Water audit warns of overuse

THE first comprehensive analysis of the nation's water resources has warned of potential overuse in key areas across the country, and says double-counting of supplies is commonplace.

The report, obtained by The Australian yesterday, also says a lack of co-ordination between the states and territories could intensify the problem of over-allocation.

In an effort to guard against the overuse of water, the report suggests tinkering with a key definition in the National Water Initiative - Australia's blueprint on water reform - relating to allocation levels and strengthening the regulation of farm dams.

Australian Water Resources 2005, prepared for the National Water Commission, identifies 22 water management areas across the country that may be under stress because of entitlement and allocations policies and practices.

They include the Great Artesian and Lake Eyre basins, and the water supplies for Adelaide and Perth.

Longer-term monitoring is required to properly assess risks, the report says.
more from The Australian

More rain falling in flooded S. Plains

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) Flood-weary residents of Texas and Oklahoma had no reprieve Friday as more rain fell in a region where two weeks of storms have swollen rivers and lakes beyond their limits.

Thousands of people have been forced from their homes, though some residents were holding out, saying conditions are no worse than floods they've weathered before.

A state of emergency was in place for all of Oklahoma on Friday, and flood watches and warnings were posted for river communities. A flood watch was in effect for large portions of Texas, where the storms have been blamed for at least 11 deaths.

The rains had tapered off and become more isolated, but National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Patrick said storms could cluster and create a more widespread threat of flooding by the weekend.

"The storms are very efficient rain producers, and if you happen to be under one of them you can pick up 1 1/2 or 2 inches an hour," said another meteorologist, Jesse Moore. "Right now with the ground being saturated, it's all run-off and that causes the flash flooding we've been seeing."
more from Top Nation

A cleaner North Sea? Ship fuel suppliers hedge bets

London: European ship fuel suppliers are hedging their bets ahead of tighter fuel quality rules from November amid uncertainty about demand for the cleaner grade and expectations that some ship operators will ignore the new rules.

European Commission regulations banning ships from burning dirtier fuel in the North Sea and the English Channel are aimed at reducing sulphur dioxide emissions that are 700 times higher than sulphur levels in diesel fuel for vehicles.

Sulphur dioxide is a major cause of acid rain and blamed for health problems such as lung disease.

But some say the August transition to the cleaner fuel, which will slash the maximum sulphur content by more than half to 1.5 per cent, will not happen overnight, even though the industry has had years to prepare for the switchover.

"Companies buying fuel for their ships will always try to optimise," said Frederic Bricout, managing director of fuel supplier Transcor International in Belgium. "In other words they will refill in other ports where they can still buy the high sulphur."

Transcor, which is setting up new storage facilities for the cleaner fuel in Antwerp, estimates that around half of the fuel it will provide to customers from November will be low sulphur.

Because ships could just buy enough clean fuel to get them beyond the North Sea, and then burn higher sulphur, cheaper grade fuel in unregulated waters, demand is uncertain.
more from the Gulf News

France faces fine over nitrates pollution

The European Commission referred France to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over nitrate pollution of surface water in Brittany on 27 June 2007, amid concerns that the EU is nevertheless still supporting intensive farming in the region.

In March 2007, France was sent a final warning for non-compliance with a judgement delivered in 2001 on surface-water pollution by nitrates and had three months to take action. As no Action Plan has thus far been implemented, the Commission confirmed its decision to refer France to the Court and to ask the ECJ for a €28 million financial sanction and a €117,882 daily penalty payment.

Jean-François Piquot, from the environmental NGO Eaux et Rivières de Bretagne, does not consider this condemnation as a success and is demanding a reorientation of agricultural policy. He defines the French and European attitude as "schizophrenic", concerning efforts to improve the environment while at the same time promoting intensive agriculture.

France has frequently been subject to infringement procedure for non-transposition or non-implementation of EU environmental law, with ten disputes currently under investigation by the ECJ. According to a report by Strasbourg Senator and Mayor Fabiennne Seller, Brussels could be in a position to demand around €500 million from France.

The president of the regional authority in charge of agriculture in Brittany, Jacques Jaouen, considers the condemnation an injustice: "What is the more shocking is the lack of recognition for what has been done," he said.
more from EurActiv

Testing reveals drugs' residue

WEST GLACIER - For five miles downstream of the Boulder, Colo., sewage treatment plant there are no male fish.

In Pacific currents off the Los Angeles coastline, fish are too lazy to hunt, too laid back to bother with breeding.

In south-central Asia, vultures are dying of drug overdoses.

All because what goes in must come out.

“All domestic sewage, regardless of your location on the globe, will contain pharmaceuticals,” said Kate Miller. “If you can find a human being, you'll probably find pharmaceuticals in the environment.”

Miller works for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality as an engineer and a hydrologist, but she sounds more like a chemist - what with all those crazy long compound names in the parts per billion.

Recently, Miller was asked to go on a hunt for fecal contamination - sewage, basically - in Helena Valley groundwater. She was to use certain microbial markers, such as E. coli and coliphage, to sniff out the presence or absence of fecal taint.

But the more she read about sewage-borne contaminants, the more she became convinced that more modern markers would make for a more interesting study. And so Miller added 28 man-made chemicals to her search target, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disrupters and personal care products.

On Wednesday, she presented her findings to the Flathead Basin Commission, a multi-agency commission charged with protecting water quality in the Flathead River drainage and Flathead Lake.

Miller's is a compelling story - 32 of 35 drinking water wells tested positive for the chemicals, and of the 28 compounds she chose to look for a whopping 22 were found.
more from the Missoulian

Drought costs are just getting started

Damage from the Lake Tahoe fire is only a fraction of the growing financial toll of a drought that's gripping much of the nation. And the cost has nowhere to go but up. Sam Eaton reports.

Scott Jagow: This wildfire in Lake Tahoe is just awful. It's destroyed 275 homes and buildings so far. Might be the weekend before the fire's contained.

Insurance adjusters are already starting to total up the damage. And it's gonna be a big bill. But perhaps only a fraction of what's to come — it's so dry across the country, drought conditions might spark a lot more of these big fires. Sam Eaton reports from our Sustainability Desk.

Sam Eaton: The Lake Tahoe wildfire is the latest chapter in a record dry spell that covers much of the Western and Southeastern U.S. The drought is already costing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. In California, 13 counties have been declared disaster areas due to crop losses. The timber industry has also suffered.

But Carole Walker with the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association says property damage from wildfires may rival hurricane losses:

Carole Walker: We know that from a hurricane perspective, we're facing trillions of dollars of exposure. When it comes to wildfire, we're really in that same boat.

Climate change has ushered in a new era of the mega-catastrophe. And before the summer's over, drought may top the list as the most financially damaging.

Brian Fuchs is with the National Drought Mitigation Center:

Brian Fuchs: Really, there's not that much in the current outlooks for the next several months to show that this is going to subside in any way.

On the contrary, Fuchs says the severe drought in the Southeast is spreading northward into the Midwest corn belt. And with the ethanol boom causing a record number of farmers this year to skip the more drought-tolerant soybean crop in order to capitalize on high corn prices, a Midwest drought would be devastating.
more from American Public Media

Averting water wars in Asia

NEW DELHI:

The sharpening Asian competition over energy resources has obscured another danger: Water shortages in much of Asia are becoming a threat to rapid economic modernization.

Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. No country would influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau, the source of most major rivers of Asia.

Tibet's vast glaciers and high altitude have endowed it with the world's greatest river systems. Its rivers are a lifeline to the world's two most-populous states - China and India - as well as to Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries make up 47 percent of the global population.

Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water - 3,920 cubic meters per person - than any continent other than the Antarctica.

The looming struggle over water resources in Asia has been underscored by the spread of irrigated farming, water-intensive industries and a growing middle class that wants high water-consuming comforts like washing machines and dishwashers. Household water consumption in Asia is rising rapidly, although several major economies there are acutely water-stressed.

The specter of water wars in Asia is also being highlighted by climate change and environmental degradation in the form of shrinking forests and swamps that foster a cycle of chronic flooding and droughts. The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia's great rivers could be accelerated by global warming.
more from the International Herald Tribune

Louisiana scientists could get $27.5 million in grants

To encourage economic development and the renaissance of research in the parishes that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged, 11 teams of scientists should share $27.5 million in federal grants, according to a recommendation of a panel chosen by the state Board of Regents.

The projects this money would underwrite include research to bolster Louisiana's fragile coastal wetlands, work that may result in disease-fighting drugs narrower than a human hair and the development of an institute to study and fight infectious illnesses.

A regents committee is to decide Wednesday whether to endorse the panel's recommendations, and the full board is to vote Thursday. Both actions are expected to be formalities.

The money comes from $10.4 billion in community-development block grants that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

"The whole program was created at our insistence," LRA Director Andy Kopplin said. "There was such academic flight and flight risk post-storm, and we wanted to make an investment that said loudly and clearly, 'The colleges and universities and the research capacity in the affected areas are going to be an important part of our recovery, and we're going to make an investment.' "
more from the Times Picayune

Judge axes watershed rec rules

A state Supreme Court justice in Greene County has thrown out rules for recreational use of watershed lands that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection enacted last year.

The town of Hunter had filed a lawsuit against the city agency over the rules, claiming they were adopted without proper procedure and that the rules themselves hurt the local economy by limiting access to thousands of acres of city-owned watershed land.

The town argued that the rules, adopted in August 2006, violated the 1997 Memorandum of Agreement between the city and communities in its upstate watershed because the agreement allows for public access to the watershed.

Hunter also argued that the new rules were illegal because state law required state Health Department approval before the city agency could enact them. The Department of Environmental Protection did not seek such approval.

Last year, Hunter Supervisor Dennis Lucas complained that the rules were thrust upon the community, which he said was not asked to participate in their development. Lucas viewed that as a violation of the "partnership" between the city agency and the watershed communities.
more from the Kingston Freemon

Thailand's Energy And Money From Waste Water

KRABI, June 27 (Bernama) -- As demand for renewable energy continues to rise, a palm oil company in the southern Thai province of Krabi has been turning pollution into profit.

Asian Palm Oil Co Ltd, one of the biggest palm-oil producers in the province known more for its tourism products, is producing biogas from waste-water that can be used to produce electricity for own consumption and sold for commercial purposes.

Besides reducing pollution, the company is also saving on energy cost and making money by selling its extra energy.

Its managing director Nipon Udompholkul noted that the old method of open ponds to store and treat waste water from the palm oil mills gave rise to unpleasant odour or in another words air pollution.

"After four years, it has been proven that it's a reliable method and now adopted by at least three other mills," he told Bangkok-based media during a visit to the factory located 45km from Krabi town.



BIOGAS FROM WATER PROJECT

Nipon said the "Biogas from Waste-water in Palm Oil Mill" project carried out with the assistance of Thammasat University and sponsored by the National Energy Policy Office, is the first such project in Thailand.

It has managed to cut the pollution caused by the mills by as much as 80 percent.

Under the system, the waste-water treatment using Complete Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) is capable of reducing up to 90 percent of BOD and produces biogas which can fuel the boiler or the biogas engine to generate electricity.

Project consultant Prawat Leetanakul said the biogas not only produce energy after burning but takes away the unpleasant odour that the neighbourhood once had to bear.

Now, there are 40 such mills in the Kingdom, almost half of them in Krabi.

Asian Palm Oil had spent Bt40 million installing the system and hopes to recoup its investment within five years.

more from the Malaysian National News

Scarce water and population boom leads California to 'perfect drought'

A typical summer's day in Los Angeles: temperatures nudge the nineties, the sun blazes high in the sky, palm trees sway in the ocean breeze, and sprinklers spray a fine mist of water into the scorching air.

But if the predictions of climatologists, environmentalists, city planners and the head of the water board are correct, the sprinklers and many other of the comforts that have made southern California habitable may have to be turned off.

Experts across the city concur that the conditions are ripe in southern California for the "perfect drought". Los Angeles has recorded just 8.15cm (3.21in ) of rain in the year ending June 30, making it the driest year on record since 1877. According to the National Drought Mitigation Centre, southern California faces "extreme drought" this year, with no rain forecast before September. One climatologist referred to the temperatures in Los Angeles as "Death Valley numbers".

The Sierra Nevada mountains, which typically provide Los Angeles with 50% of its water, have provided just 20% of their normal volume this year, and the snowpack is at its lowest for 20 years. Pumping from an aquifer in the San Fernando Valley was stopped this month because it was contaminated with chromium 6.

While the waters dry up, demand for the scarce resource increases. Not only has southern California seen a growth in its population of two-to-four times the national average in the past 50 years, but neighbouring states such as Nevada and Arizona are also experiencing population booms. And they all claim water from the same source, the Colorado River.

"I call it the dry incendiary summer of 2007," says Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "Mother nature is converging with human nature. With population growth and the decline in the water there are the elements in the equation which you could call the perfect drought."
more from the Guardian Unlimited

Plan for water is ready to emerge

ATLANTA - Bob Rawlins raises his cattle and cultivates his crops far away from where a battle over the state's water supply could break out next year, but he knows the fallout could affect him and fellow farmers far into the future.

Recent droughts have left the ground dry and made it difficult for cattle farmers to get the hay and grass they need to feed their herds. Those who don't have the equipment for corn-salad feed, as Mr. Rawlins does, wonder whether they can carry on.

"Many of them have had to sell their herds completely, or reduce them," said Mr. Rawlins, who farms near the intersection of Ben Hill, Turner and Wilcox counties.

The drought is adding urgency for the water plan, expected to be unveiled in draft form Thursday before the Georgia Water Council, a group that will ultimately be responsible for carrying it out.

The plan has been largely shrouded from public view, with only bits and pieces revealed in presentations setting the stage for this week's unveiling.

"We have no idea what to expect," said April Ingle, the executive director of the Georgia River Network, part of a network of environmental groups called the Georgia Water Coalition.
more from the Augusta Chronicle

Coastal zones set agenda on climate

KEY WEST, Fla. – With the start of hurricane season, meteorologist Matt Strahan regularly scans computer screens for signs of a storm brewing near this famously carefree island.

Strahan figures that few of the people he is there to protect are as worried as he is about a less imminent but far-reaching threat: Global warming is causing the world's oceans to expand, and they gradually could swallow coral reefs such as Key West.

Likewise, rising sea levels could haunt dozens of coastal cities, including San Diego, San Francisco, Boston and New York.

Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and hurricanes. Rising temperatures likely will damage fisheries, increase heat-related deaths, hasten the spread of infectious diseases and alter where crops can grow.

Government agencies, politicians and activists are slowly ramping up their efforts to adapt to these projected changes. No national program exists to coordinate such a monumental mission, so the work largely has fallen to state and local governments.

Like most of the country, the San Diego region has yet to create a comprehensive plan for coping with global warming.

“We are just seeing so many areas at the local level that we probably would need to do some sort of serious rethinking about,” said Linda Giannelli Pratt, a climate change expert for the city of San Diego. “It's still a little fuzzy.”
more from Sign on San Diego

A plan for thirsty times

Colorado River water has always been recognized as the lifeblood of the Southwest. Now, it has its own blood bank.

After years of study and discussion, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation this week announced a proposal for managing the river and its two largest reservoirs - Lake Powell and Lake Mead - during droughts.

The plan, which still faces several months of final review, is extraordinary for several reasons.

Not only is it unusual that the agency is approaching management of Colorado River water based on the notion that there might be less water to divide, but also because environmental groups - as opposed to just water district officials - played a significant role in shaping the proposal from the start.

"The drought has caused everyone to stretch and do some things that were not heretofore possible," said Don Ostler, the Salt Lake City-based director of the Upper Colorado Commission, which represents Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico in river management issues.

He pointed out that the idea for a drought-oriented focus on the Colorado began in 2000, when water shortages were severe. Although there is growing agreement that the Colorado River experiences longer and more severe droughts than previously thought, earlier management plans emphasized mainly the availability of water.
more from the Salt Lake Tribune

Contaminated water becoming major problem

ISLAMABAD: The federal capital is receiving contaminated water supply as the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has failed to repair leaking and old pipelines, residents told Daily Times on Sunday.

Simly and Khanpur dams are the major sources that supply water to the federal capital but the CDA has no arrangement to supply water through safe pipelines to the residents.

About nine million gallons of water per day is being supplied from the Simly Dam. The Simly Dam’s main water supply-line could not be monitored over 25 kilometres, said a CDA official, requesting anonymity, adding that the dam was receiving a lot of waste of the poultry farms situated around it.

He said that chlorine being used to purify the water was ineffective, as the people for illegal connections had damaged the supply-line coming from the dam. He said that damaged and open supply-line due to illegal connections at various places was contaminating the water. However, the water received from the Simly dam was being checked at the seven million gallons reservoir near the Pak Secretariat, the official said, adding that there again chlorine and other chemicals were used to purify the water.

When water from this reservoir is supplied to various sectors again sewerage lines and broken water pipelines get mixed and residents receive contaminated water, he said. He said that in Islamabad underground water seepage was found at the depth of 450 feet. He said 18 nullahs in and around the city were also a major source of seepage and water contamination.
more from the Daily Times

Rock pits could solve water goals, utilities say

The rock quarry that solved West Palm Beach's recent drought emergency could become the drinking water source that helps guarantee South Florida's ability to nearly double its population, utility directors say.

Tapping its full potential, however, may require water customers to pay hundreds of millions to a company entangled in former County Commissioner Tony Masilotti's corruption case.

It also may test the ability of Broward and Palm Beach county politicians to cooperate on fundamental questions of growth, money and the environment, as they contemplate how to pay for such a massive public works project.

"Palm Beach County residents could find themselves subsidizing Broward's growth," said Palm Beach County Commissioner Karen Marcus. "The question should be, how do we have a natural system and not charge existing residents to pay for future development?"

Palm Beach Aggregates made $188 million in 2004 selling about a third of its 3,400-acre property to the South Florida Water Management District, to serve as a 14.6 billion-gallon reservoir for environmental projects. Home builder Lennar agreed to buy another third for a home project that it's now trying to cancel.

The pits have proven most valuable so far to West Palm Beach. In May, the city drew 600 million gallons to keep its water supply from falling critically low. The water was slightly salty, so it was diluted, blended with treated sewer water and sprayed onto the ground above the city's well field.

Water managers were readying the rock pits to catch rainy-season storm water for use in dry times. The water was to go to northern Palm Beach County wetlands and the brackish northwest fork of the Loxahatchee River, not water utilities. But as drinking water becomes increasingly scarce, utilities want to know if there's also enough water to fill their glasses on a regular basis.
more from the Palm Beach Post

Who gets the water?

Water. We use about 408 billion gallons every day in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s over 1,000 gallons a day for every citizen. We use it to make electricity, to irrigate crops, we bathe in it and use it to make lemonade and beer.

In 2005, the Oregon legislature decided if there was one creature by which to measure the health of our rivers and lakes, it was a fish. Since then, fish such as steelhead, chinook, chub and lamprey must be considered when people get permission from the state to use water.

There are about 100 municipalities, including Corvallis, Salem and Adair Village, whose water use permits are up for extension. Permits are granted for limited amounts of water and for limited spans of time, and periodically they must be reviewed by the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Now fish that are listed as “sensitive,” “threatened” or “endangered” by either the state or the federal government must be taken into account in approving those water permits. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is charged with making sure listed fish “persist,” or survive.

It’s an unprecedented situation in Oregon, and only two of the cities or water districts applying for extensions to their permits are moving ahead to see if they are approved. All others have placed their applications on hold, waiting to see what happens.
more from the Albany Democrat-Herald

Icebergs are 'ecological hotspot'

Drifting icebergs are "ecological hotspots" that enable the surrounding waters to absorb an increased volume of carbon dioxide, a study suggests.

US scientists found that minerals released from the melting ice triggered blooms of CO2-absorbing phytoplankton.

These microscopic plants were then eaten by krill (shrimp-like organisms), whose waste material containing the carbon sank to the ocean floor.

The findings are published in the online journal Science Express.

The study, carried out in the Southern Ocean's Weddell Sea in December 2005, has helped researchers understand the impact of free-floating icebergs on the marine environment.
more from BBC

Fears of water shortage spreading across Japan

Fears of a water shortage are spreading across the country as the Japanese archipelago has had little rain since last winter.

Restrictions have been placed on using water on Shikoku Island, where water shortages are particularly serious, while some schools in Kagawa Prefecture on the island have switched from rice to bread in school lunches to save water.

The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry has already set up a water shortage countermeasures task force.

The level of water in the Sameura Dam in Kochi Prefecture had declined to 31.6 percent of its capacity by midnight on Wednesday, as compared with the normal level of 86.5 percent for this season.

The intake of water from the Sameura Dam for use in Tokushima Prefecture has been reduced by 17.4 percent and that for neighboring Kagawa Prefecture has been cut by half.

There has been little rain even through the rainy season started earlier this month in mainland Japan.

The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry that manages dams across the country has warned that the water level of the Sameura Dam will be zero as early as July 1 if there is no rain before then.

Hardest hit is Kagawa Prefecture where there is less rainfall than any other area of Shikoku and because it has no major river. Public elementary and junior high schools in seven cities and four towns in the prefecture have stopped using their swimming pools. They have also switched from rice to bread in their school lunches to save water.

Besides Shikoku, restrictions on water use had been place at three dams in western and central Honshu by Monday.

The water shortage is attributed to little rain in winter and spring. In particular, areas along the Sea of Japan coast had the least rain and snow since observations started in the 1961-62 winter because of the warm weather over winter. In particular, the amount of snow in the Hokuriku area including Fukui, Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures was 9 percent of normal levels.
more from MSN

Great Lakes' past may offer clues on climate

From one view of history, the Great Lakes are near record lows, approaching the bottom-scraping frustration of the mid-1960s.

From another, longer view, though, the lakes are nearly as high as they've ever been, just a few feet below the high-water mark reached at the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1850s.

Both pictures are scientifically accurate and are getting more attention from climatologists, lake scientists and environmentalists curious about history's large climate cycles and how they tip the lakes' eons-old balancing act of rainfall and runoff, heating and evaporation.

The fluctuations are raising new questions about whether climate change has begun to alter the depth of the lakes, though the picture is still too complex to yield definitive answers.

"If you look at the record even from 1850 on, at lake levels and precipitation levels, this is not abnormal," said Thomas E. Croley II, research hydrologist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. "But it's always hard to say whether this is the start of something else, and that's where you get so much subjective opinion, so many questions of climate change."

Over the weekend, owners retired the Lake Superior ferry between Minnesota and Isle Royale because the boat was too big to dock in the shallow marina. Deep-lake cargo carriers have left tons of freight at loading docks to cross shallow channels between lakes. Marinas have been dredging more than ever. And still other indicators of lake health seem out of whack.

In the last decade, researchers learned the lakes not only were dropping compared with modern records, but they were also getting warmer -- even faster than temperature increases on land. Lake Superior is 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was a century ago, "and most of that warming happened recently," within 25 years or so, said Jay Austin, a climatologist at the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.

Ice on the lake forms later and melts earlier, he said, and the tipping point when the winter lake begins warming rapidly for the summer has come earlier each year. That in turn has spelled faster evaporation for Lake Superior -- the feeder lake for the lakes system -- which has been steaming away 4.6 millimeters faster every year since 1977.
more from the Chicago Tribune

Army Corps maps neighborhoods' flood risks online

Many parts of New Orleans struck hardest by Hurricane Katrina remain vulnerable to flooding despite nearly two years of attempts to protect them, a study published Wednesday by the Army Corps of Engineers found.

The assessment, laid out online in a series of neighborhood maps, is the first time the corps has identified in detail the areas that still face substantial danger from flooding. It shows a 100-year storm today would likely bury most of Gentilly and the Lower 9th Ward — two of the neighborhoods that suffered most after Katrina — under more than 8 feet of water. A 100-year storm is one whose severity has a 1% chance of being met or exceeded in any year.

Even in those neighborhoods, the corps' assessment suggests the areas vulnerable to severe flooding are smaller than they were before Katrina because of upgrades to New Orleans' levees. Most notable is Lakeview, where the corps concluded new floodgates have reduced the risk substantially during all but the most severe storms.

In the Lower 9th Ward, the corps' maps show more land now would escape serious flooding during a 100-year storm than before Katrina. The same is true in nearby parts of St. Bernard Parish. Other neighborhoods largely spared by Katrina, such as the French Quarter and Garden District, likely would be spared by all but the most severe storms.

The corps' reports do not tag neighborhoods as being dangerous or safe. Rather, they lay out potential damage from a variety of storms block-by-block and "let everyone make their own decisions about the risk," corps spokesman Vic Harris said.
more from USA Today

Unleashing a dioxin legacy

For decades, paper mills, municipal waste incinerators, and petrochemical industries lining the banks of the Houston Ship Channel (HSC) have filled the waters with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and its equivalents. The sediments lying underneath still bear that toxic legacy. A new study published today on ES&T’s website (DOI: 10.1021/es062917p) suggests that soil erosion, hurricanes, tides, shipping, and dredging may be churning up contaminants, transporting them to different parts of the channel, and reintroducing them into the aquatic environment. The findings may help reveal why mysteriously high dioxin levels are in fish and shellfish in the channel despite tight regulations on emissions.

The HSC is a 52-mile-long, very narrow channel and is one of the busiest ports in the U.S. It receives freshwater from the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers and connects to the Gulf of Mexico via Galveston Bay. High concentrations of dioxins have been found in blue crab and catfish in the HSC since Texas first started testing for the chemicals in the early 1990s. In other places in the state, tissue levels of dioxins plummeted within 1–2 years of reductions in emissions, but in the HSC, levels have remained almost constant, even after a decade of tightened regulations on industries and years of cleaning up. This suggests that “something different was happening [there]”, says Larry Koenig, manager of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ’s) HSC Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) project, which is determining acceptable amounts of daily dioxin input into the channel.

“We’re finding alarming amounts of it, and what we want to know is: is this dioxin derived from continuing inputs, or is it legacy dioxin,” says Kevin Yeager of the University of Southern Mississippi’s department of marine sciences, who teamed up with Hanadi Rifai of the University of Houston’s civil and environmental engineering department and other colleagues for the current study.

Yeager and his team collected 55 sediment cores from the upper part of the channel. Most of the cores were so heavily mixed that they were unsuitable for analysis. Continued dredging, shipping, and hurricanes have caused heavy mixing of the channel’s sediments and the dioxins in them. The team settled on eight sediment cores that showed the least amount of mixing and analyzed them for the rate of sedimentation and the rate of deposition of 17 of the most toxic dioxins and other airborne pollutants. They also tested for dioxin content and changes in dioxin concentrations within each core. They compared these findings with a background atmospheric dioxin deposition rate obtained from one sediment core from a wetland farther northwest.
more from Environmental Science & Technology

Jeff unhappy about pump gates

Corps decides to not build them
By Richard Rainey

A contentious Jefferson Parish Council greeted the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday as corps officials explained their decision to not install temporary sluice gates to protect drainage pumping stations against storm surges.

"I don't understand the continued indecision, miscalculation on the part of the corps," Councilman Louis Congemi said.

The corps canceled its plan to build temporary gates at eight pump stations after rejecting all bids for the work in May. In response, the council demanded that the corps not spend the money it had set aside for the project anywhere but in Jefferson Parish. Brett Herr, the corps' branch chief in charge of armoring the stations along Lake Pontchartrain, said the corps budgeted no more than $5 million in federal money for the gates.

more from the Times-Picayune

Fish study raises red flag on water supply

By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fish caught in the rivers near Allegheny County's storm sewer overflow pipes contain almost twice as much of certain estrogenic chemicals that can cause cancer, a University of Pittsburgh study has found.

The link between sewage plant discharges and fish contaminated with those chemicals has been established by studies in other urban areas around the world, but the finding is particularly significant in Allegheny County, which has more than 400 sanitary and combined sewer overflows.

The findings are a concern for public health because of the region's dependency on the rivers for its drinking water. Dr. Conrad Dan Volz, head of the study, said a number of reports have shown a link between high ingestion of estrogens and hormone problems and some cancers, including testicular cancer.

Estrogenic chemicals, called xenoestrogens or estrogen-mimicking chemicals, come from garden pesticides, plasticizers, glues, cosmetics and products that dissolve detergents. Pharmaceutical estrogens from female hormone replacement drugs and birth control pills are also found in sewage discharges.
more from the Post Gazette

A Mystery of Fish Mortality

MORGAN FORD, Va. -- Something in the Shenandoah River is turning the smallmouth bass thin and listless and causing sunfish to break out in blisters that look like cigarette burns. Something in the water is making both species weaken and die, leaving the river bottom flecked with white bellies.

Something is doing all this. After five years of tests, more than $600,000 in government money and uncounted numbers of dead fish, that's still as much as anybody knows.

Since 2002, fish have been dying in the Shenandoah and other western tributaries of the Potomac River, and scientists have been racing to find the cause. They have considered viruses, oxygen-depleted "dead zones" and runoff from chicken farms, but they have found nothing definitive. At the same time, the search has been complicated by die-offs this year in two rivers outside the Potomac watershed: the Cowpasture and upper James.

At the center of the mystery is the Shenandoah, whose easy fishing and picturesque setting have long attracted visitors from the Washington area. Here, the impact has been ecological, economic and emotional, as locals try to understand how this beloved waterway became something that kills fish.
more from the Washington Post

Life with little water

By Nick Carey

Like many towns in the arid parts of the United States' southwest region, Flagstaff faces a never-ending challenge in its search for water, and it is getting harder.

"Eight years of drought conditions and a growing population haven't helped," said Randy Pellatz, the assistant director of utilities for the city of Flagstaff.

The heavily forested, mountain town of Flagstaff has grown to 62 000 people from 45 000 in 1990, straining its water resources. Upper Lake Mary, a man-made reservoir that provides up to 40 percent of the town's water needs of 11-million gallons a day, is down to 18 percent of normal levels.

Mark Shiery of Flagstaff's fire department said the area is up to three years behind normal precipitation levels, heightening the risk of forest fire in this high desert town.

"Wild fire is the single biggest threat we face," he said.

It is a stark puzzle: how to provide water for a growing population in desert or near-desert conditions. Then add in the long drought.
more from Reuters

Environmentalists' lawsuit targets water board's 'ag waiver'

Tens of thousands of farms are illegally exempt from laws requiring the monitoring and reporting of toxic water runoff, environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit targets the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board's "ag waiver" program, which allows farmers to join coalitions rather than test their own runoff.

Millions of pounds of pesticides and fertilizers are applied to these farmers' lands, later washing into creeks and streams and, ultimately, into the Delta. There, the toxins imperil threatened fish such as the Delta smelt, environmentalists say.
They first sued in 2003, when the waiver program began. That lawsuit was dismissed. The waivers were extended last year, and a new lawsuit was filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and San Francisco-based Baykeeper.

Water officials still don't know the answers to basic questions, the lawsuit says, such as how many discharges are taking place, which chemicals and how much of them are released into the environment, and whether the coalitions have made any improvement in water quality.

"These coalitions are not responsible," said Sejal Choksi, program director for Baykeeper. "They're a shield or a cover to (farmers) not being held individually accountable."
more from Recordnet

Florida Is Slow to See the Need to Save Water

Even as a drought and unprecedented water restrictions strip many Florida lawns of their lushness, Mark Harding has few takers for the artificial grass he sells from a showroom here. Inquiries are up, he said, but swapping turf for less thirsty alternatives remains hard for Floridians to get their heads around.

“People are just starting to look at it,” said Mr. Harding, a transplant from Buffalo who admits to having replaced only a piece of his own lawn with the fake stuff. “It’s right in its infancy stage.”

The same might be said for awareness that Florida’s water supply, seemingly endless given the abundance of springs, lakes, canals, aquifers and rainfall, is not.

Many regions have all but depleted their groundwater supply, yet they have barely begun planning new water sources or enforcing conservation measures. Meanwhile, residential water bills in Florida’s urban areas — averaging $32 a month in Miami, for example — have remained much lower than those in many other cities.

“We now face the scarcity, the spending and the spectacle that used to be unique to the arid West,” said Cynthia Barnett, the author of “Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.” But Ms. Barnett and others who study Florida’s water use say that unlike out West, a sense of urgency has not taken hold here, nor have government agencies taken the politically thorny steps some scientists say are necessary.

more from the NY Times

Australia Turns to Desalination Amid Water Shortage

Look at the grass courts at Perth's Peppermint Grove Tennis Club, and it's difficult to believe the talk about drought and the possibility that this west Australian coastal city will run out of water.

Beyond the fence, sailboats and kayaks bob in the Swan River, a thick ribbon of blue that winds through a city bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean. It is a city where water seems to be everywhere. But Perth is facing a serious water shortage.

Over the past 10 years or so, the city has seen a 21 percent decline in rainfall, but the stream flow into dams — the actual amount running into storage — dropped about 65 percent, according to Malcolm Turnbull, Australia's minister for the environment and water resources.

"We've seen similar declines in stream flow, though not quite so dramatic across southern Australia," he says.

Turnbull calls Perth the "canary in the climate change coalmine," a city scrambling to find other sources of water for a growing population. The city is riding a wave of economic prosperity fueled by China's insatiable appetite for Western Australia's natural resources.

Perth, with a population of about 1.7 million, is growing 3 percent a year — about 750 families a week move to the city, says Gary Crisp of the Western Australia Water Corp.

"We need more water," he says. "We're absolutely running out."

The Water Corp. turned to the nearby Indian Ocean to help solve the problem.

The Kwinana Desalination Plant south of the city opened two months ago. The facility, the first of its kind in Australia, covers just a few acres in an industrial park next to the ocean.
more from NPR

Toxic pollution found under ships in Suisun Bay

Report shows seven poisonous metals peeling from decaying government vessels in hazardous concentrations
By THOMAS PEELE/MediaNews Group
Article Launched: 06/17/2007 08:16:56 AM PDT

McGowan: "This material is going to keep getting into the bay and something has to be done about it."
More than 21 tons of lead, zinc, barium, copper and other toxic metals have fallen or washed away from decaying government ships off Benicia in Suisun Bay, and high levels of the materials were found in sediment under the vessels, according to a draft report.

Tests on water extracted from sediment samples indicate a significant risk to aquatic life on the bay bottom and that toxic metals are likely entering the food chain and could be passed on to people who eat fish from the area, said two scientists who reviewed the report for MediaNews Group.

The 610-page document suggests that the "mothball fleet" of dozens of World War II relics and rotting cargo carriers is more of an environmental threat than the U.S. Maritime Administration, which maintains it, has previously acknowledged.

The report lists seven toxic metals in peeling and flaking paints in quantities that exceed California's standards for hazardous waste.

In addition to the 21 tons of metals that are estimated to have fallen, at least another 66 tons remain on the ships.

That toxic material "is likely to be released to the environment" and its cleanup "is highly warranted and recommended" because of threats to the "ecosystem, site maintenance personnel, visitors and salvage crews," states the report by R&M Environmental and Infrastructure, an Oakland engineering firm.
more from the Vallejo Times Herald

WPB water supply got boost from treated sewage water

WEST PALM BEACH — The City of West Palm Beach came so close to exhausting its water supply in May that it made an unprecedented decision to pump millions of gallons of treated sewage water onto well fields that supply 150,000 customers.

With a critical need for drinking water, utility managers skipped percolating the effluent through a filtering marsh for two years. The so-called reuse water was put directly onto the city's well field after being blended with millions of gallons from old quarry pits at Palm Beach Aggregates in western Palm Beach County - water not intended for direct human consumption.

The plan evolved out of urgent necessity after water managers April 3 ordered the city to stop pumping from Lake Okeechobee, which was dangerously low. During dry times, Lake O often is used to replenish Clear Lake, the source for the city's water treatment plant.

The city wasn't ready to handle a historic drought without backup water from Lake Okeechobee, said Mayor Lois Frankel. Its new state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant that recycled wastewater was still being tested.

"Changing a system cannot be done overnight," she said. "We got a little bit blind-sided."

The city routinely puts out notices when there's a boil-water alert, or even a change in water's taste, smell or color from a chemical-treatment adjustment. It announced and enforced grass-watering restrictions as the crisis mounted. But the public wasn't informed about the change in treatment of recycled sewer water.
more from the Palm Beach Post

A Sacred River Endangered by Global Warming

VARANASI, India -- With her eyes sealed, Ramedi cupped the murky water of the Ganges River in her hands, lifted them toward the sun, and prayed for her husband, her 15 grandchildren and her bad hip. She, like the rest of India's 800 million Hindus, has absolute faith that the river she calls Ganga Ma can heal.

Around Ramedi, who like some Indians has only one name, people converged on the riverbank in the early morning, before the day's heat set in. Women floated necklaces of marigolds on a boat of leaves, a dozen skinny boys soaped their hair as they bathed in their underwear, and a somber group of men carried a body to the banks of the river, a common ritual before the dead are cremated on wooden funeral pyres. To be cremated beside the Ganges, most here believe, brings salvation from the cycle of rebirth.

"Ganga Ma is everything to Hindus. It's our chance to attain nirvana," Ramedi said, emerging from the river, her peach-colored sari dripping along the shoreline.

But the prayer rituals carried out at the water's edge may not last forever -- or even another generation, according to scientists and meteorologists. The Himalayan source of Hinduism's holiest river, they say, is drying up.
more from the Washington Post

Worry about water

Michigan must lead in resource protection

June 14, 2007

The scenarios are ominous. Drought, human devastation, even war. All because of water, an essential element of life that is taken for granted around here because we have so much of it. Makes it hard to grasp the "worldwide frenzy to secure freshwater" that experts at Yale University say is already happening. Water, some say, will be the oil of the 21st Century -- highly valued, but also much in demand and coveted to a point of trouble.

Big difference: People lived without oil for a long time and probably could again, awful as that would be. But people cannot live without water. And so they will fight for it.

Michigan has to fight for it, too. No state has a greater stake in defending the resource.

Global experts now say that about one in six people around the world lacks access to clean water and many devote most of their days to finding or hauling it. Worse, some are near sources of water that have been rendered unsafe by pollution.

Even in the United States, where the average person uses 80-100 gallons of water a day, more than a third of the country is technically in drought, partly because so many people have chosen to live in areas where there is simply not enough water to support them.

What's this mean to Michigan, an economically hurting pair of peninsulas jutting out into 20% of the world's freshwater supply?

Probably that we can expect more interest in the Great Lakes, but for the wrong reasons. And certainly that this state should take a lead role in defending them -- from both pollution and diversion. If you are not aggressive about protecting a resource, how can you expect to be entrusted with it? Minnesota and the Canadian province of Ontario are already far ahead of Michigan in passing laws to guard the lakes against out-of-basin withdrawals. Illinois and New York are ready to act while the state with the most to lose has yet to take up this issue.
more from the Detroit Free Press

Water fleas turned into toxic-waste detectives

They give their lives so that ours will be safer.

Of course, when you’re a water flea or a fathead minnow, you don’t have a lot of choice.

These tiny creatures tell us if sewage-treatment plants and industries are piping toxic waste into our waterways.

By law, the industrial plants should not release wastewater that is toxic. To prove that they are complying, they hire labs such as James R. Reed & Associates in Newport News, Va.

Clients of the 23-person lab include the sewage plants of Richmond and the Virginia counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico.

In a clean, bright room, workers put fathead minnows and water fleas into samples of wastewater to test it for toxicity. The tests involve computer programs and statistical analyses, but the bottom line is that if these common fresh-water animals do well, the waste is not toxic.

If the creatures die, or if they don’t properly grow or reproduce, the waste is toxic. That means the plant or industry has to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
more from the Winston-Salem Journal

Cleaning Passaic River may cost $2.3B

Removing the toxic chemicals that foul the lower Passaic River could cost up to $2.3 billion, the federal government said Thursday, as it outlined what could become one of the costliest pollution cleanups in U.S. history.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is considering seven options for restoring the heavily contaminated river, where dioxin, pesticides, heavy metals and other chemicals have spread as far north as Garfield and the city of Passaic.

The cheapest option -- entombing the contaminated riverbed under a dirt cap -- could cost at least $900 million. Completely removing 11 million cubic yards of toxic sediment could run more than twice that, the agency estimated.

"This is going to be one of the most significant river restorations in the history of the United States," said Alan Steinberg, the EPA's regional administrator. "You're talking about a river that runs through one of the most populated areas of the state and a river that was subject to a terrible environmental destruction."

Steinberg said the companies responsible for polluting the river would foot the bill -- a vow that could set up a long fight among the industries that have set up shop along the Passaic over the years.
more from New Jersey Media

Reduction of metals ordered by regulators

San Diego and several other agencies must reduce the amount of metals fouling Chollas Creek by roughly 90 percent over the next two decades, according to a mandate issued yesterday by regional water regulators.
These pollution limits begin the large steps that need to be taken,” said Benjamin Tobler, who helped craft the metals initiative for the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The cleanup is significant because of its size, the price tag – possibly more than $1 billion – and the precedent it sets for reclaiming once-ignored urban waterways in the county.

San Diego, La Mesa, Lemon Grove and the California Department of Transportation are primarily responsible for meeting the new anti-pollution standard, which focuses on copper, lead and zinc. Major landowners such as school districts, the county and the Navy also are on the hook to help reduce those contaminants.

It will be challenging work because the pollution sources are widespread and tough to control. Metal contamination is largely linked to urban runoff, particularly copper dust from brake pads, zinc particles from tires and lead from car exhaust.

Trash and industrial operations in the creek's heavily urbanized watershed also contribute to the problem.

REDUCING METALS IN WATERWAYS FOR RESIDENTS:
Don't dump automotive fluids, such as oil, into storm drains.
Report illegal dumping to city or county storm-water agencies.
Don't wash cars in a driveway or at curbside. Go to a business that recycles its wastewater.
Erect fences that don't have a zinc coating.
Ensure that a vehicle's wheel-balance weights are secure.

FOR AGENCIES:

Increase street sweeping.
Add filtering devices at storm-water drains.
Expand the amount of open land so more storm water can drain into soil.
Push for less use of metals in brake pads.
SOURCES: San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, Coastkeeper, city of San Diego
more from San Diego Union Tribune

The case of the disappearing Great Lake

BARAGA, Mich. — "Where did the water go?" asks Ted Shalifor, manager of a marina and campground on Lake Superior's Chippewa Indian Reservation.


The water on Lake Superior is so low that he couldn't put his docks in the water this year. Where he used to see water, he now sees sandbars.

Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake, has dropped to its lowest level in 81 years. The water is 20 inches below average and a foot lower than just a year ago.

The dropping levels have had serious environmental and economic consequences. Wetlands have dried up. Power plants run at half capacity. Cargo ships carry partial loads. Boaters struggle to find a place to dock.

The changes can be seen all along the 2,800-mile shore of Lake Superior, the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes. The water has receded, sometimes 50 feet or more, from its normal shoreline.
more from USA Today

Test all wells for arsenic, says health expert

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 13 June 2007

Drinking water poisoned with arsenic may be causing cancer on the same scale as passive smoking, affecting millions of people worldwide, a public health specialist has warned.

Every private well or borehole in the world used for drinking water should be tested for the presence of the metal, Professor Allan Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said. Research in northern Chile, one of the most heavily contaminated areas, has shown that between 5 and 10 per cent of the population died from arsenic poisoning, most from lung and bladder cancer.

"That is the highest death rate caused by something in the environment in the world," said Professor Smith. "The problem with arsenic is that it is colourless and odourless, unlike other causes of lung cancer such as cigarette smoke and diesel fumes. It is very hard to convince people that water that is crystal clear and tastes fine could kill them."

more from The Independent

Considering chloramine

Is San Francisco's water causing weird rashes in some people? Stalled bill means we may never know
BY JON BECKHARDT

For three years, dozens of Bay Area residents have alleged the water disinfectant used in San Francisco and other cities causes a variety of symptoms ranging from asthma to fainting to rashes. The San Francisco Department of Public Health has spent more than $100,000 to study the chemical, chloramine, but it has not done a full scientific study that might prove or disprove a connection between the chemical and the reported symptoms.

Responding to the lack of scientific studies on the dermatological and respiratory effects of the chloramine, Assemblymember Ira Ruskin (D–<\d>Redwood City) introduced legislation to further study the chemical, but the measure was held up in the Appropriations Committee as the June 8 deadline for advancing it passed, frustrating those who hoped to finally get some answers.

Chloramine replaced chlorine in San Francisco's water system in February 2004 after the Environmental Protection Agency tightened regulations against trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, chlorine by-products that may be carcinogenic.

more from the SF Bay Guardian

Gorbachev call for global law on water access

By Fiona Harvey

Published: June 12 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 12 2007 03:00

Access to clean water should be enshrined in international law as a human right, says Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union.


Mr Gorbachev, who is chairman of the charity Green Cross International, which campaigns on water problems, is pressing the UN to adopt a convention on fresh water similar to that covering human rights.

About 1bn people lack access to clean water and 2bn lack access to sanitation, with the problem being aggravated by the demands of increasing populations and economic growth. Climate change has also shifted rainfall patterns and caused supplies of fresh water to dwindle.

Mr Gorbachev says that the problem is urgent. "Before, people thought water was available and would always be available, and the problem was not that severe. Now it is necessary to adopt a convention that would declare the right of access to good quality drinking water as a human right."
more from the Financial Times

Tapping into water waste

Reduced supply increases need for conservation
BY PATRICIA FARRELL AIDEM, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/11/2007 10:45:33 PM PDT

SANTA CLARITA - Local water suppliers are urging conservation as summer approaches in this driest year on record - and as the region's main water supply is reduced to a trickle because of a threatened fish 300 miles away.

The Castaic Lake Water Agency and the four retailers that distribute the region's state water allocation plan an advertising blitz to spread the message that a little conservation goes a long way.

"We're working on an outreach campaign from movie ads to newspaper ads to bus benches... the whole nine yards," Thomas Hawes, the CLWA's water conservation program coordinator, said Monday.

Just 3 inches of rain have dampened the Santa Clarita Valley since Oct. 1, one-sixth of normal rainfall, limiting the amount of water that percolates to underground sources. At the same time, the state Department of Water Resources is pumping just a fraction of the norm from the Sacramento Delta to protect the Delta smelt, a fish population used to judge the ecological health of the water body that serves much of California via the State Water Project.

Local water officials say residents can combat the shortages by making some minor changes.
more from the LA Daily News

The wrath of 2007: America's great drought

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 11 June 2007

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.

In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

The human impact, for the moment, has been limited, certainly nothing compared to the great westward migration of Okies in the 1930 - the desperate march described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.

Big farmers are now well protected by government subsidies and emergency funds, and small farmers, some of whom are indeed struggling, have been slowly moving off the land for decades anyway. The most common inconvenience, for the moment, are restrictions on hosepipes and garden sprinklers in eastern cities.

more from the The Independent

More ethanol means more corn -- and more water pollution

Farmers in Illinois, second only to Iowa in corn production, planned to plant 1.6 million more acres of corn. Their Missouri counterparts intended to plant corn on an additional 700,000 acres.

That's just this planting season. With the ethanol industry predicting that it will more than double production by 2010 — and with Washington politicians leaping on the biofuels bandwagon — it seems certain than the nation will need more corn in coming years to keep pace.

The robust growth benefits farmers and the Corn Belt economy. It might chip away at energy imports as advertised, even though much of the fertilizer that farmers use is made with imported natural gas. But those successes have one certain cost: more oxygen-stealing chemicals running off farms to choke rivers and lakes with algae.

more from Saint Louis Today

Both Sides Say Project Is Pivotal Issue for Brazil

PORTO VELHO, Brazil — The eternal tension between Brazil’s need for economic growth and the damage that can cause to the environment are nowhere more visible than here in this corner of the western Amazon region.
More than one-quarter of this rugged frontier state, Rondônia, has been deforested, the highest rate in the Amazon. Over the years, ranchers, miners and loggers have routinely invaded nature reserves and Indian reservations.

Now a proposal to build an $11 billion hydroelectric project here on a river that may have the world’s most diverse fish stocks has set off a new controversy.

How that dispute is resolved, advocates on both sides say, could determine nothing less than Brazil’s vision of its future at a moment when it is simultaneously facing energy and environmental pressures and casting envious glances at faster-growing developing countries, like India and China.

Unhappy with Brazil’s anemic rate of growth, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made the economy the top priority of his second term, which began in January. Large public works projects, including the dams here on the Madeira River, are envisioned as one of the best ways to stimulate growth.

“Who dumped this catfish in my lap?” was the president’s irate complaint when he learned recently that the government’s environmental agency had refused to license the dam projects, according to Brazilian news reports.

But the proposal is far from dead, and continues to have Mr. da Silva’s support. Additional environmental impact studies are under way, but the dispute now raging in Rondônia appears to have more to do with politics and economics than science and nature.

“My impression is that some environmental groups see the authorization of construction as opening the door to unrestricted entry to the Amazon,” said Antônio Alves da Silva Marrocos, a leader of the Pro-Dam Committee, financed by business groups and the state government.
more from the New York Times

Despite promises to fix it, the Gulf's dead zone is growing

Every late spring, it forms 12 miles off the Louisiana coast and lasts for months: a sprawling, lifeless band of water known as the "dead zone."

Shrimp trawlers steer clear, knowing the low oxygen in this part of the Gulf of Mexico makes it uninhabitable for fish and other marine life. It starts at the mouth of the Mississippi River and can extend all the way to the Texas border, many years growing to the size of Connecticut.

It's not a natural phenomenon. Waste water and fertilizer runoff from farms and towns hundreds of miles up the Mississippi pour billions of pounds of excess nutrients into the Gulf, sparking unnatural algae blooms that choke off the oxygen needed for the food chain to survive.

Under a process that's been in place for the past decade, a federal task force and a team of scientists appointed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency will meet in New Orleans this week to tackle the problem.

But more than five years after the task force pledged to reduce the dead zone to a quarter of its size by 2015, it's still getting bigger. A boom in corn production for ethanol is bringing more farmland on line, leading experts to predict near-record sizes this year.

more from the New Orleans Times Picayune

Poison left behind

Serious problems remain after decades of cleanup on Peninsula military bases.
BY PATRICK LYNCH AND JOHN M.R. BULL

June 10, 2007
The military has polluted Peninsula creeks and ponds with cancer-causing chemicals and dangerous contaminants such as mercury and arsenic.

The water tables under the four major bases are extensively contaminated with fuel and other toxins.

At one base, an industrial solvent has been found flowing into the York River at levels almost 4,000 times the federal drinking-water limit.
At another, fish skeletons have been deformed by military pollution.

And tests show elevated levels of nasty polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in fish, oysters and crabs in public waterways near three of the bases - particularly around Tabb Creek near Langley Air Force Base.

And despite those tests, a communications glitch between state agencies allowed at least 175 bushels of oysters to be sold to consumers last year out of waters contaminated with PCBs, a carcinogen that accumulates up the food chain into humans.

more from the Hampton Roads Daily Press

Louisiana Wants to Change River's Course to Save Coast

In what would be an engineering feat unlike any in the nation's history, Louisiana wants to move the Mississippi River as part of a master plan to save the state's vanishing coastal wetlands. Many experts believe it's the only thing that will work.

Southeast Louisiana is the fastest disappearing landmass on Earth. On average, every half hour or so, a piece the size of a football field slips into the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's like the Gulf of Mexico has gotten 20 to 30 miles closer to everybody in southeast Louisiana," Windell Curole says as he stands on top of the levee system in Bayou Lafourche. As general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, it's his job to try to hold back the sea.

To the south, people have abandoned their homes as the land has turned to marsh, then to open water. Soon, Curole says, even the earthen levee may not be enough to protect them.

"We either start tackling the problem or we help people move and communities move out, and all the infrastructure along with it," he says.

Coastal erosion threatens New Orleans, as well as oil facilities vital to the nation's energy supply, ports that handle more than half of its grain shipments, and the estuaries that produce a third of its seafood. But to understand why the coast is vanishing, it is necessary to know how it got there.

Denise Reed, a geology professor at the University of New Orleans, says the whole coast of Louisiana was built by the river, which kept changing course, squiggling back and forth like a loose garden hose and spreading sediment everywhere it went. But since humans tamed it with levees, the river can only build land in one place — farther and farther out to sea.

"Until we're at the point where we are now, where the water and the sediment that comes out of the mouth of the river goes straight into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico," Reed says.

more from NPR

Coke Vows to Reduce Water Used in Drink Production

NEW YORK - The Coca-Cola Co. said on Tuesday it will reduce the amount of water used to produce its beverages and put more effort into recycling the water it uses in manufacturing.


Coke, which along with its bottlers used 290 billion litres of water for beverage production last year, said it would make a US$20 million commitment to the World Wildlife Fund.

"Our goal is to replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production," Coke chief E. Neville Isdell told the WWF's annual meeting in Beijing.

More than half the water Coke used in 2006 was dedicated to processes like rinsing, cleaning, heating and cooling, rather than going into the drinks themselves.

Coke's new measures include setting water efficiency targets for global operations by next year, and aligning its manufacturing system to return all water used in manufacturing to the environment.

The Atlanta-based company will also expand support of local water preservation efforts, like harvesting rain water, reforestation, improving water efficiency in farming, Coke and the WWF said in a statement.


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