Monthly Archive for November, 2010

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“Mi hijo tiene hambre, mire su barriga…”

Published on 11/22/2010 in contaminated water, drought, spanish, tap water, wastewater, water shortage and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Un joven se lava la cara con el agua de una coladera en una calle capitalina.Foto encontrado en: www.eluniversal.com.mx

“PUERTO PRÍNCIPE.— Hacinadas en torno a un río donde la basura y los animales conviven, más de 500 familias, que han hecho del campamento de desplazados de Los Cayos, en el sur de Haití, su hogar desde el pasado mes de enero, piden a gritos ayuda para conseguir el agua potable que necesitan para sobrevivir.

Los 10 mil litros de agua que cada tres días les suministra la ONG Intermón Oxfam parecen no cubrir las necesidades de la población que allí habita desde que la tierra temblara, hace 10 meses.

“¡S’il vous plait, l’eau!” (¡Por favor, agua!), es la súplica que a cada paso transmiten los haitianos desplazados tras el sismo a los escasos visitantes que recorren el entramado de callejuelas que tienen como destino final un río en el que la basura y los cerdos campan a sus anchas. “Mi hijo tiene hambre, mire su barriga hinchada”, dice una mujer al paso de los cooperantes de la ONG española Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras (BUSF). Con un “Bonjour”, los aproximadamente 20 mil habitantes de Los Cayos agradecen la visita de los cooperantes y los periodistas.”

Leér más: El Universal

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Water, Water Everywhere, And Not A Drop To Swim In

Published on 11/22/2010 in climate change, contaminated water, drought, erosion and wastewater. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.npr.org

“This is one of the unfortunate byproducts of developing a tiny shard of land in the middle of the sea: there’s nowhere to put the trash.  People do burn it, using it to smoke fish and cook.  And there are a few dumps – though also near the beach.  But inevitably plastic bottles, car transmission, paint cans, and diapers all end up in the turquoise water.

And then there’s the bathroom situation.  In the last census, only a third of South Tarawa households reported having a flush toilet.  Which means lots of people use the lagoon – about 29 percent, according to that report.  Others use the ocean side of the atoll.

Probably the most oft-repeated piece of advice to travelers here is: “Whatever you do, don’t swim in the lagoon.”

Compounding all these problems is the fact that South Tarawa has too many people.  When you conjure an image of a small Pacific island, you think deserted sandy beaches, colorful reefs, sloping coconut trees.  Many of Kiribati’s outer islands do fit that description.  But South Tarawa has more 40,000 people live on South Taraw, with upwards of a thousand new residents moving here each year – folks from the rural islands hoping to make it in the big city.  One of Tarawa’s neighborhoods, Betio (pronounced ‘BEH-so’ – ‘ti’ makes an ‘s’ sound in Kiribati), has so many people crammed on to so small a piece of land, it’s more densely populated than Hong Kong.”

Read more: NPR

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Arab World and Med Region More Vulnerable to Climate Change

Published on 11/22/2010 in agriculture, climate change, drought, erosion, policy, rivers and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.greenprophet.com If Egypt’s Nile Delta is flooded by rising seas, half of its population will be at risk.

“The seriousness of climate change in the Arab World was pointed out recently in an article in the news site ArabBusiness.com, in which it was noted that powerful dust storms in Iraq, freak floods wreaking havoc in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and rising sea levels eroding Egypt’s coast are all sure signs that countries in the Middle East are some of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

This is certainly nothing new as the Middle East has never been an area that has received ample rainfall. With one of the fastest growing populations in the world, especially in countries like Egypt, people living in the Arab World by the year 2015 will have to survive on less than 500 cubic meters of water a year each, against a world average exceeding 6,000 cubic meters per head, according to Mohamed El-Ashry, former head of the Global Environment Facility.

Five hundred cubic meters of water per person per annum is barely enough to survive on, much less maintain a decent quality of life. Although desalination is now widely used in Saudi Arabia, and in the Gulf States, especially in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, strict measures of water conservation and recycling, such as those now being considered in Abu Dhabi will now have to become the norm.

After all, if a small country like Israel, with a population of 7.5 million can reclaim 75% of its sewage waste water then why can’t Arab countries do the same? The ravages of climate change will not go away soon; and the sooner that Arab countries take more measures to conserve water, the better off they will be.”

Read more: Green Prophet

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Fiji Water Embroiled in Junta Meltdown

Published on 11/22/2010 in bottled water, greenwashing and policy. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Photo retrieved from: www.motherjones.com

“For its part, the bottled-water company has always maintained that it stays out of Fijian politics: Owner Lynda Resnick has said that “they don’t have any guns there, but they still manage to have these coups all the time. They have a rogue government that changes every five years with a new coup. So sometimes it’s very hard to be in Fiji, but we do it.”

Yet even as the US government has maintained sanctions that include restricting military aid to the government, Fiji Water has done the opposite: It has hired a company with close military ties to provide security for its facilities around the island. The Fiji Timesreported in 2008 that the directors of the private security firm, Homelink, were two former Fijian military officers and two current officers “on special assignment.” One of them is Colonel Apakuki Kurusiga, who in 2008 said that “the company is supported by the RFMF [Royal Fiji Military Forces] and this relationship will be maintained throughout the life of the company.” Colonel Kurusiga also serves in the government as deputy secretary of Fijian affairs. In that capacity he’s helped write new regulations whose early drafts propose that women in rural areas “must not wear pants or tie their hair,” according to the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation. (When I got Homelink’s national manager on the phone, he refused to answer questions unless I came to Fiji to ask them in person. “Then I will show you what we are, all the papers and everything,” he assured me.)”

Read more: Mother Jones

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Putting the Hydro Industry’s Fox in Charge of the Henhouse?

Published on 11/19/2010 in dams, greenwashing, policy and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Photo retrieved from: www.gis.rdg.co.uk

“The International Hydropower Association, the hydropower industry’s main lobbying group, has released what it calls a Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol. Developed with a select group of partner institutions over the past three years, the Protocol is a scorecard to assess how hydropower projects compare against a list of relatively vague criteria. It is not a binding set of social and environmental standards.

The new protocol does not define any bottom lines of acceptability. For example it does not require that projects comply with national law. Many scores for “basic good practice” are weaker than existing standards – and particularly the framework of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) – in important aspects. In the eyes of the dam industry, “basic good practice” does not, for example, require that all available energy options are assessed in a balanced way.

The Protocol states that the scores for basic good practice are “broadly consistent” with the industry group’s own Sustainability Guidelines of 2004. As Shripad Dharmadhikary of the Manthan Research Center in India has pointed out, “the protocol is essentially designed to assess projects against a standard developed by the hydropower industry itself, which clearly has a vested interest in the standards being less stringent”.”

Read more: International Rivers

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Zafarrancho En Chimalhuacán Por Agua

Published on 11/19/2010 in groundwater, spanish, tap water, water shortage and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Foto encontrado en: www.eluniversaledomex.mx

“Ciudad de México.- Debido a que la Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) suspendió en Chimalhuacán el suministro de corriente eléctrica a dos pozos de agua potable y a dos cárcamos que administra la Comisión del Agua del Estado de México (CAEM), lo que provocó que se quedaran sin agua más de 500 mil habitantes, colonos se enfrentaron con personal de esa paraestatal, provocando un zafarrancho que puso en tensión a esa localidad, debido a que los vecinos retuvieron varias horas a seis vehículos de esa empresa.

Los hechos se registraron el pasado miércoles y ayer la zona centro de esa localidad amaneció con un fuerte dispositivo policiaco, para evitar nuevos enfrentamientos, incrementando la tensión en ese municipio.

Por la falta de agua en varias colonias, un grupo de estudiantes de la Escuela Normal de esa localidad, así como numeroso grupo de miembros de Antorcha Popular, en respuesta a la postura de la CFE de cortar la luz a esos pozos, procedieron a secuestrar y retener a seis vehículos de esa paraestatal, mismos que amenazaban con quemar, si no se reponía la energía a las bombas de agua, para que se reiniciara el abasto del vital líquido.

Los antorchistas se enfrentaron a golpes y verbalmente con los trabajadores de la CFE sobre las avenida de El Peñón y Embarcadero, en el barrio Xochitenco, a donde llegaron armados con palos y piedras, iniciándose un zafarrancho en la parte baja de ese municipio, por lo que tuvo que intervenir la policía estatal y local, para calmar los ánimos.”

Leér más: Metrópoli

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Chemicals Testing For Endocrine Disruption To Expand

Published on 11/18/2010 in contaminated water, tap water and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.stuffinheair.com

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified a list of 134 chemicals that will be screened for their potential to disrupt the endocrine system. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interact with and possibly disrupt the hormones produced or secreted by the human or animal endocrine system, which regulates growth, metabolism and reproduction. Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has made it a top priority to ensure the safety of chemicals, and this is another step in this process.

“Endocrine disruptors represent a serious health concern for the American people, especially children. Americans today are exposed to more chemicals in our products, our environment and our bodies than ever before, and it is essential that EPA takes every step to gather information and prevent risks,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “We are using the best available science to examine a larger list of chemicals and ensure that they are not contaminating the water we drink and exposing adults and children to potential harm.”

The list includes chemicals that have been identified as priorities under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and may be found in sources of drinking water where a substantial number of people may be exposed. The list also includes pesticide active ingredients that are being evaluated under EPA’s registration review program to ensure they meet current scientific and regulatory standards. The data generated from the screens will provide robust and systematic scientific information to help EPA identify whether additional testing is necessary, or whether other steps are necessary to address potential endocrine disrupting chemicals.

The chemicals listed include those used in products such as solvents, gasoline, plastics, personal care products, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, including benzene, perchlorate, urethane, ethylene glycol, and erythromycin.”

Read more: Water World

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4,000 Hold Protest To Save Agusan Watershed

Published on 11/18/2010 in groundwater, logging and mining. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.balatucan.com

“SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur — At least 4,000 people joined Saturday’s “Motor Caravan to Save Mt. Magdiwata” in a bid to stop illegal miners from encroaching into the watershed forest reserve surrounding the 633-meter high peak to cut trees for mining tunnels.

The local parish priest and other religious leaders led prominent citizens and representatives of business and other sectors in a motor caravan protest aimed to stop logging, mining and other destructive activities that threaten the water supply of around 100,000 residents of this capital town.

The caravan of about 200 vehicles, including some 10-wheeler trucks, marched through the town’s major streets to end up at the foot of the Mt. Magdiwata range. Protesters in open cargo trucks bore placards, and chanted “Stop mining, stop cutting trees inside Mt. Magdiwata.”

San Francisco Water District General Manager Elmer Luzon, who joined the march and led his colleagues, said his office decided to take to the streets to dramatize their continuing opposition to ongoing illegal mining and logging activities inside the watershed.

“We have already tried all legal means and done exhaustive leg work to coordinate with various government agencies, but it seems it was not enough as illegal logging and mining activities continue to this day,” Luzon said.”

Read more: GMA News

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Argentina y Uruguay Celebran Acuerdo Final Por Papelera

Published on 11/17/2010 in contaminated water, policy, products, rivers and spanish. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Foto encontrado en: www.bbc.co.uk

“El acuerdo alcanzado establece que un comité científico integrado por expertos de ambos países vigilará los niveles de contaminación en el Río Uruguay y dentro de la fábrica UPM.

Los técnicos podrán realizar hasta doce visitas al año a la planta de celulosa, donde medirán la temperatura y turbiedad de las agudas, además de la presencia de residuos.

En la fábrica se instalarán, además, algunos sensores de transmisión continua y permanente de información.

La construcción de la papelera, en 2007, supuso la mayor inversión individual en la historia de Uruguay, con un gasto estimado en US$1.800 millones.

Sin embargo, la instalación de la planta cerca de la ciudad uruguaya de Fray Bentos, unida por el Río Uruguay a la ciudad argentina de Gualeguaychú, también causó el mayor conflicto diplomático en la historia reciente del país sudamericano.

Vecinos de Gualeguaychú, en la provincia argentina de Entre Ríos, se quejaron de que la fábrica contaminaba su territorio y protestaron cerrando el puente que une ambos países por más de tres años.”

Leér más: BBC Mundo

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Abu Dhabi’s Climate Change Choice: Trees Or Water?

Published on 11/17/2010 in agriculture, climate change, desalination, drought, groundwater and water shortage. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.greenprophet.com

“The Emirates Environmental Group (EEG) has planted one million trees in four years in order to stave off climate change and desertification, and to restore its heritage of indigenous trees.

Although the group has planted trees that are accustomed to the desert environment and therefore well-adapted to scant water resources and high temperatures, the Federal National Council (FNC) addressed the Ministry of Environment and Water with concerns about Abu Dhabi water scarcity.

“The UAE used 4.5 billion cubic metres of water in 2009. Slightly more than half of the water supply comes from groundwater,” according to The National. “The agricultural sector uses 97 per cent of that groundwater, while contributing 3.3 per cent of GDP.”

Referring mostly to water used for growing food, but applicable to all vegetation, FNC members stressed that the Ministry must re-evaluate its growing scheme.

“Agriculture needs a fundamental rethinking,” Mr al Zaabi, an FNC member from Sharjah, said at a recent meeting with the Ministry. “What do we plant, where do we plant it, and how do we plant it?”

Failure to do so could deplete groundwater sources. Meanwhile, various FNC members voiced urgent concerns about the Emirate’s backup in the event that an emergency compromises the 83 desalination plants that The National suggests provides 65% of Abu Dhabi’s commercial and residential water supply.”

Read more: Green Prophet

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