All Entries in the "Water" Category

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

Full Story: After Decades-Long Wait, US Navy to Study Health Effects of Water Contamination at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina..

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.

Full Story Dem Sell-out Dianne Feinstein Attempts End-Run to Hand California Water to Billionaire Farmers | Economy | AlterNet.

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.

Full Story Water Heist: Corporations Are Targeting Cash-Strapped Cities for Control of Their Public Water | Water | AlterNet.

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.

Full Story Four billion people threatened by water shortages if world leaders stumble at 2010’s first climate change hurdle | Oxfam International.

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.

Full Story Heartbreaking Stories Warn New Yorkers of What May Be in Store if the State OKs Controversial Gas Drilling | Water | AlterNet.

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.

Full Story How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply | Water | AlterNet.

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

via YouTube – Can you swallow this?.

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.

via We must all be stewards of water.

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.

via Dr Pepper’s Wet Dream: Water, Government Subsidies and Transfer of Wealth in the Middle of the Desert | Water | AlterNet.

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.

via EPA’s Failure to Publicize Drinking Water Data Prompts Rethinking in Agency, Congress | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund.

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.

via Water, Water—Not Everywhere | CommonDreams.org.

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.

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.

via Why Can’t the U.S. Guarantee the Most Basic of Human Rights — the Right to Clean Water? | Water | AlterNet.

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.

via Chicago water: In public reports, city silent over sex hormones and painkillers found in treated drinking water — chicagotribune.com.

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.”

via Australians Ban Bottled Water.

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.

via Fresh water: Our ’sea of diamonds’.

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.

via Toxic Hudson River Sediment Could Poison Texas Aquifer.

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:

via Miami Interfaith Spirituality Examiner: Dramatic increases in water bills expected globally, including South Florida.

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.”

via Water Infrastructure Financing Act Benefits Corporations 
at the Expense of Taxpayers
 | CommonDreams.org.

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.”

via Are Policy Makers Exacerbating Drought Scares? That’s What It Looks Like in California | Water | AlterNet.

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.

via Poison in the well — chicagotribune.com.

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

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.

via The Consequences of ‘Drill, Baby Drill’: More Than 90 Oil Spills a Day in the U.S. | Water | AlterNet.

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.

via The Latest Absurdity in the Fight to Conserve Water: Making Rainwater Harvesting Illegal | Water | AlterNet.

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.

Cuyahoga River Fire Galvanized Clean Water and the Environment as a Public Issue

Cuyahoga River Fire Galvanized Clean Water and the Environment as a Public Issue  – by Michael Scott

Environmentalists observing 2009 as “The Year of the River” are celebrating the remarkable return to health of the Cuyahoga River over the last four decades.

But before there was a Cuyahoga comeback, the Cuyahoga was a catalyst.

When the oily, murky and sluggish waterway caught fire in June 1969, it not only caught the attention of a previously indifferent industrial nation — it also ignited an already smoldering ecological movement.

That movement toward environmental responsibility included the first Earth Day and passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972, still the most influential water improvement measure on the books.

“The fire did contribute a huge amount to the new environmental movement and it put the issue in front of everyone else, too,” said Jonathan Adler, environmental historian and law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “Water pollution became a tangible, vivid thing — like it had never been on a national level.

“There was a sense of crisis at that point. It was: Oh, my God — rivers are catching on fire.’ ”

via Cuyahoga River Fire Galvanized Clean Water and the Environment as a Public Issue | CommonDreams.org.

CDC covered up high lead levels in D.C.

CDC covered up high lead levels in D.C.

Eight years ago, engineers and officials in Washington, D.C. decided to give the go-ahead for a program that would eliminate the “potentially carcinogenic by-products” of chlorine in tap water. The program replaced chlorination with chloramination, and it worked. However, in the next three years, hundreds of families with homes fitted with lead pipes in the District of Columbia were exposed to dangerously high lead levels. Unknown to scientists at the time, the chlorine in tap water served as a ‘binder’ for the lead pipes, keeping a certain amount of lead from dissolving in the water. In 2004, the chlorination method was restored. Still, in the first half of that year, 74 out of 108 household taps sampled had lead concentrations above the “EPA action level,” some astronomically so.

Numerous studies confirm that very low levels of lead in blood are linked to short attention spans and reading problems in children. In adults, low levels are linked to high blood pressure and an increased risk of death from heart disease and stroke. If not detected early, children with high levels of lead in their bodies can suffer from brain and nervous system damage, stunted growth, and hearing problems.

via The Raw Story | CDC covered up high lead levels in D.C..

Nestle Asked to Stop Fooling With Community Water Supplies

Nestle Asked to Stop Fooling With Community Water Supplies

Continued Disputes Foreshadow Shareholder Season

For Immediate Release: April 1, 2009

Contacts:

• * Sara Joseph, 617-447-2527
• * Arlene Kanno, 608-253-7266
• * Terry Swier, 231-972-8856
• * Debra Anderson, 530-964-2488
• * Anne Wentworth, 207-793-2633

BOSTON – In the lead-up to Nestlé’s annual shareholders’ meeting this April 23rd, a storm is gathering around the business practices of the world’s largest water bottler. Communities across the country have long been engaged in struggles with the bottling giant over control of local water resources. Now many of these struggles are coming to a head and a national campaign called Think Outside the Bottle is using April Fools Day to call on the corporation to, “stop fooling with community water supplies.”

“For years Nestlé employed a range of tactics to wrest water rights from rural communities and downstream users, keeping its abuses out of sight and out of mind to the public,” said Deborah Lapidus, campaigns director for Corporate Accountability International. “Well, affected communities have now made it clear there is a pattern that needs to stop.”

To begin bottling in communities, Nestlé has been engaged in everything from costly public relations campaigns and legal challenges to backroom deals for water rights. For example:

Public relations to pump. This year, several Maine communities passed ordinances to protect community water rights. Their victory was significant, given that just a few years earlier, Nestlé pumped more than $200,000 to front groups that successfully attacked and defeated similar, statewide measures in the media.

Draining community resources in more ways than one. When communities in Michigan challenged Nestlé’s right to drain hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every day, the corporation waged a drawn out court battle to maintain its access to water. The protracted legal struggle has burdened community members with costly legal fees , exhausting the community’s resources to challenge water withdrawals.

via Nestle Asked to Stop Fooling With Community Water Supplies | Corporate Accountability International.

Don’t Flush an Energy Opportunity

Water and Energy: How Congress Can Solve Two Problems at Once

Don’t Flush an Energy Opportunity

Congress now has several opportunities to further our understanding of the nexus between water and energy use and to promote water conservation efforts that can also achieve significant energy savings. A recently introduced energy and water bill combined with financial incentives in the omnibus energy bill due later this year could help the entire country enjoy the savings some states are already seeing from reductions in water use–with a potential for job creation through water-efficient home retrofits.

In California, Santa Clara County’s experience underscores this important but often overlooked link. Beginning in the early 1990s, the Santa Clara Valley Water District got serious about water conservation. The district, which serves some 1.8 million residents and includes Silicon Valley and the city of San Jose, developed programs that encouraged residents, businesses, industries, and agricultural producers to use water more efficiently.

The results have been impressive: a savings of 370,000 acre-feet of water in 13 years. (A typical household uses one acre-foot of water per year).

But perhaps even more significant have been the energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions: 1.42 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 335 million kg of carbon dioxide, which is equal to taking 72,000 cars off the road for a year.

via Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Don’t Flush an Energy Opportunity.

Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes by Carolyn Kormann: Yale Environment 360

Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes

Bolivia accounts for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it will soon be paying a disproportionately high price for a major consequence of global warming: the rapid loss of glaciers and a subsequent decline in vital water supplies.

by carolyn kormann

Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a seemingly endless stream of reports by global institutions and universities chronicling the melting of the world’s cryosphere, or ice zone. This latest report concerned the glaciers in the Andes and revealed the following: Bolivia’s famed Chacaltaya glacier has lost 80 percent of its surface area since 1982, and Peruvian glaciers have lost more than one-fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country’s coastal region, home to 60 percent of Peru’s population.

And if warming trends continue, the study concluded, many of the Andes’ tropical glaciers will disappear within 20 years, not only threatening the water supplies of 77 million people in the region, but also reducing hydropower production, which accounts for roughly half of the electricity generated in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

via Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes by Carolyn Kormann: Yale Environment 360.

Water cut off in Mexican capital

OPS:  Who’s next? LA?  Las Vegas?  Phoenix? Tucson? Albuquerque?

Water cut off in Mexican capital

Some of the city’s residents depend on weekly water rations

Mexico City officials have shut down a main pipeline providing fresh water to millions of residents because reserves have fallen to record low levels.

The closure, due to last 36 hours, will affect five million people, or a quarter of the city’s population.

Unusually low rainfall last year and major leakage are blamed for leaving reservoirs less than half full.

Hundreds of water trucks have been deployed in the areas worst affected by the cuts.

The local government says it will carry out emergency repairs to the water supply network.

More than 50% of the water carried by the pipeline leaks out before it reaches its destination.

This is the third time the capital has faced such a drastic form of water rationing this year, the BBC’s Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City reports.

via BBC NEWS | Americas | Country profiles | Water cut off in Mexican capital.

Mercury mystery in state waters

Mercury mystery in state waters

Fish species aren’t equally affected by the heavy metal. And some lakes feel it more.

On an early spring morning, Robert Gong cast his line into Carter Lake even though he knew of the toxic danger beneath the surface.

The idyllic scene — calm, slate-blue waters fringed by evergreens and snow — belied the problem: a build-up of dangerous mercury in the reservoir’s walleye.

The problem isn’t limited to the Larimer County reservoir. About 20 percent of the Colorado lakes and reservoirs that have been tested by the state contain mercury-tainted fish.

“It seems it’s everywhere,” said Gong, a Loveland resident. “It scares some people, and some say they eat the fish anyway. Me, I catch and release. I’m not eating those fish.”

The heavy metal, however, isn’t found in fish in all lakes or all species in tainted lakes — a phenomenon in Colorado and in other parts of the country.

So scientists are now trying to unravel the mystery of why it pops up in Carter Lake walleye, but not those in Chatfield Reservoir.

“We’ve got some very hot fish in some, but not in all our reservoirs,” said Nicole Vieira, a state Division of Wildlife aquatic toxicologist.

via Mercury mystery in state waters – The Denver Post.

Impending water shortages spell unforeseen financial losses

OPS:  Another good reason to move to Industrial Hemp

Impending water shortages spell unforeseen financial losses

Dwindling water sources in a warming climate may leave businesses dry.

Example: Cotton clothes will be harder to make as water resources shrink with climate change.

As the climate continues to change, water shortages will hit all industries hard, warns a new report from the nonprofit water research group Pacific Institute. Commissioned by Ceres, an investor network group, and published at the end of February, the report also tells businesses—and their customers and investors—what to measure to prepare for the inevitable droughts, shortages, and polluted water resources.

Although many of these impacts have been forecast in the past decade, Pacific Institute reports that most businesses are not thinking about looming water problems. Using information from 120 companies in eight industrial sectors covering food, clothing, pharmaceuticals, mining, energy, and more, the authors used a risk framework to calculate the industries’ “water footprints”.

via Impending water shortages spell unforeseen financial losses – Environmental Science & Technology (ACS Publications).

10-Year Study Uncovers Toxic Aspects of Water Purification

10-Year Study Uncovers Toxic Aspects of DBPs

via Global Pollution and Prevention News: ENN — Know Your Environment.

Fixing Our Water Crisis Can’t Be Done by the Corporations that Are Exacerbating It

Fixing Our Water Crisis Can’t Be Done by the Corporations that Are Exacerbating It

If we learned anything from the World Water Forum it should be that the privatization model has failed and a grassroots movement is needed.

In fact, none of these is the main story, because the World Water Forum itself is no longer the main story. The World Bank has spent 200 million dollars over fifteen years on privatization policies — the same policies promoted by the World Water Council — and by their own admission, these policies have failed.

Two of the world’s largest private water operators, Suez and Veolia, the major shareholders of the World Water Council, have received the lion’s share of World Bank investments in water and sanitation, and, in their pursuit of full cost recovery around the world, have raised water tariffs and delivered poor service from Atlanta to Argentina.

During the same years that these companies aggressively promoted private sector investment, public financing for water hit an all-time low, leaving millions high and dry. The development model that promotes infinite growth on a finite resource base, that has constructed large dams on 60 percent of the world’s rivers and displaced upwards of 40 million people, that has shifted massive amounts of natural resources from the “developing countries” to the “developed countries,” is, of necessity, coming to a crashing end. As Oscar Olivera, trade unionist and spokesman for the Bolivian Coordinadora del Agua y La Vida said, “What we are talking about today is a challenge to a whole concept of development, and to the imposition of structures that deny our rights and control our access to basic resources.”

via Fixing Our Water Crisis Can’t Be Done by the Corporations that Are Exacerbating It | Water | AlterNet.

Tennessee’s Dirty Data

Tennessee’s Dirty Data  – By Kelly Hearn

The Tennessee Valley Authority manipulated science methods to downplay water contamination caused by a massive coal ash disaster, according to independent technical experts and critics of the federally funded electrical company.

The TVA is the largest public provider of electricity in the nation, providing power to 670,000 homes and burning through some 14,000 tons of coal per day. On December 22 the authority made headlines when one of its retention ponds collapsed, letting loose an avalanche of coal ash–the toxic residue left over when coal is burned. More than 5 million cubic yards of ashy mud pushed its way through a neighborhood and into Tennessee’s Emory River, knocked houses off foundations and blanketed river water with plumes of gray scum that flowed downstream.

New evidence indicates that in the wake of the disaster, the TVA may have intentionally collected water samples from clean spots in the Emory River, a major supplier of drinking water for nearby cities and a popular site for recreational activities such as swimming and fishing. Third-party tests have found high levels of toxins in the river water and in private wells, while the TVA has assured residents that tap water, well water and river water are safe.

Contrary Data

In the days after the spill, the TVA assured the public that the coal ash was “inert material.” But soon questions emerged about the chemistry of the ash, particularly the presence of toxic elements like selenium and arsenic. Scientists said the toxins were dissolving unseen into the Emory, which feeds into two other rivers–the Tennessee and the Clinch–and supplies municipal water treatment plants.

via Tennessee’s Dirty Data.

Catching rain water is against the law

Catching rain water is against the law – By John Hollenhorst

Who owns the rain? Not you, it turns out. You’re actually breaking the law if you capture the rain falling on your roof and pour it on your flower bed! A prominent Utah car dealer found that out when he tried to do something good for the environment.

Rebecca Nelson captures rainwater in a barrel, and she pours it on her plants. “We can fill up a barrel in one rainstorm. And so it seems a waste to just let it fall into the gravel,” she said.

Car dealer Mark Miller wanted to do pretty much the same thing on a bigger scale. He collects rainwater on the roof of his new building, stores it in a cistern and hopes to clean cars with it in a new, water-efficient car wash. But without a valid water right, state officials say he can’t legally divert rainwater. “I was surprised. We thought it was our water,” Miller said.

State officials say it’s an old legal concept to protect people who do have water rights. Boyd Clayton, the deputy state engineer, said, “Obviously if you use the water upstream, it won’t be there for the person to use it downstream.”

“Utah’s the second driest state in the nation. Our water laws ought to catch up with that,” Miller says.

So what about the little guy, watering with rainwater at home? Will anybody do anything about that violation of the law? Clayton said, “If she really does that, then she ought to have a water right to do it.” He added that they would not likely make an issue out of it, though, because they have “bigger fish to fry.”

via ksl.com – Catching rain water is against the law.

Who owns Colorado’s rainwater?

Who owns Colorado’s rainwater?  -  By Nicholas Riccardi

Environmentalists and others like to gather it in containers for use in drier times. But state law says it belongs to those who bought the rights to waterways.

Reporting from Denver — Every time it rains here, Kris Holstrom knowingly breaks the law.

Holstrom’s violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.

But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom’s property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.

What Holstrom does is called rainwater harvesting. It’s a practice that dates back to the dawn of civilization, and is increasingly in vogue among environmentalists and others who pursue sustainable lifestyles. They collect varying amounts of water, depending on the rainfall and the vessels they collect it in. The only risk involved is losing it to evaporation. Or running afoul of Western states’ water laws.

Those laws, some of them more than a century old, have governed the development of the region since pioneer days.

via Who owns Colorado’s rainwater? – Los Angeles Times.

Water wars leave Colo. farmers dry

Water wars leave northern Colo. farmers dry

Crops die, equipment is auctioned over rules dating back to 19th century

WIGGINS, Colo. – Many farmers in this northern Colorado plains region are struggling to keep their crops irrigated and stay afloat as they find themselves on the wrong side of state water rules dating back to the 19th century.

The farmers around Wiggins, population 830, recently lost a lengthy war over access to the nearby South Platte River.

To make ends meet, several of them banded together for a recent auction to raise money: combines, tractors, vintage trucks and piles of rusted scrap metal, all arranged in rows, waited to be gobbled up by buyers amid a cloud of dust hanging over the auction site.

via Water wars leave Colo. farmers dry – Life- msnbc.com.

Out West, a new kind of water war

Out West, a new kind of water war

Reporting from Denver — In rural Chaffee County, Colo., one of the world’s largest beverage companies has discovered water it deems fit for a bottle: clean and crisp, with the mountain spring flavor people are willing to pay for.

Nestle Waters North America wants to tap an aquifer feeding a pair of springs near Salida, southwest of Colorado Springs, and draw 65 million gallons of water per year to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead brand.

But many mountain residents say Nestle should go bottle someone else’s water.

“I’m afraid they will pump and pump until they suck it dry,” said Michele Riggio, a Salida physical therapist who has led the opposition.

The conflict is the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle against the bottled water industry, which has enjoyed strong growth over the last decade thanks to the beverage’s popularity among consumers who eschew tap water and soft drinks.

via Out West, a new kind of water war – Los Angeles Times.

Competition for water intensifying

Competition for water intensifying

With yesterday’s celebration of the World Water Day, water use is once again in the spotlight. So also the correlation between energy- and water demand. Population growth and mobility, rising living standards, changes in food consumption, and production of biofuels are increasingly intensifying the competition for water, making it as political as is already the fight for the world’s remaining oil- and gas reserves.
A UN report released at the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey last week, for example, finds that the southern and northern tiers of Africa, much of the Middle East, a broad band in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, southern and eastern Australia, as well as northern Mexico and the southwestern United States will be affected by persistent drought and water scarcity in the coming years.

via Dallas Environmental Policy Examiner: Competition for water intensifying.

As climate changes, is water the new oil?

As climate changes, is water the new oil?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If water is the new oil, is blue the new green?

Translation: if water is now the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, can delivery of clean water to those who need it be the same sort of powerful force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change?

And, in another sense of green, is there money to be made in a time of water scarcity?

The answer to both questions, according to environmental activists watching a global forum on water, is yes.

The week-long meeting in Istanbul ends Sunday, which is International World Water Day, an annual United Nations event that began in 1993 to focus attention on sustainable management of fresh water resources.

The yearly observance recognizes water as an absolute human need: people can live as much as 30 days without food but only seven without water. How long can a person live without oil?

via As climate changes, is water the new oil? | Reuters.

Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It

Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It

By Robert Glennon,

Our water crisis should occasion grave concern but not panic. We have solutions available; now we need a national commitment to pursue them.

The following is an excerpt from “Unquenchable: American’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It” by Robert Glennon. Copyright 2009 Robert Glennon. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington DC.

Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the introduction of Glennon’s new book and follows a narrative about the water profligacy of Las Vegas. The timing of this excerpt is perfect for World Water Day, but the timing of the book in terms of the water issues facing American and the rest of the world is also incredibly important.

“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water,” observed Benjamin Franklin in 1774. But he was wrong. In the United States, we utterly fail to appreciate the value of water, even as we are running out. We Americans are spoiled. When we turn on the tap, out comes a limitless quantity of high-quality water for less money than we pay for our cell phone service or cable television. But as we’ll see, what is happening in Vegas is not staying in Vegas. It’s becoming a national epidemic.

via Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It | Water | AlterNet.

Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West

Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West

Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource

DENVER — Oil companies have gained control over billions of gallons of water from Western rivers in preparation for future efforts to extract oil from shale deposits under the Rocky Mountains, according to a new report by an environmental group that opposes such projects.

The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years.

via Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West – WSJ.com.

Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad

Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad

If like me you have a yard, and if like mine it crunches underfoot, then this site can help you decide whether it’s your imagination or you really should be sniffing the wind for wildfires.

Drought.gov offers a fascinating array of maps that tell you more than you want to know about the status and outlook for your area, at least more than you want to know if your area is like mine. And judging by most of the maps, it is.

For example, there’s a “Seasonal Drought Outlook” map that shows drought conditions forecast to persist or intensify in most of Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and California between now and June. There are a handful of areas that will improve, including Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, which only demonstrates that the word, “improve” is relative. That area that has been so dry for so long the people wouldn’t remember what to do if lawn watering and burn bans were lifted.

via Pensito Review » Drought in America: Yes It’s That Bad.