Punjab water 'is risk to health'

Research over a two-year period found that poisonous pesticides and heavy metals had entered the food chain.

This had caused a high prevalence of congenital deformities, cancer and kidney damage, the study said.

It was commissioned by the Punjab Water Pollution Control Board, which told the BBC it was studying the findings.

Mercury and arsenic

The report - by a team of senior doctors from the post-graduate Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh - was conducted over the past two years.

It linked contaminated water with varying degrees of DNA mutation in people in the state.

According to the study, 80% of ground water samples had mercury that was far beyond the permissible level.

Arsenic was found in 70% of samples of effluent, 50% of tap water samples and 57.7% of ground water samples.

A high degree of pesticides had contaminated water in drains in parts of Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar and Nawanshahr.

The study says that blood samples collected from people in the area showed that in 65% of the cases the DNA had mutated.

more from the BBC

Mismanagement threatens Asian water crises: ADB study

The mismanagement of resources, not scarcity, will lead to water crises in developing Asian nations, said a study commissioned by the Asian Development Bank and released on Thursday.

Urbanisation, industrialisation, population growth and climate change were likely to put a strain on the region's water resources, it said.

But Asia had also developed the expertise and the technology to ensure there was enough water for its people, the study published in Singapore said.

The key was putting in place the right practices and policies to manage the precious resource, said the report entitled "Asian Water Development Outlook."

"It is likely that if there will be a water crisis in the future, it will not come because of actual physical scarcity of water, as many predict at present," said expert Asit Biswas, one of the report's authors.

Any future water crises would likely be sparked by "continuing neglect of proper wastewater management practices," he wrote.

"Continuation of the present trend will make available water sources increasingly more contaminated and will make provision of clean water more and more expensive, as well as more complex and difficult to manage."

But the report said that "there is now enough knowledge, technology and expertise available in Asia to solve all its existing and future water problems."

Although major changes in water governance practices were required, Asia can boast of some success stories, it said, such as Singapore's water management system, described as one of the world's best.

More from Terra Daily

Rainwater proposed to flush Ex toilets

Plans to spend nearly $1-million on a "demonstration rainwater harvesting system" at Exhibition Place are a waste of money, critics say, but city officials argue the move will yield long-term environmental benefits.

With little debate, the city's works committee recommended yesterday that council approve the plans, which would see rainwater collected at the Automotive Building and then used to flush toilets in its eight washrooms, as part of a pilot project to showcase new technology to make buildings more efficient.

Toronto Water would put up $600,000 in its capital budget for the project, while city-owned Exhibition Place would pick up the rest of the bill, expected to be a total of up to $935,000, as part of the Automotive Building's renovations.

The works committee chairman, Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, an ally of Mayor David Miller, said the project would inspire others in the city to install similar systems, reducing the amount of cleaned and filtered drinking water wasted on flushing toilets.

"It's a great technology that we want to demonstrate to the world," Mr. De Baeremaeker (Scarborough Centre) said yesterday, arguing that widespread adoption of the technology would conserve water, save energy and spare the city millions of dollars by delaying the need for new water-filtration plants.

More from The Globe and Mail

Duwamish whistle-blower paid a steep price

After decades in the construction trade, Ron Slater had finally moved up. Management. A company truck. A healthy salary. Life was good.

But then Slater and his crew began to suffer mysterious nosebleeds, headaches and fatigue as they unearthed spots on a construction site with rainbow-hued water, metal shavings and a powerful industrial stench.

Soon, one of his workers passed out mysteriously and had to be taken to the hospital.

Slater began to have deep doubts about his superiors at Morrison Knudsen Corp. when they had his crew drain contaminated water off Harbor Island, a Superfund site, into the Duwamish River.

Morrison Knudsen, one of the largest and best-known construction firms in the world, was clearing the decades-old industrial property owned by the Port of Seattle.

Slater's breaking point came when a bulldozer ruptured an underground tank of diesel fuel. Slater called on the radio asking for help -- only to have the project's safety officer speed over in his truck and bark, "How many ... times have I got to tell you -- don't get on the radio talking about fuel spills or calling 911."

"After a number of these confrontations over testing, over contaminated waste ... it was clear that if I didn't get along and go along, I was going to be going down the highway," Slater said.

Slater kept complaining anyway, and soon he was on his way down the road.

He contacted the state's Department of Labor & Industries. He also called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, launching a major investigation -- and providing a cautionary tale for the Duwamish River Superfund site, next to Harbor Island.

The lesson from Slater: Unless cleanup contractors and everyone else involved are constantly and carefully watched, the job won't get done right.

After investigating the allegations brought by Slater and his crew, the state in October 2000 issued 34 citations for violations, including failing to protect employees from hazardous substances. It imposed a $48,500 fine.

More from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

From Sewage, Added Water for Drinking

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — It used to be so final: flush the toilet, and waste be gone.

But on Nov. 30, for millions of people here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water — after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground.

On that Friday, the Orange County Water District will turn on what industry experts say is the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water to increase drinking water supplies. They and others hope it serves as a model for authorities worldwide facing persistent drought, predicted water shortages and projected growth.

The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the wary, is getting a close look in several cities.

The San Diego City Council approved a pilot plan in October to bolster a drinking water reservoir with recycled sewer water. The mayor vetoed the proposal as costly and unlikely to win public acceptance, but the Council will consider overriding it in early December.

Water officials in the San Jose area announced a study of the issue in September, water managers in South Florida approved a plan in November calling for abundant use of recycled wastewater in the coming years in part to help restock drinking water supplies, and planners in Texas are giving it serious consideration.

“These types of projects you will see springing up all over the place where there are severe water shortages,” said Michael R. Markus, the general manager of the Orange County district, whose plant, which will process 70 million gallons a day, has already been visited by water managers from across the globe.

More from the New York Times

Watching our water world

A group of international scientists called on world leaders Sunday to invest billions in a complex array of satellites, undersea robots and other high-tech devices to monitor the oceans and better understand an environment they say is crucial to predicting natural disasters.

The consortium will issue its appeal for funding this week at a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, where it will stress the need for a system that could measure the vital signs of the globe’s oceans, providing warnings of tsunamis, droughts and other potential crises linked to climate change.

"There are more people living in harm’s way and we have more environmental threats and disasters looming with global warming," Jim Baker, an oceanographer and member of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans, or POGO, said from Philadelphia before Wednesday’s meeting.

"So, the risk (of not doing this) is that we don’t have the warnings that we need to protect society."

The ambitious system the group wants to develop includes a variety of robotic submarines, fixed stations taking measurements from the sea floor, cables the length of highways gathering data on ocean conditions and satellites tracking the movement of plankton from space.

They estimate it would cost up to $3 billion to develop the system within the next 10 years, and will ask officials at the 72-member Group on Earth Observations meeting to ante up the funds.

Baker said the price tag might seem steep, but much more is put into atmospheric monitoring systems while the ocean, which covers 71 per cent of the planet, is at times ignored.

More from The Chronicle Herald Canada

Source of water for West at risk

The West's natural water-delivery system is breaking down under the strain of rising temperatures, upsetting a fragile truce between people and the dry land they inhabit.

Mountain-snow runoff already bears the scars of climate change in the highest elevations, where winter now arrives later and ends earlier. There, snow melts before downstream users need it, or vanishes in the mild-spring winds.

Scientists say this seasonal shift will deepen as temperatures rise. The change threatens not only the water but also the way it is stored and released in a delicate relay from storm clouds to mountains to streams and reservoirs.

If the timing falters, water supplies would shrink. Forests and other wildlife habitat would weaken. Wildfires would grow. Hydroelectric power production would suffer.

"Changes in runoff are only one step away from the warmth in global warming," said Brad Udall, an environmental engineer and director of the Western Water Assessment in Boulder, Colo. "Right after temperature increase, what should pop into people's mind is the question of water."

more from the Arizona Republic

'Ocean' To Be Built In Arizona Desert

A project reminiscent of Ski Dubai - the world's largest snow park, in a country where daytime temperatures average 113 degrees - is taking shape in the Arizona desert. Water, not snow, is the theme for this one.

Developers plan to build a massive new water park that would offer surf-sized waves, snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking - all in a bone-dry region that gets just 8 inches of rain a year.

"It's about delivering a sport that's not typically available in an urban environment," said Richard Mladick, a real estate developer who persuaded business leaders in suburban Mesa to support the proposal, called the Waveyard.

Artists' drawings of the park show surfers gliding through waves that crash onto a sandy beach, and kayakers navigating the whitecaps of a wide, roiling river. Families watch the action from beneath picnic umbrellas. If constructed, the park would use as much as 100 million gallons of groundwater a year.

That water use may raise future questions in a state that has been in a drought for a decade.

More from CBS Denver

Oasis country dying of thirst

SITTING where Australia's two greatest rivers meet, Wentworth lies at the symbolic heart of the Murray-Darling Basin food bowl.

There has been an irrigation industry there for more than a century, and the Wentworth Shire calls itself "oasis country" - a place where the brown waters of the Darling and the green waters of the Murray have enabled people to turn the desert into a garden.

The Perry sandhills outside town are a brilliant red, but the citrus and wine grapes are usually a brilliant green. Generations have grown up knowing nothing but full water allocations, and the most famous monument in Wentworth features a Massey Ferguson tractor.

The tractors are honoured for the epic role they played building levee banks to stop Wentworth disappearing under the mighty flood of 1956.

But no tractor will be able to drag the south-western NSW district out of the drought disaster it finds itself in today. For the first time, Wentworth irrigators are enduring the huge shock of a zero water allocation this year.

Mr Watson wants the Government and farmers to take radical action so this water crisis is never repeated. " I just hope out of this drought we get some changes. Let's stop talking and let's start doing."

The chairman of Western Murray Irrigation, Ian Murdoch, said the water situation was "very grim … the weather patterns seem to be changing".

More from The Sydney Morning Herald

A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating new climate report. Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.

Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on Sunday that he found the "quickening pace" of global warming "very frightening".

And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he "looked forward" to both the United States and China – the world's two biggest polluters – "playing a more constructive role" in vital new negotiations on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month.

The new IPCC report, which is designed to give impetus to the negotiations, highlights the little-known acidification of the oceans, first reported in this newspaper more than three years ago. It concludes that emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – have already increased the acidity of ocean surface water by 30 per cent, and threaten to treble it by the end of the century.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said yesterday: "The report has put a spotlight on a threat to the marine environment that the world has hardly yet realised. The threat is immense as it can fundamentally alter the life of the seas, reducing the productivity of the oceans, while reinforcing global warming."

More from The Independent

Water recovery plan irks builders

Going green could become the rule of law, not just a trend, in Sandy Springs.

Spurred by the ongoing drought, city officials are considering a mandate for water-saving systems in most new homes.

The options include a "gray water recovery system" for residential construction priced at $500,000 or more, which is the majority of new housing in the city. If approved, the requirement would be a first for metro Atlanta.

The council is expected to vote Tuesday on several building code changes that are designed to reduce long-term water demand.

Most of the options carry a modest cost, including low-volume faucets, bath fixtures and appliances in all new construction, and waterless urinals in new commercial buildings.

The requirement for a gray water recycling system, however, has raised hackles among builders. The Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association estimates it will cost $5,000 to $7,000 per home.

The organization represents 2,000 builders in metro Atlanta, and opposes the requirement.

"One, it's going to be expensive. Two, I don't see this as helping our drought conditions," said Chris Burke, a vice president with the association.

Gray water is water that already has been used in a home and that can be used for other purposes, such as outdoor watering. It doesn't include toilet water. Designs vary, but generally, a recovery system uses dual piping to capture the spent water, then deposits it in a storage tank, which is pumped for irrigation.

Burke argues such systems will divert used water from the local sewer system and delay its return to the river system.

more from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs

Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world’s biggest dam, biggest power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel. Ever. Even the project’s official tally of 1.13 million displaced people made the list as record No. 10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China’s biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the first.

The rising controversy makes it easy to overlook what could have been listed as world record No. 11: The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest man-made producer of electricity from renewable energy. Hydropower, in fact, is the centerpiece of one of China’s most praised green initiatives, a plan to rapidly expand renewable energy by 2020.

The Three Gorges Dam, then, lies at the uncomfortable center of China’s energy conundrum: The nation’s roaring economy is addicted to dirty, coal-fired power plants that pollute the air and belch greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Dams are much cleaner producers of electricity, but they have displaced millions of people in China and carved a stark environmental legacy on the landscape.

more from the NY Times

Sky-high dioxin level taints river

The discovery of the highest level of the feared chemical compound dioxin ever in the Great Lakes region has prompted the EPA to order an emergency cleanup in the Saginaw River in Saginaw and the state to issue new warnings about eating fish from the river.

The chemical hot spot was found in river-bottom sediment near a city park popular among shoreline anglers. Dow Chemical Co., whose plant in Midland was the source of the likely decades-old dioxin, found the chemicals as part of a larger sampling program.

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In the wake of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's cleanup order, the Michigan Department of Community Health said late Wednesday that it was adding white bass to existing warnings on fish not to eat from the river and adding warnings for other fish.

Some fish are mainly bottom-feeders and accumulate more toxins than others. Health and environmental officials said Wednesday that eating fish from the river is, by far, the greatest risk for people from the dioxin.

The EPA's senior health adviser in Chicago, Milton Clark, said dioxin is highly toxic and may be more problematic in river sediment than in soils because it gets into the food chain.

The new hot spot is across from a Saginaw city riverfront park, Wickes Park, which has play areas for children and a boat launch. Locals say people often fish there.

Spots of dioxin have been found in rivers below Dow's Midland plant all the way out to Saginaw Bay, starting in 1978, but never at such a high level, EPA officials said. The agency issued three other emergency cleanup orders in June for three hot spots on the Tittabawassee River.

more from the Detroit Free Press

Water flow from Lake Lanier can be cut immediately

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday agreed to a plan to keep more water in Lake Lanier.

With that approval, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at noon started reducing its downstream releases of the depleted lake's water. The reduced flows can continue until June 1, if drought conditions do not improve.

The corps has been required to release more than a billion gallons from the lake every day, in part, to ensure the survival of federally protected mussels that live downstream in Florida's Apalachicola River.

The Fish and Wildlife's announcement was mostly good news for Georgia, which wants to hold as much water as possible in Lanier. The lake provides drinking water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans and is crucial for power generation.

"It's really the confirmation and affirmation of really good news for us," said Gov. Sonny Perdue, via telephone. He is in Canada on a trade mission.

The decision "more significantly indicates that our federal partners both from the Corps of Engineers and Fish and Wildlife are intimately engaged in both the short and long-term solution to this water shortage that we have....we applaud their efforts."

Perdue took credit for alerting the federal government of the possibility that metro Atlanta is facing a possible water shortage.

"I think it was maybe Oct. 18 when I rang the alarm bell," the governor said. "No one seemed to be paying attention outside of our state. And in the 30 days that's ensued, we got extraordinary cooperation from those federal partners."

But Lanier won't get to keep as much water as Georgia officials had hoped and the corps had proposed.

The Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to a phased-in reduction in flow to 4,500 cubic feet per second, or 33,600 gallons per second, between now and June 1. The average flow has been nearer 5,000 cubic feet per second.

In a news release, the service said its biologists did not have time to study the downstream effects of releasing only 4,150 cubic feet per second, or 31,042 gallons per second.

That was the reduction the corps had proposed to help save water in Lanier, which is expected this weekend to hit its lowest level since the federal reservoir was built in the 1950s.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Despite Rescue Effort, Bay Crabs at an Ebb

The Chesapeake Bay's famous blue crabs -- feisty crustaceans that are both a regional symbol and a multimillion-dollar catch -- are hovering at historically low population levels, scientists say, as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten the bay's ultimate survivor.

This fall, a committee of federal and state scientists found that the crab's population was at its second-lowest level in the past 17 years, having fallen to about one-third the population of 1993. They forecast that the current crabbing season, which ends Dec. 15 in Maryland, will produce one of the lowest harvests since 1945.

This year's numbers are particularly distressing, scientists say, because they signal that a baywide effort to save the crab begun in 2001 is falling short.


Governments promised to clean the Chesapeake's waters by 2010. But that effort is far off track, leaving "dead zones" where crabs can't breathe.

Maryland and Virginia have changed their laws to cut back the bay's crab harvest. But watermen have repeatedly been allowed to take too many of the valuable shellfish, scientists say. The watermen, meanwhile, say they're being unfairly blamed.

"Now it appears that even the hardy blue crab is approaching its breaking point," said Howard R. Ernst, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a critic of government efforts to protect the Chesapeake. If the crab's population drops further, Ernst said, "what we ultimately lose is not only a resource, but a unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage."

The Chesapeake has a long roster of collapsed species, including many of its best-loved icons.

First, the sturgeon was mercilessly fished for meat and roe. Shad went next, netted and blocked off by dams. Oysters have been nearly wiped out by harvests and disease. Rockfish dropped off but then came back, the bay's best, but just about only, success story.

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In Chinese Dam's Wake, Ecological Woes

MIAOHE, China -- It was in this little village clinging to cliff sides over the Yangtze River that the environmental costs of China's Three Gorges Dam began to add up, a down payment on what experts predict will be billions of dollars and years of struggle to contain the damage.

The first sign was just a crack in the terraced earth, about four inches wide and 35 feet long, villagers said. But engineers found that the crevasse betrayed the danger of a massive landslide. They judged the risk so great that most of Miaohe's 250 farmers were temporarily evacuated. Fearing the hillside would never be safe again, the government started constructing a replacement village on a nearby plateau, blasted out of rock for increased stability.

"This is going to be good," said Han Qinbi, 60, a grizzled peasant who pointed at the spacious new house he and his family will be moving into next summer.

But what Han saw as good fortune was a bad omen for the Chinese government. In the 18 months since the Three Gorges Dam was completed, increasingly clear signs of environmental degradation have started to accumulate along the Yangtze, just as activists had warned. Among the most troubling have been incidents of geological instability in the soaring gorges that now embrace a reservoir stretching behind the dam across a good portion of Hubei province 600 miles southwest of Beijing.

Local officials acknowledge that dozens of major landslides have been recorded, affecting more than 20 miles of riverbank. A group of hydraulic engineers and environmentalists reported in March that the overall number of landslides in the area, including small ones, surpassed 4,700, requiring reinforcement or evacuation of 1,000 localities.

More from the Washington Post

Georgia governor leads prayer for rain

Bowing his head outside the Georgia Capitol on Tuesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue cut a newly repentant figure as he publicly prayed for rain to end the region's historic drought.

"Oh father, we acknowledge our wastefulness," Perdue said. "But we're doing better. And I thought it was time to acknowledge that to the creator, the provider of water and land, and to tell him that we will do better."

Hundreds of Georgians -- ministers and lawmakers, landscapers and office workers -- gathered in downtown Atlanta for the prayer vigil. Some held bibles and crucifixes. Many swayed and linked arms as a choir sang "What a Mighty God We Serve" and "Amazing Grace."

As Perdue described it, "We have come together, very simply, for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm."

"It's got to be worth a shot," said David Mais, 34, an Atlanta resident who is worried his carpet cleaning business could suffer from the drought. "I do think we need to do a lot more, but hopefully prayer will unite us."

As metropolitan Atlanta's water supplies drain to record lows, many across the Southeast have criticized Perdue and other Georgia officials for failing to introduce more stringent conservation measures.

more from the LA Times

Potomac Recovery Deemed At Risk

The Potomac River, celebrated for its comeback from abysmal pollution, is still seriously fouled by contaminants that wash down from farms and fast-expanding Washington suburbs, according to a report from an environmental group.

The Potomac Conservancy, a Silver Spring-based nonprofit group, gives the river a grade of D-plus in its first "State of the Nation's River" report. The report is to be formally unveiled this morning.

The report comes as federal scientists say that more "intersex" fish, showing elements of both genders, are being found in the river. Previous studies had shown that male bass in District waters were growing eggs; new data show that female fish also seem to be developing abnormally, one researcher said yesterday.

The Potomac Conservancy's report cites the intersex problem -- along with high levels of dirt, sewage and other pollutants -- to show that the Potomac might be in danger of backsliding after a decades-long rehabilitation.

"We've plateaued," said Hedrick Belin, president of the conservancy, which has pushed for cleaner water and the protection of land along the Potomac's banks. "The improvements that we've made, the progress, has stalled out."

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Revitalized Kennebec River winds away from polluted past

here was a time within many people's lifetimes when almost no one would have fished the confluence of the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers in Winslow.

Tanneries, factories and mills dumped municipal sewage into the Kennebec and its tributaries, fouling the waters as they flowed through Augusta toward Merrymeeting Bay. In Hartland, the Sebasticook River below the tannery ran with the color of dyes used on leather.

It was the same with other rivers across Maine and the nation. Once pristine, filled with fish, home to mammals and birds, the living, breathing Kennebec had been smothered to death by a flood of sewage and bark, poisoned by chemicals

Things began to change 35 years ago, when Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie and others introduced a bill that would become the landmark Clean Water Act. Muskie also sponsored amendments to the bill in 1977.

One of the nation's most significant pieces of environmental legislation, the act gave the state and local governments, and dedicated environmentalists the tools to begin a cleanup that would almost immediately begin yielding results.

Today, the public enjoys fishing, boating and even swimming on the Kennebec. Property values have increased. Developers are cashing in by renovating old mills as condos and retail space.

more from the Morning Sentinel (ME)

Forced to Run Straight, a River Must Now Twist

In the early 1980s, engineers straightened out stretches of the Kushiro River, which had meandered some 100 miles under Hokkaido’s big sky here in northern Japan, flowing through green hill country and rural towns, winding through the nation’s largest wetland and this port city’s downtown before emptying into the Pacific Ocean.

Like most rivers in Japan, the Kushiro River on Hokkaido, once considered a flooding threat to farmland, was straightened out years ago. Now the government, citing environmental concerns, plans to restore some curves to the stretch at left.

Later in November, work is to start again. But this time bulldozers will be moving earth to put curves back in a stretch of the river that had been straightened out, restoring its original, sinuous, shape.

For decades, Japan pursued economic development at all costs, but it is now emphasizing the importance of protecting the environment. So under a 2003 law that aims to reverse decades of destruction, the Kushiro River will be the first of perhaps many straightened rivers to regain some of its original curves.

Still, in a country famous for heedlessly paving rural areas in concrete to create jobs and to buttress the half-century rule of the Liberal Democratic Party, some environmentalists and local residents are skeptical of the new projects. With no rivers left to straighten, they say, the authorities nowadays are simply starting to curve them instead. Can politicians and bureaucrats be trusted to repair nature?

“Well,” Kazuaki Saito, 47, a farmer whose land abuts the stretch to be curved, said of the project, “it’s human egotism, and it’s for the sake of spending money.”

more from the NY Times

Pollution Turns China River Dark Red

Industrial discharge and household wastewater have polluted a northern Chinese river so badly that the water is dark red in some sections and has caused chronic illnesses among villagers, a government publication reported.

Some of the 50,000 villagers living along polluted stretches of the Futuo River in Hebei province said sweet potatoes and soy beans grown there were tough and would not soften with cooking, the state-run China Environment News reported. Oil pressed from peanuts harvested in the area smells bad, the report said.

China has some of the world's most polluted waterways and cities after two decades of breakneck industrial growth. The government has struggled in recent years to balance environmental concerns with economic growth.

One stretch of the Futuo River, once a place for boating and fishing, was flowing reddish-brown, with inches of white foam floating on some parts.

''The river looked like a white boa constrictor slithering into Anping County,'' the Oct. 30 report said.

more from the NY Times

WINDING RIVER New technology could harness the power of Mississippi, turning it into a power plant

The Mississippi River has been responsible for a lot of things in Louisiana. Generating electricity hasn't been one of them.

Navigation, sediment, debris and the state's flat terrain have hindered development of any kind of hydraulically generated power on the largest river in the nation. Louisiana gets just 1 percent of its electricity from hydraulic power.

But a new nationwide focus on renewable sources of power -- such as wind, water and the sun -- and new technologies could turn the Mighty Mississippi into a power plant responsible for generating electricity for from 640,000 to 1.3 million homes or more.

"Literally there could be 100s to 1,000s of megawatts in the Mississippi River," said Wayne Krouse, CEO of Hydro Green Energy LLC in Houston. "It's a very large potential resource."

Krouse's company has six preliminary permit applications in with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to study putting its technology in the Mississippi River. Another company, Free Flow Power LLC, of Manchester, Mass., has 10 times that many applications pending before FERC.

Free Flow intends to spend up to $3 billion installing turbines up and down the Mississippi River from Illinois to the mouth of the river, including at 36 sites in Louisiana, according to Dan Irvin, CEO of Free Flow. Additionally, the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane University is working with Global Green, an environmental organization, on a yearlong study looking at the viability of river power for the Holy Cross neighborhood and for Tulane University's planned Riversphere research and museum.

"There are a billion liters per minute on average coursing through New Orleans," said Doug Meffert of the Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research. "It's been a source that's largely been underutilized for energy."

more from the Times Picayune

Atlanta water use is called shortsighted

When Rick McKee, the editorial cartoonist of the Augusta Chronicle newspaper, set out to capture the historic and severe drought that is afflicting the Southeast, he did not draw parched rivers or shriveled crops or brown lawns: He drew an oafish, bloated hulk of a boy holding up a straw to slurp up water from a smaller boy's water fountain.

Above the larger boy, a sign reads "Atlanta," above the other, "Everybody else."

It is, in many ways, a cartoon that sums up feelings across the Southeast now that Lake Lanier, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to most of metropolitan Atlanta's 5 million residents, is draining to historic lows. With government officials issuing stark projections that Atlanta could run out of water within three months, Georgia politicians have pleaded with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to decrease the amount of water being released. The flow has been required to save two species of mussels 200 miles downriver.

Yet while Georgia's leaders try to cast the water shortage as a battle between 5 million people and a few mussels -- with the message that greater priority should be given to Atlanta residents -- there is a growing sense that the metropolis itself is the problem: Critics say Atlanta's rapid population growth, coupled with blithe disregard for water conservation, is straining the region's ecosystem.

more from the LA Times

The Tennessee town where the taps run dry

As twilight falls over this Tennessee town, Mayor Tony Reames drives up a dusty dirt road to the community's towering water tank and begins his nightly ritual in front of a rusty metal valve.

With a twist of the wrist, he releases the tank's meagre water supply, and suddenly this sleepy town is alive with activity. Washing machines whir, kitchen sinks fill and showers run.

About three hours later, Mr. Reames will return and reverse the process, cutting off water to the town's 145 residents.

The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 65 kilometres west of Chattanooga and 240 kilometres northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.

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Sold down the river

Taming China’s longest river has been the dream of emperors and dictators for centuries. The first water diversion works on the Yangtze were built during the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago and the Three Gorges dam was first proposed by Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary father of modern China, nearly 100 years ago as a way to mitigate the river’s frequent and devastating floods. The project was championed by Mao Zedong in the 1950s but decades of disastrous political blunders and fierce domestic opposition meant it would take another 50 years and the crushing of a nascent democracy movement before Mao’s dream of building the world’s largest hydropower station could be realised.

When the river’s flow was cut and the Three Gorges reservoir filled in 2003, the Chinese government hailed the project as an engineering marvel that would boost the region’s economy, improve the environment and raise living standards for the 1.3m forced from their homes to make way for the rising water.

But in recent months, senior officials have publicly admitted for the first time the Three Gorges region faces an environmental catastrophe if urgent action is not taken. In interviews they have also acknowledged that rising discontent among the dam’s refugees will be resolved only with huge new investment. In mid-October the Financial Times travelled the length of the reservoir and spoke to numerous officials and residents to check on reports of an environmental and humanitarian disaster in the making.
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The Blue Planet’s Lifeblood: A Finite Flow

It is impossible to enter “Water: H2O = Life,” the exhibition opening tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History, and not feel excitement at its possibilities. You walk into darkened space where a tumbling aqua-lighted waterfall seems to descend from the ceiling; letters projected on its turbulent surface spell “water” in multiple languages.
This is affecting and clever because the seeming cascade really is formed of water in its vaporous state. And you cannot pass through that curtain of mist without taking some notice of water’s extraordinary qualities: Like few other substances on earth, the show points out, water can exist as a solid, liquid and gas at everyday temperatures and pressures.

By the projected words you are also quickly made aware of water’s power to flow beyond national boundaries. The exhibition — created by Eleanor Sterling, director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the museum, in conjunction with the Science Museum of Minnesota and other science museums — is also meant to have a global reach. It will travel to South America, Asia, Australia and other locations in North America. Its objects include a meteorite from Australia (containing 15 percent water), live Southeast Asian mudskippers (fish that carry water in their bodies as they slither onto land) , a pipe fragment from Mexico used to irrigate fields some 1,500 years ago, and a display devoted to the environmental impact of the Three Gorges Dam in China, the world’s largest concrete structure. And given the exhibition’s concerns with environmental education, there is also much here that will attract younger visitors, who may not always be prepared for immersion into the watery realm of environmental debate.

But the exhibition also inspires considerable frustration. It presents a free-flowing flood of data and has an overly insistent and predictable message. That message is, admittedly, a virtuous one, because water, the exhibition points out, is not a renewable resource. What exists on earth now is the only water we will ever have, and less than 1 percent of it is available for human use. In 27 countries, most in Asia and Africa, convenient water is unavailable to half the population; meanwhile many rivers there are polluted with sludge, and even the Ganges, the sacred river of India, harbors harmful waste.

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Effort to Save Everglades Falters as Funds Drop

The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering.

Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry.

The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.

Supporters say the effort would get sorely needed momentum from a long-delayed federal bill authorizing $23 billion in water infrastructure projects, including almost $2 billion for the Everglades.

But President Bush is expected to veto the bill, possibly on Friday. And even if Congress overrides the veto, which is likely, grave uncertainties will remain.

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Groups oppose aquaculture in Gulf

A coalition of environmental groups on Wednesday strongly opposed a draft plan to open federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico to large-scale fish farming operations.

Wearing lime-green buttons saying "I'm with the fish," representatives from the Gulf Restoration Network, the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch and other groups said a plan being considered by fisheries regulators this week in Mississippi fails to address economic and ecological concerns for the Gulf's existing fishing industry and fish species.

"This practice could threaten the economic well-being of the Gulf's active fishing industry," said Sascha Bollag, fish campaign organizer with Food & Water Watch, a Washington nonprofit group.

Offshore commercial fish farming, or aquaculture, is prevalent elsewhere in worldwide seafood production, but has yet to get off the ground in the United States. The Bush administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are interested in jump-starting a domestic industry, and officials are looking to the Gulf as a test market.

Aquaculture on land is common throughout the South, where pond-raised catfish and crawfish populate seafood markets and restaurant menus. Water flow and pollution can be more easily regulated on land than with open-ocean aquaculture. Much of the open aquaculture in China came under scrutiny earlier this year when banned antibiotics were found in some seafood produced in Chinese fish-farm facilities.

Those who showed up to comment Wednesday pointed out a slew of environmental concerns, from chemical pollution to genetic complications if farm-raised fish were to escape and mix with wild stocks.

"If one of these aquaculture operations is hit by a storm -- and they will be -- what is the effect of their release into the water?" asked Howard Page, chairman of the Mississippi chapter of the Sierra Club. "There could be hormones and antibiotics that are going to be introduced into the natural environment in large, large quantities."

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, meeting in Biloxi this week, will not take final action on a 400-page aquaculture plan, but could do so as early as January. The draft plan would set up a permit system in the Gulf for aquaculture operations, and would place limits on the types of fish allowed to breed and the location of facilities.

Several Gulf council members point out that fish farming is a necessary step for the United States to remain competitive in the global seafood market.

The United States already imports more than 80 percent of the seafood it consumes.

"Are we going to have to keep doing imports for the rest of our lives? That's not an option," said Harlon Pearce, a Louisiana representative on the Gulf council who is a seafood dealer in Kenner. "I understand the concerns of the fishermen here. But if we don't catch enough fish to stay on the plate, we're going to lose that market anyway."

The plan still must be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and lawyers at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, before the Gulf council can take any action.

Congress considered a nationwide aquaculture bill this summer.

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