Monthly Archive for December, 2010

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Giant Oil Pipeline In The Works From Alberta To The Gulf

Published on 12/23/2010 in contaminated water, greenwashing, mining, oil, policy, products, wastewater and waterborne diseases. 0 Comments Tags: oil sands, U.S oil supply.

The existing portion of TransCanada's pipeline under construction in North Dakota. Photo retrieved from: www.cnn.com

“Oil sands are just that — sand mixed with a heavy form of crude. They are found in Canada’s Alberta province, covering an area roughly the size of Texas. They are either mined like coal or produced with wells like oil.

If they are mined, vast amounts of water and heat are necessary to separate the oil from the sand. If they are extracted by well, it’s often necessary to heat up the rock to get the thick oil flowing.

Either way, extracting oil sands is considerably more energy intensive than pumping normal oil.

On a lifecycle basis, from the extraction process on through to burning the stuff in a motor vehicle, oil sands are estimated to emit 5% to 30% more carbon dioxide than regular oil.

Oil sand extraction is also tough on the landscape, especially if it’s mined. The mines are huge, roughly the size of Rhode Island. They have resulted in deforestation of hundreds of square miles of wilderness, at least until the sites are replanted.

Processing the oil also requires thousands of acres of ponds filled with toxic mine tailings. Birds are prone to landing in these ponds, Salmon said, and thousands are killed each year. The runoff can also pollute nearby waterways.”

Report: Harmful chemical found in tap water of 31 U.S. cities

Published on 12/20/2010 in contaminated water and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: chromium in tap water, tap water contamination, US tap water quality.

Photo retrieved from: CNN

“Millions of Americans in at least 31 U.S. cities could be drinking tap water contaminated with the harmful chemical hexavalent chromium, according to a report released Monday by the non-profit Environmental Working Group.

“While the dangerous carcinogen, otherwise known as chromium-6, may sound foreign to most people, perhaps the name Erin Brockovich will ring a bell.

“After chromium-6 was discovered in the water supply of Hinkley, California, Brockovich helped bring about a lawsuit that ultimately ended in 1996 with the utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, paying more than $330 million in damages. Norman, Oklahoma; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Riverside, California, top the non-profit organization’s list of cities with water supplies contaminated by chromium-6.The Environmental Protection Agency has classified the toxin as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans” as part of a risk assessmentthe agency is currently conducting on total chromium. The agency says water utilities are required to test for total chromium levels in the water but not explicitly for chromium-6. Chromium-6 is a natural byproduct of total chromium.”

Effort Falters on San Francisco Bay Delta

Published on 12/18/2010 in agriculture, drought, policy, rivers, water diversions and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: conservation of fish and wildlife, Sacramento River, San Francisco Bay Delta, San Joaquin River.

Photo retrieved from: www.nytimes.com

“The Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a federal and state initiative, would re-engineer the delta to make it safe for native species and would establish a framework for water distribution for the next 50 years. The delta, where California’s two largest rivers come together, supplies about one-quarter of the freshwater used by about 23 million Californians.

The goals of the plan are to keep vegetables and fruit trees growing in the Central Valley, taps running in Southern California and native fish swimming in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and in the briny western reaches of the delta, which the rivers feed and give it its formal name.

But the Westlands Water District, which serves some of the wealthiest and most powerful agricultural interests, has pulled out of the negotiations, saying it doubts it will get the water deliveries it had expected.

“The original purpose was to restore our water supply,” said Tom Birmingham, the general manager of the district, which snakes along the western edge of the Central Valley and serves 600 farms, according to its Web site.

The route the water takes is not without risks. Because of 160 years of farming and the construction of 1,100 miles of levees, delta lands have sunk and are now 3 to 20 feet below sea level. Mindful of how Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, planners are also focusing on the possibility that a big earthquake or storm could break crucial levees and allow saltwater from the bay to inundate the delta, which could shut off a large source of the freshwater supply for months.

Among the proposed solutions to the environmental and engineering issues is a $13 billion tunnel that would tap into the Sacramento River farther upstream and divert water around the delta. The tunnel, which could be 33 feet in diameter and 33 miles long, would be designed to be more resilient to earthquakes. It could also eliminate the springtime problem of newly hatched young smelt being sucked into giant pumps south of the delta that pull the river water into the distribution system.”

U.S. Border Crossing to Become Wastewater-Recycling Living Machine

Published on 12/17/2010 in agriculture, groundwater, solutions and outreach, tap water and wastewater. 0 Comments Tags: Mexican border, wastewater recycling.

Photo retrieved from: www.cleantechnica.com

“Enter the United States at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry on the Mexican border, and you’ll never know just by looking around that you’re walking through a “living machine” wastewater recycling system. But when installation is complete, a custom-designed system will treat and recycle wastewater on site, reducing “generation of wastewater and demand for potable water, while increasing the local aquifer recharge,” according to the company that designed the system, Worrell Water Technologies.

A press release by the company announces that the U.S. General Services Administration selected Worrell to design the system for the border crossing. A lush green landscape is expected to be the only visible part of the Living Machine system, which will be nourished by wastewater flowing below the surface “in watertight cells and pore spaces between rock particles so there is no smell, mosquitoes, or human exposure. The purified water will be re-used for on-site irrigation in this low precipitation area.”

Call for BHP Billiton to Halt Congo Smelter, Inga 3

Published on 12/17/2010 in contaminated water, dams, greenwashing, hydropower, mining, policy, privatization, products and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: access to electricity, aluminium smelters.

Photo retrieved from: www.theage.com

“Aluminum smelters create some of the most energy-intensive jobs in the world. BHP Billiton suggests that the new smelter would create 1,200 permanent jobs and require 1,600 sub-contractors, representing an astounding 4,286 MWh of consumed electricity per job/sub-contract. While these jobs and local sub-contracts are important, they come at the opportunity cost of similar investments which could create more jobs and local development. Attracting a variety of manufacturing and processing industries to the region could create far more jobs, spurring the local economy while consuming the same amount of, or even less, electricity.

Aluminum smelters also pay some of the world’s lowest electricity tariffs. Other electricity consumers, especially Congolese households, are at risk of paying higher power tariffs to offset the disproportionately low tariffs BHP Billiton is expected to negotiate.

In order to justify low power tariffs and energy-intensive job creation in a country with such low energy access rates and high unemployment, other economic and financial benefits are expected to offset the opportunity cost. However, investment contracts commonly reduce tax burdens and royalty rates paid to the state. Indirect economic benefits, such as indirect job creation, can also be misleading as they would likely accompany investments in other new industries as well.”

Desalination No Silver Bullet for California’s Water Woes

Published on 12/16/2010 in desalination, oceans and water technology. 0 Comments Tags: desal in california, desalination.

Photo retrieved from: SantaCruz.com

“Water has been called the lifeblood of the American West. Nowhere is this more true than in California, where dwindling water resources and a swelling population are pushing water agencies, businesses and nonprofits to find new ways to slake the state’s growing thirst. Some say the state only needs to look west to the Pacific Ocean for a partial solution to its problem.

“About 20 seawater desalination plants are in various stages of planning and development along the coast.

“It’s kind of like the Gold Rush,” said Paul Choules, vice president for desalination and reuse for Veolia Water Solutions and Technologies, one of the world’s biggest desalination companies, of the potential desalination market in California. “Unfortunately, there’s no gold there yet.”

“And it’s unlikely that desalination alone will be the silver bullet that eliminates the state’s water woes. Long timelines, high price tags, complex permitting and environmental challenges mean it could be a long time before most of those plants start producing fresh water — if they ever do. Meanwhile, some water experts say measures such as conservation and water reuse could meet the state’s future water needs.”

No Dams on the Brahmaputra, Pleads Northeast

Published on 12/14/2010 in dams, policy, rivers and water wars. 0 Comments

Photo retrieved from: www.yahoo.com

“To ease tension further, an internal ministry group has gone on to say that it has found no evidence yet that China was planning to divert the waters from Brahmaputra. But it is not clear if New Delhi has any detailed information on China’s plan of action.

With reports that China plans to build at least 21 dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo and several others on its tributaries, the fear is that Assam and Arunachal Pradesh would be badly affected. Indian engineers have raised apprehensions that China might have plans to divert the 78 billion cubic metres (bcm) of water to its arid southern part. This is the volume of water that the river brings into the Northeast and further flows down to the vast plains of Bangladesh. This would leave the Northeast and Bangladesh high and dry. For Bangladesh, Brahmaputra brings fresh water and fertile silt for farming. Added to it are issues related to safety of construction of huge dams on an earthquake-prone zone. A solution being advocated is institutionalising water-related negotiations with China. While Arunachal wants speedy establishment of user rights on the rivers, Assam wants concrete step – a water-sharing treaty between the two countries. Experts point out that the river balances the entire ecological landscape of the region. It’s not only China that plans to dam the river, India is also aggressive on harnessing the hydropower generation capacity of the river and its tributaries. Since there is no water-sharing treaty, it is bound to come up as a major trans-boundary issue between New Delhi and Beijing.”

Assessment of Groundwater Investigations and Borehole Drilling Capacity in Uganda

Published on 12/14/2010 in groundwater and policy. 0 Comments Tags: boreholes, uganda's water supply.

Photo retrieved from: www.ecolifoundation.com

“The report describes the legislative and institutional framework of the sector. The Directorate of Water Resources Management regulates the water drilling in Uganda. The Directorate licenses the drilling contractors and issues permits for drilling and water abstraction, and collects data for the national groundwater database. Every year, between 1,000 and 1,500 boreholes are drilled in Uganda. Currently applied siting as well as drilling contract formats are mostly no-water-no-pay contracts rather than Bills of Quantities contracts, which ultimately leads to lesser quality boreholes. Borehole drilling contracts by District Local Governments, constituting the largest fraction are procured after prequalification, whereas other actors also apply selected bidding or open bidding. The Sector Investment Plan (SIP) has studied various targeted service levels (access to safe water) based on selected combinations of water supply options. Combining the SIP information, current borehole costs and combined GoU / NGO funding capacity, it follows that there will be an increasing funding gap for borehole drilling.

The questionnaires, interviews and workshop revealed the following:

1. The current implementation environment for borehole drilling in Uganda is not conducive for a cost efficient and cost effective implementation of borehole drilling projects nor for a sustainable development of the sector.

2. The prices for boreholes depend on the costs for boreholes made by the drillers. Lower prices can only be attained if drillers can drill more boreholes per rig and/or per year.

3. Quality of works can only be ensured by a regulated environment where qualified and professional consultants, drillers and implementing agency staff work hand in hand aiming at high quality end products.”

Agua Del Grifo Igual A La Embotellada

Published on 12/14/2010 in bottled water, solutions and outreach, spanish and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: agua embotellada, España.

Foto encontrado en: www.wallpapers.pixxp.com

“El agua embotellada es una industria que en la actualidad mueve miles de millones de dólares. Su demanda, en las últimas décadas, se incrementó de forma exponencial (en América del Sur, por ejemplo, el consumo llegó a triplicarse entre 1997 y 2004, según una estadística publicada por el periódico británico The Guardian).

Para algunos, se trata de una cuestión de marketing, de una estrategia que ha logrado vender con éxito un elemento de la naturaleza que puede conseguirse -en los lugares donde hay disponibilidad de agua- abriendo el grifo y a bajo costo. Otros, en cambio, aseguran que prefieren el agua embotellada porque sienten que es más segura, pero, sobre todo, porque su sabor es mejor.

Ahora, un proyecto en España parece haber encontrado una solución para quienes prefieren el agua de botella. Se trata de un proceso de nanofiltración que hace que el agua potable tenga el mismo sabor -o incluso mejor- que el del agua embotellada.”

Leér más: BBC Mundo

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78,000 Tonnes of Garbage Collected from Three Gorges Dam After Water Level Raised

Published on 12/13/2010 in contaminated water, dams, hydropower and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: garbage, three gorges dam, Yangtze River.

Photo retrieved from: www.chinadigitaltimes.net

“Environmental sanitation workers from southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality have collected 78,000 tonnes of garbage from the Yangtze River near the Three Gorges Dam, ensuring the dam’s safe and effective operation after its water level was raised.

More than 68,000 workers in nearly 21,000 boats retrieved the garbage.

In late October, the water level in the dam was lifted to its designed maximum of 175 meters, allowing the dam to play its full flood control, power generation, navigation and water supply roles, said Wang Yuankai, a Chongqing municipal work administrator.

Raising the dam’s water level increased the surface area of water in the dam. It also increased garbage collectors’ workload, with about 60 percent more garbage appearing.

The cleanup operation helped ensure the water quality of the dam and its navigability.

The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest water-control and hydropower project.”