Biosensors To Probe The Metals Menace

If the pond life goes star-shaped, you'd be wise not to drink the water. Researchers from CRC CARE are pioneering a world-first technology to warn people if their local water or air is contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals and metal-like substances.

Andrew McKay, a PhD student at CRC CARE and The University of Queensland, is studying the changes that take place in a unique water microbe when it is exposed to arsenic, cadmium and lead - industrial and natural contaminants around the world.

"Our goal is to develop a simple field test that can warn people or environmental authorities if dangerous levels of toxic metals or metalloids (metal-like substances such as arsenic) are present in the environment, to which they might be exposed," he explains.

The test could provide vital in helping to tackle one of the world's greatest disasters - the poisoning of tens of millions of people in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, through naturally-occurring arsenic in their household well water.

"But countries such as Australia and New Zealand also have an arsenic problem from the tens of thousands of old sheep and cattle dips where arsenic was used for decades to control pests," Mr McKay said.
more from Terra Daily

Brazil River Dispute Highlights Larger Issue

Brazil's most hotly contested public conflicts today are often about water.

President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva says hydro-electric energy is a sine qua non for the development of South America's biggest economy. But environmental and indigenous groups increasingly oppose massive engineering projects.

The proposal to divert part of Brazil's mighty Sao Francisco River to the vast drought-prone Northeast epitomizes the debate.

No other river, the Amazon included, has such a hold on the imagination of Brazilians. "Old Chico," as the Sao Francisco River is affectionately, called has been immortalized in folklore and celebrated at Carnival.

Now, this legendary river is at the center of one of Brazil's most ambitious infrastructure schemes to divert some of its waters to the impoverished northeast. The rural areas there are Brazil's poorest, according to the World Bank. But critics variously assail the $2.3 billion venture as a boondoggle, an environmental nightmare, and a vanity project.

more from NPR

North-West Passage is now plain sailing

The North-West Passage – the sea route running along the Arctic coastline of North America, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began.

"Since August 21 the North-West Passage is open to navigation. This is the first time that it happens," Nalan Koc, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's climate change programme, told reporters in Longyearbyen, a town in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

"The Arctic ice sheet currently extends on 4.9m square kilometres. In September 2005 it measured 5.3m square kilometers."

Koc was quoting research from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, where scientists monitor the surface of the Arctic ice sheet at regular intervals. Last week they noted "the imminent opening" of the North-West Passage.

"Analysts confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972," they said in research conclusions published on the centre's website.

The news is yet another milestone showing that the Earth is warming up. The route was first navigated in the early 1900s by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who later beat Robert F Scott in the race to the south pole in 1911. Amundsen and his crew took nearly two years to pick their way through a labyrinth of narrow lanes of open water and thick ice. Now it would be comparatively plain sailing.
more from The Guardian

In China, New Risks Emerge At Giant Three Gorges Dam

MIAOHE VILLAGE, China -- China's vaunted engineering marvel, the Three Gorges Dam, drew fierce criticism during its construction for uprooting more than a million people and manhandling the Yangtze River basin. Now, a year after completion, the project has new problems -- including landslides, water pollution and suggestions that the dam could contribute to the very flooding it was built to prevent.

Geologists say the massive weight of water behind the Three Gorges Dam has begun to erode the Yangtze's steep shores at several spots. That, along with frequent fluctuations in water levels, has triggered a series of landslides and ...
more from the Wall Street Journal

Residents fed up with bad water

The water that flows through the faucets, staining the bathtubs and sinks at many homes on Poole Circle in Holbrook, is so rusty that Tracy Loughlin won't let her two small boys bathe in it.

She bundles up Tyler, 5, and John, 7, at the end of a long day at work and drives them 12 miles to her mother's house in Hanover for their baths.

"My water is too rusty and brown and smelly to bathe them in it," said Loughlin, 32. "I don't want to risk it. It can't be too healthy."

Like many residents on the half-circle lined with 1950s ranch houses, the Loughlins don't drink the water. They don't even let their purebred American bulldog, Princess, lap it out of a bowl.

Poole Circle isn't the only Holbrook neighborhood that has had problems with rusty water for years.

But things have gotten so bad on Poole Circle over the past six months that residents recently petitioned selectmen to take action. Now fire hydrants in the neighborhood are on automatic timers to help flush out the system, and water samples have been sent to the state for testing.
more from The Boston Globe

Two major rivers heavily polluted

Two major rivers remain heavily polluted despite more than a decade's efforts to clean them, posing a threat to the water safety of one sixth of the country's 1.3 billion population, a report showed yesterday.

More than half the water in the Huaihe River is highly polluted, said a report released by the environment and resources protection committee of the National People's Congress (NPC).

Although the emission of chemical oxygen demand (COD), an important indicator of water pollution, in the Huaihe River has been decreasing since 2004, it was still about 83 percent above the target level last year.

The pollution threatens drinking water safety in cities along the river, as many of them draw from the river for their waterworks. For instance, the report said, only half the water taken from the river met the safety standard in Bengbu city of East China's Anhui Province from January to June this year.
more from Environmental Health News

Team Tracks Antibiotic Resistance From Swine Farms To Groundwater

The routine use of antibiotics in swine production can have unintended consequences, with antibiotic resistance genes sometimes leaking from waste lagoons into groundwater. In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois report that some genes found in hog waste lagoons are transferred - "like batons" - from one bacterial species to another. The researchers found that this migration across species and into new environments sometimes dilutes - and sometimes amplifies - genes conferring antibiotic resistance.

The new report, in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, tracks the passage of tetracycline resistance genes from hog waste lagoons into groundwater wells at two Illinois swine facilities.

This is the first study to take a broad sample of tetracycline resistance genes in a landscape dominated by hog farming, said principal investigator R.I. Mackie. And it is one of the first to survey the genes directly rather than focusing on the organisms that host them. Mackie is a professor in the department of animal sciences and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology.
more form Environmental Health News

Icky Algae Alarms New England Fishermen

STOCKBRIDGE, Vt. (AP) -- It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways. Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called ''rock snot'' is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists.

''It scares me,'' said Lawton Weber, a fly fishing guide, who first spotted it on the Connecticut River in northern Vermont in June. ''It's an aesthetic eyesore when it's in full bloom mode and its impact on the trout population is going to be significant.''

Over the past 10 years, the algae with a scientific name of Didymosphenia geminata, or didymo, has turned up in California, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee.

''We're starting to realize it's all over the place,'' said Karl Hermann, a regional waste monitoring and assessment coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver.

What started out in Vancouver Island in British Columbia ''has suddenly just skyrocketed,'' he said.

The algae has the potential to bloom into thick masses with long stalks, blanketing the bottoms of some streams, threatening aquatic insect and fish populations by smothering food sources.

In New England, it has turned up in the White River, Connecticut River and the Batten Kill, a trout fishing mecca in southern Vermont that's famed for its hard-to-catch fish. Quebec is grappling with it in Matapedia River in the lower St. Lawrence.
more from the NY Times

Rivers soak up pollution from Iowa's aging sewers

When rainfall coursing down the Des Moines River caused a sewage backup that temporarily KO'ed Ottumwa's water treatment plant Friday, it was the latest sign that Iowa's sewage systems cannot keep up with demands people place on them these days.

An equally glaring reminder was a sewage clog that forced 800 workers - including employees of the Iowa Department of Public Health - to leave the Lucas State Office Building in Des Moines the same day.

Dozens of Iowa cities and towns polluted rivers and streams last week when rains overloaded their sewer systems and they were forced to divert the waste. Because the systems could not handle the onslaught, the communities piped their waste directly into local rivers or streams.

Through July, Iowa sewage plants recorded more than 100 such bypasses caused by non-weather-related problems such as equipment breakdowns or pipe clogs. It could cost millions of dollars to upgrade the plants, and that could mean higher bills for homeowners.

The streams that absorb the diverted sewage became potential health threats to swimmers, boaters and fishermen, because the human wastes can contain disease-causing organisms and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
more from The Des Moines Register

Killer water in Limestone County?

ATHENS — “I’ve been their sewer for 20-something years.”

That’s how nursery owner Bill Strain described alleged contamination by his business neighbor, the Limestone County Farmers Cooperative.

He believes the co-op’s handling of chemicals has been causing contamination since it began operation.

Both businesses are on U.S. 31 south of U.S. 72 and are one-half mile apart.

Strain, once a customer of the co-op, said it took him about five years and $2 million in plant losses before he put the blame on the co-op. He has filed a lawsuit that states the co-op does not follow industry standards for cleaning its spray tanks and other equipment.

The lawsuit also states the co-op is causing run-off contamination by not having a self-contained area for mixing and loading operations.

Testing by the state and a private lab indicates there are pesticides and herbicides in the groundwater and storm water adjacent to the co-op, in a tributary that runs to Swan Creek and in Strain’s irrigation pond off U.S. 31.

Strain has abandoned his pond and is pumping water from Swan Creek. The contamination was found in a tributary to the creek, but it is the only source he has to irrigate his plants other than the pond.

more from The Decatur Daily

Troubled waters at Camp Lejeune: An Overview

From 1957 to 1987, civilians, Marines and residents drank, cooked with, bathed in and swam in water contaminated by industrial solvents at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in Jacksonville. In a statement e-mailed to the Star-News, the Marines acknowledge the contamination occurred but said it is reserving judgment on the possible health effects until a national Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry study is complete in 2008.

Here's an overview of the issue, which has attracted the attention of national lawmakers and health agencies:

The water: Some of the wells at Camp Lejeune were contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and dichloroethylene (DCE). These chemicals, believed by researchers to be possible carcinogens, were used as dry-cleaning solutions or as solvents to dissolve grease or other compounds. Leaking underground storage tanks, spills and drum disposal - along with solvent-disposal practices by a nearby dry cleaner - led to the contamination.

Contaminants were found in two of the eight water systems supplying Camp Lejeune: the Tarawa Terrace and Hadnot Point water systems, which served housing, schools, swimming pools and other buildings on the military base. By 1987, the Marines had shut down those systems. According to the Marine Corps, the water now meets federal standards.
more from The Wilmington Star

Will oceans surge 59 centimetres this century - or 25 metres?

LONDON -- When Al Gore predicted that climate change could lead to a 20-foot rise in sea levels, critics called him alarmist. After all, the International Panel on Climate Change, which receives input from top scientists, estimates surges of only 18 to 59 centimetres in the next century.

But a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark - and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh.

"If we follow 'business-as-usual' growth of greenhouse gas emissions," he writes in an e-mail interview, "I think that we will lock in a guaranteed sea-level rise of several metres, which, frankly, means that all hell is going to break loose."

The scientific basis for this idea - which Prof. Hansen and five co-authors gleaned from geological records, ice core samples and analysis of the sea floor - is outlined in a recent paper published by the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

more form Environmental Health News

Experts: Water at risk from climate change

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — More frequent sewer overflows, tanking stream water quality, reservoir water storage problems and a higher risk of catastrophic wildfire — all are expected to be consequences of human-caused global warming, which may leave Colorado’s water supplies vulnerable in the coming decades, two climate experts told water managers during a Colorado Water Congress meeting Wednesday.

“This is why it sounds like a doom and gloom presentation; there are so many ways climate change can ripple through water resource planning and utility operations,” Boulder water consultant Bob Raucher said.

And make no mistake, global warming is “unequivocally” real, and it is likely caused by humans and our greenhouse gas emissions, said climate researcher Joel B. Smith of Boulder-based Stratus Consulting, a lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent global warming report.

more from The Daily Sentinal

Delta canal fears raised

Though old enemies may be looking afresh at a peripheral canal to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a panel of scientists warned Wednesday that no one knows how such a canal will affect the sensitive estuary.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzegger has mounted a campaign to build the canal. Rejected by state voters in 1982, the project is getting renewed focus as a fix for the Delta, where water quality is suffering and fish are in decline as the estuary strains to provide water to two out of three Californians.

The original proposal called for a 43-mile canal to divert Sacramento River water near the town of Hood, and carry it around the Delta directly to state and federal export pumps near Tracy. It was thought this would isolate exports from Delta water quality problems, while preventing fish from being killed in export pumps.

Critics opposed the original project because they feared it was a tool for Southern California to grab more north state water.

Now, a generation later, the Delta is widely considered to be in crisis, partly because water exports near Tracy continue to kill fish, including Delta smelt, green sturgeon, striped bass and chinook salmon.

Also, new research warns that an earthquake could devastate Delta levees, causing a statewide water and economic disaster.

more from The Sacramento Bee

TOXIC GROUNDS

Groundwater beneath the Rosedale Highway refinery is saturated with toxic chemicals leaked or spilled on the property over the last 20 years, some of it pooling dangerously close to two public drinking supplies including the Kern River.

But until recently, the state agency tasked with protecting our groundwater has not formally acted to get the messes cleaned up -- no fines and no enforced deadlines.

Instead, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has relied on voluntary cleanup measures by the refinery's various owners. Over the last two years, though, the only cleanup effort under way has ground nearly to a halt. Still, the board hasn't acted.

When new contamination showed up in June, the water board did issue a formal cleanup order to the refinery's new owner, Big West of California, a subsidiary of Flying J. But prompt action has not been past practice at the water board. And the recent order does not address most of the contamination.

That may change after state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, was asked by a reporter what he thought of the situation.

more from The Bakersfield Californian

New maps show major reduction in flooding risk during 100-year storm

When the Army Corps of Engineers completes construction of a new flood protection system in 2011, vast areas within the new protection system will see dramatically reduced flooding risks, according to new maps released Wednesday.

The risk maps, which factor in levee and floodgate improvements designed to protect New Orleans from a 100-year hurricane -- about the strength of Hurricane Rita -- show broad swaths of dry land in areas that corps officials believe would flood if a similar storm hit the
current levee system. Further, the new projections show the system would hold up well even in a much stronger, 500-year storm, one substantially stronger than Hurricane Katrina.

Corps officials also announced that completion of the upgrades, combined with drainage improvements, will require an additional $7.6 billion, most of which the Bush administration plans to seek from Congress.

Donald Powell, federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, called the map release one of the most important events in the state's recovery since the 2005 flood.

"If I were in the real estate business, or if I were anticipating coming to live in New Orleans, the first thing I would look at are these maps we're releasing today," he said during a Wednesday news conference.

The risk maps still indicate high water levels in the lowest neighborhoods in the event of a 100-year hurricane, defined as a relatively strong storm with a 1 percent chance of hitting Louisiana in any year. That flooding would stem from rainfall and, in rare cases, a minor amount of overtopping of levees or walls.
more from The Times Picayune

Study: Erosion causing lakes' water loss

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.—Erosion caused by dredging and other human activities on the St. Clair River is causing Lakes Huron and Michigan to lose 2.5 billion gallons of water daily, according to a private Canadian study.
Like a bathtub drain, the artificially deepened river is funneling vast amounts of water into Lake Erie, where it flows east to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River before eventually being lost to the Atlantic Ocean, says the study released Tuesday.

Sponsored by the Georgian Bay Association, the report acknowledges that drought, evaporation and other factors have contributed to a steep dropoff in water levels on the three upper Great Lakes—Huron, Michigan and Superior—since the late 1990s. Huron and Michigan, considered hydrologically the same lake, are 21 inches below normal and Superior could hit a record low this fall.

"But the erosion in the St. Clair River stands out among these problems as a man-made issue that can be corrected fairly easily and within a relatively short timetable," the report says.

It suggests covering the eroding areas with rock and installing gates to regulate water flow southward from Lake Huron.

U.S. officials said they were conducting a five-year study that would recommend what to do. The Canadian group and environmentalists in both nations said waiting that long would severely damage wetlands, fish habitat, water quality and Great Lakes cargo shipping.

more from The San Jose Mercury News

In Florida, lukewarm welcome for drought-resistant landscaping

Zellwood, Fla. - Barbara Tubb's entire yard is a garden of colorful plants and flowers. Palmetto. Pungent-smelling blue basil. And her favorite: bright white cat whiskers. Buttressed by pine needles, the yard looks to one neighbor like a fire hazard.

Inspired by environmentalism, rising water bills, and her husband's support before he died, Ms. Tubbs hired a landscape architect to design her new drought-resistant yard. The homeowner's association in the country club where she lives – a community of manufactured homes in suburban Orlando – resisted her save-water-and-the-planet attitude but eventually granted permission for her to tear out all her St. Augustine grass. Immediately, there was backlash from her neighbors; one even called the fire department.

In Florida, there seems to be little awareness of water as a limited resource, and why should there be? The state is mostly a lush, tropical landscape with lakes, rivers, and springs. Surrounded by ocean water, it gets pounded by hurricanes and tropical storms that, with other rainfall, dump up to 50 inches annually.

But some warn Florida's groundwater is nearing its limits. And people like Tubbs who uproot lush sod for less thirsty landscaping often don't get much support from their neighbors.

This summer's drought – the worst in the Southeast since record-keeping began in 1895 – has laid bare parts of Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental US behind Lake Michigan. It has also exposed permanent water problems in the eastern part of the nation, says Cynthia Barnett, a longtime Florida journalist and author of "Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S."

more from The Christian Science Monitor

Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts

FRESNO, Calif. -- Steve Johnson scans the hot, translucent sky. He wants to make rain -- needs to make rain for the parched farms and desperate hydro companies in this California valley. But first, he must have clouds. The listless sky offers no hint of clouds.

Inside a darkened room near the Fresno airport, Johnson's colleagues study an array of radar screens. If a promising thunderstorm appears, Johnson will send his pilots into it in sturdy but ice-battered single-engine planes, burning flares of silver iodide to try to coax rain from the clouds.

This year, there have been few promising clouds, to the dismay of the farmers, ranchers and power companies who hire Johnson's cloud seeders.

"We can increase the rainfall by 10 percent. But Mother Nature has to cooperate. Ten percent of zero is zero," says Johnson, a meteorologist and director of Atmospherics Inc.

A few miles south of Fresno, Steve Arthur is looking the other way for water. His company is working around the clock drilling wells to irrigate fields in California's 400-mile-long Central Valley, one of the most productive food-growing areas in the world.

"People are really starting to panic for water," said Arthur, whose father started drilling wells in 1959. They must drill ever deeper to tap the sinking water table. "Eventually, the water will be so deep the farmers won't be able to afford to pump it," he said. "There's only so much water to go around."

more from The Washington Post

Found in the Weeds: Bug Scientist Touts Cure for Levee Leaks

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana State University professor Gregg Henderson is a bug scientist, but lately he's been obsessed with grass.

In a city searching for ways to combat two great plagues -- termites and flooding -- Dr. Henderson believes an unremarkable-looking tall grass could be a new weapon to fight both. Vetiver grass's densely clumped stems quickly shoot up to 8 feet tall. It puts down a massive root system that has been touted for diverse uses, ranging from erosion protection for the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast to a treatment for baldness.

Dr. Henderson, an entomologist at LSU's AgCenter, is interested ...

more from the Wall Street Journal

Your turn: Hennepin shows smart ways to keep waters clean

Reports are coming in from all across southern and Central Minnesota of lakes turning stinky and green from enormous algae blooms. Not only are children refusing to jump off the end of the dock into the pea soup, but unofficial reports are that four dogs died from toxic blue-green algae.

Some of the blame lies with the hot, dry summer we've experienced this year. But a lot of it can be traced to the way we live.

Algae and other aquatic plants thrive on the same nutrients plants use on land. The big one is phosphorous. Two major sources of phosphorous are your local sewage treatment plant discharge to a river or lake and runoff from farm fields.

We know how to fix both problems. They require government actions to protect the public's waters and the money to put the solutions in place. But we believe it will be money well spent. We've made a small start, with the Legislature passing the Clean Water Legacy and putting $54 million into it during the next two years.

A good example of how money smartly applied can clean our waters is the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District in Hennepin County. There are 139 lakes in the district, from Lake Calhoun and Lake Minnetonka to Christmas Lake, as well as the creek itself.

During the past 40 years, the district has documented gradual improvements in every water body but Christmas Lake, which was exceptionally clean to begin with, said Eric Evenson, district administrator of the district. According to Evenson, the improvements came about like this:
more from the St.Cloud Times

State to test drinking water

State regulators will test drinking water in rural Barnwell County to see if a 36-year-old nuclear waste dump has polluted private wells.

Recently opened state records show tritium pollution beneath the landfill exceeds safe drinking water standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The contamination, which flows off the landfill to a creek, also rivals pollution on parts of the nearby Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons complex with a history of groundwater pollution, The State newspaper reported Sunday.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control will start testing this week in a small community just south of the landfill, agency waste regulator Richard Haynes said Monday. The agency will test other wells in the general area over the next few weeks, Haynes said.

“Right now, the first step is to look in that southern area,’’ Haynes said. “Then we’ll evaluate how far out we go’’ for other tests.

DHEC and landfill operator Chem-Nuclear believe drinking water is safe, saying the direction of groundwater from the site is to the southwest, rather than the south.
more from The State

Making Water Do the Splits

It's hard to imagine a greener way to power the planet than using solar power to turn water into hydrogen gas. This clean fuel can be piped through fuel cells to produce electricity and then recombined with oxygen to yield water as a waste product. Sunlight doesn't break water molecules apart on its own, however, which is why Earth is covered with oceans. So researchers have spent decades searching for catalysts to help it along. And new work by researchers in Virginia takes a key step toward that goal.

A good solar catalyst has to be a jack of many trades. It must absorb high levels of solar energy, move the resulting electrons to a catalytic site where they can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and finally stitch a new bond between two hydrogen ions to generate hydrogen gas. On top of that, the catalyst must be cheap and not generate any unwanted byproducts that would prevent the reaction from working over and over again.

No water-splitting catalyst has come close to meeting all these challenges. One major stumbling block has been that two electrons are needed to turn hydrogen ions into hydrogen gas. Previous approaches for turning water to hydrogen have created catalysts only capable of dealing with one electron at a time, largely because electrons tend to repel each other.

more from Science magazine

Cleanup of toxins may cost Sunnyvale millions of dollarsCleanup of toxins may cost Sunnyvale millions of dollars

Sunnyvale has endured a series of challenges since embarking years ago on an ambitious plan to refashion its woebegone town center mall into a traditional downtown: a revolving door of developers, missed deadlines and community outrage.

Now, months after the bulldozers started rolling across the site, the city is facing one more costly mess: The groundwater beneath the land is contaminated, and the city, as part of its deal with the project's latest developer, is on the hook to help pump it out. The potential cost to taxpayers? Millions of dollars.

The ultimate total will depend on exactly how much of the contaminant, perchloroethylene, a sweet-smelling chemical used downtown at three former dry cleaners about 50 years ago, has seeped into the water table. After years of delays, the city negotiated with a new development team, Sand Hill Property Management and Rreef. The council in April voted to foot most of the cleanup bill - including any claims from third parties such as nearby homeowners - with no cap.

Caps are commonly used by cities to limit their expenses when the cost of the cleanup and the extent of contamination is unclear.
more from Contra Costa Times

Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts

FRESNO, Calif. -- Steve Johnson scans the hot, translucent sky. He wants to make rain -- needs to make rain for the parched farms and desperate hydro companies in this California valley. But first, he must have clouds. The listless sky offers no hint of clouds.

Inside a darkened room near the Fresno airport, Johnson's colleagues study an array of radar screens. If a promising thunderstorm appears, Johnson will send his pilots into it in sturdy but ice-battered single-engine planes, burning flares of silver iodide to try to coax rain from the clouds.

This year, there have been few promising clouds, to the dismay of the farmers, ranchers and power companies who hire Johnson's cloud seeders.

"We can increase the rainfall by 10 percent. But Mother Nature has to cooperate. Ten percent of zero is zero," says Johnson, a meteorologist and director of Atmospherics Inc.

A few miles south of Fresno, Steve Arthur is looking the other way for water. His company is working around the clock drilling wells to irrigate fields in California's 400-mile-long Central Valley, one of the most productive food-growing areas in the world.

"People are really starting to panic for water," said Arthur, whose father started drilling wells in 1959. They must drill ever deeper to tap the sinking water table. "Eventually, the water will be so deep the farmers won't be able to afford to pump it," he said. "There's only so much water to go around."

As global warming heats the planet, there will be more desperate measures. The climate will be wetter in some places, drier in others.
more from The Washington Post

System Would Use Effluent to Produce Power

Government and industry officials are creating an innovative sewage system in Charles County that is believed to be the first in the nation that would use water flushed down the toilet to operate power plants.

Called a closed-loop system, the plan is to pump the county's sewage to treatment stations and then route the treated sewage, known as effluent, to area power plants. Instead of groundwater, the plants would use the effluent for their cooling towers and other operations.

The new system has not entered the permitting process, and the county government is still negotiating with power plant companies over details such as building the extensive pipe network and financing the project. But government and industry officials involved in the discussions described the plan as nearly finalized.

The system's design is receiving high marks from environmentalists and wastewater experts, who called it innovative and said its benefits would be twofold. The area's power plants would no longer draw groundwater, helping preserve a key natural resource in fast-growing Southern Maryland. In addition, the county would stop flushing its treated sewage into the Potomac River, an important step in cleaning the Chesapeake Bay.
more from The Washington Post

Weeds are retreating, but worries remain

NAHCOTTA, Wash. -- Three hours from Portland, five from Seattle, Willapa Bay is so quiet you can stand a city block away from an oyster farmer and hear his rubber boots squelch in the mud.

The huge bay, about the area of Portland, is a key stopping point on the Pacific flyway, providing a feeding ground for thousands of migrating birds. Its oysters account for at least a fifth of the U.S. harvest.

It's also home to what is perhaps the most successful West Coast effort against a seemingly invincible invasive plant -- and, not unrelated, to one of the largest government applications of an aquatic herbicide.

Quietly, the bay has become a testing ground for two top environmental challenges: pesticides and noxious weeds.

The eradication project's supporters include The Nature Conservancy, which owns a 7,000-acre forest next to the bay, nearly all the bay's oyster farmers and government scientists who've spent decades trying to kill the creeping cordgrass Spartina alterniflora.
more from The Oregonian

Corps to test protection of London Avenue Canal

Using crack meters, prisms, piezometers and a slew of other sensitive instruments, the Army Corps of Engineers turned a small slice of the London Avenue Canal into a $4 million laboratory Friday to determine how much water it can safely hold.

The two-week test calls for gradually pumping water into a dammed-off section of the canal's east side and monitoring the pressure it exerts on the levee, floodwall and bottom of the channel, all the while guarding against a structural failure.

"We've got enough instrumentation that we would never even begin to approach failure," said Maj. Nick Nazarko, the corps officer in charge of safety in the 5700 block of Warrington Drive.

Although long on detail and complexity, the goal of the exercise is simple.

The corps wants to raise the designated "safe water elevation" above 4 feet, a level so low that it has on occasion interrupted drainage even during routine rains. But the level cannot come up without convincing evidence that the repaired canal, which broke at two spots during Hurricane Katrina, can handle additional water.
more from The Times Picayune

Bottled water, cavities linked

Drinking too much bottled water may be contributing to a rise in tooth decay, especially among young children, according to several local dentists who specialize in children's dentistry.

After looking into children's mouths in Brevard County for more than three decades, they said, they are seeing the worst "epidemic of cavities" in many years.

Although, increasingly, a number of commercially sold waters contain some fluoride -- a naturally occurring mineral that helps prevent tooth decay -- it may not be enough to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's optimal standards, said Dr. Ray Pollock, a pediatric dentist with offices in Melbourne and Palm Bay.

"We've spent 50 years getting (tap) water fluoridated" as a public-health measure, he said. "And, now, because so many children consume bottled water instead, we're seeing a ton of decay."
more from Environmental Health News

Trying to Save the Coral Reefs

More than 30 years later, some of those dive bums have grown up to become full-fledged coral ecologists, and what they are seeing today is probably making them long for the halcyon days of the '60s. Rising ocean temperatures, compounded by other man-made factors, like pollution and overfishing, have been catastrophic for the earth's coral. "I grew up diving and snorkeling all over the world," says Gregor Hodgson, executive director of the coral monitoring organization Reef Check Foundation. "Those reefs are all gone."

On August 7, researchers at the University of North Carolina released the world's first comprehensive study on coral in the Indo-Pacific region, which stretches from Japan to Australia and east to Hawaii, and is home to 75% of the world's coral reefs. The outlook is grim. Between 1968 and 2003, more than 600 sq. mi. of reef disappeared in the region — that's 1% a year, twice the pace of rainforest decline — and the losses are hitting well-protected areas like the Great Barrier Reef just as hard as the stressed, overfished reefs that surround crowded countries like the Philippines. "People thought the Pacific was in much better shape," says John Bruno, lead author of the study, which was published online by the Public Library of Science. Scientists assumed that far-flung reefs in the vast waters of the Pacific would be safely isolated from negative human impact. They were wrong. "There is no such thing as an isolated reef from the perspective of climate change," says Bruno.
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Egyptian villages fight water war

The land of the Nile is seeing a rising tide of protests at a shortage of drinking water amid accusations the government would rather irrigate golf courses than slake the thirst of villages.

A wave of demonstrations and ensuing clashes with police in recent weeks has left dozens injured in a country where the Nile River provides 95 percent of fresh water and irrigation uses up 80 percent of that.

The Arab world's most populous nation, with 76 million people, has a water deficit of 20 billion cubic metres (706 billion cubic feet) a year, according to government statistics.

Many inhabitants of the desert nation's villages are forced to resort to buying jerry cans of water from occasional tanker trucks or improvising wells to bring up often unclean water.

"Last week the tap water was yellow and smelled bad," said Nefertiti, 23, who lives in the Nile delta village of Borg el-Borollos, to the north of Cairo, declining to give her last name.

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World faces new threats of water scarcity

Water scarcity: The physical availability of water is being endangered by a rash of new threats, including climate change, increase in global population and the sudden growth of the water-hungry bio-energy sector.

Addressing the 17th annual World Water Week, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) Anders Berntell warned that 1.4 billion people now live in regions where there is a real, physical water scarcity, and an additional 1.1 billion live in regions where there is water stress due to over-consumption. "Clearly, these figures will increase in the future, due to population growth, intensified agriculture and climate change," he told a meeting of over 2,000 water professionals, technicians, scientists and policy makers.

The annual five-day meeting, to conclude Friday, is described as the world's largest single gathering of water experts, including officials from more than 150 organizations. "We are not prepared to deal with the implications this has for our planet. There is a security component in this that is not fully understood or addressed internationally yet." "And I am not talking about water security," he said.
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One Billion Dollars Later, New Orleans Is Still at Risk

After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild New Orleans’s hurricane protection system, that is how much the water level is likely to be reduced if a big 1-in-100 flood hits Leah Pratcher’s Gentilly neighborhood.

Looking over the maps that showed other possible water levels around the city, Ms. Pratcher grew increasingly furious. Her house got four feet of water after Hurricane Katrina, and still stands to get almost as much from a 1-in-100 flood.

By comparison, the wealthier neighborhood to the west, Lakeview, had its flooding risk reduced by nearly five and a half feet.

“If I got my risk reduced by five feet five inches, I’d feel pretty safe,” said Ms. Pratcher, who along with her husband, Henry, warily returned home from Baton Rouge, La. “Six inches is not going to help us out.”

New Orleans was swamped by Hurricane Katrina; now it is awash in data, studied obsessively in homes all over town. And the simple message conveyed by that data is that while parts of the city are substantially safer, others have changed little. New Orleans remains a very risky place to live.
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Bacteria in river, streams studied

Some waterways labeled 'impaired' because of E. coli, poor quality

A study is under way to determine why the Smith River and several local streams in the Smith River Watershed have elevated levels of potentially harmful bacteria, and public input is encouraged.

According to information recently shared at a local public meeting on the study, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) water monitoring dating back to the late 1990s shows that the Smith River; Marrowbone, Leatherwood and Blackberry creeks; and parts of the South Mayo and North Mayo rivers are designated as “impaired.”

That is because they have elevated levels of the bacteria E. coli, which can be present in human and animal stomachs and feces. Elevated E. coli levels also sometimes indicate elevated levels of harmful related pathogens (disease-causing agents).

Part of the Smith River — 14 miles from Martinsville Dam to Turkey Pen Branch — also has an impaired ability to support aquatic insects, a sign of low water quality, said Mary Dail, regional total maximum daily load coordinator for the Virginia DEQ. Dail spoke at the meeting.

Part of the study will aim to determine what is causing the decline in insect habitat, she said.

Working to lower the high bacteria levels is important because E. coli can cause illness, usually gastrointestinal illness.

“It raises a red flag,” said Dail. Although people should be careful never to drink from any stream, elevated E. coli levels also raise questions about whether people should be swimming in or eating fish from the stream, among other uses.
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Lake Tahoe warmer, dirtier - scientists worry

Lake Tahoe, the jewel of the Sierra once so crystal-clear that Mark Twain likened boating on it to floating on air, is warmer and soupier than ever before as a result of climate change and human activities, UC Davis scientists reported Wednesday.

Their 45-page report, the most comprehensive ever done on the lake, outlines significant changes in weather patterns over the years, including less snowfall and more rain, deteriorating lake clarity and increasing water temperature in the Lake Tahoe Basin - all of which could increase invasions of exotic fish and plant species.

"Change is a difficult thing, and the lake is changing," said Geoff Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center and co-editor of the report. "But I think it is too early to say that our efforts are in vain. We can't judge each year in isolation. It's not all doom and gloom."

But there is reason to be concerned about the second-deepest lake in the United States, researchers said. Conditions appear to be getting worse, even as environmental and planning agencies work to reduce runoff from residential and commercial development and improve water quality in the lake.
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Business and Science to Join in Taking a River’s Pulse

Environmentalists and big corporations often end up in open conflict because they do not see eye to eye on whether a natural resource like a river should be protected or exploited.

But the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, a scientific research organization, and I.B.M., the computer giant, plan to come together in this old waterfront town on Thursday to announce a bold collaboration combining innovative technology with marine biology expertise to create a world-class center for river research. Their joint project will create a system of sensors to provide 24-hour-a-day monitoring of conditions in the 315-mile Hudson River as it flows from the Adirondack Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.

The partnership will bring together two very different cultures, as was evident this week when I.B.M. executives accompanied the Beacon Institute’s director on a tour of the river aboard a 29-foot wooden fishing boat called Trust. The environmentalist wore a polo shirt and athletic shoes. One of the executives was in a dark blue suit and striped tie.

The two sides also have different goals. While the Beacon Institute, which receives financing primarily from the State of New York, seeks to understand the river in order to protect it, I.B.M. sees an opportunity to create a new business based on environmental awareness. Both sides say they can accomplish something together that neither could do on its own. The overall cost has not yet been determined.

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Prevention is better than treatment, Water Prize Laureate

Stockholm Water Prize laureate Professor Perry L. McCarty from Stanford University, USA says that people cannot afford to lose the water available because of pollution.

At the opening session of the World Water Week in Stockholm, he said that it is estimated that there are 300-400 thousand contaminated ground water sites in the United States alone, the cost of cleaning up is estimated at 750 billion dollars or even more. Remediation using microorganisms is rather a very expensive method to clean up the contamination.

So the lesson from the American experience is that to prevent water from contamination is more important than to treat it after because technological treatment can only solve part of the problem.

“My own research focus on technical areas concerning biological processes for waste water treatment and ground water remediation and that resolves problem in part. But nevertheless, they are the important parts, as they concern the fundamental part of ground water supplies, as well as the use of waste resources”, said McCarty.

Professor McCarty said ground water is very special resources. 98% of world water is represented by ground water. 50% of the world relies on ground water for drinking water supply. Good quality groundwater can make it easier to treat for drinking water and there will be no cost of distribution and easy to clean up.

Ground water is one of the most precious resources. Unfortunately it is often contaminated by unwise practices such as over use of pesticide or untreated waste.
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Aussie 'missing link' ocean current found

AUSTRALIAN scientists have discovered a giant underwater current that is one of the last missing links of a system that connects the world's oceans and helps govern global climate.

New research shows that a current sweeping past Australia's southern island of Tasmania toward the South Atlantic is a previously undetected part of the world climate system's engine-room, said scientist Ken Ridgway.

The Southern Ocean, which swirls around Antarctica, has been identified in recent years as the main lung of global climate, absorbing a third of all carbon dioxide taken in by the world's oceans.

"We knew that they (deep ocean pathway currents) could move from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean through Indonesia. Now we can see that they move south of Tasmania as well, another important link," CSIRO scientist Mr Ridgway said.

In each ocean, water flows around anticlockwise pathways, or gyres, the size of ocean basins.
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Blue-green algae feed off extreme weather, conference told

Climate might trump phosphates; Scientists debate 'interesting connection'
DOMINIQUE BLAIN, The Gazette
Published: 7 hours ago

It's the weather, people: an ecology professor presented findings yesterday that indicate that the increase in blue-green algae blooms in Quebec might have just as much to do with the weather as it does with phosphate pollution.

David Bird, a professor currently studying the ecology of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, at the Université du Québec à Montréal, spoke to about 150 scientists and students who packed a Palais des congrès room at the 30th Congress of the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology.

Bird indicated the increasing occurrence of extreme weather, such as heavy downpours, droughts and warm winters, seems to be linked to the onset of cyanobacteria problems.

These natural events underline the unsustainable abuse that watersheds have endured for years, he said.

A watershed is a land area that drains water into a body of water. Many lakes' watersheds, such as those of Massawippi and Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships, are polluted by phosphorus from the use of agricultural and residential fertilizers, as well as leaking septic tanks and the use of detergents that contain phosphates.
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Wading in on water

Limnology: the study of the phenomena of lakes and other fresh waters.

For the next week, there will be a lot of learned discussion on this subject coming at a time when blue-green algae are the scourge of Quebec lakes.

The 30th Congress of the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology is taking place at Palais des congrs, until Saturday drawing 1,500 participants from 61 countries to Montreal.

The Quebec provincial health and social services department currently has 107 lakes and rivers on a watch list of bodies of water affected by blue green algae.

For the rest of the week, scientists, researchers and university professors will be presenting the results of experiments, surveys and all the collected data on the the impact of residential development on lakefront, among other topics, at the conference.

It seems the insatiable appetite of baby boomers who want to retire on a lakeshore property is one of the causes of the proliferation of blue green algae. Summer cottages are being converted to full time homes and with that comes phosphate laden dishwasher water which feeds the algae.
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Economic benefits of Northwest Passage opening with costs: researchers

MONTREAL (CP) - While the federal government eyes the economic benefits of a shipping route through Canada's north, scientists are warning that the fabled passage cannot come about without serious costs to the environment.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ramped up efforts recently to assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, a potentially lucrative route to Asia that could open year-round thanks to global warming.

But researchers studying the country's Arctic lakes say ecosystems in the north are struggling to adapt to climate change.

"There might be some positives for some shipping companies for a short period of time, but there's certainly a lot of negatives too," said John Smol, a professor at Queen's University specializing in water and climate change.

Researchers at an international conference on water in Montreal are looking to Arctic lakes as important warning systems for the dangers that other bodies of water can face.

Histories of Arctic lakes suggest the rate of global warming has greatly accelerated in the last 150 years, and even more so recently.

Several studies presented at the conference conclude rising temperatures are now eating into the ice cover of lakes. A similar process must occur for ships to be able to cross through the Northwest Passage.

"Less ice cover changes the whole ecosystem," Smol said Monday during a break at the limnology conference. "There is less time for photosynthesis among other things."
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Water Levels in 3 Great Lakes Dip Far Below Normal

Water levels in the three upper Great Lakes are wavering far below normal, and experts expect Lake Superior, the northernmost lake, to reach a record low in the next two months, according to data from the international bodies that monitor the Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater reservoir.

Although the cause of the falling levels is in dispute, the effects in Lakes Michigan and Huron are visible everywhere. Ship channels are overdue for dredging. Wetlands in some areas like Georgian Bay, east of Lake Huron in Ontario, have dried up, leaving fish and birds without accustomed places to reproduce.

Beaches around Saginaw Bay in Michigan have reverted to marshes as shorefront reverts to wetlands. One-third of the Michigan boat ramps are unusable.

Although the drop in levels in all three lakes is variously ascribed to climate change or new rainfall patterns, evidence is growing that people caused some losses in Lakes Huron and Michigan.

Gravel mining early in the 20th century by private companies and dredging by the Army Corps of Engineers, particularly in the mid-1960s, may have widened and deepened the St. Clair River, through which those two lakes drain into Lake Erie.

The flow may be eroding the riverbed. The erosion may in turn result in increased outflow, more than can be replenished by rain or snowmelt, according to a study by a group of Canadian coastal engineers.

Data being released this week by a group of Canadian homeowners, supplementing an engineering study from 2005 by W. F. Baird and Associates, a Canadian business, indicates that the outflow is undiminished and may be significantly greater than earlier estimates.
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East River Fights Bid to Harness Its Currents for Electricity

From the eastern edge of Roosevelt Island, the past and perhaps the future of New York power are on display.

Just south of the Roosevelt Island Bridge to Queens rise the smokestacks of KeySpan’s giant Ravenswood electricity generating station, a behemoth that runs on natural gas and fuel oil.

North of the bridge, black cables snake out of the churning surface of the East River. They connect a makeshift control room inside an old shipping container on the island to a battery of futuristic mechanisms that could shape an energy future that does not pollute or use foreign oil — if a five-year-old company named Verdant Power can work out all the bugs.

Weeks after they were formally dedicated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, six underwater turbines that turn the river’s currents into electricity have been shut down for repairs and a basic redesign. The East River’s powerful tides have been wreaking havoc with the giant turbine blades since the first two were installed in December.

“But the good thing is that there’s more power in the East River than we thought,” said Mollie E. Gardner, a geologist for Verdant Power, which owns the equipment.

This is the reality of new energy projects, which often seem more attractive on paper than they do in practice. Verdant’s principals, along with the state officials who have supported the project with large grants, say the setback is only temporary, even expected — a way to work out the kinks before moving onto the next, expanded phase.
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Pesticides still pouring into reef waters

EIGHT of the 10 main rivers flowing into Great Barrier Reef waters have breached Queensland's water quality guidelines, polluting the country's most valuable tourist attraction with increased amounts of toxic chemicals.

The herbicides atrazine and diuron were present at river mouths, inshore reefs and intertidal seagrass monitoring locations, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority report said.

Monitoring over the past 12 months confirmed pesticides were "an ubiquitous contaminant" in the inshore areas of the reef, the Annual Marine Monitoring Report 2006 said.

The report was released on Friday after the Herald reported concerns in environmental circles that it had been withheld for several months.

Environmental groups say that despite knowing about the problem for decades, the Queensland and federal governments have not done enough to protect the reef from pastoral and sugar cane plantation activities that are pouring mud and chemicals into rivers.
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Plains Farmers Learn from Past as Aquifer Depletes

About a quarter of a million people left the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but for the families who stayed, hope lay in a massive aquifer of clean, fresh water right beneath their feet.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which lies under parts of eight states, was like lifeblood for Great Plains farmers who today pump billions of gallons of water from the underground supply to their crops annually. But widespread use of the Ogallala for irrigation is depleting the aquifer in some areas, leaving farmers with yearly decisions about how to use the water and how to conserve it for future generations.

An Enormous Resource

The Ogallala, a vast formation of sand and gravel, is part of a larger aquifer that once held more than 3 billion acre-feet of water, roughly the equivalent of 3 billion acres of land covered in a foot of water. The aquifer's depth varies by state. In parts of Nebraska, there are still 1,000 feet of water saturating its sand and gravel. But in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas — states that had less water to begin with — the water table has dropped steeply.

Just outside of Colby, Kan., farmer Lon Frahm uses 38 sprinklers to pump water over 5,000 acres of farmland. His center-pivot irrigation system sprinkles 600 gallons per minute on his corn, making up for where Mother Nature leaves off in a semi-arid zone that gets less than 20 inches of rain a year.

Frahm estimates that he pumps around 2 billion gallons of water from the Ogallala annually. In recent years, his wells have dropped about 6 inches, though in years when there is more rain, he uses less water. As a member of the Kansas water board, Frahm regularly wrestles with the question of what to do as the water table drops.

"We've got some people that use the analogy of oil. What's the difference between taking oil from the ground, and taking water from the ground? It's a resource not doing any good down there," Frahm says, citing a view he often hears from other farmers.

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Pollution sources sought

Starting Monday, the state Department of Environmental Quality will scour the banks of Bayou Lafourche in search of contamination sources that have gotten this waterway classified as “impaired” under the federal Clean Water Act.

Howard Fielding, manager of the DEQ drinking water protection program, said the mission of representatives from cities, parishes and organizations along the bayou is to overcome the bayou’s biggest problem, fecal coliform flowing into the water from failing septic systems.

“So that’s what we decided to focus on,” Fielding said. Fecal coliform are a type of bacteria that may signal presence of human or animal waste in water.

Starting on Monday and continuing for several weeks, between eight and a dozen teams of DEQ staff members will carry out the survey starting at Donaldsonville, said Jeff Dauzat, environmental scientist with the DEQ Office of Environmental Compliance Surveillance Division.

At Donaldsonville, Mississippi River water is pumped into the channel of Bayou Lafourche and eventually finds its way into the Gulf of Mexico near Golden Meadow and Grand Isle.
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Sockeye collapse could have grave implications

First Nations leaders and fisheries officials have scheduled an emergency meeting for tomorrow to discuss how to deal with what's fast becoming a disastrous season for the sockeye salmon fishery.

With unexpectedly low numbers of sockeye returning to the Fraser River, aboriginal leaders are concerned their impoverished communities will have a tough time feeding themselves this winter.

"The people in the communities tend to be older folk or very young families with dependent children. They can't go to the nearby supermarket and buy fish or any of the other meat products. It's just not an option for them because their household budgets are so small," says Ernie Crey, senior fisheries advisor for the Sto:lo Nation in Chilliwack. "They rely heavily on Fraser River sockeye runs for their annual intake of protein. It's just that simple."

more from The Province

Engineers to Test Flood Defenses In New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS -- A $3 million experiment by the Army Corps of Engineers this week will simulate the conditions that caused critical levee failures during Hurricane Katrina, leading to disastrous flooding.

In the test, engineers will gradually pump water into a section of the London Avenue Canal, one of two canals whose flood walls toppled in the storm two years ago, allowing in most of the inundation in the main part of the city.

As the canal waters rise, engineers will monitor the amount of seepage beneath the flood wall and how much the structure tilts -- while promising nervous neighbors that the test will not cause another breach. The measurements will tell them how much rising water the canal wall can withstand.

"Some computations show the wall is going to fail at certain water levels; some show it won't," said Ray Martin, a geotechnical engineer consulting with the Corps on the project. "This experiment will let us know."

The fact that such an experiment is necessary two years after the storm reflects the continuing uncertainty as to exactly what caused the city's flood defenses to fail.
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