Rising U.S. water usage worries experts

Rising U.S. water usage is worrying experts who will gather April 15 at this year's intelligent water summit in Washington.

Ironically, water consumption has risen because of the drive toward renewable energy. Solar power generation consumes huge quantities of water, as does production of other forms of energy.

Despite educational programs and official exhortations, waste remains a major issue in water usage for landscaping and gardens, experts who are to attend the summit said ahead of the meeting.

While inefficient use of sprinklers and other devices for landscaping and gardening is an old problem, federal land managers have raised concerns that some types of solar energy projects in the western United States consume far too much water.

The Bureau of Land Management recently warned Nevada officials it wasn't in the public interest to go ahead with solar energy plants that used water-cooled components to produce electricity under the state's abundant sunshine.

Power generation companies favor the water-cooled solar electric plants because they are the most cost-efficient while air-cooled plants use 90 percent less water but are far more expensive to run.

The problem is worse in Arizona, where there are greater pressures on available water resources outside the state's urban centers.

Added to the emerging correlation between solar power generation and water resources is the industry prognosis that solar plants are here to stay, while all traditional projects dependent on hydrocarbon resources eventually will run out of the fuel and shut down, as has happened with coalmines, analysts said.

Rain Bird, the water efficiency company behind the summit, said a global audience of media and consumers will be able to view and participate in the Intelligent Use of Water Summit: State of the Union via a live streaming webcast from the Smithsonian Institution.

more from UPI

Disputed Bay of Bengal island 'vanishes' say scientists

The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta.

Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

Beneath the waves

The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says there has never been a permanent settlement on the now-vanished island, which even in its heyday was never more than two metres (about six feet) above sea level.

In the past, however, the territorial dispute led to visits by Indian naval vessels and the temporary deployment of a contingent from the country's Border Security Force.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

Anyone wishing to visit now, he observed, would have to think of travelling by submarine.

Professor Hazra said his studies revealed that sea levels in this part of the Bay of Bengal have risen much faster over the past decade than they had done in the previous 15 years.

more from the BBC

World Water Day: Thirsty Gaza residents battle salt, sewage

Activists around the world are marking World Water Day today with school campaigns, films, and concerts – all designed to draw attention to the fact that access to safe drinking water is something 1 in 5 people don't enjoy, while 40 percent of the world's population doesn't have adequate sanitation.

An acute example of the human cost can be found in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where experts say a potent mix of politics and geography are pointing toward the onset of a full-blown water crisis. In the small coastal territory, resources are either scarce or contaminated, sewage goes largely untreated, and already ailing infrastructure buckles under an Israeli economic blockade in place since Hamas took over in 2007. According to the United Nations (UN), the current environmental damage could “take centuries to reverse.”

“If the situation continues like this any longer, we’ll be faced with a very serious water crisis in the Gaza Strip,” Stéphane Beytrison, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza, told the Monitor recently. “And any real efforts at developing the water and sanitation system, whether by the local authorities or by aid agencies, are hampered completely by the closure. It’s a real and very crucial problem.”

more from Christian Science Monitor

U.S. Bolsters Chemical Restrictions for Water

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it would overhaul drinking water regulations so that officials could police dozens of contaminants simultaneously and tighten rules on the chemicals used by industries.

The new policies, which are still being drawn up, will probably force some local water systems to use more effective cleaning technologies, but may raise water rates.

“There are a range of chemicals that have become more prevalent in our products, our water and our bodies in the last 50 years,” the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said in a speech on Monday. Regulations have not kept pace with scientific discoveries, and so the agency is issuing “a new vision for providing clean, safe drinking water.”

Along with its other steps, Ms. Jackson said the E.P.A. was readying stricter regulations on four carcinogens often detected in drinking water, including a chemical commonly used in dry cleaning.

The announcements come amid growing complaints that systems across the nation are delivering tap water that poses health risks to residents. Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water, or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

In some instances, laws are sufficient, but they have been ignored: More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times. And the other major water law — the Clean Water Act — has been violated more than half a million times, though few polluters were ever punished.

more from the NY Times

India's urban poor suffer water crisis as cities grow

There's no escaping urban India's growth.

In the capital, hundreds of migrants arrive daily at railway and bus stations, densely populated slums burgeon at the seams and building complexes, shopping malls and industrial plants are sprouting up in every direction.

But as industrialisation takes effect and growing numbers of rural populations move to towns and cities like New Delhi, experts say the inability to provide clean and safe drinking water - especially to the urban poor - has reached crisis point.

"Higher demand for water, increased pollution by humans and industry and the mismanagement of water is most of all impacting the poorest people in the country's towns and cities," said Sushmita Sengupta of a Delhi-based think-tank, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

"Cities are already water-stressed and with increasing urbanisation, we need to learn to stop wasting vital resources."

According to India's last census in 2001, around 286 million - 28 percent of population - live in towns and cities.

This is projected to reach around 575 million people in 2030, which will mean around 40 percent of India's total population will be urban.

Yet no major cities and towns have a 24x7 water supply. Most households receive water twice daily - in the morning and evening - with many middleclass families relying on water storage tanks.

Water cuts that last days are becoming increasingly common in the scorching summer months, and water protests and reports of violence over water scarcity are on the rise in urban centres.

more from Reuters

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region

For at least two decades now, climate scientists have been telling us that CO2 and other human-generated greenhouse gases are warming the planet, and that if we keep burning fossil fuels the trend will continue. Recent projections suggest a global average warming of perhaps 3 to 4 degrees C, or 5.4 to 7 degrees F, by the end of this century.

But those same scientists have also been reminding us consistently that this is just an average. Thanks to all sorts of regional factors — changes in vegetation, for example, or ice cover, or prevailing winds — some areas are likely to warm more than that, while others should warm less.

What’s true for temperature, it turns out, is also true for another frequently invoked consequence of global warming. Sea level, according to the best current projections, could rise by about a meter by 2100, in large part due to melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. But that figure, too, is just a global average. In some places — Scotland, Iceland, and Alaska for example — it could be significantly less in the centuries to come. In others, like much of the eastern United States, it could be significantly more.

more from Yale 360

West Africa sets out to protect dying mangroves

In Sierra Leone, one of Africa's poorest nations still recovering from a 1991-2002 civil war, lawmakers are preparing a bill to join a seven-nation charter to protect the region's mangrove forests.

Conservation group Wetlands International says the initiative is essential for West Africa to save the 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of mangrove swamps it has left, less than a third of the 3 million hectares it started with.

The mangroves are falling prey to the artisanal salt industry because they are most readily available source of wood for fires used to boil up seawater and salt dust -- the preferred method of making salt.

Environmental groups are trying to encourage salt producers to use other methods, including solar drying, to reduce the strain on mangroves.

"If the mangroves disappear, fishing will be in crisis," said Wetlands' West Africa coordinator Richard Dacosta. "The saltwater tide will invade river estuaries and coastal areas. Local communities on the coast will have to move."

The region's mangrove forests also suck up thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide, and so could be a way for West Africa to get a foothold in the $136 billion carbon market.

"Mangroves sequester large amounts of carbon and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Dacosta said.

"NO WOOD LEFT"

Mangroves swamps are the amongst the most diverse ecosystems on earth, scientists say. A barrier between the land and sea, they are the nurseries of the ocean, where many species of fish and shrimps breed and their young thrive. Birds roost, snakes seek out prey, monkeys scavenge in them.

They are also a buffer against coastal erosion in a region where much of the population lives in low-lying areas.

On the outskirts of the village of Fobo, 50km (30 miles) south of Freetown, a crab scuttles across mud in the mangrove forest while oysters cling to its roots. Vast areas have already been cleared to make way for rice fields in the nutrient-rich soil.

But the local salt industry is by far the biggest threat.

For generations, villagers have scraped "salt dust" from the soil, added seawater, and boiled it over wood stoves.

Marie Kano, head of the salt producers association, said many of the mangrove trees used for fuel have already gone.

more from Reuters