Steve Solomon's new book "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization" is an exhaustively researched and well written contribution to the world's increasing awareness of water issues. It traces the overriding importance of water in the world's economic and political history, accurately identifying water as the world's most precious resource. It provides strong support for the statement that "Water is fundamental to life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite to the realization of all other human rights." (UN, 2002).
Is water in short supply? The reality is that the earth is a water-rich planet on which less than one percent of its water inventory is used for human purposes. What is in short supply is inexpensive fresh water that people can afford to buy.
How much water is there in the world and how is it used? The best current estimate is that the earth has 329 million cubic miles of water, with each cubic mile containing more than one trillion gallons. But the vast majority, 99.7 percent, is found in the oceans with an average salt content of 35,000 parts per million. This level of salinity (fresh water is usually 500 parts per million or less) means that humankind cannot use this water without doing something to it, such as desalination, which is not easy or cheap.
The majority of global freshwater (75 percent) is used for agriculture, 39 percent in the U.S. and Europe, and more than 80 percent in parts of Africa and Asia. World water demand more than tripled over the past half century, and today more than a billion people lack access to clean drinking water and more than two billion to water for proper sanitation.
Solomon's book lays out this reality in considerable detail as well as the implications. These include health effects (80 percent of infections in the developing world are due to water-borne diseases), the inability to adequately feed a growing world population, and the potential for conflict as water supplies are contested by neighboring peoples. Another implication derives from the inseparability of water and energy issues. Both water and energy are essential to the reduction of poverty, and the linkage between them has not always been recognized. This has begun to change in recent years, with growing sensitivity to the fact that energy is needed to provide water services (pumping water from underground aquifers, moving water to where it is used, treating impaired water for reuse, and desalinating brackish and sea water) and that many forms of energy production depend on the availability of water (hydropower, cooling of thermal power plants, fossil fuel production and processing, biofuels, carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen economy). As a result a new term has appeared in the water lexicon, the water-energy nexus.
This is not to say that some people haven't spoken out on water issues in the past. A number of voices have sought to sound the alarm for several decades, including the United Nations which declared an International Decade of Water in the 1980s and a new one in 2005. The UN Millenium Summit in 2000 identified fresh water availability as a major global crisis, as did the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. World Water Forums have also been held every three years since 1997.
What is complicating the world's ability to address water security issues is the linkage between water and global climate change. In its 2008 Technical Paper on Climate Change and Water the International Panel on Climate Change stated that "Observational records and climate projections provide abundant evidence that freshwater resources are vulnerable and have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change...." Climate change will disrupt the hydrological cycle and impact global water resources long before other impacts are felt. Precipitation patterns can change, leading to a greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (flooding, drought, hurricanes), and by altering the timing of winter snows, snowmelt, and spring rains, climate change could overload reservoirs early in the season, forcing releases of water and leaving areas like California high and dry in late summer. Coastal areas and island nations also face a serious threat. Rising water levels, before they destroy property and flood low-lying areas, will cause saltwater intrusion of freshwater supplies, putting the drinking water of millions of people at risk.
As Solomon's book effectively documents, "Just as oil conflicts were central to twentieth-century history, the struggle over freshwater is set to shape a new turning point in the world order and the destiny of civilization." This is not hyperbole but fact. Just as the struggle to control water resources has shaped human political and economic history to this point, so will the struggle in future years be central to the world we will live in and leave to our children and grandchildren. This book helps us immeasurably to understand this reality.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-hoffman-md/recognizing-water-for-wha_b_399955.html
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Invasive freshwater snail spreading in California
SANTA CRUZ, Calif.—Researchers say a tiny, invasive freshwater snail has spread faster in California waterways than previously thought.
The New Zealand mudsnail has now been found in the higher elevations of the Santa Cruz Mountains by local researchers. The snail had been found previously in a dozen or so inland California rivers.
The snail reproduces quickly and can even survive in the stomachs of predators.
Researchers fear the snail will crowd out the insects that the threatened steelhead feeds on. They say it also could push out other aquatic life important to the food web.
Officials are asking all fishermen who wade into area rivers to freeze all of their gear for eight hours, which is the only way to decontaminate.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13900552?nclick_check=1
The New Zealand mudsnail has now been found in the higher elevations of the Santa Cruz Mountains by local researchers. The snail had been found previously in a dozen or so inland California rivers.
The snail reproduces quickly and can even survive in the stomachs of predators.
Researchers fear the snail will crowd out the insects that the threatened steelhead feeds on. They say it also could push out other aquatic life important to the food web.
Officials are asking all fishermen who wade into area rivers to freeze all of their gear for eight hours, which is the only way to decontaminate.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13900552?nclick_check=1
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Water Is The New Oil
(The Huffington Post) 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.
The water-centric lens made it dramatically clear that in every era control and manipulation of water has been a central fulcrum of power and wealth and a precondition of prosperous civilization. Time and again water breakthroughs -- the irrigated Agricultural Revolution in ancient Mesopotamia, China's unifying Grand Canal, Rome's aqueducts, Europe's transoceanic Voyages of Discovery, the waterwheel and then steam engine-powered Industrial Revolution, the 19th century Sanitary Awakening, and American-pioneered giant dams for hydroelectricity, irrigation and flood control -- were associated with epic turning points of civilization and a recalibrating world order among great powers.
These and other skeletal remains of water history are readily visible to anyone who looks for them. I visited many in person, some through museum exhibitions, and others virtually through the marvel of the worldwide web and the multimedia postings of its myriad fellow travelers.
Easily my most memorable visit was in 2004 to the dusty, reddish hills of southeastern Kenya on the edge of Africa's Rift Valley where I helped lay two miles of pipes that connected waterless, literally dirt-poor villages to a borehole pump. My wife, a high school teacher, organized the trip for students, and my three teenage daughters joined what became a life perception-altering experience for all. When the water tap flowed for the first time, the villagers expressed unforgettable joy at their liberation from having to march two to four hours each day to fetch 200 pounds of clean freshwater in plastic 'jerry' cans -- hours sacrificed from education and productive work. We also worked alongside a small group toiling for weeks with hand tools and sisal sacks to dig and carry soil to reinforce an earthen dam -- precisely like those built since antiquity -- that trapped vital monsoon water for the dry season, all along knowing that the task could be completed in a single day with a bulldozer. I raised muddy creek water 20 feet to irrigate cropland by stepping up and down on a treadle pump -- much as Chinese rice farmers did using bamboo tubes centuries ago and Americans today do on their Stairmasters.
These experiences highlighted how unevenly layered water's role is, with co-existing ancient, medieval, and modern methods imparting enormous advantages for water Haves and crippling disadvantages for water Have-Nots. They drove home that, like the planet, we ourselves are 70% water, and that unique among oil, iron, and all substances, water is irreplaceable in its uses by mankind. And somehow they revealed water's special, ineffable bond to our essential humanity -- to each other and to Nature.
"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water," Benjamin Franklin quipped long ago. With the impending freshwater scarcity crisis, world politics and human civilization is undergoing another turbulent sea change. Alarmingly societies are bifurcating into those with enough water and those without. Two in five people lack adequate sanitation, and over 1 billion don't have access to safe drinking water.
Scarcity of unpolluted, freshwater is menacing the future of China and India, which have only one-fifth and one-sixth as much water per person as America. Our energy, food, and climate change challenges are integrally tied to water.
Yet our water crisis is manageable using today's technologies. But it will require an heroic transformation in the political organization of existing water resources. The paradox of water is that, despite its scarcity, almost everywhere it remains the most misgoverned, economically undervalued, inefficiently allocated, and egregiously wasted critical natural resource. Nature won't permit us to continue using water at the profligate 20th century rate of two times population growth. Although no Al Gore of water has yet arisen to sound the political clarion, radically improved efficiency -- which the combination of free market forces and water ecosystem regulations have begun modestly to produce -- is the best solution. Amply endowed America has a golden opportunity to become a global water superpower and growth leader of the new order. Yet in our interconnected global society we ignore at our peril the desperate thirst around the planet. As a Turkish proverb warns: "When one man drinks while another can only watch, Doomsday follows."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-solomon/water-is-the-new-oil_b_380803.html
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.
The water-centric lens made it dramatically clear that in every era control and manipulation of water has been a central fulcrum of power and wealth and a precondition of prosperous civilization. Time and again water breakthroughs -- the irrigated Agricultural Revolution in ancient Mesopotamia, China's unifying Grand Canal, Rome's aqueducts, Europe's transoceanic Voyages of Discovery, the waterwheel and then steam engine-powered Industrial Revolution, the 19th century Sanitary Awakening, and American-pioneered giant dams for hydroelectricity, irrigation and flood control -- were associated with epic turning points of civilization and a recalibrating world order among great powers.
These and other skeletal remains of water history are readily visible to anyone who looks for them. I visited many in person, some through museum exhibitions, and others virtually through the marvel of the worldwide web and the multimedia postings of its myriad fellow travelers.
Easily my most memorable visit was in 2004 to the dusty, reddish hills of southeastern Kenya on the edge of Africa's Rift Valley where I helped lay two miles of pipes that connected waterless, literally dirt-poor villages to a borehole pump. My wife, a high school teacher, organized the trip for students, and my three teenage daughters joined what became a life perception-altering experience for all. When the water tap flowed for the first time, the villagers expressed unforgettable joy at their liberation from having to march two to four hours each day to fetch 200 pounds of clean freshwater in plastic 'jerry' cans -- hours sacrificed from education and productive work. We also worked alongside a small group toiling for weeks with hand tools and sisal sacks to dig and carry soil to reinforce an earthen dam -- precisely like those built since antiquity -- that trapped vital monsoon water for the dry season, all along knowing that the task could be completed in a single day with a bulldozer. I raised muddy creek water 20 feet to irrigate cropland by stepping up and down on a treadle pump -- much as Chinese rice farmers did using bamboo tubes centuries ago and Americans today do on their Stairmasters.
These experiences highlighted how unevenly layered water's role is, with co-existing ancient, medieval, and modern methods imparting enormous advantages for water Haves and crippling disadvantages for water Have-Nots. They drove home that, like the planet, we ourselves are 70% water, and that unique among oil, iron, and all substances, water is irreplaceable in its uses by mankind. And somehow they revealed water's special, ineffable bond to our essential humanity -- to each other and to Nature.
"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water," Benjamin Franklin quipped long ago. With the impending freshwater scarcity crisis, world politics and human civilization is undergoing another turbulent sea change. Alarmingly societies are bifurcating into those with enough water and those without. Two in five people lack adequate sanitation, and over 1 billion don't have access to safe drinking water.
Scarcity of unpolluted, freshwater is menacing the future of China and India, which have only one-fifth and one-sixth as much water per person as America. Our energy, food, and climate change challenges are integrally tied to water.
Yet our water crisis is manageable using today's technologies. But it will require an heroic transformation in the political organization of existing water resources. The paradox of water is that, despite its scarcity, almost everywhere it remains the most misgoverned, economically undervalued, inefficiently allocated, and egregiously wasted critical natural resource. Nature won't permit us to continue using water at the profligate 20th century rate of two times population growth. Although no Al Gore of water has yet arisen to sound the political clarion, radically improved efficiency -- which the combination of free market forces and water ecosystem regulations have begun modestly to produce -- is the best solution. Amply endowed America has a golden opportunity to become a global water superpower and growth leader of the new order. Yet in our interconnected global society we ignore at our peril the desperate thirst around the planet. As a Turkish proverb warns: "When one man drinks while another can only watch, Doomsday follows."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-solomon/water-is-the-new-oil_b_380803.html
Monday, December 7, 2009
How To Invest In Water
A global water crisis is looming, but the path to profits is a muddy mess of regulated industries, giant companies with small water operations, and start-up technologies.
For Alex Miles, who once ran a water hedge fund and now manages $350 million at Kingfisher Capital, successful investing in water means going beyond it -- commodities, power and efficiency technology are all ways to make a portfolio splash.
Water scarcity has become a global issue as climate change alters water availability, population growth raises demand, and contamination threatens clean supplies. But what seems to be an obvious investment opportunity has challenges -- in particular, the belief that water is a public good, not a profit source.
"If water were not viewed as a human right, it would be a great investment," said Miles, who compares water shortages to gravity -- inescapable.
Miles ran Aqueduct, one of the first hedge funds in water from 2006 to 2009. His Kingfisher's Value Opportunity flagship fund, which has water as one focus, has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 3.65 percentage points annually between its inception at the end of 2004 and the end of June 2009, he said.
In an interview at a recent Green Power conference in San Francisco, he explained how to invest in ways that could help alleviate crisis as well as profit from its effects, such as higher grain prices.
"The fault of the investment community is that they have looked at water too narrowly," he said.
PLUG INTO THE SMART GRID
Water investment can be made in primary industries, like utilities that produce, treat and transport water. But it should also include related industries, such as smart grid and pollution management that could increase efficiency of water use, and products tied to water -- like food.
Heavy regulation limits returns at publicly traded water utilities, while the biggest players in water technology, such as General Electric Co and Siemens AG, are even bigger in other areas, diluting their value for someone wanting a targeted water investment.
One pure play would be small-cap Energy Recovery Inc, which makes equipment that cuts energy use at desalination plants and other enterprises that clean water.
Secondary industries that are closely related to water offer other opportunities. Moving and heating water is a major energy draw, while water is crucial to producing energy, from mining to natural gas extraction to cooling power plants.
Bets on water include meter companies focused on water and building an electricity smart grid, Miles said. He cited companies such as Badger Meter, Itron Inc, and EnerNOC, a demand response company that sells 'negawatts' -- contracts to cut demand when needed by power companies.
Miles declined to recommend any specific investment, but argued that many of the water companies had been chewed up by credit fears that had nothing to do with the underlying demand for their wares and services.
"Investors in water have to take a long-term view," he said. "A lot of these stocks have struggled because of the global credit crisis rather than because of their business models."
FOLLOW THE CARBON FOOTPRINT
Water use is often energy-intensive, and thus carbon-intensive, while much industry endangers water. So increased focus on carbon and water go hand in hand, he said.
"Carbon prices should go up, reflective of (the) water crisis," he said.
Investing in the Climate Exchange Plc, the publicly traded company which itself runs exchanges for greenhouse gases, could be seen as water investment, he said.
Miles expects the crisis to intensify, despite technology improvements, and the best strategy for "water crisis" investors is grain and other soft commodities, he said.
Water prices will rise because needs will be so dire and governments such as the United States will have more pressing priorities. But regulation and fragment markets mean the water price rise will lag price increases in products that use water -- like food -- which trade in global markets.
"I want to be long agricultural commodities," he said.
The market already expects higher prices of grains from economic recovery, but it does not price in additional impacts of water crisis, he said. Wheat could get a risk premium related to water in the same way that gold currently enjoys a premium because of currency risk in an unstable world economy.
Aside from trading directly in agricultural futures, investors could get exposure with exchange-traded funds such as the PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund or the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund.
http://planetark.org/wen/55824
For Alex Miles, who once ran a water hedge fund and now manages $350 million at Kingfisher Capital, successful investing in water means going beyond it -- commodities, power and efficiency technology are all ways to make a portfolio splash.
Water scarcity has become a global issue as climate change alters water availability, population growth raises demand, and contamination threatens clean supplies. But what seems to be an obvious investment opportunity has challenges -- in particular, the belief that water is a public good, not a profit source.
"If water were not viewed as a human right, it would be a great investment," said Miles, who compares water shortages to gravity -- inescapable.
Miles ran Aqueduct, one of the first hedge funds in water from 2006 to 2009. His Kingfisher's Value Opportunity flagship fund, which has water as one focus, has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 3.65 percentage points annually between its inception at the end of 2004 and the end of June 2009, he said.
In an interview at a recent Green Power conference in San Francisco, he explained how to invest in ways that could help alleviate crisis as well as profit from its effects, such as higher grain prices.
"The fault of the investment community is that they have looked at water too narrowly," he said.
PLUG INTO THE SMART GRID
Water investment can be made in primary industries, like utilities that produce, treat and transport water. But it should also include related industries, such as smart grid and pollution management that could increase efficiency of water use, and products tied to water -- like food.
Heavy regulation limits returns at publicly traded water utilities, while the biggest players in water technology, such as General Electric Co and Siemens AG, are even bigger in other areas, diluting their value for someone wanting a targeted water investment.
One pure play would be small-cap Energy Recovery Inc, which makes equipment that cuts energy use at desalination plants and other enterprises that clean water.
Secondary industries that are closely related to water offer other opportunities. Moving and heating water is a major energy draw, while water is crucial to producing energy, from mining to natural gas extraction to cooling power plants.
Bets on water include meter companies focused on water and building an electricity smart grid, Miles said. He cited companies such as Badger Meter, Itron Inc, and EnerNOC, a demand response company that sells 'negawatts' -- contracts to cut demand when needed by power companies.
Miles declined to recommend any specific investment, but argued that many of the water companies had been chewed up by credit fears that had nothing to do with the underlying demand for their wares and services.
"Investors in water have to take a long-term view," he said. "A lot of these stocks have struggled because of the global credit crisis rather than because of their business models."
FOLLOW THE CARBON FOOTPRINT
Water use is often energy-intensive, and thus carbon-intensive, while much industry endangers water. So increased focus on carbon and water go hand in hand, he said.
"Carbon prices should go up, reflective of (the) water crisis," he said.
Investing in the Climate Exchange Plc, the publicly traded company which itself runs exchanges for greenhouse gases, could be seen as water investment, he said.
Miles expects the crisis to intensify, despite technology improvements, and the best strategy for "water crisis" investors is grain and other soft commodities, he said.
Water prices will rise because needs will be so dire and governments such as the United States will have more pressing priorities. But regulation and fragment markets mean the water price rise will lag price increases in products that use water -- like food -- which trade in global markets.
"I want to be long agricultural commodities," he said.
The market already expects higher prices of grains from economic recovery, but it does not price in additional impacts of water crisis, he said. Wheat could get a risk premium related to water in the same way that gold currently enjoys a premium because of currency risk in an unstable world economy.
Aside from trading directly in agricultural futures, investors could get exposure with exchange-traded funds such as the PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund or the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund.
http://planetark.org/wen/55824
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Invasive carp threatens Great Lakes
Fish and wildlife officials will poison a 6-mile stretch of water near Chicago on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to keep one of the most dangerous invasive species of fish, the Asian carp, out of the Great Lakes.
The Asian carp, a voracious eater that has no predators and negligible worth as a commercial or sport fish, now dominates the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries.
The fish has entered the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal — a man-made link between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes — and is knocking on the door of Lake Michigan. Once inside a Great Lake, the carp would have free rein in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem, imperiling the native fish of the lakes and a $7 billion fishing and recreation industry.
"We've got a chance to beat this thing, but we've got to do everything right," says Joel Brammeier, acting president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a conservation group.
The poisoning will kill an estimated 100 tons of fish, which will be removed by crane and hauled to a landfill. The five-day fish kill will provide time for the Army Corps of Engineers to perform routine maintenance on an electrical barrier that has been placed in the canal to block Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.
No Asian carp have been found on the Great Lakes' side of the electrical barrier. However, recent DNA samples taken from water indicate the carp may have gotten past the barrier.
"We feel confident that our barriers repel the fish," says Chuck Shea, the Army Corps of Engineers' project manager. The barrier consists of low voltage sent through steel cables, electrifying the water enough to stop the fish but not enough to kill them or humans.
The Great Lakes have struggled for decades from more than 150 invasive species brought in by ocean-going vessels dumping water from around the world. The Asian carp is the first major threat to come from the other direction, upstream from the Mississippi River.
The results are potentially devastating for the Great Lakes and the rivers that flow into it.
Good intentions gone bad
Asian carp were first brought to Arkansas in 1963 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wanted a natural way to control aquatic weeds, reducing the need for chemicals. Fish farms brought more carp to function as pond cleaners.
The fish started to escape as early as 1966, according to a Fish and Wildlife Service history. The Asian carp were spread by Mississippi River floods in the 1990s.
Once released, the insatiable fish quickly conquered local rivers and headed north to spawn and eat. Asian carp now dominate many parts of major rivers, including the Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, Columbia and Platte rivers. A survey in an offshoot of the Mississippi River near St. Louis found 97% of the fish were Asian carp.
Asian carp consist of four species — bighead, black, grass and silver — native to the rivers of China, Russia and Vietnam. They can consume 40% of their body weight every day and steal the food supply from other species. With no natural predators or disease found in their native waters, Asian carp quickly become the bulk of the biomass — the size and weight of fish — in American rivers.
The big problems are:
Bighead carp. The fish doesn't have a stomach, so it eats constantly. By vacuuming plankton, algae and everything else in its way, the fish can grow to more than 4 feet and 85 pounds. The older and bigger it gets, the more it reproduces.
Silver carp. The 50-pound flying fish is a YouTube sensation. It leaps high from the water when disturbed by a passing boat or water-skier. Boaters and jet-skiers have been seriously injured by the airborne fish.
"You don't see people water-skiing or flying down the Illinois River in boats anymore," says Chris McCloud of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Asian carp are still used on some fish farms to keep ponds clean. Some carp are sold, often live, at specialty Asian markets. But the fish have little commercial value.
"It's full of bones — floating bones in its flesh — that make it objectionable to Americans who want their fish as a filet," says Barry Costa-Pierce, director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant program.
Carp isn't a popular sport fish. But bow hunting for carp is gaining fans. The ultimate bow fishing prize: nailing a silver carp midair.
Perhaps an impossible task
Keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes may be impossible because the fish is so common in U.S. rivers, says Ron Kinnunen, a Michigan Sea Grant biologist who works on Lake Superior. "It's hard to stop an invasive species once the genie is out of the bottle. You can only hold them in check," he says.
The Great Lakes' last line of defense is the world's largest electrical fish barrier, constructed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Army Corps of Engineers has a $40,000-a-month electricity bill for the barriers.
A demonstration barrier went up in 2002. A second, more powerful barrier was finished in 2006, but the voltage wasn't cranked up until last February. The economic stimulus bill provides money for a third electrical barrier, which should be ready next year.
The barriers need to be turned off every six months or so for maintenance. When the power is off this week, the Illinois Department of Natural Resource will drop 2,300 gallons of rotenone, a fish poison, into the canal.
The fish kill is so large that rotenone's manufacturer couldn't supply enough of the poison. Illinois officials had to get donations from fish and wildlife officials in other states. Rotenone turns off the oxygen function in fish. A crew of 200 will work five days to execute the fish kill.
The fish kill has broad support from fish and wildlife officials, environmental groups and the fishing industry. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, an industrial waterway, is 70% wastewater from local sewer systems. Fishing is prohibited.
The original barrier will keep working during the fish kill, but it delivers only half the voltage of the newer one and isn't as effective. The new stimulus-funded electrical barrier will let the Army engineers keep one powerful barrier going while the other is repaired.
No long-term answer
The electrical barriers and mass poisoning may not be enough to protect the Great Lakes forever. Several groups are calling for the government to "disconnect" the Chicago Sanitary Canal from the Great Lakes.
The man-made canal is the only link between the basins of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The canal was opened in 1900 for environmental reasons — to stop the dumping of Chicago's raw sewage into Lake Michigan.
The canal reversed the flow of the Chicago River, directing it south to the Des Plaines River rather than north to Lake Michigan. The American Society of Civil Engineers named the canal one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. The canal remains important for wastewater, flood control and barge traffic.
A century later, the Chicago Sanitary Canal has created another environmental problem. The 200-foot-wide waterway is the sole link between the nation's two most important watersheds and now serves as a pipeline — in both directions — for invasive species.
"We have to take care of this problem permanently," says Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a joint U.S.-Canadian commission that coordinates fisheries management. "We need pure biological separation between the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes basin." Congress has ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to study the issue.
Gaden says the Army Corps needs to quickly design a solution to restore the natural separation between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes. "We don't have time to wait," he says. "The electrical barriers are the be-all, end-all. This is an emergency."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-30-asian-carp_N.htm
The Asian carp, a voracious eater that has no predators and negligible worth as a commercial or sport fish, now dominates the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries.
The fish has entered the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal — a man-made link between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes — and is knocking on the door of Lake Michigan. Once inside a Great Lake, the carp would have free rein in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem, imperiling the native fish of the lakes and a $7 billion fishing and recreation industry.
"We've got a chance to beat this thing, but we've got to do everything right," says Joel Brammeier, acting president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a conservation group.
The poisoning will kill an estimated 100 tons of fish, which will be removed by crane and hauled to a landfill. The five-day fish kill will provide time for the Army Corps of Engineers to perform routine maintenance on an electrical barrier that has been placed in the canal to block Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.
No Asian carp have been found on the Great Lakes' side of the electrical barrier. However, recent DNA samples taken from water indicate the carp may have gotten past the barrier.
"We feel confident that our barriers repel the fish," says Chuck Shea, the Army Corps of Engineers' project manager. The barrier consists of low voltage sent through steel cables, electrifying the water enough to stop the fish but not enough to kill them or humans.
The Great Lakes have struggled for decades from more than 150 invasive species brought in by ocean-going vessels dumping water from around the world. The Asian carp is the first major threat to come from the other direction, upstream from the Mississippi River.
The results are potentially devastating for the Great Lakes and the rivers that flow into it.
Good intentions gone bad
Asian carp were first brought to Arkansas in 1963 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wanted a natural way to control aquatic weeds, reducing the need for chemicals. Fish farms brought more carp to function as pond cleaners.
The fish started to escape as early as 1966, according to a Fish and Wildlife Service history. The Asian carp were spread by Mississippi River floods in the 1990s.
Once released, the insatiable fish quickly conquered local rivers and headed north to spawn and eat. Asian carp now dominate many parts of major rivers, including the Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, Columbia and Platte rivers. A survey in an offshoot of the Mississippi River near St. Louis found 97% of the fish were Asian carp.
Asian carp consist of four species — bighead, black, grass and silver — native to the rivers of China, Russia and Vietnam. They can consume 40% of their body weight every day and steal the food supply from other species. With no natural predators or disease found in their native waters, Asian carp quickly become the bulk of the biomass — the size and weight of fish — in American rivers.
The big problems are:
Bighead carp. The fish doesn't have a stomach, so it eats constantly. By vacuuming plankton, algae and everything else in its way, the fish can grow to more than 4 feet and 85 pounds. The older and bigger it gets, the more it reproduces.
Silver carp. The 50-pound flying fish is a YouTube sensation. It leaps high from the water when disturbed by a passing boat or water-skier. Boaters and jet-skiers have been seriously injured by the airborne fish.
"You don't see people water-skiing or flying down the Illinois River in boats anymore," says Chris McCloud of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Asian carp are still used on some fish farms to keep ponds clean. Some carp are sold, often live, at specialty Asian markets. But the fish have little commercial value.
"It's full of bones — floating bones in its flesh — that make it objectionable to Americans who want their fish as a filet," says Barry Costa-Pierce, director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant program.
Carp isn't a popular sport fish. But bow hunting for carp is gaining fans. The ultimate bow fishing prize: nailing a silver carp midair.
Perhaps an impossible task
Keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes may be impossible because the fish is so common in U.S. rivers, says Ron Kinnunen, a Michigan Sea Grant biologist who works on Lake Superior. "It's hard to stop an invasive species once the genie is out of the bottle. You can only hold them in check," he says.
The Great Lakes' last line of defense is the world's largest electrical fish barrier, constructed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Army Corps of Engineers has a $40,000-a-month electricity bill for the barriers.
A demonstration barrier went up in 2002. A second, more powerful barrier was finished in 2006, but the voltage wasn't cranked up until last February. The economic stimulus bill provides money for a third electrical barrier, which should be ready next year.
The barriers need to be turned off every six months or so for maintenance. When the power is off this week, the Illinois Department of Natural Resource will drop 2,300 gallons of rotenone, a fish poison, into the canal.
The fish kill is so large that rotenone's manufacturer couldn't supply enough of the poison. Illinois officials had to get donations from fish and wildlife officials in other states. Rotenone turns off the oxygen function in fish. A crew of 200 will work five days to execute the fish kill.
The fish kill has broad support from fish and wildlife officials, environmental groups and the fishing industry. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, an industrial waterway, is 70% wastewater from local sewer systems. Fishing is prohibited.
The original barrier will keep working during the fish kill, but it delivers only half the voltage of the newer one and isn't as effective. The new stimulus-funded electrical barrier will let the Army engineers keep one powerful barrier going while the other is repaired.
No long-term answer
The electrical barriers and mass poisoning may not be enough to protect the Great Lakes forever. Several groups are calling for the government to "disconnect" the Chicago Sanitary Canal from the Great Lakes.
The man-made canal is the only link between the basins of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The canal was opened in 1900 for environmental reasons — to stop the dumping of Chicago's raw sewage into Lake Michigan.
The canal reversed the flow of the Chicago River, directing it south to the Des Plaines River rather than north to Lake Michigan. The American Society of Civil Engineers named the canal one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. The canal remains important for wastewater, flood control and barge traffic.
A century later, the Chicago Sanitary Canal has created another environmental problem. The 200-foot-wide waterway is the sole link between the nation's two most important watersheds and now serves as a pipeline — in both directions — for invasive species.
"We have to take care of this problem permanently," says Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a joint U.S.-Canadian commission that coordinates fisheries management. "We need pure biological separation between the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes basin." Congress has ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to study the issue.
Gaden says the Army Corps needs to quickly design a solution to restore the natural separation between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes. "We don't have time to wait," he says. "The electrical barriers are the be-all, end-all. This is an emergency."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-30-asian-carp_N.htm
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Wasted Food Uses 25% of Freshwater Supply
When Americans throw out food, they’re wasting more than just groceries. Research funded by the National Institutes of Health has found that 40% of all food produced in the United States is discarded, and with it goes a lot of wasted resources. One quarter of all freshwater consumed in the nation is wasted when this volume of food is tossed out. Also, about 300 million barrels of oil used to either produce or transport food is gone for naught when so much food is thrown away.
Wasted food has increased in volume by 50% since 1974. Today, 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, adding up to 150 trillion calories a year—all in a country where 6.7 million people didn’t have enough to eat in 2008.
- Noel Brinkerhoff
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