Water Waste // Current TV

Riot police quell protest as World Water Forum opens

The World Water Forum, a seven-day arena aimed at addressing the planet's deepening crisis of fresh water, was launched here Monday amid a violent protest broken up by riot police using tear gas.

The forum, held only every three years, will address growing water scarcity, the risk of conflict as countries squabble over rivers, lakes and aquifers, and how to provide clean water and sanitation to billions.

Anti-riot police dispersed some 300 demonstrators against the forum as they headed to the venue buildings, detaining at least 15. The protesters, whose rally had been called by unions, environmentalists, and leftist organisations, responded to tear gas by hurling rocks and beating officers with sticks.

They chanted slogans such as "water is people, it's life, it's not for sale," and "we want to crush this forum which wants to take our water". Heading an appeal for the globe to husband its water resources, Loic Fauchon, president of the World Water Council staging the conference, said humanity was squarely to blame for wasting the precious stuff of life.

"We are responsible," he said. "Responsible for the aggressions perpetrated against water, responsible for the current climate changes which come on top of the global changes, responsible for the tensions which reduce the availability of freshwater masses so indispensable to the survival of humanity."

He added: "At this very time in the history of water, we are faced with a major challenge to use more water resources but at the same time to protect, enhance the value of and even reuse these waters."

The world's population, currently more than 6.5 billion, is expected to rise to nine billion by mid-century, placing further massive demands on water supplies that are already under strain.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicts a rise in the number of people living under severe water stress to 3.9 billion by 2030, amounting to nearly half the world's population. Most of these will live in China and South Asia.

That tally does not include the impacts of climate change. Global warming may already be affecting weather patterns, changing the time and place where rain and snow fall, say some experts. Around 2.5 billion people today do not have access to decent sanitation, defying one of the targets of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

Hydrologists say the crisis is rooted in excessive irrigation, leakage of urban water supplies, pollution of river water and unbridled extraction of water from nearly every type of source.
The need for better management of water "is becoming more urgent," the head of the OECD, Angel Gurria, warned in a report to be issued on Tuesday.

"We witness increasing pressure, competition and, in some regions, even conflict over the use of water resources. Poor governance and inadequate investment are resulting in billions of people not having access to water and sanitation services." Tens of billions of dollars are needed annually to fix the world's water systems, but policies to address the global financial crisis could help meet the target, the report says.

Gurria admitted in an interview that the world's economic crisis cast a shadow over the ability to muster such huge sums, including in development aid. But, he said, hope lies in the plans set by the United States, China, European countries and others to spend massively in infrastructure to steer their economies out of the path of recession.

end of excerpt.The World Water Forum, a seven-day arena aimed at addressing the planet's... more

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Big business told to ax risk by cutting water usage

One of the biggest wasters of water is industry. Personally, I think they should have... more

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How we can avoid a world without water

There is no more of an insidious killer than drought because of its subtlety and silence. It creeps across the land and air sucking out its moisture and leaving nothing but devastation and hunger in its wake. It robs humans and other species of the sustenance they must have to survive, and it seeks to cast a dark shadow in the background of the raging fires it precipitates. It takes great pleasure in the misery it creates and shows no remorse for the lives it takes.

Too dramatic you think? I think not. Drought has been and continues to be a persistant and severe threat upon the Earth. Only now, it is excelerating and becoming even more of a persistant and severe threat due to our own intervention. Can you imagine that? We by our own hand are exacerbating the very condition that is leading to our own demise due to our own selfish oblivious actions or lack of action regarding it.

And as we see with many parts of the world including Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and now even the U.S., the balance between conservation and waste of this life giving resource is dangerously out of balance. The balance between a stable climate that supports life and an erratic climate that destroys life is also dangerously out of balance in concert with actions surrounding water resources. And its remedy now rests with human choices. So what can be done?

Besides an entire shift in consciousness and in how we see water, political will is one important way water policy is fixed from local to the federal level. However, as with consciousness surrounding the climate crisis people must be aware that there is a problem and that it effects their lives. Once that message is clear people seek to move beyond the confortable boundaries they live in to exact change. For many, severe drought in Kenya, China, or Gaza does not phase them as to them it is a world away. However, when we realize how the hydrologic cycle plays into all of our lives and how it is affected by pollution, waste, mismanagement, privitization, and now climate change, those areas of the world do not look so far away anymore.

And this is where we are at now. Looking across the great expanse of our world and seeing the effects of drought and how close to home it is to us and that its effects are not indigenous to just one part of the world. That is the first step towards action.

We need not live in a world without water, but that will mean living in a world without apathy and fear of facing problems head on to solve them. It will not be easy to do now as we already see the relentless shadow of drought moving across the landscape, but it is something we must do in order to save our most precious resource in order to save ourselves.

This article and interview with Peter Gleick gives us good insight into drought, the global water crisis, and the solutions that lie before us now.

How we can avoid a world without water
http://www.alternet.org/water/127703/peter_gleick%3A_how_we_can_avoid_a_world_without_water/?page=1There is no more of an insidious killer than drought because of its subtlety and... more

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Promote Clean Water - Everyone needs it. Not Everyone Has It.

1 in 6 people do not have access to clean drinking water. Approximately every 14... more

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1 comment

EcoStiletto - Go Green Water Challenge

EcoStiletto's Rachel Sarnoff took the Go Green Water Challenge of Green... more

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Russia and Central Asian water

That's right, not oil, but water.

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Snow study shows California faces historic drought

As predicted, droughts will become worse in this part of the US. How bad will it have... more

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USDA to deregulate first ever industrial GE crop which threatens human health

A corn crop to be used just for ethanol? Wasn't it already proven that ethanol... more

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A car that gives 310mpg of water

"A vehicle that travels 500 km on a litre of fuel, with water as an important... more

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Coca Cola, others charged with greenwash at protest in San Francisco

Great to see this happening in America. We need to see more of it in the coming year... more

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Climate change and drought to strain Colorado River

What would you do if your well ran dry? Would you care about water then? For the... more

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Farmers in California feeling effects of drought

Water restrictions, higher prices, and wildfires that are more ferocious brought on by... more

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The world has a water shortage, not a food shortage

Most people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if the water that goes into their food is taken into account. The rich gulp down far more, since they tend to eat more meat, which takes far more water to produce than grains. So as the world's population grows and incomes rise, farmers will if they use today's methods need a great deal more water to keep everyone fed: 2,000 more cubic kilometres a year by 2030, according to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a research centre, or over a quarter more than they use today. Yet in many farming regions, water is scarce and likely to get scarcer as global warming worsens. The world is facing not so much a food crisis as a water crisis, argues Colin Chartres, IWMI's director-general.

The solution, Mr Chartres and others contend, is more efficient use of water or, as the sloganeers put it,; more crop per drop;. Some 1.2 billion people, about a fifth of the world's population, live in places that are short of water (see map). Farming accounts for roughly 70% of human water consumption. So when water starts to run out, as is happening in northern China, southern Spain and the western United States, among other places, farming tends to offer the best potential for thrift. But governments, whether to win votes or to protect the poor, rarely charge farmers a market price for water. So they are usually more wasteful than other consumers even though the value they create from the water is often less than households or industry would be willing to pay for it.

The pressing need is to make water go further. Antoine Frarot, the head of the water division of Veolia Environnement, a French firm, promotes recycling, whereby city wastewater is treated until it can be used in industry or agriculture. This costs about a third less than desalination, and cuts pollution. He expects his recycling business to quadruple in the next decade. Yet as Mr Frarot himself concedes, there are many even cheaper ways to save water. As much as 70% of water used by farmers never gets to crops, perhaps lost through leaky irrigation channels or by draining into rivers or groundwater. Investment in drip irrigation, or simply repairing the worst leaks, could bring huge savings.

end of excerpt.

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I believe that irrigation holds the solution to a great part of the global water crisis. In many parts of the world sprinkler irrigation is still the most used method of irrigation because it is the most available and least expensive. This method however is very wasteful, and using it in places where pervasive drought is common is not cost effective. In order for us as a species to mitigate the crisis we will surely face regarding water if present behavior persists we will have to change how we do things. Regarding the irrigation of crops it will be how they are irrigated, when they are irrigated based on changing weather patterns, and also in focusing on areas looking towards less water intensive crops in drier areas.

It is unfortunate that the very places where the most water intensive crops are grown such as cotton, rice, and corn (India, China, Africa, and the Southwest US ) are experiencing the most pervasive droughts and desertification now. As population increases towards 9 billion and resources become scarcer, farmers will most certainly have to devise ways of conserving water to get optimal growth and yield from a limited resource.

Through shifting the emphasis on crop varieties grown in these areas if possible and by changing irrigation methods from sprinkler to drip irrigation, trillions of gallons of water could be saved. Also in places where weather patterns are changing and are seeing more rain, rain catchement systems will be invaluable in helping to catch excess rain and use it for irrigation purposes.

more at the link.Most people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if... more

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When it comes to water, Pickens is far from green

"While touting his plan to wean us off foreign oil, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens says little of his intention to market fossil water. Thanks to help he obtained from the Texas Legislature, he has stacked the board of a tiny water district and by the power of eminent domain also granted him by the Legislature, he can force landowners to sell him rights to a 320-mile strip of land by which he will pipe the water down the same corridor to Dallas that he plans to use transmitting his wind power. But Pickens is just one of thousands of capitalists who sell precious Ogallala water for private gain. Like him, they are aided by government.

Pickens shouldn't be allowed to sell 65 billion gallons a year as he proposes, but neither should Plains farmers be allowed to pump 6.2 trillion gallons annually, over half of which is poured onto corn. With populations increasing and global warming likely to cause widespread drought, we should redirect the billions we spend on corn subsidies and take control from local water districts. Under federal or state control, we could end Texas's 'right of capture' policy, which parcels water to the landowner with the biggest pump."

Julene Bair is a writer and author of One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter. She will soon complete Where Rivers Run Sand, a personal account of the crisis facing the Ogallala Aquifer.

From article byJulene Bair.
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How outrageous is this? That one man could use his wealth and political favors to secure ownership of what is a human right in order to sell it for his own profit. This is a blatant example of using the current water crisis we face for personal gain. People like T. Boone Pickens have no soul as far as I am concerned, and we now know the real story behind his so called green wind initiative.

Water for this plan would come from the panhandle section of the Ogallala Aquifer. As one of the largest underground aquifers in the world, the Ogallala runs from Texas to South Dakota and a century ago was said to hold more water than Lake Huron. Since then, cheap electric pumps gave farmers the power to bring water up hundreds of feet, and the depletion began. This aquifer waters a little over one-fifth of the nation's irrigated land, and is steadily being depleted due to population growth, overuse, ineffective agricultural methods that waste trillions of gallons a year, and now global warming/climate change in the form of drought. See my previous entry on this: Devastating Drought Settles On The High Plains. It is a ripe area for exploitation, and that is exactly what T. Boone Pickens is doing. He is hoping to sell this scarcer water at a high price to make a profit from it. A green venture? Hardly.

And the Ogallala isn't the same as rivers or lakes. There is no source of replenishment. It holds "fossil water" which has been sealed underground for hundreds of thousands of years. Once it's gone it's gone forever... again, forever. However, as the Ogallala Aquifer's water level continues to decline, Pickens is looking to expand its usage and more than likely that includes making even more profit agriculturally from ethanol production.

So the wind mills... a diversionary ruse on the part of an oil man posing as a green convert who supported George W. Bush to the hilt and is now being repaid for it at the expense of a precious resource now more precious than oil? A resource of the Ogallala that should not belong to him exclusively, or any one farmer over another. This is why Texas' 'right of capture' policy must be stopped in order to preserve the declining water level of the Ogallala Aquifer and to protect it from vulture capitalists who seek to steal it.

These states need to stand up for their water!"While touting his plan to wean us off foreign oil, Texas billionaire T. Boone... more

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Carbon capture coal plant opens in Germany amid reservations

Energy giant Vattenfall has launched an emissions-free coal-fired test plant near... more

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Lake Tuz, Turkey's 2nd largest lake disappearing

Lake Tuz, located in central Anatolia and known as the second-largest lake of Turkey, can no longer carry that title as it has shrunk by 85 percent over the last 90 years due to global warming, drought and the over usage of its water for irrigation purposes.

Aksaray University department of engineering, geodesy and photogrammetry engineering instructor Semih Ekercin spoke with the Anatolia news agency on Tuesday and said he examined the changes to the coastlines of Lake Tuz, second in size only to Lake Van, located in eastern Anatolia, and Beyşehir Lake, located in the western part of central Anatolia.

Ekercin said he even received support from NASA during the course of his study, adding that after examining satellite maps of Turkey provided by the US, Japan and France, he found there was a serious shrinkage of Turkey's lakes.

Ekercin said Lake Tuz covered 216,400 hectares in 1915. "Lake Tuz has shrunk at an alarming rate from then on. The water surface area of Lake Tuz decreased to 92,600 hectares in 1987," Ekercin said. "I clearly detected from the satellite images that the area of Lake Tuz decreased to 32,600 hectares in 2005. Drought, the over usage of water in the lake basin for irrigation and global warming have led to the loss of water in the lake.

snip

Ekercin said there is a need for urgent and radical measures to protect Lake Tuz. "If the necessary measures are not taken, by 2015 Lake Tuz will no longer exist."
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Radical measures indeed. The World Water Forum is taking place this week in Stockholm... but like every other year, what "radical" plans will come from it? Every year there are meetings, forums, dinners, and talks. And every year we see scenarios like Lake Tuz in Turkey continuing to play out before our eyes. We talk, and yet while talking still continue to perpetuate the climate change/global warming that is dropping levels in waterways worldwide. We talk, and yet continue to pollute our waterways until they are of no use to us or other species and cause the death of many rivers worldwide. We talk, and yet we still do not have a sufficient global plan to deal with the affects of climate change/drought that are slowly and silently creeping to all corners of this world as we continue to waste water with inefficient agricultural practices, infrastructure, and greed.

Those who know of and remember the tragedy of the Aral Sea in Russia see a hauntingly familiar and frightening pattern here. People care more for their own selfish sustainment than for only using what they need, which is considerably less than what they want. How many lakes and rivers will we run dry before we realize that we are running out of time to fight for the sustainability of this planet? Where is the plan? Where are the politicians? The World Bank doesn't have that plan. The IMF doesn't have that plan. The G8 doesn't have that plan. Will the World Water Forum in Stockholm have that plan?

The loss of Lake Tuz like so many other waterways, the Murray River in Australia as a starker example is a harbinger to us that something is terribly wrong.

Why aren't we listening?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

How many more?Lake Tuz, located in central Anatolia and known as the second-largest lake of Turkey,... more

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Spain sweats amid 'water wars'

Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the... more

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Ceremony marks 'death' of Australia's greatest river

Thousands of people rallied in southern Australia Sunday to protest the dwindling... more

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The looming nuclear nightmare in the backwoods of North Carolina

Looking for weapons of mass destruction? Try the backwoods of North Carolina. The site is easy to find. You don't need infrared telemetry, informants, or a global positioning satellite. Just follow the railroad tracks deep into the heart of the triangle area to the gleaming cooling tower of the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, which rises like a concrete beacon out of the forest.

It may not look like much-a run-of-the-mill nuke, but inside the confines of the steel fence that rings the plant, resides one of the most lethal patches of ground in North America. Shearon Harris is not just a nuclear power-generating station, but a repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants owned by Progress Energy.

Those railroad tracks? They're for hauling nuclear waste. The spent fuel rods are carted by rail from the Brunswick and Robinson nuclear reactors to Shearon Harris, where they are stored in four densely packed pools, filled with circulating cold water to keep the waste from heating up. The pools are interconnected and enclosed within one building. That building is attached to the reactor itself. Together, they form the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country.

All this makes Shearon Harris a very inviting target for would-be terrorists. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has fingered Shearon Harris as one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the nation.

Potential atomic terrorists don't have to steal plutonium, take a crash course in physics, or concoct a bomb to manufacture a radiological nightmare scenario in the heart of the Carolinas. All they have to do is penetrate the security fence of a lightly guarded commercial reactor and find a way to ignite the pools of high-level radioactive waste. The easiest method is to disrupt the circulation of the water system that keeps the pools cool.

The resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable. Moreover, because the water system that feeds the waste pools is also connected to the Shearon Harris reactor, a pool fire could also trigger a nuclear meltdown. And so it goes.

An uncontrolled pool fire and meltdown at Shearon Harris would put more than two million residents of this rapidly growing section of North Carolina in extreme peril. A recent study by the Brookhaven Labs, not known to overstate nuclear risks, estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage.

Looking for weapons of mass destruction? Try the backwoods of North Carolina. The site... more

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California attorney general cracks down on Nestle water bottling plant plans

Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.

Nestle Waters North America wants to pump about 200 million gallons of water a year from three natural springs that supply McCloud, about 280 miles north of San Francisco. Brown's office said that's enough to fill 3.1 billion 8-ounce plastic water bottles.

The water would be bottled at a 350,000-square-foot facility on the outskirts of the former lumber town.

The Swiss-based company scaled back its plans in May after years of opposition from environmentalists and a group of McCloud residents. It originally sought to pump more than double the amount of water.

David Palais, Nestle's Northern California natural resource manager, said the company already was planning studies on air and water quality, hazardous materials, traffic conditions and climate change for a new environmental review of the bottling plant.

"We appreciate the attorney general's letter and share his commitment to ensuring that new projects in California do not negatively impact the environment," Palais said in a statement.

He said the company will conduct environmental studies over the next two or three years. Afterward, Siskiyou County will prepare a new environmental impact report for the project.

Brown said the company must put its revisions into a new contract with the town of McCloud. He wants proper study of the environmental consequences of the bottling operation, saying the previous draft review had "serious deficiencies."

He said it failed to include an examination of whether the operation will contribute to global warming through the production of plastic bottles, the operation's electrical demands and the diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions produced by trucks traveling to and from the plant.

"It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States," Brown said in a statement. "Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles."
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This boggles my mind. California is in a drought in most of the state with more wildfires reported this year, and all Nestle can think of is pumping millions of gallons of water from a spring to put it in plastic bottles to make a profit from it? Another company without a moral center! Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed... more

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