(May 13, 2009, The New York Times)
For the third year in a row, Mark Watte plans to rely on the aquifer beneath his family farm for three-quarters of the water he needs to keep his cotton, corn and alfalfa growing, his young pistachio trees healthy and his 900 dairy cows cool.
That is 50 percent more [...]
(May 5, 2009, AutoBlogGreen)
The nail in the coffin of corn-based ethanol might be made of water. The magazine Environmental Science & Technology has published an article that pegs the amount of water needed to make enough corn ethanol to move a vehicle one mile at 50 gallons. That’s pretty high.
ES&T calculated the amount of water [...]
(April 26, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Any doubt that California is hip-deep in an epic struggle for water was put to rest earlier this month when an estimated 10,000 farmers and farmworkers marched 50 miles across the gasping San Joaquin Valley.
The goal was to heighten awareness about their water shortage, brought about by a third [...]
(April 26, 2009, The Oregonian)
“People think oil is something to fight about. Wait until we start running out of water,” said state Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley.
A handful of big farmers and their utility company engineered Oregon Oasis to get that water. They bought political access and nearly got their way.
“People who are well funded [...]
(April 12, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
The San Francisco Chronicle invites you to decide by playing our online water game. As you play, you’ll hear from a water manager about how cities can use less water, from a Central Valley farmer close to losing his crops and from a conservationist on why we need adequate [...]
(March 31, 2009, The Mercury News)
Displaying a bowl of minnows and pictures of unemployed farm workers and their families, California congressmen pleaded with their colleagues Tuesday to make an emergency exception to the federal Endangered Species Act.The lawmakers said efforts to protect a 3-inch-long fish, the delta smelt, have led to court-ordered reductions in the [...]
(March 24, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
As Don Bransford prepares for his spring planting season, he is debating which is worth more: the rice he grows on his 700-acre farm north of Sacramento, or the water he uses to cultivate it.
After three years of drought in California, water is now a potential cash crop. Last [...]
Oil and Water Mix: Four Reasons Why Water will Be Big(ger) (LeakBird)There’s a lot of talk comparing the oil boom to the coming water boom. Discussing whether water will be bigger and more important than oil is kind of a foolish tack, IMHO. The point is that we can hardly do anything without water. I think that rather than comparing the two industries, it’s more useful [...]
(March 21, 2009, Robert Glennon, AlterNet)
The following is an excerpt from “Unquenchable: American’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It” by Robert Glennon. Copyright 2009 Robert Glennon. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington DC.
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the introduction of Glennon’s new book and follows a narrative about the water [...]
(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 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 5, 2009, The Salt Lake Tribune)
I have a classic Western postcard tacked to the bulletin board above my computer. It shows two men in a field holding shovels over their heads, locked in mock battle. Behind them runs an irrigation ditch. The caption reads: “Discussing Western Water Rights, A Western Pastime.”
I know firsthand how [...]
(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 9, 2009, The Californian)
The slogan, “food grows where water flows,” is part of a water education campaign by the California Farm Water Coalition (www.CFWC.com). You’ve probably seen it on signs and banners in the San Joaquin Valley. It’s just as true in the Salinas Valley.
There are some important differences here.
Water for farms doesn’t flow [...]
(March 7, 2009, The Merced Sun Star)
Kenneth Shackel is feeling more like an emergency-room doctor than an agricultural researcher these days as he helps west Valley farmers cope with little to no irrigation water this season.
“It’s like triage,” said Shackel, a University of California at Davis pomologist and plant science professor. “For some, this isn’t [...]
(March 3, 2009, Dan Bacher, IndyBay)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Department of Water Resources and corporate agribusiness have continually tried to frame the battle over restoring the California Delta and Central Valley rivers as one of “fish versus people.”
This false dichotomy was exemplified by an article published in the Sacramento Bee, “Delta cutbacks put Valley [...]
(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 [...]
(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. 28, 2009, MSNBC)
Butte County water officials have concerns that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proclamation Friday on the drought isn’t clear about protecting local control over groundwater.
Paul Gosselin, director of the county Department of Water and Resource Conservation, said there are concerns about what exactly the governor means by “expedited water transfers.”
Butte County has an ordinance [...]
(Feb. 27, 2009, Reuters)
“The south has plenty of water and the north lacks it, so if possible why not borrow some?” China’s revolutionary communist leader Mao Zedong said in 1952.
That probably seemed a great idea at the time.
But it is causing pollution as well as discontent among farmers facing forced resettlement to make way for a mammoth construction to [...]
(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. 27, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
With California’s budget crisis resolved for the moment, state lawmakers Thursday turned their attention to another emergency: a three-year drought that has left key reservoirs at 35% of capacity.
Legislators stepped forward with plans to ask voters to borrow as much as $15 billion for projects to expand and improve [...]
(Feb. 20, 2009, Central Chronicle)
If we don’t change our lifestyle and careless attitude towards Mother Nature, India will certainly experience severe water stress by 2020.- Satish Kumar Singh
Water catastrophe is now common phenomenon in every nook and corner of India. Day by day its graveness is mounting. Even people are killing one another on the [...]
(Feb. 22, 2009, RedOrbit)
California’s primary source of irrigation water is projected to go dry in 2009 due to drought, idling more than 60,000 workers and up to 1 million acres of farmland, federal officials said Friday.
California water officials declared a zero allocation policy for farmers who purchase water from the federally managed Central Valley Project [...]
(Feb. 21, 2009, Jesse McKinley, The New York Times)
The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms [...]
(Feb. 20, 2009, MSNBC)
Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) Executive Director Timothy Quinn issued the following statement today on the 2009 water supply allocations announced by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources. The Bureau announced that some agricultural contractors stand to receive no water deliveries this year, while municipal [...]
(Feb. 20, 2009, BlueNC)
When the market extremists get on a binge about environmental planning, they generally argue that the markets will eventually do what regulations can’t.
The truth is, they’re right.
Given enough time, the markets would eventually create a hideously toxic environment that would kill billions of people, eliminating the need for cleaning anything up. No [...]
(Feb. 21, 2009, John Laumer, Treehugger)
Last minute negotiations may have solved California’s budget crisis; but, a far more protracted problem shadows the future of civilization-as-they-know-it: water reservoirs are drying up; and climate change is likely to worsen the problem. Food prices throughout the nation will be affected in the short-term. Long-term prospects point to an [...]
(Feb. 16, 2009, Tara Lohan, The Nation)
If you’ve read anything about the global water crisis, you’ve likely read a quote from Dr. Peter Gleick, founder and president of the Pacific Institute, and one of the world’s leading water experts. His name has become as ubiquitous as drought itself, which is suddenly making major headlines. [...]
(Feb. 11, 2009, Stephen Chu, Alternet)
Eight years of disinformation and muzzling U.S. climate scientists has left the public largely unaware of the catastrophes ahead.
Finally, we have a top administration official telling it like it is. Energy Secretary and Nobelist Stephen Chu told a Los Angeles Times reporter:
In a worst case, Chu said, up to [...]
(Feb. 17, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
Taking a Cue From Carbon Tracking, Companies and Conservationists Tally Hidden Sources of Consumption
It takes roughly 20 gallons of water to make a pint of beer, as much as 132 gallons of water to make a 2-liter bottle of soda, and about 500 gallons, including water used to grow, [...]
(Feb. 15, 2009, Jack Rosebro, Green Car Congress)
Xinhua. Faced with widespread drought and water shortages, China’s Water Resources Minister Chen Lei has announced a national goal of reducing the country’s water use, as measured by the amount of water used per unit of GDP, to about 55% of current consumption by 2020. The target is [...]
(Feb. 11, 2009, Gim Gogek)
When people talk about conserving water in California, it’s always about turning off your yard sprinklers, taking shorter showers or shaving without the water running. We fret about watering golf courses and lawns in the suburbs. In presentations at schools, at Rotary clubs and on public service announcements, we’re continually told [...]
(Feb. 15, 2009, Aguanomics)
Last week, Judge Wanger of the US District moderated a debate between farmers and environmentalists over water exports from the Delta last week in Fresno.
Although the debate included the typical give and take, the part that got everyone’s attention was this comment by Lloyd Carter, who represented the environmentalists. When asked about [...]
(Feb. 14, 2009, The Houston Chronicle)
LUBBOCK, Texas — Reliable sources of clean water are the key to a successful economic future for Texas and without them the state and businesses could suffer billions in losses.
That was the dire message in a recent report from the office of state comptroller Susan Combs, a longtime West [...]
(Feb. 13, 2009, The Mercury News)
FRESNO, Calif.—Federal water managers plan to slash deliveries to more than 140 farms, Native American tribes and cities this year because there is so little water flowing into Lake Shasta.Those groups have special rights to California’s water, because they were drawing on the scarce resource even before the U.S. Bureau [...]
(Feb. 12, 2009, The Economist)
AS CHINA’S 15-day lunar new year holiday began, Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, was in the plush Swiss resort of Davos, hobnobbing with other global powerbrokers. Towards the end of the holiday on February 8th, he appeared in a very different setting. Sporting a pair of smart white trainers, he strode [...]
(Feb. 8, 2008, ABC News)
Fresno, CA, USA (KFSN) — Comments made at a recent debate between farm water officials and environmentalists has sparked an uproar.
In a televised interview at the event, an official from the California Water Impact Network criticized farm workers and their right to work in this country.
Lloyd carter criticized farm [...]
(Feb. 6, 2009, Aguanomics)
This 26 minute PBS video is excellent for its overview of California water issues. They interview farmers in the Central Valley (”protect our way of life”), enviros (”we can’t keep taking water from nature”) and have a good overview of the technology (water recycling, reverse osmosis, etc.) What do they forget to [...]
(Feb. 6, 2009, China View)
Beneath a cloudless blue sky, the withered wheat grass barely 2 inches high slumped over gray, parched ground in Wei Liuding’s field.
A mere spark would set the field alight at this time of the year when the field should be green.
“I haven’t seen such a severe [...]
(Feb. 5, 2009, San Francisco Chronicle)
With experts predicting an historically dire drought in the state due to limited snowpack in the Sierras, Californian Steven Chu, Obama’s Secretary of Energy emphasized in his first interview since taking office how big the economic hit to the state and nation would be if water supplies stopped supporting California’s [...]
(Feb. 2, 2009, Redlands Daily Facts)
The city is teaming up with the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District and the East Valley Water District to sponsor a new water conservation system.
The system will use a weather station and weather-based irrigation controllers at the city’s parks to ensure fields are only watered when it’s needed.
“Every [...]
(Feb. 2, 2009, The Merced Sun Star)
An unprecedented shift of San Joaquin River water from farmers in the east Valley to those in the west could further complicate the scramble to save crops from drought this year.
At stake is precious San Joaquin River water, which has helped east-side farmers cultivate a multibillion-dollar economy on 1 [...]
(Jan. 28, 2009, RecordNet.com)
Water issues in San Joaquin County floated to the top of the state and federal legislative platforms approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors.
Flood protection, water supply and the fate of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ranked highest on the list of issues and concerns the county wants elected officials in Sacramento [...]
(Photo Courtesy of Old-Photos.Blogspot.com)
Drought and water shortages may drive up the cost of food in America this year, before the Fed’s printing press can even produce symptoms of inflation. Though Peter Gleick may focus on “water footprinting”, David Zetland says it’s not the core issue.
The core issue is price. And price needs to reflect water’s [...]
(Jan. 24, 2009, The Merced Sun-Star)
Draw a tall cool glass of water from the tap anywhere in this county, and you’ll be drinking water that came out of the ground.
For cities and farms alike, most water comes from one source — wells. Much of the water Merced County uses comes from a common [...]
(Jan. 22, 2009, Visalia Times-Delta)
Don’t be fooled: The latest rain offers no real relief from dry conditions that could cost Central Valley agriculture more than 40,000 jobs.
That was the message delivered Wednesday to the State Board of Food and Agriculture in a session on water conditions that increasingly are putting a squeeze on agricultural operations.
“The [...]
(Jan. 20, 2009, The Vacaville Reporter)
Pushing hard to build a new canal around the delta, the Schwarzenegger administration rarely misses an opportunity to point out how rickety California’s water system has become.And in their zeal to get the expensive and controversial aqueduct built, they occasionally exaggerate.
For example, when federal regulators imposed new rules last month [...]
