More dams to be built on the Zambezi

Mozambique plans to build dams to avoid repeats of the flooding of the Zambezi River that has devastated the country in recent weeks.

The first dam to be constructed will be the Mpanda Nkhuwa dam, located 70 kilometres downstream from the Cahora Bassa dam in the Tete Province, according to energy minister Salvador Namburete.

The initiative will help control the flow of floodwaters that are discharged from the country's Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam during the rainy season.

The floodgates of the Cahora Bassa dam have to be opened when the weight of water building up behind reaches the dam's maximum capacity. A second dam would store water downstream and help to regulate the flow of water.

It would also improve irrigation of farmland in the region, and produce an estimated 1,300 megawatts of electricity, according to the Mozambique news agency.

The estimated cost for the dam — which would take six years to build — will be US$2.3 billion. A loan from China's Exim Bank agreed in November 2006 will cover the cost.

from the Science and Development Network

Six million Chinese face water shortages

A severe drought in southwestern China is threatening the water supplies of six million people in the crowded metropolis of Chongqing, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

The city faces an acute water shortage in early March due to a continuing drought along the Yangtze River, the agency said citing a local meteorological expert.

"The city will be lacking at least 500 million cubic metres of drinking and irrigation water and about six million people will be thirsty," Xinhua quoted the local meteorologist as saying.

Official figures show that the amount of water stored in Chongqing's reservoirs is around 1.17 billion cubic meters, less than half the normal storage, it said.

The southern province of Guangdong said it was considering rationing water to industry, farms and residents to ease a drought there.

Last summer's drought was the worst to hit southwest China in more than a century, when temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104F) and about 18 million people faced water shortages.

Some parts of Chongqing -- home to some 30 million people -- had started limiting water supplies to residents and were drilling new wells to find underground sources, Xinhua reported earlier.

from Reuters

New Type of Clean

The cleanest sewage effluent ever seen is surging out of high-tech treatment plants being installed across the United States and throughout the world.

A spreading wave of technology promises to clean up polluted beaches, conserve precious water supplies and spur residential growth in targeted areas. Government officials at all levels are struggling to keep up with the advancements.

John Poppe of Karcher Creek Sewer District can barely contain his enthusiasm for an advanced technology that uses biological membranes to filter out virtually all bacteria and microscopic particles from wastewater. His eyes sparkle with excitement when he talks about the clean water being discharged from his district’s sewage-treatment plant near Port Orchard, the first of its kind in the state.

"This water quality is Class A," he says, holding up a flask of clear water. "It is very clean. It could be used for irrigation, maybe streamflow augmentation."

Poppe (pronounced pop-ee) is eager to begin watering South Kitsap ballfields with a small portion of the 1.6 million gallons of fresh water pumped each day from the South Kitsap plant into Puget Sound. A pilot project is planned for this summer.

But Poppe, who ran Bremerton’s sewer system for years, is already looking beyond the big, regional treatment systems to scaled-down versions of his district’s plant. Miniature treatment systems are being used throughout Europe for single homes or clusters of homes. Poppe wants his district to install — and maintain — such systems anywhere there’s a need in Kitsap County along with portions of Mason County.

from the Kitsap Sun (WA)

Future of Water Supply at Risk

Global warming may cause longer and more severe droughts than ever seen on the Colorado River, significantly decreasing the West's water supply for drinking, growing crops and keeping lawns green, a study by the National Research Council concluded Wednesday.

The decline in supply could be so severe -- a previous study cited suggested as much as 20 percent -- that water-saving measures won't be enough to compensate in the rapidly growing region, the council's study said.

The council is part of the National Academies -- a group of private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The study examined previous research, including tree-ring data dating back 600 years, to draw conclusions and offer recommendations.

Such a drop in Colorado River flow, the panelists said, could lead to costly and difficult choices on an already politically contentious issue: how to share the lifeblood of the West. The river serves water to seven states and to 18 million people in Southern California alone, including more than 1 million in the Inland region. It is used heavily for agriculture in the Coachella Valley.

"Whenever decisions have to be made on whose water is reduced, that is always contentious," said Ernest Smerdon, former dean of the College of Engineering and Mines at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who chaired the study panel.

The panel, made up of experts in climate, water resources, engineering and geography, urged the states to launch an in-depth study of water supply and demand so they have a plan in place before a crisis occurs.

from the Press-Enterprise (Riverside CA)

The Water Detectives

SO what is coming out of the tap?

You might not want to know. The water comes out of streams in which fish have sex and pine cones rot. New York’s watershed does not exist in an aseptic vacuum: people drive around reservoirs, acid rain falls everywhere, and mud tends to slide downhill.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection monitors it all. It samples water at 500 locations throughout the distribution system, and at 965 monitoring stations within the city. In 2005, technicians working around the clock drew 33,200 samples from little silver boxes on the streets, measuring such things as temperature (warmth can indicate stagnant water), chlorine, specific conductance (a measure of mineral content) and level of orthophosphate (added to create a film on pipes to prevent lead contamination).

After recording all the data on the streets, from the backs of their white sport utility vehicles, the technicians converge on a high-rise in Corona, Queens, the agency’s urban nerve center. They wheel their plastic coolers full of samples to a lab on the sixth floor and hand the day’s catch to a team of 30 chemists and microbiologists.

It’s the microbiologists’ job to find bacteria in the water. And make no mistake, they are there, many different types, including the occasional E. coli, which can cause severe illness.

from the NY Times

On the Water Front

On a raw winter’s day, the water riffling over the spillway of the Ashokan Reservoir looks icy and pure. Set at the eastern end of this vast artificial lake in Ulster County, the spillway curves and drops like a wedding cake, in four tiers, before sending its flow through a narrow granite passage flanked by evergreens. The setting is grand, as befits an enormous public work, a manipulation of nature for the benefit of humanity — or at least for the 8.2 million residents of New York City, 100 miles to the south.

If the Ashokan is not the one true source of the city’s drinking water, akin to Perrier’s Vergèze or the original Poland Spring, it is still evocative shorthand for the sprawling upstate waterworks that have long quenched New York’s thirst. The city has the largest drinking-water system in the country, an engineering feat on a par with the Panama Canal, delivering 1.2 billion gallons of water a day through 300 miles of tunnels and aqueducts and 6,000 miles of distribution mains.

Moreover, as city officials, water connoisseurs and native boosters have long declared, New York tap water is among the world’s purest and tastiest. It is praised in foreign-language guidebooks, and some city bakers credit its mineral content and taste for their culinary success.

“It’s delicious,” said Emily Lloyd, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

The upstate water is of such good quality, in fact, that the city is not even required to filter it, a distinction shared with only four other major American cities: Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore. New Yorkers drink their water from Esopus Creek, from Schoharie Creek, from the Neversink River, straight from the city’s many reservoirs, with only a rough screening and, for most of the year, just a shot of chlorine and chasers of fluoride, orthophosphate and sodium hydroxide.

from the NY Times

Deal on Delta suit goes to Congress

The nation's largest irrigation district would take partial ownership of an important dam, canals and pumping plants in exchange for giving up claims to water and relieving the federal government of its obligation to drain tainted water from the western San Joaquin Valley under a proposal presented to members of Congress on Thursday.

It is the latest attempt to settle a decades-long conundrum of how to dispose of selenium-tainted farm runoff that was once destined to be dumped in the Delta near Antioch. The broad outline of the lawsuit settlement has not been endorsed by any federal agency and requires approval of Congress, where key members on Thursday sounded guarded about its implications.

"We need to learn much more about this proposed settlement," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an e-mail. "Whether this settlement is just or not, I simply cannot answer at this time."

from the Contra Costa Times

Ag producers worry about CBM water

When the soil in Roger Muggli's fields turned bad last year, damaging more than 300 acres of alfalfa, the third-generation farmer quickly settled on a culprit: coal-bed methane drilling along the nearby Tongue River.

It's a charge that has made Muggli few friends in a region where economic development is desperately sought after and future coal-bed methane development could mean hundreds of new jobs. His claims are denied by industry representatives and some federal scientists, who say there is no way to prove Muggli's assertion of a tie between coal-bed methane and his bad soil.

But state officials and an independent researcher who investigated the case warned that Muggli's problems could be a harbinger of more to come, as the industry prepares to dramatically ramp up operations across 20 million acres in southeastern Montana in coming years. They said his fields bear the hallmarks of coal-bed methane effects, though they were careful to add that a direct link was impossible to prove.

"We knew this was coming and we wanted to prepare for it," said Richard Opper, director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. "It's definitely a wake-up call when you see the impact."

from the AP

Delaware draining water supply, study finds

Wells in central New Castle County are removing groundwater "at or beyond sustainable levels," drawing water away from Maryland and New Jersey and diminishing streams in some areas, according to a draft report now under study by state regulators.

The Army Corps of Engineers assessment -- nearly a decade in the works -- could force Delaware to restrict development, close areas to new wells, work more closely with its neighbors and possibly reconsider well locations, according to some who have seen the document.

"There are difficult issues here, because the aquifer is clearly at its maximum yield capacity," said Stewart Lovell, water supply manager for Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

The corps study relied on a computer model of groundwater levels and well pumping in an oval-shaped zone that included all of Delaware and portions of Maryland and South Jersey.

from the Delaware News Journal

Reduce Delta water use or build canal, report says

California must either dramatically reduce its use of Delta water or build something akin to the Peripheral Canal, the highly controversial proposal rejected 25 years ago to allow parts of the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California to tap directly into the Sacramento River, according to a major new study released Wednesday.

The report also says that decades of policies designed to keep the Delta's water fresh are wrongheaded, in effect putting the drinking water supply of much of California in direct conflict with the needs of a severely weakened ecosystem in which populations of several fish species are extremely low.

Salinity in the Delta historically fluctuated between salty and fresh, depending on the season and the amount of rain and snow that fell and flowed into tributaries leading to the Delta. Improving the ecosystem requires bringing back more variable salt levels, which is impossible now because it would ruin drinking water supplies for 23 million people and irrigation water for millions of acres of farmland, the study said.

By building a Peripheral Canal or something like it, water for most of the state would be taken out of the Sacramento River instead of the southern Delta, allowing managers to let the Delta become saltier at times.

Doing so could benefit native fish, including Delta smelt, and create less hospitable conditions for invading species, said Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis fish biologist and one of six authors of the study.

from the Oakland Tribune

Climate change 'affecting' China

Parts of Shaanxi province face drought after January saw as little as 10% of average rainfall, state media say.

Frozen lakes are melting and trees are blossoming in the capital Beijing as it experiences its warmest winter for 30 years, the China Daily reported.

China is the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, after the US.

The country's top meteorologist, Qin Dahe, said the recent dry and warm weather in northern China was related to global warming.



But he told reporters that China was committed to improving energy efficiency, and planned to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions by 20% in the next five years.

Mr Qin was China's representative on an inter-governmental panel on climate change, which last week released a report saying mankind was very likely the cause of global climate change.

His comments, at a press conference in Beijing, mark the Chinese government's first official response to the report's findings.

from the BBC

River's toxic brew spurs federal action

Experts say it's tough to tell exactly where contaminants such as DDT, PCB and PAH are entering the Columbia River.

But it's no mystery where these toxics end up.

"Everything comes down to Astoria," said Mary Lou Soscia, director of the water and watersheds office for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The river's toxic brew reveals itself in the sediment along the banks, in the crayfish and salmon that feed on microorganisms and insects, and in the birds that eat the fish. Many are worried about the implications for people who consume the accumulated contaminants in the river's salmon and sturgeon. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has research that shows toxics can have damaging effects on endangered fish species.

In response to tests that show potentially dangerous levels of contamination throughout the river's ecosystem, the EPA has named the Columbia River Basin a "national priority" and pledged to reduce toxics in the water and fish tissue by 10 percent in five years. The federal agency is spearheading a strategic plan for reaching that goal.

"The Columbia River is one of the seven most important water bodies in the entire U.S.," said Soscia. "The EPA is stepping up and saying there are problems in this river. Our hope is that as we move forward on this work, as we understand the river better, the action we'll be taking could have a direct effect on Astoria."

from the Daily Astorian (OR)

Montana and Wyoming Fighting for Water

Sandy gullies and endless sage brush offer little hint of the watersports mecca once envisioned for this small town near the Montana line.

Back when the Bighorn River flowed strong out of the distant Wind River mountains, it backed up 72-miles from the Yellowtail Dam in Montana south to the outskirts of Lovell -- a man-made lake that once drew almost half a million visitors annually.

But drought has choked the Bighorn going on eight years, chopping 30 miles off Bighorn Lake in recent summers and prompting tourists to vacation elsewhere. And now a U.S. senator from Montana -- anxious to tap the reservoir to feed a downstream trout fishery -- could crush Lovell's recreational aspirations for good.

Flexing his newfound muscle as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Max Baucus has introduced legislation that could further deplete the lake. It would force the federal Bureau of Reclamation to ensure a steady flow of water out of Yellowtail Dam, drought notwithstanding.

The bill, which Lovell officials say would effectively doom Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, stakes out yet another front in the water wars breaking out across the Northern Plains.

As the worst dry spell since the 1930s shows no signs of abating, many states are squabbling with each other and federal officials.

from the AP via the NY Times

Iowans cleaned a river, and began a movement

Not so long ago, a clean environment was soft-headed aesthetics, not the sure-footed substance of economic argument.

By some indicators, Iowans have started to turn around.

Recently, the Legislature's Sustainable Natural Resource Funding Advisory Committee hired a firm to survey 800 Iowans, asking them to rank the seriousness of state issues. The first was predictable - lack of affordable health insurance.

But No. 2, ahead of gasoline prices and the economy, was a surprise: pollution of rivers, lakes and streams.

Another less scientific indicator: River cleanups took root five years ago.

Back then, 35 Iowans, covered in rain gear like swamp ghosts, paddled canoes down the Maquoketa River in eastern Iowa's pouring rain. The air was cold enough that the water and their bodies steamed.

Some participants were middle-aged, with bad backs and knees, standing in chest-deep water and feeling for footing in the river's current. They pulled out a wooden picnic table immersed in water and mud, a herniated disc waiting to happen.

Younger Iowans trying to figure their place in the world tied up their long hair into ponytails and diligently worked on the river banks, picking up beer cans they didn't even drink from.

from the Des Moines Resister

Tankers may ship water to parched cities of future

Fleets of supertankers could one day ply the world's oceans laden not with oil but fresh water.

Sounds far-fetched?

In Paris on Friday the world's top climate scientists issued the strongest warning yet that human activity was heating the planet. They forecast temperatures would rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius this century.

By 2100, water scarcity could impact between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people, says a leaked, related U.N. climate study due to be published in April.

China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States would face critical water shortages, it says.

Maritime experts say shipping water by tanker is one of the least eccentric ideas raised of late to counter acute shortages.

Dragging icebergs from the Arctic, ships hauling enormous bags of fresh water, and cloud seeding -- in which clouds are sprayed with chemicals to induce rain -- have all been aired by water authorities in the past.

"You can ship any liquid commodity if the money's right," said Bill Box, spokesman for Intertanko, the world's largest association of tanker owners.

from Reuters via Scientific American

Fixing levees isn't easy or cheap

Communities responsible for maintaining levees publicly identified as substandard by the federal government are racing to fix problems caused by years of neglect.

One obstacle might prove more formidable than the levees themselves: money.

The Army Corps of Engineers identified 122 levees on Thursday that it said posed an unacceptable risk of failing in a flood. Although a few of the levees protect major cities such as Albuquerque and Sacramento, many guard sparsely populated areas and have been overgrown with trees and brush that could weaken them.

MORE: Corps reveals locations

The levees were identified by a corps inspection program that intensified after Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed Gulf Coast levees in August 2005.

The corps has given the communities a year to make repairs. That deadline has left levee owners — primarily local governments for whom the corps built the levees — scrambling for the money to get the job done. For some, the challenge is significant.

Cost is large, but time short

In tiny Lincoln, N.H., floodwaters dug gaps between some of a levee's granite blocks in 1995. "It's not like it's going to fall down tomorrow," town manager Ted Sutton said. Even so, he estimated repairs will cost $500,000 to $1 million.

Sutton said he's frustrated by the corps' deadline. The town has three months to produce a repair plan and one year to fix the levee, which protects about 90 homes and businesses. The levee is currently covered by snow and ice. "They're demanding we give them a plan in the middle of winter. I don't think so," he said. "It's frozen and under snow."

Repairing the levee in a year also will prove financially difficult, he said. "It took us 10 years to save enough money to build a new town hall, and that only cost between $250,000 to $300,000," he said. "We have no way of paying for something like that. It's just impossible."

from USA Today

North Dakota saltwater spill prompts questions

A year after a ruptured pipeline spilled nearly 1 million gallons of saltwater into a northwestern North Dakota creek, Ned Hermanson is giving up.

He intends to move his 400 cows to pastures far from the oil fields here, away from one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history.

"I live day-to-day next to a neighbor that's an oil company, and they're a bad neighbor," said Hermanson, a wiry man who dips tobacco and wears a softball-sized rodeo belt buckle. "Life is too short to be mad every day at them, so I'm leaving."

Officials say the plight faced by Hermanson and a dozen ranchers affected by the spill shows the need to pay more attention to wastewater pipelines nationwide.

Nathan Wiser, an environmental scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver, said there are no specific federal regulations for saltwater disposal lines.

"Standards don't exist," he said. "It makes sense to have better monitoring of these things and regulate them more tightly."

The spill near Alexander has been described as the worst in North Dakota's oil history. The saltwater, a byproduct of oil production, flooded a stock pond and a beaver dam, and flowed into Charbonneau Creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone River.

from the AP via the Houston Chornicle