LeakBird

(Jan. 16, 2009, Aguanomics)
David Zetland, an agricultural and resource economist at the University of California, Berkeley, talks with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene about the economics of bottled and tap water, conservation, and global water supply and management.
The 26 minute interview [.mp3] is — in my not-humble opinion — pretty damn good.
In it, Keene and I [...]

(Jan. 16, 2009, The Arizona Republic)
One by one, Arizona and its Indian tribes are settling decades-old disputes over the state’s precious water supply.
The latest deal, still being formalized by the numerous governments and agencies involved, will end almost half a century of claims originating on White Mountain Apache land at the headwaters of the Salt [...]

(Jan. 15, 2009, Reuters)
Farmers blocked roads across Peru on Thursday, demanding Congress repeal laws they say could put water under the control of private interests.
Protesters snarled traffic on highways in South America’s third-largest country, piling roads with tree trunks, boulders and truck tires. They also halted trains to Machu Picchu, Peru’s top tourist spot.
The laws, [...]

(Jan. 15, 2009, Water Technology Online)
The government of Saratoga County, NY, headquartered here, will decide January 20 whether it will join six communities in the county that are planning to sue the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over what they see as a conflict between an EPA-backed PCB-dredging project in the Hudson River and the [...]

(Jan. 14, 2009, Robert Glennon, Huffington Post)
I recently returned from Saudi Arabia, a country that faces self-inflicted water challenges. I’m part of a team charged with drafting a water code for the Kingdom. In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia decided it wanted food security, so it encouraged farmers to grow wheat by drilling an unknown number [...]

(Jan. 15, 2009, The Auburn Plainsman)
The United States Supreme Court turned down a petition Georgia filed reviewing a ruling that favored Florida and Alabama Monday.
Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s main source of drinking water, will be providing less water for the capital.
Georgia filed the petition against the federal appellate court’s decision last year. The Supreme Court will [...]

(Jan. 14, 2009, Star-Telegram)

More than a decade ago, Texas kicked off an ambitious and comprehensive program to guarantee that the state’s urban and rural regions would have the water supplies they needed through 2050.
Much good work has been done under the framework established by 1997’s Senate Bill 1, but Texas still faces alarming trends when [...]

(Jan. 13, 2009, MSNBC)
A Florida administrative law judge has recommended that the St. Johns River Water Management District approve Seminole County’s plan to withdraw 5.5 million gallons daily from the river.
The permit for diverting the surface water for use in Seminole County’s water supply was challenged by several entities, including the the city of Jacksonville, [...]

(Jan. 13, 2009, Jacksonville Business Journal)

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined to hear Georgia’s appeal of a lower court ruling in the long-running tri-state water wars.
The high court denied a request to review a decision handed down nearly a year ago by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington invalidating a 2003 agreement to let [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, The Salt Lake Tribune)
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has tapped a longtime assistant state engineer to step up and become the state’s water boss.
Kent Jones, assistant state engineer for 21 years, would replace former state Engineer Jerry Olds, who announced his departure last fall.
Jones, who also would direct the Division of Water Rights, [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, WRDWAugusta)
Georgia’s long-term water plans face another threat, this time from the US Supreme Court. A court decision today questioned the state’s right to use more water from Lake Lanier, northeast of Atlanta.
Florida and Alabama are angry about Georgia’s use of more water for drinking purposes.
Georgia has been in a severe drought for over [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, China National News)
China must overhaul its water management systems to provide better legal protection and more open competition for the increasingly scare resource, the World Bank said Monday.
‘For years, water shortages, pollution, and flooding have constrained growth and affected public health and welfare in many parts of China,’ the bank said in [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, KQED’s Climate Watch)
California’s Dept. of Water Resources has issued a new gameplan for managing the state’s precarious water supply. DWR calls its draft California Water Plan “a new chapter in the way California must manage her water resources,” warning that “the system has lost its reslience.”
The agency appears to fully recognize the [...]

(Jan. 13, 2009, WaterWired)

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 [...]

(Jan. 9, 2009, Salt Lake Tribune)
The Utah Legislature will soon begin its 2009 session, and we may expect bills promoting two favorite pieces of home-grown pork, the Lake Powell pipeline and Transition Power’s nuclear nightmare on the Green River.
But before legislators cast more of our recession-stretched cash before these two swine, they should read the [...]

(Jan. 8, 2009, Napa Valley Register)

This week, water experts from the city and county of Napa expressed confidence that residents will not have to prepare for rationing or extreme conservation measures in the near future.
Even if the State Water Project delivers only a small portion of what it has promised in 2009 — which is [...]

(Jan. 9, 2009, American Water Resources Association)

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 [...]

(Jan. 1, 2009, InfraNet Lab)

[zoning future underground water banks for a new liquid sub-urbanism]

Scientists and economists predict that the wars of the 21st century will be waged over water rights. Some cities live under the threat of eradication through rising sea water levels, and others, under the threat of desertification. Counties in arid Arizona, whose [...]

(Jan. 8, 2009, India Water Portal)
Relatively little scholarly work has investigated the role of state water bureaucracies in the development of water resources, environmental transformations and state-citizen relationships, although exceptions include institutions like the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers, in the US. Many other countries like France, Spain, the Netherlands, UK, [...]

(Jan. 7, 2009, The Nation On Web)
With the sharp decrease in the graph of underground drinking water, City will be facing a critical water shortage in coming months. If government does not take concrete steps to cope with the situation, a water crisis is in the offing.
Sources in Wasa said that according to a State [...]

(Jan. 7, 2009, Associated Press)
A national environmental group recommended Wednesday that California overhaul its water-delivery system by building a canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
A report by The Nature Conservancy endorsed piping Sacramento River water around the delta, which is suffering from degraded water quality and declining fish populations. The conservancy said a canal [...]

(Jan. 6, 2009, AlterNet)

What do the water crisis, Dante’s Inferno, Hollywood movies, Sandra Bullock, the Mars Rover, cholera, have in common?  Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute , arguably America’s foremost water expert, connects the unlikely dots in this fascinating recent talk at UC Berkeley.
You can skip the introductory remarks and go to 20:00 to [...]

(Jan. 6, 2009, The Mercury News)
A federal judge entered not guilty pleas Tuesday for the Truckee Carson Irrigation District and four of its employees accused of falsifying records to secure extra water supplies from the U.S. government.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert McQuaid Jr. also agreed during a brief hearing to allow all four men to [...]

(Jan. 5, 2009, NCRiverWatch)
Among the barrage of environmental problems we face today, from climate change, to deforestation, to pollution, there is another potential disaster looming on the horizon that journalist Fred Pearce argues is not getting enough attention–major rivers across the globe are no longer flowing all the way to their traditional outfalls. This is [...]

(Jan. 5, 2009, WaterDrop)

India has a population of 1.1 billion people, which is about 17 percent of the world’s total 6.7 billion people. India is second to China and ahead of third place United States of America. India has become the world’s second fastest growing large economy and the population growth has been soaring for [...]

(Dec. 30, 2008, Denver Post)
Finances are tight for a lot of folks these days.
Unfortunately, money isn’t the only thing that’s lacking. There’s another type of shortage that threatens our quality of life.
Colorado needs more water. As things stand right now, the state will not have enough water for our population in the near future.
We’re not [...]

(Jan. 4, 2009, Greenville Online)
Two years ago, when wells started to run dry in southern Greenville County, state and county leaders sought ways to bring water to residents along an eight-mile stretch off U.S. 25.
State Rep. Eric Bedingfield and County Councilman Fred Payne have warned residents at numerous community meetings that $60,000 in state money [...]

(Jan. 4, 2009, MySanAntonio)
More than a decade ago, Texas kicked off an ambitious and comprehensive program to guarantee that the state’s urban and rural regions would have the water supplies they needed through 2050. Much good work has been done under the framework established by 1997’s Senate Bill 1, but Texas still faces alarming trends [...]

(May 29, 2008, Christian Science Monitor)
Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water – and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake [...]

(Jan. 3, 2009, CapitolChronicles)
Many urban planners and conservationists now see water replacing oil as the new precious commodity this century. It’s conceivable that the next wars will be fought over the wet stuff. Arizona, California and New Mexico are all struggling with droughts, but it’s not just the Southwest. Atlanta and parts of the Old [...]

Water For The Ages is an excellent resource taking a humanitarian eye at the water crisis.

(Jan. 1, 2009, SeacoastOnline)
When word got out this summer that the Kennebunk Kennebunkport Wells Water District was thinking of selling up to 432,000 gallons of water a day to Nestle/Poland Springs, the reaction was immediate and largely negative…
“Spring water is now a commodity item, not unlike Maine lobsters or wood products,” said KKWWD Director Norm [...]

(Dec. 27, 2008, Aquadoc)
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 [...]

(Dec. 28, The Daily Gazette, 2009)
Hart said the two cities have invested millions of dollars in their respective water systems and sewer plant and he can understand the city of Johnstown’s reluctance to share resources and risk being burdened by outside development. He said a possible solution to the problem would be if Fulton County [...]

(Dec. 22, 2008, Chicago Tribune)
Detroit may has been stealing Canadian water for 44 years.
It seems the Motor City’s drinking-water intake pipe extends about 100 yards across the international boundary in the Detroit River, and it’s been siphoning as much as 32 billion gallons a year since 1964 without a water-taking permit.
“The City of [...]

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