WaterWired

Ray Walker: Open Letter to the Obama Administration and the Southern Nevada Water Authority

Note: This guest post is by Ray Walker, a Retired Water Rights Analyst. Last summer, he posted on exempt wells and prior appropriation.

 

Since I post quite a bit on the Colorado River basin and especially Las Vegas' water issues, I thought Ray's perspective would be interesting, as he claims to know of a 'Source' of non-tributary fresh water that could keep Lake Mead full. I have asked him to identify the 'Source' but he is reluctant to do so, sincehe has a financial interest in not divulging it to the general public. I suspect it is 'produced water' or non-tributary ground water.

 

I publish this in the interests of promoting discussion; I have no stake in this, financial or otherwise, nor have I verified this information. The opinions expressed are Ray's and his alone.

Okay - I did tell Ray that if he realizes some $$$ from this he could make a donation to my charitable foundation.

 

Feel free to post a comment or email Ray.

 

*************************************

 

January 17, 2009

 

Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA)

c/o John Entsminger, Esq. and Pat Mulroy

 

Dear Ms. Mulroy and SNWA,

 

As we all know, Obama's administration is investigating projects for the upcoming Stimulus Bill of $825 billion. 

 

Development of a non-tributary fresh water Source that, on average, could yield a million acre feet for the region and be utilized to keep Lake Mead reasonably FULL is worthy of consideration.  Development of the Source is not outrageous, but I agree when Ms. Mulroy said, "Policymakers will need to become creative, even 'outrageous'."

 

The SNWA should make the following known to the Obama administration:

 

Lake Mead holds 28.5 million acre feet and when FULL can produce 2075 megawatts of renewable energy each year. By comparison, 21,000 desalination plants in 120 countries around the world produce 3.4 million acre feet a year. A $300 million dollar wind farm will only produce 150 megawatts !  Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam and 17 generators are already built, paid for and fully functioning!

 

To appreciate a new Source solution to keep Lake Mead reasonably FULL, it is important to understand that all of the present tributary water flowing into and/or stored in Lake Mead already belongs to others and is subject to The Law of the (Colorado) River which is an accumulation of court decrees, compacts and case law stretching back to when the indigenous tribes first inhabited the desert Southwest.

 

In other words, "don’t even think about touching one drop of the present Colorado River water supply; it already legally belongs to someone else" !

 

Such non-tributary water must be fresh water which is under no circumstances any part of any tributary or groundwater that would drain into or possibly be connected to or eventually ever reach (and never has reached) any part of the Colorado River or any of its tributaries in any state.

 

Delivery of non-tributary water from the new Source would not be subject to the provisions of the Law of the River because such water was never part of the Colorado River or its tributaries when the Laws of the River were set in stone.

 

More importantly, non-tributary water from the new Source could be stored in Lake Mead WITHOUT DAMAGE to the existing water rights of those who already own and control all of the presently existing Colorado River water.

 

If water from the new Source were to be stored in Lake Mead, the surface area of Lake Mead would increase. That surface area increase would cause more evaporation. The increase in evaporation would have to be subtracted off of the amount of non-tributary water stored. For example, Lake Mead presently has in storage approximately 15 million acre feet and has a surface area of 93,000 acres. If one million acre feet of non-tributary water were to be added, the surface area would increase to 97345 acres. The additional 4345 acres would cause the evaporation losses( +-5 ft/yr) to increase by 21,725 acre feet per year. In order to keep the non-tributary water in Lake Mead without damage to the water rights of others, 21,725 acre feet (2%) would have to be subtracted off of the million acre feet of non-tributary water accumulated. Each year, the evaporation loss would be re-evaluated and accounted for. The increase in renewable energy production due to the increase in reservoir depth could more than pay for the rental of the available air space in Lake Mead.

 

If an extra million acre feet of non-tributary water could be accumulated in Lake Mead EACH YEAR, Lake Mead could, in a few years, be kept reasonably FULL and functioning rather than going DRY as predicted.

 

Utilizing the million acre feet to keep Lake Mead full is only one option available.It may not be desirable to put all the fresh water in one shopping basket. 

 

Some of this million acre feet a year could be used by Las Vegas (SNWA) and the cities of California. Large instantaneous releases could be made to seasonally flood & restore the Colorado River Delta, worth $2.4 billion a year. 75,000 acre feet a year could be released for diversion into the old All American Canal for groundwater recharge purposes to keep the 1.3 million people of Mexicali, Mexico from being without water in exchange for Mexico’s cooperation with the drug and immigration issues.

 

Non-tributary water in storage is rather amazing in that it can be utilized for exchanges. There are instances where owners of the non-tributary water can simply trade/exchange their non-tributary water for the natural flow water and thus put water to various beneficial uses in geographic areas where previously it would have not been allowed.

 

All exchanges have to approved, properly measured and administered for by those in authority to avoid damage to existing water rights.

 

The legal concepts associated with the movement and storage of non-tributary water are certainly not new to Bureau of Reclamation projects and private ventures throughout the west.

 

Vast networks of diversion, storage, delivery and re-use of non-tributary waters enable the Colorado Big Thompson, Fryingpan-Arkansas, San Juan-Chama and scores of other projects to function on a daily basis in the desert Southwest. Ken Salazar knows a great deal about these projects.

 

With communication, cooperation and coordination, exchanges may be possible which would help solve the issues surrounding Las Vegas, but also the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta .

 

As an interesting example for evaluation, at times on a space available basis conveyance structures could receive the stored non-tributary water IN EXCHANGE for leaving an equal amount in northern California. Such an exchange could be a win-win trade.

 

Point being that a water exchange can be made hundreds of miles away and can involve sometimes several totally separate river basins simultaneously without damage to anyone’s legal water entitlements.

 

Nevada, Las Vegas and California need “water insurance”.

 

A totally versatile supply of millions of acre feet of non-tributary fresh water stored in numerous reservoirs may very well mean the difference between financial life or death for thousands of Nevadans & Californians in the event of severe drought, earthquakes, terrorism or even guagga mussel attacks.

 

For all entities/agencies/municpalities/bureaus/states a readily available supply of fresh water for mitigation would certainly beat the millions of dollars spent for litigation, which never creates one new drop of fresh water !

 

The best laid plans to mine the groundwater of the deserts for Las Vegas and the cities of Southern California may not turn out as designed. A water insurance policy to avoid the devastation & disappointment when all does not go well could avoid an avalance of cease and desist orders which might very well curtail the communities of the future.

 

I would appreciate it if the SNWA would let me know that they have received this communique'.  As always, I am open to all suggestions that enable a complete confidential disclosure to occur so that the SNWA and others can evaluate the merits of developing the Source and pass the information on to the Obama administration.

 

/s/ Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst)

waterrdw@yahoo.com

Congressional Water and Climate Presentation by Peter Gleick

On January 9 Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute gave presentations to both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The title: Water and Climate Change: Managing Unavoidable Impacts; Avoiding Unmanageable Impacts.

His conclusions:

1. Impacts of climate change on water systems are already occurring
2. Both mitigation and adaptation are needed
3. Recommendations to water managers have been available for two decades but actual progress towards implementing them have been slow
4. In many cases there is compelling evidence that climate changes will pose serious problems to water systems
5. National water policy must be reevaluated and updated to meet 21st century challenges, including the risks of climate change to the USA's water

He then provided eight recommendations to Congress:

1. Constitute  a new, national bipartisan Water Commissionto to develop new water policy recommendations
2. Update the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act
3. Reorganize and streamline the diverse and uncoordinated Federal water responsibilities
4. Expand investment in our drinking water and wastewater treatment systems, especially for small communities
5. Establish Federal incentives for improving water efficiency and reducing wasteful use of water, using the Farm Bill, trade laws, plumbing codes, and tax code revisions
6. Spotlight national security issues related to water and climate
7. Update the 2000 National Assessment on the impacts of climate change on USA water resources
8. Integrate climate change into all Federal water decisions and policies

Gleick also provides budget recommendations for a variety of Federal agencies.

Excellent advice from the man who should be the first White House Water Advisor.

"The evidence that humans are changing the water cycle of the United States is increasingly compelling." -- National Water Assessment Report, 2000

Dear President-elect Obama: National Agenda for Drinking Water

Here's another missive for soon-to-be President Obama from the American Water Works Association (AWWA), Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA), National Association of Water Companies (NAWC), and the National Rural Water Association (NRWA).

Download National Agenda for Drinking Water

Issues discussed include:

• Economic stimulus through water infrastructure investment
• Long-term water infrastructure investment
• Safe drinking water standards
• Source water protection
• Climate change research and adaptation
• Water system security

Good reading, and not too long.

Ever since working in and traveling in developing countries I've been a big fan of the USA's tap water. I am now more appreciative and supportive of our nation's municipal drinking water systems than ever before, especially after reading Elizabeth Royte's excellent Bottlemania. 

One of the reasons I am not supportive of the widespread use of bottled water is my fear that we will eventually lose our will and interest in maintaining our drinking water systems and protecting source water.

"Barack Obama will invest in our nation's most pressing short- and long-term infrastructure needs, including modernizing our...water...needs." -- www.barackobama.com (quoted in the report)

Bottled Water Session Summary - 2008 NGWA Ground Water Summit

At last spring's NGWA Ground Water Summit my colleague Todd Jarvis convened a great session on bottled water.

Afterwards, he was asked to prepare a session summary for posting on the NGWA WWW site. If it is there, it's hard to find, so Todd granted me permission to blog it.

Voilà!

Download NGWA Bottled Water Session_Summary_NGWA_Summit_2008

Enjoy - it's footnoted, too!

"If someday I find myself wanting to buy bottled water, I will do it as an informed consumer, someone who knows that the image on the label may not reflect an ecological reality, that part of its sticker price may be landing in the pockets of lawyers and PR flacks, that profits probably aren't benefiting those who live near the source and that the bottle and its transportation have a significant carbon footprint." -- Elizabeth Royte, Bottlemania, p. 226

"All I want to have is a choice about what I drink. I want five or six waters to match a dining experience. Fine waters are a treat." -- Michael Mascha, water expert, quoted in Bottlemania, p. 172

Washington's Loss is Our Gain - Dr. Philip Mote Leads Oregon Climate Change Research Institute

Allow me some chest-thumping on behalf of my adopted home state.

It's great to welcome Dr. Philip W. Mote, the soon-to-be erstwhile Washington State Climatologist, to Oregon, where he will head the new Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (OCCRI). He will also become a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science at Oregon State University, where the institute will be located. He will begin his new duties on a part-time basis in the spring, transitioning to full-time in the summer of 2009.

Phil has been Washington’s state climatologist since 2003, a research scientist with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, where he has worked since 1998, and an affiliate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the UW and received his undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard University.

Mote is a leading scientist on the impacts of climate change, including variations in Pacific Northwest and national snowpacks, sea levels, water resources, precipitation and temperatures. He was a lead author for the fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received a Nobel Prize for its efforts.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said, "I am pleased that Phil Mote has agreed to be the first director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. This institute will be critical to advancing Oregon’s position as a leader in climate change research and policy development, and Phil’s world class background in this area will help ensure Oregon continues to be a leading resource on climate science nationally and around the globe."

“I am really excited to lead this new institute, building partnerships both among researchers across the Oregon University System and between researchers and people who need to understand what climate means for them – whether in state government, the private sector, or whatever,” Mote said.

“The level of enthusiasm among researchers and many other Oregonians for this new institute is part of what made this job so appealing,” Mote added.

Read the entire media release (the source of most of the above).

I am very excited about having Phil as a colleague. His reputation and expertise are legendary, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but around the globe.

In the vernacular, his dance card will be quite full.

Welcome, Phil!

“We must dare to think “unthinkable” thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.” – former Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR)

Mulroy to Obama: Tap Mississippi Floodwaters, Create Jobs, Water the West

Ray Walker sent me this link to Henry Brean's article in the 12 January 2009 Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

The first part of the story will whet your appetite:

If the federal government wants a surefire way to create jobs and stimulate the economy, Pat Mulroy has a suggestion to make: Why not study and build the largest water diversion project in American history?

The general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority said now may be the time to take a serious look at a decades-old idea of capturing floodwater from the Mississippi River and using it to recharge the massive groundwater aquifer beneath the Central Plains.

In terms of jobs and investment, the project would dwarf the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams, and some believe it could secure the future water supply for a vast swath of the Midwest and West, including Nevada and six other states that share the Colorado River.

Mulroy plans to float her suggestion in Washington, DC, today, during a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution on shoring up the nation's infrastructure.

This will be the 10th in a series of events organized by Brookings to make policy recommendations and advice to President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team.

Today's forum will result in a "memo to the president" on why and how to invest in infrastructure as part of an economic stimulus package and beyond.

"It's the best opportunity to come along," Mulroy said. "We've ignored our infrastructure for decades."

She is the only panelist from the West, and the only representative from a water agency.

I thought I said she should be appointed Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Seems like she's already started the job!

Perhaps she read Dead Pool or my posts on that book.

Is Pat thinking about the unthinkable? Check this out from Brean's story:

Short of dismantling the sprawling cities and massive economies that now dot the arid West, Mulroy said the only way to save the Colorado is to find more water to fill it.

Many predict climate change will only make things worse.

"We can't conserve our way out of a massive Colorado River drought. We can't desalt our way out of a massive Colorado River drought," Mulroy said. "If the West is growing drier and the Midwest is growing wetter, I see that as an opportunity."

You can download the MP3 of the event here.

 

Marc Reisner mentioned a project like this in Cadillac Desert  (see the chapter "Things Fall Apart"): pump Mississippi River water up to the High Plains to recharge the Ogallala (High Plains) aquifer and supply some Texas cities along the way. I recall hearing of this as a graduate student at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s. Since the Mississippi is a 'Corps of Engineers' river, they would have to be involved.

 

When this idea was discussed in the 1960s and 1970s, nuclear power was proposed as the power source to pump the water uphill - over 3000 feet, and around 4000 feet if you took the water out below New Orleans.  But - wait a minute! Now we can make the project 'green' by using T. Boone Pickens' wind energy! He's looking for a buyer.

 

What goes around, comes around. Can NAWAPA and NARA be far behind?

 

"The more things change, the more they remain the same."  ("Plus ça change, plus c' est la même chose.") -- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

The World's Water 2008-2009: Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

If you have not seen these books (this is the sixth one) you've been missing something. They are   produced biennially by Peter Gleick and The Pacific Institute. Each one features articles by experts, plus more data than a WaterWonk would know what to do with (well, almost).

 

Here's information from the book's WWW site:

 

Produced biennially, The World’s Water provides a timely examination of the key issues surrounding freshwater resources and their use. Each new volume identifies and explains the most significant  trends worldwide, and offers the best data available on a variety of topics related to water. The 2008-2009 volume features overview chapters on:

 

• water and climate change
• water in China
• status of the Millennium Development Goals for water
• peak water
• efficient urban water use
• business reporting on water

 

This new volume contains an updated chronology of global conflicts associated with water, as well as brief reviews of issues regarding desalination, the Salton Sea, and the Three Gorges Dam.

 

From the world’s leading authority on water issues, The World’s Water is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information and analysis on freshwater resources and the political, economic, scientific, and technological issues associated with them. It is an essential reference for water resource professionals in government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, students, and anyone concerned with water and its use.

 

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter one: Peak Water

Chapter two: Business Reporting on Water

Chapter three: Water Management in a Changing Climate

Chapter four: Millennium Development Goals: Charting Progress and the Way Forward

Chapter five: China and Water

Chapter six: Urban Water-Use Efficiencies: Lessons from United States Cities

WATER BRIEFS

One: Tampa Bay Desalination Plant: An Update

Two: Past and Future of the Salton Sea

Three: Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, China

Four: Water Conflict Chronology

DATA SECTION

Data Table 1: Total Renewable Freshwater Supply, by Country

Data Table 2: Freshwater Withdrawal by Country and Sector

Data Table 3: Access to Safe Drinking Water by Country, 1970 to 2004

Data Table 4: Access to Sanitation by Country, 1970 to 2004

Data Table 5: MDG Progress on Access to Safe Drinking Water by Region

Data Table 6: MDG Progress on Access to Sanitation by Region

Data Table 7: United States Dams and Dam Safety Data, 2006

Data Table 8: Dams Removed or Decommissioned in the United States, 1912 to Present

Data Table 9: Dams Removed or Decommissioned in the United States, 1912 to Present, by Year and State

Data Table 10: United States Dams by Primary Purposes

Data Table 11: United States Dams by Owner

Data Table 12: African Dams

Data Table 13: Under-5 Mortality Rate by Cause and Country, 2000

Data Table 14: International River Basins of Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America

Data Table 15: OECD Water Tariffs

Data Table 16: Non-OECD Water Tariffs

Data Table 17: Fraction of Arable Land that Is Irrigated, by Country

Data Table 18: Area Equipped for Irrigation, by Country

Data Table 19: Water Content of Things

Data Table 20: Top Environmental Concerns of the American Public: Selected Years, 1997–2008

WATER UNITS, DATA CONVERSIONS, AND CONSTANTS

COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS

Volume 1: The World’s Water 1998–1999: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

Volume 2: The World’s Water 2000–2001: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

Volume 3: The World’s Water 2002–2003: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

Volume 4: The World’s Water 2004–2005: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

Volume 5: The World’s Water 2006–2007: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

COMPREHENSIVE INDEX

"He who asks the question cannot avoid the answer." --Cameroonian proverb

The WaterWired Kiss of Death: Dr. Robert M. Hirsch for USGS Director

Okay, you're saying - what does WaterWired have against USGS water maven Dr. Bob Hirsch? After all, my failures (so far) to get Peter Gleick appointed White House Water Advisor, Pat Mulroy named U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner, or Gerry Galloway selected as Assistant Secretary of the Army, Civil Works, are well-known.

I also wanted to see Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) as Secretary of State, but he may soon become a full-fledged Blago-boyich.

So why curse Dr. Hirsch as well?

The current USGS Director, Dr. Mark Myers, just submitted his resignation, as is customary when a new administration takes the reins. He expressed an interest in staying as Director but has heard nothing. Dr. Suzette Kimball, Associate Director for Geology, is now the Acting Director.

So why Bob? If you've been reading my blog, you know that I think very highly of him. I've posted about his "Big Four Water Issues" and more. There are few WaterWonks who know the Washington scene as well as Bob. I was disappointed to see him step down as Associate Director for Water last spring, a post he held for 14 years. Here's what I said then:

Bob has been an eloquent spokesman for USGS water programs lo these many years. He's arguably the best-informed water scientist in the USA and the most astute observer of the "water scene", especially from inside the Beltway (even though his office was in Reston, outside the Beltway).

In addition to knowing his way around DC, Bob has remained active "doing science", no small task when you are an administrator of a government agency. He's become an eloquent advocate for climate change research as related to water resources, something this country (and the world) must continue to address. He has also continued to speak out on the need for data, the lack of which will haunt us in the future.  

His scientific abilities are well-respected, so he's not viewed as just another lifelong bureaucrat with no science chops. Although the USGS is a proud scientific agency, Bob understands the science-policy interface. And he calls them as he sees them.

He's also a WaterWonk.

President-elect Obama may wish to appoint someone younger (Bob's probably my age), avoiding another OWG [Old White Guy]. A USGS outsider might also viewed more kindly, and that vantage point has merit. But in terms of someone who knows the ropes, is smart and respected, I can't think of a better person than Dr. Bob Hirsch.

Who's your choice?

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby

 

[Disclosure notice: My institute receives about $93K annually from the USGS, as do the other 53 state water resources research institutes.]

Establishing Markets for Ecological Services: Beyond Water Quality to a Complete Portfolio

Dick Enberg of AWRA sent me this article (same title as the post) by G. Tracy Mehan, III, former EPA Assistant Administrator for Water (2001-2003) and now with the Cadmus Group.

Download Mehan - Markets for Ecological Services

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first give forty years of success." -- Peter Drucker, quoted in Mehan's article.

Oregon Water Funding: Down the Drain

Todd Jarvis sent me Robin Doussard's article from the Oregon Business Magazine.

Significant Water Funding Sinks

 It was an ambitious plan felled by the collapsing economy. But since we’re talking water, contentiousness also played a hand.

The governor in the spring began a serious attempt to wrangle the state’s many water issues and proposed a $100 million effort, called Headwaters to Ocean (H2O) that would address wide-ranging water supply and quality issues and finally create a long-term water management strategy. Oregon is one of only two Western states without a comprehensive water plan.

Over the past several months, an advisory group to Headwaters to Ocean worked over the early proposal. Included were representatives from environmental groups, cities, tribes, agriculture and others with a stake in water.

In early September, “We concluded that there was not enough agreement among stakeholders to build a consensus in time to propose [a water plan] to the January Legislature,” says Mike Carrier, the governor’s natural resources policy director. So the group was asked to focus on asking for legislative support to continue designing an initiative as well as immediate needs for 2009. In November it delivered a proposal for a $55 million lottery-backed bond package that would have provided financing for Umatilla Basin water projects, along with more than $16 million for water agency budget initiatives. Then the economy tanked. When the governor issued his recommended budget in early December, what was left of water-related funding was a trickle: $3.3 million to fund the first phase of the Umatilla Basin project and to support the development of a long-term water initiative.

“What we hoped to do last spring when we rolled out H2O was to ask the Legislature to fund this initiative,” says Carrier. “Now we are asking for the funds to complete the planning for this initiative. Then we will come back in a 2010 special session or the 2011 Legislature with a strategy.”

The governor’s budget includes $2.5 million, to be funded by lottery-backed bonds, for a recharge project in the Umatilla Basin. The basin has suffered sharp groundwater declines and this project would divert winter-month water from the Columbia River into the aquifer for irrigation in the basin. Eastern Oregon was the region that spawned the controversial “Oasis Bill” that was defeated in the last session, which sought to pull more water from the Columbia year round. The  budget also includes about $492,000 for the Water Resources Department and DEQ to help get the water strategy done.

“Given how serious this financial situation is, we’re fortunate to put $3.3 million toward water issues,” says Carrier. “The number could have easily been zero.”

But hey, we've got plenty of water in Oregon!  We don't need no stinkin' money!

In fairness, the H-2-O Initiative alluded to in the article was not particularly well-crafted. and needed to be redone. But the $1M+ I requested was brilliantly constructed and worth  every penny.

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” -- Isaac Asimov

The Nature Conservancy Launches Cool Green Science Blog

The Nature Conservancy launches its Cool Green Science blog 'for real' on Monday, 12 January 2009, but it's already got some posts.

Robert Lalasz, TNC's Associate Director, Digital Marketing, sent me this information:

We've got more than a dozen of our scientists and policy experts blogging about conservation science and practice, particularly the market-and-science-based approach to conservation that's the hallmark of the Conservancy. (One of our bloggers is Diedre Paterno-Pai with our freshwater program.)

Hey, it's about more than water, but that's okay!

Give it a read!

"Nature abhors a moron." -- H.L. Mencken
 

Orissa, India: 58,345 Hours for Clean Water

Colleague Robert Adamski sent me this, written by Scott Harrison of Charity:Water.

I jumped back, but too late, as coconut juice splashed all over my jeans. The upside-down transfer from coconut to steel cup hadn't factored in the volume differential.

I sat on a plastic chair in the Engreda Village Baptist church, tucked away in the rural hills of Eastern India. Men and women of the community had gathered here to thank us for funding a piped water system that brought clean and safe drinking water down from a new well in the mountains.

41-year-old Junash was the one that spilled on me, but I didn't mind, and drank two cups of the warm juice. A few minutes earlier, he'd made a speech about what happened here.

I learned that the 567 residents of Engreda had big problems with water. Their primary source for years had been a polluted stream in the valley beneath the village, which I saw a few moments later.

"In the stream, we would remove a little bit of sand, and the water would ooze out into it. We used to drink that, and the children and adults used to get diarrhea," Junesh said.

"We are poor. Whatever savings we had, we spent on curing our waterborne diseases. The poor remained poor."

Not anymore.

Through last year's partnership with retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, more than $540,000 was raised - enough for 100 water projects in Honduras, India and Ethiopia.

Engreda was one of those projects, but the water running from their taps came at a higher price than our funding.

The people had petitioned our implementing partner Gram Vikas to help them with the water problem. But before bringing clean water to Engreda, Gram Vikas asked villagers to first give a year of their time to construct toilets and bathing rooms.

For over 30 years, Gram Vikas has taken a unique approach to development work. For them, sanitation is the key to good health, and community participation is the key to sustainability. "Sanitation" meant toilets and showers here; "participation," a year plus of hard work.

Junash said Gram Vikas' proposal was initially met with some resistance, as each of Engreda's 130 families would have to do a "lot of work" that would cost "a lot of money."

For Gram Vikas to work in a community, 100% of the people must agree and contribute, and after a short time, they did.

But their involvement didn't stop there.

After all 130 toilets and bathing rooms were constructed, community members then helped lay pipe from the well Gram Vikas constructed high in the mountain near a spring. It was tough going. Villagers spent more than a month breaking stones in the rocky ground but beamed with pride at their achievement.

I sometimes hear people accuse those in the developing world of laziness. But the more I travel, the more I find that's just not true. Communities like Engreda give what they have, even if it's not the cold cash that comes easier for many of us.

Written on the wall next to our contribution was theirs, and while not in the form of a check, its value far exceeded ours.

The stone, bricks, gravel and labor the people of Engreda added to the project came to $19,851. At least half of that was sweat equity and calculated at the going rate of 17 cents an hour. For comparison, if their labor took place in the United States, where hourly minimum wage is $6.55, they'd have contributed more than $364,000 of labor value - 58,345 hours.

In that light, charity: water's $7,822 contribution for the hard costs of piping, taps and the water tower was a steal.

Back at the Gram Vikas compound later that evening, the project coordinator smiled when she learned I'd visited Engreda.

"Yes, they're very happy there. They tell us the water tastes better than coconut milk."

I had to agree.

--Scott Harrison, 8 January 2009

Read and see more about the work in India here. Check out the work in Honduras, too.

WaterWired's Second Birthday!

WaterWired's second birthday almost slipped my mind (one of the unpleasant side effects of turning 60, I suppose).

464 posts in the past year! Even Maude Barlow was enthusiastic! 

The Russian cabinet honored me.

But I can't let all this adulation go to my head. 

Why not?

The Greater Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce designated me permanent persona non grata.

So what is my vision of our water future?

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -- Woody Allen

January-February 2009 Southwest Hydrology: 'Dear Mr. President and Members of Congress'

The January-February 2009 issue of Southwest Hydrology has hit the streets and it's a real special issue - advice to President Obama and the new Congress from some of the country's foremost water experts.

From the WWW site:

January 2009 brings the inauguration of a new President and many new members of Congress. They and the continuing members of Congress will need to address serious water issues facing the country, especially in the West. Infrastructure is crumbling. Water quality is becoming worse in many areas. Climate change is impacting our hydrologic systems in completely new ways. We must conserve more water, and we must act sooner rather than later. Several of the country’s foremost water experts share their thoughts on how the federal government could most efficiently and effectively face this imminent threat to our health, welfare, economy, and national security.

You can download the entire issue or individual articles for free.

Some of the experts and articles featured:

Critical Need: A National Interagency Water Plan, by Brad Udall and Kristen Averyt

Doing More with Less: Improving Water Use Efficiency Nationwide, by Peter Gleick

Pharmaceuticals in Water: Implications for Sustainability, by Shane A. Snyder

Keep the West Vibrant with a Strong Climate Change Policy, by Jonathan Overpeck

Taking Care of Infrastructure Business, by Gerald E. Galloway

Short-Term Improvements for Water Management in the West, by William A. Blomquist and Jeffrey J. Mosher

“Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.” -- Aldous Huxley

Water Strategy for the USA: Op-Ed by Jim Thebaut and Erik Webb

A Water Strategy for the United States

By Jim Thebaut and Erik Webb

Those Americans even aware of Zimbabwe’s recent fight against the disruption and death caused by cholera, a highly treatable water-borne disease, carry an unfounded confidence that clean, abundant water will always be available and a similar water-borne disease epidemic could never occur here. However, many areas of our nation aren’t far from the conditions facing third-world countries in ensuring adequate, clean drinking water for their people. Various regions of our country face problems including dwindling surface and groundwater supplies, non-existent water and sanitation infrastructure, closely packed septic systems, inadequate reinvestment in existing water treatment infrastructure, and expanding contamination of surface water including both biological and new chemicals (including pharmaceuticals) that all increase our risk of water-borne illness outbreaks. 

Like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, we are rapidly reaching crisis levels without truly being aware of the risks.  This crisis is curable if the United States chooses to establish a modern, integrated, national water policy framework, implements sustainable water use planning, invests in the changes needed to pursue water resource sustainability, and provides leadership to assist the rest of the world meet similar goals.

The region of the country closest to the breaking point is the Colorado River basin, which provides drinking water for 30 million people in the American Southwest. Although most of the region’s residents still have adequate, untainted water, portions of the Navajo and Hopi reservation communities of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado – about 80,000 people – live with inadequate plumbing and sanitation and regularly drink untreated water. This portion of the Native American population suffers from birth defects and skin diseases out of proportion to the rest of the country. Additionally, it is anticipated that as climate change causes rising water temperatures greater disease risk will occur.

Creating plentiful, clean water for the Southwest’s Native Americans is one small part of a bigger picture. Similar water supply and sanitation challenges are emerging throughout the nation.  Over two thirds of state’s chief water managers anticipate drought and other water crisis in the near future. Infrastructure investment is grossly inadequate to maintain current systems, let alone meet the demand anticipated by another 100 million people over the next 3-4 decades.

We’ve faced these issues before and started down a path of coordinated policies.  In the post-World War II era, the nation faced a decade of drought that triggered intense national pressure to coordinate expansion of water supplies.  Congressional committees and White House offices were coordinated in order to address water supply issues allowing water development to proceed at an accelerated pace. We then realized and began to face the environmental consequences of expansion with greater national emphasis on protection of natural resources.  Unfortunately, while addressing environmental issues our over-reaction to development allowed us to sweep away the essential coordination functions embodied in the White House Water Resources Council. The consequence is that our nation’s water policy has devolved into a tangled mess of competing initiatives and policies intended to govern increasing demands, managing runoff, pollution abatement, improving quality, using reservoirs and underground water storage, conservation and efficiency improvements, all overseen by a complex infrastructure of federal, state and local bureaus, departments and agencies with overlapping and competing responsibilities. As a result, we have a hodgepodge of laws and regulations that benefit some at the expense of others. At best, our nation’s water use and planning structure is fractured and inefficient. At worst, it’s headed for complete breakdown.

Presently, at the federal level alone, 20 agencies and bureaus, under six cabinet departments, directed by 13 congressional committees with 23 subcommittees and five appropriations subcommittees are responsible for water-resource management. Consolidation of these responsibilities would make the job of managing water resources easier, but such consolidation of power and control is unlikely. A more likely approach might involve White House coordination of partnerships between federal agencies and coordination with state and local agencies to create integrated water policies as part of a national framework.

Additionally, decision-makers at every level must learn to embrace the principles of integrated water resources management, the concept of considering multiple viewpoints before making decisions. While this practice is gaining acceptance and application, it is woefully under-used in our highly fractionated U.S. water management system.

Integrated management would be based on clear principles.  For example, as a nation, we must begin to treat water as we would any other scarce resource and learn to live within our means. This requires efficiency and planning for sustainable use in the face of increasing demands for water, particularly in agriculture, industry and power production.

One of the best ways to promote sustainability is to make consumers aware of the true cost of water. What we pay to the water company each month only reflects the price to bring clean water to our taps and does not reflect the value of the resource in each of its various uses. Water management, resource expansion, environmental protection, and infrastructure maintenance is expensive, and much of the cost is redistributed through state and federal taxes and local and regional bond measures. Transparency about the real cost of water should be a fundamental principle, irrespective of the source of funds that underwrite the supply.

The good news is that the United States has experience with integrating national water policy. The Water Resources Planning Act of 1965 created the Water Resources Council, empowered to assess the adequacy of the nation’s water supplies, to establish principles and standards for federal participants in water projects, and to review agricultural, urban, energy, industrial, recreational and fish and wildlife water needs. The Act also established a grant program to assist state development of comprehensive water and land use plans.  This law was passed in an era before we understood the full environmental impact of our water resource management actions, and therefore needs to be strengthened to be effective. Nevertheless, the law creating the Council was never repealed.

It is now time that we re-empower and revise the Act to coordinate the nation’s efforts toward sustainable water resources development. 

This revision could benefit by incorporating the much stronger policy framework for international water policy objectives embodied in the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, signed into law in late 2005, which establishes access to safe water and sanitation as a major U.S. foreign policy objective. Merging our domestic and international water policy framework, and placing its operation directly under the umbrella of the White House, would unite and organize our national and international efforts and help solve both domestic and international water problems.

When it comes to drinking water, our nation and the planet are clearly at a crossroads.  Ensuring each member of our nation and the world community access to clean water is a humanitarian mission that will assure a safer world and avoid environmental calamity. Population growth, increased demands and changes in our hydrological systems caused by climate change make addressing the water crisis an imperative.  The United States can assume global leadership by setting a viable example in solving our own drinking water and sanitation issues, finding a viable way to coordinate our national water policy, and coupling our domestic efforts with our international policy.

Download Thebaut-National Water Policy oped

Jim Thebaut is the writer, director and executive producer of public television’s “The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?” and “Running Dry,” a documentary about the global water crisis. Erik Webb is a PhD hydrologist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and a former Congressional Fellow with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Note: Jim sent this to me. Both Jim and Erik are good friends of mine. After Peter Gleick, Erik would be my choice as White House Water Advisor. He formerly was Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) water and energy advisor..

Is 'Dead Pool' Dead On? Part 3: Ethical Issues

Time to wrap this up. This will be the last post on Dead Pool, lest I be accused of beating a dead horse, putting readers to sleep, needlessly frightening children, or worse.

It would be a good idea to read Part 1 and Part 2 before this post.

So what is left for Powell to do after depopulating Phoenix? He can offer some solutions for staving off disaster. He suggests two "simple" things:

1. 80% of Western water use is for agriculture; Powell wants that cut to 70%

2. Of the remaining 20%, cities may use up to half that for landscaping; reduce that to 50% 

He says those two steps will free up 2.7 MAF per year, or about 20% of the Colorado River's flow. Ag use could be cut by growing more appropriate crops for arid regions.

Pricing should be used, and water trading/marketing should be facilitated (I can see David Zetland smiling).

Powell notes that the West may be its own worst enemy - consider the Waveyard, the water theme park slated to be built in Mesa, AZ. In fairness, it is supposed to use non-potable water, although it must be treated because of human compact. But business as usual must be discontinued.

And speaking of business as usual, the Colorado River Compact should be replaced. Powell acknowledges that this will be very difficult, but asserts that a different agreement with more players at the table is needed for the new climatology. So if you believe "the Phoenix Fable" may be realized, then a new way of thinking is needed.

So what did I think of the book? I liked it a lot. Powell's historical perspective is very good. Don't expect Cadillac Desert; it's not intended to be a replacement or sequel, although I might describe it as Cadillac Desert with climate change. He goes into the environmental effects of dams, how they will not "create" more water, and the folly of answering climate change concerns by building more of them. He even discusses cloud seeding and desalination. His solutions are not new, but would be effective if the political will (or whatever it takes) could be mustered to implement them.

A colleague of mine thought that Powell did a very good job until the last few chapters, where he performs the analysis. I will admit that the analysis could be considered by some to be weak, but the book is not intended as an academic tome; it's a book for the intelligent layperson. Besides, Powell is not a hydrologic modeler. So I think his simplistic approach is appropriate; it serves to get his point across.

So I recommend Dead Pool. It tells a tale that may not come true, but certainly needs to be discussed. Powell deserves kudos for penning it. A lot of people won't like it.

Let me broach one last point, one that Powell did not consider. In fact, I've heard no one else mention this: ethics.

Are there ethical issues here?

Several years ago, I listened to a talk by a Federal scientist about climate change in the Southwest. After the talk, he was unusually candid. What really annoyed him was seeing Western governors trekking to DC, hats in hands, asking for Federal government help to cope with the drought. But once back home, that message is forgotten, and it is "grow, grow, grow", for local consumption. Is that ethical?

How about water managers who don't want to tell it like it is, or like it could be, or keep doing the SOS, for fear of stifling growth and upsetting the public. Granted, predicting the hydrologic future in the face of climate change is not easy. But it can be done, at least in probabilistic terms. Certainly you can inform people that serious problems may be on the horizon. Shouldn't the public be apprised of this? Shouldn't people/firms who are thinking of relocating to these areas be given more than Reclamation's "all is rosy" graph in Part 2? Don't they deserve a peek at a graph like Powell's showing that there is a certain probability that Scenario X will occur?

Let me close with a true story.

A number of years ago, Kelly Summers, a well-known figure in New Mexico hydologic circles, was hired as the City of Albuquerque's first hydrogeologist. After a few years, he noted that well water levels were dropping at an alarming pace, and his study of the stratigraphy led him to conclude that the most productive zones in the basin aquifer were much less extensive than they were believed to be.  In his inimitable, curmudgeonly style, he told his bosses that this did not bode well for the city's future water supply. He was told to shut up. He didn't, and he was fired because of it. A few years later, he was vindicated by a hydrogeologic study. The ultimate result: the city developed a plan to cope with what Kelly discovered.

Summers behaved ethically; his superiors did not.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, water managers, policy-makers, and decision-makers could use a few Kelly Summers.

"The future of the West hinges on whether it can defend itself against itself." -- Bernard DeVoto, Harpers, January 1947

"It's a desert, stupid." -- bumper sticker produced by the water conservation folks, City of Albuquerque, early 1990s (at least one person lost her job)

H2OSU January 2009 Newsletter

It's that time again - The H2OSU Newsletter from the IWW is now available. What's inside? How about: Presidential appointments (or lack thereof); ASR & AR; film series, new Oregon Climate Change Research Institute director, and more!

Plus the usual humor and stuff.

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." -- Thomas Brackett Reed

AAG Session: Future of Water in the American West

James Powell, and Patricia Gober from ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City, both of whom   have graced these pages over the past few days, will be featured speakers at an Association of American Geographers (AAG) Presidential Plenary to Explore the Future of Water in the American West.

Other speakers will be William E. Rinne, Surface Water Resources Director at the Southern NevadaWater Authority, and Glen MacDonald of UCLA.

The session will take place at the AAG Annual Meeting, 22-27 March 2009, in Las Vegas.

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” – Ambrose Bierce

DCDC Wins International Water Prize

Given that I am in the middle of discussing Powell's Dead Pool, I thought this post would be particularly appropriate.

This is from the press release on DCDC's WWW site.

The Decision Center for a Desert City has been tapped as one of a handful of institutions worldwide to receive this year’s Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water. DCDC, part of Arizona University’s Global Institute of Sustainability, will split the $133,000 award with one other institution.

The prizes, awarded biannually by the Prince Sultan Research Center for Environment, Water and Desert, part of King Saud University in  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, bolster scientific research that tackles problems such as water distribution, sustainability, preservation and provision, focusing particularly upon arid regions like the American Southwest.

 “I am gratified that DCDC’s efforts to improve sustainable water management in desert cities are being recognized,” says Patricia Gober, co-director of DCDC. “It really speaks to the global applicability of our work.”

Gober will travel to Riyadh to accept the prize, which will be awarded as part of the Third International Conference on Water Resources and Arid Environments, to be held November 16 - 19, 2008.

The prize provides awards in five categories, ranging from general creativity and innovation to advancements in specialized branches, such as ground water, surface water and alternative water resources and desalinization. DCDC’s award was in the category of Water Resources Management and Protection. More information on the prize program is available here.

DCDC is one of only five National Science Foundation-funded Decision Making Under Uncertainty centers nationwide. The center’s record of striving to improve decision making under climatic uncertainty, focusing on the interplay between water management decisions and climate change scenarios, was pivotal in their selection for the award, as was WaterSim, DCDC’s cutting-edge scientific simulation and policy tool. More information is available at the DCDC Web site.

Here are all the prize winners.

Congratulations!

"If the camel gets his nose in a tent, the body will soon follow. " -- Saudi Arabian proverb

Is 'Dead Pool' Dead On? Part 2: Building to the 'Unthinkable'

You might want to read Part 1 before this post.

Although it deals with water shortage, James Powell's Dead Pool opens with a tale of too much water.

It is late spring 1983, and after a monstrous El Niño winter, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation engineers are struggling to keep Glen Canyon Dam from becoming just part of the sediment load down the Grand Canyon. The dam comes close to failing, closer than Reclamation would publicly admit, but it manages to hold back the snowmelt coursing down the Colorado River's mainstem and tributaries.

Years after that event, a Reclamation hydrologist was unusually candid with some of us. "We came that close," he said, holding his thumb and index finger about a half-inch apart. I remember wishing that one of my engineer friends, who would always wax enthusiastically about routing dam-break floods, could have been there to hear this guy's description of what they did to stave off the disaster that would have occurred had the dam failed - would you believe a 580-foot high flood wave initially forming after Glen Canyon Dam went out, tearing down the Grand Canyon at 25 miles per hour, then attenuated to a 70-foot high wave taking out Hoover Dam and the remaining Colorado River dams in succession, just like so many dominoes? One wag noted that Mexico would have received more than its Colorado River allotment that year!

As an aside, I remember that winter well. I was living in the Sierra Nevada just outside the hamlet of Truckee, CA. I earned my stripes shoveling snow and maneuvering either our Honda Civic station wagon or VW Rabbit on a daily 60-mile round trip commute to Reno, where both my wife and I worked. We both appreciated CalTrans for keeping Interstate 80 open. That winter I well understood the utility of A-frame houses with metal rooftops. If only we'd had one!

After that introductory scene and some excellent historical background (John Wesley Powell et al.),  Powell proceeds to detail the work of the "Concrete Pyramid" - Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; pork-barrel Western politicians; mega-construction companies; and agribusiness, fed to steroid-size through subsidies (Powell uses the pejorative term "welfare") - in reshaping the American West.

"Cash-register" dams and "river basin accounting" are exposed as tricks to build more projects, even when the numbers didn't add up. You can have umpteen unnecessary projects in a basin, each with a lousy benefit-cost ratio, but if you have one "cash-register" dam project to pay for all the others, then the whole thing's a go. Reclamation and the Corps were way ahead of the rest of us - they were taking holistic (river basin-wide) views!

Powell notes that agriculture uses a lot of water - he does not necessarily see a great problem with that, but does question why we insist on growing crops like cotton and alfalfa in the desert with irrigation, or try to irrigate high-elevation areas with short growing seasons. At least cotton is a high-value crop, unlike alfalfa, which is essentially grown to feed livestock.

Although Reclamation and the Corps would butt heads at some places in the West, the Colorado River Basin was Reclamation's domain, or more accurately, Reclamation's river. The Colorado River flows through some of the driest, and, in my opinion, the most spectacular, parts of the USA. Its watershed comprises about 250,000 square miles (650,000 square kilometers), but its annual flow is relatively puny: 15 MAF (million acre-feet), probably at least 0.4 MAF too high, or about 590 cubic meters per second (cms). I live along the banks of the Willamette River, whose mainstem length is barely 180 miles and whose drainage basin of about 12,000 square miles (31,000 square km), 5% of the Colorado's, produces an average annual discharge of about 24 MAF (940 cms), 60% greater than the Colorado's.

Powell has a vivid description of the building of Hoover Dam during the depths of the Depression. When you imagine what those men endured to construct it - the "high scalers", hanging on ropes using pneumatic hammers on the canyon walls to emplace dynamite, then swinging out of the way on their ropes to avoid being blown to bits. The book also describes the horrible working conditions endured by the workers, exacerbated by the parsimony of the consortium of companies running the project.

He goes into great detail about the Colorado River Storage Project and Reclamation's desire to build a dam at Echo Park in Colorado, in Dinosaur National Monument. The Yampa River joins the Green River at Echo Park and environmentalists, led by David Browder, then of the Sierra Club, fought this plan, more so than a high dam at Glen Canyon (later regretted by Browder and others). His account of Browder, with his 9th-grade education, disproving Reclamation's evaporation calculations, is priceless. The enviros won at Echo Park but in exchange for allowing a high dam at Glen Canyon to go forward.

The book has its cast of characters: besides David Browder, there are John Wesley Powell (no relation to the author?), Luna and Aldo Leopold, Floyd Dominy, Delph Carpenter, Wayne Aspinall, Morris (Mo) and Stewart Udall, Wallace Stegner, Marc Reisner, et al.

The last parts of the book are what I am really interested in - the "thinking about the unthinkable" part. In Part Four, "River of Limits", Powell discusses "a new climatology", especially that based upon  dendrochronology - tree-ring analysis. Powell cites tree-ring work suggesting that the long-term mean annual flow of the Colorado is 14.6 MAF, 0.4 MAF lower than the 'official" estimate Reclamation and others use. Note that one older tree-ring study suggested a mean annual flow of only 13.2 MAF.

Powell faults Reclamation on two specific counts: 1) it uses the 15 MAF figure; and 2) does not factor climate change effects into its CRB model. Even if Reclamation distrusts the work of people like Barnett and Pierce, it could still use its own model with its own climate-change scenarios and use multiple simulations to develop probabilities. It is interesting to note that Reclamtion's simulations show Lake Powell continuing to gain water till 2030, then dipping slightly. In fact, the possibility that Lake Powell will reach dead pool - the lake level at which no more water can be withdrawn - is believed to be so remote a possibility that it does not appear on Reclamation's charts. 

Powell then briefly describes how others can simulate the future of the CRB by using spreadsheet-type models that are similar to, but simpler than, Reclamation's model; WaterSim from Arizona State University's Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC), is one such model. These models mimic the results of Reclamation's model, but when used with climate-change effects, they show drastically different results. Powell used the CROSS (Colorado River Open Source Simulator) model with what he felt were more realistic assumptions, namely the lower mean annual flow and the effects of climate change. His simulation, when plotted with Reclamation's, show differences of up to 20 MAF in a given year. Furthermore, he shows that after 30 years, there is enough water for only Lake Mead or Lake Powell, but not both. Reclamation's model shows both reservoirs with plenty of water for the entire 21st century.

The graph below shows the results of Reclamation's model (dark curve) and Powell's (light curve). Total live storage in both Lakes Powell and Mead is plotted on the y-axis is in MAF, from 0-60 in increments of 10 MAF, and the x-axis spans the years 2008 to 2101.

 

Powell also mentions a report done for the Sonoran Institute, Ecosystem Changes and Water Policy Choices: Four Scenarios for the Lower Colorado River Basin to 2050, in which the 'dry scenario' shows a 40% reduction in the Colorado River's flow by 2050.

So what happens next? Well, after meandering through the realm of cloud seeding (can't prove it works, but can't prove it doesn't, either), Powell then gets on with the "unthinkable" scenario, which builds to the passage that began my Part 1.

My tale ends, right? No - I'll have a Part 3 in a several days.

Then I will need to rest.

"Westerners call what they have established out here a civilization, but it would be more accurate to call it a beachhead." -- Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, p. 3.

Reuniting the Klamath River?

Great story and pictures from the December 2008 National Geographic. Could peace be in the offing? I'll believe when I see it.

By the way, the question mark is my addition.

Here are two recent posts on the Klamath situation: 25 November 2008 and 14 November 2008.

From Russ Rymer's article:

After fighting for years over its water, farmers, Indians,and fishermen are joining forces to let the troubled Klamath River run wild again. As drought years have become more problematic in the Klamath region, the competing water needs for fish and for farmers' fields have aggravated the rivalry between the Indian tribes living near the northern California coast and the irrigating farmers upstream along Oregon's arid southern border.

  The trouble, as farmers see it, came to a boiling point in 1997. That's the year coho salmon were accorded federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, which would entitle them to minimum flows of water. In 2001 tensions came to a dramatic head when the federal government shut off irrigation water to some 1,400 Klamath Reclamation Project farmers, including Steve Kandra. The families felt singled out—"Farmers aren't used to being vilified," Kandra notes—and some responded with civil disobedience. They partially opened the irrigation canals' headgates in defiance of federal marshals and queued up for a symbolic bucket brigade through the streets of Klamath Falls, Oregon.

“Our Northern California congressional district has been ground zero for many tragic events from an outdated and inflexible ESA, including ... the Klamath Basin water shut-off of 2001.” -- Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA)

Earth Focus: Jim Thebaut Interview, World Water Issues, and More

Since I'm in the middle of a Southwest USA leitmotif, why not keep going?

Carol Eisner, who handles Jim Thebaut's publicity, sent me a link to an Earth Focus video (27 minutes long) in which Jim discusses his recent film that depicts the water crisis in the USA Southwest: The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry? I reviewed the film a while back. [Disclosure notice: Jim's a friend of mine.]

Jim also mentions his next film project: again, it's about water, but with a focus on the security aspects. I will anxiously await it.

The video also has some other good segments, including sanitation issues, World Toilet Day, U.S. international water policy, and more. There is an interview with Eric R. Peterson of CSIS and his report on USA international water policy.

Another'Dead Pool' post is forthcoming - I haven't forgotten. Here's another great quote to keep you hooked (I'm not reader-baiting - honest!):

"I have no apologies. I was a crusader for the development of water. I was the Messiah. I was the evangelist who went out and argued persuasively for the harness of water for the benefit of people." -- Floyd Dominy, Commissioner (1959-1969), U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Is 'Dead Pool' Dead On? Part 1: A Phoenix Fable

With both surface [water] and groundwater supplies severely limited and no relief in sight, Phoenix declares a stage-four water emergency, its highest level. The state legislature rescinds the Groundwater Management Act. Voluntary reductions having long since failed to conserve enough water, Phoenix enforces rationing. Watering lawns, washing cars, and splashing in water parks are distant memories. The two hundred golf courses in Phoenix and Scottsdale have been closed for years, their verdant fairways and manicured greens blown away on the hot dry wind. Valves attached to water meters automatically shut off the flow when consumption exceeds the limit. Armed water police with the authority to shut off valves and make arrests patrol neighborhoods. Phoenix doubles the price of water to residences, raises it even more for the heaviest water users, and prohibits new water hook-ups. Home construction shuts down and the once-booming central Arizona real estate market collapses. As tax revenues decline, Phoenix runs short of funds and rating agencies reclassify its bonds as junk.

Following Nevada's example, Phoenix begins to build a desalting plant on the Sea of Cortés. But as the border crisis intensifies, and with its own water supplies at dangerous lows, Mexico nationalizes all American-owned factories in the country, including the desalting plants and the maquiladoras. By the 2020s, with water, the stuff of life at stake, it is every nation for itself.

Businesses and families begin to abandon Phoenix, creating a Grapes of Wrath-like exodus in reverse. Long lines of vehicles clog the freeways, heading east towards the Mississippi and north toward Oregon and Washington. Burning hot, parched, and broke, the city that rose from the ashes achieves its apogee and falls back toward the fire. -- Dead Pool, by James Lawrence Powell pp. 239-240.

These three paragraphs conclude the penultimate chapter, "River of Law",  of James Lawrence Powell's Dead Pool, a book that might be viewed as a 21st-century sequel (or perhaps 'epilogue' is a better term), to Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert. Like Reisner's seminal book, Dead Pool should serve as a wake-up call to start the considering the possible fate of the "hydraulic society" we've constructed in the Southwest.

Powell's book leads me to believe that my quest for someone who's "thinking about the unthinkable" has ended. But like the dog who finally catches a car he's been chasing, I'm not sure what I will do now.

Dead Pool focuses on the Colorado River Basin and its future, given the specter of climate change and its effects. As you can see from the above, he's not especially optimistic, especially given the fact that for a number of years, the USA Southwest, the driest part of the country, is also the fastest-growing. The housing/sub-prime mortgage crisis and the current economic downturn will likely put a dent in the growth rates, but I don't think you'll find many people worrying that the very hot, dry future that Powell posits could drive people away.  

This post is simply to whet your appetite; I'll post more on Powell's  book shortly.

"God created both man and nature. And man serves God. But nature serves man...To have a deep blue lake [Lake Powell], where no lake was before, seems to bring man a little closer to God." -- Floyd Dominy, Commissioner (1959-1969), U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, quoted in Dead Pool, p. 136

Oregonians Worried About Water

Happy 2009!

What a great way to start 2009, with some self-serving stuff on the Oregon Statewide Water Roundtables, which I helped organize.

Below is the OSU media release (click for an e-version), and here are stories from The Oregonian, the Capital Press, and the Corvallis Gazette-Times [added on 3 January 2009].

Oregonians Worried About Adequate Water Supply
by David Stauth

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A majority of Oregonians who recently participated in a series of water forums don’t believe the state has enough water to meet all of its basic needs, including those of wildlife.

Despite its abundant rainfall, people are pessimistic now and even more wary about where the state will be in 20 years; about two-thirds of respondents in statewide forums said the quantity of water won’t be adequate to meet future needs. There are fears about protecting existing water rights, adequate land use planning, climate change and other issues.

People want solutions, but they want those solutions crafted from the bottom-up, not by state or federal mandates.

These are among the findings in one of the first surveys ever done in Oregon to ask people what they think about water issues. They reflect the participation of 301 citizens attending five different water “roundtables” around the state this past fall.

“This was an effort to simply find out what was on Oregonians’ minds when it came to water issues,” said Michael Campana, director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University. “We found that people were not optimistic about future water supplies, and that there are a lot of concerns.

“But it’s not all doom and gloom,” Campana said. “Many people are ready and willing to tackle some of the difficult water issues we’re facing, and work together even though there are some contentious disagreements. That gives me some cause for optimism. As much as anything, though, we kept hearing that Oregonians want customized, local or regional water solutions, not a one-size-fits-all mandate imposed by state or federal agencies.”

Five water roundtables – held in Salem, Bend, Newport, Ontario and Medford – attracted a broad group of participants, mostly just concerned citizens but also people with interests in agriculture, resource management, land development, recreation, tourism and other areas. The meetings were open to anyone and not designed to be a scientific cross-section of Oregonians, organizers said.

A report on the findings was just completed, and the results will be reported to the governor, state legislature, and Oregon Water Resources Commission. The full report is available on the Web.

“This was not designed as a study to make recommendations or suggest policy options,” Campana said. “It was just an open, unfiltered effort to see what people are thinking, which we will report to agencies and officials who are working now to develop long term water management strategies.”

Among the key issues that were often mentioned:

• Adequate water quantity and quality;
• Concerns about non-point water pollution as a result of urbanization;
• Need for more funding for water and wastewater infrastructure and management;
• Protection of existing water rights and uses;
• Better integration of water planning and land use planning;
• Climate change impacts;
• Restoration of wetlands, floodplains and in-stream flows;
• Interstate water allocation and management.

Many of the citizens surveyed felt that state agencies dealing with water should get more support and funding, Campana said. But they didn’t want those same agencies dictating solutions to local communities.

“We need to do it ourselves,” said one Ontario, Ore., resident at the roundtable meetings. “We need to start local and include those impacted physically and economically by water use.”

Some local initiatives, Campana said, are already fairly well-advanced.

“Residents in the Umatilla Basin are already very aggressive in their desire to manage groundwater,” he said. “They are considering tribal, fishery, irrigation and other issues, and have formed a task force to help reach consensus on what needs to be done. This may include proposals to tax themselves to produce funding for better groundwater management.”

Some potential solutions cited in the roundtables included water reuse and recycling; water conservation tax credits; water storage and conservation; local integrated water planning; interstate compacts, and other approaches.

Specific concerns at the various roundtables ranged from fish barriers and groundwater withdrawals to herbicides, E. coli and invasive species.

"Too bad we're dead, or we would have gone to these meetings." -- Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

The Girl Effect: Empower 600 Million

Take a look at this video from The Girl Effect (from the Nike Foundation).

The Girl Effect: The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society. 

International Water Conservation & Xeriscape Conference and Expo

The International Water Conservation & Xeriscape Conference will be held in Albuquerque, NM on 26-27 February 2009.  It will be held in conjunction with the 2009 Water Conservation and Xeriscape Expo, 28 February-1 March, 2009. The Expo is free to the public and will feature more than 250 exhibitor spaces.

Both are sponsored by the Xeriscape Council of New Mexico and are great events that have grown in stature since they were first held in 2000.

Here is the WWW site blurb:

Since 2000, the Water Conservation Conference offered by the Xeriscape Council of NM has become the national outdoor water conservation conference. The February 2008 conference attracted almost 400 registrants from 18 states. Over 35 city water departments were represented. Registrants have also attended from Mexico, Japan, Canada, and Argentina.

We have been able to attract and feature the world’s most renowned water experts.  Global water/climate keynoters have included the late Sen. Paul Simon, Sandra Postel, Peter Gleick, and Eileen Claussen.  Others, speaking on related landscape and water, water and energy and sustainability have included Hunter Lovins, Peter Warshall, Gloria Flora, Schlomo Aronson, Robert Glennon, and Amy Vickers.

The 2009 global water keynote will feature Maude Barlow, the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. Our “Foodshed” keynote address will be by Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute, who is leading the research to develop perennial grains. The Land Institute has worked for over 20 years on the problem of agriculture with a primary purpose of developing an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. Our increasingly current and relevant topic for 2009 is “Watershed – Foodshed”.

Yes, you read that right - Maude Barlow will be the global water keynote. Her topic is: "Downscaling of General Circulation Models and Coupling with Hydrologic Models: Implications for Southwestern Hydrology."

NOT!

But I doubt she'll be discussing New Mexico's 10-year water supply.  

"Sacred cows make great hamburgers." -- Unknown

Desalting Deep Brackish Ground Water

Fifteen billion acre-feet of ground water? That is about a 25-year supply for the world at current pumping rates!

That's how much brackish ground water lies beneath New Mexico, according to Sean Olson [thanks to John Fleck for alterting me] in the 29 December 2008 Albuquerque Journal (you will have to view an ad to read his article).  I know a lot of brackish ground water underlies New Mexico but I am a little skeptical of that figure - it seems awfully high.

But the exact number is not relevant to Olson's article,  which basically says that desalting New Mexico's huge supply of brackish ground water will likely cost a lot of money because of the energy required.

Mike Hightower of Sandia National Laboratories, a good guy (even though he attended New Mexico State University) who knows as much about the energy-water nexus as anyone I've ever met. says that it will cost about $3-$5 per 1000 gallons to treat brackish water to drinking-water standards. It costs about $1-$2 per 1000 gallons to treat 'normal' fresh water to the same standards.

Then there's the problem of waste disposal, about which I posted in August 2008.

For more information on the topic: here is Bruce Thomson's Op-Ed about the New Mexico brackish water issue, and another one of my posts on this subject from November 2008. 

Never a dull moment in the Land of Entrapment!

"We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases. " -- Goethe

Paying (More) for Water?

Todd Jarvis sent me this opinion piece from the Idaho Mountain Express. It's about a sensitive issue - paying for water. No, not for the infrastructure to provide it or the maintenance of the infrastructure. Most of us pay nothing for the actual water itself. Should we? Jon Marvel makes a case for doing so (I've not reproduced the entire article). He is the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, ID.

Marvel contends that charging for water is a way to mitigate the impact of recent state agency budget cuts mandated by Gov. Butch Otter (R-ID). He urges the legislature, "Don't Give Away Idaho's Water".

One possible area for this kind of fiscal reform is in the administration of Idaho's most precious natural resource—water.

Under current Idaho law water right holders do not pay the State of Idaho anything for that right even though the Idaho Supreme Court has affirmed that the State owns the surface and ground water within its boundaries. Every Idaho State water right establishes a point of diversion, a point of use, a season of use and the amount of water for that right, but the State charges nothing for the water.

Of course, there are costs for water users: farmers pay water districts for delivered water and may have costs for pumping water. City dwellers pay city water departments or private water companies for water but other than these costs, water is free for the taking.

One consequence of this free water policy is that the majority of the Idaho Department of Water Resources annual budget of $26,000,000 comes from the Idaho's general fund and not from water users.

Instead of this drain on public coffers and the sales tax revenues that could be supporting public education, why doesn't the State start charging all water users for the use of public water ?

Such a water charge could also encourage conservation of water by establishing a rising fee as the amount of water use increased. In this way large water users like irrigators would become accountable for their impacts that contribute to currently declining surface and groundwater flows in the Snake River Plain.

Hard times like these can lead to innovative ways to sustain important public programs like public education. The earlier we start to discuss new ways of funding critical public needs, the sooner we can help insure our children's future.

Rural (self-supplied) folks who pump their own water may balk because they generally pay more for water than city dwellers. A recent presentation (see slide 11) by colleague Jerry Schmidt shows that in Oregon, over 10 years a rural resident who pumps ground water can expect to pay about $17,000 versus about $5,200 for the city dweller. But the $17,000 figure includes $14,000 for the intitial cost of the well and pump and then $300 per year for operation (but nothing for replacement and repair), so the comparison is slightly misleading.

No one is paying anything for the water (although some municipal systems now levy a "scarcity" or "commodity" charge that purports to include the cost of the water). This needs to change. Such fees for using water should be used to support the various activities of state water resources agencies in the fields of outreach and education, and to provide funds to communities to plan/manage their own water supplies.

"Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand." -- Unknown

The Human Right to Water: The Time Has Come

After posting my review of the film Blue Gold: World Water Wars I decided to post a link to a recent editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle (thanks to Robert Teeter of the Santa Clara Valley Water District) about the right to water. The editorial is balanced, pointing out some of the ramifications, positive and negative, of declaring such a right. 

Here is another perspective from Dennis T. Avery from American Daily (thanks to Waterlover). 

So how much water do we have a right to? Good question. Here is a 1996 paper by Peter Gleick in which he supports a 'lifeline' of 50 liters ( about 13 US gallons) per day per person. Each person would be guaranteed this amount for free.

Some have questioned the necessity for declaring access to water a basic human right, questioning whether it will really help the more than 1 billion people who do not have access to clean water. Others say that this is just a 'feel good' measure by Westerners to pat themselves on the back for doing something to alleviate suffering. Still others say it will just produce more government intervention and block private enterprise from meeting water needs in developing countries. 

I used to be among the naysayers. Then I met an Irish lawyer at the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto almost six years ago. At 3WWF there was hope that the Ministerial Declaration would contain support for such a right. It did not. The lawyer, whose name I cannot recall, explained to me why such a right was necessary. It would essentially put recalcitrant countries on notice that they need to put access to water at the top of their 'to do' lists. Failure to do so could lead to assorted sanctions and other pressures from the international community.

There is also a practical reason for declaring this right and pressuring countries to recognize and support it. Lack of access to clean water means more diseases, which themselves may not always be life-threatening but can lead to compromised immune systems, rendering people more susceptible to fatal diseases. Lack of access to clean water could also lead to civil unrest and pose a threat to internal and international security.      

I do not believe that having water as a basic human right should preclude the entry of private companies into the water sector in developing countries. Small systems can be constructed by locals with help and training from NGOs, but for larger systems, private firms would likely be better. Water would not have to be provided free, except for the amount below a lifeline, such as Gleick's 50 L per day per person. As long as the companies understand this and abide by it, there is no reason whay they should be forbidden to operate in developing countries. Who else is going to develop the large water systems? But oversight and clear ground rules need to be present.  

Maude Barlow and her ilk who decry privatization have it wrong. Without private industry we cannot bring safe water to over 1 billion who lack it nor sanitation to the 2.5 billion or so who  lack access to that. Declaring water to be a human right does not preclude a role for private industry.

The last sentence of the editorial said it best:

"As the United Nations studies making water a human right, it should avoid ideological extremes. Privatization isn't the enemy in making the water flow." -- San Francisco Chronicle editorial (26 December 2008)

Review of the Film 'Blue Gold: World Water Wars'

I was warned by a colleague that "my head would explode" if I watched the film, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, that is based on the similarly-titled book by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. I viewed the film three times, and all is still intact. I have not read the book.

I could spend far more time reviewing some of the claims the film makes but cannot afford the time, so I will stick to brief mention of the good points and the most blatant examples of misinformation.

Some background is in order. Maude Barlow is National Chair of the Council of Canadians and Tony Clarke is Executive Director of the  Polaris Institute, another Canadian organization. Barlow was also recently appointed as UN Senior Water Adviser. Both Clarke and Barlow are featured prominently in the film, which is directed by Sam Bozzo, who provided me with a signed DVD of the film.

Before continuing, let me say that several previous posts have questioned Barlow's grasp of certain water facts: in an interview with Amy Goodman and an interview in The Progressive.  I made some comments about the film a few months ago. I took issue with some statements Barlow made in the film FLOW: For Love Of Water.

What I Liked

• Visually impressive
• Discussion about sea water desalination and its high current energy costs
• Emphasis on community-based actions and solutions
• No great affinity for bottled water
• Prior appropriation water law and its seeming discouragement of conservation (from Robert Glennon of Water Follies fame)
• Pollution problems
• Owens Lake - Los Angeles' "'water grab" in the early 20th century
• Ryan's Well Foundation, founded by Canadian Ryan Hreljac
• Discussion of the Atlanta-Suez and Cochabamba-Bechtel fiascos
• No fondness for the World Bank
• Deleterious  effects of dams  (but neglected decommissioning issues)
• Urban vs. rural water issue - retiring ag land for urban water
• Support for a human right to water
• Effects of excessive ground water pumping: sinkholes, land subsidence 

So What Didn't I Like?

• Provocative, undocumented statements such as: 'Much of the world's fresh water is polluted beyond human use'; 'Every single drop of fresh water will be privately owned and controlled'.

• Then there is Dr. Michael Kravcik, a Slovak hydrologist who runs an NGO, People and Water, that has done some good work in watershed restoration. But what he talks about is a link between ground water pumping and earthquakes, and thence to tsunamis. This is unbelievable, as it is presented as fact with no documentation. Kravcik claims that more runoff from the land and pumped ground water have increased the ocean's water level, producing more weight on the ocean floor (and less weight on the land), which can cause faulting, and tsunamis. In 1994 Frank Schwartz and colleagues published a paper in Nature (Sahagian, D., F. Schwartz, and D. Jacobs, 1994, "Direct anthropogenic contributions to sea level rise in the twentieth century", Nature, 367: 54-57) in which they calculated the additional sea level rise from ground water pumping and other anthropogenic sources to be 57 mm, or a little over 2 inches. Given the great ocean depths, this additional water is insignificant and I doubt it can produce earthquakes, then tsunamis. I was unable to find any reference to this mechanism in the scientific literature.  This kind of blather has already been reported as 'fact' in some reviews I have read. As an aside, Kravcik might be interested in knowing that ground water pumping can actually limit earthquakes and that injecting fluid can cause earthquakes. This pumping-injection scenario has been proposed to control terrestrial earthquakes [but that's fodder for another post].
  
• Kravcik also discusses soil loss due to urbanization, then states that we are about at the half- way point [to what?], and "in fifty years there will likely be a collapse of the planet's water sources." Come again? I must've missed the logic and the documentation.
  
•  Misinformation about water privatization in USA cities. Across the screen is flashed a sequence of cities' names (e.g., New York, Chicago, Riverside, Houston, Tampa, Pittsburgh (misspelled) , Las Vegas, Seattle, et al.) followed by "Buyer: XYZ Company". The implication is that the water supply of these cities is now owned/controlled by some multinational corporation. I checked four of the cities: Las Vegas (Suez), Seattle (RWE/Thames), Chicago (Veolia) and New York (Suez). The water supply of each is not controlled, in whole or in part, by the private firms mentioned - Suez, Veolia, RWE/Thames. I checked the WWW sites of each city and called Seattle, New York, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
  
• A similar visual trick is used for the Great Lakes, although it says Potential Buyer: Nestlé. I am sure the governors of the eight states and premiers of Ontario and Quebec would be interested in this statement. Nestlé is not going to buy the Great Lakes, folks.
  
• Innuendo is made that the USA's military operations in the Great Lakes region are somehow related to the USA's interest in claiming/stealing the Lakes' water. Yes, Virginia, the USA does have military bases in the Great Lakes region, just like they have them in the Pacific Northwest. Does the latter fact that mean that the USA is planning a BC invasion? Barlow and Clarke seem to forget that some of their countrymen have suggested that Canada supply some of its water to the USA.
  
• Implication that because companies like GE supply pollution control/water  cleansing equipment they will then "own" the water they clean. Why is that a logical conclusion?
  
• Tenuous (really!) connection between possible Bush family land purchases in Paraguay and the taking of ground water from the Guaraní aquifer, the largest fresh ground water source in the world, and arguably the largest fresh unfrozen water body in the world. So how would the Bushes and/or the USA get the water from the aquifer to the USA? I addressed this issue in a previous post.

Any Other Thoughts?

There is very little mention of climate change and its effects on water resources. I view that as far more of a threat than privatization.

Some of the people discussing ground water did not display a very good understanding of it. I also think a lesson in the finer points of the hydrologic cycle might be warranted.

I am unsure that Barlow, Clarke and their compatriots understand the difference between owning water and owning a right to use water. In the Western USA, you own a right to use water. I am sure in some places you can actually own water, but in the Western USA and other places you own the right. There is a huge difference.

Robert Glennon says that "We now pump 30 billion gallons of ground water" each day, but doesn't say who "we" is. This has been (mis?)interpreted as meaning the world pumps 30 billion gallons per day, but that is actually too small for a global figure. Thirty billion gallons is about 92,000 acre-feet, about the annual pumpage by the City of Albuquerque when I lived there a few years ago.  The daily global pumpage is about 600 billion gallons. According to Kevin McCray of the National Ground Water Association, the daily pumpage in the USA is about 80 billion gallons per day and in the world, about 408 billion gallons per day (see his presentation).

A few people discuss living within your watershed and not transporting water long distances to fuel growth. Okay, that's fine, but how do you control growth? By law? The case of Bolinas, CA, was mentioned, but there was no mention of some of the negative effects, such as potentially unaffordable housing.

Profligate water use is decried, but I detected no mention of pricing as a means to reduce demand and extend supply [David Zetland's smiling now!]. In fact, supply, demand, and economics in general seem to be absent from the discourse.

No mention is made of privatization that appears to be  working, e.g., Veolia's management of Oklahoma City's wastewater treatment facility (contract just renewed) and Indianapolis' drinking water system.  I suspect there are other examples. Let's have some balance.

Barlow, Clarke and others appear to want free water for those in developing countries. That is a recipe for disaster, regardless of whether the system is privatized or not. Why is that bad? Because when people get water for free, they will waste it because there is no need for conservation(see"'profligate use" above). Sorry folks, that is human nature. This does not preclude supplying a limited amount ['lifeline'] for free, then charging for an amount greater than that. 

The theme "private is bad" permeates the film, and I really get tired of that mantra. The protagonists don't realize that privatization can work if it is done right [clear ground rules; oversight; and consideration for the poor]. It is possible to have privatization wihout surrendering one's right to use water. And sometimes governments are too incompetent or corrupt to run water supply systems. Who is going to build the systems, especially the large ones, to supply water to the over 1 billion people who lack access to it and the 2.5 billion who do not have access to sanitation?

WaterWired's Take

When you  set yourself up as being morally/ethically (choose a similar adverb) superior, then try to strengthen your case with some serious distortions of facts, you are no better than the "bad guys" you disdain. You've ceded the high ground, and that's what I think Barlow, Clarke, et al., have done. The film makes many good points, then blows it with some egregious distortions.  

And let me say again, since Barlow is now a UN Senior Water Adviser, she should endeavor to get her facts straight.

Is the film worth seeing? Yes, but wear your crap detectors.

And no, your head won't explode.

Now I must rest.

"The purpose of education is to teach children to be crap detectors." -- Unknown (John Holt?) 

Canadian Complaint Against Nestlé Waters Canada: False Advertising?

My friends over at Stop Nestle Waters should be happy. Five Canadian groups - Friends of the Earth Canada, the Polaris Institute, the Council of Canadians, Wellington Water Watchers, and Ecojustice - have filed a complaint against the Nestlé Waters Canada for some of its advertising claims, which the groups claim are not true:

• Most water bottles avoid landfill sites and are recycled
• Bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world [WTF?]
• Nestlé Pure Life is a Healthy, Eco-Friendly Choice

These claims were made in a full-page ad in the Toronto Globe and Mail last October. You can read more about this at HV120.CN, where you can find these comments:

"They can spin the bottle all they want, but the truth is there is no green solution to bottled water," said Joe Cressy, Campaigns Coordinator, for the Polaris Institute, in Ottawa.

"We welcome the opportunity to show that we have, in fact, been honest in our conversation with Canadians, with the media and with government of the environmental stewardship exercised by our industry," said John Challinor, a spokesman for Nestlé Waters Canada.

See more from Defending Water in Maine. Here is a copy of the complaint:

Download Advertising Standards Canada Complaint-Nestle Waters  (thanks to Linda Hunn)

We'll see how this plays out. In the meantime, Nestlé might want to consider sticking with the chocolate business.

"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need." -- Will Rogers

Aaron Wolf: Bridging Troubled Waters

Friend and Oregon State University colleague Aaron Wolf is the subject of an article in Miller-McCune magazine about his work in mediating water disputes around the world. 

Aaron is the magazine's latest 'Wonking Class Hero', and they've got that right, as he is a charter member of the WaterWonks.

Aaron has been the subject of numerous articles throughout the years and this ranks as one of the best, as it starts "from the beginning".

And as you can see from the photo, Aaron doesn't quite walk on water, but what you can't see is that his feet aren't really touching bottom.

The first few paragraphs of Tom Jacobs' article:

In 1991, as Aaron Wolf was finishing his doctoral dissertation, the Madrid Middle East peace process was just getting under way. The two sides decided to tackle five sets of regional issues, including the equitable division of water resources. As a budding expert on the subject — his research focused on the Jordan River and its dual role as "a flashpoint and a vehicle for dialogue" — Wolf agreed to advise the U.S. team designing the talks.

Fifteen years later, one remnant of that failed attempt at Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking remains: the water negotiations. "They still go on," Wolf says. "The two sides have cooperative projects. In the second intifada, when they realized how much violence there was going to be, they took out a joint advertisement asking both sides to try to protect the water infrastructure."

The lessons of that enduring success have stayed with Wolf as he has pursued his remarkable dual career, as an Oregon State University scholar studying water-resource issues and a hands-on mediator of water disputes around the world. Water, he has come to understand, is so central to the human experience that it can help even bitter enemies find common purpose.

Aaron has lately begun to address and explore the spiritual aspects of water in his work.

On the other hand, Wolf notes that "all spiritual traditions — not just (those) in the religions that come out of the desert — seem to tap into water as healing, soothing and cleansing." This shared sense of sacredness gives him hope for the future, as does the resilience of many water agreements. "India and Pakistan have a water treaty that has survived since 1960 — through two wars," he says. "In the middle of one of the wars, India made payments to Pakistan as part of their treaty obligations."

"I think water hits us at a profoundly different level than other resources," he adds. "People are willing to do horrible things to each other. What they seem not willing to do is turn off each other's water."

He is someone who is truly making this world a better place to live, and I am proud to have him as a friend and colleague.

An appropriate post for this Christmas Day.

"I was told this joke: 'In America, what's the opposite of speaking? Waiting to speak!'" -- Aaron Wolf

Doing the Right Thing: Donating to Water Charities

Publisher Tom Bell has a wonderful editorial, Water professionals are obligated to support charitable water causes, on page 9 of the December 2008 issue of U.S. Water News. It's about donating to charities that bring safe water to villages.

Bell points out that the world annually spends $300B on agricultural subsidies, $50B on bottled water, yet only about $3B on foreign aid specifically devoted to water and sanitation projects. About $10B - $20B per year would be enough to provide clean water to the entire world.

Bell provides some water charities to which you can donate. Here are some more that will make excellent use of your contributions. These are all small organizations that put 'boots on the ground' and most emphasize helping those in need help themselves. In my view this latter aspect is key to success and sustainability.

Shameless plug: my own nonprofit, the Ann Campana Judge Foundation, welcomes tax-deductible contributions as well.

Do you have a favorite water charity? Let us all know by commenting.

"Our failure to help those in the developing world gain access to clean water must surely rank as one of the greatest development failures of the last century." -- Peter Gleick 

James Lovelock on Geoengineering

I posted two days ago on a fascinating geoengineering session at the recent AGU meeting in San Francisco. I did not intend to maintain this thread, but friend Clay Cooper sent me an article that I thought worth sharing.

The article is by Dr. James Lovelock, shown here in Daisyworld, the scientist who first proposed the Gaia hypothesis. He weighed in on geoengineering in an article published last summer, "A geophysiologist's thoughts on geoengineering".

Download Lovelock - Geoengineering 

Here is the abstract:

The Earth is now recognized as a self-regulating system that includes a reactive biosphere; the system maintains a long-term steady-state climate and surface chemical composition favourable for life. We are perturbing the steady state by changing the land surface from mainly forests to farm land and by adding greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants to the air. We appear to have exceeded the natural capacity to counter our perturbation and consequently the system is changing to a new and as yet unknown but probably adverse state. I suggest here that we regard Earth as a physiological system and consider amelioration techniques, geoengineering, as comparable to nineteenth century medicine.

Lovelock argues that we really don't know enough about the Earth to start fiddling with it on a planet-wide scale to mitigate the effects of global warming. He also cautions against placing too much reliance on geophysics.

Among other things, he suggests that if we used stratospheric aerosols to ameliorate global warming, that "fix" would eventually lead to increased ocean acidification, for which we would need another medicine, and so on. We might have to undertake the "onerous permanent task of keeping the Earth in homeostasis. "

Not a pretty sight.

"We could find ourselves enslaved in a Kafka-like world from which there is no escape." -- James Lovelock

Listen Up! Dr. Gerald E. Galloway for Assistant Secretary of the Army, Civil Works

This suggestion to the Obama Administration might be viewed as the proverbial kiss of death, since so far I have struck out with Peter Gleick and Patricia Mulroy. But my mother told me good things come in threes.

So, with my mother's advice in mind, I urge the Obama Administration to appoint my colleague Dr. Gerald E. Galloway, Jr. as Assistant Secretary of the Army, Civil Works. This position oversees the civil functions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

I don't take credit for thinking of this; I received a copy of a letter from the Association of State Floodplain Managers urging the Obama folks to appoint Gerry to this position. I had not thought of it simply because I am unfamiliar with the civilian hierarchy of the Army and the USACE. 

Download ASFPM_Asst_Secy_Army_Appt_1208

After I read the letter, I thought, "What a great idea!" I have known Gerry for about 9 years and currently serve with him on the AWRA Board of Directors. He is Past-President of the AWRA. Gerry has had almost as many careers as cats have lives: military man (38 years; retired as a brigadier general); government official; corporate officer; academic; public administrator; professional society leader; engineer; and geographer. I suspect I have left out a few.

Here is his abbreviated biography on the AWRA WWW site:

Gerry Galloway is Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, and a Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources. Prior to joining the Maryland faculty, he was Vice President for Geospatial Strategies, ES3 Sector of the Titan Corporation. A civil engineer, public administrator, and geographer, he also serves as a water resources and flood mitigation consultant to a variety of national and international government organizations. He has served as a Presidential appointee to the Mississippi River Commission and the American Heritage Rivers Advisory Committee and as Secretary of the U.S. Section of the Canada-U.S. International Joint Commission. In 1994, he was assigned to the White House to lead a committee in assessing the causes of the 1993 Mississippi River Flood. During a 38-year career in the military he served in various command and staff assignments in Germany, Southeast Asia and the United States, retiring in 1995 as a Brigadier General and Dean of the Academic Board at the U.S. Military Academy. In 2002 and 2005, he served as General Chairman of the American Water Resources Association National Water Policy Dialogues. He holds a Bachelor's degree from West Point, a Master's degree in Engineering from Princeton, a Master's in Public Administration from Penn State (Capitol Campus), a Master's in Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). He has been the recipient of the Association of State Flood Managers' Goddard-White Award, ASCE's Civil Government Engineer of the Year and Presidents' Awards, the SAME Academy of Fellows Golden Eagle Award, the Julian Hinds Award of the Environment and Water Resources Institute of ASCE and the U.S. Geological Survey's John Wesley Powell Award. In 2005 he was named an Honorary Diplomate by the American Academy of Water Resource Engineers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a registered professional engineer in New York.

Is that a bio or what?

Gerry is more than an engineer; he is widely respected among water resources professionals of diverse backgrounds because of his multidisciplinary perspectives. His counsel is sought by many. His energy level is that of someone much younger.

I do not worry one bit that his military background might compromise his ability to run the USACE's civil works. Gerry is man of integrity and character who speaks his mind. What I admire most about him is that he wants to do the "right thing", regardless of who or what thinks otherwise. 

This is one appointment where the Obama team could make a "slam dunk" (sorry, George), or "big splash" among WaterWonks.

And along with Pat and Pete, Gerry would form a potent water triumvirate.

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.” -- Carl Sagan