All Entries in the "Water" Category
EPA: 1M gallons of oil may be in Mich. river
EPA says 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled in Mich. river, governor criticizes cleanup.
Federal officials now estimate that more than 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled into a major river in southern Michigan, and the governor is sharply criticizing clean-up efforts as “wholly inadequate.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the update Wednesday night, shortly after Gov. Jennifer Granholm lambasted attempts to contain the oil flowing down the Kalamazoo River. She warned of a “tragedy of historic proportions” if the oil reaches Lake Michigan, which is still at least 80 miles downstream from where oil has been seen.
Granholm called on the federal government for more help, saying resources being marshaled by the EPA and Enbridge Inc., which owns the pipeline that leaked the oil, were “wholly inadequate.”
Full Story: EPA: 1M gallons of oil may be in Mich. river | Raw Story.
Michigan Oil Spill: Oil Halfway To Lake Michigan, Mayor Daley Responds
Oil from a pipeline spill in Michigan early this week has been on the move through area waterways in recent days–and some fear that it could enter Lake Michigan.
The trouble began about 9 p.m. Sunday, when an oil pipeline owned by Enbridge Liquids Pipelines sprung a leak in Marshall Township. The pipeline was shut down–but not before it leaked an estimated one million gallons of oil that began flowing down the Kalamazoo River.
The oil is now about 80 miles from Lake Michigan and moving toward the lake, the Chicago Tribune reports. During a Thursday press conference, Mayor Daley said the oil spill threatens the Midwest’s drinking water. The Tribune reports:
Full Story: Michigan Oil Spill: Oil Halfway To Lake Michigan, Mayor Daley Responds.
Weighing Safety of Weed Killer in Drinking Water, EPA Relies Heavily on Industry-Backed Studies
Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review.
Meanwhile, some independent studies documenting potentially harmful effects on animals and humans are not included in the body of research the EPA deems relevant to its safety review, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found. These studies include many that have been published in respected scientific journals.
Even so, the EPA says that it would be “very difficult for someone to put a thumb on the scale” to slant the outcome.
Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S. An estimated 76 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on corn and other fields in the U.S. each year, sometimes ending up in rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies. It has been the focus of intense scientific debate over its potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and hormonal and reproductive problems. As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported in a series of articles last fall, the EPA failed to warn the public that the weed-killer had been found at levels above federal safety limits in drinking water in at least four states. Some water utilities are suing Syngenta to have it pay their costs of filtering the chemical.
A human right Canada rejects: Access to clean water – thestar.com
Contary to what Ottawa says, UN convention would not compel exports to U.S.
On June 17, Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, presented a draft resolution declaring the human right to “available, safe, acceptable, accessible and affordable water and sanitation” to a closed-door consultation at the UN General Assembly that will be dealt with over the next several weeks. This is the first time the General Assembly has been asked directly to deal with this issue and it presents a huge test for the world and for Canada.
When the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area. But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world.
Nearly 2 billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and 3 billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. Every eight seconds, a child dies of water-borne disease, in every case preventable if their parents had money to pay for water.
Full Story: A human right Canada rejects: Access to clean water – thestar.com.
Fracking Tales: Stories From the Frontlines of Gas Drilling
Since we launched, we’ve been reporting on the environmental threats of drilling in natural gas reserves around the country. (Here’s a good primer on the process of hydraulic fracking that is used to release the gas.) The potential risks of hydro-facking have been gaining attention, and we wanted to point to two on-the-ground stories that have recently come out.
This month’s Vanity Fair has a long piece, “A Colossal Fracking Mess,” on the human and environmental effects of the drilling. It follows Dimock, a town in northeastern Pennsylvania, where residents are fighting the hydraulic fracking that they say has contaminated the town’s aquifer. The story reports that the water supply is so harmful that the town is “now known as the place where, over the past two years, people’s water started turning brown and making them sick, one woman’s water well spontaneously combusted, and horses and pets mysteriously began to lose their hair.” We reported on Dimock multiple times last year. Our lead reporter on gas drilling, Abrahm Lustgarten, wrote that Dimock was “ground zero for drilling the Marcellus Shale, a prized deposit of natural gas that is increasingly touted as one of the country’s most abundant and cleanest alternatives to oil.”
Full Story: On The Hill: Fracking Tales: Stories From the Frontlines of Gas Drilling.
‘Gasland’ Documentary Shows Water That Burns, Toxic Effects Of Natural Gas Drilling (VIDEO)
What do you do when a gas company offers nearly $100,000 for the right to drill on your land?
If you’re Josh Fox, you refuse the money – then make an award-winning documentary portraying the natural gas industry as an environmental menace that ruins water, air and lives.
In “Gasland,” premiering Monday at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, Fox presents a frightening scenario in which tens of thousands of drilling rigs take over the landscape, gas companies exploit legal loopholes to inject toxins into the ground and residents living nearby contract severe, unexplained illnesses.
This isn’t some dystopian nightmare, Fox says, but the harsh reality in communities from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. “People are feeling completely upended,” the 37-year-old filmmaker said in an interview at his woodland home near the Pennsylvania-New York border, where gas companies have been leasing thousands of acres of pristine watershed land in anticipation of a drilling boom.
Full Story: ‘Gasland’ Documentary Shows Water That Burns, Toxic Effects Of Natural Gas Drilling (VIDEO).
Is Your Faucet Making You Sick?
Your drinking water may be contaminated with lead, even if you’re using faucets claiming to be ‘lead-free.’ Here’s what we can do about it.
By now we’ve all heard the dangers of lead — at any level. The American Heart Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the World Health Organization, and every other health-based organization that has reviewed the available studies have concluded that there is no safe level of lead in the human body. Human lead exposure has been associated with reduced cognitive function, aggressive behavior, increased criminal activity, digestive ailments, nervous system disorders, cardiovascular impairment, and bone marrow damage, just to name a few. Recent medical research has demonstrated that many of these ailments are caused by low levels of lead exposures — levels that were previously believed to be safe. Lead in our bloodstream robs us of our future, as it is particularly toxic to our children’s health. Furthermore, unlike other toxins that our bodies can remove, lead accumulates over time and can have adverse impacts throughout adulthood and can even shorten our lives.
But, after years of government programs to reduce lead exposure, maybe you feel safe, right? The gas you put in your car no longer contains lead. You were careful to repaint your house with lead free paints, and you avoid buying those brightly-painted imported toys that seem to be recalled with alarming frequency. And of course, last year when you remodeled your kitchen you installed a brand new faucet with packaging claiming to be “lead free” to replace that old leaky one. Surely that new faucet doesn’t contain lead.
Full Story: Is Your Faucet Making You Sick? | Water | AlterNet.
Radioactive water from Oyster Creek nuclear plant has reached a major New Jersey drinking-water aquifer
Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of contaminated water underground, even as it said there was no imminent threat to drinking water supplies.
The department launched a new investigation Friday into the April 2009 spill and said the actions of plant owner Exelon Corp. have not been sufficient to contain water contaminated with tritium.
Experts call for hike in global water price
World Bank and OECD say water is a finite resource that must be valued at a higher price in order to repair old supply systems and build new ones
Major economies are pushing for substantial increases in the price of water around the world as concern mounts about dwindling supplies and rising population.
With official UN figures showing that 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and more than double that number do not have proper sanitation, increases in prices will be – and in some countries are already proving to be – hugely controversial.
However experts argue that as long as most countries provide huge subsidies for water it will not be possible to change the wasteful habits of consumers, farmers and industry, nor to raise the investment needed to repair old supply systems and build new ones. And price rises can be managed so that they do not penalise the poorest.
Full Story: Experts call for hike in global water price | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Flammable Drinking Water? Why Gas Drilling in New York and Nearby States Could Become an Environmental Catastrophe
This particular cigarette is the third one he’s lit in the past 10 minutes. A second ago, it was lying on the table in front of him next to three pocketknives, two inhalers and four other untouched cigarettes. Now it’s wedged between two tattooed knuckles on his left hand (the “D” and “U” of the word “DUCK”). Its smoke rises between us in a quivering ribbon.
Mayer, a heavyset Vietnam vet, shouldn’t be smoking this cigarette because his house and property are inundated with high levels of methane gas. There’s so much of it that he can hold a barbecue lighter up to his tap and watch his drinking water explode in a blue fireball.
Warnings about Lejeune’s tainted water unheeded for years
For 30 years, thousands of Marines and their family members at Camp Lejeune, N.C., drank, cooked with and bathed in water that was laced with dangerous chemicals, but when outside contractors began raising questions about the toxic water, documents show, base officials rebuffed them and ignored the warnings or ordered more tests.
The worst-offending wells finally were shut down in November 1984, more than four years after the first warnings. In that time, more than 2,500 babies may have been carried in utero on the base or born at Camp Lejeune hospital, according to estimates by federal scientists.
Strung together, thousands of pages of documents tell the story of how the contamination was allowed to continue. They show that Camp Lejeune officials had been told consistently that something very foul flowed through the base’s pipes.
Full Story: Warnings about Lejeune’s tainted water unheeded for years | McClatchy.
Coal-Fired Plants Gulp 1.5 Trillion Gallons of Water and We’re Left to Drink the Dirty Backwash
In many respects, some folks might use more water flicking on their lights, than chugging back a glass of that wondrous stuff.
Here’s a sobering fact: Coal-fired power plants use approximately 1.5 trillion gallons of water a year in the US.
In many respects, some folks might use more water flicking on their lights, than chugging back a glass of that wondrous stuff.
Makes you wonder: Has the EPA ever tabulated the external costs of coal on our water resources?
And then, after that refreshing drink of desperately needed water, the 600-odd coal-fired plants (the EIA actually reports 1,445 coal-fired generators) typically throw up their chemically enhanced processed wastewater into our rivers and waterways, poisoning our own drinking water.
According to a recent analysis of EPA data, the NY Times concluded:
“Power plants are the nation’s biggest producer of toxic waste, surpassing industries like plastic and paint manufacturing and chemical plants.”
But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.
Full Story: Coal-Fired Plants Gulp 1.5 Trillion Gallons of Water and We’re Left to Drink the Dirty Backwash | Water | AlterNet.
Nation’s Largest Private Water Utility Joins Lawsuit Against Herbicide Maker
The nation’s largest private water utility company has joined a federal lawsuit that aims to force the manufacturer of atrazine, a widely-used herbicide, to pay for its removal from drinking water.
As the Investigative Fund reported two weeks ago, the class action lawsuit was originally filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois by 16 cities in Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa. The communities are alleging that Swiss corporation Syngenta AG and its Delaware counterpart Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. made billions of dollars selling atrazine while local taxpayers were left “the ever-growing bill for filtering the toxic product from the public’s drinking water.”
American Water Company joined the lawsuit in five of those states yesterday, representing 28 additional Midwestern communities.
Full Story: Nation’s Largest Private Water Utility Joins Lawsuit Against Herbicide Maker | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
Clean Water and Dirty Coal Don’t Mix
Dark Secret of World Water Day: Coal-Fired Plants Drink 1.5 Trillion Gallons, Then We Drink Backwash
Here’s a sobering fact on World Water Day: Coal-fired power plants use approximately 1.5 trillion gallons of water a year in the US.
In many respects, some folks might use more water flicking on their lights, than chugging back a glass of that wondrous stuff.
Makes you wonder: Has the EPA ever tabulated the external costs of coal on our water resources?
And then, after that refreshing drink of desperately needed water, the 600-odd coal-fired plants typically throw up their chemically enhanced processed wastewater into our rivers and waterways, poisoning our own drinking water.
According to a recent analysis of EPA data, the NY Times concluded:
Full Story: Clean Water and Dirty Coal Don’t Mix | CommonDreams.org.
Millions in Taxpayer Dollars Flow to Bottled Water
Millions in Taxpayer Dollars Flow to Bottled Water
New report, film call for reducing waste, funding public water this World Water Day
BOSTON, MA – March 23 – Of five states surveyed, taxpayers are footing the bill for between $78,000 and $475,000 a year in bottled water, according to a report released today by Corporate Accountability International. The findings come on the heels of World Water Day and the release of the animated short, Story of Bottled Water. The states surveyed were Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oregon. The Connecticut governor’s office also announced today that it is considering various approaches that could help agencies cut back on bottled water spending.
Connecticut was among the four northeastern states featured in the first edition of the report, Getting States Off the Bottle. The second edition analyzes the problem with such spending, especially given tightening state budgets and the $22 billion annual shortfall currently facing public water systems nationwide.
A major cause of the gap in funding has been the marketing and promotion of bottled water. Marketing campaigns, like Nestlé’s Born Better, have convinced one in five people to believe the only place to get clean drinking water is from a bottle. And as public
Full Story: Millions in Taxpayer Dollars Flow to Bottled Water | CommonDreams.org.
U.S. drinking water pollution causes drastic overhaul of EPA policy
American drinking water has become polluted with a cocktail of new chemicals over the last 50 years, including some that are known to cause cancer and others that are suspected of it.
In a speech Monday night, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that her agency will overhaul U.S. drinking-water policy in an effort to corral more of these chemicals – and to do it more quickly than in the past.
“To confront emerging health threats, strained budgets and increased needs – today’s and tomorrow’s drinking-water challenges – we must use the law more effectively and promote new technologies,” Jackson said. “To make our drinking-water systems work harder, we have to work smarter.”
Full Story: U.S. drinking water pollution causes drastic overhaul of EPA policy.
The Looming Water Disaster That Could Destroy California, and Enrich Its Billionaire Farmers
There’s a disaster waiting to happen in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and a handful of wealthy farmers seem to like it that way.
“That, in your own backyard there, is the scariest place after New Orleans.” — Geologist Nicholas Pinder’s description of the precarious situation in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta after the hurricane Katrina disaster.
Imagine the devastating flooding of Hurricane Katrina multiplied by epic sandstorms, drought and economic collapse of the Dust Bowl. Now picture it happening an hour east of Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley and spreading all the way down to the Mexican border. It’s not as far-fetched as you think. A routine 6.7-magnitude earthquake would be enough to set it off, liquefying the decrepit levee system that walls off California’s main source of drinking water from the Pacific Ocean and triggering a deadly flood that would submerge roads, destroy homes, wipe out thousands of acres of farmland, kill countless numbers and possibly cut over 20 million Californians off from their water supply for a year or more.
California’s politicians have known about this looming catastrophe for decades. They also have had the power to neutralize the threat. But no one has done anything to prevent it.
Full Story: The Looming Water Disaster That Could Destroy California, and Enrich Its Billionaire Farmers | Water | AlterNet.
Taking action for World Water Day
There are still 900 million people who don’t have a safe water supply – and not always in the places you expect
This is a tale of two countries – one landlocked, with two-thirds of its harsh environment given over to desert and where rainfall is thought to be reducing; the other low lying, with millions of inhabitants squeezed onto narrow spits of land prone to severe monsoon flooding.
They may be continents apart, each with their own set of problems, but in both, girls miss out on school because they spend hours fetching water. Mothers give birth with no access to clean water. Children are dying from chronic diarrhoea. Livelihoods are put on hold through illness and hospital beds are full.
Water is life. That might sound hackneyed, but believe me there has never been a more potent truism – especially when today, World Water Day, there are still nearly 900 million people across the world who don’t have access to a safe water supply.
Full Story: Taking action for World Water Day | Barbara Frost | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
The Story of Bottled Water: Fear, Manufactured Demand and a $10,000 Sandwich
Imagine I was trying to sell you a sandwich. It’s shrink wrapped in plastic that may leach toxic chemicals, but don’t worry about that. Mine’s still healthier than a sandwich you could make at home, what with all those impurities in your fridge. Now, I’ve got no proof of that, and actually, some people have tested my sandwiches and found that sometimes they have more bad stuff in them than the ones from your own kitchen. But never mind that. Mine’s more convenient. Tastes better too. I swear.
So here you go: one plastic-wrapped, waste-producing sandwich that isn’t any healthier and doesn’t taste any better than the one from your own kitchen. That’ll be $10,000, please.
That preposterous pitch is the truth behind the marketing campaigns that turned bottled water into a $5 billion-a-year industry in the United States alone. Today is World Water Day–a good day to pause and consider the insanity of a global economy where 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while other people spend billions on a bottled product that’s no cleaner, harms people and the environment and costs up to 2,000 times the price of tap water.
Full Story: Annie Leonard: The Story of Bottled Water: Fear, Manufactured Demand and a $10,000 Sandwich.
Are Greedy Water Bottlers Siphoning Your City’s Drinking Water?
It took six years for residents of tiny McCloud, California, to give Nestle Waters North America its walking papers. The water bottler had hoped to build a 1 million square-foot facility in the town of less than 2,000 and was given a backroom 50-year contract (renewable for an additional 50 years) to annually take 1,250 gallons per minute of delicious spring water from the town, hunkered in the shadow of Mount Shasta, and unlimited groundwater. But after years of opposition from community and environmental groups, Nestle scrapped its plans and left with its tail between its legs.
However, the bottling giant didn’t have to look very far for its next target. Last summer as Gov. Schwarzenegger was warning that parched California was in its third year of drought, and residents of the capital city of Sacramento were facing water restrictions, Nestle was getting a behind-the-scenes welcome mat rolled out and the keys to the city’s water pipes.
Full Story: Are Greedy Water Bottlers Siphoning Your City’s Drinking Water? | Water | AlterNet.
Water and the War on Terror
Why Availability of Freshwater Is a Huge Factor in the ‘War on Terror’
While leaders in Washington have been war-gaming the national security risks of climate change, they’ve only started to connect the dots to the closely related threats emanating from the growing crisis of global freshwater scarcity. At first blush, water and national security may not seem to be interlinked. But the reality, as narrated in my new book WATER: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, is that the unfolding global water crisis increasingly influences the outcome of America’s two wars, homeland defense against international terrorism, and other key U.S. national-security interests, including the transforming planetary environment and world geopolitical order.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali famously predicted 25 years ago that the “next war in the Middle East will be fought over water.” While that has yet to come to pass, the greatest present danger stems from failing nation-states — and not just in the bone-dry Middle East. With world water use growing at twice the rate of human population over the last century, many of the Earth’s vital freshwater ecosystems are already critically depleted and being used unsustainably to support our global population of 6.5 billion, according the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the situation can only be expected to get worse as the population pushes toward 9 billion by 2050. As great rivers run dry before reaching the sea, groundwater is mined deeper and deeper beyond replenishment levels, and water quality erodes with growing pollution, an explosive fault line is cleaving between freshwater Haves and Have-Nots across the political, economic, and social landscapes of the 21st century.
Among the water Have-Nots are the 3.6 billion who will live in countries that won’t be able to feed themselves within 15 years due largely to scarcity of water — likely to include giant India. Throughout history, states that have been unable to feed themselves with homegrown or reliably imported cheap food have stagnated, declined, and often collapsed, with grievous adjustments in living standards, population levels, and regional turmoil.
Full Story: Water and the War on Terror | Grist.
16 Cities Sue Manufacturer Of Atrazine Weed-Killer For Contaminating Drinking Water
A coalition of communities in six Midwestern states filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking to force the manufacturer of a widely-used herbicide to pay for its removal from drinking water.
Atrazine, a weed-killer sprayed primarily on cornfields, can run off into rivers and streams that supply municipal water systems. As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported in a series of articles last fall, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to notify the public that atrazine had been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois by 16 cities in Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa. The communities allege that Swiss corporation Syngenta AG and its Delaware counterpart Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. reaped billions of dollars from the sale of atrazine while local taxpayers were left with the financial burden of filtering the chemical from drinking water.
Full Story: 16 Cities Sue Manufacturer Of Atrazine Weed-Killer For Contaminating Drinking Water.
L.A.’s New Scheme to Plunder Owens Valley Water, This Time with Solar Panels
L.A. has sold the idea of enriching the residents of the Owens river valley before, while ripping them off in the dark. Will the residents buy into it?
The city of Los Angeles recently announced plans to transform Owens Valley into one of the largest sources of solar power in America, outfitting the region with a massive energy farm that would span 80 square miles and generate up to 10 percent of California’s total electricity output. It truly is a monster, able to generate as much as 5 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.5 million homes, dwarfing China’s plans to build the world’s biggest solar farm by a factor of three.
The scale of this energy farm would make a solar panel manufacturer drool: while its total cost has not been disclosed, a test section 1/600th of the project’s final size is expected to cost $50 million. The hefty price tag is why L.A.’s Department of Water and Power (DWP), the city’s giant utility that will build and operate the solar farm, is eager to get cranking, afraid of missing its opportunity to tap into the lucrative government subsidies being handed out for solar and other green energy projects before they disappear.
On February 2, DWP general manager David Freeman made the 250-mile trip to the Owens Valley to sell the locals on the plan, pitching it as a sure way to create jobs in the depressed rural region, increase local tax revenues and save their environment.
Full Story: L.A.’s New Scheme to Plunder Owens Valley Water, This Time with Solar Panels | Water | AlterNet.
Toxic Waters – Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Hampering E.P.A.
Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
Full Story: Toxic Waters – Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Hampering E.P.A. – NYTimes.com.
After Decades-Long Wait, US Navy to Study Health Effects of Water Contamination at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina.
After Decades-Long Wait, US Navy to Study Health Effects of Water Contamination at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina.
We turn now to a story of environmental contamination that has been brewing for decades. Last week, the US Navy finally agreed to pay over $1.5 million to fund a study looking into the health effects of water contamination at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina. The study could show a link between toxic water at the base and the illnesses and deaths of Marines and their family members over a thirty-year period from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Thousands of Marines and their families who were stationed at Camp Lejeune have long complained of illnesses and deaths linked to exposure to toxic water. Health officials estimate that one million people were exposed to contaminated well water at the base before the main well was shut down in 1984.
Free: Audio, Video, Transcript, MP3 download
Anger fuels water-fluoridation debate in Watsonville, Calif.
The Santa Cruz County town, which officials say is experiencing a dental-decay epidemic, voted in 2002 to block fluoridation of the city’s water. The City Council is moving closer to approval.
The editorial in the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian offered local voters some blunt advice: “Shield your eyes,” it said, “because the City Council is preparing to spit in your face.”
That was this month, as the council inched toward finally fluoridating the city’s water — a state-mandated action that has been bitterly debated since city residents narrowly voted to block it in 2002. At a council meeting in January, an anti-fluoridation activist held up a sign alluding to Nazis. When speakers threatened to boycott local businesses if fluoridation goes through, a council member told them to jump off the parking-garage roof.
Although the argument in the Santa Cruz County agricultural town of 50,000 has raged for years, people on both sides see a resolution as urgent.
Full Story Anger fuels water-fluoridation debate in Watsonville, Calif. – latimes.com.
Dem Sell-out Dianne Feinstein Attempts End-Run to Hand California Water to Billionaire Farmers
Feinstein is trying to ram through a massive transfer of public water into the private pockets of a clique of billionaire corporate farmers.
California’s Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein showed Californians who she really serves this past Thursday, when news emerged that she was trying to ram through a massive transfer of precious water out of the hands of millions of state residents, and into the private pockets of a clique of billionaire corporate farmers.
Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle described the swindle:
Feinstein wants to attach the proposal as an amendment to a fast-tracked Senate jobs bill. She is pitching the plan as a jobs measure to address the economic calamity in the Central Valley. It would increase farm water allocations from 10 percent last year to 40 percent this year and next, an amount that farmers say is the bare minimum they need.
Bay Area Democrats were livid, accusing Feinstein of concocting the plan in secret, upending fragile water negotiations that Feinstein has supported and pitting California’s Central Valley against its coast.
Water Heist: Corporations Are Targeting Cash-Strapped Cities for Control of Their Public Water
From wastewater to drinking water, big business is looking to cash in on public water systems and they’ve got a new tactic.
Corporate interests are eyeing our water. From wastewater to drinking water, big business is looking to cash in on public water systems and they’ve got a new tactic: They’re using desperate economic times to convince city officials that they should place a corporation between families and their ability to eat, drink, and clean.
Take Akron, Ohio, for example. In September 2008 I wrote an article for Alternet about a ballot measure in Akron where voters were asked whether to lease the city’s wastewater system to a corporation in return for an immediate, one-time payment. The plan was roundly defeated. But more importantly, as the article suggested, the lease signaled a new direction for water privatization in the U.S. This involved a collaboration between water companies and Wall Street to snatch up control of water infrastructure for the better part of a century.
Since that vote, similar lease plans have been floated in Milwaukee and Chicago, presenting a dangerous possibility: In the near future, a major U.S. city could sign over unprecedented control of its water system to a corporation for a generation or longer. The silver lining in this narrative is that the same communities being targeted by water corporations for these deals are now charting out new ways to ensure their water remains in public hands. And for the moment, advocates of public control are winning.
Four billion people threatened by water shortages if world leaders stumble at 2010’s first climate change hurdle
World leaders are set to fail their first test on climate change since Copenhagen and put the world on track for almost four degrees of warming, said Oxfam International today, ahead of the 31 January deadline for countries to submit emission reduction targets under the Copenhagen Accord.
Despite agreeing that temperatures should be kept from rising above the two-degree danger level at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, world leaders are so far failing to provide adequate emissions cuts targets. The European Union, Japan and Australia have already put their plans on the table, none of which improve on the offers they made before Copenhagen.
Rich countries pledges on emissions cuts are expected to total just 12-18 per cent below 1990 levels – less than half of the 40 per cent cuts needed from rich countries to keep temperatures in check.
The pledges expected under the Accord will, according to climate models, lead to a nearly four degree centigrade rise in global temperature by 2100. Scientists predict this will create a world crippled by drought with four billion people affected by water shortages across the globe, year round droughts in Southern Africa and serious droughts in Europe every ten years instead of every one hundred years.
To Curb Climate Change, We Need to Protect Water
It is widely acknowledged that greenhouse gas emission-fueled climate change is having a profound and negative impact on fresh water systems around the world. Warmer weather causes more rapid evaporation of lakes and rivers, reduced snow and ice cover on open water systems, and melting glaciers.
What is less understood is that our collective abuse and displacement of fresh water is also a serious cause of climate change and global warming. If we are to successfully address climate change, it is time to include an analysis of how our abuse of water is an additional factor in the creation of global warming as well as solutions that protect water and watersheds.
There are two major factors. The first is the actual displacement of water from where it is sustaining a healthy ecosystem as well as healthy hydrologic cycles. Because humanity has polluted so much surface water on the planet, we are now mining the groundwater far faster than it can be replaced by nature. New Scientist reports of a “little-heralded crisis” all over Asia as a result of the exponential drilling of groundwater. Water is moved from where nature has put it in watershed and aquifers (where we can access it) to other place where it is used for flood irrigation and food production – where much of it lost to evaporation – or to supply the voracious thirst of mega cities, where it is usually dumped as waste into the ocean.
Full Story OnTheCommons.org » To Curb Climate Change, We Need to Protect Water.
Solving the Water and Energy Crisis … in One Swell Poop
Upwards of 3 million people die annually from diarrhea, dysentery, and parasitic diseases – all for the want of clean water. Meanwhile, each year in the water-rich United States, 2.1 billion gallons of the world’s most precious liquid are used, not to water thirsty crops or slake parched throats, but to flush human waste from home toilets to municipal sewers. While harvesting rainwater and recycling graywater are fine strategies, it’s time to get to the seat of the problem. We need a Toilet Revolution.
As frequently happens, the solution to this modern problem can be found in the recent past – and the Third World present. Jeff Conant, author of The Community Guide to Environmental Health, has traveled the world in search of the perfect “waterless toilet.” He found it in the Mexican town of Tepotzlan, which boasts hundreds of “non-traditional waterless” eco-loos. In the 1980s, Tepotzlan’s innovators got a boost when former UNICEF worker Ron Sawyer settled in to help the locals design a new generation of “eco-san” toilets.
While the practice of using human waste as fertilizer is as old as humanity itself, Tepotzlan’s eco-sanistas marked an engineering watershed when they found a way to separate feces from urine. A locally designed toilet seat harvests the fluids while allowing the solid wastes to fall into a dry compost toilet. (Not such a strange idea: The human body is designed to send solid and liquid wastes in opposite directions.) One immediate result of separating pee from poo is the elimination of the unpleasant aromas associated with the traditional outhouse.
Full Story Earth Island Institute | Earth Island Journal.
Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells
All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe.
There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.
In measured amounts, that waste acts as fertilizer. But if the amounts are excessive, bacteria and chemicals can flow into the ground and contaminate residents’ tap water.
In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials. As parasites and bacteria seeped into drinking water, residents suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses and severe ear infections.
Full Story Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells – Series – NYTimes.com.
Why Just About Everything You Hear About California’s Water Crisis Is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
The media and the governor are warning of the “worst drought in history” in California We’re being lied to.
We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm, warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought in modern history,” when in fact the state nearly pulled in its average rainfall in 2009. The fearmongering is about to go into overdrive, as powerful interests start whipping up fears of drought to push through a $11 billion bond measure on the upcoming November elections, setting up the Golden State for a corporate water grab.
One of the big boosters promoting the drought scare is Gov. Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency in early 2009, and promised to reduce water deliveries across the state by a whopping 80 percent.
Such a huge cutback is alarming for a state in which most of the population lives hundreds of miles away from water sources and is dependent on a gargantuan aqueduct system for basic survival. Journalists in a wide range of publications have recently seized on this juicy disaster-in-progress story, hitting their readers with heavy-handed images of drought and suffering that seemed more in line with something filed on a UN humanitarian mission in Somalia than news from the heart of California.
Full Story Why Just About Everything You Hear About California’s Water Crisis Is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong | Water | AlterNet.
Beer is Cheaper Than Water
Several British supermarket chains make a habit of selling a bottle of booze for less than they sell a bottle of water (5 pence for a beer vs. 8 pence for brand-name water). The cut-rate prices are designed to lure customers into stores, where it’s hope that they’ll load up on more expensive alcohol and some food to go with it (and who knows, maybe some pricey mineral water). But some British experts worry that the low cost of booze may disguise the high cost of drinking in a nation known for enjoying the bottle. “We hav ea huge problem with alcohol abuse in the UK, so we want a clampdown on these cut-throat price deals,” a spokeswoman for the British Medical Association said. The BMA and other groups are calling for a minimum price on alcohol that would force the price of a six-pack up to 6 pounds. The idea has been roundly panned by the alcohol industry and government officials alike, but some activists insist that it’s necessary. As the chief executive of Alcohol Concern sagely noted, “The evidence shows young people and harmful drinkers are drawn to very cheap alcohol.”
Full Story The most important news and commentary to read right now. – The Slatest – Slate Magazine.
Millions Drink Tap Water That Is Legal, but Maybe Not Healthy
The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal.
Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.
But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.
Other recent studies have found that even some chemicals regulated by that law pose risks at much smaller concentrations than previously known. However, many of the act’s standards for those chemicals have not been updated since the 1980s, and some remain essentially unchanged since the law was passed in 1974.
Full Story Millions Drink Tap Water That Is Legal, but Maybe Not Healthy – Series – NYTimes.com.
Al Gore: A Billion People’s Water at Risk From Melting Ice
At UN climate talks Monday, he warned that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive deprive more than a billion people of access to clean water.
Climate guru Al Gore warned UN climate talks Monday that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive deprive more than a billion people’s access to clean water.
Adding to an avalanche of bad scientific news over the last two years, the former US vice president cited new research showing that the Arctic ice cap may have shrunk to record-low levels last year.
“2008 had a smaller minimum, probably, than 2007,” Gore said at the release of a report he co-sponsored with the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, called Melting Snow and Ice: A call for Action.
Full Story Al Gore: A Billion People’s Water at Risk From Melting Ice | Water | AlterNet.
Obama, Palin, Copenhagen: The End Of Drinkable Water?
With America’s national debate on global warming going bipolar between President Obama’s grand entrance at Copenhagen and the surreality of Sarah from Alaska going rogue on world environmental science by championing the climate deniers, those committed to doing the planet’s serious business should stay focused on one, often overlooked but trackable key factor of climate change–the pivotal role of water. It is through water that global warming destabilizes civilized societies. At Copenhagen last week, Bill McKibben of 350.org warned of a looming, water-related doomsday tipping point that could render future climate change efforts moot–if warming temperatures thaw the permanently frozen Arctic soils to release its methane greenhouse gasses.
Water’s central role was colorfully highlighted in the run up to Copenhagen by cabinet members from the sea level Maldives islands and mountainous Nepal who separately held meetings underwater and at the base of Mount Everest’s shrinking glaciers. They are desperate because they are on the front lines of the global warming battle. Along with the billions of other water-distressed people around the planet, climate change is exacerbating today’s mounting crisis of freshwater scarcity by radically altering hydrologic patterns to produce overwhelming flooding, droughts, storms, rising coastal sea levels, as well as the unprecedented melting of Arctic icecaps and mountain glaciers visible in Sarah’s own backyard. While the impacts are complex, they fall unevenly and are further dividing human society–with water rich regions generally getting wetter and arid ones drier.
Full Story Steven Solomon: Obama, Palin, Copenhagen: The End Of Drinkable Water?.
Tourist killed by hotel water – Miami
After a hotel’s powerful filter removed all the chlorine from city water, bacteria grew — killing one and making two others ill.
A foreign visitor has died and at least two other people have become sick after staying at a downtown Miami luxury hotel, and health officials are blaming an unusual type of pneumonia called Legionnaire’s Disease.
Guests at the Epic Hotel have been relocated upon request to nearby hotels to prevent further contact with the Legionella bacteria in the water, according to the Miami-Dade County Health Department.
An investigation this week by county and state officials revealed that the hotel had installed a water filter powerful enough to remove chlorine from its city-supplied water, a move that encouraged bacterial growth.
“What’s ironic is the hotel installed a special filtration system to enhance the quality of their drinking water,” said Dr. Vincent Conte, the county’s top epidemiologist.
Studies show this type of bacteria is not easily transmitted through simple person-to-person contact because water droplets must enter a person’s lungs. Instead, the culprit is typically a building ventilation system or water supply.
Full Story Tourist killed by hotel water – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com.
Heartbreaking Stories Warn New Yorkers of What May Be in Store if the State OKs Controversial Gas Drilling
Residents of others states are issuing words of warning for New Yorkers who may soon allow companies to use the “fracking” process to drill for natural gas.
I live and work in Marcellus shale ground zero — central New York State, just south of the Finger Lakes, one of the biggest and best watersheds in the hemisphere. My home is in economically challenged, mostly rural Tioga County, and I work in Tompkins County. Almost all our neighbors for several miles around have signed gas leases. I participate regularly and actively as a client, colleague, patient, or volunteer with businesses, organizations, and institutions in 19 other New York counties.
I have been economically poor and landless, economically comfortable and landless, comfortable and landed, and poor and landed. I’ve been rural, suburban, and urban. And I’ve spent most of my adult life paying state and local taxes in New York State (and a whole lot of national taxes, most of which have gone toward things I do not condone). I am a farmer, writer, editor, actor, and educator. My spouse, who was laid off a couple years ago and has been underemployed and looking for work ever since, and I struggle to make ends meet. Yet we love this part of the world and have been glad to call it home. This is all by way of showing we are stakeholders in this region, dubbed “Marcellus shale” for the natural gas reserves hidden underground. Because we care a whole lot and wanted to learn firsthand, my spouse and I recently traveled around West Virginia and Pennsylvania, talking to people whose lives have been affected by the same sort of hydrofracturing (or “fracking”), a technique used in drilling for natural gas that is likely to soon take place in New York State.
Most of these Pennsylvanians told us they rue the day they signed the gas leases. Some of them “inherited” gas leases — or bought property on which there was a mineral rights lease they were unaware of — and now are paying the consequences.
Water Is The New Oil
What’s More Important Than Oil?
That’s the question I first asked myself which led me to write “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization” (Harper Collins January 2010). I had read Dan Yergin’s wonderful history of oil, “The Prize”, and began contemplating what other natural resource might be shaping our destiny as profoundly. The obvious answer arrived like a slap in the forehead, a Bill Clinton “It’s the economy, stupid!” moment–WATER.
Water is visibly showing through as a root cause of nearly every headline issue transforming the world order and planetary environment: Freshwater scarcity is a key reason why 3.5 billion people are projected to live in countries that cannot feed themselves by 2025. Earth’s freshwater ecosystems are critically depleted and being used unsustainably, reported the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, for today’s 6.5 billion population much less for the 9 billion we’ll be by 2050. Extreme droughts, floods, melting glaciers and other water cycle-related effects of global warming are why there’ll likely be 150 million global climate refugees within a decade. Diplomats warn that 21st century conflicts will be fought over water as they were for oil in the 20th.
While many scholars highlighted the central importance of water in relation to their own main fields of study, no one had ever pulled it all together into a comprehensive narrative of water’s role in world history. I thus set out to discover water’s main history lessons, then apply them to help illuminate the stakes and challenges of our new era of scarcity.
Full Story Steven Solomon: Water Is The New Oil.
Millions in U.S. Drink Contaminated Water, Records Show
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.
Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.
Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year.
Full Story Millions in U.S. Drink Contaminated Water, Records Show – NYTimes.com.
The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West
Red Snow Warning –
By Chip Ward –
Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert — specifically Utah's slickrock portion of it where I live — hot 'n' dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly arid landscape, redrock powder is lifted up and carried hundreds of miles eastward until it settles on the broad shoulders of Colorado's majestic mountains, giving the snowpack there a pink hue.
Some call it watermelon snow. Friends who ski into the backcountry of the San Juan and La Plata mountain ranges in western Colorado tell me that the pink-snow phenomenon has lately been giving way to redder hues, so thick and frequent are the dust storms that roll in these days. A cross-section of a typical Colorado snowbank last winter revealed alternating dirt and snow layers that looked like a weird wilderness version of our flag, red and white stripes alternating against the sky's blue field.
The Forecast: Dust Followed by Mud
Here in the lowlands, we, too, are experiencing the drying of the West in new dusty ways. Our landscapes are often covered with what we jokingly refer to as “adobe rain” — when rain falls through dust, spattering windows or laundry hung out to dry with brown stains. After a dust “event” this past spring, I wandered through the lot of a car dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the only color seemingly available was light tan. All those previously shiny, brightly painted cars had turned drab. I had to squint to read price stickers under opaque windows.
Full Story Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Ruins in Our Future | TomDispatch.
EPA: Uranium From Polluted British Petroleum Mine Found In Nevada Water Wells
Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time.
But she can look through the window from her kitchen table, just past her backyard with its swingset and pet llama, and see an ominous sign on a neighboring fence: “Danger: Uranium Mine.”
For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.
They say they have been met by a stone wall from state regulators, local politicians and the huge oil company that inherited the toxic site – BP PLC. Those interests have insisted uranium naturally occurs in the region’s soil and there’s no way to prove that a half-century of processing metals at the former Anaconda pit mine is responsible for the contamination.
That has changed. A new wave of testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that 79 percent of the wells tested north of the World War II-era copper mine have dangerous levels of uranium or arsenic or both that make the water unsafe to drink.
Full Story EPA: Uranium From Polluted British Petroleum Mine Found In Nevada Water Wells.
OPS: BP is destroying Lake Michigan also – with refinery waste
Report says nuclear plants are poisoning our water
Radioactive pollution double a decade ago, says Sierra Club
Nuclear facilities and power plants are contaminating local Canadian food and water with radioactive waste that increases risks of cancer and birth defects, says a new report to be released today.
The report, Tritium on Tap, produced by the Sierra Club of Canada, warned that radioactive emissions from various nuclear plants across the country have more than doubled over the past decade. The figures were based on statistics compiled by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission which measured pollution coming from the plants.
Although Canadian guidelines have suggested that the existing levels of tritium in the water are safe, the report cites recent peer-reviewed studies, including a recent review by the UK’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters, that suggest the opposite.
“Once in our body, tritium enters our DNA, fat, proteins and carbohydrates — and that is where it does its damage from close range,” said the Sierra Club report. “It is a carcinogen and causes birth defects.”
Full Story Report says nuclear plants are poisoning our water.
How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply
A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California’s most precious natural resource. A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they’ve pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California’s most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us — and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California’s increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California’s environment.
California is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people’s fear of drought to push a massive waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking the state’s rivers dry. The fearmongering schtick goes like this: California is on the brink of a water crisis of cataclysmic proportions, with a life-or-death struggle just around the corner, pitting small farmers who want to save their livelihood against big city elitists who care more about the environment than they do about American jobs. But in reality, this drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really help small farmers — of which there are very few anyway — but would deliver more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a war waged for water by California’s megarich on everyone else.
The leader of these recent water privatization efforts in California is a Beverly Hills billionaire named Stewart Resnick. Stewart and his wife, Lynda Resnick, own Roll International Corporation, a private umbrella company that controls the flowers-by-wire company Teleflora, Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, pesticide manufacturer Suterra and Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming company in America and the largest pistachio and almond producer in the world. Roll Corp. was ranked #246 on Forbes’ list of America’s largest private companies in 2008 and had an estimated revenue of $1.98 billion in 2007.
Opposition to Desalination Escalates in Rockland County, New York
Washington, D.C.—“Public resistance to desalination mounted last week when two towns in Rockland County, New York, issued resolutions voicing opposition to the proposed Haverstraw Water Supply Project. The towns of Ramapo and Stony Point passed resolutions speaking out against the project. An initiative of the private corporation United Water, the project would supply water to the Rockland County area by desalinating water from the Hudson River just north of New York City. Proponents tout the project as a means of supplying long-term drinking water to the area. Yet, there are major problems with the proposal.
“If constructed, the facility will generate a generous annual profit stream for United Water. Yet, local water customers will pay for United Water’s gain in the form of the rate increases that will be necessary to address the costs of United Water’s capital investment, as well as the massive amounts of energy that it takes to run a desalination facility. Because it will draw from the Hudson River, the drinking water the plant produces may contain traces of radioactive chemicals that pose a threat to human health. The plant may also damage the local marine environments and could contribute to global warming. A desalination facility would be an impractical and damaging investment for a state trying to lower its carbon emissions.
“Food & Water Watch and the Rockland Coalition for Sustainable Water applaud the towns of Ramapo and Stony Point for their commitment to ensuring that area water infrastructure needs are addressed in the safest, most cost-effective way possible. Desalination should only ever be considered after all other possible methods of water conservation and delivery have been exhausted. Rather than saddling area residents with the financial burdens of building and operating a desalination facility, conservation methods such as rainwater harvesting, upgrading leaking municipal water pipes, and promoting green infrastructure systems should instead be implemented. We commend the commitment of these municipalities for their proactive position of protecting consumer interests in Rockland County and urge other towns in the area to follow their lead and issue similar resolutions.”
Full Story Opposition to Desalination Escalates in Rockland County, New York — Food & Water Watch.
Can you swallow this?
Video: Privatization of basic utilities like water can devastate poor communities. Without access to affordable and clean drinking water, diseases like cholera can spread and infect hundreds of thousands of people
OPS: This is one Ritchie Daley should see before he thinks about selling off Chicago’s water System
Nuclear scars: Tainted water runs beneath Nevada desert
The state faces a water crisis and population boom, but radioactive waste from the Nevada Test Site has polluted aquifers.
Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. – A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada.
Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers.
When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation.
During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and a population boom, state officials are taking a new measure of the damage.
Full Story Nuclear scars: Tainted water runs beneath Nevada desert — latimes.com.
The Halliburton Loophole
Editorial - NYTimes -
Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton loophole, which was inserted at the behest of — you guessed it — then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton.
It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, it involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic, into underground rock formations to blast them open and release natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing has been implicated in a growing number of water pollution cases across the country. It has become especially controversial in New York, where regulators are eager to clear the way for drilling in the New York City watershed, potentially imperiling the city’s water supply. Thankfully, the main company involved has now decided not to go ahead.
Full Story Editorial – The Halliburton Loophole – NYTimes.com.
Mayor Daley May Be Considering A Sale Of Chicago’s Water System
Private Firm Would Jack Up Rates For Residents, Watchdogs Warn
If the parking meter deal put a bad taste in your mouth, try swallowing this:
Chicago is considering leasing its water system to help fix the budget.
The new boss could charge whatever they want for water, CBS 2′s Roseanne Tellez reports.
Could it happen here in Chicago? It already has nearby. Homer Glen in Will County relies on Lake Michigan water, but the supply comes from a German-owned firm. Locals say there’s a lot more than water going down the drain.
It’s a vital resource you can’t live without. But in Homer Glen, the question is can you afford water. Residents say rates are breaking the bank.
via Mayor Daley May Be Considering A Sale Of Chicago’s Water System – cbs2chicago.com.
OPS: Da Mayer is insane. He must be stopped before he does any more damage to the City.
Groups Rally to Stop Nestlé’s Raid on Sacramento Water
Grassroots community activists are mobilizing against the internationally boycotted corporation that is planning to bottle water in an already parched state.
Sacramento councilmember Kevin McCarty again raised the issue of the plan by Nestlé to build a new bottling plant in South Sacramento at last Tuesday night’s Sacramento City Council meeting as grassroots community activists mobilized against the internationally boycotted corporation coming to the Capital City.
McCarty asked for the issue to be agendized for a future city council meeting so that an “urgency ordinance” can be passed, according to Save Our Water in Sacramento, the grassroots group fighting against Nestlé’s plan to come to Sacramento after being kicked out of McCloud by massive local resistance.
“Councilmember McCarty will be asking the council to pass an urgency ordinance that would require a special permit for water bottling facilities in the city,” said Evan Tucker, an activist with Save Our Water. “This would require this type of project to come before the city council and be subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.”
Full Story: Groups Rally to Stop Nestlé’s Raid on Sacramento Water | Take Action | AlterNet.
The F Word: Will Gas Drilling Destroy NYC’s Drinking Water?
Laura Flanders » The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s long awaited plan for drilling in the Marcellus Shale was just released. The Shale, which stretches from Ohio to New York is believed to be the country’s largest remaining reservoir of natural gas. Drilling has begun in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and there have already been reports of contaminated wells. A recent EPA report also found evidence of toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing in wells drilled in Wyoming.
So what did the DEC SAY?
Well, not so fast. The natural gas industry, with Halliburton leading the charge, has skirted the Clean Water Act for years. They’re not about to give up now. Capitalizing on fears of global warming and the growing disdain for fossil fuels, they’re pushing gas drilling as a clean, green alternative. And their message seems to be swaying Washington. The new climate bill introduced last week by Sen. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer includes incentives for natural gas.
Full Story: GRITtv with Laura Flanders » The F Word: Will Gas Drilling Destroy NYC’s Drinking Water?.
With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater
Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy used to power their plants contained so much salty sediment that it was corroding their machinery [1]. Nearby residents saw something odd, too. Dishwashers were malfunctioning, and plates were coming out with spots that couldn’t easily be rinsed off.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection soon identified the likely cause [2] and came up with a quick fix. The Monongahela, a drinking water source for 350,000 people, had apparently been contaminated by chemically tainted wastewater from the state’s growing natural gas industry. So the DEP reduced the amount of drilling wastewater that was being discharged into the river and unlocked dams upstream to dilute the contamination.
But questions raised by the incident on the Monongahela haven’t gone away.
Full Story: With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater – ProPublica.
Water Worries Threaten US Push for Natural Gas
by Jon Hurdle | CommonDreams.org – PAVILLION, Wyoming – Louis Meeks, a burly 59-year-old alfalfa farmer, fills a metal trough with water from his well and watches an oily sheen form on the surface which gives off a faint odor of paint.
He points to small bubbles that appear in the water, and a thin ring of foam around the edge.
Meeks is convinced that energy companies drilling for natural gas in this central Wyoming farming community have poisoned his water and ruined his health.
A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests he just might have a case — and that the multi-billion dollar industry may have a problem on its hands. EPA tests found his well contained what it termed 14 “contaminants of concern.”
Full Story: Water Worries Threaten US Push for Natural Gas | CommonDreams.org.
Coca-Cola’s Lies About Sustainability Have Gone Too Far
They’ve gone from greenwashing to outright lying.
In 2007, facing growing opposition to its water management practices, particularly in India, Coca-Cola’s CEO, Neville Isdell came up with a brilliant idea. The Coca-Cola company, he announced, will become water neutral, replenishing every drop of water they use, and therefore, as the suggestion went, Coca-Cola would have no impact of water resources around the world.
Voila! Problem solved, a company using 300 billion liters of water annually would have no impact on water resources. Sustainability doesn’t get any better than that. The only problem was that Coca-Cola knew that water neutrality was impossible to achieve.
In a concept paper on water neutrality that Coca-Cola developed with others, it clearly stated that, “In a strict sense, the term ‘water neutral’ is troublesome and even may be misleading. It is often possible to reduce a water footprint, but it is generally impossible to bring it down to zero.”
Full Story: Coca-Cola’s Lies About Sustainability Have Gone Too Far | Water | AlterNet.
Vacated Mercury Mines Taint Calif. Waters
| CommonDreams.org – NEW IDRIA, Calif. – Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California’s rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state’s major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people.
But an Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has tried to clean up fewer than a dozen of the hundreds of mines – and most cleanups have failed to stem the contamination.
Although the mining ceased decades ago, records and interviews show the vast majority of sites have not even been studied to assess the pollution, let alone been touched.
Full Story: Vacated Mercury Mines Taint Calif. Waters | CommonDreams.org.
NYT Investigation Exposes Severity of Nationwide Water Contamination; Corporations Violated Clean Water Act Over 500,000 Times in Last Five Years
Democracy NOW! - Free: Video, Audio, Transcript, MP3 Download
A major investigation by the New York Times has found that chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years. Most of the violations have gone unpunished, with state regulators taking significant action in just three percent of all cases. An estimated one in ten Americans has been exposed to drinking water that has dangerous chemicals or falls short of federal standards. We speak with Charles Duhigg, the New York Times reporter who carried out the investigation. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
The Ruins in Our Future
Why Red-Colored Snow on the Rockies Is a Major Warning Sign That the West Is Drying Up. The era of cheap and plentiful water in the West is over and that’s bad news for our sprawling cities, agriculture and ecosystems. 
Tomgram: Chip Ward, – All of us have been watching drought in action this summer. When it hits the TV news, though, it usually goes by the moniker of “fire.” As we’ve seen, California, in the third year of a major drought, has been experiencing “a seemingly endless fire that has burned more than 250 square miles of Los Angeles County” (and that may turn out to be just the beginning of another fire season from hell).
Southern California has hardly been the only drought story, though. For those with an eye out, the southern parts of Texas, the hottest state in the union this year, have been in the grips of a monster drought. Seven hundred thousand acres of the state have already burned in 2009, with a high risk of more to come.
Jump a few thousand miles and along with neighboring Syria, Iraq has been going through an almost biblical drought which has turned parts of that country into a dustbowl, sweeping the former soil of the former Fertile Crescent via vast dust storms into the lungs of city dwellers.
In Africa, formerly prosperous Kenya is withering in the face of another fearsome drought that has left people desperate and livestock, crops, and children, as well as elephants, dying.
Full Story: Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Ruins in Our Future.
Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells
– NYTimes.com – MORRISON, Wis. — All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe.
There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.
In measured amounts, that waste acts as fertilizer. But if the amounts are excessive, bacteria and chemicals can flow into the ground and contaminate residents’ tap water.
Full Story: Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells – Series – NYTimes.com.
The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West
Red Snow Warning – By Chip Ward
The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West
Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert — specifically Utah’s slickrock portion of it where I live — hot ‘n’ dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly arid landscape, redrock powder is lifted up and carried hundreds of miles eastward until it settles on the broad shoulders of Colorado’s majestic mountains, giving the snowpack there a pink hue.
Some call it watermelon snow. Friends who ski into the backcountry of the San Juan and La Plata mountain ranges in western Colorado tell me that the pink-snow phenomenon has lately been giving way to redder hues, so thick and frequent are the dust storms that roll in these days. A cross-section of a typical Colorado snowbank last winter revealed alternating dirt and snow layers that looked like a weird wilderness version of our flag, red and white stripes alternating against the sky’s blue field.
The Forecast: Dust Followed by Mud
Here in the lowlands, we, too, are experiencing the drying of the West in new dusty ways. Our landscapes are often covered with what we jokingly refer to as “adobe rain” — when rain falls through dust, spattering windows or laundry hung out to dry with brown stains. After a dust “event” this past spring, I wandered through the lot of a car dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the only color seemingly available was light tan. All those previously shiny, brightly painted cars had turned drab. I had to squint to read price stickers under opaque windows.
Full Story: Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Ruins in Our Future.
Toxic Waters – Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost to Health
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.
Full Story: Toxic Waters – Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost to Health – Series – NYTimes.com.
We must all be stewards of water
- The Ottawa Citizen
Simcoe County aquifer dispute underscores the need for a national water policy
A decisive victory has been won for water in Simcoe County, in a struggle that had been brewing for more than 20 years. Dump Site 41, the landfill that was to be built atop the Alliston aquifer this fall, points to major shortcomings in water governance at all levels of government in Canada.
Preliminary work on the dump site was approved in a very close vote in 2007 at Simcoe County council, despite much public opposition. Since then, the artesian spring just under the proposed landfill — declared by a University of Heidelberg study to contain among the purest water in the world — was de-watered to allow for construction.
The struggle to protect the watershed that serves several communities and wildlife in Ontario had grown to epic dimensions as national organizations and political figures joined First Nations communities, local farmers and residents to voice their opposition.
Dr Pepper’s Wet Dream: Water, Government Subsidies and Transfer of Wealth in the Middle of the Desert
- By Yasha Levine, AlterNet.
A bottling plant in the middle of the desert? In the warped “pro-business” logic of a sprawling, bankrupt desert city in California, the plan made perfect economic sense.
VICTORVILLE, Calif. — On a sun-baked afternoon in October 2008, a group of soft-drink executives and city officials gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony at an old Air Force base on the outskirts of the city, 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
They were standing on the edge of the Mojave Desert, one of the driest, most inhospitable terrains in America. Yet there they were, posing for photographs, gold-plated shovels in hand, to mark the construction of a massive new bottling plant and distribution hub for the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, a facility that will to suck up hundreds of millions of gallons of water a year from this water-scarce area to supply soft drinks to 20 percent of its domestic market.
A bottling plant in the middle of the desert? It sounds too absurd to be real. But in the warped “pro-growth, pro-business” logic of a city on the frontier of Southern California’s urban sprawl, the plan made perfect economic sense.
EPA’s Failure to Publicize Drinking Water Data Prompts Rethinking in Agency, Congress
EPA’s Failure to Publicize Drinking Water Data Prompts Rethinking in Agency, Congress - by Danielle Ivory – | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund
There is some evidence that Congress — and the Environmental Protection Agency — are rethinking their policies on a commonly used weed-killer after disclosures that the EPA failed to notify the public about high levels of the herbicide in drinking water.
As the Investigative Fund revealed last week, the herbicide atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. The chemical has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union.
The Natural Resources Defense Council published a report on atrazine levels last week, and the New York Times weighed in with an article on growing questions about the herbicide’s health effects.
The Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee has asked the EPA for a comprehensive briefing next week on the agency’s failure to publicize results of tests that showed high levels of atrazine. The committee also is asking the EPA to develop a specific plan for reporting this data to the public in the future.
Water, Water—Not Everywhere
Water, Water—Not Everywhere - | CommonDreams.org – by Olga Bonfiglio
Without water, nothing can live. And in the Western United States, there isn’t much of it because the region is a desert.
“Everything yearns to be alive in the desert,” says Riley Mitchell, a park ranger at Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah.
For example, short, clumpy trees grow in the cracks of rock where they find even the least bit of soil. Look a little closer and you see vegetation surviving in this land and that includes many flowering plants. Lizards scurry across your path in order to alter their body temperature, which gets too cold under a rock or too hot in the sun.
In the desert everything living screams for water, including your own body. You don’t sweat in its dry heat. Your lips crack and your skin dries as your body dehydrates. If you haven’t taken care to consume enough water you’ll know it because you’ll feel faint.
Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’
Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’ – | CommonDreams.org
by Diane Farsetta
Even critics of World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, agree that it’s an important forum where thousands of people working on water issues share information.
This year’s event, held from August 16 to 22, placed special emphasis on the relationship between water and climate change. The closing statement was literally a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December. “Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt,” it reads, adding that “water-related adaptation” should be seen as part of the solution. The statement also calls for funding “to assist vulnerable, low income countries already affected by climate change,” along with longer-term adaptation efforts.
So why are there critics of World Water Week? In a word, Nestlé.
via Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’ | CommonDreams.org.
On The Hill: EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyo. Drinking Water Might Be From Fracking
OPS: Drill baby Drill. with any luck at all Cheney and his family are being poisoned by this too.
EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyo. Drinking Water Might Be From Fracking - by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Federal environment officials investigating drinking water contamination near the ranching town of Pavillion, Wyo., have found that at least three water wells contain a chemical used in the natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing. Scientists also found traces of other contaminants, including oil, gas or metals, in 11 of 39 wells tested there since March.
The study, which is being conducted under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, is the first time the EPA has undertaken its own water analysis in response to complaints of contamination in drilling areas, and it could be pivotal in the national debate over the role of natural gas in America’s energy policy.
via On The Hill: EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyo. Drinking Water Might Be From Fracking.
EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water
EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water
One of the nation’s most widely-used herbicides has been found to exceed federal safety limits in drinking water in four states, but water customers have not been told and the Environmental Protection Agency has not published the results.
Records that tracked the amount of the weed-killer atrazine in about 150 watersheds from 2003 through 2008 were obtained by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund under the Freedom of Information Act. An analysis found that yearly average levels of atrazine in drinking water violated the federal standard at least ten times in communities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas, all states where farmers rely heavily on the herbicide.
In addition, more than 40 water systems in those states showed spikes in atrazine levels that normally would have triggered automatic notification of customers. In none of those cases were residents alerted.
via EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water.
Wastewater from food plants getting into wells
Wastewater from food plants getting into wells - - Boston.com
When empty-nesters Kari and Ron Craton moved a few years ago to a more rural area of southwestern Michigan, they were seeking a more rustic life.
What they got was more rust.
Government officials say food-processing plants that turn raw crops into products have contaminated the water-supply wells of the Cratons and other property owners in agricultural areas of Michigan and could do the same in other states. Residents claim increased amounts of metals in water drawn from their wells have killed their pets, ruined their plumbing and made their houses impossible to sell or rent.
“It’s going to take years to clean up this mess,” says Kari Craton, who persuaded environmental advocate Erin Brockovich to help her and her neighbors.
A few years ago, acting on residents’ complaints about foul odors and flies near wineries and cheese factories in the San Joaquin Valley, regional water officials in California started requiring food processors to install monitoring wells near the fields where they disposed of their production wastewater. Elevated levels of salts and nitrates, which in extreme cases can reduce blood oxygen in infants, were found near some fields.
via Wastewater from food plants getting into wells – Boston.com.
When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist?
When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist? – By Peter Asmus, AlterNet.
When drought brought a critical shortage of water to Kerala, India, anti-globalization activists placed part of the blame on Coca-Cola, which operated a plant there.
Critics contended that Coca-Cola failed to involve the local community in its plans, and the activists began building a substantial global movement against water privatization, employing the tactic of “brand-jacking” of the world’s No. 1 brand — Coke — to make their point.
Coke’s Kerala plant has since ceased operations, making it a casualty of the global pressure placed on the company. But the campaign against privatization of water resources by activist groups has only grown stronger on the campaign front.
Today, the focus is on bottled water, which critics point to as a wasteful, expensive example of water privatization — companies taking public water, repackaging it and selling it back to us for a profit.
The latest fight between activists and companies such as Coke and Nestle is about who really owns water — corporations or communities.
via When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist? | Water | AlterNet.
DEVELOPMENT: Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right?
OPS: Yes. Before it’s too late.
DEVELOPMENT: Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right? - By Thalif Deen - – IPS ipsnews.net
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 (IPS) – The growing commercialisation of water – and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide – is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.
“We definitely need a covenant or [an international] treaty on the right to water so as to establish once and for all that no one on earth must be denied water because of inability to pay,” says Maude Barlow, a senior adviser to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, on water issues.
“We’ve got to protect water as a human right,” she said, pointing out that the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva would be the most likely venue to propose such a covenant.
But it would be best, she added, if it were ratified by the 192-member General Assembly, currently presided over by Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua.
“We need at the United Nations more than a human rights remedy,” Barlow told IPS. “We need a plan of action for the General Assembly.”
The U.N. says that close to 880 million people – mostly in the developing world – lack adequate access to clean water. By 2030, close to 4 billion people could be living in areas suffering severe water stress, mostly in South Asia and China.
A study commissioned by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), released in March, said the global market for water supply, sanitation and water efficiency is worth over 250 billion dollars – and is likely to grow to nearly 660 billion dollars by 2020.
via DEVELOPMENT: Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right? – IPS ipsnews.net.
Bottled Water Sucks
Bottled Water Sucks – The Nation
I knew bottled water was a social ill but I didn’t know how damaging it was until I saw an explosive and compelling new documentary called Tapped.
With style, verve and righteous anger, the film exposes the bottled water industry’s role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, contributing to overall pollution, and increasing America’s dependence on fossil fuels. All while gouging consumers with exorbitant and indefensible prices.
Claire Thompson summed up the problem well in her post on the movie at Grist:
“Not only is it [bottled water] a clear waste of resources (only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch), it’s an incredible waste of money for consumers, who pay more than the price of gasoline for water that’s marketed as “pure,” but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water. (In fact, 40 percent of the time, bottled water is nothing but municipal tap water, freed from the government oversight that keeps it safe.)”
Watch the movie’s powerful trailer.
via Bottled Water Sucks.
Water Scarcity Looms as Population, Temperature Rise
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – | CommonDreams.org
August 6, 2009
Water Scarcity Looms as Population, Temperature Rise
WASHINGTON – August 6 – Water scarcity is increasing in many regions as factors including population growth, climate change, and pollution restrict the amount of water available relative to demand. In 2008, 1.4 billion people lived in “closed basins”-regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, municipal, and environmental needs for all. This number is expected to grow to 1.8 billion by 2025.
According to the latest Vital Signs snapshot of water scarcity trends:
* Population growth is a major driver of water scarcity at the regional and global levels. Urbanization and rising incomes-two trends prominent in rapidly developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil-also contribute to increased domestic and industrial demand for water.
* Several major rivers, including the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling, and Yellow, no longer reach the sea year-round as a growing share of their waters are claimed for various uses.
* Diets heavy in livestock are water intensive because of the huge quantities of water required for livestock production. Similarly, fossil fuel production requires many times more water than renewable energy sources do.
via Water Scarcity Looms as Population, Temperature Rise | CommonDreams.org.
Why Can’t the U.S. Guarantee the Most Basic of Human Rights — the Right to Clean Water?
Why Can’t the U.S. Guarantee the Most Basic of Human Rights — the Right to Clean Water? - | | AlterNet
California is leading the way with new legislation to guarantee clean water for all, but the federal government is far behind.
The prime obstacle to guaranteeing a human right to water in international law has been the U.S. federal government, which also, by the way, opposes human rights to food and housing.
It is this somewhat surprising political dynamic that makes AB 1242 by California Assemblymen Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos, so significant. The legislation, which establishes the right of every Californian to have clean water for basic human needs, passed a key state Senate committee in early July and may just be heading toward Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk this fall.
The concept of a human right to water is a hot topic at the United Nations and in international circles. Multinational companies are beginning to endorse the concept, with PepsiCo making a proclamation supporting the human right to water this past March.
What does a human right to water really mean? AB 1242 is a great first step, but the one-page bill is short on specifics.
Chicago water: In public reports, city silent over sex hormones and painkillers found in treated drinking water
Chicago water: In public reports, city silent over sex hormones and painkillers found in treated drinking water -- chicagotribune.com
Pharmaceutical chemicals aren’t on list of substances in water that require public notice
By Michael Hawthorne | Tribune reporter
Annual water quality reports mailed to Chicagoans this month didn’t say a word about sex hormones, painkillers or anti-cholesterol drugs, even though city officials found traces of pharmaceuticals and other unregulated substances in treated Lake Michigan water during the past year.
Like other cities, Chicago must notify the public if its drinking water contains certain regulated contaminants, including lead, pesticides and harmful bacteria.
But pharmaceutical chemicals, which have been detected in drinking water across the country, are not on that list. So Mayor Richard Daley is technically correct in stating that the “pure, fresh drinking water” pumped to 7 million people in Chicago and the suburbs “meets or exceeds all regulatory standards.”
Drinking water standards haven’t been updated for years, in part because little is known about how pharmaceutical concoctions might affect public health. But researchers and regulators are concerned about the potential effects of long-term exposure to these substances, which are designed to have an impact at low doses.
Australians Ban Bottled Water
Australians Ban Bottled Water
SYDNEY — Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country _ and possibly the world _ to take such a drastic step in the growing backlash against the industry.
Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia’s beverage industry in one day: Hours earlier, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.
“I have never seen 350 Australians in the same room all agreeing to something,” said Jon Dee, who helped spearhead the “Bundy on Tap” campaign in Bundanoon, a town of 2,500 about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Sydney. “It’s time for people to realize they’re being conned by the bottled water industry.”
It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado
It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado - NYTimes.com
Just 75 miles west of here, in Utah, collecting rainwater from the roof is still illegal unless the roof owner also owns water rights on the ground; the same rigid rules, with a few local exceptions, also apply in Washington State. Meanwhile, 20 miles south of here, in New Mexico, rainwater catchment, as the collecting is called, is mandatory for new dwellings in some places like Santa Fe.
DURANGO, Colo. — For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.
Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.
Now two new laws in Colorado will allow many people to collect rainwater legally. The laws are the latest crack in the rainwater edifice, as other states, driven by population growth, drought, or declining groundwater in their aquifers, have already opened the skies or begun actively encouraging people to collect.
via It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado – NYTimes.com.
Fresh water: Our ‘sea of diamonds’
Fresh water: Our ‘sea of diamonds’
This scarce resource — much of which resides in the Great Lakes — will be exploited if we lower our guard.
Minnesota has long been a national leader on conservation issues. One of the state’s most recent claims to environmental excellence is its role as the first of the eight Great Lakes states to ratify, in 2007, the Great Lakes Compact. Congress and former President George W. Bush signed off on the compact — sold to the public as the best hope of stopping water exports — last fall.
But the work of protecting the Great Lakes is just beginning. Efforts must continue on two fronts in order for Minnesota to remain a leader.
First, citizens and our congressional delegation must make a strong case for capturing a piece of the $475 million in Great Lakes restoration money proposed by President Obama in his 2010 budget. The money is the first significant federal investment proposed for the purpose of cleaning up toxic hot spots, restoring habitats and attacking invasive species. Although prior presidents and Congresses have been glib in calling the Great Lakes a national treasure, they haven’t been willing to defend them, even as the Florida Everglades and Chesapeake Bay benefited from substantial federal dollars.
Consumers Don’t Buy Water for Health Reasons
Consumers Don’t Buy Water for Health Reasons | CommonDreams.org
NEW YORK – Many people seem to have a vague notion that bottled water is healthier than tap, but it is not a major reason that they buy it, a small study finds.
UK researchers found that among the 23 gym-goers they interviewed, many thought that bottled water was more “pure” and healthful than tap water. But they were hard-pressed to come up with any specific health benefits.
And when it came to their motivations for buying bottled water, health reasons were not at the top of the list. Instead, taste, convenience and cost were more important in study participants’ decisions to buy or not to buy, the researchers report in the online journal BMC Public Health.
Consumer demand for bottled water has been steadily rising over the past decade, and health concerns are often assumed to be a driving force, according to Lorna A. Ward and colleagues at the University of Birmingham.
However, their findings suggest that is not the case, the researchers say.
via Consumers Don’t Buy Water for Health Reasons | CommonDreams.org.
Thirst for Profit: Corporate Control of Water in Latin America
Thirst for Profit: Corporate Control of Water in Latin America | CommonDreams.org
Water for Sale: What is called for is an international code for the public’s access to a guaranteed supply of water as a basic human right.
The Corporate Crusade to Commodify Water
Water has been characterized as the oil of the 21st century. Blue gold. It is essential to life, and yet humanity faces a growing water crisis as a result of severe mismanagement in water and sanitation, which will be exponentially exacerbated in the coming decades by population growth combined with declining resources. Latin America has the greatest income disparity in the world and the population’s access to water reflects this inequality. Over 130 million people living in the region do not have access to potable water in their homes, and sanitation is in even poorer condition, as it is estimated that only one in six persons has adequate sanitation services. According to the 2007 Annual Report from the nonprofit organization Water For People, “Every day, nearly 6,000 people who share our world die from water-related illnesses – more than 2 million each year – and the vast majority of these are children…There are more lives lost each year to water-related illnesses than to natural disasters and wars combined.” It is clear that lack of access to clean water is a serious issue, one that has only started to gain international attention from a variety of organizations in recent years.
via Thirst for Profit: Corporate Control of Water in Latin America | CommonDreams.org.
USA, Canada to Modernize Great Lakes Water Quality Pact
USA, Canada to Modernize Great Lakes Water Quality Pact | CommonDreams.org
NIAGARA FALLS, New York, June 15, 2009 (ENS) – The United States and Canada have agreed to update the 37-year-old Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement that commits both countries “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon met Saturday at the Rainbow Bridge that connects the two countries to announce their intention to modernize the agreement.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement addresses threats to water quality in the Great Lakes and in the portion of the St. Lawrence River that straddles the Canada-U.S. border.
“We have to update it to reflect new knowledge, new technologies and, unfortunately, new threats,” Secretary Clinton said.
When the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was first signed in 1972, the major issue was phosphorus over-enrichment. The agreement was updated in 1978, when the major issue was ridding the Great Lakes of persistent toxic substances.
via USA, Canada to Modernize Great Lakes Water Quality Pact | CommonDreams.org.
Water Risks Ripple Through the Beverage Industry
Water Risks Ripple Through the Beverage Industry | CommonDreams.org 
NEW YORK – At New York’s Del Posto, diners can share a $130 entree of wild branzino fish with roasted fennel and peperonata concentrato and a $3,600 bottle of Dom Perignon. They cannot share a bottle of Perrier or San Pellegrino water.
The Italian restaurant backed by celebrities Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich is one of several shunning bottled water, along with the city of San Francisco and New York state.
“The argument for local water is compelling and obvious,” said Bastianich, who is phasing out bottled water across his restaurant empire, which stretches to Los Angeles.
“It’s about transportation, packaging, the absurdity of moving water all over the world,” he said.
via Water Risks Ripple Through the Beverage Industry | CommonDreams.org.
California’s Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country’s Food Supply
California’s Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country’s Food Supply
Nearly a third of the country’s food supply comes from California, but drought there may be a catastrophe for farmers — and the rest of us.
What a difference an administration makes. Samuel Bodman, the previous secretary of energy under the Bush administration, spent his short term stumping for nuclear power plant construction, polluting the hell out of the Earth, profiting off global warming and trying to significantly downplay America’s singular role in greenhouse-gas emissions.
The new one? Well, he’s a doom prophet with a Ph.D.
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going,” Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. “I’m hoping that the American people will wake up,” he added, just in case there was any confusion about the gravity of the situation.
That kind of apocalyptic foresight has made Chu a breath of fresh, dystopian air. For eight nearly insufferable years, the American public has had no shortage of political tools telling it everything is going to be all right, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, that reports of our impending environmental devastation have been greatly exaggerated, and so on. By contrast, Steven Chu is a Cassandra on a mission from reality. But few, especially in the state he singled out, feel like buying what he is selling.
via California’s Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country’s Food Supply | Water | AlterNet.
Tap Water Worries Have You Buying Bottled? Safeway Loves You
Tap Water Worries Have You Buying Bottled? Safeway Loves You | CommonDreams.org
MERCED COUNTY, Calif. – Wells are drying up across the county from an overtaxed and sinking water table.
Drought and climate change threaten the future of local water supplies.
And Merced has been selling its tap water since 2002 to a water bottling plant, which then sells that water at rates far above what it costs the plant to buy it from the city.
The Safeway Inc.’s water bottling plant in Merced — one of the top five commercial/industrial water users in the city, which bottles Safeway’s in-house purified and spring water brand Refreshe — uses roughly 50,000 gallons a day, five days a week, for its bottling operation.
The plant, which provides most Refreshe drinking and spring water to Safeway stores in the state, filters city water, puts it in bottles and sells it as purified water. The bottles note that the water was bottled in Merced, but not that it was pumped out of the ground by the city. (Refreshe spring water is shipped in from a spring and then bottled in Merced.)
via Tap Water Worries Have You Buying Bottled? Safeway Loves You | CommonDreams.org.
Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer
Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer
FORT EDWARD, New York, May 19, 2009 (ENS) – The long awaited dredging of the Upper Hudson River to remove sediment contaminated by PCBs from a General Electric factory began Friday near Roger’s Island in Fort Edward.
The six-year dredging project will be conducted by General Electric under the terms of a November 2006 consent decree. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will oversee all aspects of the work; dredging will continue through October 2009, weather permitting.
This first phase of the dredging project will be conducted 24 hours a day, six days a week and aims to remove 265,000 cubic yards of sediment and 20,300 kilograms of PCBs from a six-mile stretch of the river between Roger’s Island and Thompson Island.
Dramatic increases in water bills expected globally, including South Florida
OPS: How about eliminating #3 entirely by replacing engineered grasses with plants native to your area. Lush green lawns are an unnecessary expense in time and pollution as well as a waste of water. If you’re going to water something, make it something you can eat.
Dramatic increases in water bills expected globally, including South Florida
Inflation, drought, new taxes, and expensive water projects are among the drivers of higher water bills expected around the world, despite the squeeze already on consumers as a result of the recession. Locally, customers could be facing water bill increases of up to 40% in the following South Florida cities: Plantation, Sunrise, Southwest Ranches, Weston, and parts of Davie. Other local cities that could face higher water bills include Boynton Beach, Cooper City, Dania Beach, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Lake Worth, Miramar, and parts of Pembroke Pines.
Other areas of the United States are also preparing for high increases. The City of Camarillo in South California is facing a staggering increase of 70% in their water bill by 2011. In West Virginia, the City of Fairmont requested a 49% increase. Furthermore, landlords around the country are being strained by rental contracts that include water in the monthly rental fees while water prices continue to climb.
Overseas, consumers in Victoria, Australia, are preparing for their water bills to jump as much as 60% over the next three years. And in the UK, churches and community groups are bracing for a whopping 4000% increase in their water bills as a result of a new tax.
If you’re not already conserving water for ecological, scientific, or spiritual reasons, then you might consider saving water now for financial reasons! Here are five cheap, easy things you can do to make a huge difference:
Water Infrastructure Financing Act Benefits Corporations at the Expense of Taxpayers
Water Infrastructure Financing Act Benefits Corporations at the Expense of Taxpayers | CommonDreams.org
Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter
WASHINGTON – May 14 – “Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved S.1005, the Water Infrastructure Financing Act. The bill contains language that would, for the first time, allow private wastewater utilities access to funding from the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRF). This proposed change to the law would essentially allow private wastewater utilities to benefit from public funding. The burden of this modification, however, would ultimately fall on consumers, because private wastewater utilities charge customers as much as 80% more than do their public counterparts. Under this bill, consumers would be left to subsidize these utilities through both taxes and higher user rates.
“Privatization is not an efficient means of rejuvenating ailing wastewater systems. From high costs and inefficiency to unaccountable and irresponsible operators, a deluge of problems has swamped communities that have turned their wastewater systems over to the private sector. This is because corporations prioritize earnings over quality and stockholders over consumers. They seek returns by cutting corners and hiking rates, and further pad investor pockets by downsizing workforces and stripping away worker benefits. Inflated prices, higher household bills and lost jobs are the last thing families need in these challenging economic times.
“Congress should reject language in the Water Infrastructure Financing Act that subsidizes and incentivizes such corporate abuse. If taxpayers front the money for these programs, they should be the primary beneficiaries.”
Coal ash is damaging water, health in 34 states, groups say
Coal ash is damaging water, health in 34 states, groups say
WASHINGTON — People in 34 states who live near 210 coal ash lagoons or landfills with inadequate lining have a higher risk of cancer and other diseases from contaminants in their drinking water, two environmental groups reported on Thursday.
Twenty-one states have five or more of the high-risk disposal sites near coal-fired power plants. The groups — the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice — said that a 2002 Environmental Protection Agency document that the agency didn’t release until March of this year adds information about toxic releases from these facilities to nearby water systems and data on how some contaminants accumulate in fish and deer and can harm the health of people who hunt and fish.
The report said that people who live near the most problematic disposal sites have as much as a 1-in-50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water contaminated by arsenic. The highest risk is for people who live near ash ponds with no liners and who get their water from wells.
The report said the ash ponds also produced an increased risk of damage to the liver and other organs from exposure to such metals as cadmium, cobalt and lead, and other pollutants.
Although the health information mainly came from an EPA study released in August 2007, the information was largely neglected and was too technical for most people to understand, the groups said. The report and a chart of the sites “takes the numbers and fleshes them out so the most dangerous units are identified,” said Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice.
via Coal ash is damaging water, health in 34 states, groups say | McClatchy.
Are Policy Makers Exacerbating Drought Scares? That’s What It Looks Like in California
Are Policy Makers Exacerbating Drought Scares? That’s What It Looks Like in California
Like much of the West, the state has serious water issues, but Mother Nature is only partly to blame.
Take shorter showers, wash only full loads of laundry, sweep instead of hose your driveway.
These are the messages that Californians are getting as part of the state’s new “Save Our Water” campaign. Just weeks ago, 19 million Southern Californians were told they would be seeing mandatory restrictions, and at the same time, thousands of farmworkers marched to protest water cuts in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley in the central part of the state.
All this seems to fit with a February proclamation from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that California is facing a drought emergency that director of the Department of Water Resources Lester Snow compared at one point this winter to the worst drought in modern history of the state.
But not everyone is convinced about how dire the situation is and why. In a controversial story in the Stockton Record, columnist Michael Fitzgerald wrote, “California’s ‘drought’ is overblown. The alarmists calling it a historic disaster are trying to pull a fast one.”
Mass. awards $986 million for clean water projects
Mass. awards $986 million for clean water projects
BOSTON (Map, News) – Massachusetts is awarding more than $986 million in loans for improvements to drinking water and waste water projects.
Gov. Deval Patrick announced Friday that 127 infrastructure projects throughout the state will receive the funding.
New projects include $64 million for a wastewater treatment plant upgrade in Westborough and more than $55 million for collection system and other improvements in Chatham.
The money comes from the state revolving fund program and stimulus money. Massachusetts is receiving $133 million for clean water projects and $52 million available for drinking water projects.
via Mass. awards $986 million for clean water projects – Examiner.com.
Corporate Think Tank Dives into Water Policy
Corporate Think Tank Dives into Water Policy
In May 2008, the major law firm Hunton & Williams launched the Water Policy Institute (WPI), a think tank-esque, industry-supported consortium formed “to address water supply, quality and use issues,” according to its website.
After the initial flurry of press releases, WPI appeared to languish. Then, ten months after its formation, WPI issued its first white paper. “Water Wars: Conflicts Over Shared Waters” (pdf) focuses on two river basins in the Southeastern United States. The paper urges the states involved — Georgia, Florida and Alabama — to put aside litigation and work with federal mediators to reach an agreement on water allocation. It also supports further study of seasonal water use, ecological issues and efficiency measures.
The white paper’s conclusions seem reasonable, even obvious. So much so that it’s unclear why Hunton & Williams felt the need to recruit major public relations and corporate powerhouses when forming WPI — and what they, and the law firm, get out of the effort.
What is clear is that WPI, Hunton & Williams and their corporate allies have a long history of siding with (or being) polluters and attempting to undermine water quality safeguards. It seems reasonable, therefore, to worry that whatever WPI is up to, it’s likely to do more harm than good.
via Corporate Think Tank Dives into Water Policy | CommonDreams.org.
Which is Healthier: Tap Water or Bottled Water?
Which is Healthier: Tap Water or Bottled Water?
Tap water wins again and again and again and again.
We all know that bottled water has a larger carbon footprint than tap water. Those bottled water people have to harvest water, construct a plastic bottle for it, ship it the water to the bottles or the bottles to the water. Then they have to transfer the products to stores, refrigerate a percentage of the bottles and then consumers have to drive to store and get the bottled water. It’s a mess, a mess I tell you.
Is Bottled Water Less Polluted?
No.
According to a study by the Environmental Working Group, bottled water is just as polluted as a tap water. In fact, twenty percent of bottled water has more chlorine than California’s state regulations will allow in tap water.
We should stop polluting our water. That’s what we should really learn from this.
Is Bottled Water Subjected to Higher Health Standards than Bottled Water?
Nope.
via Which is Healthier: Tap Water or Bottled Water? : Planet Green.
West Is Told to Expect Water Shortfalls
West Is Told to Expect Water Shortfalls
The Colorado River is a critical source of water for seven Western states, each of which gets an annual allotment according to a system that has sparked conflict and controversy for decades. But in an era of climate change, even greater difficulties loom.
The scope of those potential problems is detailed in a study being published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tim P. Barnett and David W. Pierce of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography report that under various forecasts of the effects of warming temperatures on runoff into the Colorado, scheduled future water deliveries to the seven states are not sustainable.
The work builds on an earlier study by the researchers that looked at whether Lake Mead, the huge reservoir behind Hoover Dam, would eventually go dry. For the current study, they tweaked their model of river inflows and outflows and looked at the delivery shortfalls that would be needed to keep Lake Mead at the lowest functioning level. The modifications in the model “didn’t really change any of our answers,” Dr. Barnett said. “It just made the study a lot stronger.”
via Observatory – West Is Told to Expect Water Shortfalls – NYTimes.com.
Poison in the well
Poison in the well
Crestwood officials cut corners and supplied residents with tainted water for 2 decades
Like every town across the nation, south suburban Crestwood tucks a notice into utility bills each summer reassuring residents their drinking water is safe. Village leaders also trumpet the claim in their monthly newsletter, while boasting they offer the cheapest water rates in Cook County.
But those pronouncements hide a troubling reality: For more than two decades, the 11,000 or so residents in this working-class community unknowingly drank tap water contaminated with toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, a Tribune investigation found.
As village officials were building a national reputation for pinching pennies, and sending out fliers proclaiming Crestwood water was “Good to taste but not to waste!,” state and village records obtained by the newspaper show they secretly were drawing water from a contaminated well, apparently to save money.
Officials kept using the well even though state environmental officials told them at least 22 years ago that dangerous chemicals related to a dry-cleaning solvent had oozed into the water, records show.
US Water Contaminated By Pharmaceutical Companies, Hospitals, Consumers
US Water Contaminated By Pharmaceutical Companies, Hospitals,
Consumers
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water _ contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.
Federal and industry officials say they don’t know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them _ as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.
via US Water Contaminated By Pharmaceutical Companies, Hospitals, Consumers.
Cap-and-Trade for Water: A Bad Idea for People and the Planet
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 16, 2009 2:00 PM |
CONTACT: Food & Water Watch Kate Fried (202) 683-2500 |
Cap-and-Trade for Water: A Bad Idea for People and the Planet
Statement from Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director, and Maude Barlow, Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN General Assembly
WASHINGTON – April 16 – “Yesterday, the CEO of Climate Exchange PLC trotted out the incredibly bad idea to, essentially, apply the flawed model of carbon cap-and-trade markets to water. The head of the UK-based company that made millions of dollars last year from its business facilitating carbon trading wants to take this scheme that has failed to reduce emissions of climate changing carbon gas and apply it to water extraction rights from the Great Lakes, according to an interview titled, ‘Water cap and trade,’ posted yesterday on Global Dashboard: Notes from the Future.
“Trading the right to emit carbon in one location so that emissions will be reduced in another location has been tried in Europe and failed. Governments and industries there have found ways around the system in order to hand out emissions permits, according to the April 13, 2009 edition of U.S. News and World Report. It’s left consumers paying more for energy – 25 percent more for electricity in Germany – while carbon emissions have increased. In short, it’s meant money for the energy corporations and carbon traders, but nothing more than a lump of coal for consumers and the environment.
“Despite that, the head of Climate Exchange PLC supports the possibility of capping rights to extract water from the Great Lakes and then selling those rights to the highest bidder, be they in Asia, the Middle East or elsewhere in the United States.
“This amounts to taking water, which belongs to everyone and to no one, and trading it away. In short, it commodifies water.
“This notion of a sort of cap-and-trade system for water rights to decrease water use is even more far-fetched than buying and selling carbon emission permits to reduce pollution and slow down climate change. It’s a form of bluewashing that industry has cooked up to look like environmental stewards. Nationally and internationally, all the businesses that use water, particularly giant food and beverage corporations, can never be water neutral because they can’t use zero water. In other words, their voluminous water extraction in one place can’t be offset somewhere else because other companies are using water in those other places.
“Research shows that withdrawing too much water from a single watershed can have myriad effects. According to a recent report by the U.S.-based Groundwater Protection Council, withdrawing too much ground water can dry up wells, springs and wetlands, and reduce stream flows and lake levels.
“Water is a human right, not a corporate commodity. The idea that it can or should be bought, sold or traded away to the highest bidder must be stopped.”
via Cap-and-Trade for Water: A Bad Idea for People and the Planet | CommonDreams.org.
Across the United States, Waters in Crisis
Across the United States, Waters in Crisis
WASHINGTON – Over the last years, up to 60 percent of lakes, rivers, streams, and drinking water sources across the United States have lost crucial environmental protections at the hands of polluters, developers, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Without immediate action in Congress, a generation of progress in cleaning up our nation’s waters may be lost,” says a new report by seven U.S.-based environmental advocacy groups.
“When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, our [U.S.] waters were in dire shape,” states the report, “Courting Disaster: How the Supreme Court Has Broken the Clean Water Act and Why Congress Must Fix It” [pdf]. “The Cuyahoga River had caught fire several times, Lake Erie was all but devoid of life, oil spills commonly occurred on our coasts, and industrial polluters treated rivers and lakes as open sewers.” For almost 30 years, however, broad application of the Clean Water Act led to a significant clean up of U.S. waters and a notable slowing of wetland loss. But beginning in 2001, a series of Supreme Court and government agency rulings derided critical regulations, inciting environmental groups to now demand immediate action from lawmakers.
via Across the United States, Waters in Crisis | CommonDreams.org.
The Consequences of ‘Drill, Baby Drill’: More Than 90 Oil Spills a Day in the U.S.
The Consequences of ‘Drill, Baby Drill’: More Than 90 Oil Spills a Day in the U.S.
And that’s just the fraction of reported spills. While big tanker disasters make the headlines, the daily toll of the oil industry is huge.
The 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska on March 24 got much attention, including reports that significant oil still pollutes the area and many fish and animal species and the Alaska Native economies that relied on them have still not recovered.
Meanwhile, the captain of the Cosco Busan oil tanker which slammed into San Francisco’s Bay Bridge and caused a major spill in November 2007 is currently on trial.
Such dramatic tanker accidents are what normally come to mind when people think of oil spills. But oil spills and ongoing leaks from pipelines, platforms, storage tanks and other infrastructure are actually a daily occurrence in Alaska, the Gulf Coast, California and other parts of the U.S.
Companies are rarely punished for such occurrences, yet these sources of contamination create serious and ongoing public health and environmental problems that communities are often left to deal with on their own. These spills happen from rigs, pipelines and infrastructure both on land and offshore, with the most serious health and environmental consequences coming when oil and related contaminants pollute waterways or seep into groundwater.
The Latest Absurdity in the Fight to Conserve Water: Making Rainwater Harvesting Illegal
The Latest Absurdity in the Fight to Conserve Water: Making Rainwater Harvesting Illegal
Absurd laws are challenging the collection in some states, while others are embracing the practice.
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times described the latest absurdity in the never-ending search to quench the thirst for water: ownership of rainwater and, more precisely, the illegality of rainwater harvesting. Residents and communities in parts of Colorado are turning to this ancient practice of collecting and storing rain to fulfill their domestic water needs, including flushing toilets and watering lawns. Using this “grey” water, as it is called, relieves pressure on water resources and can be extremely efficient.
Many long-time water users, however, object to the practice.
These so-called water buffaloes argue that people who collect rainwater are taking away from their water by collecting the water before it has a chance to flow into a river from which they obtain water. Effectively, they argue, the rainwater belongs to them – they own the rain that falls from the sky as part of their water allocation, even though 97 percent of the rainfall that falls on soil does not reach a river. The bad news? The law in Colorado stands behind those water buffaloes.
Bioethanol’s Impact On Water Supply Three Times Higher Than Once Thought
Bioethanol’s Impact On Water Supply Three Times Higher Than Once Thought
ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2009) — At a time when water supplies are scarce in many areas of the United States, scientists in Minnesota are reporting that production of bioethanol — often regarded as the clean-burning energy source of the future — may consume up to three times more water than previously thought.
Sangwon Suh and colleagues point out in the new study that annual bioethanol production in the U.S. is currently about 9 billion gallons and note that experts expect it to increase in the near future. The growing demand for bioethanol, particularly corn-based ethanol, has sparked significant concerns among researchers about its impact on water availability. Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires the use of 263 to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump. But these estimates failed to account for widely varied regional irrigation practices, the scientists say.
The scientists made a new estimate of bioethanol’s impact on the water supply using detailed irrigation data from 41 states. They found that bioethanol’s water requirements can be as high as 861 billion gallons of water from the corn field to the fuel pump in 2007. And a gallon of ethanol may require up to over 2,100 gallons of water from farm to fuel pump, depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn.
via Bioethanol’s Impact On Water Supply Three Times Higher Than Once Thought.
