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tagged w/ Dams
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No fanfare for China's Three Gorges Dam
As the water level in the reservoir on the Yangtze River approaches its final height of 175 meters, criticism of China's Three Gorges Dam continues.
The completion of Three Gorges is being met with little fanfare, unlike the elaborate celebrations Beijing staged 12 years ago to mark the diversion of the Yangtze on the spot of the future massive dam, Inter Press Service reports.
In China, critics are saying filling of the dam is worsening the drought already affecting the Yangtze's delta. And Chinese diplomats are being met with skepticism in their efforts to promote hydropower across Asia and Africa.
To construct Three Gorges -- the world's largest and most expensive dam -- 1,350 villages were submerged and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. The dam has a capacity of 18,000 megawatts of electricity.
The dam's original cost, when approved in 1992, was estimated at $8.3 billion. That figure has now risen to $27 billion by Beijing's estimate, while other predictions slate the final cost at $88 billion.
"The Three Gorges dam is a model of the past," said Peter Bosshard, the policy director of California-based International Rivers, an organization whose mission is "to protect rivers and the communities that depend on them," Inter Press reports.
"There are smarter ways of generating energy and managing floods than by building outdated mega-projects," said Bosshard.
By blocking the flow of the Yangtze, its ecosystem has been altered to the extent that rare river species of dolphin and sturgeon are now facing extinction. Commercial fisheries along the Yangtze as well as off the river's mouth in the East China Sea have declined. And landslides, pollution of freshwater supplies and a greater risk of earthquakes are among the side effects of the dam.
In September 2007 government officials admitted, "If preventive measures are not taken, there could be an environmental collapse."
Pan Jiazheng, hydrologist with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, maintains that water is the only renewable energy source in China that can be developed on a large scale.
"Developing hydropower is the only viable way to make a dent in China's consumption of coal," Pan told Inter Press. "Those who argue that hydropower is not a clean energy have to ask themselves whether there is any other task more urgent for China's clean development than burning less coal."
Despite domestic and foreign criticism of Three Gorges, China is actively seeking to build hydropower projects in countries ranging from Cambodia to Pakistan to Nigeria.
"It is quasi-science to believe that hydropower equals green energy," said Zheng Yisheng, who researches environment and development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "You can't see rivers just as a source of energy and choose to ignore their ecological function as ecosystems. People need energy but they need a place to live, too."As the water level in the reservoir on the Yangtze River approaches its final height... more-
- JanforGore
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- 12 days ago
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From ecological Soviet-era ruin, the Aral Sea is reborn
Standing on the shore under the relentless Central Asian sun, Badarkhan Prikeyev drew on a cigarette and squinted into the distance as one fishing boat after another returned with the day's catch.
Until recently, this spot where the fish merchant was standing, in a man-made desert at the edge of nowhere, represented one of the world's worst environmental calamities.
Now fresh water was lapping at his boots, proclaiming an environmental miracle — the return of the Aral Sea.
The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest body of fresh water, covering an area the size of Ireland. But then the nations around it became part of the Soviet Union. With their passion for planned economics and giant, nature-reversing projects, the communists diverted the rivers that fed the inland sea and used them to irrigate vast cotton fields. The result: The Aral shrank by 90 percent to a string of isolated stretches of water.
The catastrophe "is unprecedented in modern times," says Philip Micklin, a geography professor at Western Michigan University who has studied the Aral Sea for years.
And even now, nearly two decades after the Soviet Union broke up, the damage is far from reversed. Satellite images taken earlier this year show that one section of the sea has shrunk by 80 percent in the last three years alone. Uzbekistan, which controls three-quarters of the Aral Sea, has given up trying. The rescue has happened on Kazakhstan's portion, and it is striking.
Aralsk is a port that ended up 100 kilometers (60 miles) inland. But now, a dam built by the World Bank and Kazakh government is slowly resurrecting a small part of the sea, reviving the fishing industry and bringing hope to an area that some expected would simply dry up and blow away in the fierce, salty winds.
The returning water has crept to within 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of Aralsk, also known as Aral, and the World Bank reckons it could reach the port in about six years.
Kazakhs can hardly wait. "Good News — The Sea is Coming Back," declares a sign at the entrance to Aralsk.
In some areas, the water is already lapping at the derelict hulls of ships that were stranded deep inland, heightening the ghostly and surreal aura of the landscape.
"Finally, there is hope and a life to be made here." said Prikeyev, 49, waiting for his fishermen near the village of Akespe, 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Aralsk. "Work is available for anyone who wants it."
This summer his boats returned laden with heaving sacks of pike and carp.
The miracle is a small one compared with the damage that will probably never be undone. Uzbekistan has chosen to keep the lucrative cotton industry going, and to prospect for gas and oil under the exposed seabed.
But where the sea is being saved, the solution has proved elegantly simple.
The $88 million project launched in 2001 resulted in a dam to channel the precious waters of the Syr Darya river into the Kazakh section, rather than let them flow south and go to waste.
The five states of former Soviet Central Asia are in broad agreement about the need to coordinate use of the region's two life-giving rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In practice, however, little concrete collaboration has been achieved, meaning certain death for large part of the sea.
The centerpiece of the Aral salvation project is the concrete Kokaral dam. It's an unremarkable-looking structure that can be walked across in less than a minute, but its impact has been dramatic.
The rising water level has noticeably cooled the climate and lowered salinity sufficiently to sustain freshwater fish.
According to the World Bank, the catch of freshwater fish reached around 2,000 tons in 2007, up from just 52 tons in 2004.
For the first time in years, many Kazakhs living near the Aral Sea feel they have a future.Standing on the shore under the relentless Central Asian sun, Badarkhan Prikeyev drew... more-
- JanforGore
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- 21 days ago
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Water-short Iraq faces new peril: the sea
Iraq's water crisis is getting worse by the day, adding to the political uncertainty sweeping the country ahead of potentially incendiary parliamentary elections in January.
On top of the cutbacks in the water flow of the life-giving Tigris and Euphrates rivers by Turkey, Iraq's parched south is now threatened by encroaching tidal waters from the Gulf that are poisoning vital farmland, the result of climate change.
On Sept. 19, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Ankara had agreed to increase the Euphrates flow to between 450 and 500 cubic meters per second until Oct. 20, after which Baghdad would have to negotiate a new deal.
But it will take much more than that to help the Iraqis, who are suffering one of the country's worst droughts in living memory.
Apart from the land around the two great rivers that rise in Turkey's Anatolia region, Iraq is largely desert. These days, its arable land is steadily drying up. Poor rains have damaged farmland even further.
Crop yields are so bad that a country once so fertile and known in antiquity as Mesopotamia - "the land between the rivers" - is now one of the largest importers of wheat in the world.
There is deepening distrust of Ankara in Iraq. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says that Turkey has twice reneged on promises to increase the flow rate of the Euphrates, which also runs through Syria, Iraq's northwestern neighbor.
Baghdad believes that the Syrians too are reducing the Euphrates flow. Damascus denies that, but since Maliki accused Syria of harboring the masterminds of devastating suicide bombings in the capital in August, Baghdad is not likely to get much support from Syria on the water issue.
Turkey has drastically reduced the flow of the two rivers since 2002 because of its ambitious plan to build 22 dams and hydroelectric power plants to develop its impoverished southeast.
Ankara declared in August that it had no water to spare in its reservoirs
So it was something of a surprise when Ankara made a bid to mediate between Baghdad and Damascus in late August as part of Turkey's assertive new foreign policy aimed at establishing itself as a regional leader.
So far, the Turks have made no discernible progress on resolving the political dispute between Syria and Iraq, and the worsening water crisis is raising hackles even further.
The crisis has been worsened by Iranian dam-building to the east, cutting the flow of rivers such as the Karoun, which flows into the Shattt al-Arab, the waterway formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris at Qurna in southern Iraq.
Water has historically been a cause of friction in the largely arid Middle East and there have been concerns that conflict could erupt between Turkey and its riparian neighbors to the south.
This has not happened, even though Turkey and Syria went to the brink of war in 1998 over Syria's harboring of Kurdish separatist leaders.
But Mustafa Kibargolu, of the Department of International Relations at Ankara's Bilkent University, cautioned in a recent analysis: "The fact that any confrontation or high tension stemming from the unsatisfied demands of parties over the use of water has not been seen yet in the region should not mislead observers into thinking that this is unlikely.
"Unless some old policies are purged and new ones introduced, it remains a real possibility."Iraq's water crisis is getting worse by the day, adding to the political uncertainty... more-
- JanforGore
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- 1 month ago
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Utility Agrees to Removal of 4 Klamath River Dams
In a major boost for California's dwindling salmon stocks, a utility company has agreed to the removal of four hydroelectric dams that for decades have blocked fish migrations on one of the West Coast's most important salmon rivers.
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Backers say the decommissioning -- which still must be approved by the federal government -- would be the nation's largest and most complex dam removal project.
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The dams, which range in height from 33 feet to 173 feet and are spread across 65 miles of the Klamath, haven't just kept chinook and coho salmon out of the upper river and its tributaries. They also have hurt water quality.In a major boost for California's dwindling salmon stocks, a utility company has... more -
Iraq's 'Garden of Eden' waterway facing catastrophe
Iraqis living alongside the ancient Shatt al-Arab waterway, the site local legend says of the
Garden of Eden, face an environmental catastrophe because of massive dams built by neighbouring Iran.
A vibrant fresh water lifeline teeming with fish has become a salty, polluted channel which is driving people away from its banks and where fishermen struggle to make a living, local residents and officials say.
At the centre of the dispute is the Karoun river, which this year has been completely staunched by Iran to stop its water feeding into the Shatt al-Arab just above the Iranian oil city of Abadan, local people say.
"Iran completely cut the water from the Karoun and diverted it to the Bahman Shir," an Iranian river, said Oun Dhiab, director of the Iraqi National Centre for Hydro Resources.
"Iranian dams had reduced the flow since 2002, but this year not a drop has reached us. This shortage of water and the increasing saltiness will cause a huge environmental crisis, and is changing the Shatt al-Arab environment," he said.
The Shatt al-Arab, a strategic 200 kilometre-long (120-mile) extension of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, runs between Iraq and Iran, separating the two countries by a width of 400 to 1,500 metres (437 to 1,640 yards) before flowing into the Gulf.
The loss of the fresh torrent that the Karoun brought down from the Iranian mountains has left Iraqi fishermen working in salt-filled waters.
Their ever-shrinking catches are also being polluted by toxic emissions from Iran's Abadan refinery, its largest, on the opposite bank.
Behind the dams, the 890-kilometre Karoun has a flow of between 1,200 and 1,800 cubic metres per second, and the loss of its huge volumes has had a dramatic impact on Iraqis.
"The Abadan refinery is expelling contaminated gases which have polluted the Shatt al-Arab environment and the water, as well as killing fish," said Nama Ghadhban Mansur, governor of Seema district near Basra.
"Now we are suffering from migration because of water pollution, especially as the source of the people's living is animals and agriculture. They have started to leave their homes."
Water reaching the Shatt al-Arab from the Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq's two great rivers, has also fallen sharply, so the Karoun dispute could not have come at a worse time.
Iraq's water minister last month accused Turkey of breaking a promise to increase water flows down the Euphrates. Turkey says it does not have enough water in its reservoirs to send any more.
The lack of fresh water and the pollution has led fishermen in southern Iraq to break long-standing rules.
"The fishing was very good a few years ago," said Adnan Ali Qassim, a father of eight who lives in the port of Al-Faw, home to an estimated 10,000 fishermen.
"There was no fishing during the reproduction season," said the tall 38-year-old, wearing a traditional white dishdasha.
"But fishermen are not respecting the law and are now using illegal methods, such as explosions and electric shocks."
His livelihood has suffered badly.
"We were getting dozens of tonnes of fish per day, but now the number cannot be more than five or six tonnes, all because of the pollution and the increased salt level," Qassim said.
Mohsen Abdul Hai, an agriculture adviser to the governor of Basra province, blamed Iran both for stopping the Karoun's waters from reaching its mouth and for allowing the Abadan refinery to pollute the Shatt al-Arab.
"Fish are dying because of it, and it is also causing the death of large numbers of animals from blindness after drinking salt water," he said.
Asked how the problem might be solved, Hai said the province had appealed to Baghdad to intervene, asking ministers to press both Turkey and Iran to increase the flow of water to Iraq.Iraqis living alongside the ancient Shatt al-Arab waterway, the site local legend says... more-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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In water-scarce Mideast, Jordan and Israel join in controversial pacts
Pacts that will now divert more water to them leaving others out of the equation. Between this and the serious drought plaguing Iraq, there will have to be more equitable and reasonable pacts than this to avert water wars. Notice that the Palestinian people are not mentioned in this. It is the taking of water for their farms and their living that has led in part to the conditions in this area and the ongoing conflict. Will this only exacerbate conflict?Pacts that will now divert more water to them leaving others out of the equation.... more-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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Iraq's new war is a fight for water
Iraq’s devastating water shortages have three main causes: upstream dams in Turkey and Syria have drastically reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates; rainfall levels have hit record lows; and inefficient management techniques mean Iraq wastes what limited water it does have.
“The drought has been a real issue; without rain there has been no replenishment of rivers and groundwater aquifers,” says Mohammed Amin Faris, a leading Iraqi water official. “We used to have droughts once a decade. Now we are worried they are coming every two or three years because of global climate change.
“In addition to that, we have other problems. Neighbouring countries are putting up dams that have stopped us getting the water we had in the past.”
According to Iraqi government figures, water flow in the Euphrates is currently some 200 cubic metres per second as it crosses into Iraq, less than half of the minimum amount required to help the country meet its basic needs. Much of the water is stopped in Turkey, while Syria, battling its own water crisis, is also drawing on supplies. Iraq, downstream of both, pays the price for their consumption.
Similar problems face the Tigris and will be greatly exacerbated if Turkey pushes ahead with its controversial US$2 billion (Dh7.35bn) Ilisu dam project.
“The Euphrates River is already cut as far as Iraq is concerned and the Tigris will be cut as well if Turkey goes ahead,” says Mr Faris. “If these dams are completed the flow from the Tigris will be halved from 20.9 billion cubic metres a year to 9.7 billion cubic metres.”
Most of the cities in Iraq, he says, are dependent on that water: “Vast areas of land will be dry. This dam could destroy Iraq.”
As a member of Iraq’s international water negotiating committee, Mr Faris has been involved in talks with Turkey and Syria designed to come up with an equitable solution for water sharing. Discussions so far have been inconclusive.
“We are trying to get a third party involved in the talks as a mediator, the United States or the United Nations,” he says. “But they have refused. Water is a political issue, it’s part of a political game and of course it’s far more important than oil. There are alternatives to oil but there is no alternative to water.”
The next round of talks was due to take place yesterday in Ankara, and follows claims by the Iraqi water minister, Latif Rashid, that Turkey had broken a promise to increase water flows in the Euphrates.
Iraq also faces reduced water flow from Iran but, according to Mr Faris, government attempts to open dialogue with Tehran on the issue have failed.
“We want negotiations but Iran is just ignoring us,” he says. “They are upstream and we are downstream and there’s not much you can do about it, especially if you are weak.”
Water shortages, acute in the cooler and traditionally wetter northern part of the country, are even worse in central and southern zones. Agriculture has been hit hard.
“We simply don’t have enough water,” says Salam Iskander Zait, the head official for the Ministry of Agriculture in Wasit province, south of Baghdad. His offices are in Kut, on the Tigris. “Water levels have been falling consistently, this is the thing that worries me. It’s not a problem I can solve, it’s something the government will have to do at a national level, working with our neighbours. It’s an international matter.”
Iraqi farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet and impoverished rural areas are slipping further into destitution. Iraqi politicians, government officials and local leaders warn that such developments will serve only to undermine fragile security gains and could provide a breeding ground for insurgents.
There are even suggestions that water shortages could trigger a new international conflict between Iraq and its neighbours. Allegations are increasingly being made, in particular against Turkey and Iran...Iraq’s devastating water shortages have three main causes: upstream dams in Turkey... more-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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Explore Water
Man's impact on water is global. http://current.com/groups/water-is-life/-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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The water wars of California
Don't think water wars are relegated to third world countries. California is a breeding ground for the same with drought, lack of moral will, greed, and political grandstanding all coming together to make matters worse. Sooner or later, something's got to give.
Excerpt:
The pumps that export water out of the delta regularly pulverize federally threatened and endangered fish, yet the government agencies that operate them are rarely held accountable. The agency that is supposed to monitor and protect the health of the San Francisco Bay and the fragile delta ecosystem also gets 80 percent of its budget from water sales. And the state water projects regularly promise more water than they can deliver.
THE GREAT SUCKING SOUND
California's water wars stem from a tricky dilemma: two-thirds of the precipitation falls in the north, while two-thirds of the people live in the drier south. The delta, located primarily in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, is the heart of the state's water supply, where the freshwater flows of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and vein-like tributaries converge. It boasts the largest estuary on the west coast of North and South America, providing critical habitat for at least a dozen threatened or endangered species including salmon, smelt, splittail, sturgeon, and others.
The delta is also like a superhighway interchange of water for the state.
Two vast plumbing networks — the Central Valley Project, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the State Water Project, operated by the Department of Water Resources — transport water from delta pumping stations to cities and agricultural operations across the state.
Roughly 5.7 million acre-feet of water was exported annually from the delta in recent years, a high that many environmentalists say is unsustainable. (An acre-foot, or 325,853 gallons, is the amount that covers an acre one-foot deep.) Before the Central Valley Project was constructed in the 1930s, only 4.7 million acres of farmland were irrigated statewide. By 1997, the acres of thirsty cropland had climbed to 8.9 million, converting many areas that were once barren desert into lush green fields. Agribusiness dominates the sector, with some farming operations like agricultural empires, spanning tens of thousands of acres.
As cropland has expanded, so has agriculture's demand for water. State and federal agencies sell delta water by issuing contracts to water districts, and the water is priced substantially lower for agricultural use. A report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council suggests that delta water allocation has traditionally gone something like this: "Corporate and agricultural interests demanded more and more water, and the state and federal agencies let them have it."
No one can say just how much rain will fall from the sky in a given year, so stipulations were written into the water contracts to deal with allocation during times of water shortage. Depending on a district's water rights — a status determined by a combination of seniority and a hierarchy of uses — it may get 100 percent of the amount promised on paper during a dry year, or a mere fraction of it.
But the districts continue to promise water to farmers, and the state continues to promise water to the districts.
This latest round of water wars is exacerbated by the drought, which has sapped water supply in California for three years in a row.
continued at the link.Don't think water wars are relegated to third world countries. California is a... more-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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Water shortage threatens two million people in southern Iraq
And what is Turkey's solution to this crisis for the Euphrates River? Why build more dams to divert even more water of course. There is no "democracy" in any place where people are deprived of the basic necessities of life. So much for our "occupation." It's bad enough we forced Monsanto seeds down their throats to ruin their agriculture, but now they don't even have enough water to water the seeds. Why is it everywhere we go we bring nothing but misery to the people who live there?
The Middle East is already an arid water scarce area.They cannot afford to have climate change along with multiple dams and wasteful practices adding to their crisis. Once again, the sun shines bright in the sky and all people can think of is using water for electricity that they need to grow food and survive because it makes contractors and politicians rich, and can also be used as a political weapon as the Ilisu Dam in Turkey is one against the Kurds.
Restore the Marshlands, give the seeds back to the farmers, tear down the unncessary dams in Turkey destroying history and being used as political weapons, and invest in solar power in this area to save water. These dams have displaced thousands of people and denied water to those who need it to live. It isn't as though the solutions aren't there, but of course they are always the solutions that make someone money that only matter.
It is time for the Middle East to come into the sun.And what is Turkey's solution to this crisis for the Euphrates River? Why build more... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 months ago
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Water shortage wilts California's San Joaquin valley
After three years of drought, California's legendary water wars are flaring once again, and towns like Mendota, San Joaquin, and Firebaugh are getting a first glimpse of what their future might look like. Farmers blame the area's blight on a "man-made drought" brought on by increasingly strict environmental regulations, but that is only the beginning of the story. There's also the crushing confluence of political negligence, drought, and a century's worth of unbridled growth. Now, as residents wonder if normalcy will ever return, planners are forced to consider a far uglier question: should it? Is a new "normal" required?
That towns like Mendota even exist reflects the extraordinary ambition that built the American West. A century ago, much of the San Joaquin Valley was an undeveloped dust bowl, its few small farming communities clustered around natural water sources. Today, it is a green expanse of agricultural empires. Most of the water that has irrigated these seemingly endless fields comes from northern California, diverted by an epic system of dams and canals born from New Deal funds. It was one of the most ambitious water systems ever built, and the San Joaquin Valley became, in the words of historian Kevin Starr, "the most productive unnatural environment on Earth."
The valley is home to a $20 billion crop industry; the San Joaquin region alone produces more in farm sales than any other individual state in the country. Mark Borba, 59, has a big stake in that business, just as his grandparents did in the valley's development. Borba Farms started off with about 20 milk cows and 30 acres of land in 1910, at a time when farmers who had tapped an underground aquifer were kicking off a race to cultivate. The farm now covers 10,000 acres, and Mark Borba is only one of 600 growers in the Westlands Water District, a water-contracting group of farmers and landowners on the far west side of the valley where Mendota and other towns sit. By the time Borba took over his family's operation in the 1970s, the valley was already supplying 25 percent of the country's food.
Making that explosive growth possible is access to water delivered through an increasingly byzantine system centered on the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, a thousand-square-mile web of channels, islands, and levees where the two rivers meet before flowing into the San Francisco Bay. From there, giant dams and pumps suck the water southward through veinlike aqueducts to 25 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland. But not all water consumers are created equally. In fact, access to the water is essentially based on a squatters' rights notion: "First in rights, first in time." In other words, whoever signed up for a water contract first got the best guarantees. Latecomers got junior rights, meaning they'd be the first to get cut in a dry. Westlands, which has a contract for water delivery with the federal government, is the most junior of the bunch.
It was complicated and costly, but for a long time, the system worked. Over the last three decades, however, the valley's explosive growth has caused rivers to run dry, dead fish to accumulate near the water pumps, and chronic water shortages. The levees near the bay are old, prompting worries that a failure, perhaps following an earthquake, could cause salt water from the bay to rush into the delta, crippling the water supply for the entire state. And the delta smelt, an endangered species of fish no bigger than an index finger, began disappearing as the massive pumps sucked up fish along with the water it was sending south. Lawsuits over the fish filed by environmental groups and water contractors multiplied, and court-imposed restrictions and regulations began siphoning off more and more of the 6 million acre-feet of water exported through the river basin each year.
more at the linkAfter three years of drought, California's legendary water wars are flaring once... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 months ago
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Water crisis in parched Northern China
The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to irrigate his plot of land, even though he lives right next to the largest water project in history.
The elderly farmer watches in despair as his corn crop wilts under the scorching northern China sun, knowing that a fresh, abundant stream is only a stone's throw away.
"We ordinary people don't dare use that water," Li told AFP as he nodded toward the fenced-in canal, part of China's hugely ambitious but troubled South-North Water Diversion Project.
"That water is for Beijing, and people here do not steal water."
The temperatures have approached 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks this summer in Hebei province, a region surrounding Beijing that has been stricken by drought for much of the last decade.
But although Li's crops are withering away, he is getting no sympathy from the authorities -- quite the opposite.
Earlier this year the government announced that the completion of the project's central canal, stretching 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from a tributary of the Yangtze river to Beijing, will be delayed five years to 2014.
This means that instead of being a beneficiary of the project, Hebei will now be tasked with supplying water to the capital until the project is completed.
The delay will further complicate a water shortage in northern China that experts say is caused by global warming, drought and rising demand from 96 million people who live in the booming Beijing region that includes Hebei.
Currently a 300-kilometre portion of the canal from the Hebei city of Shijiazhuang to Beijing is supplying emergency water to the capital from three reservoirs that previously provided water to the parched province.
The canal, which sits above Li's farmland, abruptly disappears as it nears the dry riverbed of the North Yishui river only to reappear on the opposite bank next to a large pump station that sucks the water through pipes underneath the dusty riverbed.
"There has been no water in the river for 30 years," the bronzed Li said, sweating under a straw hat, a partially capped silver tooth gleaming in the sunlight.
His family's well dried up about 10 years ago, so he like other villagers must now rely on water from a machine-pumped well -- and pay for it, making irrigation prohibitively expensive.
"At first the machine-pumped well was only 30 or 40 metres deep, now it is well over 100 metres deep," Li said of the falling underground water table, a phenomenon seen throughout north China.
This situation should have been alleviated by the water diversion project -- an unprecedented 400-billion-yuan (58-billion-dollar) plan to channel water from the humid south to the parched north along three separate lines.
"Now that (construction of the canal) has been pushed back for five years, we will see a deepening of the crisis in the North China region," said Zhang Junfeng, a water expert with Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental group.
"The North-South project was supposed to come on line earlier and it was designed to reduce the amount of underground water being used in urban areas."
The delay means that the region will have to rely on pumping more underground water to meet demand.The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to... more-
- JanforGore
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Russian dam rescuers unlikely to find 64 missing
Sixty-four people missing after a massive pressure surge flooded part of a Russian dam are most likely dead, its owner said on Tuesday, indicating a likely death toll far higher than the 12 confirmed so far. "Finding anyone alive in the flood zone is unlikely, but the search continues," Vasily Zubakin, the chairman of state-controlled hydro-power company RusHydro, said through a spokesman.
A senior official at a local hospital near the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant said the death tally had officially risen to 12 from the 10 given on Monday night.
But 64 people were unaccounted for after a turbine room flooded early on Monday at the power station, Russia's largest. Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed this figure on Tuesday when he arrived on the scene.
Russia has been plagued for years by mine collapses, gas explosions and other catastrophes linked to creaking Soviet-era infrastructure.
After the global economic downturn gripped Russia last year, ambitious plans to revamp roads, ports and power stations were either scaled back or scrapped.
Shoigu said that a sudden surge in water pressure had burst through one of the turbines and caused the flood. "The main reason for the accident was a hydraulic pressure surge, but the cause of that surge still needs to be investigated," he said.
TURBINE PASSED ITS PRIME
Producing three times as much power as the Hoover Dam on the U.S. Colorado river, the Sayano-Shushenskaya station was touted as a jewel of Soviet engineering when it was launched in 1978 on Siberia's Yenisei river.
The turbines, however, have not been overhauled since Soviet times, and the firm that built the destroyed turbine told Reuters on Tuesday that it was too old to work safely.
"The machine is 30 years old. All guarantees of its functioning had passed," said Maria Aliyeva, a spokeswoman for engineering firm Power Machines, adding that the theoretical maximum age of the turbine is 25-30 years.
The Vesti television news channel ran amateur footage showing a fiery explosion near the base of the dam amid a torrent of gushing water.Sixty-four people missing after a massive pressure surge flooded part of a Russian dam... more-
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Fertile Crescent 'will disappear this century'
Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.
Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture.
Tensions have been growing since May, when the Iraqi parliament refused to approve a new much-needed trade deal with Turkey unless it contained binding clauses on river flows. But Turkey appears in no mood to compromise. In July, it announced the final go-ahead for yet another dam, the Ilisu on the Tigris.Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce... more-
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Colorado river reservoirs could bottom out by mid-century
St. Thomas which was a city covered by Lake Mead due to Hoover Dam construction is now exposed due to recession of water levels. To some that may seem like justice because of what was done to St. Thomas originally because of the dam construction, but now this lake which is one of the largest has millions of people dependent on it for water. So now, those in this area who once lost all due to the water coming in may well see that again because of the opposite effect. This is a stark example of what population increases and climate change combined with waste can lead to. It should be a lesson to us all.
From article:
All reservoirs along the Colorado River might dry up by mid-century as the West warms, a new study finds. The probability of such a severe shortage by then runs as high as one-in-two, unless current water-management practices change, the researchers report.
The study's coauthors looked at the effects of a range of reductions in Colorado River stream flow on future reservoir levels and at the implications of different management strategies.
Even under the harshest drying caused by climate change, the large storage capacity of reservoirs on the Colorado might help sustain water supply for a few decades. However, new water management approaches are critical to minimize the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage by mid-century.
"This study, along with others that predict future flow reductions in the Colorado River Basin, suggests that water managers should begin to re-think current water management practices during the next few years, before the more serious effects of climate change appear," says lead study author Balaji Rajagopalan of the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU-Boulder).
The findings by Rajagopalan and his colleagues have been accepted by the journal Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
The Colorado River system is enduring its 10th year of a drought. Fortunately, the river system entered the drought in 2000, with the reservoirs at approximately 95 percent of capacity. The reservoir system is currently at 59 percent of capacity, about the same as this time last year, says Rajagopalan. Roughly 30 million people depend on the Colorado River for drinking and irrigation water.
The research team examined the future vulnerability of the system to water supply variability coupled with projected changes in water demand. They found that through 2026, the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage in any given year remains below 10 percent under any scenario of climate fluctuation or management alternative. During this period, the reservoir storage could even recover from its current low level, according to the researchers.
But if climate change results in a 10 percent reduction in the Colorado River's average stream flow as some recent studies predict, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed 25 percent by 2057, according to the study. If climate change results in a 20 percent flow reduction, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed one in two by 2057, Rajagopalan says.
"On average, drying caused by climate change would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage by nearly ten times more than the risk we expect from population pressures alone," Rajagopalan says.
"By mid-century this risk translates into a 50 percent chance in any given year of empty reservoirs, an enormous risk and huge water management challenge," he says.
The river hosts more than a dozen dams along its 2,330-kilometer (1,450-mile) journey from Colorado's Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California.
end of excerpt.St. Thomas which was a city covered by Lake Mead due to Hoover Dam construction is now... more-
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Endangered Killer Whales Desperately Need Salmon
The dwindling population of Killer Whales (Orcas) on the United States Pacific Coast depends upon wild salmon, whose numbers can be increased only by revising water policy on the Sacramento and Columbia rivers. Will the Obama Administration do the right thing?The dwindling population of Killer Whales (Orcas) on the United States Pacific Coast... more-
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Panama's Ngobe Indians win major victory at Inter-American Commission on human rights
After two years of brutal government repression and destruction of their homeland, the Ngöbe Indians of western Panama won a major victory yesterday as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Panama to suspend all work on a hydroelectric dam that threatens the Ngöbe homeland. The Chan-75 Dam is being built across the Changuinola River by the government of Panama and a subsidiary of the Virginia-based energy giant AES Corporation. The Commission’s decision was the result of a petition filed last year by the Ngöbe, after AES-Changuinola began bulldozing houses and farming plots. When the Ngöbe protested the destruction of their homes, the government sent in riot police who beat and arrested villagers, including women and children, and then set up a permanent cordon around the community to prevent anyone from entering the area. In addition to threatening the community, the dam will irreversibly harm the nearby La Amistad UN Biosphere Reserve.
“We are thrilled to have the Commission take these measures to protect Ngöbe communities,” said Ellen Lutz, executive director of Cultural Survival and lead counsel for the Ngöbe. “We are hopeful that this will help the government of Panama and AES recognize their obligation to respect Ngöbe rights.”
The Commission, which is a body of the Organization of American States, is still considering the Ngöbe’s petition and issued this injunction, called precautionary measures, to prevent any further threat to the community and the environment while the Commission deliberates on the merits of the case.
Specifically, the Commission called on the government to suspend all construction and other activities related to its concession to AES-Changuinola to build and administer the Chan-75 Dam and abutting nationally protected lands along the Changuinola River.
In addition to Chan-75, for which land clearing, roadwork, and river dredging are already well underway, the order covers two other proposed dam sites upstream. The Commission further called upon the government of Panama to guarantee the Ngöbe people’s basic human rights, including their rights to life, physical security, and freedom of movement, and to prevent violence or intimidation against them, which have typified the construction process over the past two years. The Commission required the government to report back to it in 20 days on the steps it has taken to comply with the precautionary measures.
Chan-75 would inundate four Ngöbe villages that are home to approximately 1,000. Another 4,000 Ngöbe living in neighboring villages would be affected by the destruction of their transportation routes, flooding of their agricultural plots, lack of their access to their farmlands, and reduction or elimination of fish that are an important protein source in their diet. It would also open up their territories to non-Ngöbe settlers.
The dam also will cause grave environmental harm to the UNESCO-protected La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, an international World Heritage Site that upriver from the dam site. Scientists believe that there is a high risk of losing important fish species that support the reserve’s wildlife, including several endangered species, because the dam will destroy their migration route.
end of excerptAfter two years of brutal government repression and destruction of their homeland, the... more-
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Drought and desertification worsening in Tibet
Rising temperature and deforestation have intensified drought and desertification in Tibet, China's state media said.
Drought conditions have hit 33 counties in five of the six prefectures in Tibet, affecting 15.3 percent of the Tibetan plateau, Xinhua said, quoting the regional drought relief and flood control headquarters.
According to the report, the drought has also killed 13,601 head of cattle.
Nine meteorological centers in Tibet have not seen substantial rain for 226 consecutive days, Zhao Yiping, head of the Tibet Regional Meteorological Bureau said.
The drought has also been worsened by higher than normal temperatures. Tibet has experienced temperatures 0.4 to 2.3 celsius degrees higher than normal years, Zhao said.
The report by Xinhua news agency follows a warning by China's top weather official last month that Tibet faced a growing threat of drought and floods as global warming melts its glaciers.
The head of the China Meteorological Bureau, Zheng Guogang, last month was quoted by Xinhua as warning that global warming was accelerating glacial shrinkage, causing Tibet's lakes to swell.
"If the warming continues, millions of people in western China will face floods in the short term and drought in the long run.
Moreover, desertification is spreading by 39,600 hectares (98,000 acres) annually in Tibet, an official at the regional forestry bureau was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency."
end of excerpt.
http://www.tibetcustom.com/article.php/2009062015494691
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Reported by Chinese media. Yes China, but keep building those dams.
More at the link.Rising temperature and deforestation have intensified drought and desertification in... more-
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China to displace 330,000 people for water project
About 330,000 people in central China are to be evicted from their homes to make way for a reservoir that will form part of a massive water diversion project, state media said Sunday.
More than two-thirds of the people in Hubei and Henan provinces would be relocated to about 50 nearby counties and cities, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Jiyao, head of the project, as saying.
Zhang did not say where the remaining 100,000 would be placed to make way for the Danjiangkou Reservoir, part of the multi-billion-dollar North-South Water Diversion Project. The project aims to bring water from the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north of the country, which is plagued by droughts.
Xinhua has previously said that by 2010, when part of the project will have been completed, up to one billion cubic metres of water will be diverted to Beijing annually.
According to the project's website, the relocation of the 330,000 people is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
end of excerpt from article.
Also see:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE51Q02E20090227?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
There is great discontent amongst the people over this water scheme.
I am really exasperated in continuing to read about the proliferation of dams not only in Asia but also in Africa. As we have seen from every example of a dam being built in these areas, it does nothing but displace people, cause environmental devastation, and threaten agriculture thus exacerbating the very conditions already plaguing farmers in China now. I sometimes really do find myself speechless.
My previous entry on Three Gorges Dam with comment:
Three Gorges Dam-Hydropower At A Huge Human Cost
http://water-is-life.blogspot.com/2007/11/three-gorges-dam-hydropower-at-huge.html
I have to honestly state that I am sad regarding human behavior today. We see the crisis and yet we continue to shield our eyes from it thinking business as usual is going to solve it when it is really a paradigm moral shift that must occur in our consciousness that will bring us the answers. In short, we have forgotten what it is to be human (if we even know what that means) and instead only care on the whole about survival at any cost (which is really not survival) instead of survival in balance with peace and ecological consciousness.
Water is our lifeblood not a commodity to be used carelessly without regard for the consequences. I think China is learning that lesson the hard way.About 330,000 people in central China are to be evicted from their homes to make way... more-
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Himalayan dam project stopped after scientist on hunger strike almost dies
Work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas has been stopped after one of India's most eminent scientists came close to dying on the 38th day of a fast, in protest against the harnessing of a tributary of the sacred river Ganges.
Professor AD Agarwal, 77, former dean of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, last week called off his second fast in a year against Himalayan dam projects, after the Indian government agreed to speed up its inquiry into how electricity could be generated without the flow of the water being impeded. The free-running of the river is a crucial element of its sacred status.
"The water ... is not ordinary water to a Hindu. It is a matter of the life and death of Hindu faith," Agarwal said, before his fast began in January.
The 600MW Loharinag-Pala project is one of several hundred major dams and barrages planned or now being constructed by India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan for the foothills of the Himalayas. Together they are expected to provide 150,000MW of electricity for countries in which power cuts are frequent and demand is growing fast. But experts argue the dams will have profound effects on the environment and culture of the region, directly affecting the lives of millions of people.
According to a recent report from the NGO International Rivers, the dams will fundamentally transform the landscape, ecology and economy of the region and will displace hundreds of thousands of people. Shripad Dharmadhikary, one of South Asia's leading water and energy experts who authored the report, said: "Damming and diversion of rivers [in the Himalayas] will severely disrupt downstream flows, impacting agriculture and fisheries and threatening livelihoods of entire populations."
Tomorrow – designated International Day of Action for Rivers – the NGO is organising a global campaign against dams.
Dharmadhikary's report said the dams are being planned and carried out with hardly any environmental assessment of individual or cumulative impacts. "If all the planned capacity expansion materialises, the Himalayan region could have the highest concentration of dams in the world. The dams' reservoirs, tunnels, transmission lines and related works will destroy thousands of houses, rivers, forests, spiritual sites and even parts of the highest highway in the world, the Karakoram highway."
In addition, it warns that climate change could reduce the amount of electricity that the dams are planned to generate. This is because increased melting of glaciers is causing more silt to be washed down the mountains, reducing the capacity of the dams. "The impact of global warming is already being felt much more in the Himalayas than in other parts of the world. This is resulting in the accelerated melting of glaciers and the depletion of the massive water store of the region. There are real fears the snow-covered mountains [will turn] into bare, rocky mountains. As glaciers melt, water in the rivers will rise, and dams will be subjected to much higher flows, raising concerns of dam safety," it says.
In the past few years, Pakistan, India, Bhutan and Nepal have all prepared plans for a massive programme of dam building in the region. Bhutan, one of the most remote but pristine countries in the world, is planning to expand its hydroelectricity capacity by about 10,000 MW - the equivalent of at least five British nuclear power stations - in the next 10 years. Among the projects planned for the near future in Bhutan are the giant 1,095 MW Punatsangchu-I and the 600 MW Mangdechhu projects. Nepal is planning to install hydropower capacity of 22,000 MW in the coming years and while some of the dams would be to meet its own acute needs for reliable electricity, the majority would be for export to India.Work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas has been stopped after one of... more-
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