LeakBird

(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 [...]

(May 1, 2009, The Chicago Tribune)
The recent drop in Huron water levels that led the Georgian Bay Association to commission its own study resulted largely from drought and warmer temperatures, which boost evaporation rates, the report says.
“Climate is the main driver of the lake level relationships between lakes over time,” it says. “There has [...]

(March 22, 2009, Reuters)
If water is the new oil, is blue the new green?
Translation: if water is now the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, should delivery of clean water be the same sort of powerful political force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change?
And, in another [...]

(March 21, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Earthquakes and severe storms could destroy hundreds of miles of mostly earthen levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in coming decades, according to a state report that provides the most detail yet on the vulnerabilities of the hub of California’s water system.
Among the findings in the [...]

(March 18, 2009, ESPN)
After 39 years in the fish and wildlife management business, I have concluded that only two things really affect fish and wildlife populations: habitat and climate. Most of the contributions made by detailed harvest management practices and manipulations of fisheries by hatcheries have generally had relatively minor impact on the sustainability of [...]

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 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 [...]

(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 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, 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 [...]

(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, [...]

(Feb. 11, 2009, Ben Block, WorldWatch)
In regions where pumping and distributing water requires significant electricity use, policies that lead to reduced water consumption could address climate change more efficiently than requiring businesses and households to use less energy, according to water expert Peter Gleick.
“Some of the cheapest greenhouse gas emission reductions available seem to be [...]

(Feb. 12, 2009, The Deseret News)
The House passed Wednesday a bill by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to create new research programs into how to conserve water, use it more efficiently and reuse wastewater.
“Many experts are starting to see water as ‘the new oil’ in terms of what a precious commodity it is,” Matheson said. “The [...]

(Feb. 6, 2009, Planetizen)

As long as temperatures, population, and industrialization continue rising, the earth’s water supply is in big trouble, as mapped here by German researchers.
“These projections of per-capita water availability were made by Martina Floerke and colleagues at the University of Kassel in Germany.
They combined different types of forecast to obtain their results. A [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, MultiTrode)
The Florida 2008 results include the biggest challenges faced by water & wastewater utilities, the effect of the current economic problems on the capital and operational budgets, the importance of energy cost and CO2 emissions and many more insights into how utilities are thinking.
Florida water & wastewater utilities face many problems in [...]

(Jan. 18, 2009, WaterWired)

This brief, 6-page paper by some folks form Oakland’s East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) has some advice for water utilities about preparing for climate change.
Download OPF0109
Enjoy!

(Jan. 12, 2009, BoingBoing)
Researchers at the Southern Nevada Water Authority analyzed tap water from 19 US water utilities. New Scientist shares the list of the top 11 detected compounds, fortunately all of which were “found at extremely low concentrations.” According the Environmental Protection Agency, there’s no cause for alarm but there could be risk “especially [...]