California’s sinking delta

Dennis Baldocchi often drives past the ruins of his grandmother’s house on Sherman Island, in northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Flooding gutted the house when the island’s levee broke 40 years ago. Today, grass grows through the floors and chickens wander through.

To Dr. Baldocchi, the slanting hulk whispers an unsettling truth: The land that his family farmed for three generations is sinking farther below sea level each year.

Immigrants began arriving at the Sacramento River Delta 150 years ago. They drained 450,000 acres of marshy lands so that they could farm asparagus, corn, and sugar beets.

Their ingenuity fueled an economic boom, but it also triggered a slow-motion catastrophe: Draining allowed oxygen to penetrate the soil, permitting microbes to consume organic detritus that had lain undisturbed for millenniums, and to churn out carbon dioxide. As the soil deflated, the land sank as much as two inches per year.

Baldocchi, now a biogeochemist at the University of California in nearby Berkeley, spent much of his childhood on Sherman Island, pheasant hunting and helping harvest asparagus on his uncles’ farms. He didn’t appreciate the slow changes that were taking place in the land until he returned in 1999, after 22 years away.

Baldocchi motions to the road ahead. It hovers six feet above the plowed fields. The roads have sunk more slowly than surrounding fields, since blacktop slows the seepage of oxygen, which microbes need to devour peat. “When you grow up here, an inch or two per year you don’t notice,” he says. “But if you’re gone 22 years and it drops two or three feet, you get a visual sense of it.”

more from the CS Monitor

Overfishing linked to algal blooms

Nitrogenous fertilizers and detergents have long been known to cause algal blooms that block sunlight and strangle ecosystems, but a study now reveals that overfishing of large predatory fish is also playing a key part.

Britas Klemens Eriksson at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands noticed that populations of predatory fish in the Baltic Sea seemed to be declining in areas where algal blooms subsequently tended to form. Curious as to whether there was a connection, Eriksson and a team of colleagues from the Swedish Board of Fisheries in Öregrund set up an investigation.

The team reviewed a year's worth of field data on predatory pike (Esox lucius) and perch (Perca fluviatilis) populations from nine areas covering 700 kilometres of coastline in the Baltic Sea. They then compared this information with information collected during the same period on smaller fish and algal populations in the region. They found some intriguing patterns.

"In areas where there were strong declines in perch and pike there were massive increases in smaller fish and large blooms of algae," comments Eriksson. Where perch and pike populations were intact, the surrounding waters had a 10% chance of experiencing an algal bloom; in areas where their populations had been substantially reduced, the chances of an algal bloom were 50%.

Intrigued by these trends, the researchers ran small-scale field experiments for 2 years in unpolluted waters to investigate the forces responsible for controlling algal growth. They manipulated the environmental conditions in these experiments by: sometimes excluding large predatory fish through the use of cages; sometimes adding nitrogenous fertilizer pellets; sometimes applying both techniques; and sometimes leaving areas as untouched controls.

As expected, the nitrogenous pellets increased algal growth. But surprisingly, when predatory fish were prevented from accessing a given area, algae in that area became much more prevalent. The effect even proved to be true when nitrogenous pellets were not added to the system.

"This is the first study to show that top predators are linked to the formation of macroalgal blooms," says marine biologist Heike Lotze, at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

more from Nature

Portland lifts water-boiling order; now tempers are simmering

Portland lifted its drinking water alert Sunday afternoon, meaning westside residents no longer have to boil water, but the E. coli contamination scare has many people simmering in anger instead.

The contamination, discovered Thursday but not relayed to the public until confirmed by a second test Saturday, plainly worried many residents. They questioned why the alert was not given sooner, said officials didn't clearly define the affected area and wondered whether their tap water had made them sick.

It also reignited the argument over whether Portland's five open water storage reservoirs -- part of a system that provides drinking water for more than 860,000 people -- should be covered.

City officials, however, defended the Portland Water Bureau's handling of the situation.

"The system worked exactly as it was planned to work," Commissioner Randy Leonard said at a news conference Sunday. Leonard, who is in charge of the bureau, said no one was at risk during the alert.

Leonard and Mayor Sam Adams said the incident points out the need for improvements, however. Adams said the city should have a system similar to school districts, which e-mail parents when library books are due and make automated telephone calls to warn of closures during bad weather.

The contamination was limited to a single reservoir at Washington Park, but Water Bureau Director David Shaff said the bureau hasn't the capability to pinpoint which customers receive water from which reservoirs. Lacking that, the bureau had to issue a blanket boil-water order to westside residents. It was the first time in the bureau's history that it issued such a directive.

The order affected about 50,000 residences and businesses west of the Willamette River and receiving water from the Portland Water Bureau or the Burlington, Palatine Hill or Valley View water districts, which buy water from Portland.

In response, residents emptied store shelves of bottled water, restaurants on Portland's westside tossed out ice, quit serving water and coffee or closed, and hotels offered guests bottled water and apologies. Some people boiled water for tea and coffee and brushed their teeth with sparkling water.

"I think a lot of people are pretty worried," said Jessica Johnson, who lives in Northwest Portland. "My mom called to tell me yesterday, and I had just chugged a glass of water. But I'm feeling fine."

Leonard said some people overreacted, but said the incident pointed out the need to have water and other emergency supplies on hand. Multnomah County health officer Dr. Gary Oxman said the warning system is a "designed over-reaction" intended to protect the most vulnerable residents.

The E. coli bacteria found in the reservoir was not the most serious type, Oxman said. He and other health officials said the most likely symptoms would be a sore stomach and diarrhea. Hospitals haven't reported any increase in illness, Oxman said.

more from the Oregonian

Conservation is seen as key to dealing with state's water woes

Katie Martin grew up with a set of water commandments. No lingering in the shower. Turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth. Don't flood the yard.

Until she left for college this fall, the 19-year-old lived with her family in a typical California stucco house with a lawn. But when it comes to water, neither the Martins nor their town, San Luis Obispo, is typical.

Katie, her parents and little brother use roughly half the water on a per-person basis as the average single-family household in Los Angeles used last year.

"The community is just like that," Martin said.

As climate change, environmental constraints and growth continue to tighten the valve on California's water supplies, the rest of the state is going to be more like that too. Not just during droughts but all the time.

The reason is simple. Compared to building new reservoirs, recycling or seawater desalination, conservation is one of the cheapest, quickest and least environmentally damaging ways for the state to get more water.

"I think we have a water crisis in California, and I think conservation is the only solution that can be implemented in time," said Kevin Wattier, general manager of the Long Beach Water Department.

Water demand in Southern California has remained essentially flat the last two decades, despite the addition of 3.7 million people.

Similarly, L.A. used slightly less water last year than in 1990, even though there are a million more Angelenos now.

Much of the lid on demand has been achieved through gadgetry. Utility rebates and plumbing ordinances have put low-flow toilets and shower heads in millions of buildings and homes. Water agencies promote high-efficiency washing machines.

But it hasn't been enough, said Timothy Brick, chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the region's water wholesaler. "I think we have a long way to go."

Ramping up the Southland's conservation efforts could save more water annually than the combined demand of Los Angeles, San Diego and Long Beach, his agency estimates.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year called for the state to cut urban per-capita water use 20% over the next decade. Wide-ranging water legislation approved this month in Sacramento mandates the drop.

"It can be done. But people have to want to do it," said UC Berkeley professor Michael Hanemann, director of the university's California Climate Change Center. "Urban water agencies have to get religion."

more from the LA Times

U.S. group sees worsening coastal flooding threat

Fast-melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica will lead to a much sharper rise in sea levels than previously estimated, touching off flooding that will radically alter U.S. East Coast cities from Miami to Baltimore, according to a new study.

Climate change will cause a rise of at least 1 meter (39 inches) in sea levels by the end of this century, according to a review of scientific data by Clean Air-Cool Planet, an environmental group that calls itself nonpartisan.

The projection is in sharp contrast to a 2007 study by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said world sea levels could increase 18-59 centimeters (7-23 inches) by 2100.

"We are on our way to radically changing what the coasts look like," said Jim White, a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who worked on the study. "Norfolk could replace New Orleans as the poster child" for coastal flooding, he told reporters on Thursday.

Norfolk, Virginia, situated near the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean, is home to the world's largest naval base.

The group said it based its conclusions on a study of ice melting by Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

The 2007 U.N. study linked most of its projected sea level rise to a natural expansion of water as it warms. But newer scientific data has focused more on the added impact of ice sheets sliding into oceans.

Gordon Hamilton, an associate professor at the University of Maine, said satellite data shows that Greenland is shedding ice at an accelerated rate, pushing more and more of it into the ocean.

"Icebergs are being calved off the ice sheet at a rate three times faster now than just a few years ago," he said.

more from Reuters

Sewage Industry Fights Phosphorus Pollution

Tucked away in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, three massive metal cones could help address the world’s dwindling supply of phosphorus, the crucial ingredient of fertilizers that has made modern agriculture possible. The cones make consistently high-quality, slow-release fertilizer pellets from phosphorus recovered at the Durham Advance Wastewater Treatment Facility, less than 10 miles from downtown Portland. By generating about one ton of pellets every day, they are changing the view that such recycling could not be done efficiently. Ostara, the firm that makes the reactors and sells the pellets as Crystal Green, thinks that Durham is one of hundreds of facilities that could use the technology.

Humans excrete some 3.3 million tons of phosphorus annually. In fact, phosphorus from domestic sewage, in addition to fertilizer runoff, has traditionally been a nuisance, because it triggers blooms of algae that deplete local waters of oxygen. In some wastewater plants the element can also bind with ammonia and magnesium to form a mineral called struvite, which keeps phosphorus out of waterways but clogs pipes at the facilities. The growing recognition that cheap supplies of phosphorus will grow scarce in the coming decades has led some nations to consider conservation. Sweden has mandated that 60 percent of phosphate be recycled from wastewater by 2015. In 2008 China slapped a 135 percent export tariff on phosphate.

These pressures have made struvite a hot topic in sewage circles. Japan has been recycling struvite for a decade, but the cost-effectiveness and quality of the pellets varied, according to Don Mavinic, professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) and co-inventor of Ostara’s technology. “There’s always been a problem of struvite removal,” Mavinic says. “I wanted to build a better mousetrap.”

more from Scientific American

Mystery of Bangladesh's mass arsenic poisoning solved

Researchers have pinpointed the source of what is probably the worst mass poisoning in history, according to a study published Sunday.

For nearly three decades scientists have struggled to figure out exactly how arsenic was getting into the drinking water of millions of people in rural Bangladesh.

The culprit, says the new study, are tens of thousands of man-made ponds excavated to provide soil for flood protection.

An estimated two million people in Bangladesh suffer from arsenic poisoning, and health experts suspect the toxic, metal-like element has caused -- and will continue to cause -- many deaths as well.

Symptoms include violent stomach pains and vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions and cramps. A large dose can kill outright, while chronic ingestion of small doses has been linked to a large range of cancers.

It has long been known that the arsenic comes from water drawn from millions of low-tech "tube wells" scattered across the country.

Ironically the wells were dug -- often with the help of international aid agencies -- to protect villages from unclean and disease-ridden surface water.

Tragically, millions of people continue to knowingly poison themselves for lack of an alternative source of water.

Earlier studies succeeded in filling in a few pieces of the deadly puzzle.

They showed that water with the highest concentrations of arsenic is roughly 50 years old, and that the organic carbon which, once metabolised by microbes causes the poison to leach from sediment, does not take long to filter down from the surface.

But the source of both the contaminated water and the organic carbon remained unknown until a team of researchers led by Charles Harvey of MIT in Boston, Massachusetts cracked the secret.

Working in the Munshiganj district of Bangladesh, the researchers analysed the flow patterns of surface and underground water in a six square-mile (15.5 square-kilometre) area.

They used natural tracers and a 3-D computer model to track water from rice fields and ponds, and tested the capacity of organic carbon in both settings to free up arsenic from soil and sediments.

"We saw that water with high arsenic content originates from the human-built ponds, and water with lower arsenic content originates from the rice fields," said Rebecca Neumann, a co-author and postdoctoral associate at Harvard.

more from AFP

India Rain

Farmers in India do a lot of talking about the weather—especially, it seems, when there is no weather in sight. During the month of May, when the land heats up like a furnace and most fields lie fallow, when wells have run dry and the sun taunts from its broiling perch in a cloudless sky, there is no topic more consuming—or less certain—than when and how the summer monsoon will arrive. The monsoon season, which normally starts in early June and delivers more than three-quarters of the country's annual rainfall in less than four months, will begin gently, like a deer, the farmers say, and later it will turn into a thundering elephant. Or it will start as an elephant and then turn into a deer. Or it will be erratic and annoying right through, like a chicken. In other words, nobody really knows. But still, everybody talks.



This was the case one day in 2008 when an extended family of farmers from a village called Satichiwadi climbed up to the hilltop temple of their village goddess, planning to ask her for rain. It was mid-May and 106 degrees, and Satichiwadi, a village of 83 families that sits in a parched rural valley in the state of Maharashtra, about a hundred miles northeast of Mumbai, hadn't had any significant rainfall for seven months. Most of India at this point was caught in an inescapable annual wait. In New Delhi, the heat had triggered power cuts. Dust storms raced, unmitigated by moisture, across the northern states. Tanker trucks clogged the rural highways, delivering government-sponsored loads of drinking water to villages whose wells had run dry. Meanwhile, radio newscasters were just beginning to track a promising swirl of rain clouds moving over the Andaman Islands, off the southeast coast.

All day, villagers had been speculating about those distant clouds. It was gambling time for rain-dependent farmers across India. In the weeks leading up to the monsoon, many would invest a significant amount of money, often borrowed, to buy fertilizer and millet seeds, which needed to be planted ahead of the rains. There were many ways to lose this wager. A delayed monsoon likely would cause the seeds to bake and die in the ground. Or if the rain fell too hard before the seedlings took root, it might wash them all away.

"Our lives are wrapped up in the rain," explained a woman named Anusayabai Pawar, using a countrywoman's version of Marathi, the regional language. "When it comes, we have everything. When it doesn't, we have nothing."

In the meantime, everyone kept scanning the empty sky. "Like fools," said an older farmer named Yamaji Pawar, sweating beneath his white Nehru cap, "we just sit here waiting."

If the people of Satichiwadi once believed the gods controlled the rain, they were starting to move beyond that. Even as they carried betel nuts and cones of incense up to the goddess's temple, even as one by one the village women knelt down in front of the stone idol that represented her, they seemed merely to be hedgingtheir bets. Bhaskar Pawar, a sober-minded, mustachioed farmer in his 30s, sat on one of the low walls of the temple, watching impassively as his female relatives prayed. "Especially the younger people here understand now that it's environmental," he said.

more from National Geographic

Salt-loving algae wipe out fish in Appalachian stream

A salt-loving alga that killed tens of millions of fish in Texas has struck for the first time in an Appalachian stream that flows along the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Prymnesium parvum or “golden algae” caused the sudden death of thousands of fish, mussels, and salamanders in early September along some 30 miles of Dunkard Creek. University and government scientists fear the disaster could presage further kills in the region. Streams at risk due to high concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS) include portions of the northern branch of the Potomac River and 20 other streams in West Virginia, according to state scientists. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky also have many vulnerable rivers and streams, according to U.S. EPA scientists.
Dunkard Creek is a tributary to the Monongahela River, where last year high TDS levels fouled industrial equipment and ruined the taste of drinking water. Faced with projected increases in TDS as a result of the burgeoning and water-intensive natural gas hydraulic fracturing activity at the Marcellus Formation, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) recently proposed TDS standards for end-of-pipe discharges of 500 parts per million (ppm) TDS and 250 ppm each for sulfate and chloride.
Despite historically high TDS levels, the creek was a good fishing stream with small mouth bass, muskie, mussels, and salamanders, according to biologist Frank Jernejcic with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources. In just a few days the algal bloom wiped out the creek’s 18 species of fish and 14 species of freshwater mussels—the most diverse population of mussels in the Monongahela basin. “This is the worst fish kill I’ve experienced in 21 years in West Virginia,” says Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the Water Research Institute at West Virginia University.

more from EST news