Monthly Archive for September, 2011

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Sharp Emotions Salt Desalination Plant Meeting

Published on 09/20/2011 in desalination, oceans, policy and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: Santa Cruz desalination project.

Santa Cruz Water Director Bill Kocher. Retrieved from: www.santacruz.patch.com

“The desalination plant, which may be the city’s biggest municipal project ever, at $100 million, is already polarizing the town.

A group of opponents called Desal Alternatives leafleted the meeting, asking people to attend another meeting Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Live Oak Grange to talk about how not building the plant would create jobs.

Meanwhile, the invitation-only meeting was a pitch to various people in the community asking them to support the desalination plant.

Kocher and Laura Brown, director of the Soquel Creek Water District, described the perils of a decreasing water table, including ocean water and toxic Chromium-6 compromising the Soquel district’s wells if the table keeps plummeting.

“The problem is if we wait until it’s too late,” said Kocher. “It’s like the oil light in your car and the oil light is on.”

The two water districts, which comprise 135,000 people, will work together to build the plant, if approved. It would produce 2.5 million drinkable gallons a day by sifting salt out of ocean water.

Opponents say the cost is too high and that demand for water has dropped in recent years. Proponents claim that the drop is largely due to a bad economy with empty stores, manufacturing businesses that have left town and rentals that don’t water lawns, and that demand will pick up again in the future.”

Ground Glass Solution for Cleaner Water

retrieved from: sciencedaily.com

“British science has led to a use for waste glass that cannot be recycled that could help clean up polluted waterways by acting as an ion-exchange filter to remove lead, cadmium and other toxic metals.

“Only a fraction of waste glass bottles and jars can be recycled, partly because much of the glass is coloured, brown or green, and partly because the market sustains only a limited weight of recyclable glass. Millions of tonnes of waste container glass are generated across Europe. As such, large amounts of waste glass, purportedly for recycling, are shipped to China and elsewhere to be ground up and used as hardcore filling materials for road building.

“Now, Nichola Coleman of the University of Greenwich, London, has developed a simple processing method for converting waste container glass, or cullet, into the mineral tobermorite. Tobermorite is hydrated calcium silicate, silicate being the main material that can be extracted from glass. In the form produced, the phase-pure 11-angstrom form — the mineral can be used as an ion-exchange material that can extract toxic lead and cadmium ions from industrial effluent, waste water streams or contaminated groundwater.”

On a divisive dam, a snippy bit of graffiti

Published on 09/19/2011 in aquatic ecosystems, dams and species extinction. 0 Comments Tags: dam removal, Matilija Dam, Ojai, peakwater, Water.

Retrieved from: static

“An anonymous band of artists paints a huge pair of scissors and a long dotted line on obsolete Matilija Dam near Ojai. The message? Tear the thing down already.

“If life imitated art, it would be a simple matter to follow the dotted line and snip a 200-foot dam near Ojai off the face of the earth.

“For years, an alliance of environmentalists, fishermen, surfers and officials from every level of government has called for demolishing the obsolete structure.

“Now, an anonymous band of artists has weighed in, apparently rappelling down the dam’s face to paint a huge pair of scissors and a long dotted line. The carefully planned work popped up last week and is, no doubt, Ventura County’s most environmentally correct graffiti by a dam site.

“Everyone I’ve talked to has really enjoyed it,” said Jeff Pratt, Ventura County’s public works director. “It sends a good message.”

That message? Tear the thing down already.

“Matilija Dam was built in 1947 for flood control and water storage. But officials say it was flawed from the outset. For decades, it’s been holding back silt as much as water, depriving beaches 17 miles downstream of the sand they need to replenish themselves. It’s also been deemed a huge obstacle for steelhead trout, an endangered species that was once a trophy fish luring anglers from across the country.

“Officials say they don’t know who painted the shears, and they’re careful to note that such acts — even in the name of art — are illegal and dangerous. The dam is challenging enough that rescue squads use it for climbing practice, pounding in metal anchors that may have aided the scissors hands.

“But even if the painting is no more legal than garden-variety graffiti, some say it speaks to the takedown’s glacial pace.

Kuyiloor barrage in urgent need of repair

Published on 09/18/2011 in agriculture and floods. 0 Comments Tags: Kuyiloor barrage, peak water, Valapattanam river, Water, water storage.

Retrieved from: The Hindu

“The 16-shutter barrage built across the Valapattanam river at Kuyiloor near Mattannur as part of the Pazhassi Irrigation Project (PIP) stands as a physical testimony to the state of extreme disrepair the project has fallen into. PIP is now on its deathbed, 32 years after its partial commissioning by the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, with the State government winding it up. The barrage is also a reminder of the urgent need to protect and maintain the project’s storage reservoir which is now a major source of water for the entire district and neighbouring Mahe.

“The old radial shutters of the barrage and its operating mechanism are so corroded that one of them was damaged in 2009 and another, earlier this year. The mechanical wing of the Irrigation Department, entrusted to reconstruct the two radial shutters to replace the damaged ones at an estimated cost of Rs.1 crore, has nearly completed the work. With no further allocation of funds, the work is now stalled, leaving the entire project in limbo.

“According to project officials here, five shutters are not in operative condition due to heavy damage and the remaining 11 shutters are also in a dilapidated condition. Their replacement with new shutters is required for proper storage of water in the reservoir. The timing for the work to get stalled could not be worse.

“The shutters can be opened only during monsoon season and the repairs can only be conducted before November each year. The supply of drinking water by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) will be adversely affected if the repair work is not done before November. After November, the water should be stored in the reservoir. Already, the storage capacity of the reservoir is reduced by about 30 per cent due to heavy leakage through the radial shutters.”

Landmark study finds plants create water-rich areas around roots

Published on 09/16/2011 in aquatic ecosystems and riparian zone. 0 Comments Tags: peakwater, plant roots, UC Davis, UCD Department of land, Water.

Retrieved from: UC Davis news

“An international team of researchers led by a University of California, Davis, soil scientist has for the first time demonstrated that the soil around plant roots contains more water than does soil in other areas.

“The findings, which contradict earlier beliefs that soil in the immediate vicinity of the roots has less water, could potentially lead to development of more drought-tolerant plants and more efficient irrigation systems.

“The results of the study appear in the October issue of the scientific journal New Phytologist.

“Plants take water up from the ground by means of fine roots, a few millimeters in diameter,” said Ahmad Moradi, a postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. “Their thicker roots serve more as pipelines, to relay the water. We want to understand the water distribution around these fine roots because this is the place where the roots remove water from their surrounding soil.”

“At the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the researchers used a method known as neutron tomography to create a precise three-dimensional image of water distribution around the plant roots and in other soil areas. This technology allowed them to show the distribution of water to a fraction of a millimeter, without having to remove a plant from the soil.

“Neutrons are sensitive to water, and plant roots consist of around 90 percent water,” Moradi said. “When one wants to examine them, or the movement of water in the soil, neutrons are far better tools than X-rays.”

“It is probable that a gel-like substance that the roots exude is responsible,” said Andrea Carminati, a co-author at the University of Göttingen, Germany. “This substance can absorb 10,000 times its own dry weight of water. In this way, plants could create an emergency supply for short periods.”

Environmental poison in San Francisco Bay could increase with Delta water plan

Published on 09/16/2011 in aquatic ecosystems, contaminated water, management and water diversions. 0 Comments Tags: aqueducts, peakwater, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, san francisco bay, selenium, Water.

Retrieved from: USGS

A naturally occurring poison responsible for one of the nation’s worst wildlife disasters a quarter-century ago is a looming problem in San Francisco Bay — one that could worsen if aqueducts are built around the Delta, new research suggests.

The aqueducts could channel more selenium at higher concentrations into the bay, a possibility that has been largely overlooked in lengthy debates about Delta water, a top scientist said.

“It’s clearly a serious problem and it could get worse,” said Sam Luoma, a former lead scientist for the state’s bay-Delta water and environment programs who sits on a national panel reviewing Delta water plans. “I don’t know why it hasn’t gotten traction.”

Highly concentrated selenium from farm runoff killed or injured thousands of birds in the 1980s at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge near Interstate 5 west of Merced.

After photographs of dead and deformed birds appeared in newspapers and on television screens across the country, the wildlife refuge was declared a toxic dump and closed in 1987.

Today, selenium from the Bay Area’s oil refineries and the San Joaquin Valley’s farms is diluted enough in the bay and Delta that it might not be a severe problem, except that it is concentrating in the flesh of invasive clams that infest the waterways’ northern reaches, especially parts of San Pablo Bay, the Carquinez Strait and Suisun Bay.

Colleges moving away from plastic water bottles

Published on 09/15/2011 in bottled water, management and solutions and outreach. 0 Comments Tags: bottled water pollution, College of Saint Benedict, hydration station, peakwater, plastic water bottles, Water.

Retrieved from: USA today

“On a warm recent Friday afternoon, College of Saint Benedict junior Emily Martin stopped to fill up her reusable water bottle at a new water station in the campus library.

“Stations like this one — drinking fountains with an extra spigot to make filling a reusable bottle quicker and easier — have been part of life here since the central Minnesota college banned the sale of plain bottled water in August. The 31 fountains, known as hydration stations, are now the only way to get drinking water on campus.

“They’re just a lot more convenient than the regular drinking fountains,” Martin said. “They go faster, people aren’t waiting in line as much, and they don’t spill all over the place.”

“Saint Benedict is following a growing trend of colleges and universities banning the sale of plain bottled water as part of a move toward sustainability.

“According to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), 14 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada have campus-wide bans, while another dozen or so have bans that cover a portion of campus.

“The Minnesota College Republicans protested the ban on campus Tuesday by handing out plastic water bottles to passers-by. In a written statement, the group said the policy takes away students’ free choice.”

How a Big Dam Fuels Landgrabs, Hunger and Conflict in Ethiopia

Published on 09/14/2011 in dams, displacement of people, hydropower, management, rivers and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: ethiopia, Gibe III dam, Green News, Hunger, international rivers, Lake Omo, Landgrab, peak water, rivers, sugar, water news.

Photo retrieved from: guardian.co.uk

“The Gibe III Dam, which is currently under construction, will disrupt the river’s annual flood cycle and lower the water levels of Lake Turkana. Critics have long feared that once the dam is built, the Ethiopian government will establish plantations in the Omo Valley and use the regulated water flow to irrigate export crops. The government dismissed such fears as baseless, and argued that the dam would not reduce the amount of water in the Omo River and Lake Turkana.

“Now that the dam is being built, the government is showing its true colors. An official map of the Lower Omo Valley delineates three blocks of land with a total of 245,000 hectares (close to 1,000 square miles) that will be turned into sugar plantations, to be managed by a state-owned sugar company. A briefing paper by the Oakland Institute, a research and advocacy organization, suggests that in addition, 11 smaller concessions have been awarded for private cotton plantations.

“Growing thirsty crops such as sugar cane and cotton for the world market does not make sense in a region that is scarce in water and prone to hunger and resource conflicts. The dam and the associated land grabs will turn the Gibe III hydropower project into a social and environmental disaster on several accounts:”

World’s Biggest Dam Removal Begins This Week

Published on 09/13/2011 in dams and rivers. 0 Comments

Photo retrieved from: USGS

Seattle, WA — The biggest dam removal project in history begins this Saturday on Washington’s Elwha River. American Rivers, the national leader in restoring rivers through dam removal, applauded the effort which will revitalize salmon runs and deliver significant cultural, economic, and recreation benefits to the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and surrounding communities.

“This is one of the most significant river restoration efforts the world has ever seen,” said Bob Irvin, president of American Rivers. “We will witness a river coming back to life, with great benefits for people and the environment. The lessons we learn on the Elwha will inform and inspire other river restoration efforts around the country.”

The three-year process to demolish the two Elwha River dams begins Saturday, September 17.

Ancient Mediterranean Water Supply Networks Revived

Published on 09/13/2011 in drought, groundwater, management and world water supply. 1 Comment

Retrieved From: WorldAtlas.com

Years of drought had dried up the ancient water supply networks existing around the Mediterranean Rim. However, with rainfall returning over the past 5 years, the hydraulic heritage has come to life again. The names of the tunnels that carry the revived streams -khettaras in Morocco, foggaras in Algeria or qanâts in Iran- evoke the trickling sounds of water. These underground infiltration galleries are the most characteristic and original illustration of local communities’ recovery of ancestral schemes. As IRD researchers and their partners1 show, these water mines in the middle of the desert, most of which had been abandoned, have now been restored by oasis inhabitants.

These communities are now reinvesting in the maintenance of khettaras and in agriculture, especially young people returning to rural environments after experiencing unemployment in towns and cities. This is a risk owing to the uncertainties of climate, but fully assumed to revive collective action and to reappropriate the rules governing water-supply access, indeed in anticipation of possible new shortages in the years to come.

Click Here To Read More: Science Daily

jenna cavelle