Ocean "dead zones" spread, fish more at risk-study

The number of polluted "dead zones" in the world's oceans is rising fast and coastal fish stocks are more vulnerable to collapse than previously feared, scientists said on Monday.

The spread of "dead zones" -- areas of oxygen-starved water -- "is emerging as a major threat to coastal ecosystems globally," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Such zones are found from the Gulf of Mexico to the Baltic Sea in areas where algae bloom and suck oxygen from the water, feeding on fertilisers washed from fields, sewage, animal wastes and pollutants from the burning of fossil fuels.

"Marine organisms are more vulnerable to low oxygen content than currently recognised, with fish and crustaceans being the most vulnerable," said Raquel Vaquer Suner of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Spain.

"The number of reported hypoxic (low oxygen) zones is growing globally at a rate of 5 percent a year," she told Reuters.

Her study with a colleague showed that the number of "dead zones" had risen to more than 140 in 2004 from almost none until the late 1970s.

Hundreds of millions of people depend on coastal fisheries for food. Crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters and shrimps are less able to escape from low-oxygen waters than fish.

more from the Reuters

Climate change may be sparking new and bigger "dead zones"

“Wasteland” conjures up visions of dusty desolation where life is fleeting and harsh—if it exists at all. Oceans, too, have their inhospitable pockets. Scientists are discovering that climate change—and not just fertilizer from farm use—may be spurring the emergence of barren underwater landscapes in coastal waters. Expanding dead zones not only spell trouble for biodiversity, but they also threaten the commercial fisheries of many nations.

Dead zones are not new; they form seasonally in economically vital ecoystems worldwide, including the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay. Agricultural runoff sparks many of these die-offs; increased use of nitrogen fertilizers has doubled the number of lifeless pockets every decade since the 1960s, resulting in 405 dead zones now dotting coastlines globally.

But lesser-known wastelands are also emerging—without nutrient input from farms. Alarms about such dead zones first sounded in Oregon during the summer of 2002. Usually “we see many schools of fish and lots of different species,” says David Fox of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, but surveys revealed dead fish and invertebrates littering the seafloor. The culprit was hypoxia—low-oxygen conditions, which can occur after the decomposition of organic matter in areas where deep waters well up to the surface.

The emergence of hypoxic areas so close to shore has startled researchers, comments Jack Barth, a physical oceanographer at Oregon State University. A decade ago scientists needed to sail out 50 miles or more to find hypoxic water off Oregon, but he says, the zone was now so close that “a long baseball homer hit off of highway 101” could land in it. To scientists’ surprise and dismay, “hypoxia has become a feature of the coast,” with its reemergence near shore every summer, states Francis Chan, a marine ecologist, also at Oregon State.

Ordinarily upwelling systems such as that off Oregon teem with life. As coastal winds push surface waters offshore, cold, nutrient-rich waters from below replace them, stimulating plankton blooms that serve as food for many marine organisms. In fact, upwelling systems lead to such productive ecosystems that they support some 20 percent of the world’s fisheries’ yield while making up just 1 percent of the ocean surface.

Dead zones can form, however, when these systems become supercharged, either because of fertilizer runoff or, as in the case of Oregon, because of changes in ocean circulation. When upwelling intensifies, more nutrients go to the surface, where plankton growth skyrockets. Those that are not eaten eventually die and rain down into deeper waters, where bacteria use available oxygen to decompose them. Hypoxia results when the rate of this widespread organic decay outpaces fresh supplies of oxygenated surface water.

more from Scientific American

Iran Sinking as Groundwater Resources Disappear

Iran's insatiable demand for water, which is being drawn out of aquifers far faster than it can be replenished, is causing large chunks of farmland to sink and buildings to crack, according to a new study.

Estimates suggest the water levels in Iranian aquifers have declined by an average of nearly 1.5 feet (half a meter) every year over the last 15 years.

As the water is removed, soil and rock lose their support, leading to compaction and sinking.

Satellite radar observations—collected by Mahdi Motagh from GFZ, the German Research Centre for Geosciences based in Potsdam, Germany, and his colleagues—are showing just how serious the problem is.

Combining satellite radar images of the land surface dating back to 1997 with water level data, the team has shown that water withdrawal from aquifers is creating a major dilemma.

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Calif. tribe fears losing land if dam is raised

The federal government is considering enlarging a dam to boost the state's water supply, which would flood what little land remains above water where a Native American tribe had fished and farmed for centuries.

Nine-tenths of the ancestral land of the Winnemen Wintu was submerged in 1945, when the federal government built a 602-foot dam downstream of their ceremonial and prayer grounds.

Now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is considering enlarging Shasta Dam, flooding the remaining 22 miles of rocky, steep canyon shoreline, including two sacred rocks involved in coming-of-age rituals.

"These sacred places help keep the tribe healthy. They help keep it balanced and they help us to heal," said tribal chief Caleen Sisk-Franco. "There is no replacement. There's not an option to move it."

The desire by the few remaining tribal members to preserve the remnants of their homeland is running headlong into the desires of Central Valley farmers, the main beneficiaries of the federal proposal to enlarge Lake Shasta.

When it was filled to capacity, the lake flooded 46 square miles where tribal leaders say some 20,000 Winnemen Wintu once lived along the McCloud River. Their numbers fell to 395 at the turn of the century, with thousands massacred by western settlers and ravaged by disease during the Gold Rush. Today, the tribe counts 122 enrolled members, about a fifth of whom live in a makeshift village of trailers and a house on 42 acres of private land a few miles from the McCloud River, some 225 miles north of San Francisco.

Lake Shasta is the starting point for the federally run Central Valley Project, a system of 21 reservoirs, canals and aqueducts that funnel water to some 3.2 million acres of farmland and supplies water to about 2 million people.

Supporters say an enlarged lake is needed to meet the needs of California's growing population. The larger reservoir also would be able to store more cold water, which is needed to help the salmon that used to migrate to cooler water upstream before the dam blocked their path, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

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Ban Near on Diverting Water From Great Lakes

The House began debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would ban almost any diversion of water from the Great Lakes’ natural basin to places outside the region.

The measure is intended to put to rest longstanding fears that parched states or even foreign countries could do long-term damage to the basin by tapping into its tremendous body of fresh water.

The bill, which would also put in place strict conservation rules for the eight states that border the lakes, is expected to win House approval, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. It has already been passed by the Senate, and the Bush administration has signaled its support.

So House backing for the measure, known as the Great Lakes Compact, is regarded by its many advocates across the Midwest and in New York and Pennsylvania as a long-sought final piece to a complicated puzzle whose solution started taking shape a decade ago in an effort to give the region control over its water. The fear was that without strict, consistent rules on who is entitled to that water, it might start disappearing.

“People realized that Great Lakes water is a finite resource and that death by a thousand straws is a real threat,” said Jordan Lubetkin, a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation. “There is a perception that because the Great Lakes are so vast, they are immune from harm. That is not the case.”

more from the NY Times

Fresh produce from wastewater

rom Bangladesh to Ghana to Mexico, millions of farmers living in and around cities in developing countries use wastewater to irrigate their crops, according to a new report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a nonprofit research organization supported by 60 governments and other organizations. The report provides the first comprehensive, global analysis of the use of wastewater for irrigation—which, despite its benefits (providing food and sources of livelihood), poses health risks to farmers and consumers.


INTERNATIONAL WATER MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE
A Mexican farmer washes his spring onion crop in a river containing sewage.

“The scene you see is the following,” says Liqa Raschid-Sally, an environmental engineer with IWMI and one of the two authors of the report. Developing countries are experiencing increasing urbanization, causing their cities to consume enormous amounts of water. However, the infrastructure for treating wastewater is not keeping pace with urban growth, and as a result, most of the wastewater from cities remains untreated or partially treated. “If there is a river close by, they dump it in the river; in coastal cities, they end up dumping it into the ocean; if there is a lake nearby, they dump it there. So, if there is a water source downstream of cities, it’s polluted,” Raschid-Sally explains. An overwhelming 85% of the 53 cities analyzed discharged untreated or partially treated wastewater; only 15% treated their wastewater “adequately”, according to the report.

With urbanization comes increased demand for food. Most developing countries lack adequate infrastructure, including good transportation and refrigerated storage, to import perishable food from far afield. Consequently, millions of farmers cash in on the opportunity to grow and sell crops locally. Given the scarcity of freshwater sources, farmers use the only water available to them: sources that are polluted with partially treated or untreated effluents. As the IWMI report finds, a majority of the crop fields in and around cities are used to grow perishables, mostly vegetables. And the fields are a major food source for city dwellers. Just outside her own office building in Accra, Ghana, says Raschid-Sally, small farms grow vegetables using water from a stream that contains effluents from her building. “Sometimes I go and buy vegetables from there,” she confesses.

As noted in a 1996 report by the World Health Organization (WHO), the yield is often higher in fields irrigated with wastewater because of the high nutrient levels. However, there are obvious health risks from this practice: bacteria, worms, and even harmful chemicals from industrial effluents pose threats to consumers.

It is often difficult to pinpoint sources of infections with epidemiological studies, especially in developing countries, says Raschid-Sally. But a 2002 analysis by WHO of existing studies showed that irrigation with wastewater increases the rates of roundworm and bacterial infections and diarrheal diseases.

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Drugs affect more drinking water

Testing prompted by an Associated Press story that revealed trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water supplies has shown that more Americans are affected by the problem than previously thought — at least 46 million.

That's up from 41 million people reported by the AP in March as part of an investigation into the presence of pharmaceuticals in the nation's waterways.

The AP stories prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in at least 27 additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water. Positive tests were reported in 17 cases, including Reno, Nev., Savannah, Ga., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala. Results are pending in three others.

The test results, added to data from communities and water utilities that bowed to pressure to disclose earlier test results, produce the new total of Americans known to be exposed to drug-contaminated drinking water supplies.

The overwhelming majority of U.S. cities have not tested drinking water while eight cities — including Boston, Phoenix and Seattle — were relieved that tests showed no detections.

"We didn't think we'd find anything because our water comes from a pristine source, but after the AP stories we wanted to make sure and reassure our customers," said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities.

The substances detected in the latest tests mirrored those cited in the earlier AP report.

more from the AP

MD Gets Tough on Chicken Farmers

Maryland regulators today will announce the tightest-ever controls on what Eastern Shore poultry farmers do with their birds' waste, officials said yesterday, adopting a tougher stance toward state agricultural interests in a bid to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

The rules, proposed by the Maryland Department of the Environment, would create unprecedented scrutiny of the state's powerful poultry industry, currently not subject to several regulations that apply to dairy and hog farms. Environmentalists say poultry waste washes downstream, eventually helping trigger low-oxygen "dead zones" in the Chesapeake.

Today's proposal would limit where, how and for how long chicken farmers may store excess manure in outdoor piles, open to the rain. And for the first time, it would allow state officials to inspect poultry farms unannounced.

These changes seems likely to revive a debate between farmers and environmentalists that has been simmering since poultry waste was blamed for the outbreak of the bacteria Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake in 1997.

"It's controversial, but it's necessary," Maryland Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson said.

Representatives of the state's poultry business said yesterday that they would not comment on the regulations until they had read them.

But in the past, chicken farmers have said that they feel scapegoated for the bay's larger problems. They say that pollution doesn't make business sense: Why would they let large amounts of manure, a valuable fertilizer source, slip away in the rain?

more from the Washington Post

A water fight in Maine

Walk about 100 yards down a well-worn path, past wild berry bushes, and take a left into leafy growth. Just a few more feet into the green canopy, and there they are, jutting out from the earth.

"I don't even like the sight of them here," said Liz McMahon, a Shapleigh resident for 23 years, as she stared, frowning at the 3-foot-high rust-colored pipes.

These metal fingers are the source of a fierce debate that has gripped this small town and others across Maine, forcing residents to choose between Poland Spring - a company with a century-old history in the state - and their newfound environmental and social sensibilities.

For more than a hundred years, the company has drawn waters from Maine springs and marketed it to the world as just possibly "the best tasting water on earth." But now McMahon and others are part of a growing movement raising questions about the homegrown company's corporate parents - Nestlé Waters North America purchased it in 1992 - and the very concept of bottled water, which uses plastic and oil to deliver a product that many can get from their faucet.

As the company seeks to tap new springs, a number of towns have begun to push back against locating water-extraction sites on their land, forcing this quintessentially Maine company to consider the once unthinkable: looking to other states for its water.

"We're a Maine company," said Mark Dubois, Poland Spring's natural resource director. But if the industry continues to grow, he said, the company is going to need more water.

"We might have to force our hand," he said.

Later this month, Shapleigh residents will decide whether to put a moratorium on water pumping, which would freeze Poland Spring's plans to test the town's water. In Ogunquit, selectmen are considering a citizen petition they received in opposition to water extraction. Nearby Wells residents are set to vote in November on a 180-day moratorium, much like the one in Shapleigh, while they prepare an ordinance that would set ground rules for pumping.

more from the Boston Globe

Huge increase in spending on water urged to avert global catastropheHuge increase in spending on water urged to avert global catastrophe

Countries across the world will have to dramatically increase investment in dams, pipes and other water infrastructure to avoid widespread flooding, drought and disease even before climate change accelerates these problems, experts have warned.

Investment needs to be at least doubled from the current level of $80bn (£45.5bn) a year, an international congress was told this week, and one leading authority said spending needed to rise to 1.5% of gross domestic product just "to be able to cope with the current climate" - one thousand times the current level.

The warnings follow a summer of dramatic events, from hurricane flooding in the Caribbean and the east coast of America to desperate measures in drought-stricken Mediterranean countries, including importing water by ship.

Rich nations suffer huge under-investment, but the threat of poor infrastructure to populations in developing countries is even greater, said Dr Olcay Unver, director of the United Nations' Global Water Assessment Unit.

So serious is the problem that next year the UN's World Water Assessment Report will make one of its main messages the need for investment to "accelerate substantially", said Unver.

"You can't justify the deaths of so many children because of lack of infrastructure or lost productive time of people [who are] intellectually or physically incapacitated because of simple lack of access to safe water or sanitation," he added.

more from the Guardian (UK)

By growing less thirsty crops and investing in more efficient irrigation technology, California farmers could save billions of gallons of water each y

In a study to be released today, researchers at Oakland's Pacific Institute say that before Californians take on costly new dam and reservoir projects, state and federal policymakers need to build on existing methods for reducing agricultural water use.

The report, titled "More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California - A Focus on the Delta," stresses that agriculture remains an important part of California's economy. However, with farmers using about 80 percent of the water drawn from the critically ill Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, researchers said agricultural water conservation must expand - and quickly.

"No one has ever evaluated the potential for improving the efficiency of agricultural water use," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and co-author of the report. "We found there is a lot of potential for savings ... and they're extensions of things farmers are already doing."

Farmers who shift away from water-intensive crops, invest in high-tech watering systems and irrigate only at precise times in the growing cycle could save between 600,000 and 3.4 million acre-feet of water each year, Gleick said. One acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons, and represents the amount of water needed to cover 1 acre of land to a depth of 1 foot.

The study is part of a larger report to be released by the nonpartisan research group next year and was funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

While water use in California has been a historical source of conflict between urban and agricultural consumers, the issue has taken on new urgency in recent years amid predictions of a drier climate, booming population growth and ecological damage to the delta - the hub of the state's water system.

more from the SF Chronicle

The water plant under New York

It requires enough concrete to build a sidewalk from New York to Miami and enough pipe to reach the top of the Empire State Building 140 times over. Workers carved out enough dirt from the ground to fill more than 100,000 dump trucks.

The colossal effort is a water filtration plant being built 10 stories beneath a Bronx driving range, a one-of-a-kind project intended to become a nearly invisible part of the city's infrastructure.

The plant has been anything but hidden so far.

The plant's completion date has been pushed back six years, and its price tag, which early estimates put at $660 million, is now $2.8 billion. Costs, delays, seven-figure fines and a brush with a high-profile Mafia case have sharpened criticism of the city's handling of a project that three city watchdog agencies and a group of community leaders are monitoring.

"The bottom line is that to build this water plant, the taxpayers are getting soaked," state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said. "It's like government at its worst."

Despite the problems, officials say they will not be deterred from building what they see as the latest far-reaching project in a city full of grand monuments to civic imagination. Officials say they are making good progress despite a late start, and the cost increases are an unavoidable reflection of an industrywide trend.

"The need to complete important projects like the [water] plant has not diminished," Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler said. "We can't sit back and let others worry about the future."

The federal government has ordered the city to build what will be its first drinking water filtration facility, and the project is believed to be the first subterranean water plant in the nation. Its magnitude is hard to overlook: The pit at Van Cortlandt Park is so deep that large cranes merely peek above the rim.

more from the Associated Press

State gets serious about deepening drought

Anticipating another bone-dry winter, California is preparing to act as a water go-between next year, buying from water-rich districts in the north and selling to cities and farmers hit hard by drought.

The initiative, known as the 2009 Drought Water Bank, harkens back to measures taken during the long dry spell of the late 1980s and early 1990s and underscores the state's efforts to squeeze every drop out of a system strained by climate change, a booming population and environmental rulings that have slashed pumping out of the linchpin Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

On Thursday, the state Department of Water Resources announced the formation of the water bank during a "drought summit" in Sacramento attended by urban, agricultural and other groups that represent a total of about 25 million people, or a majority of California's water users.

Faced with forecasts showing a period that could resemble either the short, deep drought in the late 1970s or longer drought of the late 1980s, officials said they must plan for the worst. Already, many of California's reservoirs stand at record-low levels - some as low as 13 percent of capacity - after two critically dry years.

"There are a number of scenarios where we don't regain snowpack and because the reservoirs are low, we're in a lot of trouble - and that's what we're down to," said Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow.

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