LeakBird

(March 27, 2009, The Seattle Times)
In a first-ever pledge for American presidents, Barack Obama in his inaugural address included a promise to the world’s poor nations — “to work alongside you to … let clean waters flow.”
The moment is an acute one as the world faces “water bankruptcy” as threatening as today’s financial meltdown. The [...]

(Feb. 10, 2009, Forbes Magazine)
We want oil and iPods, but we can’t live without water. That alone makes it the world’s most precious commodity. But, still, most casual investors might be hard pressed to think of ways to play H20, as it is seemingly free. There is no Exxon of water.
But maybe there should be. [...]

(March 20, 2009, Citizen News Service)
The President of the United Nations General Assembly has told delegates at the 5th World Water Forum (WWF) in Istanbul, Turkey, that, “those who are committed to the privatization of water, making it a commodity like oil, are denying people a human right as basic as the air we breathe.”
In [...]

(March 18, 2009, The New York Times)
Don’t expect the future to look much like the past, at least when it comes to the Earth’s fresh water supplies. That’s the message emerging from a major international meeting being held here this week.
More than 27,000 people — including government ministers from more than 120 countries — have [...]

David Zetland of Aguanomics and Professor Robert Stavins, Director of the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard, were “on the same page“ with regard to water conservation pricing after Professor Stavins wrote a recent op-ed for the Huffington Post.  Until Stavins took a slightly different tack on two water pricing misconceptions.
In his first piece, Professor Stavins [...]

(March 17, 2009, The Associated Press)
The global economic crisis threatens to shrink investment in water infrastructure, an already underfunded sector vital to growth and public health, the World Bank said Tuesday
The first global economic contraction since World War II threatens to overshadow the scarcity of clean water in many poor regions, where inadequate sanitation is [...]

(March 16, 2009, Robert Stavins, The Huffington Post)

Throughout the United States, water management has been approached primarily as an engineering problem, rather than an economic one. Water supply managers are reluctant to use price increases as water conservation tools, instead relying on non-price demand management techniques, such as requirements for the adoption of specific technologies [...]

I think that David Zetland is onto the zeitgeist, only it hasn’t happened yet. What do I mean, or what is Mr. Zetland saying essentially?
Price water according to its scarcity, and water shortages will become a thing of the past.
This is the axe we hear Mr. Zetland grinding again and again, and it appears that [...]

(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, [...]

There’s an excellent old article from 1997!?! on “submetering water” from the Journal of Property Management that’s surprisingly contemporary in its report, indicating how little has changed with regard to the promising yet cost-prohibitive installation of water meters per individual residential unit.
As I see it, the difficulties of water submetering in property management can be [...]

(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. 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, Coloradoan)
Plans to ramp up water conservation efforts in Fort Collins include a couple of tried-and-true methods – education and financial incentives.
Putting those plans to work would likely mean higher rates for water customers even as average per capita demand for water decreases, officials say.
Using less water has broad impacts, including prolonging the [...]

(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. 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 [...]

(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. 18, 2009, Reuters)
Householders in England and Wales will face above-inflation increases in water bills this year, water regulator Ofwat said on Wednesday.
The regulator will allow water companies to impose average rises in household water and sewerage prices in 2009/10 of 1.1 per cent plus inflation at 3 per cent, it said in a statement.
The [...]

(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. 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. 8, 2009, ActivelyMovingWater.com)
Interview with Delbert Hawkins
I had the opportunity to work with Delbert Hawkins, a 3rd generation Montana cattle rancher, while I was project manager at the Montana Water Trust. Delbert holds the largest storage water right in Lake Mary Ronan (Lake County, Montana). Delbert also controls the outflow of the lake and has [...]

I finally got to catch David Zetland in person the other night, at the Black Rocks Arts Foundation (BRAF) on 3rd St.  The theme was “Elemental Interactions: Water” and Mr. Zetland opened with a 23-Minute talk, which I was able to film with my Flip camcorder.
I’ve broken Zetland’s talk up into three 7-minute parts:
Part 1 [...]

(Feb. 5, 2009, Seacoast Online)

The subject is water — locally, nationally, internationally. The issue isn’t new but it is definitely moving front and center these days.
Ecologists worldwide are now using the term “peak water” in the same way as the phrase “peak oil” came into common parlance over a decade ago. Back in the year [...]

Yesterday the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Water Initiative, 2009 Report from Davos, Switzerland. You can download the PDF from the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) website.
The report is nothing short of shocking:

Within 20 years entire grain crops equivalent to India and US lost
Within 20 years water more mainstream, bigger-better investment/ biz than oil
Water [...]

(Image Courtesy of CaliforniaGreenSolutions)
Is the water crisis a resource crisis or a service crisis? No matter what anyone says, each seems to fall on one side or the other. Frank R. Rijsberman claims the water crisis is both, but he seems to lean more toward a service crisis.
And opinions vary so widely on related topics, [...]

(Jan. 23, 2009, Jeff St. John, GreenTechMedia)
The world’s poorest and richest nations alike need to find ways to conserve and use water more efficiently if they hope to avoid shortages and conflict, says noted water expert Peter Gleick.
The threat of “peak water” should be considered as big a threat – and opportunity – as the [...]

(Jan. 22, 2009, The Patriot Ledger)

With nearly a third of Randolph’s water and sewer customers behind on their payments, the public works board may need to increase rates to cover the shortfall.
“We understand as much as anyone how tough people have it. Unfortunately, people are up against it,” Public Works Superintendent David Zecchini said. [...]

(Jan. 22, 2009, Aguanomics)
[Warning! Feisty post today. This Mississippi thing pisses me off!]
Phoenix is losing people from a slowing economy — not because of water shortages.
When will scarce water slow or reverse growth in dry places? I don’t think it ever will — mainly because there is so much slack in the system. Many crops [...]

(Jan. 21, 2009, EconomicsHelp)
I often hear of arguments saying bottles mineral water should be banned. The reasons are:

Contributes to global warming
Creates unnecessary landfill

For what it is worth I’d like to give my twopennce worth on this topic. But, first, I have to admit my bias and prejudices. The thing is I don’t drink [...]

(Jan. 17, 2009, ENS)
Eight water conservation and control projects along China’s longest river, the Yangtze, will be underway by 2011 to improve water use and protect the environment, a water conservation official said Tuesday.
Cai Qihua, director of the Yangtze Water Resources Commission, announced the projects during the commission’s annual work meeting in Wuhan, the [...]

(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 [...]