(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 [...]
(April 28, 2009, Planet Green)
According to a study by the Environmental Working Group, bottled water is just as polluted as a tap water. In fact, twenty percent of bottled water has more chlorine than California’s state regulations will allow in tap water.
(Original Post Here)
(April 22, 2009, Fox News)
The study examined stream flow in 925 of Earth’s largest rivers , and found significant change in about one third of them over the past 50 years.
(Original Article Here)
(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 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 10, 2009, The Orange County Register)
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on Californians to reduce water use in the face of severe drought conditions, 78 households in The Reserve neighborhood of San Clemente were resting easy.
Those residents had signed on to participate in The Reserve Outdoor Sustainability Project, a study measuring the effects of efficient [...]
(March 10, 2009, Aguanomics)
The title of this post is my reformulation of “missing the forest for the trees,” and the subject of the post is a new report from the Pacific Institute.
In Water Scarcity and Climate Change: Growing Risks for Businesses and Investors, the PI assesses the various risks to water supplies that companies should [...]
(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 [...]
(Feb. 10, 2009, ChennaiOnline)
India is expected to experience severe water stress by 2020 with the per capita availability of water projected to be less than 1,000 cubic metres.
Indian water scenario was a matter of grave concern, as 85 per cent of water was used for agriculture, 10 per cent for industry and five per [...]
(Jan. 23, 2009, San Francisco Chronicle)
San Francisco must upgrade its emergency water system to avoid a catastrophe like the fire that devastated the city after the 1906 earthquake, according to a report to be released today.
Improvements to the system – a network of pipes and storage facilities – won’t be cheap, according to the report, [...]
(Jan. 24, 2009, Aquadoc)
From a media release written by David Stauth of Oregon State University:
Regional warming and drought stress are the “dominant contributors” to a rapid increase of tree mortality in old growth forests across the West during the past 50 years, a new report concludes, with the Pacific Northwest the hardest hit of all areas [...]
(Jan. 13, 2009, Pacific Institute)
Are we running out of water?
“Is there such a thing as ‘peak water’? There is a vast amount of water on the planet—but we are facing a crisis of running out of sustainably managed water,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. “Humans already appropriate over 50% of [...]
(Jan. 20, 2009, New York Times)
Six states bordering the Ohio River are joining the Environmental Protection Agency in the largest study of its kind to identify and reduce dangerous levels of bacteria that plague the waterway.
Unsafe levels of fecal coliform, or E. coli, have been identified in about 500 miles of the 981-mile river, which [...]
(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. 16, 2009, Peak Oil News)
…new evidence by scientists from the University of Rhode Island and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, published recently in the journal Eos, indicates that the water level in the lake system is highly sensitive to climate changes.
“In the distant past, there were great fluctuations in the water level [...]
(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 [...]
