Great Lakes pact now needs only congressional approval
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 9, 2008 at 6:45 amRats! So much for using Great Lakes water to fill the elaborate water features at Aquafornia headquarters (a plastic wading pool and a slip ‘n slide)! From the Wall Street Journal:
Proponents of a multistate agreement intended to protect water in the Great Lakes are hopeful about final passage of a binding proposal in Congress.
The Great Lakes water compact — intended as a pre-emptive move to keep arid Southwestern states from viewing the Great Lakes as a solution to their water woes — has been ratified by legislatures of all eight states adjacent to the water. Across the border, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have amended their statutes, aligning themselves with the water-management rules of the compact, which also covers the St. Lawrence River Basin.
The compact, which also requires the governor’s signature in each state, bans new diversions of Great Lakes Basin water away from the basin. Exceptions are made for communities straddling the basin.
The Pennsylvania legislature approved the compact last week, and backers cite growing congressional support and a dearth of vocal opposition as evidence of the compact’s bright future at the federal level. The compact requires congressional consent.
“More than 20 members (of Congress) have already expressed their support for the compact,” including presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama, said David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, a partnership created in 1983 to tackle environmental issues affecting the Great Lakes region. “We’re hopeful that things will move forward quickly.”
Mr. Naftzger said Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio) has voiced interest in introducing a bill supporting the compact. “Just as Congress has looked to the Colorado River states to manage the Colorado River, they look to the Great Lakes states to manage the Great Lakes,” Mr. Naftzger said.
Read the full text of this article from the Wall Street Journal by clicking here.
Parched areas beginning to eye Great Lakes water supply (says the headline); As sources of fresh water dry up and demand rises, pressure to siphon off water increases
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 3, 2008 at 6:11 am
From the Buffalo News:
In the Southwest, everything from towing icebergs to seeding clouds is under consideration as the massive area served by the Colorado River basin struggles with a historic drought. In the Southeast, persistent water shortages have led to the banning of most outdoor uses of water in northern Georgia. And California is considering mandatory water rationing as soon as this summer. A growing population and a warmer world are pressuring the country’s water supply.
And that pressure raises a question: In the eyes of arid Las Vegas, Atlanta and Los Angeles, are the Great Lakes less a distant mirage on the map and more a miracle salvation?
It’s a question the 40 million people who live around the lakes have reason to ask as their representatives work to ratify a landmark agreement — called the Great Lakes Compact — aimed largely at insuring the water isn’t siphoned off by an increasingly parched world.
The Great Lakes hold about 20% of the world’s fresh water, and as the world becomes hotter and drier due to climate change, some analysts believe demand will become more urgent, and the water more coveted. So far, Western officials say they aren’t interested, but others aren’t so sure:
While Western officials insist they aren’t eyeing Great Lakes water, some say that inevitably there will be pressure to transport the water elsewhere.
“There is a long-term threat to the Great Lakes with respect to large-scale diversion,” said Kevin Martin, assistant deputy minister for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. “We are fearful that at some point in the future, someone is going to look at the lakes and think that they are an opportunity to foster irrigation projects . . . or urban growth in the Southwestern U. S.,” he said.
Read the full text of this story from the Buffalo News by clicking here.
Lessons NOT learned: Why a gulf wetland may become the fourth-largest city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 22, 2008 at 5:57 amFrom AlterNet:
If America learned one thing from hurricane Katrina, hydrologists argue, it should be this: Don’t fill in tideland marshes and build on them. Such human activity, they insist, diminishes the marshes’ ability to absorb some of the wallop of storms as they strike coastal communities.
Here on the westernmost reaches of Mississippi’s marshes — the very place where Katrina rushed ashore on its path to becoming one of the worst natural disasters in US history — that lesson is being tested, with broad implications for US taxpayers who pay most of the bills for storm repairs.
Bob Metz, a crab dealer who plies the tidelands of Bayou Caddy, has only to look out from his boathouse to see, in the distance, the future: the new Silver Slipper Casino, its bright sign twinkling beneath a dark cumulous cloud stack.
To Mr. Metz, plans to augment the casino with a new condo city built on top of a tidal marsh is the prototype of a boondoggle waiting for a bailout. But local and state governments so far are backing the plan, and the US Army Corps of Engineers is considering a permit application to fill the spongy ground so the development will have firm footing. If approved, the permit would, quite literally, lay the groundwork for a project that could create the fourth-largest city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“The big guys get what they want; that’s the lesson I take from this,” says Metz.
Another lesson might be that the dream of living on the ocean’s edge dies hard. Some $80 billion in damages from Katrina apparently have not dampened it, nor have scientists’ warnings that a $500 billion storm is possible in the US by 2020 and that the sea level may rise as much as three feet in the next century. So long as people gravitate to coastal living, political and economic pressures to allow it will rub up hard against the cautionary notes of scientists and environmentalists.
“The tough part is where the science leaves off and management and policy pick up,” says Bryan Harper, senior economist at the Army Corps’ Institute for Water Resources in Alexandria, Va. “We collectively use and enjoy the coast, but we have to understand what the balance is between what we get out of it and what is the real cost of occupying those areas. What we don’t want is to induce development to areas that are not currently developed in these high-risk areas.”
Read more on this story from AlterNet by clicking here.
The emerging water crisis in the U.S.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 9, 2008 at 6:29 amFrom the Deming Headlight, this commentary, written by Shiney Varghese, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org)
I am amazed: since last summer, almost every day we hear about another water crisis in the United States Less access to water is no longer something affecting only poor countries. It is right here in our own back yard.
For most of us living in the United States, water is something we take for granted, available when you turn your tap on — to brush your teeth, to take a shower, to wash your car, to water your lawn, and if you have your own swimming pool, to fill that as well. So it was with alarm that many of us read the story of Orme, a small town tucked away in the mountains of southern Tennessee that has become a recent symbol of the drought in the southeast. Orme has had to literally ration its water use, by collecting water for a few hours every day — an everyday experience in most developing countries.
The article highlights water issues across the U.S., and
Irrigated agriculture accounts for 80 percent of water consumed in the United States This high percentage is partially because of low water use-efficiency (the portion of water actually used by irrigated agriculture relative to the volume of water withdrawn). For the western United States, agricultural farms are the single largest water user, half of which is used by the largest 10 percent of the farms.
We need a new approach that sets appropriate incentives to ensure that: water withdrawals do not exceed the recharge rate; water conservation techniques (such as rain water harvesting) are central to land use planning; improved irrigation efficiency and better nutrient management (to reduce non-point water pollution from farm run-offs) are rewarded; and growing water-intensive crops in water scarce regions is discouraged.
Now is the time to rethink our policies regarding urban development, energy production and most importantly our agriculture and food systems, in order to avert an environmental crisis that many countries are already in the grip of.
Read the full text of this commentary from the Deming Headlight by clicking here.
Experts fear nation’s waterways need rescuing; “every region of the country will eventually be affected either by water pollution or overconsumption”
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 23, 2008 at 5:29 amFrom the Associated Press:
Rosemary Lowe scoops up a shovel of dirt and dumps it into a hole around the base of a slender cottonwood tree. One down, thousands more to go.
Lowe and dozens of volunteers spent a recent day planting native trees along a half-mile stretch of the Santa Fe River that has been reduced to a dry, sandy wash. “We’ve got to do something and this is one little place we can do it,” Lowe says, wiping sweat from her brow. “And if we multiply that by thousands of other places around the world, think of what we can do.”
Federal agencies, states, tribes and concerned citizens are spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours on waterway restoration projects to reverse decades of poor management and combat the mounting threats of population and climate change.
Nationally, there are more than 37,000 river restoration projects underway, costing more than $1 billion annually, according to a study released this month by Colorado College. Andrew Fahlund, vice president for conservation for American Rivers, said every region of the country will eventually be affected either by water pollution or overconsumption.
“Look at the southeastern United States right now and you would think you were in the midst of the Colorado River basin,” he said. “They’re having good old fashion water wars in Georgia and most people associate Georgia with verdant hills and full streams.”
Read the full text of this story from the Associated Press by clicking here.
Will the U.S. drain Canada dry? Some Canadians think so
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 21, 2008 at 5:22 amFrom Canada’s National Post:
It was here in southern Alberta, a century ago, when Canadians first learned of U.S. plans to take our water supplies. It would be the first and last battle over fresh water the two neighbours would fight. But Canadians have worried ever since that the day will come again when Americans will come after our fresh water. And if you believe certain nationalist groups, we may be powerless to do a thing about it.
Strange, considering that Canada plainly triumphed in the St. Mary River tussle, when Montana ranchers plotted in 1901 — with Washington’s blessing — to channel water from the flush, northbound waterway, 30 kilometres east to the much drier, southbound Milk River. After Albertans threatened to dam the Milk on its brief foray north of the 49th, blocking the water from returning to Montana, the Americans settled for a joint commission governing the rivers. It let Montanans take some of the water. But Alberta ended up winning the bulk of St. Mary’s flow.
Canada, with 10 times the renewable fresh water per capita as the United States, is by global standards a water heavyweight. Though we boast of our trade muscle on energy matters, Canadians come off as positively paranoid we’re powerless to stop Americans from siphoning our precious water.
“We’ve got this national neurosis about the United States, it’s our great fear we’re going to wind up like Finland — at any moment they’re going to march over our border and take us down,” says Chris Wood, the B.C.-based author of the recently released Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America.
The Ottawa-based Polaris Institute last week released a study warning: “It is not at all clear that either Ottawa or the provinces are in a position to deal with a challenge coming from Washington to turn on the taps for Canadian bulk water exports.” In March, Ottawa blocked a UN vote that would have declared water a human right, purportedly nervous the policy might let parched nations demand our H20.
Read the rest of this article from Canada’s National Post by clicking here.
“Dawn of the dead zones”: large swaths of the ocean becoming devoid of life are getting larger each year; ag runoff is to blame, says CNN article
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 21, 2008 at 5:12 amFrom CNN:
It’s thousands of square miles wide, virtually devoid of oxygen and it has been blamed for an increase in shark attacks: the Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone” is getting bigger and forcing marine life — including sharks - into shore.
The zone has been caused by a flood of nutrients, such as agricultural fertilizers, which boost algae production in the sea. These growths consume huge amounts of oxygen creating a “marine desert” almost devoid of life. The “Dead Zone” varies in size each year, but in 1999 it was 7,728 square miles — that’s nearly the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined. The huge size of the “Dead Zone’ is due to the increase in nutrient pollution flowing down rivers, including the Mississippi, which is estimated to have risen threefold in the last fifty years as chemicals become more and more common on farms.
Environmentalists fear that the drive to radically increase the amount of corn-based biofuels produced in the U.S. from 15 billion gallons to 36 billion by 2022 could increase pollution in the Mississippi by 19 per cent.
But the problem is by no means limited to U.S. waters. Similar “Dead Zones” are being discovered across the world and a major United Nations report in 2003 found that the number had doubled each decade since the 1960’s. The UN report also warned that the number will continue to increase as intensive agriculture spreads around the world and that they are already having a significant impact on commercial fish stocks.
Read the rest of this article from CNN by clicking here.
The U.S. is nearing the limit of it’s water supplies, says commentary
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 19, 2008 at 5:49 amFrom AlterNet, this commentary, written by Shiney Varghese from the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy:
I am amazed: since last summer, almost every day we see at least one news story on another water crisis in the U.S. The water crisis is no longer something that we know about as affecting developing countries or their poor in particular. It is right here in our own backyard. Today, in many parts of the U.S. we are nearing the limits of our water supplies. And that is getting our attention. The writing has been on the wall for some time. The private sector has been showing much interest in water as a source of profit, and water privatization has been an issue in many parts of the country.
The failure in public water systems has indeed been a contributing factor for this interest. In many cities, consumers have been organizing and opposing the privatization of water utilities, because they have been concerned about affordability or deterioration in the quality of service. Environmental organizations and consumer activists have also been concerned about the socio-economic, health and environmental implications of ever increasing bottled water use. But for most of us living in the U.S., water is something we take for granted, available when you turn your tap on — to brush your teeth, to take a shower, to wash your car, to water your lawn, and if you have your own swimming pool then, to fill that as well.
The article details some of the challenges facing regions across the U.S., including our own. The article at one point discusses how Katrina exposed vulnerabilities in many different areas; we should use the lesson of Katrina to address our current vulnerabilities with water in the U.S.:
… this crisis gives us yet another opportunity to rethink and challenge issues that we need to raise: land use planning that allows unfettered development, energy production that is water intensive, and agricultural water use that is inefficient from a hydrological perspective. So far we have assumed that we can undertake any development we want, wherever we want, or we could grow whatever we want, however we want, and that water will always be available to support that growth. In the process we are draining our aquifers, polluting our rivers, tampering with ecosystems and destroying the diversity of life — as if nature is ours to be manipulated to suit our wants. It is time to change some of our practices.
Read the full text of this article from AlterNet by clicking here.
At least 36 U.S. states face water shortage
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 15, 2008 at 6:19 amFrom AlterNet:
At least 36 states are expected to face water shortages within the next five years, according to U.S. government estimates. Available freshwater supplies are dwindling across the country due to rising temperatures and droughts, while increasing sprawl, population and inefficient resource usage are leading to rising demand.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association. Rising temperatures due to global warming have increased evaporation rates across the country and reduced the availability of important water sources. One of these is the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which supplies a significant portion of California’s water. Across the West, similar trends are expected to reduce flows of the Colorado River, which supplies water for seven states.
Meanwhile, rising sea levels are expected to cause saltwater to infiltrate freshwater aquifers in coastal states, rendering that water unusable.
Read the rest of this story from AlterNet by clicking here.
Both sides preparing for Colorado’s next water war
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 4, 2008 at 6:04 amFrom the Fort Collins:Now:
Brian Werner remembers thinking he wouldn’t get out of the Poudre Canyon in one piece.
Two decades ago, he and other representatives from the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District had the unenviable task of announcing plans to dam the Cache la Poudre River, creating a reservoir for long-term water storage downriver of Poudre Park.
“I didn’t know if we were going to get out of there alive,” he recalled, mostly kidding.
More than 20 years have passed and plans to capture the Poudre’s waters have changed dramatically. But passionate opposition remains, and this spring, Werner might be watching his hide again, at least metaphorically.
He is the spokesman for Northern Water (the nickname for the NCWCD) and is trying to convince Northern Colorado residents of the benefits of the Northern Integrated Supply Project, known as NISP or the Glade Reservoir project.
The more than $400 million project involves 15 communities and water districts and is designed to ensure the region has enough water to accomodate population growth in the next 40 years. Opponents, who include growth skeptics and river aficionados, say the harm to the Poudre would be too great.
An Army Corps EIS on the project is due later this month, and both sides are gearing up for a contentious battle.
But the fight over Glade Reservoir is not just a fight about Fort Collins’ scenic river. It is about growth, sprawl, agriculture, the economy, recreation and a way of life that many feel is slowly dying: The agrarian culture that created Northern Colorado.
The region’s growth threatens the peace between the old and the new West, where the irrigated plains of cattle, corn and sugar beets meet the Silicon Prairie of high-tech jobs, university research and customized green lawns.
It is a microcosm of the kind of fight shaping up throughout the American West, where water is life in the most literal sense. And there’s one thing on which most people can agree: There’s not enough to sustain the status quo.
Click here for a comprehensive (and I do mean comprehensive) article on this project Fort Collins: Now.
Water war brewing in Colorado over the Cache la Poudre River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 1, 2008 at 6:35 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
When it starts at 10,000 feet and slices through the mountains in the canyon that bears its name, the Cache la Poudre River is a shock of water in this dry land. But by the time it winds its way out to this laid-back college city of 120,000 people, most of its water has been grabbed by farmers and other cities that control the maze of canals and diversion dams that turn the river into a trickle.
Now a new dam and reservoir project could pull even more water out of the river before it reaches Fort Collins. A key juncture in the process comes this month, when the Army Corps of Engineers releases an environmental impact statement that will determine if and how the $400-million project can proceed.
Both sides expect the Corps to sign off on the proposal and are bracing for an old-fashioned showdown over that most precious of resources — water. “Mark Twain said of the West that whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting, and that applies here,” said Fort Collins Mayor Doug Hutchinson.
The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is spearheading the project in partnership with 15 cities and communities that want the water, says the reservoir and dam are the most environmentally and economically sensitive ways to deal with water needs in the booming area.
“The 15 participants have done their homework; they’ve decided it’s economically viable for them,” said Brian Warner, a spokesman for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. “They need water in the future. Heck, they need water yesterday.”
Opponents, mainly environmentalists who argue that Fort Collins deserves as much river water as possible since it’s closest to the source, contend the project is a boondoggle that could deal a death blow to the Poudre. “We thought the era of big dams was over,” said Will Walters of the Sierra Club’s Fort Collins-area chapter. “Turns out there are still some holdouts.”
Read the rest of this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Water is the Great Lake’s prize, but depsite assurances otherwise, some remain concerned of massive water diversions to the Southwest
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 30, 2008 at 7:38 amFrom the Cleveland.com, a blog/news site:
They’ve been praying for rain in the thirsty American South. Will they prey upon the Great Lakes next? Whether diverting Lake Erie or other Great Lakes water to bail out our dried-up fellow states is preposterous or possible is a matter of dramatically different opinions.
But when Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and some state lawmakers bowed their heads last November, they illustrated the continuing desperation as drought persists in parts of the United States. “That picture — the governor of Georgia praying for rain on the Statehouse steps — has been burned into my memory, that’s for sure,” said Sean Logan, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “It was a reminder of an important message: Water issues can bring you to your knees.”
Despite assurances from Pat Mulroy that she isn’t eyeing the great lakes, the fears still continue:
Some are worried that the South might soon take matters into its own hands by petitioning the federal government for help. “I think a large-scale diversion of water from the Great Lakes is fairly likely sooner than later,” said Noah Hall, an environmental law professor with Wayne State University in Michigan. “There are a lot of frightening developments out West and in the Southeast and the climate change models don’t offer much hope.”
David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, said a water grab is virtually assured. “Look at a map showing water shortages and population growth and see how they match up,” he said. “Now look at us and you can see a concern that, as time moves on, those areas will be looking at the Great Lakes to bring them water — either through a tanker, pipeline or natural channels.”
But others dismiss entirely any idea that Lake Erie water is going anywhere. Las Vegas Water Department General Manager Patricia Mulroy, head of a water department where drought is a constant threat, said it would take “an Armageddon-like series of events” to force Western states to start sniffing around the Great Lakes to solve their water crisis.
Julius Ciaccia, until recently her counterpart in the Cleveland Water Department, agreed. “In 20 years of discussing and debating water issues at a national level, I’ve never once heard a utilities director in the South or West say one word about tapping Lake Erie for water,” said Ciaccia, now head of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. “Those cities are more interested in water reclamation, re-use or even desalination than in coming to get our water.”
Mulroy said Las Vegas is now recycles all of its waste water, for example. There are also now more than 13,000 desalination plants worldwide, producing more than 12 billion gallons of drinkable water daily from salty ocean water, according to the International Desalination Association.
But as for long-distance water diversions: “It’s not technically impossible, but it’s also not economically feasible,” Ciaccia said.
The rest of this comprehensive article discusses national water issues and how this might impact the Great Lakes. It’s worthy of the click through, so to read the rest of this interesting article from Cleveland.com, click here. Here’s a related article, also from Cleveland.com, about other massive water diversion efforts that have occurred worldwide - click here.
Looming water issues on both sides of our borders foreshadow big problems
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 10, 2008 at 1:10 pmFrom Earthnews:
Adaptation, or the matter of adjusting to climate change, is sometimes called a cheaper, easier way to deal with some of the consequences of a warming world. But consider the battle between the United States, Mexico and Canada that was triggered here amid the vegetable farms near the California border.
For more than 60 years the family of Geronimo Hernandez has raised watermelons, peppers and other crops in the rich, irrigated soil of Mexicali Valley, but within the next five years it could begin to dry up.
That would leave Hernandez, 62, and 400 other farmers in a desert with no jobs, victims of new efforts by the United States to plug some of the leaks in the Colorado River system that provides water to much of the drought-stricken Southwest. That issue, in turn, has raised the hackles of Canada, where groups worry that the next U.S. move will be to come after Canada’s ample supplies of fresh water.
While politicians in the United States focus on what Congress might do to curb greenhouse gases in the future, many scientists worry how nations will respond to climate changes that are already under way.
In the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate scientists concluded that conserving water will be essential and that North America may find it easier to adapt than other parts of the world because it has “responsive” governments and more robust economies.
“The literature provides high agreement and much evidence of many options for achieving reductions of global GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions at the international level through cooperation,” the panel found. But if the mess that involves Hernandez is any guide, adaptation will be slow, shrill, expensive and politically ugly.
The situation Hernandez is referencing in the above excerpt is the lining of the All-American canal. The reservoir mentioned in the article is the Drop 2 reservoir. This is causing some difficulties for Mexico as they are seeing water they have come to rely on dry up.
But our water woes are cause for concern in Canada, as well, and apparently, the idea of a large system to move water from Canada to the U.S. is at least being discussed in some circles (also see this related WaterWired post):
The White House asked the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private Washington research group, to do a study. Last April Peschard-Sverdrup, a senior associate with the center, brought a team of Mexican and U.S. experts to Calgary, Canada, along with a position paper suggesting that the three countries might consider “water transfers and artificial diversions of fresh water” to head off future water disputes.
The Council of Canadians, a nationalist group, leaked the paper to the press calling it “damning evidence” of “secret talks” aimed at getting access to Canadian water. Maude Barlow, chairman of the group, sees a plot. “It [water] will be taken from the North. It will require a great engineering feat to build pipelines. There will be very big opposition to this when it happens.”
Peschard-Sverdrup said this is nonsense. “They do that for fund-raising purposes,” he asserts, referring to the council. But the Council of Canadians’ move rattled the Canadian government, which refused to participate in the study or to send federal officials to participate in the Calgary talks.
The Conference Board of Canada, a private Ottawa research group similar to the CSIS, refused to be a cosponsor of the study. Instead it released its own, noting that while Canada has about 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, much of it is locked up in glaciers in the far north. Gilles Rheaume, a vice president of the conference board, said: “We’re looking at the question, ‘Do we really have a lot of water to sell?’ The answer is no.”
One of his group’s concerns is that if, somehow, Canadian water was fed to the thirsty and rapidly growing cities of the U.S. Southwest, there will be no end to the demand. The U.S. Census Bureau, the Conference Board notes, expects the population of Nevada and Arizona to double by 2030. “Our question is whether there should be limitations on continuing this development. It’s a harsh reality, but it has to be considered,” Rheaume said.
Read the rest of this story from Earth News by clicking here.
Who needs Great Lakes water when Canada can supply us with all the water we’ll need!
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 8, 2008 at 7:29 amFirst, I read yesterday that some Nevada officials are pressing for a ‘water initiative’ to bring ’surplus unallocated fresh and desalinated ocean waters to the more arid regions of the West’, and then I wake up this morning to find that there is another project being talked about that would make such a national water system look puny in comparison. Cadillac Desert readers will remember the old NAWAPA, and now … we have NAWA, which would bring us all the water we could ever need! Honey, call up that contractor and build that pool! From the Water Wired blog, Michael Campana gives us the details of this latest grandiose plan:
Imagine, in the not-too-distant future lush Kentucky bluegrass lawns in Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas with no guilt feelings. Fountains and verdant gardens gracing the Las Vegas Strip. Pat Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) halving water rates with a broad grin on her face. Georgia cheerfully donating Lake Lanier water to Alabama and Florida, and building a pipeline to supply Tennessee with all the H2O it needs.
You’d say, “What have you been smoking?” Or worse.
Well, looks like something similar to NAWAPA is in the works, again exporting water from the Great White North. So how does it work? Dam the southern half of James Bay, the southern arm of Hudson Bay, run the water through helical turbines, then dump it in the Great Lakes for distribution to the USA and Canada’s prairie provinces. The scheme will provide Canada with hydroelectricity and almost $8B in revenue.
Colleague Paul Godfrey of the University of Massachusetts sent me some slides prepared by Canadian Romain Audet that describe how all this will work. It’s pretty awesome.
Check it out by clicking here to visit the Water Wired blog, and while you’re doing that, I’m going to call up the contractor to get that pool put in, and get my yard resodded with Kentucky Bluegrass - to heck with fescue!!!
I think I need a new category …. “Grandiose Water Schemes”
Business Week covers water issues; are we nearing the next major natural resource crisis?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 21, 2008 at 7:36 amFrom Business Week:
Water may be the source of the next major natural resource crisis. A rising world population; increased demand for water for agriculture, industry, and energy production; and a growing desire for safer and more plentiful water supplies are pressuring existing resources. At the same time, climate change may be reducing the availability of fresh water. Most citizens of Europe and North America have taken for granted access to cheap, safe water. People in Asia, Africa, and Latin America would like to. Will all of us have to start thinking harder about it?
Drought conditions in several parts of the world have increased the attention paid to water resources recently. In the U.S., the drought in the Southeast that began last year is the second-worst in the region’s history and has strained state and city governments, including that of Atlanta. Australia, a country where water has always been very limited, has been suffering from a severe dry period. The continuing lack of rainfall in much of Africa has increased fears of famine and war.
At the same time, nonhousehold demand for water, particularly for irrigation, has been growing. Ethanol production requires more crops, which in turn demand more water. Potential exploitation of shale oil and tar sands for energy also requires water for processing. Increased development raises the need for electrical power, which requires water to generate electricity at hydro dams or to cool nuclear or fossil-fuel plants.
But the most significant problem is that an increasing population is pressing on limited water resources. The most rapid population growth is in the Middle East and Africa, the part of the world with most limited water resources.
Get the rest of this in-depth story from Business Week by clicking here.
Drought continues in the Southeast, but Atlanta to relax outdoor watering restrictions anyway; azaleas and swimming pools OK
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 12, 2008 at 6:50 amFrom the USA Today:
Georgians will be able to water their azaleas and swim in their pools this spring after the state eased a ban on outdoor watering.
Barely 400 miles away, residents of Raleigh, N.C., should be so lucky. Their city council just enacted the toughest water restrictions available, essentially banning all outdoor watering in Raleigh and six surrounding towns.
As the historic drought gripping much of the Southeast stretches into a second year, Atlanta and Raleigh find themselves in similar drought conditions but are adopting contrasting strategies.
Both depend on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lake for drinking water — Atlanta on Lake Lanier, Raleigh on Falls Lake. Both have experienced explosive growth that is straining water supplies. Both are still among the hardest-hit places in the region as the drought shows the first signs of abating.
North Carolina environmentalists say Raleigh shouldn’t aspire to be like Atlanta in water management. “Up here, we constantly point to Atlanta as the failed example of what happens when you don’t plan,” says Dean Naujoks of the Neuse River Foundation. “I’m hopeful we don’t make the same mistakes Atlanta has made.”
Others say it’s unfair to single out Atlanta because the entire Southeast has taken water for granted for centuries. In recent decades, the region has been a Sun Belt growth engine, adding people and impervious surfaces such as concrete and rooftops with little regard to whether there would be enough water.
To read the rest of this story from the USA Today, click here.
Georgia and Tennessee have a border water war going on; Georgia wants old surveying mistake corrected and rights to the Tennessee River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 10, 2008 at 8:13 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
C. Barton Crattie, a Georgia land surveyor, did not expect to start a border war when he penned a newspaper article about a flawed 1818 survey that placed his state a mile below the Tennessee River.
The mistake in calculating Georgia’s northern corner, he figured, was just an odd historical footnote, an interesting digression for those who fret that the drought-stricken state will soon run out of water. “Unfortunately for . . . Georgia,” he wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “the corner is where the corner is.”
The corner, however, is now the subject of Georgia state legislation: Sen. David Shafer and Rep. Harry Geisinger introduced bills to set up a commission to proclaim the states’ “definite and true boundary lines.” With an extreme water shortage in the north, legislators believe Georgians should no longer forfeit their right to the Tennessee River.
The resolution has provoked ridicule and scorn on the other side of the border. Tennessee state senators have proposed settling the matter with a game of football — a dig at Georgia’s recent scores. Others have threatened to fire rifles from Lookout Mountain.
“If they really do try to pull this off, we will do whatever we have to do to defend ourselves,” said Howell Moss, the mayor of Tennessee’s Marion County, noting that the disputed milewide strip of land has been an accepted part of his state for nearly 200 years. “My constituents have no desire to live in Georgia.”
Why is this important? Because if the Georgia’s border had been surveyed correctly, the Tennessee River would cut into a portion of Georgia, and voila! water rights to the Tennessee River. But not everyone, of course, thinks the survey should be corrected:
“Just because we have more sophisticated equipment now, we can’t just go around moving borders,” said Crattie, who lives in Lookout Mountain, Ga., near the Tennessee border. “If they take this too far, there’ll be neighbors shooting everyone all the time.”
Shafer [a Georgia senator], who introduced the bill, said the correct boundary was legally set by Congress and could not be altered by a mathematician using faulty equipment. “It’s time for the boundary to be accurately surveyed,” he said. “The water flows through both of our states. I expect that Georgia and Tennessee could come to a water-sharing arrangement.”
How nice of Mr. Shafer to be so willing to share! Get the rest of the story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Atlanta comes up short in water ruling; lack of water could impact the area’s growth
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 6, 2008 at 11:50 pmFrom PBS Marketplace, a story about how the exceptional drought in Georgia is impacting development:
KAI RYSSDAL: Moving up the Atlantic seaboard a bit, there’s a new chapter in the southeast water wars, and it’s raising questions about whether Atlanta can keep growing during a record drought. Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been suing each other over water for 18 years. Yesterday, an appeals court said Atlanta doesn’t have any legal rights to the water from a federal reservoir outside the city because Lake Lanier flows to the downstream states as well.
Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.
NANCY MARSHALL GENZER: Some of Atlanta’s critics say this court decision means the city should stop issuing new building permits until it can prove it has a long-term water supply.GEORGE WILLIAM SHERK: It might happen, but pigs would probably fly first.
You can get the rest of the story from PBS’s Marketplace by clicking here.
Southern Nevada Water Authority attempts to put their northern neighbor’s fears to rest
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 29, 2008 at 7:23 amFrom the Las Vegas Review Journal:
The good people of the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes region can relax. Although officials in Southern Nevada would love to have some of your water, they don’t have any practical way of getting it. And they aren’t looking for a way, either. “We’re having enough trouble getting water from within our own state,” said Scott Huntley, a spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
But despite all the barriers involved in what would be one of the largest and most expensive water importation projects in the history of the world, the prospect of a pipeline stretching from Las Vegas to the Columbia River or Lake Superior has some people worried.
Huntley said he has fielded phone calls from reporters across North America, all wondering the same thing: What, exactly, is Nevada up to? “It comes in spurts,” he said. “I’ve had calls from Canada, Michigan, Ohio and Chicago. I haven’t really covered all of the Great Lakes (states), but I’m close.”
So, for all the Canadians, Great Lakes citizens, and citizens of the Pacific Northwest, you can sleep well tonight:
For the record, Huntley said the Southern Nevada Water Authority isn’t trying to tap the Great Lakes or the rivers of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. “Obviously, the answer is an easy one for us: No. No we’re not,” he said with a chuckle.
To read the full text of this article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, click here.
Great Lakes states work to sign multi-state compact preventing out-of-basin transfers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 7, 2008 at 12:25 pmFrom the Detroit News:
But delays in legal protection for the Great Lakes states could prove costly, especially as the waterways sink to all-time lows set in 1965.
Among the recent threats:
• In October, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson of New Mexico created an uproar when he described Wisconsin as being “awash in water” and called for a “national water policy.” He later softened his remarks, but the comment triggered a national debate that cast more scrutiny on the Great Lakes.
• A Georgia congressman has proposed a national water commission that would put the federal government in charge of Great Lakes water, an idea that Michigan lawmakers oppose.
• Experts say the 2010 U.S. census recalculation could shift political power out of some of the Midwest states such as Michigan to water-hungry states in the South and West, making it harder for the Great Lakes to keep its water here.
It’s a scenario that worries some Michigan residents. “I don’t think we ought to be sending our water to anybody,” said Paul Sapp, a 72-year-old Mecosta resident who said he’s seen local water levels drop due to withdrawals from the Muskegon River for a bottled water plant. “They all moved down (to the Southeast and Southwest) to stay warm. If they’re thirsty, they can move back.”
To read the rest of this article from the Detroit News, click here.
The picture is an actual billboard on an interstate somewhere in the Great Lakes states. It came from The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin: check out this Aquafornia post.
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