Future of Freshwater

Methane Causes Less Carbon Uptake

2011-01-07T11:03:00.001-05:00

New research has discovered what one researcher labelled an “accounting error” in the current calculations of how much carbon is absorbed by continents. According to the new research to be published in the journal Science, the amount of greenhouse gas currently taken in by forests and other carbon sinks is less than has previously been assumed, thanks to the failure to calculate the methane emissions from freshwater areas.

“Methane is a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide in the global change scenario,” said John Downing, an Iowa State University professor in the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department. “The bottom line is that we have uncovered an important accounting error in the global carbon budget. Acre for acre, lakes, ponds, rivers and streams are many times more active in carbon processing than seas or land surfaces, so they need to be included in global carbon budgets.”

The new research studied methane fluxes from 474 freshwater areas and found that the methane release changes the total amount of greenhouse gasses absorbed by natural continental environments – the most obvious being the forest – by at least 25 percent.

This new study will help scientists create a better understanding of the balance between carbon sequestration – the storing of carbon in biomass across our planet – and the greenhouse gasses released from fresh water areas.

Methane emissions occur continuously in small measures from the surface of water bodies all over the planet, says David Bastviken, principal author and professor in the department of water and environmental studies, at Linköping University in Sweden. However, “greater emissions occur suddenly and with irregular timing, when methane bubbles from the sediment reach the atmosphere, and such fluxes have been difficult to measure,” Bastviken added.

Source: Iowa State University

New EPA Water Nutrient Requirements Draw Ire of Business

2010-11-16T22:02:00.000-05:00

The months-long battle between Florida and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over freshwater nutrient standards reached a turning point Monday.

During a morning conference call, the EPA announced it will give Florida officials, including the Department of Environmental Protection, 15 months to comply with new numeric nutrient standards for freshwater lakes, streams and rivers.

In 2008, the Florida Wildlife Federation filed a lawsuit against the EPA for the federal agency's neglect to enforce water purity standards in the Clean Water Act. Since a judge's ruling in 2009, the EPA has been working to come up with more stringent standards for regulating levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in freshwater lakes and streams.

Environmental groups have blamed the high levels of nutrients for algae blooms that can kill fish and create skin irritations for swimmers. Representatives from the Sierra Club, Earthjustice and other environmental groups defended the EPA, saying the standards are necessary.

"Sewage, manure and fertilizer are killing the St. Johns River," said Neil Armingeon, a St. Johns riverkeeper. "We believe that these numeric standards are the beginning of the saving of the St. Johns River."

But state elected officials and business leaders say the new standards go too far.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Florida, who recently won the election for commissioner of agriculture, released a statement saying the EPA essentially ignored concerns about the effect implementation would have on Florida's economy, and the bipartisan effort to back up the new rules with sound science.

"While the EPA heeded our calls for additional time to implement numeric nutrient criteria in Florida by setting an effective date 15 months beyond the date of promulgation," said Putnam, "the issue remains unresolved, and regardless of when implemented, the federal mandate will have a dramatic impact on our state’s economy.”

Putnam was among several newly elected officials who signed a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Friday calling for a delay. He, along with Gov.-elect Rick Scott and incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi said the new standards could cost more than $20 billion.

Gwen Fleming, regional EPA administrator, says those figures are vastly exaggerated and based on the assumption that all wastewater treatment facilities would have to use the expensive reverse osmosis system to meet the new demands.

"That's simply not the case," said Fleming. "Prior to now, the only thing that has been out there is a lot of speculation and guesswork."

While the EPA's estimate is significantly south of $20 billion, they still expect the new regulation to cost the state between $135 and $206 million.

Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop cites estimates from municipalities and wastewater plants and says implementation will cost far more than the EPA thinks.

"Those numbers are out of fantasy land," he said. "They have no basis in fact."

In a testimony before the EPA, Bishop offered to write a $130 million check to the EPA if they would agree to pay anything over that.

"They didn't take the deal, and they won't take the deal," said Bishop. It'll cost us way more than that. It'll cost us billions of dollars."

Both Putnam and Bishop said the mandate was born of litigation and not scientifically based.

Continuing in his written statement, Putnam said the regulation "not only unfairly treats Florida differently than the other 49 states, it jeopardizes jobs throughout the state."

Fleming says the reason Florida is the only state they're imposing these standards on is because of the 2008 lawsuit. She also mentioned the DEP's well-kept data on nutrient levels as another reason.

"It just happened to be, with the lawsuit and everything else in terms of the great database from which to work, that we were able to put these rules in place," said Fleming.

The EPA does provide for some flexibility. Fleming says they wanted to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to implementing the standards, allowing for case-by-case adjustments depending on local environmental factors.

While some officials cited studies by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a spokesperson from the DEP says those cost estimates were based on a hypothetical. Still, with the actual numeric standards now available from the EPA, the DEP is being cautious to pass judgment on the costs.

The department released a written statement saying, “[The] DEP will now analyze and address the remaining legal and scientific issues, as well as the policy considerations associated with moving forward on nutrients, to assure that the benefits are worth the costs to Floridians.”

Efforts to push back against the federal government-imposed standards are already under way.

“I urge my colleagues, as well as other state and federal leaders, to continue to press on for Floridians against this federal overreach and let sound science prevail to sustain our state’s economy and natural resources,” said Putnam.

Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon said the House and Senate are planning to override a bill vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist that might limit the EPA's power as well.

"Pushing back on the new nutrient rules and the EPA is something I'm very interested in. I think it's a very big overreach by the federal government."

If the veto is overridden Tuesday in the special session, HB 1516 would require legislative approval for new rules that cost more than $1 million over five years.

Incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos added his voice to the chorus.
"Clearly, the Florida-only water standards will cost Floridians jobs and I will do everything I can not just to delay this unneeded federal intervention but to permanently stop (the new standards) from taking effect,” he said.
After the 15-month implementation period is up, the DEP will serve as the primary enforcement agency. There will be no direct enforcement for noncompliance, but over time, the EPA may refuse to renew permits to industrial businesses and municipalities that discharge nutrient-rich water into the environment.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/new-epa-water-nutrient-requirements-draw-ire-business-state-leaders

DEP instructed to revise proposed regulations for protecting freshwater

2010-11-03T13:00:00.001-04:00

After five years, what's another month or so?

Proposed regulations that would set the first comprehensive standards for water flow levels for the state's rivers and streams, called for in a law passed by the state legislature five years ago, were "rejected without prejudice" last week by the legislative panel charged with approving them.

The Regulation Review Committee directed the state Department of Environmental Protection to revise and resubmit the regulations, meant to manage and protect the state's freshwater resources.
The revisions would respond to concerns raised by legislative staff attorneys and a coalition of public water companies, agriculture, municipal and business groups concerned that the new rules would be overly strict and restrictive of public water supplies. The DEP contends it wrote ample flexibility into the rules to ensure public water needs can be met.

Betsey Wingfield, bureau chief of the water protection and land reuse bureau of the state DEP, said her office is still analyzing the technical and substantive issues raised by the Legislative Commissioners Office in its report to the committee.

"It's a legal analysis of the regulations, and I don't see them as pushing for them to be more or less protective of the environment," Wingfield said. "It's raising legal issues."

For example, among 10 "substantive concerns," the report said the regulations need to clarify the basis for a decision to change the classification of river or stream, and to more clearly define natural and sufficient flow variations.

Wingfield expects the DEP will resubmit a new version to the legislative committee in time for its November or December meeting.

She added it is typical for the committee to send new regulations back for revision after the first submittal, as was the case with the streamflow rules. The committee could have voted to reject the regulations altogether, but that would leave the state out of compliance with the law passed five years ago.

"Rejection without prejudice" was expected, Wingfield said, given the complexity of the regulations.

David Sutherland, director of government relations for the Nature Conservancy, also didn't see the committee's action as a major setback. The conservancy and several other environmental and outdoor sportsman groups have been advocating for the regulations to ensure water companies and others that divert from rivers and streams maintain water levels that can adequately support fish and other aquatic life.

Elizabeth Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Water Works Association, said her group and others in the coalition opposed to the last version of the regulations are looking forward to a new version "that will protect aquatic life and make sure public water suppliers have sufficient water to meet customer needs."

The regulations should also be narrowed so that they do not apply to groundwater supplies that were not covered in the original law, she said.

"I don't believe the Legislative Commissioners Office report went far enough," she said. "Certainly the committee identified concerns that went beyond."

http://www.theday.com/article/20101102/NWS01/311029883/1019&town=

South Jersey Report FRESH TAKE ON FRESHWATER

2010-10-18T10:07:00.001-04:00

The Fall Run is gaining steam as more keeper stripers are hitting the docks, weakfish and croaker schools are amassing the inshore waters, and bottom fishing for wreck beasties such as sea bass, blackfish and triggerfish is a solid lock. Water temperatures are dropping into the mid 60s now, which should usher in more schools of stripers with each passing day. Remember, the sea bass season is now closed until Nov. 1.

Dave Showell, Absecon Bay Sportsman, Absecon, said he's been finding stripers in the Brigantine ICW channels. "The 6-inch Gulp twister tail grubs put on jigheads are scoring bass averaging 26 inches or so. There are definitely more bass showing up each day, a lot of 24- to 28-inchers." The waters are now at 63 degrees in the back, perfect to bring those bass inside the bay. Rob Switzer lucked into a 13.5-pound striper on Brigantine Beach. Showell also noted that the huge bait schools seemed to have moved out after the recently passed new moon.

"Fishing was good on all fronts this past week," said John Gryzmko, Fin-Atics, Ocean City. "Blackfishing has been prime, especially by the Longport Bridge, Beasily's Point bridge, and 9th street bridge where tog were weighed in the likes of which went 8.69, 7.79 and a few others over the 6-pound mark." Green crabs have been best baits to hook a whitechin, but you can get away with using bits of fresh clam too. A solid presence of weakfish up to 16 inches long have shown up and they have been stacked at the Great Egg Reef and off the Ferris Wheel in about 40 feet of water. Croakers are also mixed in with the weakfish and larger model hardheads have been hanging out deeper in the 70-foot depths.

"Small spike caliber weakfish have been loaded up in the waters from 1 to 5 miles off," said Wes Bandy, Gibson's Bait and Tackle, Sea Isle City. "Chopper bluefish of 3 to 4 pounds are also mixed in with the weakfish, and both species are hitting jigged thin profile metals. Some of the weakfish are coming up bitten in half by the blues, it's pretty nasty." Bandy also reported that savvy anglers are heading to the Sea Isle backwaters around the Ludlam's Bay area to set up on anchor to clam up stripers as well as kingfish.

Captain Jim Cicchitti, Starlight Fleet, Wildwood, reported that the Starlight's 6-Hour trips are catching plenty of big porgies to 3 pounds and over. The big fish for the week were caught by Hank Lisotto, who had a pool-winning 3-pound 14-ounce porgy -- along with a mix of 20 sea bass and porgies.Wilma Birchmeier, Cherry Hill, counted a 7-pound blue in her day's catch. The vessel also has the special sea bass permits, which are good until January 1st, or when the quota is filled.This week's pools were claimed by Isabel Helfrich, Essex Junction, Vt., for her 4-3/4-pound sea bass and 18 others.Also with a big day was Emmet Jensen, Fairbanks, Ark., with a 3-pound humpback along with 20 other keepers.

"Sea bass fishing was excellent over the weekend at the reefs, before the temporary shutdown took affect," said Cathy Algard, Sterling Harbor Bait and Tackle, Wildwood. Meantime, anglers can focus on tog fishing, which has been excellent off the jetties, bridges, and inshore wrecks according to Algard. Green crab has been the bait of choice to tempt tog. The Delaware Bay has been holding weakfish up to 20 inches long, especially near the No. 1 Buoy. Try dropping Deadly Dick or Ava 007 metals and jigging them off the bottom.

Matt Slobodjian, Jim's Bait and Tackle, Cape May, reported thatsea bass were biting very well at Reef Site 11 and even thoughthe season is closed for now,they should be there when it opens back up on the 1st. Big bluefish were also hanging around the area, snapping off a lot of the sea bass as they were being reeled in.Those aggressive chopper blues can be taken on jigs or bucktails. Croakers began to move in strong to the Delaware Bay and also at the Wildwood Lump, and they can be caught on squid strips or small pieces of clam dropped down on top and bottom rigs. Striped bass haven't shown up in any real numbers yet according to Slobo, except way up in the Delaware Bay,at Reef site No. 1 and No. 2.Slobodjian warns, "Down in the lower bay, the dogfish sharks are killers and it's hard to keep a clam or bunker bait on the bottom."A bit offshore, the 19th Fathom Lump was the spot to find false albacore on the troll as well as a handful of bluefin tuna that hit metal jigs dropped to the bottom. Offshore, the Wilmington canyon is holding a few yellowfin in the 80-pound class.

http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20101015/LIFESTYLE05/10150360

Freshwater flow into oceans increasing rapidly

2010-10-07T20:57:00.001-04:00

The amount of freshwater flowing into the Earth's oceans has increased at a rapid rate over the last decade and a half, according to research undertaken by the University of California. A team of natural scientists has pinned the blame on more frequent and more extreme storms in the tropics and at the poles, linked to climate change.

The researchers found that by 2006, 18 percent more water was pouring into the oceans from rivers and melting ice sheets than in 1994. The average annual rise over that period is 1.5 percent. "In general, more water is good," said Jay Famiglietti, the study's principal investigator. "But here's the problem: not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it."

It seems that precipitation is increasing rapidly in the tropics and in the Arctic Circle, but that already-arid regions are becoming desertified at an alarming rate. The findings match up perfectly with predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the effects of rising global temperatures.

The science behind the water cycle is relatively simple. Water evaporates from the oceans, forming clouds, which then rain as they pass over land. That water runs into rivers, then back down into the sea, and the whole process begins again. However, warmer global temperatures accelerate the evaporating process, meaning that the rest of the cycle has to increase its capacity.

While there's no global network of river discharge sensors, the scientists used data from satellites about sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation over certain areas to reach its conclusion. However, the authors of the study cautioned that while this is the longest such dataset ever recorded, 12 years is still a relatively short time frame and so it's tough to pull long-term trends out of it.

The implications could be problematic for human populations. 2010 has already witnessed catastrophic flooding in some areas contrasted with heatwaves and wildfires in others, and water stresses in some parts of the world could cause mass migration, which will be difficult to deal with from a political perspective.

Then there are the implications for the climate. Some scientists believe that the North Atlantic could be rapidly approaching a "tipping point" where flow of cold, salt-free water into the sea from melting icecaps displaces warm water currents from the tropics, potentially reversing them. Britain is at the same latitude as Newfoundland and Moscow, but enjoys relatively balmy weather due to these currents. If they disappear, expect temperatures to plunge.
The researchers plan to continue their monitoring, with the hope of divulging better information about the water cycle's intricacies, the eventual objective being to better predict long-term trends.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/05/freshwater-

Freshwater yield dwindling

2010-09-14T08:37:00.003-04:00

Canada's renewable freshwater supply dropped dramatically over three decades in the most populated areas of the country, with the prairies particularly hard hit, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.

"If we want to be able to manage our water and understand what's happening with water over time, we need to know where it is, how much we have and how that's changing over time," said co-author Heather Dewar.

Dewar and her colleagues examined data on incoming freshwater supplies, from precipitation and melting snow, from across southern Canada, where 98 per cent of the country's population lives.

The annual reduction they calculated is equivalent to the water in 1.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools. Between 1971 and 2004, there was a total loss of 8.5 per cent of southern Canada's water yield.

The report, titled Human Activity and the Environment, didn't point to the reasons for the decreases over the course of 34 years. Dewar said that is better left to scientists.

They quickly weighed in on Monday. "It is clearly climate warming," said John Pomeroy, director of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan.

"As Canada warms, evaporation generally increases due to shorter winters," Pomeroy said in an e-mail from western China where he is on a speaking tour.

He said as temperatures have risen since the 1970s, the Great Lakes have had more ice-free periods and therefore longer evaporation periods. Across the Prairie provinces, groundwater and pond levels have dropped for most of the last 25 years.

"The Canadian Rockies are warming as rapidly as anywhere on earth -- we are finding about 3 to 4 degrees Celsius in winter since 1962 at high elevations."

And regional water issues appear to be on the verge of becoming more pronounced. Monday's report from Statistics Canada said although Canada is endowed with huge volumes of fresh water, it's unevenly distributed.

The combined southern portions of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have both sporadic and decreasing freshwater yields -- a fact that leads to both floods and droughts, the report said. At the same time, the demands are increasing. The population of the region grew to 4.5 million in 2006 from 1.6 million in 1971.

This part of the prairies gets just 12 per cent of the new water, primarily precipitation, that is seen in the Great Lakes drainage region.

Studies such as the Statistics Canada report are often difficult to stomach when Alberta has just gone through a cool and rainy summer, said Joe Obad of Water Matters, a conservation group.

"When everything looks green, it just slips off of peoples' political radar and makes it harder for decision-makers to make tough decisions."

But the Alberta government needs to pay serious attention to its long-standing promise to examine and re-vamp the province's water allocation system to deal with population growth and other climate changes in the years to come, Obad said.

Jim Webber, general manager of the Western Irrigation District in Strathmore, said the Statistics Canada report was "an interesting read, but you can paint any picture you want if you have enough numbers."

He said southern Alberta has seen many recent wet years, but "precipitation shortfalls can be handled by water management techniques and infrastructure."

Canada's Water Supply

- For most of the country the bulk of the water yield comes in April, May and June, as snow and ice melt, and precipitation increases. As spring turns into summer, new supplies decline even as human demand for water increases.

- More than 90 per cent of Canada's water withdrawn goes to support economic activity, about nine per cent is used by the residential sector.

- Sixty per cent of all of Canada's irrigated land is found in Alberta.

- Canada is one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the world, and the volume of water involved in hydroelectric generation is many times larger than all other uses of water in the country combined.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Freshwater+yield+dwindling/3520037/story.html#ixzz0zVU1hjkC

The Tale of The Great Lakes

2010-08-16T05:05:00.000-04:00

The Great Lakes, as well as other aquatic systems, have seen the accidental import of many invasive species. Some, as it turns out, are stronger than the native forms which dramatically changes local conditions and not always for the good.

Amidst the public battle over handling of the Asian carp threat in the Great Lakes, there is good news on the invasive species front. A New York State appellate court dismissed a challenge brought by shipping interests against the state’s tough new ballast water requirements, which are designed to limit the introduction of more invasive species into the Great Lakes. This is the second time that the state, with help from intervening Non-Government Organizations, has successfully defended the ballast water restrictions in court.

The Asian carp is the particular culprit in this case, including the bighead carp and the silver carp. Other species include the quagga mussel that now carpets the bottom of Lake Michigan. The population of prey fish, which sustain big fish like salmon, has dropped to less than 10% of what it was before invasive mussels arrived two decades ago.

An invasive species is an animal or plant that moves into a new environment, often badly disrupting it. Invasive species are becoming more common, in part because of international trade, which allows easy and accidental transport of wildlife from one corner of the world to another, and partly due to climate change, which prompts species to migrate to more hospitable environments, often at the expense of those that already live there.

The Asian carp are particularly dangerous. Native to China and parts of Southeast Asia, the freshwater carp have been cultivated for aquaculture for more than 1,000 years, often raised in submerged rice paddies. Catfish farmers in the U.S. imported the carp decades ago to eat up the algae in their ponds; the fish slowly escaped into the wild and have been making their way up the Mississippi river.

Due to the environmental threat posed by invasive species, lawyers from NRDC intervened in the shipping industry lawsuit alongside the State of New York. The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, Third Judicial Department, rejected shipping industry arguments that the New York ballast water regulations were illegal because they were stricter than the U.S. EPA's nationwide discharge permit.

“Today’s court decision is an important victory in the ongoing saga to protect our majestic Great Lakes from invasive species.”? said Marc Smith, Policy Manager with National Wildlife Federation. “Requiring the shipping industry to install effective protections against these invaders is long over due. Now more than ever do we need aggressive federal action to help reinforce New York’s leadership to ensure a more comprehensive defense policy against invasive species."

The New York court's ruling that states have authority to adopt ballast water rules that are more protective than federal standards is consistent with the decision last year in a lower state court as well as the federal appeals court in Cincinnati to uphold Michigan's ballast water rules against a similar shipping industry challenge.

The Great Lakes are a unique ecosystem representing 1/5 of the Earth's surface fresh water, but the vitality of the ecosystem has been threatened by alien species that have wreaked havoc on native fish and plants. Over 150+ invasive species have been identified in the Great Lakes since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. 65% of these invasive species introductions have been attributed to ballast water.

The Canadian and U.S. operators of the St. Lawrence Seaway have begun requiring freighters to flush their ship steadying ballast tanks with ocean saltwater to kill or expel any unwanted organisms before they arrive in the Great Lakes.

Marine advocates say the flushing largely has solved the ballast problem, and point to the fact that no new species have been detected in the lakes since late 2006. Others disagree.

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/41001

Cradle-to-Grave H2O Management

2010-08-09T05:01:00.000-04:00

Water supply is an enormous concern not only for natural gas companies involved in hydraulic fracturing (abbreviated as fracking), but also for government and environmental groups. Currently, the 4 to 6 million gallons of freshwater required for each natural gas well is drawn from rivers, lakes and streams. To further complicate matters, acquiring water rights is a time-consuming and costly process. Environmental impact studies must additionally be completed before well- or water-pumping permits can be issued, which can absorb up to two years of time.

Integrated Water Technologies believes that it has solved the fracking obstacles of both providing adequate freshwater supplies and wastewater disposal—fracking water and wastewater management—with its FracPure™ water treatment system. This cradle-to-grave solution both environmentally and cost-effectively generates reusable water and beneficial salt products.

The company has proven the effectiveness of FracPure-produced water remediation for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection by solving the problems of hydraulic fracturing water supply, handling and disposal, while eliminating long-term liabilities. As a matter of fact, John T. Hines, deputy secretary of the Office of Water Management says, “This is the first wastewater treatment system that has been successfully demonstrated for the treatment of Marcellus Shale frack wastewater.”

FracPure On-site Treatment

According to the company, the FracPure water treatment system removes all contaminants from frack water and returns 80 percent of flowback (translating into more than 1 million gallons per well) into pure water distillate for reuse on drilling sites. The remaining 20 percent of the treated water is highly concentrated salt brine, which goes through testing to ensure it is contaminant-free.

At this point, the brine is high in chlorides and not yet ready for return to the environment. However, it can be safely transported to Integrated Water’s crystallization plant for the final treatment phase.

More specifically, the steps involved in the FracPure process are:

Frack water testing—this determines wastewater processing rates.

Chemical precipitation—using a proprietary chemical treatment, a solid is formed that removes heavy metals or dissolved solids from the wastewater. The solids are dewatered and sent to a research laboratory to determine beneficial uses.

Filtration—purified water continues through multiple stages of filtration to remove organics and total suspended solids. The water is then sent to a concentrator.

Evaporation—the concentrator evaporates the brine down and yields purified distilled water for reuse on the drilling site, in addition to a greatly reduced salt brine that can be transported to the company’s crystallization plant to be processed.

On-site testing—Integrated Water Technologies’ testing labs ensure the concentrated brine meets standards for processing in its crystallization plant, and the distilled water exceeds EPA and all state regulatory groups’ recognized drinking water standard of 500 PPM. In fact, FracPure™ processed water averages less than 100 PPM and is completely safe to return to the environment.

Crystallization and desalinization—the final stage of the FracPure process turns the concentrated salt brine into salt products and distilled water. The brine is then manipulated to increase the percentage of solids in the liquid. After multiple phases of treatment, the process creates 99.7 percent pure dry salts for water softening, 99.7 percent liquid salts for road de-icing and erosion control, as well as the aforementioned distilled water.

More on Integrated Water Benefits

According to the company, a typical natural gas drilling site returns 1.3 million gallons of contaminated flowback in the first two weeks of operation. Generally, all 1.3 million gallons would have to be transported to an off-site wastewater treatment plant where it would be diluted for discharge into the environment. Integrated Water Technologies President Anthony DiTommaso says, “It is unacceptable that in the world today the primary solution to water remediation is dilution.”

In contrast, the FracPure process permits 1 million gallons to remain on-site as distilled water for reuse, eliminating about 200 incoming truck loads of freshwater for fracking. Moreover, it creates 300,000 gallons of highly concentrated salt brine, thus reducing disposal costs by 80 percent or 200 truckloads.

Over the next few years, the natural gas industry will require billions of gallons of freshwater—in the Marcellus Shale alone—for the hydraulic fracturing or drilling process. To that end, the FracPure mobile water treatment system can also create freshwater on-site from multiple other contaminated wastewater sources, such as wastewater treatment plants, sewage facilities, mining operation water effluent and other industrial wastewaters.

FracPure water management reduces water supply costs by creating new sources, trucking costs by 100 percent on-site treatment and recycling, and plant operation costs by creating commercially sold salt products. The company engineers centralized treatment plants and FracPure mobile on-site treatment units to provide 100 percent frack water recycling, production brine disposal, pit water filtration and disposal, and source water supply.

http://www.chem.info/Articles/2010/07/Processing-Equipment-Cradle-to-Grave-H2O-Management/

Feral pigs a threat to freshwater ecosystems

2010-08-03T17:01:00.001-04:00

THE feral pig – an environmental scourge - will be better managed following new research into its impact on freshwater areas.

Biosecurity Queensland senior zoologist Jim Mitchell said anybody who travelled through the outback of far north Queensland could see the environmental impact of feral pigs.

“Around almost every water body, be it a creek or lagoon, you will see large areas of ground dug up by feral pigs in search for food,” Dr Mitchell said.

“We commonly see groups of 20 to 100 pigs around water bodies in Cape York during the dry season and wondered if the repeated diggings had significant long-term impacts.

“A project to analyse the impact of feral pigs on water bodies has confirmed they are environmental vandals.

“The study was conducted at Lakefield National Park, a region on Cape York renowned for its vast river systems and spectacular wetlands.
“Our research defined the damage that feral pigs cause to tropical freshwater ecosystems.

“As expected, feral pigs clearly had a dramatic impact on the ecology of the unprotected freshwater lagoons.”
Dr Mitchell said the impacts included major destruction of plant communities, particularly water lilies, which were the pig’s favourite food.
“They dig underwater to forage for plant tubers,” he said.
“The destruction of aquatic plants and the sediment disturbance significantly reduced water clarity.
“Pig diggings caused high turbidity levels, reduced the amount of dissolved oxygen and increased the nutrient loads in the water.
“The data collected in this study will help organisations and land managers make decisions on the best way to manage the environmental damage caused by pigs.”
Dr Mitchell, who led the multi-agency study, will present his findings at the Pest Animal Symposium to be held in Gladstone from August 3 to 5.
“During the research we compared the water quality between lagoons fenced to keep out pigs and lagoons left unfenced,” he said.

http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/

Freshwater Wind Farm: Producing Clean Energy

2010-07-15T06:06:00.000-04:00

(Technorati) The EcoWatch Journal reports that Ohio is on track to install the first fresh water wind farm in the U.S.
The above conceptual photo shows what three offshore wind turbines would look like from downtown Cleveland.
These wind turbines are the largest in General Electric's fleet; they are also gearless, direct-drive wind turbines that feature innovative, advanced loads controls and aero-elastically tailored blade technology.
If all goes as planned, there will be 5 such turbines in lake Erie by 2012; continuous development will see hundreds of these turbines off the shores of Northeast Ohio by 2020.
It was at the American Wind Energy Association's annual trade show in May, in Dallas, that Ohio's governor, Ted Strickland, announced the plans for the placement of 5 wind turbines in Lake Erie.

There are only 7 offshore wind projects underway in the U.S. according to AWEA's 2009 Annual Report. The Northeast Ohio project is the only one planned in the Great Lakes, a sign that the project may in fact be the first freshwater wind farm in the U.S.
This pilot project, which will produce the first operating offshore wind farm in the U.S., is made possible by the partnership between the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp (LEEDCo), a non-profit corporation in Cleveland, and General Electric.
Benefits of such a project include more green jobs for Ohioans as manufacturers kick into high hear to produce the component parts for the wind turbines. This might very well revive Ohio's economy.

GE and LEEDCo also aim to create a strategic plan to identify opportunities for cost reduction to make offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes economically viable.
Since GE and LEEDCo will work jointly on advocacy and public policy issues to increase support for offshore wind energy to accelerate the growth of offshore wind industry, in time, other states by the Great Lakes might be able to tap into the natural, renewable, sustainable wind energy.

Read more: http://technorati.com/lifestyle/green/article/fresh-water-wind-farm-producing-clean/#ixzz0tPjWIajD

Mercury's Threat Greater in Ocean Fish Than Freshwater

2010-07-11T18:04:00.001-04:00

(HealthDay News) - Seawater itself is the reason why mercury in saltwater fish poses more of a health threat to humans than freshwater fish, even though concentrations of the chemical are much higher in freshwater species, according to new research.

Duke University researchers found that the potentially harmful form of mercury called methylmercury attaches onto dissolved organic matter in freshwater, but latches onto the salt (chloride) in seawater.

Methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cause kidney and brain disorders, and even death, the study authors explained in a university news release.

"The most common ways nature turns methylmercury into a less toxic form is through sunlight," study author Heileen Hsu-Kim, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, said in the news release.

"When it is attached to dissolved organic matter, like decayed plants or animal matter, sunlight more readily breaks down the methylmercury. However, in seawater, the methylmercury remains tightly bonded to the chloride, where sunlight does not degrade it as easily. In this form, methylmercury can then be ingested by marine animals," Hsu-Kim explained.

The findings, released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, suggest that scientists and policy makers should focus their attention on the effects of mercury in the ocean, rather than in freshwater, she added.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has more about mercury.

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/640506.html

Single Asian carp found 6 miles from Lake Michigan

2010-06-24T19:29:00.001-04:00

(AP) An Asian carp was found for the first time beyond electric barriers meant to keep the voracious invasive species out of the Great Lakes, state and federal officials said Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for swift action to block their advance.

Commercial fishermen landed the 3-foot-long, 20-pound bighead carp in Lake Calumet on Chicago's South Side, about six miles from Lake Michigan, according to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee.

Officials said they need more information to determine the significance of the find.

"The threat to the Great Lakes depends on how many have access to the lakes, which depends on how many are in the Chicago waterway right now," said John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

But environmental groups said the discovery leaves no doubt that other Asian carp have breached barriers designed to prevent them from migrating from the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes and proves the government needs to act faster.

"If the capture of this live fish doesn't confirm the urgency of this problem, nothing will," said Andy Buchsbaum, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office.

Scientists and fishermen fear that if the carp become established in the lakes, they could starve out popular sport species and ruin the region's $7 billion fishing industry. Asian Carp can grow to 4 feet and 100 pounds and eat up to 40 percent of their body weight daily.

Rogner, from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, estimated that the male carp was about 3 to 4 years old. It was caught live but has since been killed and will be sent to the University of Illinois to determine if it was artificially raised or naturally bred.

The fish was sexually mature, but Lake Calumet's conditions aren't conducive to reproduction because the water is too still, Rogner said. Even so, the lake is the ideal living environment for the fish because it's quiet and near a river system, he added.

"It fits the model to a T," he said. "They may be concentrated in that area."

Officials said they'll use electrofishing and netting to remove any Asian carp from the lake.

They have been migrating up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers toward the Great Lakes for decades.

There are no natural connections between the lakes and the Mississippi basin. More than a century ago, engineers linked them with a network of canals and existing rivers to reverse the flow of the Chicago River and keep waste from flowing into Lake Michigan, which Chicago uses for drinking water.

Two electric barriers, which emit pulses to scare the carp away or give a jolt if they proceed, are a last line of defense. The Army corps plans to complete another one this year.

"Is it disturbing? Extraordinarily. Is it surprising? No," Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said of the carp's discovery beyond the barriers.

He said the capture highlights the need to permanently sever the link between the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The Army Corps is studying alternatives, but says the analysis will take years.

"Invaders will stop at nothing short of bricks and mortar, and time is running short to get that protection in place," Brammeier said.

In Michigan, officials renewed their demand to shut down two shipping locks on the Chicago waterways that could provide a path to Lake Michigan. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice rejected the state's request to order the locks closed, but state Attorney General Mike Cox said he was considering more legal action.

"Responsibility for this potential economic and ecological disaster rests solely with President Obama," Cox said. "He must take action immediately by ordering the locks closed and producing an emergency plan to stop Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan."

A Chicago-based industry coalition called Unlock Our Jobs said the discovery of a single carp did not justify closing the locks. Doing so would damage the region's economy and kill jobs without guaranteeing that carp would be unable to reach the lakes, spokesman Mark Biel said.

"A few isolated incidents of Asian carp in this small section of the Illinois Waterway does not mean existing barriers have failed," said Biel, also executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois. "Additional regulatory controls and river barriers should be explored before permanent lock closure is even considered."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_bi_ge/us_asian_carp_great_lakes

Decline of freshwater species - a loss of natural capital

2010-06-22T14:02:00.000-04:00

The decline of biodiversity represents a loss of natural capital for future generations. Freshwater ecosystems are particularly affected, as they harbour disproportionately high levels of biodiversity. But knowledge of the development and decline of diversity in freshwaters remains patchy. So far, measures to protect genetic diversity in rivers and lakes have failed to halt the downward trend. What is widely underestimated, according to Eawag scientists, is the extent to which reduced habitat diversity also prevents species formation, thus accelerating the spiral of decline.

At this year's Eawag Info Day - held on Tuesday, 22 June - the latest findings of research on freshwater biodiversity are being presented to more than 200 scientists, water professionals, administration officials and policymakers. The 'proceedings' of this event (initially published in German as Eawag News no. 69) are available at the website below.

A mere 0.3% of the Earth's surface is covered by lakes, rivers and wetlands. Even in Switzerland - Europe's 'water tower' - the proportion is barely 4%. But these habitats harbour a huge variety of species: 40% of the world's 30,000 recognised fish species and over 100,000 invertebrates are found in freshwaters. This diversity is at risk. Not just relative to the surface area but also in absolute terms, extinction rates are considerably higher for freshwater than for terrestrial and marine species. In Switzerland, for example, 17 of just over 100 known fish species are extinct. More than 60% of all aquatic plants are believed to be threatened. Present-day extinction rates are comparable to those seen during the greatest mass extinction events in the Earth's history. Eawag research has now shown that, in addition, ever-fewer new species are being formed. Evolutionary ecologist Ole Seehausen calls this doubly negative trend a 'catastrophic biodiversity debt.'

Seehausen and his group have demonstrated that changes in the same processes which led to the development of existing species are often responsible for a decrease in the formation of new species - e.g. when environmental changes reduce the size or diversity of habitats. Genetic adaptations to ecologically distinct niches are then no longer required, young species merge into a single hybrid form, and the emergence of new species ceases. In the case of the 32 different whitefish species described in Swiss lakes, at least a third have disappeared over the past 50 years. 'There's not much time left to save the rest,' says Seehausen, who advocates greater cooperation between research and applied conservation.

The group led by aquatic ecologist Piet Spaak showed that - contrary to the assumptions of traditional conservation science - evolutionary processes can often produce marked changes and adaptations in species within a few generations. In this study, 50?year?old resting stages of water fleas (Daphnia) were retrieved from Greifensee sediment cores, and viable eggs were then hatched in the laboratory. Compared with more recent specimens, these water fleas were significantly more resistant to the elevated lead concentrations which prevailed in the 1960s. Another remarkable finding emerged from Seehausen's studies of trout: The five types of trout described in Switzerland - originating from ice age refugia - are evidently adapted to different ecological conditions and can still coexist, without merging, in near-natural rivers. In highly degraded rivers, by contrast, they are displaced by the Rhine trout, which has been widely released. Seehausen notes: 'There are virtually no coordinated programmes to conserve trout diversity.'

Species loss is attributable not only to the fact that habitats have disappeared or become monotonous, but also to a lack of connectivity. Artificial barriers impede the passage of fish. On the lower reaches of the Toess river in Canton Zurich, for example, Eawag biologists counted 23 fish species below a 6?m?high weir, but only 12 above this barrier. On the Sitter (Cantons St Gallen/Appenzell Outer Rhodes/Appenzell Inner Rhodes), 46 of 54 tributaries were found to be inaccessible for the bullhead, a small fish species of the upper reaches. Conversely, the number of fish species in the Lichtensteiner Binnenkanal rose from 6 to 16 within only 4 years after a steep drop where the artificial channel entered the alpine Rhine was reshaped to make it passable for fish.

'On account of its abundant water resources, its topography and its role as a hinge between different biogeographical regions, Switzerland has a particular responsibility for freshwaters and their biodiversity,' says Eawag researcher Mark Gessner, who is also a member of the Swiss Biodiversity Forum. He compares biodiversity to a broad investment portfolio, offering 'insurance for the future.' He argues that high levels of species richness and genetic diversity provide greater stability in the face of environmental changes, which in turn ensures the provision of ecosystem services for human populations. These include, for example, fish catches, but also clean water, flood protection or attractive recreational spaces. Gessner therefore calls on researchers to focus increasingly not only on the extent and causes of declining biodiversity, but also on its consequences. Isolated local measures need to be replaced by an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to water resource management. This requires the kind of rethink in the water management sector which has already begun in the area of flood protection. Here, the Eawag biologist is supported by Evelyne Marendaz Guignet, head of the Species Management division at the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). In her paper, Marendaz said it was clear that, despite all the conservation efforts made to date, it would not be possible to reverse the downward trend with existing instruments and resources. She highlighted the current lack of targets and priorities, and the need for better coordination of enforcement - e.g. between agriculture and water protection policy. The FOEN is therefore developing a Biodiversity Strategy, which is to be presented to the Federal Council later this year.

http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/10062230-decline-freshwater-species-loss-natural-capital.html

MSU researches freshwater relationships

2010-06-05T19:18:00.000-04:00

MSU researchers studying freshwater bodies such as the Great Lakes are studying the relationship lakes have with the surrounding streams and ecosystems.

Creating the term landscape limnology — a new way to study fresh water — three MSU professors in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife said they hope their study can help protect and conserve the nation’s water.

Given a grant in 2005, the department was allowed to collect data from 25,000 lakes across New Hampshire, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. Throughout the five years after the project began, the researchers have made drastic advancements, said Mary Bremigan an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

“We are working to develop better monitoring techniques for all lakes,” Bremigan said. “We’re setting reasonable goals and standards for freshwater bodies.”

Landscape limnology studies fresh water by not only examining the water but also its surroundings. Considering all aspects of how freshwater systems work together, the study explores the links between lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and the interactions between natural and human landscapes.

The goal of the project is to improve the broad understanding of the diversity of freshwater resources, and to give freshwater managers science-based tools to manage and protect bodies of water, Bremigan said.

By mastering the use of new technologies, such as geographical information systems, or GIS, aerial photos, data from satellites and information concerning the effects of land usage, researchers blend the information with data collected from the water systems.

By examining the surroundings of the bodies of water, more accurate data can be reached as to exactly how the water systems can be managed, said Patricia Soranno, an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

“If a lake in Michigan and Wisconsin were both exposed to 200 pounds of phosphorus, would both lakes experience a similar reaction?” Soranno said. “Now we know that they might react differently. Location matters. We know that water systems should be managed by regions.”

Combining the efforts of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the Michigan Department of Environmental Equality and the Michigan Water Resources Conservation Advisory Council, the project was a collaboration between state agencies and the university.

“This is one of the few effective collaborative research projects going on,” said Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife assistant professor. “There are social scientists and other co-authors involved, we recognized everyone and we work well together.”

Managed under one form of regulations, lake managers provide the same procedures to all lakes, although the research shows that freshwater bodies should be controlled under a more specialized method.

“It’s more complicated than looking at a shoreline,” Soranna said. “We want to look at the land around the region, it’s a far-scale aspect.”

http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/06/msu_researches_freshwater_relationships

Arab-Israeli water feuds get worse

2010-04-28T08:56:00.000-04:00

(UPI) -- Israel's feud with the Palestinians over dwindling West Bank water resources stymied an EU effort this week to secure a water management strategy for the Mediterranean region where 290 million people face shortages by 2025.

Last month, Israeli troops killed a 16-year-old Palestinian and critically wounded another teenager in a clash with Jewish settlers over a well near the city of flash point city of Nablus.

That's an extreme case, to be sure. But it reflects the growing tension in the West Bank, which Israel is slicing up with its security barrier and annexing a large chunk of land Palestinians want for a future state.

The Palestinians claim Israel is stealing their water, while the 400,000 Jewish settlers are up in arms because they fear they will be forced to abandon the West Bank as part of a peace deal.

The March 20 bloodshed in Nablus, many fear, is a portent of the battle ahead as the water shortage goes beyond crisis, worsened by years of drought, growing Israeli requirements and on the Arab side, poor conservation and planning.

According to the World Bank, Israelis consume four times as much water per person as Palestinians.

In October, Amnesty International accused Israel of neglecting Palestinian infrastructure development and leaving 200,000 Palestinians without running water.

Jewish settlers use the same amount of water as 2.3 million Palestinians, Amnesty alleged. Israel denied the allegations.

By most estimates, half the water Israel consumes is taken from its neighbors, the Palestinians and the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1980.

These sources are drying up and Israel needs to find new sources. One it has long coveted is the Litani River in south Lebanon, which at one point flows 2 miles from the border.

Even before Israel became a state in 1948, Zionist leaders had their eyes on the Litani, and wanted the Jewish state to extend deep into what is now Lebanon, amounting to around one-third of the modern-day state.

The Litani, along with the Syrian headwaters of the Jordan River, were considered to be vital for the economic well being of the future Jewish state.

Much of this territory was conquered in the 1967 war. Israel's invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were motivated in part by the desire to control the Litani.

But that all ended when Israel quit south Lebanon in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

The irony is that while Israelis and Palestinians scrap over the West Bank's overworked water sources, the Lebanese are literally letting their water drain away through inept management and failure to conserve or build a proper supply system.

Tiny Lebanon is relatively rich in water resources, with an average 73.5 billion cubic feet of renewable hydraulic resources.

"We use about half of that as drinking water or for irrigation and industrial purposes," said Fadi Comair of the Energy and Water Ministry. "The rest … is dumped in the Mediterranean."

He said that unless action is taken soon -- and there's no sign it will -- Lebanon could effectively run dry within four years.

And as water supplies dwindle, so tension between Israel and its neighbors, and between Arab states such as Egypt and their neighbors, will intensify.

Israel, technologically the most advanced state in the region, has major recycling projects. According to official figures, some 70 percent of recycled water is reused.

However, notes David Newman, professor of political geography at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, "There have been numerous incidents during the past 50 years in which water has been an added source of conflict … between Israel and its neighbors."

Two days before the 1967 war began, Israeli warplanes bombed a dam being built by Syria to block the Yarmuk River flowing into the Jordan and from there into Lake Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel's main reservoir.

"The message was sent that any attempt to tamper with the natural flow of water into Israel would be seen as a casus belli," Newman noted.

Ghazi al-Rababah, a Jordanian political science professor, warned in late November that Israeli will go to war against Lebanon, Syria and Egypt over water, with a major conflict with Egypt for control of the Nile River within seven years.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/04/16/Arab-Israeli-water-feuds-get-worse/UPI-31031271437138/

20 % of the world's supply of fresh water in jeopardy

2010-04-12T14:22:00.000-04:00

The future of 20 percent of the world's supply of pure fresh water is in jeopardy because a surprise decree by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will allow a heavily polluting pulp mill to reopen on the southern shore of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia.

Magnificent, almost pristine Lake Baikal, the "Pearl of Siberia," is a source of national pride and awe, an icon for the Russian environmental movement, a World Heritage Site and the only natural area in Russia that's protected by its own law. Many locals consider the enormous lake - at 12,248 square miles, it's the size of Maryland and Delaware combined - sacred. Between its size, its 5,380-foot depth and its remarkable biodiversity, the lake's fate has global significance.

The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill is the only industrial enterprise that dumped waste directly into the lake, and the fight against its construction gave birth to the Russian environmental movement and emboldened public figures to speak out against the Soviet state.

Using chlorine to produce bleached cellulose, BPPM discharged as much as 4 million cubic feet of toxic waste into Lake Baikal annually. More than 6 million tons of solid waste accumulated in huge open-air pits near Baikal's shore, in an active earthquake zone. The estimated costs of cleaning it up run into the millions of dollars.

The Russian government tried for almost 20 years to halt pulp production and convert the mill to other uses. In 2000, as Russia's president, Putin ordered BPPM "to end discharge of toxic wastes into Baikal at the earliest possible date," and in 2007 he declared the lake a national treasure and moved a proposed oil pipeline beyond its watershed.

The next year, the Russian government prohibited the production of pulp and paper on Baikal without a closed wastewater cycle.

"If there is even the smallest, tiniest chance of polluting Baikal, then we must think of future generations," he declared. "We must do everything to make sure this danger is not just minimized, but eliminated."

Last summer, Putin came to Baikal and took a dive to the bottom of the world's deepest lake in a mini-submarine. Upon emerging, Putin declared Baikal to be "in good condition." Then, however, he declared that the lake was almost unpolluted and hinted that the shuttered mill might reopen.

Putin's change of heart came as a surprise, and opponents of his January decree say it's a shortsighted attempt to protect the business interests of one wealthy and well-connected Russian oligarch at the expense of a unique and precious ecosystem.

Oleg Deripaska, described as close to the Kremlin who saw his fortune dwindle in the financial crisis, owns 51 percent of BPPM's shares, and the Russian government owns the rest.

Environmentalists began to mobilize almost immediately, claiming that Putin's decision is illegal under Russian and international law and asking the United Nations Economic and Social Council to decide whether Baikal should be considered endangered.

More than 34,000 people have signed a petition to Medvedev on a popular Irkutsk Internet news site alone, and late last month, hundreds of people in Irkutsk braved the Siberian winter to protest Putin's decree.

As environmental groups across Russia raised the alarm, Irkutsk police raided Baikal Environmental Wave, a local environmental group that protested Putin's decree, on suspicion that it was using pirated computer software. No one believed that, however.

"Two of the four policemen were from the Center for Fighting Extremism," the group said. "They had a camera and asked us provocative questions, for example, 'Do you participate in anti-government demonstrations?' As they took a photograph of our student volunteer's identification card, they told her that her career was over."

Putin's new amendments to the Law on Lake Baikal allow the production of cellulose, paper and carton without a closed wastewater system, as well as the storage and burning of waste on Baikal's shores.

Environmentalists say the mill, built in 1966 and closed in 2008, shouldn't be allowed to resume operations without an independent investigation of the existing conditions, and they point to the fact that two years ago the mill was at the epicenter of a strong earthquake.

Former workers report that because the owner didn't invest in maintenance and repair, the mill's equipment is dangerously worn out. Even a pro-mill representative of the Baikalsk city council who came to a news conference organized by local environmentalists described the mill as "a house that needs to be torn down that someone just decided to put siding on."

The current director of BPPM said the enterprise would be "even more environmentally sound in the future than it was in the past." The mill's owners, however, recently admitted that the closed wastewater system never functioned properly, and said they'd need another three years to upgrade it.

The workers' trade union, however, reports that the mill is signing contracts for only three to seven months of work, and critics say Putin acted mainly to give more budget money to Deripaska and to give him a chance to sell the mill.

"I am sure that the mill will never work," said Vladimir Naumov, the president of a local investment fund and the founder of a charity fund called Baikal 3000. "Otherwise they can write off Siberia and Baikal entirely, because no one lives here, and no one cares."

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/12/2672177/putin-about-face-on-paper-mill.html

Boosting Endangered Freshwater Mussels Population

2010-03-24T08:46:00.002-04:00

ScienceDaily — The endangered freshwater mussel species has been given a welcome boost by scientists from Queen's University Belfast following a 12 year cultivation project.

Over 300 of the mussels, which are threatened in many parts of Europe and North America, have been released back into the wild at a range of secret locations in Northern Ireland.

And in a novel development, the conservation scientists from Queen's will be able to keep tabs on the precious mussels after attaching tags to the outside of their shells. The Passive Integrated Transponders or PIT tags can be located by a receiver much like a metal detector, meaning the researchers can then relocate the animals in the riverbed and monitor each mussel's progress.

Conor Wilson a PhD student at Quercus, Queen's research centre for biodiversity and conservation science in the University's School of Biological Sciences said: "Queen's had been working alongside experts at Ballinderry Fish Hatchery in Co. Tyrone since 1998 in order to cultivate these precious but very slow growing mussels. They can grow to 17 cm in length and can reach 285 years old but in Northern Ireland they are currently teetering on the brink of extinction and the only counties the mussels currently exist in are Tyrone and Fermanagh.

"Freshwater mussels are an important part of the ecosystem in many rivers as they filter water keeping it clean and clear. This improves the environment for other plants and animals, and ultimately, humans.

"Our hope is that eventually, through a programme of breeding and tracking we will be able to see the equilibrium restored in these rivers and bring the levels of mussels back to what they were 100 years ago, before they were affected by a variety of factors including overfishing and habitat degradation."

The year-long release programme of the mussels has just been completed and those involved in the project say it has been a big success. Dr. Dai Roberts, academic lead on the project said: "Ultimately, this work which has been funded by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), evaluates whether captive breeding and release is a successful means to halt the decline of severely depleted populations. We hope it will be a success and that it can be replicated in many other areas of need across Europe and beyond."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100323105948.htm

Water is worth it - OECD

2010-03-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

Doubling annual investment in water and sanitation infrastructure from $15-billion to $30-billion would halve the share of people without access to these basic needs, OECD said this week.

Globally 1 billion people lack access to safe water supplies and 2.6 billion are without access to basic sanitation.

"It would be money well spent - saving lives and reaping benefits of 5 to 10 times the initial investment," it said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Climate change and over-use of water will mean that nearly one in every two people will live in water-stressed areas by 2030.

Households, industry and agriculture will increasingly compete for water, leaving little to sustain ecosystems.

Infrastructure a priority

In developing countries increasing investment in water and sanitation infrastructure is a priority.

Three new OECD studies show that putting the right price on water will encourage people to waste less, pollute less, and invest more in water infrastructure.

Households and industry in many OECD countries increasingly pay the true cost of the water they consume.

A study on Pricing Water Resources and Water and Sanitation Services shows this is done through tariffs – user prices- which better reflect the actual consumption and treatment costs, including water abstraction and supply as well as treatment of wastewater to avoid pollution.

Tariffs for water and wastewater services vary significantly across OECD countries with a bathtub of water in Denmark and Scotland costing as much as 10 times more than in Mexico while Irish households pay no direct fees for water.

Water bill increases over the last decade were primarily driven by higher wastewater charges to cover the costs of investment in environmentally sound treatment and disposal.

Waste is costly

In many OECD countries it now costs more to get rid of wastewater than to bring in drinking water.

"Balancing financial, environmental and social objectives in water pricing policies remains a challenge in most OECD countries," said OECD.

For example, people on low-incomes in Hungary and Mexico sometimes pay over 4 percent of their disposable income on water and wastewater services.

Today agriculture uses more water than households and industry put together - about 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals.

A study on Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Agriculture shows that while agricultural water consumption decreased in some countries, especially in Eastern Europe, some OECD countries such as Turkey, New Zealand, Greece and Korea recorded large increases since the 1990s.

With agricultural production projected to double by 2050 to feed the growing world population, farmers will need to improve water efficiency.

Farmers must pay their share

The report suggests that farmers should pay not only the operation and maintenance costs for water but also their fair share of the capital costs of water infrastructure.

In areas where the price of agriculture water has increased, agricultural production has not fallen - Australia managed to cut irrigation water use by half without loss of output.

Also, uptake of existing water-saving irrigation techniques in China and India, both large agriculture water users, is expected to help check the global agricultural water use to 2050.

Government subsidies for agricultural production can encourage wasteful water use and pollution.

The study on Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Agriculture says that in some countries lower agricultural subsidies, including for water and energy, are making farms cleaner and more efficient.

In addition, the report notes, agriculture must adopt long-term strategies to improve water usage, planting crop varieties resistant to droughts or floods resulting from climate change.

http://business.iafrica.com/news/2307820.htm

The Water Cycle: Freshwater Storage

2010-03-11T17:27:00.002-05:00

One part of the water cycle that is obviously essential to all life on Earth is the freshwater existing on the land surface. Just ask your neighbor, a tomato plant, a trout, or that pesky mosquito. Surface water includes the streams (of all sizes, from large rivers to small creeks), ponds, lakes, reservoirs and canals (man-made lakes and streams), and freshwater wetlands. The definition of freshwater is water containing less than 1,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved solids, most often salt.

As a part of the water cycle, Earth's surface-water bodies are generally thought of as renewable resources, although they are very dependent on other parts of the water cycle. The amount of water in our rivers and lakes is always changing due to inflows and outflows. Inflows to these water bodies will be from precipitation, overland runoff, ground-water seepage, and tributary inflows. Outflows from lakes and rivers include evaporation and discharge to ground water. Humans get into the act also, as people make great use of surface water for their needs. So, the amount and location of surface water changes over time and space, whether naturally or with human help. Certainly during the last ice age when glaciers and snowpacks covered much more land surface than today, life on Earth had to adapt to different hydrologic conditions than those which took place both before and after. And the layout of the landscape certainly was different before and after the last ice age, which influenced the topographical layout of many surface-water bodies today. Glaciers are what made the Great Lakes not only "great, " but also such a huge storehouse of freshwater.

Surface water keeps life going

As this picture of the Nile Delta in Egypt shows, life can even bloom in the desert if there is a supply of surface water (or ground water) available. Water on the land surface really does sustain life, and this is as true today as it was millions of years ago. I'm sure dinosaurs held their meetings at the local watering hole 100 million years ago, just as antelopes in Africa do today. And, since ground water is supplied by the downward percolation of surface water, even aquifers are happy for water on the Earth's surface. You might think that fish living in the saline oceans aren't affected by freshwater, but, without freshwater to replenish the oceans they would eventually evaporate and become too saline for even the fish to survive.

As we said, everybody and every living thing congregates and lives where they can gain access to water, especially freshwater. Just ask the 6 billion people living on Earth! Here's a satellite picture of the Mediterranean region during night (the full picture of the Earth is available from NASA). The most obvious thing you can see is that people live near the coasts, which, of course, is where water, albeit saline, is located. But the interesting thing in this picture are the lights following the Nile River and Nile Delta in Egypt ( the circled area). In this dry part of the world, surface-water supplies are essential for human communities. And if you check the price of lakefront property in your part of the world, it probably sells for much more than other land.

Usable fresh surface water is relatively scarce

To many people, streams and lakes are the most visible part of the water cycle. Not only do they supply the human population, animals, and plants with the freshwater they need to survive, but they are great places for people to have fun. You might be surprised at how little of Earth's water supply is stored as freshwater on the land surface, as shown in the diagram and table below. Freshwater represents only about three percent of all water on Earth and freshwater lakes and swamps account for a mere 0.29 percent of the Earth's freshwater. Twenty percent of all fresh surface water is in one lake, Lake Baikal in Asia. Another twenty percent (about 5,500 cubic miles (about 23,000 cubic kilometers)) is stored in the Great Lakes. Rivers hold only about 0.006 percent of total freshwater reserves. You can see that life on Earth survives on what is essentially only a "drop in the bucket" of Earth's total water supply! People have built systems, such as large reservoirs and small water towers (like this one in South Carolina, created to blend in with the peach trees surrounding it) to store water for when they need it. These systems allow people to live in places where nature doesn't always supply enough water or where water is not available at the time of year it is needed.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclefreshstorage.html

Bills offered in Congress to protect Great Lakes

2010-03-05T09:20:00.000-05:00

Measures ask for $3B in federal funding over five years for cleanup, battling invasive species

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Great Lakes environmental priorities such as toxic sediment cleanups and battling invasive species could get more than $3 billion in federal money over five years under bills offered Thursday in Congress.

Identical measures introduced in the House and Senate would authorize Congress to meet — and even exceed — President Barack Obama's funding requests to help repair the nation's largest surface freshwater system, ravaged by more than a century of industrial-era abuses.

"The Great Lakes are a unique American treasure," said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and a sponsor of the Senate version. "Nearly a tenth of our population lives in the Great Lakes basin, relying on the life-sustaining drinking water the lakes provide, and reaping economic and recreational benefits from them daily."

Even if the bills are enacted, they won't guarantee all the proposed funding. Congress votes yearly on appropriation measures that determine how much is spent on particular programs.

But the legislation would help continue momentum toward a comprehensive Great Lakes restoration proposed in 2005 by government agencies, scientists and advocates. The plan received little funding until Obama requested — and Congress approved — $475 million in the 2010 budget.

"It shows that Congress is treating the lakes as a national priority," said Jeff Skelding, campaign director for the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

Administration officials last month released a strategy for beginning to carry out the restoration, which could take decades to complete. Obama's plan would spend $2.2 billion over five years, including $300 million in 2011.

The congressional bills would boost next year's funding to $475 million and authorize additional money for removing contaminated sediments from tributary rivers and harbors. They also propose $25 million a year to run the Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes Program Office.

Altogether, the bills seek $650 million annually, or $3.25 billion over five years.

"The Great Lakes represent 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply, and it is about time we put some serious effort into restoring and protecting them," said Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and one of the House version's sponsors.

Aside from cleaning up some of the region's most polluted sites, the bills would restore wetlands and other fish and wildlife habitat, reduce runoff pollution that causes nuisance algae blooms, and help fend off invasions by foreign species such as the notorious Asian carp.

Exotic species already in the lakes, such as zebra and quagga mussels, cause more than $200 million a year in damages and control costs.

Environmental groups urged Congress to approve the bills despite the tight federal budget, saying the cost of healing the lakes would only go up.

"It's going to take a sustained, multi-year effort to nurse the Great Lakes back to health," Skelding said.

http://www.htrnews.com/article/20100305/MAN0101/3050589/1358&located=rss

Do Melting Ice Caps Affect the Salt Content of the Oceans?

2010-02-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

If the ice caps are melting, what is happening to the salt content of the oceans? And might this contribute to weather patterns or cause other environmental problems?

It’s true that the melting of the polar ice caps as a result of global warming is sending large amounts of freshwater into the world’s oceans. Environmentalists and many climate scientists fear that if the climate heats up fast enough and melts off the remaining polar ice rapidly, the influx of freshwater could disturb ocean currents enough to drastically change the weather on the land as well.

The Gulf Stream, a ribbon of ocean water that delivers heat from the tropics up to the North Atlantic, keeps northeastern U.S. and northwestern Europe weather much milder than other areas at the same latitude around the globe. In theory, less salt in the ocean could stall out the Gulf Stream and rob some of the world’s greatest civilization centers of their natural heating source, plunging the two continents into a cold snap that could last decades or longer—even as the rest of the globe warms around them.

The Gulf Stream keeps running because the warmer water travelling north is lighter than cold water, so it floats on top and keeps moving. As the current approaches the northern Atlantic and disgorges its heat, it grows denser and sinks, at which point it flows back to the south, crossing under the northbound Gulf Stream, until it reaches the tropics to start the cycle all over again. This cycle has allowed humans and other life forms to thrive across wide swaths of formerly frozen continents over thousands of years. But if too much dilution occurs, the water will get lighter, idling on top and stalling out the system.

Some scientists worry that this grim future is fast approaching. Researchers from Britain's National Oceanography Center have noticed a marked slowing in the Gulf Stream since the late 1950s. They suspect that the increased release of Arctic and Greenland meltwater is to blame for overwhelming the cycle, and fear that more warming could plunge temperatures significantly lower across land masses known as some of the most hospitable places for humans to live.

Of course—not surprisingly—others have noted a contradictory trend: Some parts of the world’s oceans are getting saltier. Researchers from the UK’s Met Office and Reading University reported in a recent issue of the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters that warmer temperatures over southerly sections of the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall from Africa to the Caribbean in recent years, concentrating salt in the water that’s left behind. In fact, the Atlantic in this region is about 0.5 percent saltier than it was four decades ago.

But given how little we really know about the future effects of our carbon loading of the atmosphere, calling these two trends contradictory might be premature—as the two regions of ocean interact with one another and are part of a larger whole. Looking instead at the big picture, it’s clear that climate change is already having a relatively large effect on the world’s oceans by fundamentally altering evaporation and precipitation cycles. Only time will tell how dramatic the results of these changes will be.

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/39985/

Dammed if we do, dammed if we don't: New World's biggest freshwater fish at risk

2010-01-19T06:38:00.002-05:00

Two of the world's biggest freshwater fish are in big trouble, come reports from scientists in North and South America.

First up, the genetically distinct Kootenai River population of white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), North America's largest freshwater fish. This massive monster has been known to reach almost six meters in length and weigh half a metric ton, but its size hasn't offered it any protection. In fact, it has made it more attractive, and the species has historically been heavily overfished.

The problem in the Kootenai River isn't overfishing, although it is man-made: Montana's Libby Dam, built in 1974. The dam prevents the river from the very flooding that used to tell the sturgeon it was time to spawn. Before the dam was built, an estimated 10,000 white sturgeon lived in the river. Now, just 500 remain, and they have not spawned in the wild in 35 years. Oops.

Despite the lack of wild spawning, the fish have not died out, and that's also thanks to human intervention. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho periodically restocks the river with farm-raised sturgeon.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying to save the Kootenai River white sturgeon from extinction for years by adjusting the amount of water that flows through Libby Dam, but last Thursday they announced that all of their recent attempts have failed. They'll keep trying, though, and will send even more water through the dam this year. But they can't send too much or they'll flood local towns.

Amazonian arapaima

Meanwhile, in South America, another of the world's largest freshwater fishes—in fact, the largest species with scales—is also in danger of extinction, if it even still exists. A paper in the December issue of the Journal of Applied Ichthyology reports that the giant Amazonian arapaima (Arapaima gigas) are threatened by weak and unenforced fishing regulations in Brazil, despite the species's protected status under the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Arapaima can reach more than four meters and weigh more than 180 kilograms. The fish actually comes to the surface to breathe, leaving it vulnerable to fishing with spears and nets.

Part of the problem with preserving the arapaima is that it has never really been studied, until now. Authors Leandro Castello and Donald Stewart examined several arapaima samples in museums and found that only one of them was actually the Arapaima gigas. "Our new analyses indicate that there are at least four species of arapaima," Castello told BBC News. "So, until further field surveys of appropriate areas are completed, we will not know if Arapaima gigas is extinct or still swimming about."

Castello and Stewart recommend increased monitoring and tighter controls over harvests to protect the multiple arapaima species from extinction.

And tuna, too

As long as we're talking about giant fish, let's not forget the endangered bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), which also remains heavily overfished, and as a result commands incredibly high prices on the open market. Last week, a single, 232-kilogram tuna sold for an all-time high of $175,000 to two Japanese restauranteurs—60 percent higher than last year's record. That breaks down to $21.38 an ounce—almost three dollars more per ounce than the cost of silver. (And by the time it reaches the dining table as sushi, it will be more like the cost of gold.)

But even at those prices, bluefin won't be on the menu (or maybe anywhere) for very long.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=dammed-if-we-do-dammed-if-we-dont-n-2010-01-13

EPA Proposes Freshwater Nutrient Limits for Fla., a National First

2010-01-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

U.S. EPA proposed pollution standards for nutrients in Florida waters, the first such proposal for any state.

The EPA proposal sets limits on nitrogen and phosphorous for freshwater lakes, rivers, streams, springs and canals. The agency said it would propose a rule for estuaries and other coastal waters in January 2011.

The nutrient proposal would also let Florida set interim water quality targets, a mix of standards for runoff and discharge pipes, an EPA spokeswoman said. "This works where a standard cannot be met in the short term, but can be met in the longer term," she said.

Environmental groups praised the proposal aimed at curbing nutrients that can foul drinking water and fuel algal blooms that deplete dissolved oxygen necessary for aquatic life. "The numbers are pretty good," said David Guest, an attorney for Earthjustice, which sued EPA for the standards last year.

But industry groups say complying with the standards will cost billions of dollars and disrupt work already under way in the state to curb nutrient pollution.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, National Association of Clean Water Agencies and Florida Water Environment Association met with the White House Office of Management and Budget to discuss the proposal last week, presenting documents that argue the criteria would double charges for water and sewer services in parts of the state. Both environmental and industry groups said they met with EPA last year as the agency was drafting the proposal.

Susan Bruninga, spokeswoman for NACWA, expressed objections to EPA's methodology for setting the nutrient criteria.

"EPA essentially sets criteria for broad eco-regions based on a statistical analysis of what the concentration of the nutrients are in a particular water body, and then applies it to all the water bodies," Bruninga said. "Our concern is they're kind of doing a one-size-fits-all approach and not linking concentrations to impacts."

Though EPA said the methodology it used to set the nutrient standards was specific to Florida, Guest said the proposed limits could serve as a template for nutrient standards in other states.

"I think this is a prototype that will be followed by other states," Guest said. "And if some states don't follow, EPA will be able to do this rather quickly, because they've done the hard work now."

EPA's Office of Inspector General found in August that the agency failed to follow through on its pledge to enforce federal nutrient pollution standards if states did not develop their own by 2004 (E&ENews PM, Aug. 27, 2009).

A coalition of environmental groups is now pressing the agency to set nutrient criteria for Wisconsin waters, threatening to sue EPA if it does not promptly do so (Greenwire, Nov. 24, 2009).

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/15/15greenwire-epa-proposes-freshwater-nutrient-limits-for-fl-21732.html

Recognizing Water for What It's Worth

2009-12-22T13:45:00.003-05:00

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

Invasive freshwater snail spreading in California

2009-12-16T22:54:00.003-05:00

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

Water Is The New Oil

2009-12-09T06:32:00.001-05:00

(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

How To Invest In Water

2009-12-07T14:23:00.002-05:00

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

Invasive carp threatens Great Lakes

2009-12-03T07:03:00.002-05:00

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

Wasted Food Uses 25% of Freshwater Supply

2009-12-01T09:34:00.003-05:00

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

2030 Water Resources Group Report

2009-11-27T06:03:00.001-05:00

There’s a new report out documenting global water scarcity and outlining strategies for meeting future water demand.

The report was issued by the 2030 Water Resources Group, of which Syngenta CEO Michael Mack is a member. He says agriculture accounts for approximately 71 percent of global water withdrawals today. Although agriculture has improved its water use efficiency, Mack says more can—and must—be done.

“Getting more productive in agriculture on the existing farmland is the highest priority. We have the means to do this, and it is just a question now of how to bring that together in a very sensible and focused way,” Mack says. “Making water more efficient—more crop per drop, which is a phrase that’s used increasingly so—is the key.”

The group’s report says that, unless steps are taken to address water issues, the gap between global water supply and demand will reach 40 percent by 2030. The report points out that solutions will vary by country, and even by watershed.

http://brownfieldagnews.com/2009/11/23/group-release-global-water-report/

What is Freshwater?

2009-11-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

Freshwater is chemically defined as containing a concentration of less than two parts per thousand (<0.2%) of dissolved salts.

Freshwater can occur in many parts of the environment. Surface freshwaters occur in lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. Subsurface freshwater occurs in pores in soil and in subterranean aquifers in deep geological formations. Freshwater also occurs in snow and glacial ice, and in atmospheric vapors, clouds, and precipitation.

Most of the dissolved, inorganic chemicals in freshwater occur as ions. The most important of the positively charged ions (or cations) in typical freshwaters are calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), sodium (Na+), ammonium (NH4+), and hydrogen ion (H+). This hydrogen ion is only present if the solution is acidic; otherwise a hydroxy ion (OH−) occurs. The most important of the negatively charged ions (or anions) are sulfate (SO42−), chloride (Cl−), and nitrate (NO3−). Other ions are also present, but in relatively small concentrations. Some freshwaters can have large concentrations of dissolved organic compounds, known as humic substances. These can stain the water a deep-brown, in contrast to the transparent color of most freshwaters.

At the dilute end of the chemical spectrum of surface waters are lakes in watersheds with hard, slowly weathering bedrock and soils. Such lakes can have a total concentration of salts of less than 0.002% (equivalent to 20 mg/L, or parts per million, ppm). For example, Beaverskin Lake in Nova Scotia has very clear, dilute water, with the most important dissolved chemicals being: chloride (4.4 mg/L), sodium (2.9 mg/L), sulfate (2.8 mg/L), calcium (0.41 mg/L), magnesium (0.39 mg/L), and potassium (0.30 mg/L). A nearby body of water, Big Red Lake, has similar concentrations of these inorganic ions. However, this lake also receives drainage from a nearby bog, and its chemistry includes a large concentration of dissolved organic compounds (23 mg/L), which stain the water the color of dark tea.

More typical concentrations of major inorganic ions in freshwater are somewhat larger: calcium 15 mg/L; sulfate 11 mg/L; chloride 7 mg/L; silica 7 mg/L; sodium 6 mg/L; magnesium 4 mg/L; and potassium 3 mg/L.

The freshwater of precipitation is considerably more dilute than that of surface waters. For example, precipitation falling on the Nova Scotia lakes is dominated by sulfate (1.6 mg/L), chloride (1.3 mg/L), sodium (0.8 mg/L), nitrate (0.7 mg/L), calcium (0.13 mg/L), ammonium (0.08 mg/L), magnesium (0.08 mg/L), and potassium (0.08 mg/L). Because the sampling site is within 31 mi (50 km) of the Atlantic Ocean, its precipitation is significantly influenced by sodium and chloride originating with sea sprays. More continental locations have much smaller concentrations of these ions in their precipitation water. For example, precipitation at a remote place in northern Ontario has a sodium concentration of 0.09 mg/L and chloride 0.15 mg/L, compared with 0.75 mg/L and 1.3 mg/L, respectively, at the maritime Nova Scotia site.

http://www.bookrags.com/research/freshwater-woes-01/

Experts convene to save freshwater fish

2009-11-23T12:25:00.001-05:00

A plan to save Australia's freshwater fish from becoming extinct is being worked out at a meeting of experts from around the world at the Adelaide Zoo which begins today.

The 25 delegates will discuss a series of freshwater fish management strategies to tackle the issue.

The head of Zoos SA, Chris West, says the drought, over-extraction and the drainage of wetlands have all led to diminished native fish numbers in Australia.

"In Australia, about 95 per cent of our wetlands have either been destroyed or very severely compromised by urban and rural developments," he said.

"So the freshwater fish, which in a way are canaries in the coalmine for a lot of our ecology, our natural health, are really under a great deal of pressure."

He says public awareness about the threatened state of Australia's freshwater fish numbers is far too low.

"These small and sometimes not terribly glamorous fish are disappearing as well as things like the Murray Cod, and our wellbeing, as humans, is bound up with the natural health and ecology, and that has to do with the wetlands," he said.

"So it's so important that the public realise that it's part of their health to make sure that we have good fresh water."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian-news/6501062/experts-convene-to-save-freshwater-fish/

Freshwater Inflow Needs of the Matagorda Bay System

2009-11-18T07:23:00.000-05:00

The Matagorda Bay system is the second largest estuary on the Texas Gulf Coast covering approximately 352 square miles. The abundant production of finfish and shellfish make this environmentally sensitive area important not only as a ecological resource, but also as a source of economically significant commercial and sports fisheries. Many factors contribute to this high natural productivity, but the most significant is an ample source of freshwater. Freshwater inflows are vital to the continued health of the natural ecosystems in and around the Matagorda Bay system.

To determine the freshwater inflow needs of the Matagorda Bay system, the LCRA entered into a cooperative agreement with TPWD, TWDB and TNRCC in 1993. The LCRA agreed to adapt or modify existing methods for estimating freshwater inflow needs used by the TPWD and TWDB and apply those methods to compute alternative freshwater inflow needs for the estuary. The participating state agencies provided technical assistance and advice to the LCRA.

Methodology for Estimating Freshwater Inflow Needs

This method involved the synthesis of three components: (1) development of statistical relationships between freshwater inflows and key indicators of estuarine conditions, (2) computation of monthly and seasonal freshwater inflows to optimize estuarine conditions subject to specific constraints at key estuarine locations and (3) evaluation of estuarine-wide salinity conditions to ensure conditions remain within desired limits.

The first major component is the development of statistical relationships for the varied and complex interactions between freshwater inflows and important indicators of estuarine ecosystem conditions. The key estuarine indicators considered are: salinity, species productivity, and nutrient inflows.

Statistical relationships were developed between seasonal freshwater inflows and biomass for nine finfish and shellfish species that are ecologically and economically important to the estuary. In general, most species demonstrated negative responses to freshwater inflows during winter months (November through February), and positive responses to freshwater inflows occurring from March through October.

The salinity conditions in upper Lavaca Bay and the eastern end of Matagorda Bay were found to be largely dependent on the freshwater inflows from the Lavaca and Colorado Rivers, respectively. These relationships were quantified into statistical relationships.

Similarly the nutrient inflows were related to total inflow to the estuary. A nutrient budget was prepared for the estuary which indicated that a minimum annual freshwater inflow of 1.7 million acre-feet was needed to replenish the estimated nutrient losses from the estuary.

The second essential process involves using the statistical functions noted above to compute optimal monthly and seasonal freshwater inflow needs. This is accomplished using the TWDB's Texas Estuarine Mathematical Programming (TXEMP) Model. TXEMP determines mathematically the best set of freshwater inflows needed to maximize specific conditions within the estuary while meeting a variety of limits on salinity, species productivity and nutrient inflows.

The third major component of the process of developing inflow needs is the simulation of the salinity conditions throughout the estuary using the TXBLEND estuarine hydrodynamic and salinity transport model developed by TWDB and modified by the LCRA. The simulated salinity is then compared to desired salinity ranges over broad areas of the estuary. If salinity is not within those ranges then constraints in TXEMP are modified to achieve the desired salinity.

Freshwater Inflow Needs

The freshwater inflow needs for the estuarine ecosystem associated with Matagorda Bay System were estimated for two levels of inflow needs: Target and Critical.

The Target inflows needs are the monthly and seasonal inflows that produced 98% of the maximum total normalized biomass for nine key estuarine finfish and shellfish species while maintaining certain salinity, population density and nutrient inflow conditions. The salinity condition requires that estimated salinity fall within predetermined monthly ranges preferred by most species. The productivity of any species must not be less than 80% of its historical average. Finally, the total inflow of nutrients are at least equal to the natural nutrient losses from the ecosystem. The 98 percent level of maximum biomass was selected for the target needs based on achieving the best tradeoff between productivity and freshwater inflows.

The Critical inflow needs were determined by finding the minimum the total annual inflow needed to keep salinity near the mouths of the Colorado and Lavaca Rivers at no more than 25 parts per thousand. These inflows needs are termed critical since they provide a fishery sanctuary habitat during droughts. From this sanctuary, the finfish and shellfish species, particularly oysters, could be expected to recover and repopulate the bay when more normal weather conditions returned.

The Target inflow need from all sources was calculated to be 2.0 million acre-feet per year (Table 1). Inflow needs from the Lavaca and Colorado Rivers were estimated at 346,200 and 1,033,100 acre-feet annually, respectively. The remaining contributing areas are estimated to provide an additional 620,700 acre-feet yearly.

The TXBLEND hydrodynamic and salinity transport model was used to simulate salinity conditions in the Matagorda Bay system with the Target inflow needs indicated in Table 1. The resulting simulated salinity regime was found to give acceptable salinity conditions throughout the estuary, thus the Target needs are anticipated to provide adequate salinity within the Matagorda Bay system.

A total annual freshwater inflow of about 287,400 thousand acre-feet was found to meet the Critical inflow needs (Table 2). Approximately 27,100 and 171,000 acre-feet yearly would be provided from the Lavaca and Colorado River basins, respectively, with the remaining annual inflow of 89,200 acre-feet coming from the other contributing from the other contributing drainage basins.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/water/conservation/freshwater_inflow/matagorda/index.phtml

The effects of Lake Michigan

2009-11-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

SOUTH BEND -- Lake Michigan is the sixth-largest freshwater body in the world. It has a wide-ranging impact on our area -- from lake-effect snow and thunderstorms, to our economy and our history.

With its more than 1,600 miles of shoreline, Lake Michigan holds nearly 1,200 cubic miles of water. Anything that big is going to have a huge effect on everything around it.

"I think the biggest thing is it tends to be a moderating influence," said Mike Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in northern Indiana.

That means it keeps our temperatures from becoming extremely hot or extremely cold. So how did the lake get here?

"The best understanding that we have is that it was a glacial push," Lewis said.Millions of years ago, our entire area was covered in ice. When temperatures began to rise, the glaciers started to melt.

"As they retreated, you started seeing the melt of the ice collecting in those water basins," Lewis said.

The Great Lakes were formed, and ever since they have changed the climate of our area -- depending on your point of view, for better or for worse.

How does it work?

Our cities, our culture and our weather all have been influenced by Lake Michigan. And as all continue to change, so does Lake Michigan. But how is still a huge question."There's so much more to learn, but we're just now starting to fully grasp the influence of that, of Lake Michigan," Lewis said.

But will Lake Michigan always be here? Are water levels rising or falling?

"Can we understand how these lakes actually work together and is there a normal level? So, they're going to go up and down -- sort of like our temperatures. They're going to go up and down, or (like) our weather, we're going to see extremes. What is that normal, and what is that definition of normal? And that has to be yet to be determined."

One thing is clear: "If we were to lose the water, that warming influence or that cooling influence, we would end up with an entirely different climate around here."

Grape growing wouldn't be possible in southwest Michigan if it wasn't for the lake. Mike Merchant, winemaker at Tabor Hill, has been in the wine business for 30 years."In the fall, what it does most of the time is it extends the growing season," he said. "It modifies things to keep things warmer, longer."

The opposite is true in the spring.

"In the spring it keeps things cooler, the area or the climate cooler," Merchant said. "That would delay bud break, which is very important to avoid spring frosts."

Lake Michigan allows wineries in the area to thrive, but that's not all. Grant Black, a professor of economics at Indiana University South Bend, says the lake has always had an effect here.

"It has had, historically, a substantial impact," he said. "Obviously the area that we're in really developed because of access to the waterways."It has had a huge effect on our local economy.

"Well, certainly a lot of things in the broader sort of recreation and tourism industries," Black said. "It could be things like wineries. It could be things like casinos, just the natural resources of the dunes and things like that."

The development of our cities has depended on Lake Michigan. Cities near the western coast see nearly 35 inches of snow per year. Cities near the eastern coast see nearly twice that with about 70 inches per year.

"Obviously weather patterns and those kinds of things would have affected where people located," Black said. "Obviously lots of other things would have come into play as well. So it certainly is a component of how cities developed and population growth occurs."

How cold is it?The biggest thing Lake Michigan tends to affect is our temperature.

"It tends to keep temperatures from dropping as rapidly as if there wasn't a body of water," Lewis said.

This happens because water changes temperature more slowly than air. That is why the lake keeps us cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Those relatively warmer lake temperatures in the winter lead to something we are all very familiar with: lake-effect snow.

Areas closer to the Great Lakes see significantly higher snowfall totals each year compared to areas farther from the lake. The entire Midwest is susceptible to synoptic, or system snow events. After the initial storms pass, if you live near Lake Michigan, more snow can develop."All of a sudden you end up with these relatively strong bands of snow that will set up," said Lewis

They can add several inches or several feet of additional snow. If the conditions are right, lake-effect rain is even possible.

But Lake Michigan affects more than just our rain and snow. It also can mean increased clouds playing a role in severe weather.

"You can actually see that as a band of clouds that pushes in, and sometimes it can be a focus for actual thunderstorm development, or we can look for it enhancing some of our severe potential," Lewis said.

Thunderstorms need rising air to grow, and another key ingredient."With thunderstorm development, you need moisture. If it's warm enough over the lake, and a cool enough air mass comes in, you can end up with a great source of water for that storm."

There also is very little friction over the lake. That means winds can become incredibly strong.

"The storms can hit that and accelerate and rush through."

In many ways, Lake Michigan can increase our potential for severe weather, but cooler temperatures over the lake can sometimes decrease our severe weather potential as well.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20091114/News01/911140406/-1/XML

Restoring China's disappearing wetlands

2009-11-10T15:31:00.000-05:00

China has been making great efforts to re-draw the disappearing Sanjiang Plain Wetlands on its maps. The country's largest freshwater wetlands have changed dramatically in the face of the country's rapid agricultural development in recent decades.

Located in the eastern region of Heilongjiang province, huge sections of the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands were converted by local farmers, soldiers and Zhiqing, or urban educated youth, between the early 1950s and the 1970s, responding to the central government's call to develop the Great Northern Wilderness or "Beidahuang".

The Sanjiang Plain area, a low plain that borders the Heilongjiang, Ussuri and Songhuajiang rivers, has gone through extensive agricultural development.

Today, a broad sweep of rice paddies and farmlands stretch toward the horizon. Large wilderness areas became rich black farmlands. The Chinese people gave a new name to the region: "Beidacang" - the Great Northern Grain Barn.

According to statistics, annual grain production reached 42.3 billion kg in 2008 of the country's total 528.5 billion kg in grain production last year.

Beidahuang, which has 5.5 million hectares of fertile land, has become China's largest grain production base, growing more than 138 billion kg of grain for the country over the past six decades.

After half a century, the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands tell a very different story. Extensive agricultural development and population growth have resulted in a considerable loss of wetlands.

The Sanjiang Plain contains the largest area of wetlands in China. It contains six national wetland reserves and 10 provincial wetland reserves.

But they are disappearing at a frightening speed. After more than 50 years of economic development, the area of the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands decreased by 4.32 million hectares, or nearly 80 percent. As a result, only 1 million hectares of wetlands can now be seen on the map of the Sanjiang Plain.

The wetlands, often referred to as the earth's "kidneys", have played a significant role in water purification and conservation, as well as the prevention of erosion and flooding.

Worsening droughts

Since the 1990s, the Sanjiang Plain area, with a total arable land area of 3.5 million hectares, has suffered worsening droughts.

The worst drought struck as much as 40 percent of its farmlands, and there are now more than 808,000 hectares of farmland that are vulnerable to droughts.

Scientists said an increase in droughts, floods and sandstorms afflicting northern China in recent years are closely linked to the shrinking wetlands.

Related ecological damage has caused economic losses equal to 4 percent to 8 percent of the country's GNP, according to statistics.

"As the country's largest ecological province, environmental protection in Heilongjiang province has huge effects on northeastern and northern China," said Sun Yao, vice governor of Heilongjiang province.

Many rivers and water systems in Heilongjiang reach neighboring Russia, so the ecological effect stretches beyond China's borders, he said.

Sun said Heilongjiang, especially the Sanjiang Plain, also is important to China's food and energy security future.

Experts said the wetlands in Sanjiang Plain are considered globally important and represent one of the more important breeding sites and migratory routes for waterfowl in northeastern Asia.

The wetlands are also significant for the numbers and species of globally threatened waterfowl.

The Chinese government has realized that it must speed up its efforts to save its dwindling wetlands.

A pioneer of wetlands protection in China, the Heilongjiang provincial government has banned any cultivation and excavation of wetlands since 1999.

The 2003 Heilongjiang Wetlands Regulations gave official authority for wetlands management to the Heilongjiang Provincial Forest Department (HPFD).

Farmland-to-wetlands

With funding from the National Development and Reform Committee, HPFD is managing a project that will restore 150,000 hectares of farmland to wetlands and replant 68,500 hectares yearly by 2010.

To better protect the wetlands, the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands Protection Project has been under way since March 2007, co-financed by the Heilongjiang provincial government, Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Fund.

The project is expected to cost about $55 million, including $12.14 million in Global Environment Fund grants and $15 million in loans from the Asian Development Bank.

"The project is to promote sustainable use of natural resources through integrated conservation planning and to improve the well-being of local communities," said Robert Wihtol, China director of the Asian Development Bank.The project is targeting 13 counties, including six nature reserves within five contiguous watersheds.

Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a water resources management specialist for the Asian Development Bank, said the project will involve 11,900 hectares of new forest plantations.

Already, 8,457 hectares of new forests have been planted, he said. The project also involves maintenance of about 43,700 hectares of existing forest lands.

"Forests increase the water retention capacity of the lands and mitigate soil erosion, which is the first step of wetlands protection," Kobayashi said.

Kobayashi said the prospect of a net annual income of $210 to $256 per hectare from dry-land grain production (wheat-soy-corn) has served as a strong motivator for farmers to expand the farmlands in any way possible, including draining the wetlands.

Meanwhile, pesticide and fertilizer pollution, burning, grazing and other agricultural practices within or near the natural reserves have adversely affected the area's ecology, according to a recent Asian Development Bank report.

"Alternative livelihoods for these farmers who are affected by the farmland-to-wetlands plan must be provided to discourage such harmful natural resource exploitation in the wetlands," Kobayashi said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-11/09/content_8933093.htm

Climate change threatens quarter of Swiss farmland

2009-11-04T07:34:00.001-05:00

GENEVA (AFP) – Climate change is already threatening more than a quarter of Switzerland's farmland with frequent and lengthy water shortages, according to official research published Tuesday.

The Swiss federal agricultural research station Agroscope said about 10 times more land would need to be irrigated to avoid lost harvests, some 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) instead of the 38,000 hectares that currently receive regular irrigation.

But researcher Jurg Fuhrer told AFP that such huge irrigation to cope with more frequent drought might not be economically viable or feasible.

Twenty-six percent of usable agricultural land and 41 percent of arable land is at risk due to the drier climate that has been emerging in recent years, the scientific study found.

The conclusions were based on a range of research including detailed observations of local climate, hydrological data and crop patterns between 1980 and 2006.

It showed that the Alpine country's prime arable land, spread across lower lying northern plains and valleys, had been the hardest hit by a growing frequency of summertime drought, including the Rhine valley.

"I was surprised to see the size of the area," said Fuhrer. "The area is expanding, that's the significant part."

Swiss farmers should expect a period of damaging drought at least once every three years, the researchers predicted.

The Rhine is one of Europe's biggest rivers, flowing northwards through Germany from its source in the Swiss Alps. The Rhone valley in southwestern Switzerland, which stretches into southern France, is also at risk.

"There are implications for anybody who lives along these rivers," Fuhrer pointed out.

Climate research cited by Agroscope has indicated that summer rainfall in Switzerland could be cut by up to a fifth by 2050.

Agroscope predicted that three months of sun without a drop of water would become a common feature for Swiss summers -- comparable to the severe European heatwave of 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091027/sc_afp/switzerlandclimatewarmingfarm_20091027162315

Biodiversity: It's In The Water

2009-11-02T03:28:00.000-05:00

Hydrology may be more important for predicting biodiversity than biology, say an international group of scientists whose study in the latest issue of Nature challenges current thinking about biodiversity and opens up new avenues for predicting how climate change or human activity may affect biodiversity patterns. Their new method for predicting biodiversity, described by them as "ridiculously simple," uses only the geomorphology of a river network and rainfall measurements to accurately predict the biodiversity of fish species in a river system.

For their study, the researchers examined the Mississippi-Missouri river basin, which covers all or part of 31 US states, spanning diverse habitat types and encompassing very different environmental conditions. Using geomorphological data from the US Geological Survey, the researchers identified 824 sub-basins in the network. In these, the simple presence (or not) of 433 species of fish was established from a database of US freshwater fish populations. Data on the average runoff production -the amount of rainfall that ends up in the river system and not evaporated back into the air - was then used to calculate the habitat capacity of each sub-basin.

With just four parameters, it's "an almost ridiculously simple model," explains researcher Andrea Rinaldo. The model results were compared to extensive data on actual fish species distributions. Various different measures of biodiversity were analyzed, and the researchers were surprised to find that the model captured these complex patterns quite accurately. The model is all the more remarkable for what it does not contain - any reference, anywhere, to the biological properties of individual fish species.

It is a formulation that could be applied to any river system, or in fact, any network at all. The model is general enough that it could be used to explore population migrations or epidemics of water-borne diseases in addition to biodiversity patterns. The researchers plan to extend their work to explore the extent to which simple hydrology can act as the determining factor in a wide range of biodiversity patterns.

"These results are a powerful reminder of the overarching importance of water, and the water-defined landscape, in determining patterns of life," said co-researcher Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe. "It provides a framework that could be used to connect large scale environmental changes to biodiversity. Changes in precipitation patterns, perhaps due to global climate change, could be mapped to changes in habitat capacities in the model, ultimately providing a way to estimate how climate change would alter large-scale patterns of biodiversity. It could also be used for an assessment of the impact of specific, local human activities, such as flow re-routing or damming, on the biodiversity patterns in a river network."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20080407194721data_trunc_sys.shtml

"Catastrophic decline" in freshwater biodiversity

2009-10-29T10:02:00.000-04:00

Mismanagement and growing needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth with extinction rates 4 to 6 times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins, say scientists at the DIVERSITAS 2nd Open Science Conference, in Cape Town, South Africa.

Klement Tockner, of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, explains that while freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8 percent of the Earth's surface, they contain roughly 10 percent of all animals, including an astonishing 35 percent of all vertebrates.

"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," warns Tockner. "However, few are aware of the catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity at both local and global scale. Threats to freshwater biodiversity have now grown to a global scale."

The human implications of this trend are "immense," he adds, because freshwater species in rivers, lakes, ground waters, and wetlands provide a diverse array of vital natural services - more than any other ecosystem type. The problem puts billions of people at risk as biodiversity loss affects water purification, disease regulation, subsistence agriculture and fishing.

Freshwater ecosystems and their species also absorb about 7 percent of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere. "Although small in area, these freshwater aquatic systems can affect regional carbon balances," Tockner says. "Freshwater ecosystems will be the first victims of both climate change and rising demands on water supplies. And the pace of extinctions is quickening - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia."

To highlight the ecological and economic importance of freshwater ecosystems, Tockner and colleague Charles Vörösmarty, of the City University of New York, will present their research at the conference and encourage fellow scientists to help formulate clear government policy recommendations and future research priorities.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090911213748data_trunc_sys.shtml

Water scarcity will create global security concerns

2009-10-26T08:00:00.004-04:00

Water scarcity as a result of climate change will create far-reaching global security concerns, says Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Pachauri spoke this morning at the 2009 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.

"At one level the world's water is like the world's wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others," he says. "With 31 percent of global freshwater resources, Latin America has 12 times more water per person than South Asia. Some places, such as Brazil and Canada, get far more water than they can use; others, such as countries in the Middle East, get much less than they need."

And the effects of a warmer world will likely include changes in water availability.

"Up to 1.2 billion people in Asia, 250 million Africans and 81 million Latin Americans will be exposed to increased water stress by 2020," Pachauri says. Water shortages have an enormous impact of human health, including malnutrition, pathogen or chemical loading, infectious disease from water contamination, and uncontrolled water reuse.

"Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change," Pachauri says.

When communities fight over water resources, there's a great danger for a disruption of peace and security. "That water scarcity plays a role in creating the preconditions of desperation and discontent is undeniable," he says. Competition for water from the river Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war. India has been in dispute with Pakistan over the Indus and with Bangladesh over the Ganges.

"Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries," he says. "As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to trans-boundary tensions."

"We live on a small planet where communication and influences go from one corner of the Earth to another," he says. "If there's a major disruption to peace in one part of the globe, no other part is insulated from it. We need to look at what happens to the rest of the world with some degree of alarm; these influences have very dangerous implications for the rest of the world."

Societies so far have been able to adapt to changes in weather and climate - via crop diversification, irrigation, disaster risk management, and insurance - but climate change might go beyond what our traditional coping mechanisms can handle, Pachauri suggests.

Even societies with "high adaptive capacity" are vulnerable to climate change, variability and extremes, he says, citing examples of the 2003 heat wave that took the lives of many elderly in European cities and 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

"A technological society has two choices," Pachauri says. "It can wait until catastrophic failures expose systemic deficiencies, distortion and self-deceptions, or the culture can provide social checks and balances to correct for systemic distortion prior to catastrophic failures."

"Global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to decline by 2015. If we can achieve that, we may be able to avoid the worst effects of climate change," he says. "The costs of this are not high. A major mitigation would only postpone growth domestic product growth by one year at most over the medium term. That's not a high price to pay for the world."

"There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet," he says. "We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don't come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace."

http://www.physorg.com/news174063666.html

Traces of pharmaceuticals found in central Indiana waterways

2009-10-22T13:26:00.008-04:00

(PhysOrg.com) -- Pharmaceuticals have been found in freshwater ecosystems in rural areas of central Indiana, says a new study from Ball State University.

Analysis of water collected in the last year from 10 streams in the upper White River watershed found trace amounts of acetaminophen, caffeine, dimethylxanthine, a byproduct of caffeine, and cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine.

"Like it or not, we may be unintentionally exposed to drugs from our drinking water if pharmaceuticals are in our freshwater sources," said Melody Bernot, a Ball State biology professor. "In some spots, we found traces of the mood-altering drug lithium. There are more than 300 pharmaceuticals that are being passed by human excretion into our sewer systems, and our current wastewater filtering systems are not eliminating them before the drugs enter our streams and rivers."

The presence of these compounds in freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies raises potential health issues, but little is known about the how these compounds could impact humans through chronic exposure, Bernot said.

"At this point, I can't say if it dangerous or not to consume trace amounts," she said. "The federal government only recently began funding this research."

Bernot plans to apply for funding to continue and expand her research, not only examining the impact on humans but also aquatic animals.

She said pharmaceutical compounds are designed to have a physiological effect on humans or animals, and it is likely that they may also alter function of aquatic organisms. Few studies have examined the influence of pharmaceutical compounds on freshwater organisms.

The report pointed out that sewage contamination is the main pathway for human pharmaceuticals to enter streams. This can be a result of many factors, including age and design of the sewer system. Less urbanized areas tend to use more septic tanks, as opposed to more advanced sewer systems, that can leak untreated sewage into streams.

"This study suggests these sources are contributing pharmaceuticals to streams," Bernot said. "Urbanized areas tend to have updated sewage systems that carry waste to treatment facilities making contamination in streams not receiving wastewater treatment more apparent, especially during conditions when combined sewer overflows are not contributing to water flow."

"We also have many animal feeding operations in central Indiana. Whatever drugs veterinarians put into the animals are eventually excreted into the fields and potentially exported to freshwater."

Bernot initiated the study to better understand the distribution of pharmaceuticals and their potential effect on stream processes. Prescription and nonprescription pharmaceutical concentrations were measured in headwater streams not directly receiving wastewater treatment water in the upper White River watershed.

The area has the one of the most urbanized watersheds in Indiana, encompassing three metropolitan areas including Indianapolis, Anderson and Muncie. The watershed includes 16 counties and supplies 85 percent of the surface water needed for human use in Indianapolis and central Indiana.

http://www.physorg.com/news175280924.html

Massive mismanagement leads to catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity

2009-10-15T06:58:00.004-04:00

The world will miss its agreed target to stem biodiversity loss by next year, according to experts convening in Cape Town for a landmark conference devoted to biodiversity science.

The goal was agreed at the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in April 2003. Some 123 world ministers committed to "achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the local, national and regional levels, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth."

"We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and therefore also miss the 2015 environmental targets within the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to improve health and livelihoods for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people," says Georgina Mace of Imperial College, London, and Vice-Chair of the international DIVERSITAS program, which is convening its 2nd Open Science Conference Oct. 13-16 with 600 experts from around the world.

"It is hard to image a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity," says Prof. Mace. "Biodiversity is fundamental to humans having food, fuel, clean water and a habitable climate."

"Yet changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate. Since 1992, even the most conservative estimates agree that an area of tropical rainforest greater than the size of California has been converted mostly for food and fuel. Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase."

However, she adds, "the situation is not hopeless. There are many steps available that would help but we cannot dawdle. Meaningful action should have started years ago. The next best time is now."

The DIVERSITAS conference, to be opened by UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, will call for new more science-based targets.

"A great deal of awareness-raising is still much needed with respect to the planetary threat posed by the loss of so many species. The focus of biodiversity science today, though, is evolving from describing problems to policy relevant problem solving," says Stanford University Prof. Hal Mooney, DIVERSITAS Chair.

"Experts are rising to the immense challenge, developing interdisciplinary, science-based solutions to the crisis while building new mechanisms to accelerate progress. Biodiversity scientists are becoming more engaged in policy debates."

Five roundtables between top science and policy specialists are scheduled on key issues such as efforts to create a science-based global biodiversity observing system (GEO-BON) to improve both coverage and consistency in observations at ground level and via remote sensing.

Says DIVERSITAS vice-chair Prof. Robert Scholes, who heads both GEO-BON and the local organization of the Cape Town conference: "GEO-BON will help give us a comprehensive baseline against which scientists can track biodiversity trends and evaluate the status of everything from genes to ecosystem services. The lack of such information became acutely apparent during preparation of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and in formulating the CBD's 2010 targets."

Others, meanwhile, are creating an international mechanism to unify the voice of the biodiversity science community to better inform policy making, its function akin to that of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Nairobi Oct. 5-9, environment ministers from countries the world over will consider the creation of such a body, called IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), which would require UN General Assembly approval.Interdisciplinary work underway to address key issue areas also include:

How to demonstrate and quantify the economic costs and impacts on human welfare globally and locally due to biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation (being conducted under the TEEB Initiative);

How to understand, manage and conserve ecosystem services including, for example, the creation of economic incentives to prevent habitat destruction;

How to share the benefits from the use of genetic resources fairly and equitably; and

How to improve research institutions and the international stewardship of biodiversity.

Silent crisis: freshwater species "the most threatened on Earth"

Massive mismanagement and growing human needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth with extinction rates 4 to 6 times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins, according to conference experts.

Klement Tockner of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, says that while freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8% of the earth's surface, they contain roughly 10% of all animals, including more than 35% of all vertebrates.

"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," says Prof. Tockner. "However, few are aware of the catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity at both local and global scale. Threats to freshwater biodiversity have now grown to a global scale."

The human implications of this trend are "immense," he adds, because freshwater species in rivers, lakes, ground waters, and wetlands provide a diverse array of vital natural services - more than any other ecosystem type.

The problem puts billions of people at risk as biodiversity loss affects water purification, disease regulation, subsistence agriculture and fishing. Some experts predict that by 2025 not a single Chinese river will reach the sea except during floods with tremendous effects for coastal fisheries in China.

Prof. Tockner says freshwater ecosystems and their species also absorb and bury about 7% of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere.

"Although small in area, these freshwater aquatic systems can affect regional carbon balances," he says.

"Freshwater ecosystems will be the first victims of both climate change and rising demands on water supplies. And the pace of extinctions is quickening - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia."

"Despite their pivotal ecological and economic importance, freshwater ecosystems have not been of primary concern in policy making," adds Prof. Tockner. "Only recently did the European Union take the initiative to improve this situation through the EC Biodiversity Strategy. And in the U.S., recent Supreme Court decisions have made wetlands and small streams more vulnerable to loss."

Prof. Tockner, with colleague Charles V-r-smarty of the City University of New York, will present research at one of 25 conference symposia and invite fellow scientists to help formulate clear government policy recommendations and future research priorities.

Other conference presentations will cover issues ranging from biology to economics and international law, with emphasis on the positive benefits of conservation.

Showcased topics include:

Assessments of the ecological and economic risks of the rising global trade in wildlife, many of which carry potentially harmful diseases. The USA alone imported almost 1.5 billion live animals between 2000 and 2006, experts say, with inadequate regard to the risks involved;

The release next year of a report by the UN Convention on Biodiversity called the Global Biodiversity Outlook, to include a major focus on catastrophic biodiversity "tipping points," which complicate predictions. Such thresholds, if breached, will make global change impacts difficult to control, and slow and expensive to reverse.

Biodiversity and carbon: How biodiversity loss impacts rates of natural carbon sequestration and carbon cycling on land and in the ocean. Efforts are underway to understand how levels of biodiversity correspond to atmospheric carbon levels throughout Earth's history in order to better predict the impact of biodiversity on today's rising carbon dioxide concentrations. Other scientists will warn that bioenergy and artificial carbon sequestration projects should be preceded by greater understanding of the environmental pressures these will create.

With respect to biodiversity and human health, scientist Peter Daszak of the US-based Wildlife Trust, says the emergence of new human diseases from wildlife such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and H5N1 avian influenza is a significant threat not just to public health and conservation but also the global economy.

Such deadly diseases impede wildlife conservation as pressure builds to eradicate reservoir populations and cause disruption to agriculture and trade, tourism and other key economies.

"The single outbreak of SARS cost US $30-50 billion and a truly pandemic H5N1 avian flu outbreak would cost an estimated US$300-800 billion," says Dr. Daszak.

He argues that disease emergence and spread can be predicted based on human environmental and demographic changes that underlie the emergence of these diseases.

"Such studies may ultimately allow us to identify the likely region of origin of the next zoonosis and provide strategies to prevent disease emergence and spread."

The conference will conclude with a major plenary, chaired by leading expert Lijbert Brussaard, of Wageningen University, The Netherlands, on ways to reconcile the competing Millennium Development Goals of protecting biodiversity, reducing world hunger and alleviating poverty.

"Ecosystem services are difficult to value, which has led to policy neglect and the irreversible loss of species vital to a well-functioning environment," says Anne Larigauderie, Executive Director of DIVERSITAS.

"It's important for experts to simply exchange the results of their latest research, but the goal of this conference is to collect insights of practical use to policy makers, and to demonstrate the social benefits of investment in species conservation," she says.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091013/Massive-mismanagement-leads-to-catastrophic-decline-in-freshwater-biodiversity.aspx#

Freshwater species suffer most as extinctions rise

2009-10-13T12:50:00.000-04:00

* Freshwater habitats collapsing - experts

* World to miss 2010 goal of slowing species losses

* New panel urged to assess extinctions

OSLO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Creatures and plants living in rivers and lakes are the most threatened on Earth because their ecosystems are collapsing, scientists said on Sunday.

They urged the creation of a new partnership between governments and scientists to help stem extinctions caused by humans via pollution, a spread of cities and expanding farms to feed a rising population, climate change and invasive species.

Governments globally had aimed to slow the losses of all species by 2010.

"Massive mismanagement and growing human needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth," according to Diversitas, an international grouping of biodiversity experts.

Extinction rates for species living in freshwater were "four to six times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins". Fish, frogs, crocodiles or turtles are among freshwater species.

"The 2010 target isn't going to be met," Hal Mooney, a professor at Stanford University, who is chair of Diversitas, told Reuters. Diversitas will hold talks among more than 600 experts in Cape Town, South Africa, from Oct. 13-16 to discuss ways to protect life on the planet.

World leaders agreed at a 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg to achieve by 2010 a "significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity".

"Changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate ... Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase," Georgina Mace of Imperial College in London, vice-chair of Diversitas, said in a statement.

Dams, irrigation and climate change that is set to disrupt rainfall are all putting stresses on freshwater habitats. Canals allow plants, fish and other species and diseases to reach new regions.

FRANCE TO RUSSIA

"You can travel from France to Russia without going to the sea any more," Klement Tockner of the Leibnitz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, told Reuters. "Mixing is much faster and more severe than in marine and terrestrial habitats."

By 2025, some experts predict that not a single Chinese river will reach the sea except during floods, with tremendous effects for coastal fisheries in China, Diversitas said.

Tockner said freshwater ecosystems covered 0.8 percent of the Earth's surface but accounted for about 10 percent of all animals.

The United Nations has also turned sceptical about achieving the 2010 goal after long saying that it was too early to judge.

Ahmed Dhjoghlaf, head of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said in February that: "On 1 January 2010, we will not be able to say that we significantly reduced the rate of biodiversity loss."

In Cape Town, experts will try to work out better goals for slowing extinctions, by 2020 and beyond.

Anne Larigauderie, executive director of Diversitas, urged creation of a new panel for monitoring extinctions modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose findings are approved both by scientists and governments.

"There should be a new IPCC for biodiversity and ecosystem services," she told Reuters.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LB153609.htm

Sensitivity of Freshwater Habitats

2009-10-08T09:11:00.001-04:00

Oil spills occurring in freshwater bodies are less publicized than spills into the ocean even though freshwater oil spills are more frequent and often more destructive to the environment. Freshwater bodies are highly sensitive to oil spills and are important to human health and the environment. They are often used for drinking water and frequently serve as nesting grounds and food sources for various freshwater organisms. All types of freshwater organisms are susceptible to the deadly effects of spilled oil, including mammals, aquatic bifds, fish, insects, microorganisms, and vegetation. In addition, the effects of spilled oil on freshwater microorganisms, invertebrates, and algae tend to move up the food chain and affect other species.

Freshwater is divided into two types: standing water (lakes, marshes, and swamps) and flowing water (rivers and streams). The effects of an oil spill on freshwater habitats varies according to the rate of water flow and the habitat's specific characteristics.

Standing water such as marshes or swamps with little water movement are likely to incur more severe impacts than flowing water because spilled oil tends to "pool" in the water and can remain there for long periods of time. In calm water conditions, the affected habitat may take years to restore. The variety of life in and around lakes has different sensitivities to oil spills.

The bottoms of standing water bodies, which are often muddy, serve as homes to many worms, insects, and shellfish. Lake bottoms also serve has a breeding ground and food source for these organisms and higher animals. Oil in sediments may be very harmful because sediment traps the oil and affects the organisms that live in or feed off the sediments.

In the open water, oil can be toxic to the frogs, reptiles, fish, waterfowl, and other animals that make the water their home. "Oiling" of plants and grasses that are rooted or float in the water also can occur, harming both the plants and the animals that depend on them for food and shelter. Fisheries located in freshwater also are subject to the toxic effects of oil.

On the surface of the water, water bugs that skim the water surface and floating plants such as water lilies are threatened by oil slicks that spread across the surface.

In the shoreline habitats of lakes and other bodies of standing water, cattails and other weeds and grasses provide many important functions for life in and around the water. They serve as food sources, nesting grounds for many types of animals, and shelter for small animals. Oil spills can coat these areas, affecting the plants and the organisms that depend on them.

Marsh environments are among the most sensitive freshwater habitat to oil spills due to the minimal water flow. Oil spills have a widespread impact on a host of interconnected species. For example, lush marsh vegetation is used as nurseries for shellfish and fish, as a food source for many organisms, and a home for fish, birds, and mammals.

Oil spills impact flowing water less severely than standing water because the currents provide a natural cleaning mechanism. Although the effects of oil spills on river habitats may be less severe or last for a shorter amount of time than standing waters, the sensitivity of river and stream habitats is similar to that of standing water, with a few special features:

Oil spilled into most rivers often collects along the banks, where the oil clings to plants and grasses. The animals that ingest these contaminated plants may also be affected.

Rocks found in and around flowing water serve as homes for mosses, which are an important basic element in a freshwater habitat's food chain. Spilled oil can cover these rocks, killing the mosses and disrupting the local ecology.

http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/content/learning/freshwat.htm

Water Biome: Fresh water

2009-10-01T07:06:00.003-04:00

A biome is a large area with similar climate and plants. It is generally agreed that there are seven main biomes.

About three quarters of the earth's surface is covered with water. The water biome is divided into fresh water (water with little or no salt in it, in ponds, rivers, streams) and marine, or salt water (ocean).The animals and plants of the freshwater biome are different in each country.

Fresh water Ponds and Lakes

A pond is a shallow hole where water collects. Plants generally grow around the edges of the pond, and often right across the whole pond. The temperature of the water is similar at the surface and at the bottom of the pond. The bottom is generally covered with mud.

A pond is usually too small to have waves. In places where winters are very cold, the whole pond can freeze solid. Some ponds are seasonal.

A lake is bigger than a pond, sometimes thousands of square metres. Plants only grow along the shoreline because the water is too deep away from the edges. Some lakes are so big that there are waves.

In summer, the temperature of the water in a lake is not the same: the top part of the water gets more of the sun's heat and is warm (about 19-25ºC), the middle layer is cooler because it gets less of the sunlight (about 8-19ºC) , and the bottom layer, which does not get any sunlight, is quite cold (about 4-8ºC).

'Winterkill' and 'Summerkill' in Lakes

More creatures live in the warmer layer of water. Even in the coldest places, most lakes are so big and deep that they don't freeze solid in winter, but a layer of ice can form across the surface. The ice blocks out the sunlight, and oxygen levels in the water drop, killing some plants and animals. This is called 'winterkill'.

In all freshwater areas around the world, algae (say al-gee) can be found. Algae are not plants, animals or fungi. There are different kinds of algae, and most are single-celled but some have more than one cell. As they make their food by photosynthesis, algae release oxygen into the water. Photosynthesis uses sunlight as a source of energy to combine carbon dioxide, water and salts to form chlorophyll (say claw-roe-fill). This means algae are most abundant in summer.When there is too much algae, the decaying algae reduce the oxygen levels in the water, and this can kill plants and animals. This is called 'summerkill'.

Rivers and Streams

Rivers and streams are moving strips of water. The water flows in a channel. The bottom of the channel is called the bed and the sides of the channel are called banks. Rivers are large and flow into the ocean. Rivers and streams make up about 3% of the earth's total fresh water.

Rivers and streams drain the earth of excess water. Water falls from the sky as rain, hail, snow or sleet. Once it reaches the ground, some of the water is absorbed by trees and other plants and the rest filters down into the ground.

Most water runs off the surface and eventually joins a creek or stream. Small streams join together to form rivers. Sometimes small rivers join together to become extremely large rivers. When this happens, the small rivers are called tributaries.

A watershed is an area of land where rain water, streams and small rivers all drain into one large area of water such as a large river, lake or the ocean. Because ground water also drains from a watershed, all kinds of pollution can find its way to the ocean from many kilometres away. The biggest rivers have the biggest watersheds. Therefore, biomes with lots of consistent rain have more rivers and streams. Deserts have little rain and few rivers. Desert rain is short but very intense, so dry rivers and lakes suddenly become full for a short period of time.

The mouth of a river is where it meets the ocean. Rivers carry soil along as they move, and this is dropped at the mouth of the river as it enters the ocean, and gradually builds up, making new land which is called a delta. Rivers tend to branch off in many directions through a delta, creating many islands.

Rivers that are permanently frozen are called glaciers. Glaciers and frozen freshwater, or ice, are found in places such as Antarctica, the frozen continent where the South Pole is located.

Some animals that live in a freshwater biome

The animals that live in a freshwater biome are different in every continent.

Crocodiles or alligators are found in hot areas in some countries, such as Africa, Australia and parts of the USA. Crocodiles generally stay in more salty water near river mouths, while alligators are more common in wetlands and rivers.

Frogs and turtles are generally found in rivers, streams, ponds and wetlands, different species (kinds) in each country. Different fish and the larvae of many insects also live in freshwater.

In Africa, hippopotamus live in freshwater habitats. The common or river hippopotamus lives in water holes and rivers in the grasslands, and the pygmy hippopotamus lives in water in the rainforest.

In parts of eastern Australia, platypus are found in rivers and streams.

http://www.kidcyber.com.au/topics/biomewater.htm

The Threats to the World's Fresh Water Supply

2009-09-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

There are many problems that are associated with the world’s freshwater supply. These problems stem around two main issues: availability and fitness to drink. First, even though the Earth has a great deal of water, only about 3% of this supply is made up of freshwater. (Kaufman and Franz, 1993, 281). Of this amount 75% is locked up in the polar ice caps, a little less than 25% is collected in ground water sources, and the remaining .5% is on the surface of the earth in lakes, rivers, streams, and in the atmosphere. (1993). The availability of freshwater is also limited by the water’s distribution. Not all areas of the world have adequate supplies, or access to freshwater. Infrequent, or seasonal freshwater delivery through rain and other precipitation makes the dry seasons of the year difficult for people, who must travel great distances to gather water from communal wells, riverbeds, or oases to meet their freshwater needs. Droughts also decrease the availability of freshwater.

The staggering effects of little or no freshwater in an area for an extended period of time can be seen in Ethiopia that went from a fertile and productive valley to a dry area plagued with famine and disease. In addition to natural restrictions of freshwater supplies, agriculture also impacts the amount of freshwater that is available for use. Conflicts over water are common as people with different water use interests all try to get as large a share of the scarce water supply as possible.

This conflict can be seen in the United States' Southwest. Here access to the water found in the Colorado River is being argued over by farmers, ranchers, conservationists, recreationalists, homeowners, and commercial industries like the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Currently, the freshwater supply in the world is being stretched as far as it can go, and as the population increases the demand for freshwater will only increase. It is estimated that the demand for freshwater will increase 1.7 trillion gallons a year for every 8 million people that are added to the human population.

The second issue that impacts the world’s freshwater supply is its fitness to drink. Many factors impact freshwater’s drinkability. First water pollution is a major issue that has degraded many water sources’ fitness. Pollution from raw sewage disposal in water systems, trash dumping, excessive sediments from soil erosion, chemical waste being dumped into drains and water systems, and petroleum pollution from people pouring used oil down storm drains. All of these pollutants impact the fitness of a freshwater source to be used as drinking water, and in some cases even for agricultural purposes. Overuse of a water source can also impact its fitness to use by reducing the level of water in the source. As the water level is reduced, the nutrients and salinity concentrates and makes it less fit for consumption. For example, the Aral Sea’s mineral content has increased 300% because of irrigation and windblown sediments and sand being blown into the water. (Kaufman and Franz, 1993, 29-94).

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13514/the_threats_to_the_worlds_fresh_water.html?cat=50

Earth needs users' guide to protect it from people

2009-09-28T07:01:00.001-04:00

OSLO (Reuters) - A new users' guide is needed to help protect the Earth from dangerous changes such as global warming and extinctions of animals and plants caused by humans, scientists said.

A group of 28 experts suggested nine key areas, such as freshwater use, chemical pollutants or changes in land use, where governments could define limits to ensure a "safe operating space for humanity."

"Today we are clearly driving development in the world blindfolded," Johan Rockstrom, leader of the study and director of the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University, told Reuters of a lack of international guidelines.

"We are not considering the risks that there are deep holes we can drive into," he told Reuters. The call, for setting "planetary boundaries," was published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

Rockstrom said there were signs human activities had already pushed the world into the danger zone because of global warming, a high rate of extinctions of animals and plants and pollution caused by nitrogen, mainly used in fertilizers.

Among limits, they suggested capping the percentage of global land area converted to cropland at 15 percent. At the moment, the percentage is 11.7 percent, they said.

They added that concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, should be limited to 350 parts per million of the atmosphere -- below current levels of 387 ppm. Human freshwater use should be capped at 4,000 square km (1,545 sq mile) a year -- against 2,600 sq km now.

CREDITABLE ATTEMPT

Nature said in an editorial the proposed indicators were a "creditable attempt" to quantify limits on human use of the planet. However, it noted, for instance, that fertilizers caused pollution yet helped feed millions of people.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of the study, said there were growing risks of abrupt and possibly irreversible changes.

"Observations of an incipient climate transition include the rapid retreat of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, melting of almost all mountain glaciers around the world, and an increased rate of sea-level rise in the past 10-15 years," he said.

The scientists said the current relatively stable temperatures of the Holocene era since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago was under threat from human -- or anthropogenic -- activities.

"Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen, the Anthropocene, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change," they wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE58M69Q20090923

How Much Human Activity Can Earth Handle?

2009-09-25T07:05:00.002-04:00

The scientific name is the Holocene age, but climatologists like to call our current climatic phase the Long Summer. The history of the Earth's climate has rarely been smooth. From the moment life began on the planet billions of years ago, the climate has swung drastically and often abruptly from one state to another — from tropical swamp to frozen ice age. Over the past 10,000 years, however, the climate has remained remarkably stable by historical standards, not too warm and not too cold — Goldilocks weather. That stability has allowed Homo sapiens, numbering perhaps just a few million at the dawn of the Holocene, to thrive; farming has taken hold and civilizations have arisen. Without the Long Summer, that never would have been possible.

But as human population has exploded over the past few thousand years, the delicate ecological balance that kept the Long Summer going has become threatened. The rise of industrialized agriculture has thrown off Earth's natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, leading to pollution on land and water, while our fossil fuel addiction has moved billions of tons of carbon from the land into the atmosphere, heating the climate ever more.

Now a new article in the Sept. 24 Nature argues that the safe climatic limits in which humanity has blossomed are more vulnerable than ever, and that unless we recognize our planetary boundaries and stay within them, we risk total catastrophe. "Human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that keep Earth in the desirable Holocene state," writes Johan Rockstrom, the executive director of the Stockholm Environmental Institute and the author of the Nature article. "The result could be irreversible and, in some cases, abrupt environmental change, leading to a state less conducive to human development."

Regarding climate change, for instance, Rockstrom proposes an atmospheric carbon concentration limit of no more than 350 parts per million (p.p.m.) — meaning no more than 350 atoms of carbon for every million atoms of air. (Before the industrial age, levels were at 280 p.p.m.; currently they're at 387 p.p.m. and rising.) That, scientists believe, should be enough to keep warming below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, and below a climatic tipping point that could lead to the wide-scale melting of polar ice sheets, swamping coastal cities. "Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change," writes Rockstrom.

That's the impact of breaching only one of nine planetary boundaries that Rockstrom identifies in the paper. Other boundaries involve freshwater overuse, the global agricultural cycle and ozone loss. In each case, he scans the state of science to find ecological limits that we can't violate, lest we risk passing a tipping point that could throw the planet out of whack for human beings. It's based on a theory that ecological change occurs not so much cumulatively, but suddenly, after invisible thresholds have been reached. Stay within the lines, and we might just be all right.

In three of the nine cases Rockstrom has pointed out, however — climate change, the nitrogen cycle and species loss — we've already passed his threshold limits. In the case of global warming, we haven't yet felt the full effects, Rockstrom says, because carbon acts gradually on the climate — but once warming starts, it may prove hard to stop unless we reduce emissions sharply. Ditto for the nitrogen cycle, where industrialized agriculture already has humanity pouring more chemicals into the land and oceans than the planet can process, and for wildlife loss, where we risk biological collapse. "We can say with some confidence that Earth cannot sustain the current rate of loss without significant erosion of ecosystem resilience," says Rockstrom.

The new paper offers a useful way of looking at the environment, especially for global policymakers. As the world grapples with climate change this week at the U.N. and the G20 summit, some clearly posted speed limits from scientists could help politicians craft global deals on carbon and other shared environmental threats. It's tough for negotiators to hammer out a new climate change treaty unless they know just how much carbon needs to be cut to keep people safe. Rockstrom's work delineats the limits to human growth — economically, demographically, ecologically — that we transgress at our peril.

The problem is that identifying those limits is a fuzzy science — and even trickier to translate into policy. Rockstrom's atmospheric-carbon target of 350 p.p.m. has scientific support, but the truth is that scientists still aren't certain how sensitive the climate will be to warming over the long-term — it's possible that the atmosphere will be able to handle more carbon, or that catastrophe could be triggered at lower levels. And by setting a boundary, it might make policymakers believe that we can pollute up to that limit and still be safe. That's not the case — pollution causes cumulative damage, even below the tipping point. By focusing too much on the upper limits, we still risk harming the Earth. "Ongoing changes in global chemistry should alarm us about threats to the persistence of life on Earth, whether or not we cross a catastrophic threshold any time soon," writes William Schlesinger, the president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in a commentary accompanying the Nature paper.

But as the world attempts to break the carbon addiction that already has it well on the way to climate catastrophe, more clearly defined limits will be useful. But climate diplomats should remember that while they can negotiate with each other, ultimately, they can't negotiate with the planet. Unless we manage our presence on the Earth better than we have so far, we may soon be in the last days of our Long Summer.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1925718,00.html

Water: How much do we have?

2009-09-23T13:59:00.004-04:00

Global

- About 70% of the earth is covered in water.

- The total amount of water in the world is approximately 1.4 billion km3, of which 97.5% is saltwater and 2.5% is fresh water.

- Of the 35 million km3 of freshwater on earth, about 24.4 million km3 are locked up in the form of glacial ice, permafrost, or permanent snow. Groundwater and soil moisture account for 10.7 million km3. Freshwater lakes and marshlands hold about 0.1 million km3. Rivers, the most visible form of fresh water account for 0.002 million km3 or about less than 0.01% of all forms of fresh water.

- The major source of fresh water is evaporation off the surface of the oceans, approximately 505 000 km3 a year. Another 72 000 km3 evaporates from land surfaces annually.

- Approximately 80% of all precipitation (about 458 000 km3) falls on the oceans, the remaining 20% (119 000 km3) falls over land. The difference between precipitation onto land surfaces and evaporation from those surfaces is runoff and groundwater recharge – approximately 47 000 km3 per year.

- Brazil is the country with the most renewable fresh water. Canada is third after Russia.

- Ninety-nine percent of surface freshwater by volume is in lakes and only one percent in rivers.

- Of all fresh water not locked up in ice caps or glaciers, some 20% is in areas too remote for humans to access and of the remaining 80% about three-quarters comes at the wrong time and place – in monsoons and floods – and is not always captured for use by people. The remainder is less than 0.08 of 1% of the total water on the planet. Expressed another way, if all the earth's water were stored in a 5-litre container, available fresh water would not quite fill a teaspoon.

- There are some 100 million lakes between 1 hectare (0.01 km2) and 1 km2 in area and about one million lakes which are greater than 1 km2 in area.

- The lake with the largest surface area in the world is the Caspian Sea (about 436 000 km2) followed by Lake Superior (about 82 300 km2).

- The deepest lake is Lake Baikal (about 1 700 metres deep) followed by Lake Tanganyika (about 1 400 metres deep).

- The largest river basin in the world, by drainage basin size and by discharge, is the Amazon.

- The Nile River is the world's longest river. It flows 6 670 kilometres from its headwaters to the Mediterranean Sea.

- Although 60% of the world's population live in Asia, the continent has only 36% of the world's water resources.

- Water stress begins when there is less than 1 700 m3 of water per person per year for all major functions (domestic, industrial, agricultural, and natural ecosystems) and becomes severe when there is less than 1 000 m3 per person.

- Currently, 600 million people face water scarcity. Depending on future rates of population growth, between 2.7 billion and 3.2 billion people may be living in either water-scarce or water-stressed conditions by 2025.

- At times, the flow is so low in some of the world's largest rivers – the Amu Darya and Syr Darya in central Asia, the Yellow River in China, the Colorado River in the United States, the Indus River between India and Pakistan – that they do not reach the sea.

- The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake; now it's the site of aquatic ruin. It's lost two-thirds of its surface area, some 60 000 fishing jobs have been wiped out, and people living in the salty and toxic surroundings suffer from a variety of ailments.

- The world's wetland area was halved during the 20th century. In some locations wetlands are worth as much as $20 000 per hectare (0.01 km2).

- The most devastating floods have occurred on the Yellow River in China. In 1887, 900 000 lives were lost and in 1938, 870 000. In each of 1911, 1931, and 1935 at least 100 000 lives were lost in the Yangtze River basin in China.

- More than 2 200 major and minor water-related natural disasters occurred in the world between 1990 and 2001. Asia and Africa were the most affected continents, with floods accounting for half of these disasters.

Canada

- Annually, Canada's rivers discharge 105 000 m3/s, 7% of the world's renewable water supply.

- Almost 9%, or 891 163 km2, of Canada's total area is covered by freshwater.

- The Canadian portion of the Great Lakes occupies nearly 10%, or 87 500 km2, of the 891 163 km2 freshwater area in Canada.

- Approximately 60% of Canada's fresh water drains to the north, while 85% of the population lives along the southern border with the United States.

- Canada has about 25% of the world's wetlands – the largest wetland area in the world.

- Wetlands totaling an area of more than 1.2 million km2 (127 million hectares) cover about 14% of the land area of Canada.

- Henderson Lake, British Columbia, has the greatest average annual precipitation in Canada – 6 655 millimetres. In contrast Eureka, in Nunavut, has the least average annual precipitation – 64 millimetres.

- An estimated area of 200 000 km2, or about 2% of the country's area is covered by glaciers and icefields.

- The largest river basin in Canada is the Mackenzie based on drainage area, discharge and length.

- The Great Lakes are the largest system of fresh, surface water on earth, containing roughly 18 percent of the world's fresh surface water.

- The Great Lakes Basin (shared with the United States) is the world's largest freshwater lake system.

- The largest lake entirely in Canada is Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, measuring 31 328 km2.

- The deepest lake in Canada is Great Slave Lake, N.W.T., 614 metres.

- There are an estimated 2 million lakes in Canada covering approximately 7.6% of Canada's land area.

- Canada has more lake area than any other country in the world.

- There are more than 31 000 freshwater lakes in Canada that are larger than 3 km2 in area; about 560 are more than 100 km2. Many smaller lakes dot the landscape.

- The most common causes of flooding in Canada are water backing up behind ice jams and the rapid melting of heavy winter snow cover, particularly when accompanied by rainfall. Heavy rainfall itself can also cause floods.

- The 1996 Saguenay basin storm and associated flood in Quebec led to 10 deaths and over $1500 million in damages.

- The 1997 Red River flood in Manitoba caused damages estimated at approximately $815 million.

- As a general rule, when water velocity doubles, its erosive power increases four-fold and its capacity to carry sediments increases by 64 times. Eroded sediments are eventually deposited in wetlands, lakes, or river pools, reducing channel capacity and affecting fish habitat.

- Dry regions in the interior of British Columbia and in the southern Prairies have severe soil moisture deficits at some time during most summers and can suffer from long-term drought conditions. These areas hold most of the 1 million hectares (10 000 km2) of irrigated cropland in Canada, with Alberta alone accounting for 60%.

- The development of storage reservoirs and dugouts is essential to maintaining adequate year-round water supplies, particularly in the drier parts of the country. There are about 155 000 dugouts and 21 500 reservoirs in western Canada to supply sufficient water for rural areas.

- Dugouts are typically artificial ponds that are 4 to 6 metres deep with a capacity of 2000 to 6000 m3, designed to provide a 2-year water supply with allowance for evaporation losses and ice formation.

- In 2004, about 28% of Canadian municipalities with water distribution systems reported problems with water availability within the previous five years.

http://www.ec.gc.ca/water/en/info/facts/e_quantity.htm

Freshwater trends: Will future needs be met?

2009-09-18T07:24:00.005-04:00

Despite improvements in the efficiency of water use in many developed countries, the demand for fresh water has continued to climb as the world's population and economic activity have expanded. From 1940 to 1990, withdrawals of fresh water from rivers, lakes, reservoirs, underground aquifers, and other sources increased by more than a factor of four. Increases in irrigation and, to a lesser extent, industrial uses of water have been the largest sources of this growing demand. At the same time, contamination by pollutants has seriously degraded water quality in many rivers, lakes, and groundwater sources, effectively decreasing the supply of fresh water. The result has been increased pressure on freshwater resources in most regions of the world and a lack of adequate supplies in some localities. Water experts and international institutions warn that water shortages could become critical in some regions. In the absence of significant changes in policy and far more effective management of water resources, this could pose serious long-term obstacles to sustainable development in many countries.

The supply of fresh water in a region is limited by the dynamics of the hydrological cycle, in which sea water evaporates and falls over land as precipitation. The renewable supply of water is defined as the surface water runoff from local precipitation, the inflow from other regions, and the groundwater recharge that replenishes aquifers. Because water can, in principle, be reused many times, the availability of water for human use depends as much on how it is used and how water resources are managed as on any absolute limits. With proper treatment, for example, the water returned to rivers by upstream users is also available to downstream users. Nonetheless, the renewable supply is an important constraint to the sustainable use of water within a region. Apart from human use, water is also needed to sustain the natural ecosystems found in wetlands, rivers, and the coastal waters into which they flow.

Pumping water from underground aquifers faster than they can be recharged or diverting so much water from wetlands or rivers that freshwater ecosystems fail are clearly unsustainable practices. To avoid conflict where water resources are shared, upstream and downstream users must agree on how water is to be allocated. Unfortunately, examples of unsustainable water uses can be found in virtually every region--in the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer in the United States and similar overpumping of other aquifers in parts of North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia; in the diversion of river water from the dying Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and from the Florida Everglades; in the excessive withdrawals that are causing intrusions of sea water into deltas and coastal aquifers in China, Viet Nam, and the Gulf of California; in the uncontrolled flow of sewage and fertilizer runoff that is hastening eutrophication in some temperate and tropical lakes and many coastal seas; and in the potential for conflict over water in areas such as the Nile River delta, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

http://archive.wri.org/page.cfm?id=984&z

Freshwater: Earth's Life Force

2009-09-15T16:20:00.002-04:00

From Discovery Channel

Imagine an entire planet where the universe's finest liqueur is boiled out of fermenting seas by a brilliant yellow star, distilled in the skies and rained back down on the land, forming lakes and rivers of the inebriating brew. The planet, of course, is Earth, and the liqueur is freshwater.

Without freshwater Earth's land masses would be barren, the continents might be in different locations, mountains would be far taller, and life virtually impossible. Earth's very character and appearance are the result of the planet being fairly drunk on this precious grog.

Liquid Destroyer

Luckily for us land animals, Earth can't help but make freshwater. It happens when the sun heats and evaporates water from the oceans. The salts and other minerals are left behind, creating pure water vapor in the air. As it is carried higher to cooler air, it condenses and makes clouds, which can produce rain or snow when forced higher over land.

That's the water cycle, of course. It's something taught to every schoolchild — for good reason. Not only does the water cycle give us the water we drink and use to grow food, it is also the carver of coastlines, sculptor of mountains and the burier of seas. It might even play a critical role in plate tectonics, the process that keeps creating and destroying crustal plates that make up the surface of the planet.

One of the more dramatic examples of what a few gazillon raindrops and snowflakes of freshwater can do over time is the Grand Canyon. Over the past 5 million years, the Colorado River has just as steadily cut its way through the constantly bulging Colorado Plateau, making the mile-deep, 18-mile-wide, 200-mile-long Grand Canyon along the way.

By moving such gigantic masses of rock from one place to another, freshwater also removes weight from the Earth's crust in one place and weighs down others. By wearing away rocks of the Himalaya, for instance, rain and snow make the mountains lighter and actually speed up the rate at which the range buoys upward on the more plastic layer below the crust — the zone called the mantle.

In turn, by affecting the pressure in the mantle, it's thought by some geophysicists that currents can be generated in the mantle that influence how, when and where tectonic plates move. This top-down theory to what drives plate tectonics makes freshwater a central player in the making of every inch of Earth's surface today.

Watery Creator

But freshwater does far more than move rocks around. Some of Earth's most unusual and beautiful living landscapes are created and kept thriving by freshwater. The verdant and little explored Tepuis of Venezuela, for instance, are islands in the sky, loaded with species found nowhere else. These plateaus and mountains are perpetually bathed in freshwater. In this unique ecoregion, it's virtually always raining or socked in by thick, moisture-laden clouds.

Life in such torrentially wet places evolves to take quick advantage of their decaying neighbors. Wait too long, for instance, and the next downpour will wash away what nutrients there are. In such a place, mold, fungus and large trees with broad, shallow roots form the basis of the food chain.

Downstream from these water-rich places, forests and other highland rivers fill broad basins with forest waste and worn rock, piling up tens of thousands of feet of mud and silt for millions of years. The Mississippi River sediments deposited along the Gulf Coast are now so heavy that they are squeezing Earth's mantle. The sedimentation is believed to be one of the reasons New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana are subsiding and becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise.

Grace of Water

Despite its great influence, all the freshwater that makes up the lakes, rivers, streams, creeks, marshes, potholes, bogs, fens, mires, swamps, ponds, billabongs, lagoons, mud holes and groundwater of Earth has only recently been accounted for. Monitoring where water goes is a big job and can only really be done affordably for the entire planet from space.

NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites do this task by measuring local changes in gravity over time. All matter — including water — has mass and gravity. So when there's less water in a particular area, its gravity is slightly less. More water — whether in lakes, streams or underground — means the gravity is greater. GRACE has now managed to watch as the continents swell and shrink with water on a seasonal basis — showing Earth's water cycle actually at work on a global scale.

Bad & Good News

Freshwater, however, is in trouble. Human activities have polluted and depleted freshwater in many parts of the world. Wetlands have been drained to build and farm on. Nutrient levels in many rivers and streams are so high from sewage, agricultural and industrial runoff, air pollution, and erosion that they are choked and starved of oxygen — bad news for fish and invertebrates that make for healthy streams and lakes.

The good news is that conservationists have succeeded in protecting more than 800 of the world's most vital wetlands all over the globe. It's even profitable. A 1991 study by the International Institute for Environment and Development found that a wetland in the arid north of Nigeria provided 30 times more profit from fish, firewood, cattle grazing and natural crops than if the water had been diverted to a large agricultural project. That's freshwater for you — it's heady stuff.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/guide/fresh-water.html

Fresh water scarcity demands fresh ideas

2009-09-14T08:58:00.000-04:00

A growing world population has led to rising demand for fresh water to ensure a growing supply of food and to meet rising nutrition demands. Where will this water come from? A new publication co-sponsored by CGIAR sheds some light on the narrowing options. Sudhirendar Sharma reviews the report.

Imagine a canal 10 meters deep, 100 meters wide, and 7.1 million kilometers long - long enough to encircle the globe 180 times. That is the amount of water it takes each year to produce food for today's 6.5 billion people. The projected increase of between 2 and 3 billion people over the next four decades would mean increasing the length of this canal by another few million kilometers to everyone fed. Even if there were resources and technology to do this - and that is itself debatable - it's unlikely that there would be sufficient fresh water to fill this extended canal.

This startling revelation comes courtesy the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA), an ambitious program co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) that pulled together the work of 700 experts over a five year period. The program took stock of the past 50 years of water development to determine what future actions would be needed for the next 50 years. Packaged in some 700 pages, the voluminous report titled Water for food, Water for life (Earthscan, 2007) presents a careful mix of the good and bad news.

Limited options

First, the bad news. Fresh water usage from existing river basins has already been stretched to the limits, with no possibility of more of it being available to produce the additional food the world may need over the next decades. This future scenario looks gloomy when one takes into account that 850 million people, over 50 per cent of them living in South Asia, are food insecure even at the current levels of food production; raising their consumption levels would itself entail considerable additional need for fresh water.

But there is some good news as well - producing additional food would be possible if hitherto neglected rainfed areas could be better tapped, and if greater focus is turned on low-yielding lands. Though the report avoids getting into the political dimension of food access and distribution, it throws words of caution around inter-basin water transfers (like India's proposed river-linking project) as well as expansion of hydraulic infrastructure to increase irrigation coverage. Instead, the CA findings contend that the world's food needs over the next few decades could be met by bringing the production levels of the world's low-yield farmers up to 80 per cent of what high-yield farmers get from comparable land. In effect, it calls for rainwater harvesting through effective watershed management to achieve this goal.

However, the situation on the ground is very different. Simply put, policy impetus for watershed management hasn't translated into effective results during the last three decades. A case in point is the finding of the Parthasarathy Committee, constituted by India's Ministry of Rural Development. The committee's report, released in January 2006, concluded that "... watershed programs have been bureaucratically driven and mechanically implemented with focus on 'outlays rather than outcomes' and 'accounting rather than accountability'." The Food & Agriculture Organisation, in its recent regional assessments of watershed programs, argues that many watershed programs suffer from inherent inertia to transform the rainfed areas.

Nonetheless, the authors of the Comprehensive Assessment are convinced that options to increase future food production are indeed limited. With as much as 2700 cubic kilometers of green water (from rivers and subsurface), an estimated 70 per cent of the total, already withdrawn for irrigation, the focus must shift towards productive use of blue water (rainfall). Else, countries will have to depend on food imports. Egypt imported 8 million metric tones of food grains from the United States in 2000, and saved 8.5 million cubic meters of water in the process. While such substitution works well in purely market terms, it does imply that water-scarce countries will inevitably yield some of their food sovereignty in the process - a decision not all governments would be willing to make.

Dietary choices

Meeting increasing food demand from available green and blue water is only part of the story. The other part relates to meeting the nutritional needs of a large population whose dietary habits are changing. In India, as in China, rapid economic growth has quadrupled the consumption of meat, milk and eggs. This would mean more water for keeping pace with these changing dietary habits. While an average vegetarian person's dietary need takes about 3000 litres of water converted from liquid to vapour, a meat consuming person may need four times more water. Pushing vegetarianism at the cost of religious and cultural sentiments favouring non-vegetarianism will be daunting for many water-scarce countries.

The question of dietary choices does, however, is not to be set aside too quickly. With one in every three persons suffering from water scarcity across the world and with irrigated agriculture being the major consumer of water, at least a few thinkers have asked if the focus should not shift towards educating consumers for making informed dietary choices. Anders Berntell, head of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), has suggested that "some kind of labeling of food products when it comes to their water requirements could be a first step." With labels, "if there is a choice between red meat or a fish [partly based on the need for water to cook it] then one could make a more enlightened choice."

Certainly, if consumers were to demand a low-water-consuming diet, inefficient irrigation will come under the scanner! Such radical steps may become necessary, to reduce the acreage under irrigated agriculture in the not-too-distant future. In a market-driven world, researchers may need to apply market principles in making sense of the scientific evidence. A higher price tag for food with a higher water label would be a perfect disincentive for consumer as well as its producer.

Sharper research focus needed

Given its multi-national authorship, the report stops short of making controversial recommendations but leaves readers with lot to read between the lines for interpretation. If a kilo of grain requires anywhere between 500 and 4,000 litres, should grain production be a priority for the arid regions? Does it not warrant a dramatic turnabout in the agriculture research agendas of national agriculture research systems as well as that of the CGIAR's international research centers? It cannot be denied that the most significant impact of research by the CGIAR institutes across the world has been on increasing acreage under high water-consuming crops like rice and wheat. Not only have the national agriculture research systems followed this blindfolded, this has been done at the cost of minor crops suited to diverse eco-systems and local livelihoods.

After having overtaxed farmland across the world, the researchers are now beginning to see the reality. Dr. Robert Zeigler, a 56-year-old American who is director general of the International Rice Research Institute at Manila, has been quoted as saying: "If we don't take a hard look at that, who the hell will?" Some of the institute's recent advances already are being tested in Punjab, including one strain of rice that grows in dry dirt. But the scientists readily acknowledge that finding a breakthrough is an uphill task. Interestingly, at a time when genetically engineered crops are being touted as the answer to foot shortages and nutritional deficiencies, the Comprehensive Assessment cautions scientists to avoid taking the genetic route to crop improvement, as genetic improvements in plants can provide only moderate gains over the next 15-20 years.

In many ways, this report is a timely assessment of global water resources from the standpoint of food security, poverty reduction and livelihoods generation. While the report makes a series of policy recommendations - from increasing water productivity to improving water rights and allocation - it restricts its assessment to the quantity-productivity discourse only. In doing so, the report not only underplays factors like climate change and global trade inequities but bypasses the political economy of investment in water infrastructure as a significant countervailing force. With external factors playing heavy on water governance within the nation-state context, pulling millions out of food and nutritional insecurity may remain daunting.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/aug/rvw-freshh20.htm

MillerCoors Dedicates September to Water Stewardship Activities

2009-09-11T09:37:00.001-04:00

Company plans volunteer initiatives and partnerships with non-profit groups at all facilities

CHICAGO, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- MillerCoors is drawing special attention to our nation's water supply this September, celebrating the company's first annual Water Stewardship Month. Each of MillerCoors 10 brewery locations and corporate facilities are partnering with local non-profit organizations and hosting volunteer events designed to improve water quality.

"Water is our most important resource and key to a secure future for our business and the communities where we operate. For years, our goal has been to brew and package more beer while using less water," said MillerCoors Chief Executive Officer Leo Kiely. "Given our roots near the Rocky Mountains and on the shores of Lake Michigan, we are mindful of our environmental footprint and take water very seriously."

In observation of Water Stewardship Month, MillerCoors employees will volunteer in conjunction with various non-profit organizations. The national scale of these volunteer efforts complements their wide-ranging focus, as employees confront a variety of water issues. In their local communities, MillerCoors workers will clean up rivers and beaches; restore stream-beds; test water quality; and even plant trees, bushes and perennials in preservation areas.

"Water Stewardship Month represents two important commitments at MillerCoors: environmental sustainability and community investment," said Chief Ethics and Responsibility Officer Cornell Boggs. "We firmly believe that with Great Beer comes Great Responsibility, and we are committed to conserving water as a valuable resource, not only in our operations, but also in our communities."

In 2008, MillerCoors recorded a usage of 4.1 barrels of water per barrel of beer - well below the established United Nations water usage target of 5.0 for brewers worldwide. MillerCoors also invests in watershed quality, education and conservation efforts nationwide through partnerships with The Nature Conservancy and River Network.

"We're putting the focus on Water Stewardship in September, but we have several ways in which we take great care of this resource year-long," added Boggs.

Listed below are the Water Stewardship events MillerCoors is sponsoring in brewery and corporate facility locations.

Albany, Ga., Friday, September 11

The Albany Brewery is partnering with Keep Albany/Dougherty Beautiful for an event where employees will mark the non-profit's storm drain catch basins, informing citizens that deposits into the storm drain system flow into the Flint River and can potentially harm wildlife and humans.

Elkton, Va., Friday, September 11

The Shenandoah Brewery is partnering with the Shenandoah Valley Pure Water Forum to give volunteers the opportunity to help plant trees, bushes and perennials; prepare a walking path; and spread grass seed on a portion of a new park along Elk Creek in downtown Elkton.

Chippewa Falls, Wis., Saturday, September 12

The Leinenkugel Brewery is partnering with the Chippewa Falls Department of Parks and Recreation to help clean up the banks of Duncan Creek north of the brewery. Volunteers will begin in the park and work their way toward the dam, collecting debris and trash along the way.

Milwaukee, Wis., Saturday, September 12

The Milwaukee campus is partnering with Milwaukee Riverkeeper to help clean up the Milwaukee River in the Lincoln Park area by the bridge north of the Blatz Pavilion parking lot. Volunteers will spend their time helping the group remove trash and clean up the Milwaukee River.

Eden, N.C., Saturday, September 12

The Eden Brewery is partnering with the Dan River Basin Association for a volunteer activity that will help restore the Island Ford Greenway at the new Smith River access point.

Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, September 19

The Fort Worth brewery is partnering with Tarrant Regional Water District to join the 18th annual Trinity River Trash Bash where volunteers will help pick up litter along the banks of the Trinity River.

Golden, Colo., Saturday, September 19

The Golden campus is partnering with Volunteers of Outdoor Colorado (VOC) to bring volunteers to help with the non-profit's Shop Creek Trail Restoration Project. Volunteers will work with trained VOC crew leaders and staff to restore sections of the Shop Creek Trail in Cherry Creek State Park by alleviating damage to the wildlife rich wetlands and recreate a sustainable trail.

Irwindale, Calif., Saturday, September 19

The Irwindale Brewery is partnering with Coastal Clean-up to invite volunteers to participate in its massive beach clean-up day, an event that has garnered national attention for its size in past years. Trash and recyclables will be collected from California beaches, lakes and waterways during this endeavor.

Trenton, Ohio, Saturday, September 19

The Trenton Brewery is partnering with Butler County Metroparks to have volunteers participate in wetlands restoration at Rentschler Forest Preserve.

Chicago, Saturday, September 26

The Chicago headquarters is partnering with Friends of the Chicago River and will engage volunteers in planting gardens, testing water quality and removing invasive plants from areas near and around the Chicago River.

About MillerCoors

Built on a foundation of great beer brands and more than 288 years of brewing heritage, MillerCoors continues the commitment of its founders to brew the highest quality beers. MillerCoors is the second largest beer company in America, capturing nearly 30 percent of U.S. beer sales. Led by two of the best-selling beers in the industry, MillerCoors has a broad portfolio of highly complementary brands across every major industry segment. Miller Lite is the great tasting beer that established the American light beer category in 1975, and Coors Light is the brand that introduced consumers to refreshment as cold as the Rockies. MGD 64 completes the company's premium light beer portfolio, offering consumers fresh, crisp taste at just 64 calories. MillerCoors brews premium beers Coors Banquet and Miller Genuine Draft; and economy brands Miller High Life and Keystone Light. The company also imports Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell, Grolsch and Molson Canadian and offers innovative products such as Miller Chill and Sparks. MillerCoors features craft brews from the Jacob Leinenkugel Company, Blue Moon Brewing Company and the Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company. MillerCoors operates eight major breweries in the U.S., as well as the Leinenkugel's craft brewery in Chippewa Falls, WI and two microbreweries, the 10th Street Brewery in Milwaukee and the Blue Moon Brewing Company at Coors Field in Denver. MillerCoors vision is to create America's best beer company by driving profitable industry growth. MillerCoors insists on building its brands the right way through brewing quality, responsible marketing and environmental and community impact. MillerCoors is a joint venture of SABMiller plc and Molson Coors Brewing Company.

The Future of Freshwater: Part III

2009-09-10T07:06:00.006-04:00

The supply and demand of freshwater is becoming more imbalanced over time. One day freshwater could become traded like oil if our current tends do not change. In Part II, we highlighted the issues causing an imbalance of freshwater. Part III is finding the answer to bring freshwater's supply and demand back to equilibrium. Acheiving an equilibrium is possible though pumping, filtration, genetically modified foods, desalination, and raising prices.

Pumping

An easy solution to increased demand is to adjust the supply. In water's case, that would mean pumping more ground water so it is available to meet demand. For this to become possible, transmission pipes would have to be built in areas with excess water, or by aquifers, that would run to areas with higher demands for water.

Pumping is not very economical because of two issues. One is that transmission pipes would carry very high costs. The other, is that areas with excess surface water typically do not have excess water. They simply have excess surface water that should be allocated to ground water.

Filtration

Filtration could be a small scale solution to increased water demands. Filtration systems are already used in disaster areas. Mobile filter systems are like miniature water treatment plants that filter polluted water in areas that do not have access to clean water, like after a natural disaster. These systems are normally run by solar power and are a great short-term solution.

House filters also quickly renew polluted water back into usable water. According to the Water Resources Management Project, household filters help to protect people living in rural areas from hazards and diseases resulting from water pollution.

Abdul-Karim al-Arhabi, Deputy Prime Minister and Minster of Planning and International Cooperation said, "Yemen faces many problems in supplying its people, especially those in rural areas, with safe and clean drinking water. Such simple techniques can help the government to solve this problem in some areas suffering from water scarcity."

Filtration can solve some basic issues within the imbalance of freshwater's supply and demand by providing efficient short-term relief, as well as providing clean water to areas stricken by water pollution.

Genetically modified foods

Altering plant DNA and creating genetically modified (GM) seeds that will produce plants that require less water is a viable solution. GM seeds are currently used in many farm fields today and research is continually being done to try to modify seeds even further. For instance, the USDA has found soybeans that will wilt slower, so they will be more productive in drier climates.

According to Voice of America, which is funded by the US government, "Scientists are working on other plants that either use less water or use it better, or both. For example, companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta have been developing corn with reduced water needs. Monsanto expects to be ready in a few years to market its first corn seeds genetically engineered to resist drought."

The changes that can be done to plant seeds is incredible. Tel Aviv University has discovered that a specific gene controls a plant's hydrotropism, which direct the roots to grow toward water. That gene can be multiplied or added to other seeds to help plants survive in drier climates. GM seeds could reduce irrigation use which accounts for nearly 70% of the US water use.

Desalination

Desalination is the process of taking salt out of seawater, resulting in freshwater. It speeds up the water cycle and eventually increases our supply of fresh water. Desalination changes our potential water supply so oceans are suitable for use. There are many pros and cons to desalination.

The costs are higher than other solutions. According to the Texas Water Development Board, the average cost to desalinate brackish (low salt content) water is $400-$950 per acre-foot while it is $800-$1,400 per acre-foot to desalinate seawater (high salt content). Brackish water can be found underground near areas with salt water. Brackish water has less salt content than seawater, but higher than freshwater. In addition, desalination typically requires 2,500 to 12,000 kWh per acre-foot of freshwater produced according to Water Desalination International.

The efficiency of desalination is often criticized as well. For each 100 gallons of seawater input, anywhere from 15-50 gallons of freshwater is output. The rest is a brine solution that has extremely high salt content and can cause ecological problems if not dealt with correctly. The total dissolved solids (tds) range from 5 to 500 ppm in desalinated water, which meets state requirements across the US.

Desalination is widely used around the world. Desalination plants are very common among Middle Eastern countries and are even present in the US in some coastal states. The long-term impact is not totally known for desalination, but it can definitely solve the problem of freshwater supply by increasing it to almost infinite numbers.

Raising prices

When supply and demand becomes imbalanced for any tangible item, raising the price will lower demand. This is true in freshwater's case as well. By raising the price of water, people will use less. According to the USGS, raising the price of water will lower demand and raise additional income that can be used to find new sources of water or build new water-storage facilities.

Besides raising the price of water, rebates could be used to reward people who consume less water. By reducing the price of water by giving monetary incentives to do so, water demand would decrease.

Changing the price of water has been brought up globally as well. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, China has purposed a water price increase of 40%-48% to help control its rising demand. China's Ministry of Water Resources reported that Beijing and many other cities have usable water supplies of one third or less than the current usage rates.

The future

The future of freshwater's supply and demand will be changing regardless of what actions are done. Water could become so scarce that it is traded like oil and irrigation systems will be obsolete. On the other hand, freshwater might be better taken care of, and not wasted as much. Technology has allowed for the supply to grow, but it is a responsibility of everyone to not take water for granted because Earth does not have an endless supply.

Read more about freshwater, agriculture, and farmland at Farmland Forecast (http://farmlandforecast.colvin-co.com/).

Fresh Water: A Suprisingly Scarce Resource

2009-09-08T13:02:00.004-04:00

Lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams are freshwater habitats. So too are swamps, bogs, and marshes. Lumped together, these ecosystems contain all the water in the world that is not frozen, essentially salt-free, and accessible to humans.

Lakes and ponds are basins of water surrounded by land, whereas rivers and streams are the arteries that move fresh water from land, such as mountain peaks, to the oceans. At the edge of many lakes and rivers are saturated wetlands—the swamps, bogs, and marshes—that support myriad types of plant and animal life, prevent floods, retain sediments, and purify drinking water. All the freshwater ecosystems can be found within a watershed—a set of habitats that drain into a single body of water such as a big lake or the ocean.

From scum on ponds to water celery on river beds and reeds swaying in a wetland breeze, freshwater algae and plants provide oxygen to breathe and food to eat. Plants like duckweeds float on the surface of still and slow-moving waters, while those with roots and flexible stems can stand in swift-flowing streams. Wetlands are full of vegetation that feeds everything from fish to people. In fact, about half the world's human population depends on rice, a wetland plant.

Freshwater habitats contain about 12 percent of the world's known animals, including 40 percent of the fish species. Many insects, amphibians, and crustaceans (such as freshwater shrimp) are also found in freshwater habitats. And wetlands are rich with birds, offering them a place to breed, nest, and rear young, and a source of food and shelter during long migrations. Some waterfowl such as grebes never leave this habitat.

Yet despite—and because of—the importance of fresh water, humans have manipulated these habitats more than any other on Earth. Sewage and chemicals pollute entire watersheds. Wetlands are routinely drained for strip malls, homes, and plantations. Rivers are dammed to supply electricity and water to cities and irrigation for farms. In fact, fresh water siphoned for agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all global water use. More than half of it is wasted.

These habitat alterations have destroyed half the world's wetlands in the past 100 years, dammed and diverted thousands of river miles, and left behind a polluted legacy for generations to come. At least 20 percent of all freshwater species are either extinct or threatened with extinction. As freshwater habitats are further degraded and stressed, wars over access to fresh water may darken the world's future.

Hope lies with cooperation among nations to better manage, conserve, and share the planet's scarce freshwater resources. Positive actions include resistance to wetland development, efficient agricultural use of water, and a switch to solar and wind energy from hydroelectric dams.

It amounts to precious little water, less than half a percent of the world's water supply. Yet it is vital to the survival of humans and a wide range of critters from dragonflies and piranhas to beavers and bullfrogs.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/freshwater-profile.html

Water policies suffer sinking feeling

2009-09-04T07:03:00.002-04:00

Rising populations, improving lifestyles and changes to the global climate are all increasing the pressure on the planet's water resources, says conservation expert Brian Richter. In this week's Green Room, he explains why there is an urgent need for the world to embrace new ways in which it uses water.

“ While most governments have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to manage water sustainably, a group of non-governmental and professional water organisations is stepping up to lead the way ”

More than one billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water and more than half of the hospital beds in the world are occupied by people afflicted with water-borne diseases.

More than 800 million are malnourished, primarily because there isn't enough water to grow their food.

Fish and other freshwater species are among the most imperiled on the planet, in large part because of the ways that we have polluted and exploited their habitats.

The theme of this year's World Water Week, currently underway in Stockholm, is therefore quite fitting: Responding to Global Changes: Accessing Water for the Common Good.

What global changes, you might ask? Let us start with our global population, expected to rise from nearly seven billion to nine billion in just a few decades. That is why more than half the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030.

At the same time, in populous nations such as China and India, improvements in living standards and personal incomes are linked to greater consumption of clothing, meat, and water.

It takes 140 litres of water to produce one cup of coffee; 3,000 litres to make a hamburger; and 8,000 litres to create a pair of leather shoes. All of these processes require a vast amount of water to grow crops, feed cows, or produce leather.

On top of that, climate change will bring less rain to many regions, and cause it to evaporate more quickly almost everywhere.

Accordingly, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that "the proportion of the planet in extreme drought at any time will likely increase".

These are the nightmares that keep me awake at night.

Just the tonic

These global forecasts wouldn't look so daunting if we were doing a great job of managing water today. But over-extraction of water for farms and cities is already causing even large rivers such as the Yellow, the Ganges and the Rio Grande to repeatedly run completely dry.

Remarkably, we also continue to foul our preciously scarce water supplies with too much human waste. More than 200 million tonnes of it each year go directly into our rivers and lakes without treatment.

So yes, the challenges we face are vast, but there's something brewing in Stockholm that is helping me sleep a little better.

While most governments have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to manage water sustainably, a group of non-governmental and professional water organisations is stepping up to lead the way.

You may have heard of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that certifies sustainably-harvested wood products, or the Fair Trade movement for consumer products, yet no such scheme yet exists for water.

At World Water Week, a group of leading business, social development and conservation organisations will gather as the "Alliance for Water Stewardship" to advance a new voluntary global water certification program that will recognize and reward responsible corporations, farming operations, cities, and other water users for their sustainable use of water resources.

By developing best practice standards for managing water in a way that enables economic development in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible manner, the Alliance aims to certify "water users" who are taking major steps to minimise their water footprint and protect healthy watersheds.

Participants, otherwise known as "water users", can range from large international companies to local water utilities to agricultural industries.

The Alliance will bring together the largest water players from around the world in Stockholm to launch a "global water roundtable", a two-year dialogue among global water interests to seek agreement about the problems created by unsustainable water use, and to build consensus around the best-practice standards that will underpin the certification programme.

It is a huge undertaking, but the water crisis is urgent, and we desperately need a new, transparent rulebook for managing our water resources more sustainably.

So why would a large company or city to want to play by these new rules? A rapidly growing number of consumers are buying goods from companies with environmental and social credentials, giving certified products ranging from produce to beverages to clothing a competitive edge in the marketplace.

In this increasingly water-scarce world, companies are also becoming painfully aware of their vulnerabilities to water shortages, not just in their own business operations but throughout their supply chains. If barley farmers in northern China run out of water, breweries and beer drinkers throughout Asia will feel the pain.

Many companies are realising that if they can save water in their manufacturing or growing processes, they can save a lot of money, making them more profitable.

Similarly, cities save costs for water treatment when the watersheds that supply their residents are maintained in a healthy condition.

Interestingly, investors are increasingly screening loan requests from cities and companies on the basis of their sustainability scores, because behaving in an environmentally and socially responsible manner translates into reduced investment risk.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is the simple fact that we have no other choice but to move toward a new paradigm for water.

The maths simply do not add up any other way. We have only the same amount of water on this planet now as when life began. We cannot support seven billion, let alone nine billion, if we continue to waste and foul such a substantial portion of what we have.

Certification isn't likely to solve all the world's water problems, but it very well could set us onto a sustainability trajectory that could give my nightmare a happy ending.

Brian Richter is director of the Global Freshwater Program at The Nature Conservancy, a US non-governmental organisation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8205132.stm

Sprawling L.A. Shrinks Water and Energy Use

2009-09-02T06:00:00.006-04:00

LOS ANGELES, CA — Commercial and industrial properties in sprawling Los Angeles reduced their water consumption by double-digits in July, the mayor’s office announced last week.

Meanwhile, energy consumption in America’s second largest city fell by 318 gigawatt hours during the 2008-2009 fiscal year -- more than half of which was driven by Los Angeles businesses using a slew of successful incentive programs.

Five core programs are credited with achieving the vast amount of energy savings, such as compact fluorescent lamp distribution and lighting retrofit programs, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

For example, LADWP handed out more than 500 rebates to commercial, industrial and government sites for high-efficiency lighting projects, accounting for $3.9 million in utility bill savings for participating customers. The program reduced energy use by 36 GHw.

Another incentive, the Custom Performance Program, reduced business energy use by 26.5 GWh through 77 energy efficiency projects. LADWP paid out $2.7 million in incentives, which will save customers roughly $2.9 million.

The incentive program that spurred the greatest amount of energy savings involved more than 34,000 small businesses. LADWP targeted small operations using less than 30 kWh for free energy efficient lighting, saving individual customers up to $500 annually, which equates to a 25 percent bill reduction. The Small Business Direct Install program trimmed energy consumption by 100 GWh.

Overall, the city cut its water use by more than 17 percent in July, compared with the same period the year before.

The reductions by building type include:

• 20.1 percent reduction by single-family residences

• 8.3 percent reduction by multi-family residences

• 17.1 percent reduction by commercial properties

• 21.8 percent reduction by industrial properties

• 34.4 percent reduction by government properties

"Avoiding the need to generate power through energy efficiency is the cleanest and most economical way to reduce the city’s carbon footprint and I am pleased that the DWP and its customers have been so mindful of their energy usage," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement last week. "Also, with the water shortage that we are facing, we must reduce our reliance on imported water and I am very encouraged that Angelenos have reduced their water consumption, especially during these summer months.”

Over the last three years, LADWP has boosted its energy efficiency budget tenfold. The amount of energy saved during the 2008-2009 fiscal year equals the amount of power used by 53,000 homes.

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/09/01/sprawling-la-shrinks-water-and-energy-use

Jim Rogers: China's Water Problem

2009-08-31T10:00:00.006-04:00

What worries me in China, I mean revolution, civil war, famine, none of that worries me.

What worries me is water. Because if they run out of water, and they have a stupendous water problem, then it is the end of the story.

You can survive a war, you can survive an epidemic but you cannot survive if the water runs out. THen you have to leave.

India even has a worse water problem than China.

Things like water treatment stocks in China have to boom.

Jim Rogers is a legendary investor known for his ability to predict major long term trends in several markets. Jim trades and tracks commodities, stocks, futures and interest rates all over the world. Jim has travelled extensively around the world and has written some of the best investment books available for traders. His latest book is a Bull in China, a book about the chinese stock market.

http://jimrogers-investments.blogspot.com/2009/03/chinas-water-problem.html

The Future of Freshwater: Part II

2009-08-26T07:08:00.004-04:00

Freshwater is essential for survival. Without freshwater, the Earth would be an entirely different place. The supply and demand of freshwater is becoming very uneven, and it is not correcting itself. One day, freshwater could be traded like oil if the current conditions go unchanged. There are four main issues that are hurting the imbalance of freshwater supply and demand, which include: drought, growing consumption, failing infrastructure, and falling water levels in lakes and rivers. If these problems can be subdued and solutions are imposed, freshwater’s future will improve.

Drought

Many civilizations have vanished because of drought, including the great Mayan civilization of Central America. Globally, drought has become an increasing problem. According to MSNBC, 8 million crops were seriously affected by drought in early 2009 in China. China’s Henan province, a large producer of wheat, went 105 days without water. The water distribution is very uneven in China. The North is rain stricken while the South is flood prone. Droughts costs the Chinese government millions of dollars each year in lost farming productivity.

According to the Earth Observatory of NASA, “From mid-November 2008 through mid-February 2009, unusual weather patterns brought extreme temperatures and low rainfall to this normally productive agricultural region (South America).” This period is critical for many crops, including cotton, wheat, soy, and corn. As a result, crop yields in the three countries were expected to dip, with Argentina suffering the worst blow.”

Both North and South America are currently experiencing drought. 31% of the US is in some form of drought and 11% of US crops have been damaged by the drought. Texas is encountering its worst drought in 50 years.

Africa is also suffering from uncommon drought. James Hurrell of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research expressed, “Changes in the Indian and Atlantic oceans are causing climate change in Africa and will have ripple effects on people and the environment.” By 2050, Monsoons that bring seasonal rain to sub-Saharan Africa could be 10-20% drier because of these climate changes.

Growing consumption

The consumption of freshwater is growing at an alarming rate. The primary issue is there is no substitute for water. Over the next twenty years, the global consumption of freshwater is on pace to double.

Nicholas Vardy, editor of The Global Guru, says that by 2050, 4 billion people, almost half of the world’s population, will live in areas that are chronically short of water. In the US, water demand tripled in the past 30 years, while the population only doubled.

An important factor in the growing consumption of freshwater is the equally fast growing consumption of food. All food uses some sort of freshwater. 40% of US water withdrawals are used for crop irrigation according to Colorado State University. That equates to 137,000 million gallons daily. While protein is becoming more popular among Asian diets, the demand for meat is rising, and in turn, so will grain demand followed by irrigation demand.

Failing infrastructure

The world’s water infrastructure is very old. In the US, the American Works Association estimates that $250 billion is needed over the next 30 years to repair wornout water pipes. The AWA said, “The oldest cast iron pipes, dating to the late 1800s, have an average life expectancy of about 120 years. Because of changing materials and manufacturing techniques, pipes laid in the 1920s have an average life expectancy of about 100 years, and pipes laid in the post-World War II boom can be expected to last about 75 years.” All of those pipes are due for updating within the next 30 years.

A 2009 report from America’s Civil Engineers stated, “Close to 50% of all leaks are from inferior post-war pipes, while 15-45% of drinking water is lost to leaks, and nearly 300,000 of the 900,000 miles of water mains break per year in the US.” The US water system faces an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities. In addition, seven billion gallons of drinking water are lost through leaky pipes daily.

Falling water levels in lakes and rivers

Lakes and rivers are also loosing water at an increased rate. Rivers and lakes are decreasing in water because their sources, aquifers, and being pumped or drained. More than half of the world’s population lives on a falling aquifer.

Lester Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute, which is dedicated to building a sustainable future as well as providing a plan of how to get from here to there through its Plan B 3.0. According to Brown:

"There are two types of aquifers: replenishable and nonreplenishable (or fossil) aquifers. Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge. For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer, depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.”

Many rivers do not make it to the ocean anymore before they are depleted. In the US, the Colorado River rarely makes it to the ocean because it supplies Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California with freshwater. Geography professor, Garry Running of the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire explained, “There is only so much that can be provided by the Colorado and other rivers in the region to offset groundwater shortages. All of the water, surface and groundwater, is over-allocated. There is no spare water.”

The Nile is also dammed up to supply freshwater to the Middle East and Africa. Now, 1/16th of the river water reaches the sea compared to before it was dammed.

The Aral Sea is a prime example of a body of water that has lost significant water. The Amu River in Central Asia has been designated to so much irrigation that the Aral Sea has split in two on occasion because its source cannot replenish it.

The future

Between drought, growing consumption, failing infrastructures, and falling river and lake levels, Earth is on pace to use up all of its freshwater. The demand is growing much faster than its supply. Soon people will understand how important and vital freshwater is, and these demands may then change over time.

The concluding portion of the Future of Freshwater will highlight the solutions available to help the imbalance of freshwater supply and demand.

Read more about freshwater, agriculture, and farmland at Farmland Forecast (http://farmlandforecast.colvin-co.com/).

The World’s Water Crisis

2009-08-25T07:59:00.010-04:00

by Brian C. Howard

At the recent G8 summit in Evian, France, delegates met to discuss, among other issues, how to provide safe drinking water to the 1.5 billion of the world’s citizens who live without it. Everyone within the summit gates enjoyed the free and plentiful bottled mineral water. “It’s obscene,” says one journalist who attended the conference, held near the source of one of the world’s most famous bottled water brands. “How can they not see that holding the summit in this place and talking about water in Africa is tasteless. It’s beyond comprehension.”

In fact, although many people might agree philosophically with Mikhail Gorbachev when he said, “Clean water is a universal human right,” the world is sharply divided in terms of access to safe hydration. Those who can afford it are guzzling ever-increasing numbers of designer water bottles, while half the world’s population lacks basic sanitation facilities, according to the United Nations (UN). Diseases caused by unsanitary water kill five to 12 million people a year, most of them women and children. A child dies every eight seconds from a preventable water-borne disease.

Only one-hundredth of one percent of the blue planet’s water is readily accessible for human use. The World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates that 2.3 billion people currently live in “water-stressed areas.” Hydrologists cite much of Africa, northern China, pockets of India, Mexico, the Middle East and parts of western North America as regions facing severe water shortages. Some of the world’s largest cities, including Mexico City, Bangkok and Jakarta, have severely over-pumped their groundwater aquifers.

As world population continues to increase, water scarcity will affect two out of every three people by 2025, according to UN estimates. In the 20th century, demand for fresh water grew twice as fast as population. This imbalance is largely due to industrial agriculture, but is also a product of unequal development in standards of living versus sound water management.

Additionally, scientists at Harvard University point out that global warming could significantly harm water availability. A warmer atmosphere could lead to higher rates of evaporation, causing droughts and more severe weather. Faster runoff rates and slower infiltration of groundwater could follow. Warmer water may also promote detrimental algal and microbial blooms, which may lead to more water-borne illnesses. And ironically, as the climate heats up, people will want to use more water for drinking, bathing and watering plants.

“The next world war will be over water,” says Vice President Ismail Serageldin of the World Bank. Even now, some competition is beginning to build between (and within) nations over finite water resources. Egypt has watched warily as Ethiopia has built hundreds of dams on the Nile. Syria and Iraq have squabbled over water projects with Turkey, and some of Israel’s many conflicts with Jordan and the Palestinians have been over water issues. Botswana raised a public outcry after Namibia announced emergency drought plans to divert water from the Okavango River.

Certain regions of the United States, including the Colorado and Rio Grande River Basins, also suffer ominous shortages. Much of the West’s integral agriculture, livestock and recreation industries have been seriously threatened by water scarcity, and the region has endured catastrophic wildfire seasons. At the same time, sprawling development is threatening critical watershed areas throughout the world. Elizabeth Ainsley Campbell, executive director of the Nashua River Watershed Association, warns, “Unless we become more proactive in planning for growth and setting aside open space, our drinking water will be increasingly vulnerable to pollution from fertilizers, insecticides, fuel byproducts and other chemicals associated with commercial and residential development.”

Groundwater is similarly under siege. Over-pumping and rising sea levels have resulted in falling, and saltwater-invaded, water tables. Initial remediation of the 300,000 contaminated groundwater sites in the U.S. will cost up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years, according to the National Research Council.Water scarcity is also a serious threat to natural ecosystems. “Watersheds with the highest biological value, as measured by the number of endemic bird and fish species, are also generally the most degraded,” says Carmen Revenga of the WRI. “Many biologically rich watersheds—particularly in Southeast Asia and China—also have high population densities, high levels of modified and irrigated land, and high rates of deforestation, especially in tropical areas,” she says. In the U.S., 37 percent of freshwater fish are at risk of extinction, 51 percent of crayfish and 40 percent of amphibians are imperiled or vulnerable, and 67 percent of freshwater mussels are extinct or vulnerable to extinction.

Fleecing the Third World

In much of the Third World, municipal water systems often serve only cities or primarily upper- and middle-class residents (who typically pay very low fees for use), while recurrent revenue problems inhibit increases or upgrades in service. As a result, as Christian Aid journalist Andrew Pendleton puts it, “The only water that is available to many poor people free of charge lies in festering pools and contains killer diseases such as cholera.” Pendleton continues, “If poor parents want to ensure their children will not die as a result of diarrhea, they must pay through the nose for water from private vendors or tankers.”

Some people in developing countries are increasingly turning to bottled water to meet their daily needs, a red flag for some critics. World consumption of bottled water is growing at seven percent a year, with the largest increases in the Asia Pacific region. U.S. News & World Report recently concluded, “The drive toward bottled water and filters will, however, widen the gap between the haves and have-nots.” For one thing, as Pendleton points out, poor people in need may be charged more per gallon of clean water than those in developed nations. Many families in Ghana spend 10 to 20 percent of their income on water.

Also, since many countries lack the infrastructure to recycle used water bottles, the containers end up further polluting the local water sources. In Nepal, for example, water bottles tossed aside by trekkers have caused a serious litter problem, since the government can’t afford to cart them out of remote areas.Many activists have also protested aggressive bottling operations in the developing world. In Brazil, Nestlé offers Latin Americans a brand of bottled water called Nestlé Pure Life. But as Paul Constance of the Inter-American Development Bank points out, “Though it looks much like the bottled mineral water long offered in restaurants and upscale supermarkets, Pure Life is different. It is drawn from local water sources, has an aggressively low price, and is marketed specifically ‘to meet the needs of people who have daily difficulty in access to quality water.’” One Pure Life bottling plant was established on a popular and ecologically sensitive mineral spring, prompting fierce opposition.

In Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, only 10 percent of homes have tap water, even though the local groundwater reserves are thought to host enough capacity for every resident. The public water system struggles from serious disrepair and a chronic lack of funding. Recently, some entrepreneurs began drawing water from a network of private wells and trucking it to tank owners, who then sell the precious liquid to families at a huge profit. Constance says it is not uncommon for “legal or illegal private providers to make handsome profits by trucking or carting water into the poorest neighborhoods.” Many people have to carry water bottles great distances.

Clearly, the world is approaching a water crisis. Watersheds and municipal systems must be secured from rising threats. And some wonder if bottled water quenches human greed far better than human thirst.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?1127&printview&imagesoff&src=QHA326

Water Now More Valuable Than Oil?

2009-08-24T06:25:00.001-04:00

Savvy Investors and Successful Companies are Turning Water Into Gold

The most valuable commodity in the world today, and likely to remain so for much of this century, is not oil, not natural gas, not even some type of renewable energy. It’s water—clean, safe, fresh water.

Follow the Money

When you want to spot emerging trends, always follow the money. Today, many of the world’s leading investors and most successful companies are making big bets on water. Do a little research, and it’s easy to see why. There simply isn’t enough freshwater to go around, and the situation is expected to get worse before it gets better.

According to Bloomberg News, the worldwide scarcity of usable water worldwide already has made water more valuable than oil. The Bloomberg World Water Index, which tracks 11 utilities, has returned 35 percent to investors every year since 2003, compared with 29 percent for oil and gas stocks and 10 percent for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

"There is only one direction for water prices at the moment, and that's up," said Hans Peter Portner, who manages a $2.9 billion US Water Fund at Pictet Asset Management in Geneva, according to a report by Bloomberg News. The value of the fund increased 26 percent in 2005, and Portner expects water to provide 8 percent annual returns through 2020.

If global warming continues to melt glaciers in the polar regions, as expected, the supply of freshwater may actually decrease. First, freshwater from the melting glaciers will mingle with saltwater in the oceans and become too salty to drink. Second, the increased ocean volume will cause sea levels to rise, contaminating freshwater sources along coastal regions with seawater.The United Nations estimates that by 2050 more than two billion people in 48 countries will lack sufficient water. Approximately 97 percent to 98 percent of the water on planet Earth is saltwater (the estimates vary slightly depending on the source). Much of the remaining freshwater is frozen in glaciers or the polar ice caps. Lakes, rivers and groundwater account for about 1 percent of the world’s potentially usable freshwater.

Freshwater Becoming More Scarce

Complicating matters even further is that 95 percent of the world’s cities continue to dump raw sewage into rivers and other freshwater supplies, making them unsafe for human consumption.

The Need for Freshwater is Increasing Rapidly

Yet, while freshwater supplies are at best static, and at worst decreasing, the world’s population is growing rapidly. The United Nations estimates that the world population—approximately 6.5 billion in 2006—will grow to 9.4 billion by 2050.

Companies Investing in WaterThe cost of water is usually set by government agencies and local regulators. Water isn't traded on commodity exchanges, but many utilities stocks are publicly traded. Meanwhile, investments in companies that provide desalinization, and other processes and technologies that may increase the world’s supply of freshwater, are growing rapidly.

General Electric Chairman Jeffrey Immelt said the scarcity of clean water around the world will more than double GE’s revenue from water purification and treatment by 2010—to a total of $5 billion.

GE’s strategy is for its water division to invest in desalinization and purification in countries that have a shortage of freshwater. Saudi Arabia is expected to invest more than $80 billion in desalinization plants and sewer facilities by 2025 to meet the needs of its growing population. And while China is home to 20 percent of the world’s people, only 7 percent of the planet’s freshwater supply is located there.

"This will be a big and growing market for a long time," Immelt said at the GE annual meeting in Philadelphia in April 2006.

http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/waterinvesting.htm

Freshwater Society: Water Facts

2009-08-22T12:26:00.001-04:00

Minnesotans used 1.4 trillion gallons of water in 2007. The electrical power industry used 839 billion gallons, mostly for pass-through cooling. Public waterworks used 227 billion gallons. Industries - led by mines and paper producers -- used 167 billion gallons. Farmers and other users pumped 167 billion gallons for irrigation. None of the totals includes many small - less than 10,000 gallons a day or 1 million gallons a year -- private wells that are not required to report their water usage to the state.

A person can live weeks without food, but only days without water.

University of California at Davis "Scripts," January 2001. Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org

A person needs 4 to 5 gallons of water per day to survive.

The Sphere Project Handbook "Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response." Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org. Les Roberts "Diminishing Standards: How Much Water Do We Need?" {in Forum: Water and War, International Committee of the Red Cross 1988.] Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org.

The average American individual uses 100 to 176 gallons of water at home each day. The average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day.

U . S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet "Water Q&A: Water Use at Home." Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org World Resources Institute, 1988-99 and 1996-97. "A Guide to the Global Environment." Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org.

Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.

Estimate derived from statistics in 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org.

Across the world, water-related diseases are the leading cause of death for children under the age of 5.

World Health Organization. World Health Report 2003. Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org.

At any given time, half the world's hospital beads are occupied by patient suffering from water-related diseases.

2006 United Nations Human Development Report. Quoted at "Water Facts," www.water.org

We are fortunate to live in a region where we are literally surrounded by water. But freshwater is much more precious than you may realize.

Nearly 97 percent of the world's water is saltwater or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2 percent is held in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves just one percent for all of humanity's needs - agricultural, residential, industrial, etc. - as freshwater. (United States Geological Survey)

Additionally, there is approximately the same amount of water on Earth today as there was when the Earth was formed. Water is continually recycled in the Earth's hydrologic cycle. Just think - the dinosaurs once drank the same water molecules that we drink today.

Water serves several functions. It regulates the temperature of the human body, carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, cushions joints, and protects organs and tissues. The human brain is 75 percent water. Human blood is 83 percent water and bones are 25 percent water. (American Water Works Association)

Water is also vital to the health of our planet, regulating Earth's temperature. Each day, the sun evaporates 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) tons of water. (United States Geological Survey)

In a 100-year period, an average water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about two weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere. (United States Geological Survey)

In fact, one inch of rain falling on one acre of land is equal to about 27,154 gallons of water. (United States Geological Survey)

While this process can purify and clean Earth's water, when we pollute our freshwater, it can be a long-term problem. Groundwater can stay polluted up to several thousand years. Also consider that:

- At least 1 billion people must walk three hours or more to obtain drinking water. For example, in Mexico, 15 percent of the population must haul or carry water. Even closer to home, nearly 2 percent of U.S. homes still do not have running water. (National Geographic Society)

- Households turn on their faucets an average of 70 times daily. It is estimated that up to 50 percent of the water families use could be saved by implementing simple conservation methods. (National Drinking Water Alliance)

- The 250 million U.S. residents living today have access to about the same amount of water that all 4 million U.S. residents did 200 years ago. (National Drinking Water Alliance)

- If present consumption patterns continue, two out of every three people on Earth will live in water-stressed conditions by the year 2025. (United Nations Environment Program)

How to Protect Freshwater

Conservation

Limit the time you spend watering the lawn, showering, running the garbage disposal and running faucets.

Fix leaky faucets. One drip a second can waste 2,000 gallons a year.

Buy water-efficient plumbing fixtures. If all plumbing fixtures in the United States were replaced with water-conserving fixtures, we could save 3.4 to 8.4 billion gallons of water a day.

Use moderate amounts of low phosphate cleaners and detergents. Eliminate the use of drain cleaners. Use recycled products.

Protection

Wash your car on the lawn instead of the driveway. Water that lands on an impermeable surface, such as pavement, flows through the watershed to the nearest body of water and deposits its contaminants. Your lawn, on the other hand, can trap and break down most foreign agents.

Limit the use of lawn fertilizers, and be sure to use only phosphorus-free fertilizer. Most lawns already have sufficient phosphorus and when more is added, it runs through the watershed and causes algae growth in surrounding lakes.

Education

Realize that many human activities affect water quality. Wetlands, groundwater and waterways are destroyed by construction, polluted runoff and spills. Population growth only intensifies these impacts.

Become an educated consumer. Buy recycled, environmentally friendly products.

Learn to recognize and become knowledgeable about aquatic nuisance species. Exotic invaders (such as Eurasian watermilfoil, zebra mussels and thousands more) cause habitat destruction, decrease biological diversity and cause millions of dollars of damage in the United States each year.

Transition

Rethink your daily habits and help reduce water pollution and water use. Bike, walk or carpool to help reduce the production of toxic air pollutants that can cause acid rain.

Turn down the water heater temperature and home thermostat to reduce your energy usage and help curb pollutants that cause acid rain.

Finally, share your knowledge with others. Try to remember that our actions have a widespread impact on the lasting quality of freshwater resources. We can, and must, make a difference.

http://freshwater.org/index.php/programs/whats-new/141-water-facts

The Future of Freshwater: Part I

2009-08-21T11:10:00.019-04:00

Over half of the human body is made up of water and a human cannot survive longer than a week without it. Water is the single most important component for sustaining life; and we are running out of it. Technically, water has no way of leaving our planet. Each molecule goes through the water cycle infinite times. It precipitates, then eventually evaporates and then precipitates again. The problem is that freshwater demand is increasing to levels higher than the supply can support.

The world population is growing at an annual rate of approximately 1.3% while the demand for freshwater is growing at 3.5%. If freshwater supply remains unchanged, but the demand is rising, the result is an imbalance in the supply and demand. That imbalance could eventually lead to disastrous outcomes including the fall of agriculture.

Issues hurting the imbalance

There are a few big issues that are widening the gap between the supply and demand of freshwater. The main concerns include:

- Serve drought in many parts of the world
- A rising global population
- A growing freshwater consumption rate
- A failing infrastructure for freshwater
- A decrease in water levels of lakes, rivers and streams

These issues are some of the main reasons why the demand for freshwater is rising so quickly. For instance, according to The Earth Policy Institute, the world's demand for water has tripled over the last 50 years, and is now on pace to double every 20 years.

Issues helping to solve the imbalance

There are a few methods to solve the imbalance of freshwater supply and demand. Either supply must grow, or demand must decrease. Here are the realistic solutions to the imbalance:

- Desalination
- Freshwater pumping
- Genetically modified foods
- Filtration systems

These few solutions will greatly affect the way the world uses water in the future. Because irrigation accounts for roughly 40% of all freshwater use (USGS), the agricultural community might have to make some changes. For instance, by genetically modifying soybean seeds, soybeans could grow in dryer climates and yields can be boosted. This would in turn relieve some pressure on the rest of the agricultural community and it could be done without using anymore water.

Change is imminent for freshwater's future. Freshwater cannot be taken for granted any longer because there is no substitute for it. What solution is best fit to solve the imbalance of freshwater supply and demand? It is all going to depend on what processes are most economical and able to last in the long-run.

Read more about freshwater, agriculture, and farmland at Farmland Forecast (http://farmlandforecast.colvin-co.com/).