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Pacific Institute:Extreme Weather Events Will Increasingly Affect US Water Supply
With global warming, there is an increased risk of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves,” according to the Congressional testimony of Heather Cooley, senior research associate of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. Cooley’s testimony was provided to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming for the hearing on Climate Change and Extreme Events on Thursday, July 10.
“Floods and droughts are a natural part of the climate system, but we are seeing a growing body of scientific analysis indicating it is likely that climate change will vastly increase stresses on our water systems,” Cooley testified. “We are essentially ‘loading the dice’ and increasing the probability that these types of events will increase in frequency and intensity.”
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Cooley made several recommendations for mitigating the impact of extremes on communities and water supplies, citing the need for water conservation, improved weather-monitoring efforts, and better planning and preparedness for floods and droughts. In addition to her remarks, she presented written testimony to the Select Committee addressing the need for adaptation to be a central element of all climate-change policy.
Such adaptation measures include:
-Water managers must re-evaluate engineering designs, operating rules, contingency plans, and water-allocation policies, including taking into account their energy and greenhouse-gas implications.
-New water infrastructure must be designed and built incorporating expected climate change over the expected life of the project.
-Water and energy issues must be better integrated, and water agencies should partner with other agencies to seek combined solutions to water, energy, and greenhouse-gas problems.
“Climate change will have a significant impact on freshwater resources, affecting availability, timing, reliability, and quality,” Cooley testified, “and water conservation and efficiency are particularly attractive adaptation options.”
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This will be the greatest environmental challenge of the 21st century. We must plan now. With global warming, there is an increased risk of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves,” according to the ... more -
Desalination creates no waves in UK
It looks like any other giant building site, a phalanx of multi-storey cranes and an emerging skeleton of steel deep inside the unbearably smelly Beckton sewage works in east London.
But by this time next year, what is euphemistically known as the Thames Gateway will rumble into action, using reverse osmosis technology to suck 150 million litres of brackish river water into its innards and disgorge it clean of salt to provide drinking water for close to 900,000 people a day.
It seems almost incomprehensible that London, with its relentlessly grey skies and daily drizzle, should be staring down the barrel of a water shortage. But the city has a burgeoning population (now nudging 8 million) and the rising temperatures that have come with climate change. The demand for water has risen by 15 per cent in less than two decades and a further 800,000 people are expected to throng to the city by 2016.
Now London, which uses 55 per cent of its declining rainfall for drinking water, is being forced to consider the unimaginable: Australian-style sprinkler bans and other water restrictions. A 25-year water management strategy outlined by Thames Water last week ranges from a multimillion-pound investment to replace thousands of kilometres of ageing and leaking pipes to plans for several new reservoirs and dams. Strangely, however, desalination - the solution that has caused the most consternation in Australia - has barely raised a ripple of protest in Britain.
On the drawing board since 2001, the £300 million ($622 million) plant, which Thames Water calls an "insurance policy", has quietly been under construction for a couple of years. The fact that it is being built in an area already dominated by the sewage works - not residential development - makes a big difference (although the Olympic site is very close by).
The only real objections came from the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who was furious about the plant's enormous carbon footprint, estimated at 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. He demanded that Thames Water stem its leaks - estimated at one-third of all water used - before it desalinated. In the end, a public inquiry forced a switch to completely renewable energy sources, probably bio-diesel, while Livingstone's court challenge to the Government's planning approval is likely to be jettisoned after Boris Johnson replaced him at City Hall.
Livingstone and green groups fought side by side against the plant but Londoners and their neighbours, it seems, were unfazed by the notion of drinking "dry-cleaned" water. Their protests targeted NIMBY fears sparked by new reservoirs in South London and Oxfordshire and hip-pocket fears sparked by installation of individual water meters.
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Looks like Thames Water is now using their perceived water crisis after being negligent in fixing leaks in infrastructure to make money for themselves. Desalination is a last resort because it is only a bandaid, is very expensive, and is a technology that wastes much CO2. It is actually a technology that precipitates the very conditions that lead to drought. Sorry, not a good move in my opinion. It looks like any other giant building site, a phalanx of multi-storey cranes and an emerging skeleton of steel deep inside the unbear... more -
Human viruses in deep groundwater threaten drinking water supplies
Researchers testing deep aquifers used for drinking water found human viruses, challenging the assumption that these crucial water supplies are protected from surface contamination.
Samples from three public water supply wells that draw from a 240-foot deep aquifer in Wisconsin contained human intestinal viruses, which as a group are associated with diseases such as meningitis, encephalitis, newborn enteroviral disease and polio.
Deep aquifers are a source of drinking water for many people.
Context:
Municipal drinking water wells are often drilled deep into the ground to reach aquifers lying under relatively impermeable layers called aquitards. Aquifers bounded above and below by aquitards are called contained aquifers. The aquitards are thought to protect the aquifers from surface contamination.
Shallow groundwater near waste water injection well sites can contain bacteria and viruses. Injecting waste water from treatment plants into the ground to recharge wells continues even though it's been known for 30 years that the recharged well water can be contaminated with pathogens (Vaughn et al. 1978). Bacteria found in human intestines have been measured as well in aquifers in the United Kingdom (Powell et al. 2003).
Viruses have a greater likelihood of reaching aquifers to contaminate drinking water than bacteria, protozoa and other waterborne, disease-causing organisms because their small size may allow them to pass through aquitards to reach aquifer waters. Until now, this possibility has not been tested explicitly. In a survey of over 400 sites across the United States, groundwater samples tested positive for at least one virus type (Abbaszadegan et al. 2003). This study, however, did not identify which of the aquifers were contained aquifers. Researchers testing deep aquifers used for drinking water found human viruses, challenging the assumption that these crucial water sup... more
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