Monthly Archive for January, 2012

Page 2 of 6

Afghan Olive Farms Waiting for Water

Published on 01/27/2012 in agriculture, dams, hydropower, management, policy, rivers, water shortage and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: darunta dam, Kabul River.

Photo retrieved from: www.ens-newswire.com

“We’re faced with a lack of water,” he said. “The problem is that the canal department is asking for both water and electricity at the same time – and we can’t satisfy both demands simultaneously.”

“The United States Agency for International Development said last year that it was refurbishing and modernizing the dam, where the turbine-driven generators were in poor condition and at risk of failing. The agency said it plans to finish the repair work by mid-2012.

But as Hezatullah, head of the Nangarhar Olive Factory, pointed out, the industry has declined not just because of water shortages, but also as a result of years of war and poor maintenance of farms.

There used to be 700,000 olive trees in the province, which borders on Pakistan, but three-quarters of them were destroyed by decades of war starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, he said. The farms once employed 12,000 workers, but now run on a skeleton staff of 800.”

Nuclear Power Plants Threaten Drinking Water for 2.3 Million Californians

Published on 01/25/2012 in management, nuclear power and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: san diego's water supplies.

Photo retrieved from: www.lasmogtown.com

“San Diego is the 6th Largest Region in the Country to Have Drinking Water Sources Located Within 50 Miles of a Nuclear Plant

The drinking water for 2.3 million people in California could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at a local nuclear power plant, says a new study released today by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund and Environment California Research and Policy Center.

“The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Here in California, the drinking water for 2.3 million people is too close to an active nuclear power plant,” said Emily Rusch, CALPIRG Education Fund State Director. “An accident or a leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into our drinking water.”

The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan last year drew a spotlight on the many risks associated with nuclear power. After the disaster, airborne radiation left areas around the plant uninhabitable, and even contaminated drinking water sources near Tokyo, 130 miles from the plant.

According to the new report, “Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water,” the drinking water for 2,295,738 San Diego area residents is within 50 miles of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station – the distance the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to measure risk to food and water supplies. Another 66,450 Californians on the Central Coast depend on drinking water supplies within 50 miles of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo.”

Sharing The Benefits Of Large Dams

Published on 01/25/2012 in dams, displacement of people, hydropower, management, peak water, policy, privatization and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: akosombo dam, world bank.

Photo retrieved from: www.ghanaweb.com

“It’s been nearly 50 years since the Akosombo dam was built in Ghana in 1965, flooding the lands and homes of 80,000 people, creating the largest manmade lake in the world, and securing Ghana’s electricity supply.

Since then, west African countries have built more than 150 large dams. Like Akossombo, many have stimulated national development while also bringing considerable environmental and social challenges. Some local grievances have even passed down through the generations, clogging up government offices and courts with complaints over the way ageing dams were built.

Large dam construction largely went out of fashion among major donors after 1990, as global concern grew over local impacts. But the past decade has seen the World Bank and other major multilateral banks renew their support for large dams in the face of increasing energy and food demand. Can these projects avoid repeating history?”

Wasting the Wastewater

Published on 01/24/2012 in contaminated water, dam removal, graywater and wastewater. 0 Comments Tags: Lake Champlain, peakwater, UCSC, wastewater, Water, water recycling.

Wastewater treated with chlorine at a plant in Fort Worth. While the reuse of such water in industry and on golf courses has become familiar, scientists say that such recycling water will also be crucial to the drinking supply someday.

Retrieved from: NY Times

“Each day, American municipalities discharge enough treated wastewater into natural sources to fill Lake Champlain within six months. Growing pressure on water supplies and calls for updating the ancient subterranean piping infrastructure have brought new scrutiny to this step in the treatment process, which is labeled wasteful and unnecessary by a spectrum of voices.

“As the world enters the 21st century, the human community finds itself searching for new paradigms for water supply and management,” says a report released this month by the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences. The report investigates the potential for establishing a more resilient national water supply through the direct recycling of municipal wastewater.

“Law and practice have always been that water goes back into a river or into groundwater or the ocean before it returns for further treatment,” said Brent Haddad, founder and director of the Center for integrated water research at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the committee that wrote the report. The critical question, he said, is “whether that natural stage of treatment is actually an efficient stage of treatment.”

“Sixteen experts representing industry, government, and research fields in the social sciences and hard sciences collaborated over three years to produce the study, examining everything from pathogenic risks to public attitudes about reuse.

“The committee ultimately concluded that the reuse of municipal wastewater can safely and significantly increase the nation’s available water resources – potable and non-potable – without intermediate discharge into the natural environment. “The technology for treating wastewater is good enough that we don’t need that intervention,” Dr. Haddad said.”

Drought, high feed costs prompt program to help Okla. sheriffs handle abandoned livestock

Published on 01/24/2012 in agriculture, drought, management and water shortage. 0 Comments

Photo retrieved from: www.newson6.com

“A lengthy drought that has scorched Oklahoma pastures and sent the price of hay skyrocketing has led to sharp spike in the number of cases of livestock being abandoned or neglected. While most of the cases involve horses, there also have been reports of malnourished goats and sheep, officials said.

“We are receiving many phone calls from people about starving animals,” said Dr. Carey Floyd, president of the Oklahoma Veterinary Medical Association. “People don’t have any hay, there is no pasture left. Some people are really struggling to properly care for the animals.”

Much of Oklahoma has been locked in a drought since October 2010 that intensified last year, when the state experienced its hottest summer ever recorded with a statewide average of 86.9 degrees. The price of hay has more than doubled since the same time last year, and many cattle producers sold their livestock because of a shortage of feed and water for their herds.”

Looking At A New Strategy To Save The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Published on 01/24/2012 in agriculture, aquatic ecosystems, policy, rivers, tap water and water diversions. 0 Comments Tags: california water supply, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Retrieved from: www.allamericanpatriots.com

“Water supply, flood control, and environmental management are fundamental challenges for the western United States. California’s unique development patterns, with nearly 20 million of its residents living in water starved southern California, has resulted in a system of water transfers and aqueduct systems that rely on water being pumped, collected and transferred from Northern California through an extensive and damaging pumping and aqueduct system.

The Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta (the Delta) is the heart of California’s water source and the center of the transfer system. The Delta is an 837,594 acres area where the Sacramento and San Joaquin River join before entering the San Francisco Bay and then the Pacific Ocean. Water is pumped from the Delta through a system of aqueducts to agricultural users in the San Joaquin Valley and urban centers of the San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and other communities throughout southern California. Unsustainable pumping of vast amounts of water yearly from the Delta has caused the collapse of several fish populations and has forced a rethinking of the federal and state water policies.

United States federal and state river and water policies for the past 150 years have relied on maximizing conversions of wetlands for agricultural uses while placing a high priority on flood control on major rivers like the Mississippi, Missouri and Sacramento. As we move well into the 21st century the historic water policies of flood control and water exports have left the Delta facing an imminent collapse that threatens the massive California water transfers and the delta fisheries if immediate action is not taken. The effect of the collapse is potentially the loss of water to the 20 million California residences and the agricultural economy of the California San Joaquin Valley.”

No Doubt Pakistan’s Water Crisis Is Predominantly Manmade

Published on 01/23/2012 in agriculture, drought, water rights and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: climate change, groundwater, monsoon climate, pakistan, Pakistan water crisis, peakwater, Water.

Retrieved from: Greater Kashmir

“Pakistan has in most areas of agriculture a monsoon climate, and there might be abundant rainfall during the wet season and then a very long dry season where crop production depends very heavily on irrigation water.

“Groundwater is a very important source of irrigation for farmers. Ground water is being over-pumped extensively in order to meet current demands for food production but if our demands exceed that renewable supply, then we must be in the situation that we might be over-pumping groundwater to satisfy the demand, or taking too much water from river basin systems, result in formation of salinity and barren land that in long run cause food scarcity. Over-pumping of groundwater for agriculture, industry or domestic use comes at a sharp ecological price. It disrupts the natural hydrologic cycle, causes Rivers and wetlands to dry up, the ground to collapse and fish and wildlife and trees to die.

“Water and agricultural sectors are likely to be the most sensitive to climate change. Fresh water availability is expected to be highly vulnerable to the anticipated climate change. While the frequency and severity of floods would eventually increase in river deltas. The arid and semi-arid regions could experience severe water stress.

Morocco’s Berbers Had Water Management Sorted

Published on 01/23/2012 in dams, greenwashing, management, riparian zone, rivers and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: morocco's water supplies, world bank.

Photo retrieved from: www.greenprophet.com

“These indigenous traditions have been falling apart since dam projects funded by the World Bank have disrupted local practices. “Now families are fighting over water, this was never the case in the past, our system was perfect, we don’t know why international organizations have come to help” Houssa’s mother said.

Water allocation methods

Water allocation methods used by the Berbers depend on two things: Land Tenure and Time. First Land Tenure is divided by elevation and the paths of springs. Land above the spring is used for seasonal grazing and land below for agriculture and personal use. And the organization of land-ownership is designated by tribe – so any water issues that arise are discussed between different tribes.

Second, Berbers allocate water by time, not quantity. This is true whether the allocation is between villages, between lineages (large extended family units), or between individual users. Careful allocation schedules are decided unanimously and set by days of the week.

So, three days for the upstream riparian and four for the downstream riparian, then by days between villages and finally hours between family lineages. This is because different times of the day have different evaporation rates throughout the year, so the schedule is methodologically designed to respect the natural water flow while ensuring fair allocation for all.”

Fight Over Water Regulations Gaining Steam

Published on 01/23/2012 in clean water act, contaminated water, management, policy, rivers, tap water, wastewater and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: Colorado River, EPA, lake erie.

Photo retrieved from: www.open-trip.com

“The proposed regulations are meant to address a stronger nationwide push from the Environmental Protection Agency to cut the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus discharged from wastewater treatment plants into rivers, streams, lakes and reservoirs. But opponents question the science used to support the need for the regulations, and warn that water bills could double or even triple for some Colorado ratepayers if municipalities are forced to upgrade their facilities.

Earlier this month, the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments sent a letter to Gov. John Hickenlooper urging him to block the proposed regulations. The same day, Republican state Sen. Steve King of Grand Junction introduced a bill that would essentially place a moratorium on the adoption of regulations.

“This action is not mandated by federal law, nor is it based on any demonstrated adverse environmental impacts occurring in Colorado waters from our facilities,” the PPACG wrote to Hickenlooper. “The cost of implementing such regulations on small and medium-sized communities will be staggering, and we ask for your intervention to stop this regulatory mandate.

Steve Gunderson, director of the Water Quality Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, defends the science, but acknowledges that compliance could be costly. However, he notes, only about 30 percent of wastewater plants in Colorado would be affected by the regulations, which are, at the outset, more lenient than what some environmentalists might consider ideal.

Mostly, he says, the state needs to act before the EPA steps in.

“We continue to believe that is to Colorado’s benefit to start addressing the nutrients so it’s not forced on us by means of a lawsuit of the EPA dictating to us what needs to be done,” Gunderson says.”

Chinese Dam Project in Cambodia Raises Environmental Concerns

Published on 01/22/2012 in dams, greenwashing, hydropower, policy, privatization and water diversions. 0 Comments Tags: kamchay dam, synohydro.

Photo retrieved from: www.khmerization.com

“But after the Chinese company Sinohydro, one of the world’s largest construction companies, started work on the 193-megawatt Kamchay Dam in 2007, access to the countryside surrounding this tranquil town has been restricted. Mrs. Thavry’s husband, Kim Sopha, 39, like hundreds of others in nearby villages, must now travel about 10 kilometers, or 6 miles, beyond the dam site to collect the bamboo.

“Before, all you needed was a bicycle and a knife,” Mrs. Thavry, a 32-year-old mother of two, said recently as she perched on a small stool outside her wooden home near the riverbank. “But it’s completely different now.”

Today, villagers must take a truck and a boat to arrive at an unrestricted area where bamboo plants grow. Mrs. Thavry’s husband sometimes spends a week at a time in the forest to maximize his pickings and reduce travel expenses.

Downstream from the Kamchay Dam, inaugurated last month by Prime Minister Hun Sen, giant boulders bake in the sun where river waters once flowed. Owners of riverfront restaurants complain that business has fallen now that there is often no water to attract customers who might also enjoy a swim.”