U.N. report predicts worsening freshwater supplies

Population growth, climate change and demand for greater food and energy supplies are squeezing global water supplies, according to a new U.N. report.

Water problems are often worst in developing countries, where water availability and prosperity are closely linked, says the report produced by 24 U.N. agencies and scheduled for official release tomorrow.

The report warns that mismanagement of water supplies has created problems that are “enormous … but not insurmountable” — if major policy shifts are made.

“Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” the report says. “Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity and conflict at various levels.”

A major factor affecting water availability is a surging global population, which the United Nations says could swell from 6.7 billion in 2008 to 9 billion by 2050.

And more and more of those people are living in urban areas, with much of that shift occuring in the poorest countries. That forces governments to rely on rivers and aquifers polluted by growing human settlements.

“Coping with a future without reliable water resource systems is now a real prospect in parts of the world,” the report warns.

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Source: The New York Times

With increasing water needs, will China dehydrate India?

China—and not Pakistan—is a bigger threat to India simply because it does not have enough water.
Unlike India, which has 9.56% of its surface area covered with water, China has just 2.8%. This did not matter in the past. China’s land mass is so huge that, despite its larger population, it has one-sixth the density of people per km compared with India.

But water consumption increases exponentially with industrialization. Power plants, chemical factories, mining, steel and urban sanitation require huge quantities of water. Hence, China’s water needs have increased dramatically.

That could be one reason why annexing Tibet was crucial to China’s plans. It now controls 1,700km of the Yarlung Zangbo river, the Tibetan part of the Brahmaputra. The remaining 2,900km of the river winds into India through Arunachal Pradesh, and then, through Bangladesh. That, say experts, could be one more reason behind China eyeing parts of Arunachal Pradesh.

More worrisome is the fact that China has already completed feasibility studies for a major hydropower dam at the Tsongpo gorge to generate at least 40,000MW a year, more than twice the output of Three Gorges hydroelectric project. Construction is expected to start this year and the residual waters are expected to be diverted to China’s lands. It would starve India and Bangladesh of their share of the river’s waters.

Moreover, with Left parties winning Nepal’s elections, and China’s proposal last week for no-visa travel between Nepal and China, there are fears that the waters which flow into the Ganga (primarily Kosi), too, may get diverted, because many of India’s northern rivers begin in Nepal. That could parch northern India.

At risk will be India’s agriculture and hydroelectric dams on these rivers. It could revive the saying that the next wars will be fought for water, not land.

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Source: LiveMint.com

Have we reached peak water?

Congress to Examine Link Between Energy & Water

The U.S. Senate is starting to look harder at the nexus between energy and water. Tomorrow, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on a bill introduced last week that would direct the Department of Energy to develop a roadmap for addressing the linkages between energy and water. The relationship between the two sources has been a growing concern among energy and water experts. Large amounts of water are needed to produce energy at power plants, and significant energy is used to treat and transport water to consumers. In other words, each is dependent on the other, but energy and water are rarely integrated in policy.

Peter Gleick, president of Oakland, calif.-based Pacific Insitute, a policy group, will testify before Congress tomorrow. According to excerpts of his planned testimony provided to Earth2Tech, Gleick will argue that considering energy and water together could offer substantial economic and environmental benefits.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair and ranking member of the committee, calls for in-depth research into the energy-water relationship. Besides the DOE, other government agencies would be called to conduct studies if the bill is passed. The Bureau of Reclamation would be directed to evaluate energy use in storing and delivering water from reclamation projects and identify ways to reduce energy use. The Energy Information Administration would be required to continually report on the energy consumed in water treatment and delivery. And the National Academy would be asked to study water use in the production of transportation fuels and different types of electricity generation. The work could lead to better national policies, such as those promoting the use of reclaimed water or phasing out crop subsidies that promote the wasteful use of water.

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Source: Earth2Tech

China: Water price ‘needs to shoot up’

The authorities need to push ahead with a price hike, reflecting accurately the growing shortage of water in China and help plug further depletion of the resource, an official has said.

“We must set up a rational water pricing system adapted to the country’s severe shortage of water. So some cities will face a sharp rise in water prices,” Hu Siyi, vice-minister of water resources, told the Beijing Times on Sunday.

The average domestic water price in 36 large and medium-sized cities last year was 3.77 yuan (55 US cents) per ton, an annual increase of 4.7 percent, latest official statistics showed.

“But the price does not reflect the current situation of the severe water shortage plaguing the country, leading to water wastage and pollution,” Hu said, adding that the needs of lower-income residents and industrial usage would be factored in while deciding on the price hike.

In Beijing, authorities have kept water prices at 3.7 yuan per ton, unchanged since 2004, following an increase of 0.8 yuan per ton for household water, official figures showed.

Wang Hao, director of the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, feels water prices in the capital should be at least 11.42 yuan per ton.

Water pricing reform in Beijing is under review and a public forum on any price hike will take place this year, the Beijing municipal commission of development and reform confirmed yesterday.

In 2008, there was a shortage of 40 billion tons, affecting nearly two thirds of the cities in China. About 300 million people were exposed to unsafe drinking water, according to the Ministry of Water Resources. As a result, beginning from November, China faced its worst drought since 1951, affecting 299 million mu (20 million hectares) farmland and leaving 4.42 million people short of water, according to the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

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Source: China Daily

Going green, without a lawn

Virtually all the bungalows in Jennie and Chas Rightmyer’s Kensington neighborhood have well-tended lawns out front – part of the American dream, along with picket fences and two-car garages.

But increasingly dire warnings about statewide water shortages prompted the Rightmyers to remove their Bermuda grass. They are replacing it with a drought-tolerant garden that should be completed by month’s end.

The couple hope the new landscaping will cut their overall water use by more than 20 percent.

“It just feels like the time has come,” Jennie Rightmyer said.

Californians should end their love affair with lawns, said water officials, lawmakers, conservationists and landscapers. Many of these advocates have promoted native plants for years, but they now sense a greater potential for change because of the public’s growing concerns about global warming, drought and ever-rising water bills.

“It’s the beginning of the end of lawn at home,” said Nan Sterman, who teaches a class called “Bye Bye Grass” at the Water Conservation Garden in El Cajon.

Last week, the garden’s managers started a hotline for people to seek advice from Sterman about “water-smart” landscaping.

“It’s not just the early adopters anymore,” Sterman said. “It’s (average) people who are really getting the sense that we have to do something . . . which tells me that it’s becoming part of the mainstream.”

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Source: Sign On San Diego

California: Let’s all get wet

As I write these words, rain is hammering my apartment building and rivers of fresh water — hundreds or perhaps thousands of gallons per minute — are gushing down the streets and the sidewalks, filling rain gutters, overwhelming the storm drains and rinsing the City relatively clean, and you think, ahh yes, rain, bring it on, so healthy, so good, so desperately needed.

Maybe you also think: Surely all that water is going somewhere helpful, yes? Surely at least some of those drains feed into some grand network of reservoirs and tanks that, in turn, replenish the supply and nourish the community and come back through our taps and get recycled for irrigation, and it’s all glorious and helpful, right?

Wrong.

Truth is, the vast majority of that glorious water is merely flushed away by a system of conduits and drainage pipes and sent straight out into the bay, all in an effort to avoid urban flooding because, well, we are simply not equipped to handle too much of it at once.

Meanwhile, I read the same dire stories as you. Despite the rain, despite weeks of snow and storms and pounding amounts of water crashing down on the region for hours on end, we are still in very serious drought conditions. Long-starved state reservoirs aren’t even half full. The governor declared a state of emergency. The Colorado River is long overtaxed, lakes are drying up, the besieged Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta is being siphoned off at a record pace. We do not, they say, have nearly enough water. And it’s getting worse.

It seems to prompt one ridiculously obvious, but still increasingly urgent question: How can this be? How is it that tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water are pouring through the city streets right now, but we are only able to capture and use but a fraction? Why do we not have better systems in place? Why is this not more imperative?

Is that too naïve to ponder aloud? Hardly. Sure, we all know the state has its grand reservoirs, the spring snowmelt is the lifeblood of the aquifers, the rainfall feeds the starving, overbled rivers and deltas. But what about what’s right here, right now? What about what every single city, every single person, every single household isn’t doing in the slightest?

Why do we not, for example, have in place regulations similar to what much of drought-plagued Australia’s already done, mandates requiring that every homeowner cut their usage in half and every home and building be fitted with a basic water-capture and storage apparatus — along with solar panels and compost and so on — aiming toward at least some semblance of self-sustainability? How is it we are still stuck with the archaic, centralized models of water and energy supply that, unless we start changing it fast, will likely spell California’s doom?

I know: simple questions. Simplistic, even. But as we get more desperate, we sure as hell don’t seem to have very many satisfying answers.

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Nevada: Lawyers eye looming water wars

RENO — As the specter of climate change looms ever closer, it has become more likely that Southern Nevada municipalities will have to fight for their lives — and those fights will be over water.

Municipal and regional water managers are recruiting an army of lawyers and preparing to go to war for resources. At stake is the West’s main water supply — a sum of water that most climate models expect to shrink as greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb and the temperatures of the Earth’s surface and seas rise.

And some battles have already begun.

CLE International, a company that prepares continuing legal education sessions for lawyers across the country, held a session Feb. 26-27 in Reno to share with water lawyers, water managers and concerned citizens the latest laws, strategies and problems facing Nevada and the West.

Nevada is home to numerous disputes over who owns and who should own the water in more than 230 hydrologic basins, water managers at the event said.

In Northern Nevada, locals are hammering out agreements that would protect property owners’ water rights while allowing rivers to run freely.

Negotiations on some of these water allotments have been going on for decades.

At the same time, ranchers and environmentalists are fighting the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s plan to pump hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water it has acquired rights to out of rural eastern Nevada and pipe it hundreds of miles to Las Vegas.

On both sides are those battling to preserve a way of life for local residents — ranchers need water for cows, sheep and their fodder; environmentalists are trying to save animals and wild lands and the Water Authority is trying to save the Las Vegas Valley from the threat of doom should its measly portion of the Colorado River peter out.

There are more than a dozen bill draft requests in the Nevada Legislature proposing changes to water law.

Nowhere in the West is water such a key issue as in Las Vegas.

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Source: Las Vegas Sun

Water: A neglected resource in Taiwan

With the public focusing on plummeting GDP figures and rising unemployment, little attention has been paid to another pressing problem — the plunging levels of the nation’s water reserves.

This winter has been much drier than usual, with many regions receiving less than half their normal rainfall, while other regions have received none at all. Many reservoirs are approaching critical levels. The main store of water for much of the heavily populated north, Taoyuan County’s Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫), has seen less than a fifth of its average rainfall in its catchment area so far this year and is already below half capacity. Officials have reduced the amount of water released daily and are considering enforcing stricter rationing measures should the rain continue to hold off.

Taiwan may be blessed with plentiful rainfall (the annual average is around 2,500mm), but its geography makes storage of large amounts of water difficult. As severe climate change becomes a reality and begins to disrupt traditional weather patterns, who’s to say that in a few years or decades the nation’s abundance of water won’t fade and that serious droughts, such as the one in 2003, won’t become more common?

Solving such a problem in Taiwan — with its water intensive industries and farming — is a huge challenge, but the government needs to formulate a comprehensive management strategy for reducing water usage if it is to avoid a scenario that sees businesses and the public competing for precious water resources.

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Source: Taipei Times

Flushing away valuable energy

TORONTO-Every time we flush the toilet or turn on the tap, we wash energy down the drain. The cost of pumping, distribution and treatment of water and wastewater is consistently the highest figure on the electricity bill of Ontario municipalities.

To put it into perspective, Toronto Water uses more electricity than the TTC and five times the energy consumed by all the city’s streetlights and traffic signals. Energy costs for water pumping and treatment cost the Region of Peel an estimated $25 million in 2006.

Cities and now the province are only beginning to recognize the critical nexus between water and energy. The most recent evidence of this recognition is in the Green Energy Act, which explicitly links energy efficiency and water efficiency, a first in Canada.

This connection is encouraging since water efficiency is among the most cost-effective energy reduction strategies. In California, the Energy Commission found that implementation of all identified water conservation measures could “achieve 95% of the savings expected from the 2006-2008 energy efficiency programs, at 58% of the cost.”

How can Ontario act to reduce the energy and dollars we flush down the drain?

An obvious place to start would be utilizing the new provisions of the Green Energy Act to ban the sale of 13-litre toilets– still on the shelves of your local hardware store despite the availability of toilets that use a quarter of the water — something the U.S. did more than 15 years ago in its Energy Policy Act.

Another key action under the Green Energy Act would be to make water conservation a simple choice for Ontario consumers by adopting WaterSense, the water efficiency equivalent of the successful EnergyStar consumer labeling program. The province should also ensure new homes and buildings are as water efficient as possible by incorporating water efficiency standards into the review of the Ontario Building Code required under the Act.

Two other critical opportunities where the province can take action on the water-energy nexus are infrastructure funding and its upcoming water conservation and efficiency strategy.

With smart spending on 21st century water infrastructure — specifically water efficiency and green infrastructure — the province would defer construction of energy-sucking water pipelines and treatment plants, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention saving billions of taxpayer dollars.

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Source: Toronto Sun

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