Water Waste // Current

Farmers in California feeling effects of drought

Water restrictions, higher prices, and wildfires that are more ferocious brought on by climate change are changing the landscape... more

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18 days ago

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 the water that goes into their food is taken... more

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2 months ago

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 Pickens says little of his intention to market... more

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3 months ago

Carbon capture coal plant opens in Germany amid reservations

Energy giant Vattenfall has launched an emissions-free coal-fired test plant near Berlin using a technology touted as a huge... more

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3 months ago

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.

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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, can no longer carry that title as it has... more

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3 months ago

Spain sweats amid 'water wars'

Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of... more

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27 responses

4 months ago

Ceremony marks 'death' of Australia's greatest river

Thousands of people rallied in southern Australia Sunday to protest the dwindling water levels in one of the country's... more

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4 months ago

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 is easy to find. You don't need... more

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4 months ago

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 water-bottling operation in Northern California... more

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4 months ago

Don't Fall For Nuclear Power

While the presidential hopefuls trade barbs and accuse each other of flip- flopping, they agree with President Bush on their enthusiastic support for nuclear power.

Sen. John McCain has called for 100 new nuclear power plants. Sen. Barack Obama, in a July 2007 Democratic debate, answered a pro-nuclear power audience member, "I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix."

Among Obama's top contributors are executives of Exelon Corp., a leading nuclear power operator in the nation. Just last week, Exelon released a new plan called "Exelon 2020: A Low-Carbon Roadmap." The nuclear power industry sees global warming as a golden opportunity to sell its insanely expensive and dangerous power plants.

But nuclear power is not a solution to climate change — rather, it causes problems. Amory Lovins is the co-founder and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. He makes simple, powerful points against nuclear: "The nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It is a very carefully fabricated illusion ... there are no buyers. Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies." He adds: "Basically, we can have as many nuclear plants as Congress can force the taxpayers to pay for. But you won't get any in a market economy."

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The presidential hopefuls are wrong on nuclear power. Wind, solar and microgeneration (generating electricity and heat at the same time, in smaller plants), on the other hand, are taking off globally, gaining billions of dollars in private investments. Lovins summarizes: "One of the big reasons we have an oil problem and a climate problem today is we spent our money on the wrong stuff. If we had spent it on efficiency and renewables, those problems would've gone away, and we would've made trillions of dollars' profit on the deal because it's so much cheaper to save energy than to supply it." The answer is blowing in the wind.
While the presidential hopefuls trade barbs and accuse each other of flip- flopping, they agree with President Bush on their... more

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4 months ago

Olympics Suck Up China's Already Scarce Water

Three years ago, local government officials told farmers in this village of 7,000 residents to stop using water from a reservoir near their wheat and corn fields. If they needed water, the farmers were told, they would have to dig a well.

"They said there wasn't enough water," Jia Jianguo, 60, recalled.

At their own expense, the farmers dug a 90-foot well. But even though the new irrigation system worked fine, the locals have been forced to pool their meager resources each year that the water recedes to keep their crops alive. The well is now 135 feet deep, and the groundwater is seeping away as fast as the province's increasingly scarce water supplies are being channeled some 100 miles southwest to the thirsty capital of 15 million inhabitants, Beijing.

The Changgucheng farmers were never told that their reservoir is one of four in the province tapped to meet the capital's demand for water leading up to and during the Olympic Games, which begin in August. The Games are expected to increase Beijing's water consumption by at least 5 percent, or 162,000 acre-feet, according to a recent report by Probe International, a Canadian environmental group. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.

From south to north
The channel is needed not only to make more water available for Beijing, but to clean Olympic venues and to flush out the city's polluted canals and lakes.

It is part of a mammoth $25 billion diversion scheme to bring water from southern rivers to the arid north to bolster Beijing's water supply.

Ecologists say this is just another example of how the push to showcase a green Olympics is creating environmental problems in provinces outside Beijing. Major polluting factories have been shut down or moved out of the capital for the Olympics. Diverting Hebei's water is just one of many potentially problematic actions, experts say.
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Diverting scarce water from farmers just to put on a show for the world is sickening.
Another reason to boycott their sham along with their human rights abuses and their part in genocide.Three years ago, local government officials told farmers in this village of 7,000 residents to stop using water from a reservoir... more

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5 months ago

Diary: Colorado River drought

The south-western US is suffering its eighth consecutive year of drought. There are concerns that the Colorado River, which has... more

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5 months ago

Bejing Water Diversion Plan for Olympics Criticized

Plans to divert water to Beijing for the Olympic Games are shortsighted and will not ease the city's severe water crisis, a Canadian-based development policy group said in a study released recently.

Channeling water from neighboring provinces for an event billed as the “Green Olympics” is not a “fundamental solution,” Probe International said in its report, compiled by a team of experts in Beijing who requested anonymity. Such diversions are expensive and damage the environment, the report said.

“Whether diverting surface water or digging ever-deeper for groundwater, the underlying solution proposed is like trying to quench thirst by drinking poison,” the report said.
It didn't say why the compilers had requested anonymity, although the Olympics are a highly sensitive issue and authorities have responded harshly at times to perceived critics of the games.

Explosive growth combined with a persistent drought for over two decades have drawn down Beijing's water table, meaning the city of 17 million people is fast running out of water.

Beijing has drained surrounding regions in recent years to supply its growing water needs, depriving poor farmers of water and encouraging wasteful consumption, the report said.

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Nearly all Olympic venues and the Olympic Village will use treated wastewater for heating systems and toilets. Recycled wastewater also will irrigate the Olympic Park, which will include a wooded area and an artificial lake. But the rowing venue, built on the dried-out Chaobai river bed in Beijing's Shunyi district, will use precious reservoir water. An eight-mile underground tunnel will divert water from the Wenyu River to keep the landscape green.
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Again, Bejing has one of the world's lowest per person available water resources, at one-thirtieth of the world average. And yet, they continue to divert water from poor farmers and others who need it to make artificial lakes and landscaping for the Olympics which they are hoping will bring them a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. I am already boycotting the Bejing Olympics because of China's involvement with Sudan regarding drilling oil wells on land cleared in the Darfur genocide. These selfish moves regarding water diversion make another reason why a boycott is necessary.

This is simply wasteful at a time when water conservation is crucial to the people of China, especially considering 90% of their rivers are already polluted. The water they will provide in the toilets in Bejing to put on their "green" show will probably be cleaner than what their people have to drink now that is giving them cancer. Such is the power of the dollar bill, or yen.Plans to divert water to Beijing for the Olympic Games are shortsighted and will not ease the city's severe water crisis, a... more

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5 months ago

Southeast Drought Highlights Power Plant Water Waste

Georgia, and other states in the Southeast are learning a lesson that communities on the Hudson River in New York know well:... more

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5 months ago

Living with water scarcity: world must act now

Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing humankind over the next 50 years. "With earth's water, land and human resources it is possible to produce enough food for the future - but it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world" says David Molden Deputy Director General of the International Water Management Institute.

This is the opening prognosis given in the Earthscan publication Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. The Assessment, the first of its kind, brings together the work of over 700 specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world into the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of water and food ever written, critically examining policies and practices of water use and development in the agricultural sector over the last 50 years.

Spearheaded by International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of 15 CGIAR agricultural research centres striving to increase food production, increase rural incomes, and safeguard the environment, the report is co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), FAO, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Biological Diversity in a bid to find solutions to the challenge of balancing the water-food-environment needs.

The assessment finds that 1/3 of the world's population live in areas where water scarcity must be reckoned with. While much of this water scarcity cannot be avoided, water problems can be averted through better water management.

Growing cities take more water, and environmental concerns are rising. A water-food-environment dilemma. Water use in agriculture is recognized as one of the major drivers of ecosystem degradation, causing habitat loss, drying up of rivers, and reduction in groundwater levels. Flows in the Colorado River in USA, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in India and Pakistan - all important food producing areas - dry up because of the water needed for irrigated agriculture. Clearly limiting agricultural water use is key for environmental sustainability. Therein lies the dilemma. More people require more water for more food; more water is essential in the fight against poverty; yet we should limit the amount of water taken from ecosystems.

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Since climate change is expected to hit these areas hard, better water systems will be a key to helping people cope with dry spells. Poverty, hunger, gender inequality, and environmental degradation continue to afflict developing countries not because of technical failings but because of political and institutional failings. There is need for drastic reform in the water sector. Governments must lead the reform process, but ironically state institutions themselves are in greatest need of reform. While water scarcity is here to stay, many of the problems associated with water scarcity can be avoided.

This will require that we deal with difficult choices and tradeoffs. Reconciling competing demands on water requires informed negotiations by the many stakeholders involved in water with transparent sharing of information. "The hope is in realizing the unexplored potential that lies in better water management along with non-miraculous changes in policy and production techniques" says Margaret Catley Carleson, Chair of the Global Water Partnership, "but world leaders must take action now." As Sunita Narain, 2005 Stockholm Water Prize Winner says, "this issue must become the world's obsession."Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing... more