South’s Dry Spell Travels North

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) — The drought that has plagued the Deep South for more than a year is creeping northward, and officials in multiple states are restricting outdoor burning in the face of water shortages and forest fire risks from falling leaves and tinder-dry conditions.

Extreme drought conditions, the second-worst possible, have now spread into Kentucky, and severe conditions have returned to West Virginia and southwest Virginia, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“The last three months have sucked every bit of moisture we’ve had,” said Ben Webster, a fire staff assistant for the West Virginia Division of Forestry.

In eastern Kentucky, retailers are sending bottled water to drought-stricken Magoffin County after its primary water source, the Licking River, fell to low levels and residents were told to conserve tap water.  The county’s school system is serving meals on disposable plates with plastic utensils. Lunch trays have been temporarily shelved to save on dishwashing.

Kentucky also suffered through a severe drought a year ago, but “this is probably the worst that I’ve had to deal with,” said Joe Hunley, Magoffin County’s schools superintendent.

Tens of thousands of gallons of bottled water have been distributed through a fire department and a water company alone.  “We’re bringing water in daily and distributing it to those people who are in need,” said county health director Berti Salyer. “Of course, that’s just about everyone in Magoffin County right now.”

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Source: CNN

Israel Could Bring Solutions to L.A. Water Shortage

By Lilly Fowler

There was a time when the actions to solve Los Angeles’ water problems read like a dystrophic political novel.

At the beginning of the last century, L.A. Mayor Frederick Eaton and William Mulholland, superintendent of the city’s newly created Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), plotted to gain control of water sources in Owens Valley, which left Owens Lake dry and area farmers with little recourse.

The result was the completion of the first Los Angeles Aqueduct, which supplied the city with much of its water from 1913 until a second aqueduct was completed in 1970. (Los Angeles also draws water from Northern California via the California Aqueduct and competes with other Western states for water from the Colorado River.)

The city of Los Angeles recently began atoning for its sins by returning some of the water to the Owens region, which has forced L.A.’s 3.8 million residents to do more with less. With the city’s population expected to reach 4.2 million to 4.9 million by 2020, according to the Southern California Association of Governments, solutions are needed to address the area’s growing water needs.

A recent conference at UCLA’s School of Law, “Transboundary Environmental Management in the Arava and Beyond,” proposed that Los Angeles might gain some ground regarding its often-contentious water policies if the city turned to Israel’s example.

The Sept. 9 forum, sponsored by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a leading teaching and research program in the Middle East, suggested that both Israel and Los Angeles have made many of the same mistakes when trying to develop water in arid, dry lands and could learn a great deal from each other when dealing with issues of water scarcity.

“There are very strong parallels between what’s going on in the Western United States and what’s going on in the Middle East,” said Peter Gleick, the keynote speaker at the conference.

Gleick, a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based environmental research organization, said both countries are struggling with the issue of how to best share their water supplies with neighbors. Although Israel, according to Gleick, faces the more complicated problem of sharing water from sources like the Sea of Galilee, natural underground aquifers and the Jordan River with its Jordanian and Palestinian neighbors, the dilemma in both countries is much the same.

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Source: The Jewish Journal

Pennsylvania Town Requests Voluntary Water Conservation

DUBOIS - Mayor John “Herm” Suplizio is asking City of DuBois residents to voluntarily conserve water, he announced at yesterday’s city council meeting. Mayor Suplizio called on residents to eliminate unnecessary water usage in order to maintain the city’s water supply. Water levels are currently down at the city’s reservoir.”We’re not at a mandatory level yet, but we’re not far away from it,” said Mr. Suplizio. “If people don’t have to wash their cars, it would be nice of them not to. Just little things … if you don’t have to hose down your garage, things like that.”

Source: The Progress

Water Usage Up and Reservoirs on Decline in Hawaii

WAILUKU - Periodic but isolated showers on windward and mauka areas of the islands had little effect on the watersheds, Maui County Water Director Jeff Eng reported Friday.

In his weekly water use report, Eng said water use was up by 620,000 gallons a day in the Central Maui and Upcountry systems, while the water sources for the Upcountry system have continued to falter. 

“I would like to remind our customers of our request for Upcountry customers to reduce water usage by 5 percent and our Central customers to reduce water usage by 10 percent,” he said.  “It’s been a dry week and the upcountry reservoirs have been steadily dropping, going from 100.6 million gallons on October 2 to 81.4 million gallons on October 10. That is less than half of the total storage capacity of 180 million gallons.”

The islands as a whole continue to dry out even with occasional trade-wind showers, with the Big Island suffering the worst of the abnormally dry conditions. The U.S. Drought Monitor expanded the area of North Kohala under extreme drought, increasing the area rated extreme drought from 10 percent to 12.3 percent of the islands.

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Source: The Maui News

In California, Drought Prompts Closure of Boat Launch

HEMET – Private boat launches in the Inland Empire’s largest reservoir – Diamond Valley Lake – will be indefinitely suspended starting Tuesday because of low lake levels caused by drought, according to the Metropolitan Water District.

In the meantime, the MWD board of directors Tuesday will discuss options for lengthening the boat ramp so private boats can once again access the lake.

Since 2006, levels at the lake have receded 70 feet, according to Bob Muir, spokesman for the MWD, which runs the reservoir. Of that 70 feet, 24 feet of water has disappeared since January, Muir said.

The water level at the storage facility has dropped to the end of the boat ramp, making it dangerous for private boats to launch. Small fishing boats and rental pontoons can still be used, Muir said.

“This action speaks volumes about the seriousness of the water-supply situation Southern California faces next year, particularly should we not rise to meet the water-saving challenge that’s before us,” said Metropolitan General Manager Jeff Kightlinger.

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Source: The Union Tribune

Ethiopia Says It Needs $266 Million for Emergency Drought Aid

By Jason McLure

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) — Ethiopia needs $266 million to help feed 6.4 million people suffering from food shortages due to drought, an increase of 1.8 million since June, the government said.

Millions of peasant farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa country are struggling to cope with the affects of the failure of the short rains in February and March, known as the “belg,” Mitiku Kassa, the state minister for agriculture and rural development, said today in the capital, Addis Ababa.

“It is unprecedented, the failure of the belg,” Kassa said at a meeting with international donors. “We need additional resources.”

International relief agencies need 270,245 metric tons of food to meet aid needs from September to December of this year. Donors have pledged less than two-thirds of the aid requests made earlier this year, Kassa said.

About 80 percent of Ethiopians rely on rain-fed farming even though the economy has experienced double-digit growth over the past four years. Beyond the number of people needing emergency aid, another 7.4 million people depend on a donor- funded “safety-net” program that provides food to families for at least six months of the year.

Ethiopia, a nation of 78 million people, now has 50,000 tons of food in its emergency reserves, down from 400,000 normally.

Shortages of emergency food reserves hampered the response effort to the drought earlier this year, the agriculture ministry said in a report today.

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Source: Bloomberg

Georgia Drought Continues Despite Hurricanes

The banks of Lake Lanier in Buford, Ga., look about the same as last year: Closed boat ramps, parched soil and lonely islands peeking above the surface that should be covered by a dozen feet of water.

Epic drought forced officials across the Southeast about a year ago to impose severe water restrictions and warn that Atlanta, ground zero for the dry conditions, could be just months from running short of water.

While the drought has eased, its tendrils still extend across the region. All it takes as reminder of the drought’s grip is a look at the level of the lake, Atlanta’s main water supply, which is more than 17 feet below normal.

“I’ll tell you, we’re paying attention,” said Billy Calhoun, a former fishing guide who works along the shores of Lanier. “We’re not forgetting about the drought.”

The drought spread across the region last year and forced state and local officials to order sweeping water restrictions to save dwindling resources. Landscaping companies went under and some towns worried about running dry.

The response from many corners of the region was swift.

Georgia banned virtually all outdoor watering throughout the northern part of the state. The legal battle over federal water rights among Georgia, Florida and Alabama intensified, and legislators in Tennessee and Georgia sparred over rights to the Tennessee River.

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Source: Lawn & Landscape

Many Changes Await in Colorado’s Future

By CHRIS WOODKA
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

DENVER - Some January day in the future, you might be sitting in your living room, drinking coffee made from bottled water and looking across the sand dunes in the front yard.

You’ll glance at the headlines and notice that the Colorado economy is finally bouncing back from the triple whammy of a poor ski season last year, failed crops in most parts of the state and the loss from forest fires the previous summer.

Oh yeah, and the heat wave that started Christmas Day will be about to end as high temperatures return to the temperate 60s. Still no snow in the mountains, though.

Then, you’ll wonder, “How did this happen?”

A conference last week in Denver looked at ways to avoid that particular picture, or maybe just alert people that sooner or later they may be coping with such a scene. The painting of the future was not pleasant, as a report by the University of Colorado and the Colorado Water Conservation Board depicted it in a theme of gray to black tones. Less white snow, blue water and green trees than you’d like to see. Maybe more red ink for those who need to cope with the economic fallout.

“If you knew 10 years ago that the stock market was going to go into a bear cycle beginning in October 2007, how would you have prepared?” asked Bill DeOreo, an engineer. “You need to be looking at what’s the best way to integrate drought into a long-range water conservation plan.”

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Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

Australian Farmers Trade Water

By Tanalee Smith, The Associated Press

SYDNEY, Australia - For farmer Malcolm Holm, water now is just like a new shovel or tractor - he has to buy it.

The amount of water he is allowed to take from nearby Murrumbidgee River has dwindled to nothing for the past three years because of Australia’s crippling drought. And so, except for rain he can catch and store himself, he needs to buy water for his 1,000 acres at Finley in New South Wales state, where he grows crops to feed his 600 dairy cows.

“It’s no different to buying a ton of grain or a ton of fertilizer,” Holm said. “It’s just another commodity.”

In the world’s driest inhabited continent, there is simply not enough water to go around, and households, cities, industries and agriculture all demand their share from stressed reservoirs and rivers. So Australia’s irrigation planting sector relies on a unique trading system to make the most of every drop.

What began as a localized trade within states is now an active national market that shares water along hundreds of miles of river systems used by thousands of farmers. And with the drought, the trading of water is picking up pace.

“Trading activity is certainly strengthening over previous years,” said Mark Siebentritt, operations manager of Waterfind, the nation’s largest water broker. Water is traded mostly through independent brokers who bring sellers and buyers together and who know the myriad rules in the heavily regulated market. “During drought we’re seeing a lot of water moving around.”

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Source: RedOrbit

Starbucks Wasting More Than 6 Million Gallons of Water a Day

American coffee giant Starbucks became the target of conservationists today after an investigation by the U.K. newspaper The Sun estimated that the company wasted up to 6 million gallons of water every day, enough to quell the thirst of a small African nation.

As part of a company policy aimed at preventing germ buildup in its taps, Starbucks stores are directed to keep water running constantly into a sink, called a dipper well, to clean utensils and wash away food residue, The Sun reported.

As a result of running water all day, every day at each of the company’s 10,000 worldwide coffee emporiums, Starbucks wastes water in an amount The Sun estimated to be “enough daily water for the entire 2 million strong population of drought-hit Namibia in Africa or fill an Olympic pool every 83 minutes.”

The investigation was launched after a couple who spotted a running tap at a U.K. Starbucks were told by a store employee that it was left on to clean the pipes. They contacted Starbucks head office to find out more and later received a letter confirming that it was company policy to keep water constantly running into the dipper wells.

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Source: ABC News

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