tagged w/ Water Conservation
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Dolphins in Barataria Bay off Louisiana, which was hit hard by the BP oil spill in 2010, are seriously ill, and their ailments are probably related to toxic substances in the petroleum, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested on Friday.
As part of an ongoing assessment of damages caused by the three-month spill, which began with an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA scientists performed comprehensive physicals last summer on 32 dolphins from the bay. They found problems like drastically low weight, low blood sugar and, in some cases, cancer of the liver and lungs.
Yet the most common symptom among the dolphins, found in about half the group, was an abnormally low level of stress hormones like cortisol. Such hormones regulate many functions in the animal, including the immune system and responses to threats. Scientists said the dearth of hormones suggested that the animals were suffering from adrenal insufficiency.
Lori Schwacke, the lead scientist for the health assessment, said the findings were preliminary and could not be conclusively linked to the oil spill at this point. But she said the exams were also conducted on control groups of dolphins that live along the Atlantic coast and in other areas that were not affected by the 2010 spill and that those dolphins did not manifest those symptoms.
“The findings we have are also consistent with other studies that have looked at the effects of oil exposure in other mammals,” Dr. Schwacke added, citing experimental studies of mink that were dosed with oil. Some of those minks developed adrenal insufficiency.
More at the linkDolphins in Barataria Bay off Louisiana, which was hit hard by the BP oil spill in... more
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Every year since 1993 the world has observed March 22 as World Water Day. It is a day set aside to raise awareness of the importance of water to our lives and to the ecosystems of our planet that give us life. This year the theme is water and food security. This is an important theme especially now as the effects of climate change are now hitting the developing world where much of our food is grown and where the majority of our world's poor live. For many making the connection between water and food security is something they just do not think about. In the developed world we are so used to going into a store and buying what we want without thinking about where it came from, how it was grown or what went into it. We do not consider that when we waste food we also waste water.
The price we are and will pay regarding water scarcity and food insecurity in the future will only increase as we continue to not take this seriously. For the past decade I have reported on water scarcity in every part of the world and the effects that scarcity is having on this most precious resource and the food and people that depend on it. There are many factors involved in this crisis worldwide such as lack of political will; lack of moral will; privatization; population; pollution (resulting in physical and non physical scarcity); overconsumption (overpumping and waste) and climate change (sea level rise causing salt water intrusion, drought, flood, water evaporation, glacier melt.)
I also want to add war to this list, because as we are seeing currently in Syria and in places in the Middle East drought is already affecting agriculture which is now resulting in people rising up to demand better care of their resources because of livelihoods/lives lost and higher food prices. This is definitely an urgent factor that we need to consider regarding the future of global water resources in line with militarization of such resources which will result in more conflict.
More than 40% of our planet is now in water scarce zones. This is predicted to increase with more people moving to urban areas by 2050. Our world population has doubled since 1950 and we are on track to see 9 billion within the next twenty. Yet, we are not adequately preparing as a species regarding preserving the very resources that will sustain us. More people on this planet have a mobile phone than have a toilet. What does that tell us of our priorities?
In assessing the factors involved in the connection between water and food security all of these factors then come into play and connect with something that to me is the most important factor: Perception. As I mentioned just above more people on this planet have access to mobile phones than to toilets. And more people are becoming unattached to the world around them which I believe is contributing to the lack of caring for what is actually most important. Our zeal for progress is ironically in many ways leading us backwards.
For me progressing means moving forward technologically and evolving while also improving on and preserving those life systems that support us in a sustainable way. Polluting the water we use to grow food or wasting it in order to have it to make tarsands is not sustainable. Overpumping aquifers to put water in fossil fuel plastic bottles to make a profit for a private company while people go thirsty and hungry is not progress. Profit at the expense of life is not progress. And once again, it all comes back to our perceptions as a species: To our understanding the true value of water and finding ways to use it in preserving a progressive and sustainable society.
The good news is that this is achievable. We can feed our people while preserving our ecosystems. It requires us all to look inside ourselves and to ask how important water really is to us and to make the commitment to changing our perceptions of this world and our place in it. There are so many organizations working on doing just that and on this World Water Day and every day they deserve our gratitude and support.
In the end however, we shouldn't need one day to remind people of something that should be part of their lives everyday. And to those living in parts of this world where they know where their food comes from and just how precious the water that births the seed is, they already have this perception. Perhaps we need a World Water Day theme based on that to start.
My hope and faith lie with those who know the land and who work it. Those who are truly committed to preserving this beautiful planet for our children. Sustainable agriculture, water conservation, agroforestry, agroecology, stewardship, equality and most importantly, advocacy. 2012 can be the year when we finally begin to understand that what is important is that which brings progress and life and doing all in our power to see beyond the material, political and societal walls that now impede our evolution. Water can be the catalyst to that awakening. Make it yours today and save a life.
More at the linkEvery year since 1993 the world has observed March 22 as World Water Day. It is a day... more
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The EPA is currently considering requiring ALL Water Tanks to be inspected!
Why is this a BIG DEAL?
Currently there are no EPA regulations requiring water tanks and towers to ever be inspected. Most states do not require tank inspection or cleaning. The water in the storage tanks goes from the tank directly to your tap.
All water tanks accumulate sediment over time. The soft sediment in the floor of water tanks and towers becomes a safe habitat for bacteria, protozoa and even VIRUSES!
Out of site out of mind-
No one thinks about the sediment.
The water is tested daily, if the chlorine residual goes down - operators do not ask why, they just add more chlorine, over time the additional chlorine breaks down and itself becomes a contaminate in the tank that can cause cancer.
Instead of constantly adding more and more treatment chemicals, simply cleaning the sediment from the floor of the tanks is the solution.
A countless number of biological contaminates can use the sediment in the floor of water tanks and towers to get a foot hold in a municipal drinking water system and grow into a real health concern. Why should we care what is on the bottom of a water storage tank?
We drink off the bottom of water storage tanks! Of course like many things the adverse health effects are unequally distributed to poor communities where drinking store bought bottled water is not a given, It is also these communities who have underfunded water systems that suffer from lack of maintenance.
Many utility systems that can afford inspection and cleaning of their systems simply do not allocate the funds for it because there are no regulations requiring them to do so.
What do you think?
Take the poll at www.ronperrin.us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLfqaWH_nO4&feature=youtu.beThe EPA is currently considering requiring ALL Water Tanks to be inspected!
Why is... more
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Homes on wheels with dedicated transport highways may sound like science fiction, but Terreform1, a group of artists, scientists and architects based in Brooklyn are developing a project called Homeway, that re-imagines the American suburb as a linear community.
Consider that today’s suburban neighborhoods span several miles outside city centers. This urban sprawl leads to increased energy consumption, higher transportation costs and expensive water and waste management systems. The Homeway project envisions the average suburban home affixed with wheels and capable of traveling between urban centers along existing highways. Likewise power plants, food production areas and waste management facilities will be lined up along the roadways creating an interconnected urban structure where basic amenities are produced and distributed alongside these moving communities.
Moveable houses are just one design concept in the quest for sustainable urban living. How would build an energy efficient urban center?
Homes on wheels with dedicated transport highways may sound like science fiction, but... more
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China is running out of water and can no longer afford to irrigate its northern plains, an expert has warned.
China needs to reduce food production on its dry northern plains or aquifers will diminish to a "dire" level in 30 years, one the country's leading groundwater experts has warned.
Zheng Chunmiao, director of the Water Research Centre at Peking University, said the world's most populous country will have to focus more on demand-side restraint because it is becoming more expensive and difficult to tap finite supplies below the surface.
"The government must adopt a new policy to reduce water consumption," Zheng told the Guardian. "The main thing is to reduce demand. We have relied too much on engineering projects, but the government realises this is not a long-term solution."
Zheng's comments are based on his studies of the aquifers under the North China plain, one of the country's main wheat growing regions. He said the water table is falling at the rate of about a metre a year mainly due to agriculture, which accounts for 60% of demand.
"The water situation in the North China plain does not allow much longer for irrigation," Zheng said. "We need to reduce food production even though it is politically difficult. It would be much more economical to import."
The government will be reluctant to accept such a radical step, which could weaken the country's ability to feed itself. But it may not have a choice.
Over the past 10 years, Zheng estimates the annual water deficit in northern China at 4bn cubic metres. This is increasingly made up from underground sources, which account for 70% of water supplies. Although some aquifers remain 500 metres thick, others are emptying at an alarming rate. This has created depletion cones, the deepest of which is at Hengshui near Xizhuajiang.
Before trimming agricultural production, the government will try to improve usage efficiency. Plans are now being drawn up to measure and centrally manage the remaining resources, which are currently under the control of regional governments that often tend to draw up water unsustainably for the short-term benefit of the local economy.
The Yellow River Conservancy Commission – which has the nation's most advanced river management network – is expected to serve as a model.
"The government is considering a system similar to ours that will collect data on underground water resources and connect it to our Yellow River monitoring system," said Pei Yong, director of the water regulation division. "I think it will start three or four years from now."
Even before this begins, controls on underground water use are slowly being tightened. Well digging – once a lucrative, ubiquitous and poorly regulated business - is already feeling the pinch.
Kaifeng Well Drilling – a company in Henan – charges 100-500 yuan for each metre drilled, but it has recently laid off workers because it gets permission for only two wells a year now, compared to about 30 in the 1980s.
"Business is very bad. Many firms have had to change business," said the director, who only gave his surname, Wang. "The controls are very tight now. You only get permission to drill in areas with severe water shortages."
More at the linkChina is running out of water and can no longer afford to irrigate its northern... more
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The New York Times
Photo: Bill Hammitt on his farm near Portsmouth, Iowa, where he has terraced the land, refrained from tilling and taken other measures to curb soil erosion.
PART ONE...
April 12, 2011
High Prices Sow Seeds of Erosion
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
When prices for corn and soybeans surged last fall, Bill Hammitt, a farmer in the fertile hill country of western Iowa, began to see the bulldozers come out, clearing steep hillsides of trees and pastureland to make way for more acres of the state’s staple crops. Now, as spring planting begins, with the chance of drenching rains, Mr. Hammitt worries that such steep ground is at high risk for soil erosion — a farmland scourge that feels as distant to most Americans as tales of the Dust Bowl and Woody Guthrie ballads.
Long in decline, erosion is once again rearing as a threat because of an aggressive push to plant on more land, changing weather patterns and inadequate enforcement of protections, scientists and environmentalists say.
“There’s a lot of land being converted into row crop in this area that never has been farmed before,” said Mr. Hammitt, 59, explaining that the bulldozed land was too steep and costly to farm to be profitable in years of ordinary prices. “It brings more highly erodible land into production because they’re out to make more money on every acre.”
Now, research by scientists at Iowa State University provides evidence that erosion in some parts of the state is occurring at levels far beyond government estimates. It is being exacerbated, they say, by severe storms, which have occurred more often in recent years, possibly because of broader climate shifts.
“The thing that’s really smacking us now are the high-intensity, high-volume rainstorms that we’re getting,” said Richard M. Cruse, an agronomy professor at Iowa State who directs the Iowa Daily Erosion Project. “In a variety of locations, we’re losing topsoil considerably faster — 10 to as much as 50 times faster — than it’s forming.”
Erosion can do major damage to water quality, silting streams and lakes and dumping fertilizers and pesticides into the water supply. Fertilizer runoff is responsible for a vast “dead zone,” an oxygen-depleted region where little or no sea life can exist, in the Gulf of Mexico. And because it washes away rich topsoil, erosion can threaten crop yields. Significant gains were made in combating erosion in the 1980s and early 1990s, as the federal government began to require that farmers receiving agricultural subsidies carry out individually tailored soil conservation plans.
Those plans often included measures such as terracing steep ground or sowing buffer strips with perennial grasses to stabilize areas prone to erosion, such as the edges of fields near streams or borders between crops.
Many farmers, such as Mr. Hammitt, who is on the board of the Harrison County soil and water conservation district, also do little or no plowing and leave crop residues on harvested fields, techniques that reduce runoff.
But environmentalists claim that enforcement of conservation plans by the United States Department of Agriculture is not as strict as it should be and that the gains in fighting erosion have stalled or are being undercut.
U.S.D.A. data shows that the amount of farmland erosion nationwide from water fell substantially from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, then largely stagnated.
Enforcement is needed more than ever, environmentalists say, because high crop prices provide a strong incentive for farmers to plant as much ground as possible and to take fewer protective measures like grass buffer strips.
CONTINUED...
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/04/13/business/erosion/erosion-articleLarge.jpgThe New York Times
Photo: Bill Hammitt on his farm near Portsmouth, Iowa, where he... more
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In an era of economic turmoil that has produced massive unemployment, accelerated industrial decline, and sowed fear and doubt across much of North America and Europe, China last week offered a much different lesson on growth and development.
The 12th Five-Year Plan comes in the midst of a massive and politically popular economic transition that is rapidly converting China’s economy from its previous focus on export-related revenue to one devoted to building domestic markets. In the latest draft of its new 12th Five-Year Plan to manage the world’s fastest growing industrial economy, China’s leadership called for restraining the runaway growth that is raising the incomes of more than 400 million people, but is also drawing China ever closer to a potentially calamitous confrontation over energy, water, and the quality of the nation’s environment.
The 12th Five-Year Plan, submitted for review on March 5 at the start of China’s annual plenary session in Beijing and adopted on March 14, sets a new limit on energy consumption in order to spur efficiency and conservation measures. But it also envisions record high levels of water use, which is expected to rise to 620 billion cubic meters (163 trillion gallons) by 2015—up from 599 billion cubic meters (158 trillion gallons) in 2010—and as much as 670 billion cubic meters (177 trillion gallons) by the end of the decade. The restraints on coal production, which supplies 70 percent of the nation’s energy and is the largest industrial consumer of fresh water, will serve to keep water use from climbing even higher.
In public statements and in interviews with Chinese media, the nation’s top leaders said the central focus of the new Five-Year Plan is to curb inflation and provide investments and guidance that improves the quality of life by ensuring the continuing development of manufacturing, transportation infrastructure, domestic production, the energy sector, research, science, health care, and education. But the leaders asserted that the 12th Five-Year Plan, the master economic blueprint that charts China’s development through 2015, also is meant to reckon with the damage that the nation’s modernization is causing to air, land, and water, a steadily diminishing resource.
From 2000 to 2009, total water reserves in China dropped 13 percent, and water scarcity is especially evident in the northern and western provinces, where China’s major coal reserves lie. By calling for limits on energy production, China’s leaders are apparently mindful of the dangerous choke point developing between the nation’s surging economy and its demand for opening new coal reserves in the dry provinces that cannot currently be tapped because of water shortages.
“The 12th Five-Year Plan period is crucial for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and for deepening reform and opening up and speeding up the transformation of the pattern of economic development,” said Premier Wen Jiabao in a statement.
Largest and Fastest—Is Restraint Possible?
But it is not at all clear that China’s provincial and industrial leaders—never mind the hundreds of millions of workers benefiting from modernization—will be eager to comply with the goals of the new development strategy.
China now has either the fastest growing or largest markets in the world for coal, cars, steel, cement, glass, residential housing, rail construction, clean energy equipment, highway development, power plant construction, and grain production, just to name a few.During extensive reporting in December for the Choke Point: China series, Circle of Blue found a nation that grumbles about pollution, inflation, and corruption, but also is tremendously enthusiastic about modernization and the economic opportunities it has provided.
The restraints on economic growth described in the 12th Five-Year Plan come in the midst of a massive and politically popular economic transition that is rapidly converting China’s economy from its previous focus on export-related revenue to one devoted to building domestic markets.
Just to name a few, China now has either the fastest-growing or the largest-markets in the world for:
•Cars
•Steel
•Cement
•Glass
•Residential housing
•Rail construction
•Fossil fuel energy
•Highway development
•Power plant construction
•Grain production
Over the next five years, China will continue to build one of the world’s largest water transport projects, the world’s largest highway and high-speed rail networks, and the world’s largest network of hydropower dams. China also will continue to construct the world’s largest industrial manufacturing installations, or “bases,” to produce the components and plants that generate energy from coal, wind, solar, and nuclear power.
Conservation and Efficiency Stressed
The 12th Five-Year Plan calls for reducing annual economic growth to seven percent a year (down from about 10 percent in each of the last four years), restraining the growth in coal production to three percent a year (down from more than 15 percent annually since 2000), and limiting water consumption.
cont.In an era of economic turmoil that has produced massive unemployment, accelerated... more
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It's the largest underground freshwater supply in the world, stretching from South Dakota all the way to Texas. It's underneath most of Nebraska's farmlands, and it provides crucial water resources for farming in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and even New Mexico. It's called the Ogallala Aquifer, and it is being pumped dry.
Without the Ogallala Aquifer, America's heartland food production collapses. No water means no irrigation for the corn, wheat, alfalfa and other crops grown across these states to feed people and animals. And each year, the Ogallala Aquifer drops another few inches as it is literally being sucked dry by the tens of thousands of agricultural wells that tap into it across the heartland of America.
This problem with all this is that the Ogallala Aquifer isn't being recharged in any significant way from rainfall or rivers. This is so-called "fossil water" because once you use it, it's gone. And it's disappearing now faster than ever.
In some regions along the aquifer, the water level has dropped so far that it has effectively disappeared -- places like Happy, Texas, where a once-booming agricultural town has collapsed to a population of just 595. All the wells drilled there in the 1950's tapped into the Ogallala Aquifer and seemed to provide abundant water at the time. But today the wells have all run dry.
Happy, Texas has become a place of despair. Dead cattle. Wilted crops. Once-moist soils turned to dust. And Happy is just the beginning of this story because this same agricultural tragedy will be repeated across Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and parts of Colorado in the next few decades. That's a hydrologic fact. Water doesn't magically reappear in the Ogallala. Once it's used up, it's gone.
"There used to be 50,000 head of cattle, now there's 1,000," says Kay Horner in a Telegraph report (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83...). "Grazed them on wheat, but the feed lots took all the water so we can't grow wheat. Now the feed lots can't get local steers so they bring in cheap unwanted milking calves from California and turn them into burger if they can't make them veal. It doesn't make much sense. We're heading back to the Dust Bowl."
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031658_aquifer_depletion_Ogallala.html#ixzz1GLQaxFlnIt's the largest underground freshwater supply in the world, stretching from... more
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Consumer appetite for cut-price Kenyan roses for Valentine's Day is "bleeding the country dry" by threatening the region's precarious ecology.
University of Leicester ecology and conservation biologist, Dr David Harper, warned. Harper has spent over 30 years researching wetland conservation at Kenya's Lake Naivasha and said the growth of the flowers is draining the valuable water supply.
Seventy per cent of roses sold in European supermarkets come from Kenya, most from Naivasha. Harper called on UK supermarkets to show more concern about the health of the environment that the flowers come from.
He said: "A notable few of the farmers sending roses to Europe are showing concern and an eagerness to pioneer a sustainable way forward: the best flower farms have achieved Fairtrade status, which brings money back into the workforce for social welfare improvements. Two farms have even seconded senior managers to help Kenya's water management agency at Naivasha."
But he warns that the massive scale of UK supermarket promotions of flowers over Valentine's Day — and subsequently on Mother's Day – without concern for where or how environmentally sustainable roses can be grown, will just increase the export of water – the scarcest natural resource in Kenya.
He went on: "There are just a few good farms but many more that don't care how much damage they do to the lake. Seventy per cent of the roses sold in European supermarkets come from Kenya and the majority of those are from Naivasha, many thus coming without any ecological certification. This has to change for the future of the industry as well as the lake and the country."
The provenance of such roses is not always clear, he said. Cheap roses are often grown by companies which cut corners to avoid legislation, selling them by auction in Amsterdam so buyers think they come from HollandConsumer appetite for cut-price Kenyan roses for Valentine's Day is... more
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"It is not to say that soil will disappear in 60 years, but when you consider the amount of topsoil lost in the past 100 years, that figure of 60 years starts not to look so daft.
"We talk about alternative energy," Crawford says. "There is no alternative soil."
With the world's population growing in number and wealth, food security is a prime concern for global decision-makers.
Climate change has added a new dimension to research into soil carbon, which is central to soil health and productivity as a possible way to lock up global carbon emissions. A US Studies Centre conference in Sydney this month heard how Australia is at the forefront of the scientific understanding of soil carbon and how policy-makers here are ahead of the curve when it comes to thinking about ways to reward farmers for improving soil quality by building carbon content.
The federal government is establishing a carbon trading framework that will reward good agricultural practice. Its climate adviser, Ross Garnaut, will explore the issue in an update to his 2008 climate change paper for the federal government.
And if former governor-general Michael Jeffery has his way, a network of best practice farms will be established around the nation to build awareness in the notoriously conservative farming community on the benefits of improving soil carbon and health.
Crawford says soil health is at the root of most of the challenges that society faces in the next 30 years - food security, water supply, energy, climate change and health.
"Soil is the basis for human health, and agriculture is the basis for civilisation and there is great historical evidence that most of the great ancient civilisations fell as a result of decline in their soil," he says.
"What we need to find are incentives to start giving farmers the resources they need to manage the eco-system services that we've all taken for granted, and soil being the major part of that."
cont."It is not to say that soil will disappear in 60 years, but when you consider the... more
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The worst drought in the 105-year historical record of the Colorado River has opened a new era of water scarcity that is prompting state and federal water managers to evaluate never before considered options for increasing water supply and reducing demand.
The new ideas for managing the seven-state river basin, which supplies water to 30 million residents and thousands of farms, have attracted increasing attention from agricultural users and other big water interests, particularly in the upper basin states that counted on receiving more water under the region’s near-century-old water use agreement.
In Las Vegas last month, at the annual meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association—the only organization bringing together stakeholders from each of the seven basin states—opponents and supporters made their views known during a speech by Doug Kenney, the director of the Western Water Policy Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Kenney was invited to Caesar’s Palace to share the first-year findings from his study on water governance in the Colorado River Basin. His message: in a new era of water scarcity along the river—where supply and demand lines have already crossed—traditional water management practices will need to be fundamentally changed.
New options for managing the Colorado include establishing provisions for year-to-year agreements with states and farmers to avoid shortages. They also include improvements in the efficiency of river operations, or by river augmentation, which means adding new supplies from a slew of sources—some viable, some expensive, and some fanciful: desalination, river diversions, and weather modification, respectively.
“I thought it was time for someone to stand up at that meeting and start talking about the reality.”
Kenney’s governance study is just one of several such assessments—carried out by academics and federal agencies, as well as state and regional water management authorities—suggesting the need for new ways to manage water flows. The studies are providing a new legal and scientific foundation for defining existing water rights within states, clarifying laws and regulations about how shortages on the river would be handled, and evaluating options for increasing the basin’s water supply and reducing demand.
Kenney argued that the states of the upper basin—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—are the most vulnerable if future flows are as low as predicted because the river’s legal structure gives priority to Mexico and the lower basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
“I thought it was time for someone to stand up at that meeting and start talking about the reality,” Kenney told Circle of Blue. “That there’s just not any water left on that river.”
While there were no catcalls or rotten fruit, Kenney admits that some representatives from the upper basin states were not pleased to hear that water promised to them nearly a century ago under the Colorado River Compact would probably not be available in the coming decades.
cont.The worst drought in the 105-year historical record of the Colorado River has opened a... more
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According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:
Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.*
Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.
Despite the fact that access to fresh water is likely to be one of the most pressing environmental issues over the coming years, less than 1% of U.S. adults know what percent of the planet's water is fresh (the correct answer is 3%).
Nearly half didn't even hazard a guess.
Additionally, 40% of U.S. adults say they are "not at all knowledgeable" about sustainability.
About 4 in 5 adults think science education is "absolutely essential" or "very important" to the U.S. healthcare system (86%), the U.S. global reputation (79%), and the U.S. economy (77%).According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:... more
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How unconscienable is this! The Brazilian government is now moving ahead on a project that will result in the construction of the third largest dam in the world in one of the most diverse and ecologically rich areas of the world: the Amazon. It is to be constructed on the Xingu River which is home to the Paquacamba and Arara indigenous peoples.
It will divert 80% of the river from its original course, thus leaving swaths of indigenous land in drought while flooding over 100,000 acres of rainforest and displacing 20- 40,000 people. Once again we see shortsightedness at a time when we need to see the big picture. Hydroelectricity in areas such as this in an age of global warming and drought is a short term solution that will only bring long term consequences to environment, economy, culture, and also the climate balance of the planet.
Solar energy is the one renewable energy source that is most viable here that will also preserve the environment, water resources and culture of the indigenous peoples who call this area their home. This action will then in turn spawn multiple dam projects all the way up the Amazon that will only displace more people when it is not necessary.
It is heartbreaking to see what is being done to the last vestiges of ecological richness that we must preserve for the future. There is still time however to tell the Brazilian government you oppose this. I will post a link below where you can do this.
Thanks.How unconscienable is this! The Brazilian government is now moving ahead on a project... more
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Long a proven technology in Europe, green roofs are becoming increasingly common in U.S. cities, with major initiatives in Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C. While initially more expensive than standard coverings, green roofs offer some major environmental — and economic — benefits.
The low scrubland of densely packed succulents is in full fall color, a carpet of green fading brilliantly to red and gold. This 2.5-acre oasis, located among a barrens of blacktop roofs that stretches east to Broadway and west to the Hudson River, would be an impressive sight even if it wasn’t sitting atop the U.S. Postal Service’s 1933 landmark Morgan Processing and Distribution facility in midtown Manhattan.
The biggest green roof in New York City and one of the largest in the country, the Morgan facility’s verdant covering was completed in December 2008 and has thrived since. As the inscription above the landmark James Farley Post Office might have it, the roof has been affected by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,” and has flourished through freezes and thaws, through summer rooftop temperatures that reach 150 degrees, and through weeks of drought and torrential summer storms, despite never being watered, weeded, or fertilized.
The 2.5-acre park on the Morgan Processing and Distribution facility is the biggest green roof in New York.The vegetation is a densely planted assemblage of some 25 hardy, low-growing species that have thrived in their few inches of planting material. The plants’ size and modest requirements, however, belie their substantial biological capacities and environmental benefits. Since the roof has been installed, the building’s storm water runoff into the New York municipal water system has been reduced by as much as 75 percent in summer and 40 percent in winter. The U.S. Postal Service estimates that the plants’ ability to cool the roof in summer and insulate it in winter will reduce the building’s energy costs by $30,000 a year.
The sprouting of a large, living roof in midtown Manhattan is a sign that this universally lauded green practice, which has spread rapidly across Europe, is now gaining a serious foothold in the U.S. Although initially more expensive than standard asphalt or shingle roofs, green roofs offer major environmental and economic advantages, from slashing storm water runoff and energy costs, to cooling overheated cities and cleaning their air.
Chicago, which now has more green roofs than any other U.S. city, last year added 600,000 square feet of green roofs and has some 600 projects that will bring its total to 7 million square feet. Washington, D.C. added 190,000 square feet in 2009 and has set a goal of 20 percent green roof coverage by 2020.
In Portland, Oregon, the city provides incentive grants of $5 per square foot for what they call “eco-roofs.” There’s no limit on the size of the roof,
In Europe, Stuttgart and Copenhagen have begun to mandate green roofs on most new construction.but Tom Liptan, a storm water specialist with the city, says that most of the grants have so far gone to homeowners or to buildings in the commercial district. “It was a cost/benefit evaluation,” says Liptan. “The issue here was storm water. We were trying to find a way to reduce the burden on the city. If we trap it on the roofs, we don’t have to build bigger pipes to carry it or cisterns to store it for treatment.”
Liptan figures that if half the roofs in the city were green, Portland would reduce its storm water burden by some 3 billion gallons, a quarter of the rainfall that hits the city’s roofs annually.
This year Toronto became the first city in the Western Hemisphere to mandate green roofs. New buildings with a total floor area of more than 21,527 square feet will, depending on their size, have to cover from 20 to 60 percent of their roofs with vegetation. A 2005 study calculated that if 75 percent of the flat roofs in the city were greened, Toronto could reap $37 million a year in savings on storm water management, energy bills, and costs related to urban heat island effects.
In Europe, green roofs have been a proven technology for nearly 30 years, as a low flight over Stuttgart, Germany — courtesy of Google Earth — will show. Up Eberhardstrasse approaching Marktstrasse, along Friedrichstrasse to Hauptbahnhopf, the central train station, and north of the city center along Oswald-Hesse-Strasse, there’s often more green to be seen on the rooftops than on the ground (including the vast 27-acre green rooftop of the Daimler company). While most cities in the U.S. measure their green roof area in thousands of square feet, Stuttgart can measure its in millions. Some 20 to 25 percent of the city’s flat roofs are green and, due to a combination of government incentives, tax abatements, and regulations, so are 10 percent of the roofs throughout Germany. Cities such as Stuttgart and Copenhagen have begun to mandate green roofs on most new construction.
cont.Long a proven technology in Europe, green roofs are becoming increasingly common in... more
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Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water." But that's what we're still doing every day.
The one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Yet it is still common around much of the world. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water -- both surface and underground -- unsafe for drinking.
The current engineering concept for dealing with human waste is to use vast quantities of water to wash it away, preferably into a sewer system, where it may or may not be treated before being discharged into the local river. The "flush and forget" system takes nutrients originating in the soil and typically dumps them into the nearest body of water. Not only are the nutrients lost from agriculture, but the nutrient overload has contributed to the death of many rivers and to the formation of some 405 "dead zones" in ocean coastal regions. This outdated system is expensive and water-intensive, disrupts the nutrient cycle, and can be a major source of disease and death. Worldwide, poor sanitation and personal hygiene claim the lives of some 2 million children per year, a toll that is one-third the size of the 6 million lives claimed by hunger and malnutrition.
Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in India argues convincingly that a water-based disposal system with sewage treatment facilities is neither environmentally nor economically viable for India. She notes that an Indian family of five, producing 250 liters of excrement in a year and using a water flush toilet, contaminates 150,000 liters of water when washing away its wastes.
As currently designed, India’s sewer system is actually a pathogen-dispersal system. It takes a small quantity of contaminated material and uses it to make vast quantities of water unfit for human use. With this system, Narain says, both "our rivers and our children are dying." India’s government, like that of many developing countries, is hopelessly chasing the goal of universal water-based sewage systems and sewage treatment facilities -- unable to close the huge gap between services needed and provided, but unwilling to admit that it is not an economically viable option.
Fortunately, there is a low-cost alternative: the composting toilet. This is a simple, waterless, odorless toilet linked to a small compost facility and sometimes a separate urine collecting facility. Collected urine can be trucked to nearby farms, much as fertilizer is. The dry composting converts human fecal material into a soil-like humus, which is essentially odorless and is scarcely 10 percent of the original volume. These facilities need to be emptied every year or so, depending on design and size. Vendors periodically collect the humus and market it as a soil supplement, thus ensuring that the nutrients and organic matter return to the soil, reducing the need for energy-intensive fertilizer.
This technology sharply reduces residential water use compared with flush toilets, thus cutting water bills and lowering the energy needed to pump and purify water. As a bonus, it also reduces garbage flow if table wastes are incorporated, eliminates the sewage water disposal problem, and restores the nutrient cycle. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now lists several brands of dry compost toilets approved for use. Pioneered in Sweden, these toilets work well under the widely varying conditions in which they are now used, including Swedish apartment buildings, U.S. private residences, and Chinese villages. For many of the 2.5 billion people who lack improved sanitation facilities, composting toilets may be the answer.
Rose George, author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, reminds us why the "flush and forget" system is an energy guzzler. One, it takes energy to deliver large quantities of drinking-quality water (up to 30 percent of household water usage is for flushing). Two, it takes energy -- and lots of it -- to operate a sewage treatment facility.
In summary, there are several reasons why the advanced design composting toilets deserve top priority: spreading water shortages, rising energy prices, rising carbon emissions, shrinking phosphate reserves, a growing number of sewage-fed oceanic dead zones, the rising healthcare costs of sewage-dispersed intestinal diseases, and the rising capital costs of "flush and forget" sewage disposal systems.
Once a toilet is separated from the water use system, recycling household water becomes a much simpler process. For cities, the most effective single step to raise water productivity is to adopt a comprehensive water treatment/recycling system, reusing the same water continuously. With this system, which is much simpler if sewage is not included in the waste water, only a small percentage of water is lost to evaporation each time it cycles through. Given the technologies that are available today, it is quite possible to recycle the urban water supply indefinitely, largely removing cities as a claimant on scarce water resources.
cont.Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose... more
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New report shows that U.K. farming faces changing and more variable climate.
The agricultural sector in the United Kingdom will need to adapt to new farming practices and more variable weather conditions, as climate change threatens to unevenly affect the water availability in the country in the coming decades, according to a report released on Monday.
Photo creative commons by LusobrandaneBales of hay in a field near Errol Station, Perthshire.The study, commissioned by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) and carried out by scientists at the University of Reading, shows that climate extremes such as drought and flooding are likely to reduce the amount of water for agriculture and horticulture, providing a major challenge to farmers, researchers, plant breeders and policy makers across the U.K.
According to the report, while climate change is expected to produce higher temperatures, drier summers and wetter winters across much of England, the effects on water availability will vary throughout the country and even, from year to year, in the same areas.
Direct abstractions are likely to become less reliable during the summer and more seasonal; meanwhile, the higher-intensity rainfall in certain periods of the year will produce high runoff, and thus less water will be able to percolate into aquifers, the report says.
Different crop types will also be affected differently, requiring farmers and to change their farming practices or even move their crops to other locations. Crops that need irrigation, in particular, such as vegetables and sugar beet, may be forced to shift from the drier east of England to the wetter west of the country. This, in turn, may affect stock-breeding in these regions.
Agriculture occupies 70 percent of the land within England, with three quarters used for grazing livestock and one quarter for cropping.
“Plant breeders will need to incorporate drought resistance and waterlogging tolerance into new varieties…planners must be flexible in allowing farms to build reservoirs so that they can conserve winter rainfall for summer irrigation,” RASE Agri-Science Director Ian Smith said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The study acknowledges and outlines a range of combined solutions to preserve water, reduce water use, make more water available, reduce the direct and indirect impacts of flooding, or adapt policy and practice to the changing situation. It also encourages more research into the water implications of climate change on the U.K. food production, risk management and policy.
“Two things are clear,” the report says. “First, no single option will be appropriate for every situation. Second, in general, options will not be able to save or provide enough water to address the magnitude of potential changes. The solution is to develop a range of options that address all potential impacts, depending on the severity and potential direction of change.”New report shows that U.K. farming faces changing and more variable climate.
The... more
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From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south nearly 1,500 miles, over falls, through deserts and canyons, to the lush wetlands of a vast delta in Mexico and into the Gulf of California.
That is, it did so for six million years.
Then, beginning in the 1920s, Western states began divvying up the Colorado’s water, building dams and diverting the flow hundreds of miles, to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and other fast-growing cities. The river now serves 30 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico, with 70 percent or more of its water siphoned off to irrigate 3.5 million acres of cropland.
The damming and diverting of the Colorado, the nation’s seventh-longest river, may be seen by some as a triumph of engineering and by others as a crime against nature, but there are ominous new twists. The river has been running especially low for the past decade, as drought has gripped the Southwest. It still tumbles through the Grand Canyon, much to the delight of rafters and other visitors. And boaters still roar across Nevada and Arizona’s Lake Mead, 110 miles long and formed by the Hoover Dam. But at the lake’s edge they can see lines in the rock walls, distinct as bathtub rings, showing the water level far lower than it once was—some 130 feet lower, as it happens, since 2000. Water resource officials say some of the reservoirs fed by the river will never be full again.
Climate change will likely decrease the river’s flow by 5 to 20 percent in the next 40 years, says geoscientist Brad Udall, director of the University of Colorado Western Water Assessment. Less precipitation in the Rocky Mountains will yield less water to begin with. Droughts will last longer. Higher overall air temperatures will mean more water lost to evaporation. “You’re going to see earlier runoff and lower flows later in the year,” so water will be more scarce during the growing season, says Udall.
Other regions—the Mediterranean, southern Africa, parts of South America and Asia—also face fresh-water shortages, perhaps outright crises. In the Andes Mountains of South America, glaciers are melting so quickly that millions of people in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are expected to lose a major source of fresh water by 2020. In southwestern Australia, which is in the midst of its worst drought in 750 years, fresh water is so scarce the city of Perth is building plants to remove the salt from seawater. More than one billion people around the world now live in water-stressed regions, according to the World Health Organization, a number that is expected to double by 2050, when an estimated nine billion people will inhabit the planet.
“There’s not enough fresh water to handle nine billion people at current consumption levels,” says Patricia Mulroy, a board member of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation, which promotes the development of safe, affordable drinking water worldwide. People need a “fundamental, cultural attitude change about water supply in the Southwest,” she adds. “It’s not abundant, it’s not reliable, it’s not going to always be there.”
Mulroy is also general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves two million people in greater Las Vegas. The city is one of the largest in the Colorado River basin, but its share of the river is relatively small; when officials allocated the Colorado’s water to different states in 1922, no one expected so many people to be living in the Nevada desert. So Nevadans have gotten used to coping with limitations. They can’t water their yards or wash their cars whenever they like; communities follow strict watering schedules. The water authority pays homeowners to replace water-gulping lawns with rocks and drought-tolerant plants. Golf courses adhere to water restrictions. Almost all wastewater is reused or returned to the Colorado River.From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south... more
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Today on the Water Is Life Group I will be participating in Blog Action Day and featuring entries that tell the story of water. The documentary, Flow For The Love Of Water will also be featured so if you have not seen this important documentary about what is happening to our water through privitization please try to make a point of doing so today.
There will be no more important a topic in our future than water. Energy is run by water. Agriculture is run by water. Our lives would not be liveable without water. Yet, so many people today in the 21st century still do not have this basic resource to sustain their lives and health with climate change now bringing new challenges.
So I hope that at least for today you will take some time to reconnect with the water that makes your life enjoyable, also respecting its awesome power, grace, and beauty. The lifeblood of our planet is a reflection of our morality and as it stands now it shows a species weak on that score. In order to preserve this planet for our future generations and all other species, we must begin to pay more attention to what sustains it.
Thanks.Today on the Water Is Life Group I will be participating in Blog Action Day and... more
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Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin today issued an expanded, statewide drought watch, asking all state residents to voluntarily conserve water due to continued hot and dry conditions that have persisted all summer, and are taxing reservoir, stream and groundwater levels.
The decision to expand an existing drought watch that had been in place for the state's five northeastern counties is a result of record high temperatures and water demands, combined with near-record precipitation lows.
"The drought is deepening and showing no sign of letting up soon, which has made it imperative to take this step now,'' said Commissioner Bob Martin. "Our scientists have been closely monitoring the water situation and feel this is a necessary measure.''
"What the entire State really needs is several days of heavy, soaking rain. But until we get some weather relief, we're asking all state residents to join in an effort to preserve our precious water supply, to more carefully use water and voluntarily reduce unessential use.''
Taking steps such as limiting limit lawn watering, cutting back on at-home car washing, and just doing the laundry when the machine is full can save millions of gallons of water daily and help get us through this situation, said the Commissioner.
A drought watch is a response to deteriorating water supply conditions, with a goal of raising public awareness and formally alerting all water suppliers to the situation, to help preserve existing supplies and balance reservoir storage.
The DEP is not issuing a formal drought warning at this time, which could initiate mandatory steps such as water transfers between regional water supply systems. Instead, the Department is asking residents across the entire state to be aware of the situation and use water more carefully. The goal is to moderate water demand through voluntary conservation.
New Jersey has had no significant rainfall since more than five inches of precipitation inundated a portion of the northeast sector of the State nearly three weeks ago. Some areas have received 25 percent or less of expected summer rainfall. As a result, precipitation indicators have dropped to the severely dry category in the state's central, coastal north and coastal south regions.
Stream flow levels also declined to the severely dry category in the coastal north region. Only in the coastal south region are stream flows moderately dry. Hot, dry weather continues to stress shallow groundwater and is beginning to impact some private wells.
"It's a matter of the state's faucet being turned off at the same time we've had little relief from the heat,'' said Steve Doughty, research scientist in the DEP's Division of Water Resources Management. "So, every gallon of water we can save now will extend our supply in case a return to normal weather conditions occurs later than we hope.''
According to State Climatologist David Robinson of Rutgers University, New Jersey is experiencing its warmest summer (June-August) on record since weather data has been kept starting in 1895. This followed the warmest spring on record. Every month since March has ranked in the top 10 of all time for heat, with August ranked 10th, July ranked 2nd and June as the first hottest month in the past 105 years.
At the same time, below average rainfall has accompanied the heat. The preliminary average for summer precipitation stands at 8.35 inches statewide, making it the 10th driest summer of all time and the driest summer since 1966.
Average statewide rainfall in August was just 2.42 inches, or 2.14 inches below normal, making it the 15th driest August on record. But rainfall levels have varied dramatically across the state. More than 8 inches fell this summer at the Charlotteburg reservoir in northern Passaic County while less than one-half inch of rain fell on most of Burlington County.
The following are some suggested water conservation tips:
* Do not over-water lawns and landscaping. Two times per week for 30 minutes in morning or late evening is sufficient. Use a hose with a hand-held nozzle to water flowers and shrubs.
* Turn off the faucet while brushing teeth and shaving.
* Run washing machines and dishwashers only when full.
* To save water at home, fix leaky faucets and pipes.
More information on water conservation and water supply status can be found at www.njdrought.org/ideas.html and www.njdrought.org/status.html
Information on the State's 90-day precipitation rate can be found at:
http://water.weather.gov/precip/index.php?layer%5B%5D=0&layer%5B%5D=1&layer%5B%5D=4&timetype=RECENT&loctype=STATE&units=engl&timeframe=last90days&product=dep_normal&loc=stateNJ
###Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin today issued an... more
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A far-reaching federal program of research and analysis, funded by Congress and designed to help the nation anticipate and temper the mounting conflict between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water, has been brought to a standstill by the Department of Energy, according to government researchers involved in the project.
The research program, known as the National Energy-Water Roadmap and ordered up by Congress as part of the 2005 Energy Security Act, was meant to provide lawmakers and the executive branch two studies of the impending collision between energy and water, and what to do about it.
The first, completed by a team of federal scientists in December 2006 and made public a month later, described the serious consequences the nation is already encountering as the United States encourages more energy production, the second largest user of water, but gives scant consideration to water supplies, which are in retreat in most regions of the country.
Meanwhile the second and final report that Congress commissioned, a comprehensive research agenda to better understand the nation’s energy-water choke points and begin developing real world solutions, has been held out of public view for more than four years.
22 Rewrites
Michael Hightower, an energy systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories and a co-author of the report, said the first draft of the study on research needs was delivered to the Energy Department in July 2006. Energy Department reviewers have since called for 22 rewrites, the last of which was delivered in May 2009, Hightower said.
Since then the five-member team that co-authored the study has not had any communication about the report with the two primary reviewers, Samuel F. Baldwin, chief technology officer in the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Nicholas B. Woodward in the DOE Office of Science.
“I don’t know why they are holding up the report,” said Hightower in an interview with Circle of Blue. “I can only conclude we don’t know how to write or they don’t like the report. I think we have done a nice job in collecting the data. Maybe the quality is in question.”
Neither Baldwin nor Woodward responded to email messages from Circle of Blue. Ebony Meeks, an assistant press secretary, offered this explanation by email and did not respond to follow-up questions: “When developing a comprehensive technological road map it is imperative that all the data is thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and concurred upon by the multiple participating programs. We plan to release the road map as soon as possible.”
The Energy Department’s decision to prevent the report’s public release could also prove embarrassing. A National Water-Energy Conference Without Key Research
The report’s release couldn’t come soon enough for the agency, and the nation. Over the last five weeks, in its Choke Point: U.S. series, Circle of Blue has thoroughly explored the ever more fierce contest between the nation’s insatiable demand for energy, and the tightening supplies of fresh water.
Among the primary conclusions reached in Choke Point: U.S. is that the nation has not yet recognized the significance of the collision between energy demand and water supply to the economy or the environment. The Road Map report was intended to be a vital step toward closing that information gap.
The Energy Department’s decision to prevent the report’s public release could also prove embarrassing. September 26 is the start of the four-day Water/Energy Sustainability Symposium in Pittsburgh, the second annual national conference co-hosted by the Energy Department to “highlight proven and innovative solutions to complex water/energy challenges.” The Pittsburgh conference is the second in a row that could occur without the principal national study that outlines the research priorities. Last year’s conference took place in Salt Lake City.
It is not at all clear why the Energy Department has apparently iced the Road Map. Calls last week to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which played an important role in securing funding for the Road Map, received no response.
But a number of clues are contained in a March 2007 Sandia National Laboratories paper that summarized the Road Map’s contents. The paper, prepared by Hightower and three colleagues—Ron Pate, Chris Cameron, and Wayne Einfeld—makes clear that any number of executives in the coal, nuclear, oil, solar thermal, and biofuels industries, and their allies in Congress, could be unhappy about the report’s conclusions. The Sandia paper essentially asserts that the United States quickly needs to reconsider and realign much of its energy production policy and water management practices in order to avoid dire shortages of water and potential shortfalls in energy. None of the big energy production or large water use sectors will be left untouched, the paper indicates.
“The U.S. energy infrastructure depends heavily on the availability of water, and there is cause for concern about the availability of that water as we look toward future demands on limited water resources,” the authors wrote. “As future demands for energy and water continue to increase, competition for water between the energy, domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors could significantly impact the reliability and security of future energy production and electric power generation,” they added: “It may not be possible in many areas of the country to meet the country’s growing energy and water needs by following the current U.S. path of largely managing water and energy separately while making small improvements in freshwater supply and small changes in energy and water-use efficiency.”
For instance, the authors raised concerns about U.S. energy policy that is encouraging construction of more coal-fired and nuclear power plants, which use millions of gallons of water an hour, without consideration for where they would be built. The thermo-electric generating sector currently accounts for half of the 400 billion gallons of water withdrawn daily from the nation’s rivers and lakes, principally to cool the plants. The same power plants consume more than 3 billion gallons of water a day, principally through evaporation.
The Energy Information Administration, a unit of the Department of Energy, forecast a nearly 50 percent increase in the demand for electricity between 2005 and 2030. A portion will be filled with energy from the wind and solar photovoltaics, which use virtually no water. Most of the rest will come from new thermoelectric plants.
The Sandia authors noted that new technologies are needed to enable the plants to use coolants other than fresh water, including wastewater from municipal treatment systems, seawater, produced water from mining and drilling operations, and agricultural runoff. In addition, the authors said, U.S. policy encouraging the development of pollution control systems that capture climate-changing emissions and store it deep underground–so-called carbon capture and sequestration–increases water consumption at plants 40 percent to 90 percent.
cont.A far-reaching federal program of research and analysis, funded by Congress and... more
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