LeakBird

(May 12, 2009, Jim Downing, The Sacramento Bee)
As another summer of drought approaches, hundreds of thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland are expected to be fallowed, and much of urban California faces 20 percent water cutbacks.
But in the Sacramento Valley, rice farmers have been busy for weeks spreading water 6 inches deep over [...]

(April 2, 2009, The New York Times)
For about a mile, a steady stream of water flows down Bear Canyon before finally petering out in the sand near a golf course. The arroyo is not supposed to be wet this time of year; the spring snowmelt does not usually occur until later in the season. But [...]

(March 30, 2009, Reuters)
New York City Comptroller William Thompson on Monday proposed using federal stimulus money and other solutions to spare city water ratepayers from another rate hike.
The city’s Water Board is scheduled to meet on Friday to consider raising rates. The board approved a 14.5 percent increase in 2008 and forecast another double-digit rate [...]

(March 16, 2009, GreenBiz)
This report examines the opportunities and challenges of strategic water management. Five case studies provide perspectives from projects around the world.
Though it’s a worldwide entity, water is treated as a regional issue, IBM says. There is no global market and very little international exchange.
“Water is about quantity, quality, space and time,” says [...]

(March 10, 2009, China Daily)
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 [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, The Guardian)

The world’s pre-eminent climate scientists produced a blunt assessment of the impact of global warming on the US yesterday, warning of droughts that could reduce the American south-west to a wasteland and heatwaves that could make life impossible even in northern cities.
In an update on the latest science on climate change, [...]

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 [...]

(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 [...]

Okay, so this number may shock you, but trust me, I didn’t make it up.  I actually did a year’s worth of research, and I haven’t heard anyone say this yet — in fact, I’d like someone to disprove it.
Here’s what I extrapolated.  I’ll preface by stating that 25% to 40% of all in-building, residential [...]

(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 [...]

Yesterday I was talking to a San Francisco plumber named Jim.
“You know the real reason water rates are going up?” he asked me.
“Because the water utilities’ revenues are down in these troubled times,” I replied.
“Yes, but it’s actually deeper than that,” he said.  “We’ve gotten more water efficient.  We’re not using as much water.”
“I find [...]

(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. 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, The San Diego Union Tribune)
The punishing drought that threatens to disrupt California’s economy could also exact a heavy toll on the environment, from the Anza-Borrego Desert to the mountains casting shadows on Lake Tahoe.
Water managers are bracing to get by with just a trickle of the normal deliveries from state and [...]

(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. 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. 2, 2009, Pat Gao, The Tawain Review)
Though hindered by the artificially low price of water, Taiwan is making headway in conservation and recycling efforts.
According to a report by the Water Resources Agency (WRA) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, by 2021 Taiwan’s total demand for water from conventional sources like rivers and dams will [...]

(Feb. 3, 2009, GreenBiz)
It has become eco-chic in recent years to declare that “water will be the oil of the 21st century” — an essential and limited resource, unevenly distributed around the world, the growing shortage of which will lead to economic power for water-rich nations and poverty for the rest, possibly even resource wars [...]