Israeli demand draining Sea of Galilee

Amos Onn has lived on the banks of the biblical Sea of Galilee since 1956, when he came from Jerusalem to start a new life at Kibbutz Ein Gev.

He was there when the lake flooded the neat, simple houses of the collective more than 40 years ago, paddling around in a kayak to rescue those stuck in their homes. Over the years he has watched the kibbutz flourish thanks to the lake’s waters: first it brought fish and provided the water for Ein Gev’s vegetable and fruit plantations; then it lured more and more tourists to the kibbutz’s sprawling holiday resort and famous fish restaurant.

“The sea level of Lake Kinneret [the Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee] is like the mood of Israel. If the water is high, people are happy,” Mr Onn says.

This summer both the water level and the mood of the people living by the Sea of Galilee are plunging to record lows. The country has suffered four successive seasons of drought, with rainfall no more than half the annual average.

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Running dry

“WATER is the oil of the 21st century,” declares Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow, a chemical company. Like oil, water is a critical lubricant of the global economy. And as with oil, supplies of water—at least, the clean, easily accessible sort—are coming under enormous strain because of the growing global population and an emerging middle-class in Asia that hankers for the water-intensive life enjoyed by people in the West.

Oil prices have fallen from their recent peaks, but concerns about the availability of freshwater show no sign of abating. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, which it calls an “unsustainable” rate of growth. Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts.

Untrammelled industrialisation, particularly in poor countries, is contaminating rivers and aquifers. America’s generous subsidies for biofuel have increased the harvest of water-intensive crops that are now used for energy as well as food. And heavy subsidies for water in most parts of the world mean it is often grossly underpriced—and hence squandered.

All of this poses a problem, first and foremost, for human welfare. At the annual World Water Week conference in Stockholm this week, delegates focused on measures to extend access to clean water and sanitation to the world’s poor. But it also poses a problem for industry. “For businesses, water is not discretionary,” says Dominic Waughray of the World Economic Forum, a think-tank. “Without it, industry and the global economy falter.”

Water is an essential ingredient in many of the products that line supermarket shelves. JPMorgan, a bank, reckons that five big food and beverage giants—Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Danone—consume almost 575 billion litres of water a year, enough to satisfy the daily water needs of every person on the planet.

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Bottling Plan Pushes Groundwater to Center Stage in Vermont

Hundreds of gallons of groundwater flow to the surface in rivulets here each hour, helping to create this town’s signature spring, a lush current typical of northern New England. Just uphill, a meadow stretches to the doorstep of Daniel Antonovich, a businessman with plans to bottle and sell about 250,000 gallons a day from the spring.

The idea makes his neighbors nervous. Like two-thirds of Vermonters and 40 percent of all New Englanders, most residents of East Montpelier depend on wells for their water. Some worry that a water-bottling operation will compromise their ability to shower and flush; others just do not want their local water sold elsewhere.

In corners of Vermont, once-reliable well-water supplies have become intermittent in recent years, with homeowners blaming local developers or mining operations or a bottling operation. In March, the town of East Montpelier postponed any bottling for three years. Three months later, in a move that put Vermont in the company of a growing number of states, the legislature approved a measure making the state’s groundwater a public trust. Beginning in 2010, anyone seeking to pump more than 57,600 gallons a day will need a permit, with exceptions for farms, water utilities, fire districts and some geothermal systems.

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Tunneling nearly complete for Inland Empire water project

Even in the world of big-ticket water projects, where delays, cost overruns and controversy are frequent, the inelegantly named Inland Feeder Project was in a class of its own.

In its two decades, the project has faced fire, flood, regulatory disputes, difficult geology, grouting problems, earthquake considerations, a switch of contractors and more. At one point it was $100 million over budget.

The boss at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California jokes that the project suffered everything but a plague of locusts.

Still, the agency insisted it needed a higher-capacity system to bring water from Northern California to its massive reservoir, Diamond Valley Lake, outside Hemet.

A new project manager was brought in three years ago with a simple command: Failure is not an option.

And today, several years behind the original schedule, the $1.2-billion project will complete its last bit of tunneling: a four-mile stretch known as the Arrowhead West Tunnel in the San Bernardino Mountains.

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Spain sweats amid 'water wars'

Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of climate change and that the Sahara is slowly creeping north - into the Spanish mainland.

Yet in Spain itself there is little consensus about what is to be done. Indeed, such is the disagreement that journalists and politicians alike are calling it "water wars".

A farmer and politician, Angel Carcia Udon, said: "Water arouses passions because it can be used as a weapon, a political weapon, just as oil is a political weapon."

And water in Spain has set region against region, north against south and government against opposition.

When the city of Barcelona nearly ran out of water earlier this year, the fountains were switched off and severe restrictions were introduced.

The government of Catalonia pleaded for water to be transferred from rivers like the Ebro, in neighbouring regions, but they refused.

Instead, the city shipped in millions of litres of water from France and accelerated work on the giant desalination plant on the edge of Barcelona, which promises to provide 180,000 cubic metres of water a day.

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What lies beneath

The exploitation of massive Marcellus Shale natural-gas deposits in the Appalachian region of the northeastern U.S. sounds like a dream. With energy concerns at the top of the nation’s agenda, this natural-gas reservoir, located just several hundred miles from East Coast urban centers, has drilling companies pouring into the region. In Pennsylvania, where development is the most advanced, landowners are eagerly signing mineral-rights leases. But environmental groups and some industry insiders warn that local communities and state regulators could be blindsided by the environmental consequences of the gas boom.


TOM MURPHY
Each deep-drilling and hydraulic-fracturing operation, like the one shown here, has a multi-million-gallon thirst.

David Burnett, technical director of the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M University, says that residents in central and northeastern Pennsylvania, and other prime areas for drilling the shale, should be braced for high-speed changes. During the past 7 years, exploitation of the Barnett Shale, a similar geological formation in Texas, “has turned Fort Worth into a boom town like Silver City, Nev., in its heyday,” he says. Burnett’s research aims to minimize the environmental consequences of gas and oil drilling.

Buried more than a mile beneath the surface, the Marcellus Shale’s vast amounts of natural gas have long tantalized geologists. Now, thanks to soaring natural-gas prices and improved drilling technologies—mainly hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—an estimated 50 trillion cubic feet of gas could be recovered from the formation, according to Pennsylvania State University geoscientist Terry Engelder.

The technology involves vertically drilling a deep production well down to 5000 feet, and then directional drilling, or side tracking, the drill for the next 1000 feet so that the drill bit begins to move horizontally. The operators then drill horizontally for another 3000 feet. More than a million gallons of water and chemical additives as well as about half a ton of sand are injected into the well at high pressure, which then fractures the rock. Among the additives that have been used are guar gum, biocides, and diesel fuel, although the three major drilling service companies agreed to stop using diesel fuel in 2003. The water pumped out of the well contains the additives and brine that were trapped in the gas formation, along with metals, sulfides, and radioactive materials. The levels of metals and radioactivity are likely to be very low, Engelder says. Still, radioactive materials sometimes become concentrated on the drilling equipment.

A controversial 2004 U.S. EPA report rated the threat of hydraulic fracturing to drinking water as “minimal”. Thomas Rathbun of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) says that the state also estimates the threat to drinking water as minimal because the drinking-water aquifer is shallow. It lies more than 5000 feet above the Marcellus Shale. Pennsylvania regulations require companies to drill with air until they are below the aquifer, and then line the hole. As a result, the chances of fluids from hydraulic fracturing entering drinking water are slim.

But finding and disposing of the millions of gallons of water that hydraulic fracturing demands are two major problems. With hydraulic fracturing, “you aren’t even going to have a stream left,” Burnett says. Treating the fluids brought up from the well is also a problem. “The [brine] can’t go to a sewage treatment plant,” Burnett adds. “Those plants can’t handle a multi-million-gallon slug of salty water.”

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Study Shows Continued Spread Of 'Dead Zones'; Lack Of Oxygen Now A Key Stressor On Marine Ecosystems

A global study led by Professor Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, shows that the number of "dead zones"—areas of seafloor with too little oxygen for most marine life—has increased by a third between 1995 and 2007.

Diaz and collaborator Rutger Rosenberg of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden say that dead zones are now "the key stressor on marine ecosystems" and "rank with over-fishing, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms as global environmental problems."

The study, which appears in the August 15 issue of the journal Science, tallies 405 dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, affecting an area of 95,000 square miles, about the size of New Zealand. The largest dead zone in the U.S., at the mouth of the Mississippi, covers more than 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey.

Diaz began studying dead zones in the mid-1980s after seeing their effect on bottom life in a tributary of Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore. His first review of dead zones in 1995 counted 305 worldwide. That was up from his count of 162 in the 1980s, 87 in the 1970s, and 49 in the 1960s. He first found scientific reports of dead zones in the 1910s, when there were 4. Worldwide, the number of dead zones has approximately doubled each decade since the 1960s.

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Farmers mend their watering ways

Water conservation hasn't always been a top priority for farmers in this southwest corner of the state. That's because water has been plentiful in the Flint River Basin.

But the Southeast has endured several droughts in recent years, and this year, 87% of Georgia is in some stage of drought. The state also is locked in a 2-decade-old water war with Alabama and Florida over two major river basins.

So many farmers were willing to listen when the Nature Conservancy, the Department of Agriculture and the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District, offered to help them conserve water.

They improved the efficiency of irrigation systems by adding low-pressure nozzles that reduce evaporation loss, and they started using soil moisture monitors that eliminate guesswork about when to water.

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Algae bloom a new worry

John Neukam has been catching crabs in pots near the Middle River for decades. But this year, the crabs have been dying in the water, suffocated by a bright green algae bloom that is choking off oxygen and worrying watermen and recreational boaters.

"You crab all week, you get a bushel and a half in your live box, and they die," said Neukam, after checking his pots yesterday morning. "I've been here all my life - 64 years - and we've only had this one other time, when fertilizer from a farm seeped into the cove."

People who live in subdivisions off the coves and creeks in the Middle River area have been scared to eat the fish they catch, worried about letting their children and dogs swim in the water, and in some cases unable to get their boats out from their docks, which have been socked in by the thick, carpet-like algae.

The state Department of Natural Resources says the algae is not toxic, but it is alarming. When the algae dies, the decomposition sucks the oxygen out of the water, killing crabs and fish. The algae also blocks sunlight from the beneficial bay grasses, which provide a refuge for shellfish and crabs.

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Desalination plant receives go-ahead

A private company's proposal to build the nation's largest drinking water desalination plant at Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad cleared its final hurdles Wednesday before the California Coastal Commission.

The decision came at the conclusion of a 10½-hour hearing in Oceanside punctuated by objections from environmentalists and support from elected officials who stressed the crucial need to increase the region's water supply.

“We must diversify our region's water-supply portfolio,” said San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. “We cannot conserve our way out of the water crisis.”

San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre testified in opposition to the project, arguing that it was the wrong approach to solving the region's water shortage.

“The primary way to gain new water is through reclamation,” he said, referring to the process by which waste water is converted back into drinking water.

A frustrated Mayor Bud Lewis of Carlsbad, urged the commission to make a speedy decision without adding new requirements “so we can get on with building the damn thing.”

The $300 million plant envisioned by Poseidon Resources Inc. of Stamford, Conn., would produce 50 million gallons of drinking water each day, enough to supply 112,000 households.

Nine local water agencies have collectively contracted to buy the plant's entire output of drinking water.

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Hurricane keeps dead zone small

The huge "dead zone" of oxygen-poor water in the Gulf of Mexico failed to reach record size this year. Scientists had predicted that this hypoxic zone would swell to 8,800 square miles (Reuters, 15 July) due to floodwaters that poured tonnes of fertilizer into the Mississippi River, which empties the Midwest’s agricultural runoff into the Gulf. But it ended up rating a mere 7,988 square miles (still nearly the size of Israel) and thus ranks as second-biggest since scientists started tracking it in the 1980s. 2002 keeps its place as the worst year, with an 8,500-square-mile dead zone .

Increased corn farming, for ethanol, meant farmers used lots of fertilizer this season. When the rains hit, they rinsed the fertilizer into the river. This spring 83,000 tons of phosphorus rode the Mississippi to the Gulf, 85% higher than average levels. Those nutrients, as they do every year, sparked an algal bloom. When the algae die and sink to the bottom, bacteria feast on their remains. With so many bacteria slurping so many dead algae, the bacteria suck all the dissolved oxygen out of the water faster than it can diffuse back in. Fish and crustaceans rush toward airier waters, including the coastline, in an underwater stampede some Louisiana seafood lovers call a “jubilee.”

But this year, Hurricane Dolly stirred the dead zone like a big pot of soup, aerating water that would otherwise have been oxygenless. Thus by the time scientists finished measuring it, the zone was smaller than predicted.

It should shrink further in the fall, with cooler weather, fewer algae and more storms mixing the waters.

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