surges," said CU-Boulder's Overeem, also an INSTAAR researcher and CSDMS scientist. "Hurricane Katrina may be the best example that stands out in the United States, but flooding in the Asian deltas of Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh have recently claimed thousands of lives as well."
The researchers predict that similar disasters could potentially occur in the Pearl River delta in China and the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, where thousands of square miles are below sea level and the regions are hit by periodic typhoons.
"Although humans have largely mastered the everyday behaviour of lowland rivers, they seem less able to deal with the fury of storm surges that can temporarily raise sea level by three to 10 meters (10 to 33 feet)," wrote the study authors. "It remains alarming how often deltas flood, whether from land or from sea, and the trend seems to be worsening."
"We are interested in how landscapes and seascapes change over time, and how materials like water, sediments and nutrients are transported from one place to another," said Syvitski a geological sciences professor at CU-Boulder. "The CSDMS effort will give us a better understanding of Earth and allow us to make better predictions about areas at risk to phenomena like deforestation, forest fires, land-use changes and the impacts of climate change."
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For more information on INSTAAR visit http://instaar.colorado.edu/index.html. For more information on CSDMS visit http://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Main_Page.
Water Shortage In Mexico Results In Fines
Thursday September 3rd 2009
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1234&catID=4
Water shortage is becoming a huge problem in Mexico City, to such an extent that the government has introduced a new series of fines for wastage such as washing your car or the pavement with a hose. Rosalind Pearson describes how the clampdown has impacted on the people and what citizens are doing to save water
A woman watches as city workers deliver the weekly water ration in drums and buckets at a low-income neighborhood in Mexico City. Photograph: Dario Lopez-Mills/AP
The maximum fine you can receive if caught washing your car or the pavement with a hose in Mexico City is $15,000 pesos (roughly $1,150). It’s a matter of pride for Mexicans to maintain a clean car and the pavement in front of the house sparkling clean. These are two of the ways that water is wasted in this country and that is why since September 1 2009, anyone caught hosing down the car or the doorstep, will be faced with a hefty bill.
In Aztec times Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was an elegant community built in the middle of a very large lake, with intricate canals linking the town with the land surrounding it. There is no sign of that water now, no rivers at all and the little that is left is underground. For years now the drinking water has had to be piped in from great distances, from deep wells, and at great cost. Water is largely subsidised by the government and people pay very little for it.
It has hardly rained at all this year. The rainy season starts normally – for those of us in the centre of the country – at the end of May or the beginning of June. This year we had heavy rain early in May then practically nothing in June and July. August has been a bit wetter and there’s no doubt that Hurricane Jimena helped a little but with just one more month of the rainy season to go there is a serious lack of water in the country. Dams are extraordinarily low and crops are failing and animals are dying of thirst. 2009 has been declared the driest in 40 years.
After difficult nights of rainwater mixed with sewage water flooding zones of Mexico City on occasion it seems hard to imagine that there is a problem. But the reality is quite different. There have already been considerable cuts in the domestic water supply and authorities are expecting violent reprisals. Needless to say it is the poor who suffer the most and the police are on high alert after coping with demonstrations and angry crowds.
Many houses have cisterns to ensure a supply of water but the majority of houses do not, so when the tap is dry there is no way to get hold of water. Neighbours get together and order a “pipa”, as the water tankers are known, and they empty the water into a variety of containers, whatever they have to hand. The cost of a pipa has shot up and people are complaining bitterly.
Not only that but the men who deliver this water have their favourite customers, depending on the tips they get. Without regulation they can charge what they want, they know it’s like gold and so people end up paying 550 pesos for 5,000 litres, between 700 and 950 pesos for 8,000 litres. A complete pipa, of 16,000 litres, can cost 1,900 pesos (roughly $1,200). The quality of the water varies tremendously and whether it’s drinkable or not is a moot point.
Meanwhile the government is doing its best to encourage people to use less water. There are all sorts of recommendations, such as changing the shower head for a narrower one, the idea being you wash yourself in much less water. Fixing dripping taps is a big deal too because you can lose litres and litres of water that way. Changing the loo for one that uses only three litres of water every time you flush it is a brilliant idea but most people won’t do that unless, or until, the old one packs up.
This is all excellent advice but the problem is the cost. In my particular case I have put a brick in each of my loos, or you can use a closed half-litre bottle of water, and it helps a lot to lower water consumption. Another idea that occurred to me is to cut off half the water supply for each tap so that the flow is reduced considerably and you use much less when you wash your hands, for example. Each citizen is being asked to reduce his usage by 20% and some people are indeed making an effort to cut down the amount of water they use.
Here in Cuernavaca, an hour south of Mexico City, we are not in such a difficult situation, at least not yet, but I think it won’t be long before the same new regulations will be put in place. I write a column in the local paper and I am trying to make as many people as possible aware of the situation and to be responsible with their water usage. We can see with our own eyes what is happening and we shouldn’t need to be told what to do, we should just take action now.
At work, I have managed to persuade my colleagues to separate their rubbish (washing it first) and to put organic waste out for the compost. I have also managed to convince our gardener to wash the cars with a bucket and he took my advice to heart.
Changing the habits of a lifetime is not easy. Washing your teeth while the water runs was never before considered a luxury. Taking a bath is not common in Mexico but having a shower is; showering yourself in five minutes maximum is very hard for lots of people. Accepting change is a slow process and it is for this reason that the fines have been announced.
There has to be clear motivation for people to change their ideas and their habits because the alternative is one of the biggest cities in the world ending up without water – a thought that doesn’t bear thinking about.
SYRIA: Drought driving farmers to the cities
Monday 14 September 2009
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85963
Photo: UN
Up to 60 percent of Syria's land and 1.3 million people are affected by drought in Syria
DAMASCUS, 2 September 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of Syrian farming families have been forced to move to cities in search of alternative work after two years of drought and failed crops followed a number of unproductive years.
"The situation has now got really severe; we are talking about desert, rather than farming land," said Abdel Qader Abu Awad, MENA (Middle East and North Africa) disaster management coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). "People cannot live in this environment any more and their final coping mechanism is migration."
Syria's drought is now in its second year, affecting farming regions in the north and east of the country, especially the northeastern governorate of Hassakeh. Wheat production is just 55 percent of its usual output and barley is seriously affected, according to the UN's drought response plan, drawn up following two recent multi-agency missions.
Blamed on a combination of climate change, man-made desertification and lack of irrigation, up to 60 percent of Syria's land and 1.3 million people (of a population of 22 million) are affected, according to the UN. Just over 800,000 people have lost their entire livelihood, according to the UN and IFRC.
No-one knows exactly how many people have migrated across the country because of the drought. The Syrian Ministry for Agriculture and Agrarian Reform's estimate in July was 40,000 to 60,000 families, with 35,000 from Hassakeh alone. But with people moving all the time, the figure is likely to be an underestimate.
The UN's drought response plan found there had been a "dramatic increase in the already substantial migration out of the affected areas". Migrants head for the cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs, according to the report.
"It is very difficult to monitor the scale of migration as it is constantly happening," said Awad. "When NGOs head to a settlement, there is no guarantee anyone will still be there."
Photo: Sarah Birke/IRIN
A suburb of Damascus where many farming families have moved to escape drought in the country
"Nothing left for us there"
In July, Hassan Hami Hami and his family moved to a suburb of Damascus after he lost his livelihood as a wheat farmer in Qamishle on the northeast border with Turkey, around 650 km from Damascus.
"There is nothing left for us there," he said. "Farming stopped and I sold plastic for a while, but it was not enough. We had to borrow so much money from people just to survive."
He said moving was a last resort. "It is not our home but with my son and daughter-in-law working we can just about manage."
Hassan and his wife, his son and daughter-in-law and their four children now share a small, bare apartment. Between them his son and daughter-in-law earn SYP 9,000 [US$196] a month by working shifts in a local factory. Downstairs and in next-door buildings live other families who have moved because of the drought.
Knock-on effects
The migration is causing knock-on social problems for these families as they have left behind the tight-knit communities they belonged to. Crime rates are on the rise in areas where drought migrants have settled, because of poverty, say locals.
A UN joint mission report in July said more and more children were being sent to work rather than going to school.
"The drought is causing a high drop-out rate," Sherazade Boualia, the resident representative of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Syria, said. "It is vital that children do not miss out on education. We are trying to give support to people so their children do not need to leave school in order to work. For those who move, we are trying to make sure they enrol in new schools."
Families left in the area who cannot afford, or do not want, to move are suffering. The UN's drought response plan lists problems including the drying up of drinking water; and water from unclean sources is threatening to cause disease. Prices are rising as food becomes scarce; people are surviving on bread and sugared tea, said the UN.
Photo: ReliefWeb
A map of Syria highlighting drought-hit Hassake Governorate in the northeast
Aid designed to stall migration
In August, IFRC gave US$300,340 from its emergency fund to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) to distribute food to the most vulnerable people. The organizations will launch a joint appeal to fund water purification equipment in schools and promote hygiene. The government and UN agencies have distributed food packages and seeds in the past.
Agencies hope the emergency measure can stall further migration. "When you get to the point where you decide to give up and move, things have gone very far," said Awad. "But many families do not want to leave their homeland and those who have, want to return."
Aid agencies say a sustainable long-term plan for the affected areas is needed. "We need to do studies to identify a disaster risk reduction strategy on how to overcome climate change and have better farming practices," said Awad.
"These include planting new trees, good irrigation and legislation to prevent overuse of the land," he said. "No one will go back if they don't have a livelihood to go back to."
Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Published: September 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html?_r=1
Ryan Massey, 7, shows his caps. Dentists near Charleston, W.Va., say pollutants in drinking water have damaged residents’ teeth. Nationwide, polluters have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times.
Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.
In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.
Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.
“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.
She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.
“How is this still happening today?” she asked.
When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.
But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.
This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.
In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.
However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.
Because it is difficult to determine what causes diseases like cancer, it is impossible to know how many illnesses are the result of water pollution, or contaminants’ role in the health problems of specific individuals.
But concerns over these toxins are great enough that Congress and the E.P.A. regulate more than 100 pollutants through the Clean Water Act and strictly limit 91 chemicals or contaminants in tap water through the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Regulators themselves acknowledge lapses. The new E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said in an interview that despite many successes since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, today the nation’s water does not meet public health goals, and enforcement of water pollution laws is unacceptably low. She added that strengthening water protections is among her top priorities. State regulators say they are doing their best with insufficient resources.
The Times obtained hundreds of thousands of water pollution records through Freedom of Information Act requests to every state and the E.P.A., and compiled a national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by states or the E.P.A. (For an interactive version, which can show violations in any community, visit www.nytimes.com/toxicwaters.)
In addition, The Times interviewed more than 250 state and federal regulators, water-system managers, environmental advocates and scientists.
That research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways.
Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells. Wells, which are not typically regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, are more likely to contain contaminants than municipal water systems.
Because most of today’s water pollution has no scent or taste, many people who consume dangerous chemicals do not realize it, even after they become sick, researchers say.
But an estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. That figure does not include illnesses caused by other chemicals and toxins.
In the nation’s largest dairy states, like Wisconsin and California, farmers have sprayed liquefied animal feces onto fields, where it has seeped into wells, causing severe infections. Tap water in parts of the Farm Belt, including cities in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Indiana, has contained pesticides at concentrations that some scientists have linked to birth defects and fertility problems.
In parts of New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, California and other states where sewer systems cannot accommodate heavy rains, untreated human waste has flowed into rivers and washed onto beaches. Drinking water in parts of New Jersey, New York, Arizona and Massachusetts shows some of the highest concentrations of tetrachloroethylene, a dry cleaning solvent that has been linked to kidney damage and cancer. (Specific types of water pollution across the United States will be examined in future Times articles.)
The Times’s research also shows that last year, 40 percent of the nation’s community water systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data. Those violations ranged from failing to maintain proper paperwork to allowing carcinogens into tap water. More than 23 million people received drinking water from municipal systems that violated a health-based standard.
In some cases, people got sick right away. In other situations, pollutants like chemicals, inorganic toxins and heavy metals can accumulate in the body for years or decades before they cause problems. Some of the most frequently detected contaminants have been linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders.
Records analyzed by The Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves. Companies sometimes test what they are dumping only once a quarter, so the actual number of days when they broke the law is often far higher. And some companies illegally avoid reporting their emissions, say officials, so infractions go unrecorded.
Environmental groups say the number of Clean Water Act violations has increased significantly in the last decade. Comprehensive data go back only five years but show that the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act grew more than 16 percent from 2004 to 2007, the most recent year with complete data.
Polluters include small companies, like gas stations, dry cleaners, shopping malls and the Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park in Laporte, Ind., which acknowledged to regulators that it had dumped human waste into a nearby river for three years.
They also include large operations, like chemical factories, power plants, sewage treatment centers and one of the biggest zinc smelters, the Horsehead Corporation of Pennsylvania, which has dumped illegal concentrations of copper, lead, zinc, chlorine and selenium into the Ohio River. Those chemicals can contribute to mental retardation and cancer.
Some violations are relatively minor. But about 60 percent of the polluters were deemed in “significant noncompliance” — meaning their violations were the most serious kind, like dumping cancer-causing chemicals or failing to measure or report when they pollute.
Finally, the Times’s research shows that fewer than 3 percent of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments by state officials. And the E.P.A. has often declined to prosecute polluters or force states to strengthen their enforcement by threatening to withhold federal money or take away powers the agency has delegated to state officials.
Neither Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park nor Horsehead, for instance, was fined for Clean Water Act violations in the last eight years. A representative of Friendly Acres declined to comment. Indiana officials say they are investigating the mobile home park. A representative of Horsehead said the company had taken steps to control pollution and was negotiating with regulators to clean up its emissions.
Numerous state and federal lawmakers said they were unaware that pollution was so widespread.
“I don’t think anyone realized how bad things have become,” said Representative James L. Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, when told of The Times’s findings. Mr. Oberstar is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over many water-quality issues.
“The E.P.A. and states have completely dropped the ball,” he said. “Without oversight and enforcement, companies will use our lakes and rivers as dumping grounds — and that’s exactly what is apparently going on.”
The E.P.A. administrator, Ms. Jackson, whose appointment was confirmed in January, said in an interview that she intended to strengthen enforcement of the Clean Water Act and pressure states to apply the law.
“I’ve been saying since Day One I want to work on these water issues pretty broadly across the country,” she said. On Friday, the E.P.A. said that it was reviewing dozens of coal-mining permits in West Virginia and three other states to make sure they would not violate the Clean Water Act.
After E.P.A. officials received detailed questions from The New York Times in June, Ms. Jackson sent a memo to her enforcement deputy noting that the E.P.A. is “falling short of this administration’s expectations for the effectiveness of our clean water enforcement programs. Data available to E.P.A. shows that, in many parts of the country, the level of significant noncompliance with permitting requirements is unacceptably high and the level of enforcement activity is unacceptably low.”
State officials, for their part, attribute rising pollution rates to increased workloads and dwindling resources. In 46 states, local regulators have primary responsibility for crucial aspects of the Clean Water Act. Though the number of regulated facilities has more than doubled in the last 10 years, many state enforcement budgets have remained essentially flat when adjusted for inflation. In New York, for example, the number of regulated polluters has almost doubled to 19,000 in the last decade, but the number of inspections each year has remained about the same.
But stretched resources are only part of the reason polluters escape punishment. The Times’s investigation shows that in West Virginia and other states, powerful industries have often successfully lobbied to undermine effective regulation.
State officials also argue that water pollution statistics include minor infractions, like failing to file reports, which do not pose risks to human health, and that records collected by The Times failed to examine informal enforcement methods, like sending warning letters.
“We work enormously hard inspecting our coal mines, analyzing water samples, notifying companies of violations when we detect them,” said Randy Huffman, head of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection. “When I look at how far we’ve come in protecting the state’s waters since we took responsibility for the Clean Water Act, I think we have a lot to be proud of.”
But unchecked pollution remains a problem in many states. West Virginia offers a revealing example of why so many companies escape punishment.
Mining companies often wash their coal to remove impurities. The leftover liquid — a black fluid containing dissolved minerals and chemicals, known as sludge or slurry — is often disposed of in vast lagoons or through injection into abandoned mines. The liquid in those lagoons and shafts can flow through cracks in the earth into water supplies. Companies must regularly send samples of the injected liquid to labs, which provide reports that are forwarded to state regulators.
In the eight miles surrounding Mrs. Hall-Massey’s home, coal companies have injected more than 1.9 billion gallons of coal slurry and sludge into the ground since 2004, according to a review of thousands of state records. Millions more gallons have been dumped into lagoons.
These underground injections have contained chemicals at concentrations that pose serious health risks, and thousands of injections have violated state regulations and the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to reports sent to the state by companies themselves.
For instance, three coal companies — Loadout, Remington Coal and Pine Ridge, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, one of the largest coal companies in the world — reported to state officials that 93 percent of the waste they injected near this community had illegal concentrations of chemicals including arsenic, lead, chromium, beryllium or nickel.
Sometimes those concentrations exceeded legal limits by as much as 1,000 percent. Those chemicals have been shown to contribute to cancer, organ failures and other diseases.
But those companies were never fined or punished for those illegal injections, according to state records. They were never even warned that their activities had been noticed.
Remington Coal declined to comment. A representative of Loadout’s parent said the company had assigned its permit to another company, which ceased injecting in 2006. Peabody Energy, which spun off Pine Ridge in 2007, said that some data sent to regulators was inaccurate and that the company’s actions reflected best industry practices.
West Virginia officials, when asked about these violations, said regulators had accidentally overlooked many pollution records the companies submitted until after the statute of limitations had passed, so no action was taken. They also said their studies indicated that those injections could not have affected drinking water in the area and that other injections also had no detectable effect.
State officials noted that they had cited more than 4,200 water pollution violations at mine sites around the state since 2000, as well as conducted thousands of investigations. The state has initiated research about how mining affects water quality. After receiving questions from The Times, officials announced a statewide moratorium on issuing injection permits and told some companies that regulators were investigating their injections.
“Many of the issues you are examining are several years old, and many have been addressed,” West Virginia officials wrote in a statement. The state’s pollution program “has had its share of issues,” regulators wrote. However, “it is important to note that if the close scrutiny given to our state had been given to others, it is likely that similar issues would have been found.”
More than 350 other companies and facilities in West Virginia have also violated the Clean Water Act in recent years, records show. Those infractions include releasing illegal concentrations of iron, manganese, aluminum and other chemicals into lakes and rivers.
As the water in Mrs. Hall-Massey’s community continued to worsen, residents began complaining of increased health problems. Gall bladder diseases, fertility problems, miscarriages and kidney and thyroid issues became common, according to interviews.
When Mrs. Hall-Massey’s family left on vacation, her sons’ rashes cleared up. When they returned, the rashes reappeared. Her dentist told her that chemicals appeared to be damaging her teeth and her son’s, she said. As the quality of her water worsened, Mrs. Hall-Massey’s once-healthy teeth needed many crowns. Her son brushed his teeth often, used a fluoride rinse twice a day and was not allowed to eat sweets. Even so, he continued getting cavities until the family stopped using tap water. By the time his younger brother’s teeth started coming in, the family was using bottled water to brush. He has not had dental problems.
Medical professionals in the area say residents show unusually high rates of health problems. A survey of more than 100 residents conducted by a nurse hired by Mrs. Hall-Massey’s lawyer indicated that as many as 30 percent of people in this area have had their gallbladders removed, and as many as half the residents have significant tooth enamel damage, chronic stomach problems and other illnesses. That research was confirmed through interviews with residents.
It is difficult to determine which companies, if any, are responsible for the contamination that made its way into tap water or to conclude which specific chemicals, if any, are responsible for particular health problems. Many coal companies say they did not pollute the area’s drinking water and chose injection sites that flowed away from nearby homes.
An independent study by a university researcher challenges some of those claims.
“I don’t know what else could be polluting these wells,” said Ben Stout, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University who tested the water in this community and elsewhere in West Virginia. “The chemicals coming out of people’s taps are identical to the chemicals the coal companies are pumping into the ground.”
One night, Mrs. Hall-Massey’s 6-year-old son, Clay, asked to play in the tub. When he got out, his bright red rashes hurt so much he could not fall asleep. Soon, Mrs. Hall-Massey began complaining to state officials. They told her they did not know why her water was bad, she recalls, but doubted coal companies had done anything wrong. The family put their house on the market, but because of the water, buyers were not interested.
In December, Mrs. Hall-Massey and neighbors sued in county court, seeking compensation. That suit is pending. To resolve a related lawsuit filed about the same time, the community today gets regular deliveries of clean drinking water, stored in coolers or large blue barrels outside most homes. Construction began in August on a pipeline bringing fresh water to the community.
But for now most residents still use polluted water to bathe, shower and wash dishes.
“A parent’s only real job is to protect our children,” Mrs. Hall-Massey said. “But where was the government when we needed them to protect us from this stuff?”
Regulators ‘Overwhelmed’
Matthew Crum, a 43-year-old lawyer, wanted to protect people like Mrs. Hall-Massey. That is why he joined West Virginia’s environmental protection agency in 2001, when it became clear that the state’s and nation’s streams and rivers were becoming more polluted.
But he said he quickly learned that good intentions could not compete with intimidating politicians and a fearful bureaucracy.
Mr. Crum grew up during a golden age of environmental activism. He was in elementary school when Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972 in response to environmental disasters, including a fire on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. The act’s goal was to eliminate most water pollution by 1985 and prohibit the “discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts.”
“There were a bunch of us that were raised with the example of the Clean Water Act as inspiration,” he said. “I wanted to be part of that fight.”
In the two decades after the act’s passage, the nation’s waters grew much healthier. The Cuyahoga River, West Virginia’s Kanawha River and hundreds of other beaches, streams and ponds were revitalized.
But in the late 1990s, some states’ enforcement of pollution laws began tapering off, according to regulators and environmentalists. Soon the E.P.A. started reporting that the nation’s rivers, lakes and estuaries were becoming dirtier again. Mr. Crum, after a stint in Washington with the Justice Department and the birth of his first child, joined West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, where new leadership was committed to revitalizing the Clean Water Act.
He said his idealism was tested within two weeks, when he was called to a huge coal spill into a stream.
“I met our inspector at the spill site, and we had this really awkward conversation,” Mr. Crum recalled. “I said we should shut down the mine until everything was cleaned up. The inspector agreed, but he said if he issued that order, he was scared of getting demoted or transferred to the middle of nowhere. Everyone was terrified of doing their job.”
Mr. Crum temporarily shut the mine.
In the next two years, he shut many polluting mines until they changed their ways. His tough approach raised his profile around the state.
Mining companies, worried about attracting Mr. Crum’s attention, began improving their waste disposal practices, executives from that period said. But they also began complaining to their friends in the state’s legislature, they recalled in interviews, and started a whisper campaign accusing Mr. Crum of vendettas against particular companies — though those same executives now admit they had no evidence for those claims.
In 2003, a new director, Stephanie Timmermeyer, was nominated to run the Department of Environmental Protection. One of West Virginia’s most powerful state lawmakers, Eustace Frederick, said she would be confirmed, but only if she agreed to fire Mr. Crum, according to several people who said they witnessed the conversation.
She was given the job and soon summoned Mr. Crum to her office. He was dismissed two weeks after his second child’s birth.
Ms. Timmermeyer, who resigned in 2008, did not return calls. Mr. Frederick died last year.
Since then, hundreds of workplaces in West Virginia have violated pollution laws without paying fines. A half-dozen current and former employees, in interviews, said their enforcement efforts had been undermined by bureaucratic disorganization, a departmental preference to let polluters escape punishment if they promise to try harder, and a revolving door of regulators who leave for higher-paying jobs at the companies they once policed.
“We are outmanned and overwhelmed, and that’s exactly how industry wants us,” said one employee who requested anonymity for fear of being fired. “It’s been obvious for decades that we’re not on top of things, and coal companies have earned billions relying on that.”
In June, four environmental groups petitioned the E.P.A. to take over much of West Virginia’s handling of the Clean Water Act, citing a “nearly complete breakdown” in the state. The E.P.A. has asked state officials to respond and said it is investigating the petition.
Similar problems exist in other states, where critics say regulators have often turned a blind eye to polluters. Regulators in five other states, in interviews, said they had been pressured by industry-friendly politicians to drop continuing pollution investigations.
“Unless the E.P.A. is pushing state regulators, a culture of transgression and apathy sets in,” said William K. Reilly, who led the E.P.A. under President George H. W. Bush.
In response, many state officials defend their efforts. A spokeswoman for West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, for instance, said that between 2006 and 2008, the number of cease-operation orders issued by regulators was 10 percent higher than during Mr. Crum’s two-year tenure.
Mr. Huffman, the department’s head, said there is no political interference with current investigations. Department officials say they continue to improve the agency’s procedures, and note that regulators have assessed $14.7 million in state fines against more than 70 mining companies since 2006.
However, that is about equal to the revenue those businesses’ parent companies collect every 10 hours, according to financial reports. (To find out about every state’s enforcement record and read comments from regulators, visit www.nytimes.com/waterdata.)
“The real test is, is our water clean?” said Mr. Huffman. “When the Clean Water Act was passed, this river that flows through our capital was very dirty. Thirty years later, it’s much cleaner because we’ve chosen priorities carefully.”
Some regulators admit that polluters have fallen through the cracks. To genuinely improve enforcement, they say, the E.P.A. needs to lead.
“If you don’t have vigorous oversight by the feds, then everything just goes limp,” said Mr. Crum. “Regulators can’t afford to have some backbone unless they know Washington or the governor’s office will back them up.”
It took Mr. Crum a while to recover from his firing. He moved to Virginia to work at the Nature Conservancy, an environmental conservation group. Today, he is in private practice and works on the occasional environmental lawsuit.
“We’re moving backwards,” he said, “and it’s heartbreaking.”
Shortcomings of the E.P.A.
The memos are marked “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.”
They were written this year by E.P.A. staff, the culmination of a five-year investigation of states’ enforcement of federal pollution laws. And in bland, bureaucratic terms, they describe a regulatory system — at the E.P.A. and among state agencies — that in many ways simply does not work.
For years, according to one memo, federal regulators knew that more than 30 states had major problems documenting which companies were violating pollution laws. Another notes that states’ “personnel lack direction, ability or training” to levy fines large enough to deter polluters.
But often, the memos say, the E.P.A. never corrected those problems even though they were widely acknowledged. The E.P.A. “may hesitate to push the states” out of “fear of risking their relationships,” one report reads. Another notes that E.P.A. offices lack “a consistent national oversight strategy.”
Some of those memos, part of an effort known as the State Review Framework, were obtained from agency employees who asked for anonymity, and others through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Enforcement lapses were particularly bad under the administration of President George W. Bush, employees say. “For the last eight years, my hands have been tied,” said one E.P.A. official who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.”
The E.P.A. administrators during the last eight years — Christine Todd Whitman, Michael O. Leavitt and Stephen L. Johnson — all declined to comment.
When President Obama chose Ms. Jackson to head the E.P.A., many environmentalists and agency employees were encouraged. During his campaign, Mr. Obama promised to “reinvigorate the drinking water standards that have been weakened under the Bush administration and update them to address new threats.” He pledged to regulate water pollution from livestock operations and push for amendments to the Clean Water Act.
But some worry those promises will not be kept. Water issues have taken a back seat to other environmental concerns, like carbon emissions.
In an interview, Ms. Jackson noted that many of the nation’s waters were healthier today than when the Clean Water Act was passed and said she intended to enforce the law more vigorously. After receiving detailed questions from The Times, she put many of the State Review Framework documents on the agency’s Web site, and ordered more disclosure of the agency’s handling of water issues, increased enforcement and revamped technology so that facilities’ environmental records are more accessible.
“Do critics have a good and valid point when they say improvements need to be made? Absolutely,” Ms. Jackson said. “But I think we need to be careful not to do that by scaring the bejesus out of people into thinking that, boy, are things horrible. What it requires is attention, and I’m going to give it that attention.”
In statements, E.P.A. officials noted that from 2006 to 2008, the agency conducted 11,000 Clean Water Act and 21,000 Safe Drinking Water Act inspections, and referred 146 cases to the Department of Justice. During the 2007 to 2008 period, officials wrote, 92 percent of the population served by community water systems received water that had no reported health-based violations.
The Times’s reporting, the statements added, “does not distinguish between significant violations and minor violations,” and “as a result, the conclusions may present an unduly alarming picture.” They wrote that “much of the country’s water quality problems are caused by discharges from nonpoint sources of pollution, such as agricultural runoff, which cannot be corrected solely through enforcement.”
Ultimately, lawmakers and environmental activists say, the best solution is for Congress to hold the E.P.A. and states accountable for their failures.
The Clean Water Act, they add, should be expanded to police other types of pollution — like farm and livestock runoff — that are largely unregulated. And they say Congress should give state agencies more resources, in the same way that federal dollars helped overhaul the nation’s sewage systems in the 1970s.
Some say changes will not occur without public outrage.
“When we started regulating water pollution in the 1970s, there was a huge public outcry because you could see raw sewage flowing into the rivers,” said William D. Ruckelshaus, who served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard M. Nixon, and then again under President Ronald Reagan.
“Today the violations are much more subtle — pesticides and chemicals you can’t see or smell that are even more dangerous,” he added. “And so a lot of the public pressure on regulatory agencies has ebbed away.”
Water: A Rising Tide of Smart Investing Plays
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2009/pi20090422_843804.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_investing
As water prices climb globally, companies are developing ways to conserve, clean, and meter consumption. Here are some promising contenders
By David Bogoslaw
With the yearly Earth Day celebration stretching into its fifth decade, water seems to have risen in the public consciousness as one of the planet's chief environmental concerns. There is growing recognition that this resource—which has no substitute—may turn out to be the hot commodity of the 21st century, much as oil has been for much of the past century.
The higher value ascribed to water has less to do with depletion and scarcity than cost. While there's as much water on the planet as there has ever been, cheap water is in short supply. "All the easily tapped sources have already been tapped," by damming up rivers and other methods, says Neil Berlant, lead manager of the PFW Water Fund (PFWAX), the only open-end mutual fund focused exclusively on water-related stocks. What remains are more expensive sources of water—from oceans, groundwater, or reclaimed used water—which require either desalination, chemical disinfectants, or other processes to be made suitable for drinking.
There's plenty of technology available to clean up water to meet increasingly strict public safety standards, but consumers will have to get use to paying higher rates to local water systems to pay for the necessary treatment. People in the developing world have long had little access to clean drinking water because of how much it costs.
Privatization wave is coming to water
Berlant predicts that water prices across the U.S. will double or triple over the next few years—though that's not as scary as it sounds because the increase will come off a fairly low base. He expects the higher cost to unleash a wave of business opportunities as people shop for products and services to improve water quality. This is compounded by the need for water of much higher purity than in the past for such sensitive manufacturing processes as the production of semiconductors, whose optimal performance depends on cleaner chips, he says.
Another trend in water is the move around the world toward privatization of local water systems as the costs of repairing infrastructure and providing clean water exceed what most municipalities can bear. Of nearly 60,000 local water systems in the U.S., the great majority serve fewer than 3,000 people and only 15% are owned by investors. Foreign-based companies such as Suez Environnement and Veolia Environnement have been expanding beyond their home territories to buy up public water companies in the U.S. and across the developing world.
The extended downturn in the U.S. housing market, by causing the tax base for many parts of the country to shrink, is likely speeding up the privatization process, says Judd Hill, a managing partner at Washington-based Summit Global Management, who focuses on new investment ideas in the water industry.
The thought of investing in privatized water utilities is sure to stir some uneasiness, if not revolt, among socially responsible investors who look not only at returns on their invested capital but also at the impact of management practices on a company's employees and customers. There has been a backlash against privatization in such places as Uruguay, where the local populace ousted a Suez subsidiary for not doing the work that had been contracted and for denying service to those who couldn't afford connections. The push to make access to water a human right is likely to intensify now that Canadian water activist Maude Barlow has been appointed the United Nations' first advisor on water.
Seeking pure-play water companies
Still, there's growing recognition of the need for further market-oriented solutions, since people lack sufficient motivation to use water more efficiently unless they're paying more for it.
The water industry is undergoing a transition that will result in a more clearly defined structure enabling the emergence of pure-play companies dedicated to resolving water challenges, says Steve Hoffmann, an analyst for the Palisades Water Indexes and author of a new book, Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource. Until then, investors have to decide whether or not big conglomerates have enough exposure to water, amid all their other businesses, to justify investing in them, he says. Despite their accumulation of water treatment expertise in recent years, Hoffmann excludes General Electric (GE), Dow Chemical (DOW) and similar companies from the Palisades indexes he helped to build because their exposure to water is too small a part of overall operations.
While the industry is now extremely fragmented, the number of companies investors can choose among is sure to increase over time as mergers and acquisitions occur, says Hoffmann. "Customer demands for comprehensive, cost-effective solutions discourage a segmented industry structure," he writes in his book.
Companies focused on instrumentation, regulatory compliance monitoring, membrane manufacturing, pumps, and environmental remediation will be among the candidates for consolidation in the years ahead, he believes.
Some cities still need water meters
Given the scarcity of cheap water, companies focused on water conservation are a natural place for investors to start. Since irrigation uses the majority of the planet's clean water, Lindsay (LNN) and Valmont Industries (VMI) are key components of Berlant's fund and the PowerShares exchange traded funds, which license and track the Palisades indexes. Lindsay and Valmont are the leading makers of more efficient irrigation equipment, controlling more than two-thirds of the U.S. market.
Metering is another critical way to reduce water usage, and some major cities remain only partially metered. Hoffmann recommends water meter manufacturers such as Badger Meter (BMI) and meter service providers such as Itron (ITRI) for direct conservation plays.
The rising need for desalination makes Consolidated Water (CWCO) a good bet, says Berlant. The company cleans up seawater to provide all of the water used by a number of Caribbean islands and is steadily expanding its customer base, he says. He also likes Energy Recovery (ERII), whose entire business is concentrated in making equipment that significantly reduces energy consumption in desalination plants.
As consumer demand for home-filtered water increases, Calgon Carbon (CCC) is in a unique position to benefit. Calgon is a leading supplier of activated carbon, the only element used to treat water in kitchen-sink filters and in refrigerator ice makers, as well as in big water treatment facilities.
Engineering and consulting plays
An estimated need for up to $1 trillion in infrastructure repairs in the U.S. over the next 20 years, after decades of neglect, make Mueller Water Products (MWA) a good investment, says Berlant. Mueller sells assorted components, from water hydrants to meters to pipes. And the need to replace old and leaky pipes will also benefit Northwest Pipe (NWPX) and Ameron International (AMN). Trading only on the pink sheets right now is Geospatial Holdings (GSPH), a small Pittsburgh-based company that uses Wi-Fi technology to map pipes so local water utilities can find them to make repairs. Hill at Summit likens the service to an underground Google Maps.
Most of the advanced technology options being developed to treat, and in some cases reclaim, wastewater are being driven by tougher and expanding regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hoffmann thinks some of the best bets for investors are a few of the engineering and consulting companies that already do a lot of water-related remediation. "They look at the management of water in a very comprehensive, integrated fashion and are at the forefront of knowledge-specific applications, like watershed regulations," he says.
He includes a number of these companies in the Palisades indexes, including Aecom Technology (ACM) and the Canadian company Stantec (STN), both of which specialize in using biological membrane reactors to remove polluting nutrients. He also likes Tetra Tech (TTEK), which follows the same integrated approach to wastewater management
One of the most pressing environmental issues concerns farm runoff of storm water loaded with nitrogen and other chemical fertilizer compounds and urban runoff of water full of oil and other pollutants washed off dirty streets and parking lots. Excessive runoff that can't flow back into groundwater ends up in the nearest rivers, lakes, and oceans, resulting in a profusion of algae and other plant life that suck up oxygen when they die, creating so-called dead zones that can no longer neutralize pollutants.
The Artemis Project: award to Abtech
A wellspring of creative solutions has emerged in response to this problem—from rooftop rain gardens to permeable asphalt to underground cells that allow tree roots to grow to full capacity and thereby absorb more rainwater—but most are in the early stages of development and not yet available for investment.
The Artemis Project, a San Diego consulting firm focused on the water industry, is trying to make private equity investors more aware of opportunities in new technologies aimed at solving complex water issues. This week, Artemis launched an annual competition that will give awards to companies judged to have the most investment potential. Its top choice this year went to Scottsdale (Ariz.)-based AbTech Industries, a privately held company that makes a relatively low-tech smart sponge that removes oil and grease from runoff water before it can harm large bodies of water.
Among other companies creating innovative technologies on the brink of public consciousness is BPL Global, which uses smart sensors to marry electronic devices that can measure a community's carbon and water footprints and enable better management both of water flow and energy consumption, says Hill at Summit.
If the 120 international companies that the Artemis Project has identified as having promising water solutions are any indication, the tide of innovation—and investing opportunities—should continue to rise for many years to come as the world's water worries grab the spotlight.
Bogoslaw is a reporter for BusinessWeek's Investing channel.
Simply put, every drop of water counts
Halt global warming? It's simple, one expert says: to save energy, save water.
By Emily Green
September 5, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-dry5-2009sep05,0,964585.story
More than 1,000 climate experts from around the world gathered last month in Stockholm for World Water Week. If you didn't read about it or hear about it on TV, it's not necessarily because of the crisis besetting modern journalism. It could easily be the subject. If there is anything that can clear a room faster than a plague of toads, it's discussion of climate change and water.
Peter Gleick, a MacArthur fellow and president of a nonprofit environmental and public policy group called the Pacific Institute in Oakland, was in Stockholm for the meeting. He is, above any Californian, our man on the unmentionable.
So, are there ways to address this topic, I asked Gleick recently, without leaving everyone feeling utterably depressed and helpless? Absolutely, Gleick responded. "If you want to save energy, save water."
Aha, logical. Energy saved amounts to greenhouse gas emissions prevented. Energy is a hidden cost of water. In 2004, Gleick published a report with the Natural Resources Defense Council on the subject. As the date of the report suggests, the knowledge isn't new, but comprehension is so low, thousands of climatologists still feel compelled to sing the message in Stockholm.
It may be the stealthy quality of water. It simply seems to flow naturally into our sprinklers and garden hoses, while it's actually moved to us. This takes so much power that the pumps that convey and treat California's water account for roughly 20% of the electricity consumed in the state.
Southern California, particularly, drives that figure way up. We are so far away from the sources of our water in the Sacramento Delta and the Colorado River that the energy cost for bringing water to us is 50 times higher than for Northern Californians and five times the rate for the typical American.
Why so high? Water is heavy. In the case of the State Water Project coming from the Sacramento Delta, Southern California supplies must be pumped 2,000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains. This is "the highest lift of any water system in the world," according to the Pacific Institute and Natural Resources Defense Council report.
Numbers making you dizzy? Then turn your attention to twin maps of the southwestern U.S. from a recent White House report on global climate change.
They show two futures projected by federal climate modelers: The most optimistic model, the "Lower Emission Scenario," predicts that in the last two decades of this century, Southern California will be lucky to lose only 20% to 30% of its current precipitation.
If we fail to restrict our energy consumption and cap our carbon emissions, the second map shows precipitation falling by 40%, not just here but also in the places that supply our water.
Gleick said saving hot water has a double benefit because it saves the energy to move as well as heat the water. But he isn't picky about where we find the savings.
"If you can, if you're replacing your washing machine, buy a high-efficiency water machine and you save a huge amount of energy and water and, in the long run, money," Gleick said. "But even if you're saving cold water, that's water that doesn't have to be pumped over the Tehachapi Mountains or water that in the future doesn't have to be desalinated."
This column being about gardening, an observation: About 40% to 60% of our water goes outdoors, depending on our climate zone. There's no time better than now to kill your lawn and go native. What Gleick was telling us, and what those maps were underscoring, was that we could act now to arrest global warming and plant gardens fit for the future.
Rebates are still being given by major water authorities for all manner of water-saving devices: washing machines, dishwashers, garden sprinkler and drip systems, toilets, shower heads. To find out details, look up BeWaterWise.com.
Web links to the reports cited in this column can be found on our L.A. at Home blog, latimes.com/home, where Green's columns appear weekly. She also writes on water issues at http://www.chanceofrain.com.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Drought Withers Iraqi Farms, Food Supplies
by Deborah Amos
September 3, 2009
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112494850
Ashur Mohammed, 60, checks his land in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, on July 9. Below-average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers — something the Iraqis have blamed on dams in neighboring Turkey and Syria — have left Iraq bone-dry for a second straight year. [Hadi Mizban/AP]
Iraq has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, but it's running out of another valuable commodity: water.
Iraq's ancient name, Mesopotamia, means the land between two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flow into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. But water is now so limited for agriculture that Iraq imports 80 percent of the food Iraqis eat.
During the holy month of Ramadan, traditional foods that typically come from Iraqi farms are getting harder to find.
One Farmer's Dilemma
Iraq once had the most fertile lands in the region, but the low waters of the Tigris serve as a reminder of an environmental disaster — a two-year drought — along with decades of war and mismanagement.
For Iraqi rice farmers, the lack of water is a catastrophe. Kamel al-Kafaji has been farming since he was a boy, but the future is bleak for his own son. Kafaji grows ambar rice, an aromatic variety that is especially popular during Ramadan — part of a food tradition when Iraqis break their fast at sunset.
An Iraqi rice farmer performs targiyya — a process of redistributing rice plants from an overcrowded part of the rice field to a less crowded area.[Ghassan Adnan for NPR]
Ghassan Adnan for NPRAn Iraqi rice farmer performs targiyya — a process of redistributing rice plants from an overcrowded part of the rice field to a less crowded area.
"It's no lie — Iraqis cannot live without ambar rice," he says.
Placing the small rice plants into wet ground by hand is hard work in the burning heat, but harder still is getting enough water to keep the plants alive.
"It is a tragedy. I have planted 50 percent of the land while only 20 percent will survive till the harvest time. The reason behind this is the water shortage," Kafaji says.
Most of Kafaji's soil is dusty and cracked. In this rice belt south of Baghdad, many farmers have abandoned the land and joined the urban poor. The Iraqi government has banned rice farming all together in the southern provinces because there's not enough water to sustain it.
Water Wars?
Iraq's water shortage is also a regional political problem that was years in the making.
Latif Rashid, Iraq's water resources minister, explains that Iraq is what he calls a downstream country. "This is Turkey," he says, pointing to a large regional map in his office. "There are reservoirs ... and dams on every branch."
Turkey and Syria are upstream countries. The map charts every water diversion built by the two neighbors over the years.
"Saddam didn't care about it, he didn't have a relationship with them," Rashid says, referring to the late dictator, ousted in the 2003 U.S. invasion. "When I was appointed minister of water I sent a message to Turkey and to Syria saying: 'Look, let us talk about the water issue, and this is very important.' They were surprised."
The region's water ministers are scheduled to meet in September after Rashid angrily accused the Turks of broken promises to increase water flows to the Euphrates.
The water shortage is so acute across so many borders that an international group monitoring sustainable development warns shortages could lead to water wars — armed conflicts for control of resources. That's why Rashid is pushing for a regional agreement.
"There is just not enough water for everybody. If we do not manage it everybody will be cheated," he says.
But farmer Kafaji says there is plenty of cheating across Iraq's rice fields: The government rations water, but the farmers find ways around it.
"Let me tell you a secret: Even the water pumps we use are not licensed ones because water ministry won't allow us to do so," he says. "We knew that it was illegal but we had to; it was emergency case."
Will A Favorite Disappear?
In a Baghdad market, shoppers stand over mounds of ambar rice, taking in the aroma before haggling over the price.
"Well, there is nothing tastier than ambar rice, especially for us in Ramadan month," says Rafid Radhi, who is shopping for his mother.
What would happen if he didn't come home with ambar — if this favorite rice disappeared from the market?
"My mother would kick us out of the house," he laughs.
But with the continuing drought — and no regional water plan — Iraq's agriculture disaster could mean the end for a traditional food that has long been part of the country's identity.
PEAK WATER
by James Quinn
August 31, 2009
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0831.html
This company has a Great Solution to stretching California's water--
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Serious drought puts Kenya at famine risk
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
Published: Tuesday, August 25, 2009
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1928935
A park ranger from the Kenyan Wildlife Service walks past the skeleton of a hippopotamus that died from drought. More than a million people are at serious risk of famine due to dry weather in that country.
The United Nations is warning more than one million Kenyans face the immediate possibility of famine as a result of the country's worst drought in a decade.
Crops that were due to be harvested in September have shrivelled and cattle are dying by the thousands. The Kenya Red Cross estimates up to 10 million people could face hunger and starvation within six months as a result of a poor harvest, crop failures and rising commodity prices.
"Red lights are flashing across the country," said Burkard Oberle, the World Food Program's (WFP) country director in Kenya. "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying. We face a huge challenge."
The WFP is seeking to raise US$230-million in emergency funds to feed 1.2 million famine victims, in addition to the 2.6 million Kenyans it already feeds. The most vulnerable are the poor in urban slums, pastoralists and farmers in the remote arid and semi-arid lands that account for almost 80% of the landscape, says a Kenya Red Cross report.
It is the country's worst drought in years, but comes after three or four consecutive failed rainy seasons in many areas. Food production has dropped to only about 80% of what it was in 2007 and the price of corn, a staple food, has more than doubled. Supplies have shrunk by nearly 28%.
"The current food security situation remains highly precarious," warns the UN's Famine Early Warning System Network, which predicts the situation could rapidly worsen in Kenya's southeast and coastal lowlands.
According to the Kenya Red Cross, the persistent drought "has put lives and livestock at risk" as pastoralists and subsistence farmers are being driven from the land.
"In the pastoral areas, average walking distance to water has doubled and exerted undue pressure on existing boreholes that serve both humans and livestock," it says.
Some pastoralist communities are taking their livestock more than 40 kilometres away to obtain water, while others are butchering their herds to cut their losses and moving to urban slums. The crisis is aggravated by the lingering after-effects of post-election violence in 2007-08, which displaced tens of thousands of people.
Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister, has warned of a possible "catastrophe" if seasonal rains do not come in October and November, saying a prolonged drought could contribute to inter-clan violence.
For now, the drought is being blamed for prolonged electrical blackouts in Kenya's crowded cities, since there is not enough water in some rivers to drive hydroelectric power plants. The drought is just the latest emergency plunging East Africa into crisis.
Yesterday, the UN's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit warned half the Somali population is in need of humanitarian aid as a result of the country's rapidly deteriorating security situation.
Without an effective government since 1991, Somalia is convulsed by a power struggle between Islamist rebels and a UN-backed transitional government. Fighting has intensified in recent months in many of the same areas that are already reporting problems with food distribution.
Somalia has 1.4 million internally displaced people and hundreds of thousands have fled to neighbouring Kenya.
According to the UN, one in five Somali children is acutely malnourished. "Somalia faces its worse humanitarian crisis in 18 years amid an escalating civil war," the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis report says.
National Post
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
Our Water Supply, Down the Drain
By Robert Glennon
Sunday, August 23, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101773.html
TUCSON
In the United States, we constantly fret about running out of oil. But we should be paying more attention to another limited natural resource: water. A water crisis is threatening many parts of the country -- not just the arid West.
In 2008, metro Atlanta (home to nearly 5 million people) came within 90 days of seeing its principal water supply, Lake Lanier, dry up. Rainstorms eased the drought, but last month a federal judge ruled that Georgia may no longer use the lake as a municipal supply. The state is now scrambling to overturn that ruling; but Alabama and Florida will oppose Georgia's efforts.
In Florida, excessive groundwater pumping has dried up scores of lakes. In South Carolina, a paper company recently furloughed hundreds of workers because low river flows prevented the company from discharging its wastewater. That state's battle with North Carolina over the Catawba River has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Water has become so contentious nationwide that more than 30 states are fighting with their neighbors over water.
Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, is too shallow to float fully loaded freighters, dramatically increasing shipping costs. North of Boston, the Ipswich River has gone dry in five of the past eight years. In 2007, the hamlet of Orme, Tenn., ran out of water entirely, forcing it to truck in supplies from Alabama.
Droughts make matters worse, but the real problem isn't shrinking water levels. It's population growth. Since California's last major drought ended in 1992, the state's population has surged by a staggering 7 million people. Some 100,000 people move to the Atlanta area every year. Over the next four decades, the country will add 120 million people, the equivalent of one person every 11 seconds.
More people will put a huge strain on our water resources, but another problem comes in something that sounds relatively benign: renewable energy, at least in some forms, such as biofuels. Refining one gallon of ethanol requires four gallons of water. This turns out to be a drop in the bucket compared with how much water it takes to grow enough corn to refine one gallon of ethanol: as much as 2,500 gallons.
In the United States, we've traditionally engineered our way out of water shortages by diverting more from rivers, building dams or drilling groundwater wells. But many rivers, including the Colorado and the Rio Grande, already dry up each year. The dam-building era from the 1930s to the 1960s tamed so many rivers that only 60 in the country remain free-flowing. Meanwhile, we're pumping so much water from wells that the levels in aquifers are plummeting. We're running out of technological fixes.
Some dreamers gaze upon distant sources of water and imagine that the problem is solved. Plans to divert water from rivers in British Columbia or tow icebergs from Alaska periodically arise. An entrepreneur in Colorado, Aaron Million, recently proposed a $4 billion, 400-mile pipeline to transport water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, located on the Green River in Wyoming and Utah, to Denver and Colorado Springs. But the dreamers tend not to address the immense costs, significant environmental objections or regulatory nightmares associated with such grandiose proposals.
More viable solutions include desalination of ocean water, reuse of municipal waste and aggressive conservation strategies. But none of these is a cure-all. Desalination is expensive, burns energy and generates a thorny waste problem. Nor is reclaiming water -- that is, reusing water from the sewage system -- a silver-bullet answer to the crisis. Aside from the major "yuck" factor associated with the idea of potable toilet water, it's also quite expensive, requiring a set of pipes that is completely separate from the drinking-water system.
Conservation does work. In places such as San Antonio, Albuquerque, Tucson and Long Beach, Calif., aggressive conservation programs have reduced consumption dramatically. But it's not enough.
We need a new water policy in the United States. Americans do not pay the real cost of the water that we use. In fact, we don't pay for water at all. The check that citizens write to their municipal water department or private water company covers only the cost of service, plus a small profit for the private company. There is no charge for the water itself.
Last summer, as the price of gas inched up over $4 a gallon, Toyota dealers couldn't keep fuel-efficient Priuses in stock. We should apply that pricing lesson if we want to conserve water, using increasing block rates to discourage profligate water use. Tucson does that and adds a surcharge for excessive use in the summer, when water mostly goes to fill swimming pools and irrigate landscaping.
The idea of charging for water offends many people who think that would be like charging for air. Is it immoral to extract fees for an essential resource? Precisely because water is a public -- and exhaustible -- resource, the government has an obligation to manage it wisely.
Think of our water supply as a giant milkshake, and think of each demand for water as a straw in the glass. Most states permit a limitless number of straws -- and that has to change.
The West, one of the thirstiest parts of the country, is developing a system that should lead the way: the use of market forces to reallocate water. In eastern Oregon, along the Middle Fork of the John Day River, the Oregon Water Trust persuaded third-generation ranchers Pat and Hedy Voigt to turn off their irrigation system each year from July 20 until the end of the growing season. The 6.5 million gallons per day that would have been diverted to grow alfalfa now augment river flows and improve the habitat of endangered salmon and steelhead trout. The $700,000 paid to the Voigts allowed them to make substantial on-farm improvements.
Taking their straw out of the glass is one step toward keeping us from getting parched.
Robert Glennon is a professor of law at the University of Arizona and the author of "Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What to Do About It."
The real cost of our food
Page last updated at 13:24 GMT, Monday, 17 August 2009 14:24 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8205385.stm
>Agree. There are many Peaks. Water, oil, natural resources. I feel like the village idiot for my planting flowers, trees, vegetables, and taking care of the land.
Incidentally, to collect and conserve water, a friend gave me a great helping hand as you can see in the following post: #msg-40720352 Two more water barrels will be set up next week.
Yes, few understand the urgency to conserving water. To me, Los Vegas is a joke, as exemplified by its extravagant wasting of water.
sumi
Folks are blind to this are they not???
The show must go on
Sunday, August 23, 2009
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2009/08/show-must-go-on_5352.html
>
Paris, But Not France
It is a sign that the world may be upside down when French tourists in Las Vegas take pictures of themselves in front of the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino complex which includes a half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower. And, yet this is not the strangest behavior I observed recently during a trip to southern Nevada, an area that along with the much of the West is suffering through the worst drought on record.
As a visitor to Las Vegas you could be forgiven for not understanding that the city is suffering a prolonged and extreme drought. Yes, there was a small sign in the bathroom of my hotel room that read: "Dear Guest, Southern Nevada and the West are experiencing extreme drought conditions." It suggested reusing towels as do most hotels now, even ones not located in drought-striken areas. But it did not suggest any other measures I might take.
Outside the hotel and in seeming contradiction to the bathroom message, the Las Vegas strip is brimming with so-called "water features," a term taken from geology for naturally occurring water on the earth's surface or underground. But these are anything but natural. Perhaps the most spectacular is the fountain at the Bellagio which has water jets that shoot maybe 100 feet into the air and dance to tunes broadcast by cleverly concealed outdoor loudspeakers. (The link leads to a video of the fountain in action though one must really be there to appreciate it fully.) The pool from which this bit of spectacle originates looks like a small reservoir several football fields in size.
Frank Sinatra and the Fountain
As Frank Sinatra crooned "Luck Be a Lady," the evaporation from the water jets was so great that the Nevada desert air was transformed for a few minutes into something akin to my own muggy Michigan summer atmosphere. My face ended up dripping not from spray, but from sweat--even in the still searing nighttime heat that generally leaves one hot and dry rather than hot and sweaty.
At the New York, New York hotel and casino one need only stand outside to experience the Statue of Liberty in a fake New York harbor complete with a squirting fireboat and a Brooklyn Bridge that you can actually walk over. This "water feature" was one of only two on which I saw a small plaque which mentioned the drought. It read:
New York New York is proud to operate this water feature in full compliance with all drought ordinances. A current water efficiency and drought response plan is on file with local water purveyors.
One wonders about the efficacy of these ordinances if they allow such continued profligate water use. And, in fact, it turns out that water features at resorts in Las Vegas are exempt from these ordinances. Nevertheless, some hotel owners have responded with extraordinary conservation efforts. MGM is featured in a video on the Southern Nevada Water Authority site for its efforts. http://www.snwa.com/cfml/video/index.cfml (Click on "Conservation" and then "Rebates and Programs" to find this video.) Yet, MGM continues to operate huge water features at its Mirage and Treasure Island hotels albeit with so-called "gray water" generated by guests in its hotel rooms and purified on site for this purpose.
The water authority claims that hotels and casinos only consume about 4 percent of southern Nevada's water. But, of course, they are leaving out all the vendors who sell to and service the hotels and casinos, all the people who work there and thus live in the city's apartments and homes that use water, and all the ancillary businesses that serve the people who work and live in Las Vegas, i.e. the banks, laudromats, car washes, restaurants, day care facilities, schools, and so on.
Las Vegas is built on gambling. Tourism is a major driver behind the city's growth. The people who flock there often find work in the so-called "gaming industry." Without gambling Las Vegas would still be a backwater town servicing ranchers, farmers and the remaining mining industry in Nevada.
Lake Mead's Bathtub Ring
A tourist flying into Las Vegas might be alerted to the actual situation by looking out his or her airplane window to view the noticeable white ring around Lake Mead, a lake created on the Colorado River by Hoover Dam and the source for 90 percent of the city's water. The ring is the result of the deposition of minerals on the lake floor in better times. The 10-year drought has lowered the lake level more than 120 feet from its most recent peak in 1998. The lake is now at about 40 percent of its capacity.
So quickly is Lake Mead falling that an intake pipe which supplies 40 percent of Las Vegas' water may emerge above the lake's surface by 2012. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) is working furiously to lay pipe for a new intake that will assure continued supplies should the lake fall below the current intake on schedule. The authority is a consortium of water districts that act together on water issues.
But the new intake may not be enough. A recent report from two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography calculates that there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will cease to supply water to the millions that rely on it by 2021. They calculate a 10 percent chance that this could occur by 2014 and a 50 percent chance that lake levels will drop below those necessary to generate electricity from Hoover Dam's many generating turbines. Their study assumes no changes in water management. But they hope to prompt radical changes in that management with their conclusions. (For the complete study, http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/papers/Barnett_Pierce_2008_JWRR_Lake_Mead.pdf It should provide a gripping read for anyone who lives in and around southern Nevada.)
The study's authors indirectly point out that Hoover Dam and the communities that rely on the Colorado River for water have grown up in what might turn out to be a rather wet period in the western United States. They note that average Colorado River flows over the last 500 years are less than those over the last century or the last 50 years. If that is any indication, the West may now be experiencing the new normal.
Despite all this Patricia Mulroy, manager of the SNWA, insists that Las Vegas' water troubles shouldn't be cause for limiting growth. She told Bloomberg that she expects growth in Las Vegas to continue because many Americans prefer living in the Southwest over other locations in the United States.
Mulroy's hopes for continued growth lie north of Las Vegas where she wants to tap groundwater resources currently used by ranchers, farmers and rural communities in the Snake Valley and nearby areas that straddle Nevada and Utah. While driving through areas in southern Nevada and Utah still used for ranching, I was struck by the number of irrigated fields growing feed crops of hay and alfalfa. Even more striking was that the large spray irrigation systems were turned on during the midday when evaporation is at its peak. The midday temperatures were well above 100 degrees when I passed some fields being watered in Nevada.
Much of the West's and the nation's water is used for irrigation. In the United States, the portion of water withdrawals used for irrigation in 2000, the last year for which complete figures are available, was 34 percent, according to the U. S. Geological Survey. This contrasts with 11 percent for what is called public supply for homes and businesses and another 1 percent brought up through private wells, all for household use.
Mulroy complained years ago about the profligate ways of ranchers and farmers in her region and little seems to have changed. Moreover, these same ranchers and farmers are disinclined to share their water with Las Vegas. And, a recent agreement between Nevada and Utah would put the water out of reach until 2019 if both states accept it, something that isn't a forgone conclusion.
Farmers, ranchers and rural residents in the area that would be affected by Las Vegas' groundwater withdrawals fear that their already arid landscape will end up being desiccated. They point to California's Owens Valley where Los Angeles in the early part of the last century secured water rights and shipped the valley's water to the city. Owens Lake dried up and became an alkali flat responsible for local dust storms, vegetation changed, and farming and ranching declined for lack of water.
Also in question is whether Las Vegas will be able to afford the estimated $3 billion cost of a pipeline from the north since its bond rating is in peril because of the deteriorating economy and the devastating effect that has had on tourism in the city.
All Dressed Up, But No Place To Go
Meanwhile, visitors to Las Vegas continue to ride in gondolas on fake canals in front of The Venetian hotel. I paced off the length of the ride, and the maximum distance one-way appears to be about 200 feet. But it does include passing under a bridge. There's an indoor version, too. Across the street at the Mirage one can enjoy waterfalls with flaming volcanoes that simultaneously deplete water and natural gas. And, there are countless exterior misting systems used to cool off outdoor diners for those who prefer to waste water while sitting down.
You are allowed to wonder why this writer even visited Las Vegas given his previous writings. I was on my way to a family hiking vacation in southern Utah, a vacation generously organized by one family member working in a national park there. Las Vegas was the closest city via air to my final destination. Other family members wanted to stay in Las Vegas a few days before the hiking adventure. In part, it seems this was to offer a subsidy to wealthy casino owners by means of the gambling tables and slot machines. And, I confess that in the absence of anything else to do, these owners received a small subsidy from me.
For now the water authorities and the casino owners agree that despite the drought, the show must go on. The city's residents are counting on it. The state of Nevada is counting on it. Perhaps even the whole country is counting on it. But I'm guessing that the small amount I surrendered at Las Vegas' gambling emporiums may come in handy for the city's beleaguered casino tycoons as they are gripped ever tighter by the triple threat of worldwide economic decline, disappearing water and peak oil. These developments are likely to drive operating costs through the roof even as they reduce the ability of customers to pay. That casts doubt on whether a show that supposedly must go on will go on very far into the future.
Photos Courtesy of Olga Bonfiglio
The term Peak Water is the point when water which was once abundant is or has become more scarce. Indicators of this point will center on the cost of water and its availability. The latter indicates to users that conservation has now become imperiative to preserve this valuable commodity.
Unfortunately any commodity which once was abundant will always be treated as abundant even when the warning signs indicate a scarcity is developing and that conservation is warranted. The world is facing this predicament as population growth continues almost unabated, but commodities including water are not increasing.
The purpose of this board is to discuss the trends that are affecting the availability of pure water found deep in the ground, and in fresh water lakes, streams and rivers.
Ground water is found in aquifers. "An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, silt, or clay) from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer
Without adequate pure water, all you can envision of the earth is a picture of a desert void of plant growth. Simply put, life will cease to exist without pure water.
The salt water of the earth is much more plentiful and supports marine organisms, which are important food source, but cannot be readily used directly to drink or irrigate the land masses.
Pure water, on the other hand, is nesessary for every human being and animal. Compromised water will adversely affect people's health. Prolonged consumption of impure water can have dire results.
USGS Groundwater Watch
http://groundwaterwatch.usgs.gov/
Peak Oil #board-6609
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