LeakBird

(March 14, 2009, The Oroville Mercury-Register)
The state is shopping for water for the Drought Water Bank, but a variety of factors has supplies drying up.Despite a hefty price for the sale of water, environmental constraints and good prices for commodities have far less Sacramento Valley water users signing up to sell water to other parts [...]

(March 13, 2009, MSNBC)
With local lakes and rivers at critically low levels, the region’s water provider has virtually shut down the surface water supply to the Tampa Bay region.
“The reservoir’s level is so low we are unable to provide water, consistently, to the water treatment plant and we are unable to pull water from the [...]

(March 14, 2009, The New York Times)
During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.
What the town [...]

(March 13, 2009, The New York Times)
Give I.B.M. credit for technological ambition and a willingness to tackle big problems.
I.B.M. is presenting a new bundle of services and research offerings at the World Water Forum in Istanbul on Monday. The package, grandly called Strategic Water Management Solutions, is the most recent entry in I.B.M.’s so-called smart [...]

(March 9, 2009, Reuters)
From cotton farms to factories that make high-tech computer chips, companies face huge risks from droughts like those searing California and Australia and that recently parched the U.S. Southeast.
Climate scientists say droughts will become more common as higher temperatures evaporate water supplies and overuse drain aquifers faster than they can be replenished [...]

(March 11, 2009, Robert in Monterey, Calitics)
As someone who has written before of the water problems our state faces, and who has repeated the “omg worst drought ever” frame, it’s important that I give some necessary attention to Michael Fitzgerald of The Stockton Record, who called bullshit on the whole thing today:
California’s “drought” is overblown. [...]

(March 10, 2009, Reuters)
It’s hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona’s green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high.
So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American [...]

(March 10, 2009, Aguanomics)
The title of this post is my reformulation of “missing the forest for the trees,” and the subject of the post is a new report from the Pacific Institute.
In Water Scarcity and Climate Change: Growing Risks for Businesses and Investors, the PI assesses the various risks to water supplies that companies should [...]

David Curran wrote a stimulating op-ed on the California drought in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.  Mr. Curran expressed his perplexity at the incongruity of intermittent first quarter flooding in the Bay Area and the Governor’s dire “worst drought ever” declaration.
California has gone from being the bread basket of the US to a water crisis basket [...]

(March 7, 2009, CBCNews)
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has asked Canadian cities and towns to phase out the sale and purchase of bottled water on municipal property.
The federation board of directors passed the anti-bottle resolution at a meeting in Victoria on Saturday.
The move carries no legal weight and aims simply to encourage municipalities to speak [...]

As the growing demand for all things water escalates across the United State (hydrologists, water conservation systems, water lawyers, new sources of water, et cet.), the drought environment, such as regions in Georgia, Florida, Nevada and California, has the highest market demand water conservation technologies for three reasons:

 
Timeliness
Fast Payback
Higher Water Rates

 
Timeliness
This is perhaps the most [...]

(March 7, 2009, Crikey Creek)
When I was doing the grocery shopping one day, back in Madison, WI, I made an amazing discovery. Right across from the beer, and round the corner from the dried fruit and wine, I saw the iconic image of New Zealand’s Mitre Peak – a mountain that pops out of Milford [...]

(March, 2009, SAIS)
“Year of Water” at SAIS
SAIS is examining the critical role of water throughout the world as a special substantive theme for the 2008–09 academic year. The “Year of Water” brings the SAIS community together to explore global water issues as they relate to economics and commerce, agriculture, the environment, new technologies, development and [...]

(February 27, 2009, Gavin Newsom, CleanTechnica)
Today, San Francisco took a meaningful step toward turning the promise of renewable ocean energy into reality. We submitted a preliminary permit application to the federal government to develop a wave power project off our coast that we believe can generate between 10 to 30 megawatts of energy, with potential [...]

(March 7, 2009, Arizona Geology)
There have been 550,000 applications to appropriate deep, “non-potable” water in New Mexico in recent months according to story in the Alamagordo Daily News.
The New Mexico legislature and the state engineer are seeking to take state control of water deeper than 2,500 feet in anticipation of efforts to desalinate brackish water [...]

(March 8, 2009, SramanaMitra)
While people focus on carbon footprints and potential ways to reduce the impact man-made CO2 emissions, the world is running out of another of its key elements: fresh water.
We use fresh water much faster than it can replenish: it is increasingly scarce and has no alternative.
Water is a strategic resource for countries [...]

(March 7, 2009, The New York Times)
THE Earth may be two-thirds water, but only about 1 percent of that water is actually usable for human consumption and agriculture. What’s more, as the planet warms and the population shifts, even that 1 percent is at risk.
That is why demand for hydrologists has been predicted to grow [...]

(March 5, 2009, Aguanomics)
…Says Harvard Professor Stavins at the Huffington Post. His op/ed continues:
Throughout the United States, water is under-priced. Efficient use of water will take place only when the price reflects the actual additional cost of making that water available. Lest one fear that higher water rates would mean that Americans would go thirsty, [...]

(March 4, 2009, Huliq)

The water levels in the Dead Sea – the deepest point on Earth – are dropping at an alarming rate with serious environmental consequences, according to Shahrazad Abu Ghazleh and colleagues from the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany.
(Original Article Here)

The projected Dead Sea-Red Sea or Mediterranean-Dead Sea Channels therefore need a [...]

(March 4, 2009, BloggingStocks)
“Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed a new position in Nalco Holding (NYSE: NLC); it’s my favorite pure play on water filtration,” says Chris Mayer in Daily Wealth.
“With a $1.6 billion market cap, Nalco is a small-cap stock, but it’s actually one of the world’s largest water-treatment companies. Customers use Nalco’s products and [...]

(March 5, 2009, The Miami Herald)

Lobbyists for the bottled water industry are offering an olive branch in the impending tax fight over their product. They’re agreeing to let lawmakers to remove the exemption on bottled water and impose the sales tax in lieu of the governor’s plan to impose a six cents severance tax on every gallon of [...]

With all of the rain California has been receiving over the last few weeks, water levels are back to 80% in Sierra snowpack terms and there is “drought improvement“.  The 167-mile stretch of the Hetch-Hetchy system, which provides 85% of the Bay Area’s water, can continue to flow at four fifths capacity.  But water restrictions [...]

(March 5, 2009, Business Insider)
While we don’t have a smart grid for electricity in place yet, there’s already talks that we need a smart grid for water. Implementing a smarter system that could monitor water usage would save the the US as much as 30% to 50% of its water used each year, estimates Mark [...]

(March 5, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s declaration of a statewide drought emergency last week had classic comic timing: It’s been pouring ever since. What’s not funny are the governor’s proposals: Expedited water transfers now, which may adversely affect fish and wildlife, and possible mandatory rationing later. Is the drought really that bad?
Some [...]

(March 5, 2009, The Valley Advocate)

The Massachusetts power deregulation law of the late 1990s, which allowed the building of so-called “merchant” power plants unrelated to the old regional utilities, is leading to the rise of small new power companies with their eyes on one of the Valley’s most important resources: its water.
The Advocate has previously [...]

(March 3, 2009, The Mercury News)
A coalition of water districts in California’s Central Valley are suing to stop the federal government from enforcing a new set of rules governing the endangered delta smelt.A lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Fresno by the Westlands Water District, the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority says [...]

(March 4, 2009, David Zetland, Aguanomics)
RT writes:
I am an economist from Australia who works on among other issues urban water policy.
I read with interest your nicely-written Forbes article.
We seem to have pretty much a similar situation here in Australia and a few of us make similar suggestions.
I’d love to understand more about the your situation [...]

(March 4, 2009, Aquadoc, WaterWired)
The current issue (2 March 2009) of the High Country News has a revealing article by Matt Jenkins, “How Low Will It Go?”. Jenkins describes the mission of Eric Kuhn, an engineer and former submariner who now runs the Colorado River Water Conservation District in western Colorado.
So what is his mission? Simple. [...]

(March 2, 2009, USA Today)

Gov. Charlie Crist wants Florida’s water bottlers to start paying for the water they pump from aquifers in the state, The Miami Herald reports.
Outside the rural north Florida town of Lee, “every day, Nestle Waters of North America sucks up an estimated 500,000 gallons from Madison Blue Springs,” the paper says. [...]

(Feb. 23, 2009, Tim Gamble, NextStrategies)
In January, I published an open letter to President Obama humbly giving him my unsolicited advice on what national policies he should follow in terms of national energy and sustainability policies. But what about local communities? What advice would I give local politicians, bureaucrats and community leaders?
First, I would suggest [...]

Acoustic water leak detection has been around a long time. It predominates in the water industry when it comes to listening for leaks in underground pipes, in order to protect and secure municipal water supplies from catastrophic underground leaks.  A couple of companies that come to mind are SubSurface Leak Detection, Inc, Davis-Inotek Instruments and [...]

(March 2, 2009, John Laumer, Treehugger)
The Las Vegas Review-Journal cites the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority saying ‘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.’
Was She [...]

(March 2, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Californians have grown accustomed to digesting odd ideas that routinely flow out of Sacramento, many of them not so palatable.
But are they ready for this one?
Last week, amid a third year of a statewide drought, the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District adopted a strategy to sell treated sewage as drinking [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, The San Bernardino Sun)
Water is one of California’s most vexing challenges.
Most of the state’s rainfall comes in Northern California and its snowpack is in the Sierra Nevada range. But most of the users are in Southern California and the Central Valley, where agriculture is the main consumer.
There are obstacles at every step [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, AlterNet)
The state has done little to study the impacts drilling might have on water supplies and is unprepared to treat the waste water it produces.
Got bubbles? Alarms have been ringing for months about the risk that natural gas drilling poses to drinking water supplies, but recent reports of water contamination just [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, Aguanomics)
Aquadoc’s review of Blue Gold attracted an interesting comment:
—————-
Mike, I am compelled to answer your hypothetical question of Maude Barlow: “why is privatization of our water so bad?”
While designing and constructing water delivery sources by experts make sense, the delivery of water is not a highly specialized technology and therefore is quite [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, The Water Blog, Portland Water Bureau)
Dear Water Blogmistress,

I am writing because I need advice in regards to a tap-related dilemma I’m having. I love Portland’s tap water so, so, so much and I find fellow tap-water enthusiasts… well, I’ll just say it… they’re hot. People who drink and love Portland’s tap water are hot! They [...]

 
I recently came across an insightful 2006 document (pdf) from New York’s Department of the Environment on water/ sewer billing, water metering and water efficiency, put together for New York landlords and property managers.
I know that it’s now three years old, so some of the information is perhaps dated, though in essence I would hazard [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, Ceres)
Global climate change is exacerbating water scarcity problems around the world, yet few businesses and investors are paying attention to this growing financial threat, according to a report issued today by Ceres and the Pacific Institute.
Water is crucial for the global economy – driving every industry from agriculture to electric power to [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, The Mercury News)

In March, after a series of cold winter storms, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada was above normal. That seemed to be good news for California’s water supply, which relies heavily on Sierra Nevada snow.
But after a record heat wave in the early spring, it was as if the winter’s [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, Associated Press)
As more companies become conscious of their carbon footprint, a new movement is urging corporations to track their “water footprint” as well, or risk financial losses as freshwater supplies dry up around the globe.
Major corporations such as Coca-Cola Co. now disclose the amount of water they use in financial reports, in [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, Bloomberg News)
On a cloudless December day in the Nevada desert, workers in white hard hats descend into a 30- foot-wide shaft next to Lake Mead.
As they’ve been doing since June, they’ll blast and dig straight down into the limestone surrounding the reservoir that supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas’s water. In September, [...]

 
I came across a fascinating and informative document on a recent meeting between some associates from the University of Washington and the Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) regarding water rates and billing in Seattle.
The document’s notes cover a wide gamut, but basically I learned seven things that I think any landlord or property manager in Seattle [...]

(Feb. 25, 2009, Aguanomics)
Readers will know that I favor neither public nor private (investor-owned) provision of water, since the problems of ownership structure are less important than the problems of monopoly. (And the solution to monopoly — if not competition — is careful community monitoring.)
For more evidence on what does and does not matter, read [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, Aguanomics)
San Diego is looking north for water this year, working out a number of smaller option agreements with Sacramento Valley Districts. I looked into one 10,000 AF transfer with South Feather Water and Power to get a handle on numbers for this year.
San Diego is paying $10 per acre-foot for the option [...]

(Feb. 25, 2009, CleanTech)
Leaders at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco today said the days of cheap water are over.
The developing world is still struggling to provide usable water to its residents, while water shortages in the developed world have put a new focus on expensive technologies.
“Water has never been priced properly, but [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, International Rivers)
This March, Istanbul Turkey will host the 5th World Water Forum, the world’s largest international event on water issues. The World Water Forum is organized every three years, and brings together representatives from around the world to discuss policies of water. However, the forum is dominated by state officials and private [...]

(Feb. 23, 2009, The Ludwig Von Mises Institute)
It is near impossible to imagine any private company not enjoying the “problem” of high demand for its products and services. Yet there are some products that are repeatedly reported as shortages. There is one thing these products have in common: government intervention, typically in the form of [...]

(Feb. 22, 2009, News24)
African economies are especially vulnerable to water shortages, delegates to the Implementing Environmental Water Allocations (IEWA) conference heard on Monday.
“Many African economies are held hostage to hydrology,” World Bank senior water resources specialist Rafik Hirji said at the start of the four-day event in Port Elizabeth.
It has attracted more than 300 experts, [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, Aguanomics)
The battle is getting started:
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office recommends that the Legislature turn groundwater over to the state, which would remove local control
[snip]
[farmers] say they fear that the state would require water meters, find out how much water everyone’s using and charge for it.
Valente, vineyard and orchard manager for John Kautz [...]