Monthly Archive for November, 2011

Israel threatens to cut water and power to Gaza

Published on 11/30/2011 in policy, rivers, water rights, water wars and world water supply. 0 Comments

“Israel has warned it might cut all support to the Gaza Strip, including vital water and power supplies, if the Palestinian Authority pursues its path towards reunification with militant group Hamas.

“The threats were issued by Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, on Israeli Radio on Saturday in response to a recent meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Cairo. Mr Ayalon claimed a deal with the extremist faction would turn the Palestinian Authority into “an authority of terrorism and this would block any hope of reaching any peace agreement with Israel”.

Israel currently provides around 60 per cent of Gaza’s electricity. The rest is either brought form Egypt or generated by Gaza’s own partially destroyed power station, run by the EU. Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, provides 5% of its water – a small but important contribution, according to Sari Bashi, who runs legal organisation GISHA supporting freedom of movement for Palestinians. Mr Bashi dismissed Mr Ayalon’s comments as “silly and irresponsible”.

“I can’t imagine Israel cutting off drinking water to civilians as a means of effecting the behaviour of militants. It would also be illegal,” she said. ”These policies of collective punishment – responding with anger as opposed to applying policy – have failed over and over again. I would expect the deputy foreign minister to think before he speaks.”

Water pollution traced to La Brea Tar Pits

Published on 11/30/2011 in contaminated water, hydrology, oil, tar sands and wastewater. 0 Comments

Palm trees are reflected on the oil-slicked surface at the La Brea Tar Pits. Now that polluted water in Ballona Creek has been traced to the popular tourist attraction, the county will spend $2 million on a remedy. (Ricardo DeAratanha, Los Angeles Times)

“For years, residents living near Ballona Creek and environmentalists have complained of mysterious sheens of oil and grease in the western Los Angeles County waterway, often blaming industrial dumping, urban runoff or other man-made causes for the pollution. One cause that apparently never crossed their minds: the La Brea Tar Pits. It turns out the tourist attraction and preferred field trip destination of seemingly every grade schooler in the region has sent oily wastewater spilling into the highly polluted creek. The tar pits, in Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile neighborhood, overflow during heavy rains, overwhelming the devices that separate oil from water. Polluted runoff then gets into the storm drain system, spilling into the creek and emptying into the ocean, according to county planners. It’s unclear how big a polluter the naturally occurring tar pits have been. Still, the release of pollutants has cost the county money.”

Josh Fox: Are We About to Witness the Liquidation Sale of New York and its Drinking Water?

Published on 11/30/2011 in clean water act, contaminated water, fracking, mining, natural gas drilling, privatization, tap water, uncategorized and water rights. 0 Comments

“This is a conversation about community and sharing the voices from the gaslands of America. This is the story of Josh Fox, his movieGasland and about his current, Save the Delaware campaign. “Is this the liquidation sale of New York and our drinking water?” asks Josh Fox.

This is a week to celebrate the sudden November 17 cancellation of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) meeting where they were expected to vote on new gas drilling regulations, i.e. green-light fracking in the Delaware River basin that provides drinking water for 16.5 million people. On the 17th Governor of Delaware, Jack Markell announced that his state would be voting “no” on the new DRBC regulations that would have allowed 20,000 wells to be fracked in the watershed. Governor Cuomo of New York had already stated that he would vote “no” which left the expected “yes” votes of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, leaving the deciding vote to a representative for President Obama; a very complicated decision for him and one with risky implications. This is a movement about building coalitions, including the Delaware Riverkeeper that lead the numerous grassroots organizations organizing the event in Trenton, New Jersey on November 21.

So a momentary respite from the threats of gas drilling to the Delaware was celebrated on November 21 as hundreds of people traveled to the already scheduled rally in Trenton, New Jersey which included actors and activists, Debra Winger and Mark Ruffalo residents of upstate NY. In addition, Julie and Craig Sautner of Dimock, PA who are still without safe drinking water three years later, as promised by Cabot Oil, gave their support of the victory for the watershed and served to remind us of what’s at stake.”

The Power Politics of Water Struggles

Published on 11/29/2011 in uncategorized. 0 Comments

“When you’re driving through a war zone, your instinct may be to roll up the car windows. Wrong move. A bullet is less likely to hit you than to strike the glass, which will shatter and probably cause injuries. It takes firsthand experience to learn these tricks of the trade, and for years, Mark Zeitoun has sought out such experience.

Yet he did not scout out war zones as a combatant or journalist; he was delivering water.

A leading thinker in the field of water issues, Dr. Zeitoun helped pioneer a way of analyzing international water tensions, departing from the idea that water struggles are characterized either by peaceful cooperation or armed conflict. He suggests that countries’ approaches can vary by many gradations in between.

Oxfam GBMark Zeitoun on an aid mission in Abéché, Chad.

Dr. Zeitoun’s philosophy on water politics, known as hydro-hegemony, “significantly influenced the way we look at hydropolitics across the world,” said Tony Allan, a water resource analyst at King’s College, London.

Today Dr. Zeitoun, 44, grapples with global water issues from his office at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. But his voyage to understanding has been a long one, taking him from his native Canada, Congo, Chad, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.”

Abnormal Levels of Caffeine in Water Indicate Human Contamination

Published on 11/29/2011 in uncategorized. 0 Comments

Retrieved From: thecaffeinepage.com

“Our study has determined that there is a strong correlation between the levels of caffeine in water and the level of bacteria, and that chemists can therefore use caffeine levels as an indicator of pollution due to sewerage systems.”

The researchers took water samples from streams, brooks and storm sewer outfall pipes that collect storm waters across the Island of Montreal, and analyzed them for caffeine, fecal coliforms, and a third suspected indicator, carbamazepine. Shockingly, all the samples contained various concentrations of these contaminants, which would suggest that contamination is widespread in urban environments. Carbamazepine is an anti-seizure drug which is also increasingly used for various psychiatric treatments, and the researchers thought it might be a useful indicator because it degrades very slowly. However, unlike with caffeine, no correlation was found.”

Bottled water companies target minorities

Published on 11/26/2011 in bottled water, peak water and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: bottled water, Nestle.

“New York, New York - Water is the lifeblood of this planet, whose inhabitants are watching its accelerated spiral into crisis mode even as they struggle to address the issues and lifestyles that are stretching the earth’s resources thin.

Outwardly, the global water crisis appears straightforward – people simply consume too much water. A key factor in this spiral is the fact that water has been morphing from a natural resource into a marketable – and costly – product, experts and reports have shown.

Exploring different aspects of the global water crisis, from privatisation of water to corporations marketing to minorities, reveals that water – as a human right, as a product, as a natural resource – is firmly entangled with a host of issues in areas, including public health.

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population – projected to reach eight billion by then – will be under stress conditions. Some 1.4 billion currently lack access to safe water.

Humans consume water at a rate more than twice that of population growth, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In 60 per cent of European cities with a population greater than 100,000, groundwater is used more quickly than it is replenished, said the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Yet even though humans consume more water than is sustainable, some would say that people do not drink enough water, and when they do, they’re often being tricked into doing so.”

The best wastewater treatment plants can’t filter out superbug fragments

Published on 11/25/2011 in contaminated water, tap water, wastewater, water filtering and water technology. 0 Comments Tags: bacteria in tap water, C. Difficile and water, peak water, tap water quality, wastewater and bacteria, wastewater treatment, water news, water treatment.

Retrieved from: MedicalXpress

“The implications are unclear — researchers did not look for whole living bacteria, just for dead fragments of their genetic material — but experts are concerned. Superbugs have developed resistance to almost every kind of antibiotic. They are building resistance faster than science can create new drugs. Many of them are deadly.

“Timothy LaPara and a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, testing water pouring from a modern water treatment facility in Duluth, found genes of drug-resistant bacteria in the discharge. Most American cities do not have facilities as good as Duluth’s, but no one knows for sure how much worse the situation may be at those facilities because it has not been measured.

“This is not a trivial thing to miss,” said Ellen Silbergeld, professor and editor-in-chief of Environmental Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Silbergeld said LaPara shows the situation is more troubling than many had thought.

“The best-known superbug is MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which even has been found in the locker room of a National Football League team but usually picked up in hospitals. It is sometimes defeated by massive doses of multiple antibiotics, but not always.

“A new superbug, Clostridium difficile, which can cause a fatal colon inflammation, now is on the rise. Two antibiotics work for that bug most — but not all — of the time. A quarter of patients relapse and some will die.”

Queensland Approves Toxic Waste Discharge

Published on 11/23/2011 in aquatic ecosystems and contaminated water. 0 Comments Tags: Condamine River, ConocoPhillips, Origin Energy, peakwater, queensland, toxic waste discharge, Water.

Retrieved from: Superstock

“The Queensland Government ignored environmental safety guidelines when it granted Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips permission to release toxic water from its coal seam gas operations into the headwaters of the Murray Darling Basin.

“In June last year the government granted an environmental approval allowing the companies to discharge the equivalent of eight Olympic swimming pools of treated coal seam gas water per day into the Condamine River south of Chinchilla.

“The water comes from the company’s desalination plant on the Walloons gas field, which is part of Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips’ $35 billion coal seam gas and liquefied natural gas plant near Gladstone.

“The approval – issued under the state’s environmental protection laws – allows the companies to release 17 chemicals and heavy metals into the Condamine River south of Chinchilla at levels considered to be toxic to animals, plants and micro-organisms that live in freshwater ecosystems under the ANZECC guidelines

“The companies have been discharging treated coal seam gas water into the Condamine River since September last year.”

Kerala ready to talk to TN on Mullaperiyar dam issue

Published on 11/23/2011 in dams and management. 0 Comments Tags: india, Mullapperiyar Dam, peakwater, Tamil Nadu, Water.

In the eye of storm: A view of the Mullaperiyar dam on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border at Kumily.

Retrieved from: The Hindu Business Line

“The State Minister for Water Resources, Mr P. J. Joseph, has said the Kerala is willing to hold talks with Tamil Nadu on the Mullapperiyar dam issue if only to ensure the safety of its people.

“Speaking to newspersons here after a conference of officials convened to discuss the issue on Wednesday, he said the State was committed to maintaining the supply of water to Tamil Nadu even if a proposed new dam were to come up.

“The State Government was willing to give such an undertaking before the Supreme Court or to the Centre or even sign an agreement with Tamil Nadu.

“But the Minister said the State Government viewed the state of affairs around the dam site seriously given the context of a repeat ground movements from quakes.

“The Minister said that the State Government would like the Centre to intervene in the matter. It was willing to provide all information needed by the Centre.

“A project report prepared by the State Government provided for maintaining the current reservoir level which would enable it to retain the supply of water to Tamil Nadu.”

Judge voices support for big California water pact

Published on 11/21/2011 in agriculture, policy and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: California water pact, Colorado River, México, peakwater, Southern California, Water.

Retrieved from: Huffington Post

“A state appeals judge on Monday strongly defended a landmark agreement on how Southern California gets its water, casting aside arguments that the pact should be scrapped because the state essentially wrote a blank check to save a dying lake.

“Justice Ronald Robie noted that the agreement addressed disputes that have long defied easy answers.

“It’s a question of finding a proper solution to a problem that has existed for a long time, and that requires ingenuity,” he said during a hearing.

“A three-judge panel of the 3rd Appellate District is considering whether to overturn the pact, which created the nation’s largest farm-to-city water transfer and set new rules for dividing the state’s share of the Colorado River. Farmers and environmentalists are challenging the pact, while California water agencies say it is critical to keeping an uneasy peace regarding the river.

“The court is expected to rule within three months.

“If a lower court ruling stands, consequences could ripple to six other western states and Mexico, which also rely on the 1,450-mile river that flows from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. The agreement remains in effect while the case is under appeal.”