LeakBird

(May 4, 2009, Marc Gunther, GreenBiz.com)
As best as I understand the issue (which is not very well), there’s little or no danger that the world as a whole will run short of water, which makes water different from other natural resources like oil, gas or precious metals. Using water wisely is important, nevertheless, because more [...]

(March 20, 2009, Michael Pollak, The New York Times)
Q. Eight ounces of Poland Spring (plus a nice plastic bottle) costs about a dollar. How much does the same amount straight from the tap cost? I mean, how much does it really cost?
A. One two-thousandth as much, according to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Both the [...]

(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 16, 2009, TerraDaily)
Tens of billions of dollars are needed annually to fix the world’s water systems, but policies to address the global financial crisis could help meet the target, the OECD says.In a report to the World Water Forum in Istanbul, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says demands for fresh water [...]

(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, The Environment News Service)
Global demand for water is greater today than it has ever been and demand will increase in the future, thousands of delegates to the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul heard at their opening session today. Driving the demand for water are population growth and mobility, rising living standards, [...]

(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 [...]

With all of the rain California has been receiving over the last few weeks, water levels are back to 80% in Sierra snowpack terms and there is “drought improvement“.  The 167-mile stretch of the Hetch-Hetchy system, which provides 85% of the Bay Area’s water, can continue to flow at four fifths capacity.  But water restrictions [...]

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 4, 2009, David Zetland, Aguanomics)
RT writes:
I am an economist from Australia who works on among other issues urban water policy.
I read with interest your nicely-written Forbes article.
We seem to have pretty much a similar situation here in Australia and a few of us make similar suggestions.
I’d love to understand more about the your situation [...]

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 [...]

(March 2, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Californians have grown accustomed to digesting odd ideas that routinely flow out of Sacramento, many of them not so palatable.
But are they ready for this one?
Last week, amid a third year of a statewide drought, the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District adopted a strategy to sell treated sewage as drinking [...]

(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. 26, 2009, Bloomberg News)
On a cloudless December day in the Nevada desert, workers in white hard hats descend into a 30- foot-wide shaft next to Lake Mead.
As they’ve been doing since June, they’ll blast and dig straight down into the limestone surrounding the reservoir that supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas’s water. In September, [...]

(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, International Rivers)
This March, Istanbul Turkey will host the 5th World Water Forum, the world’s largest international event on water issues. The World Water Forum is organized every three years, and brings together representatives from around the world to discuss policies of water. However, the forum is dominated by state officials and private [...]

Chris Brown wrote a post on the economics of water for the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, in which he argues that water shortages wouldn’t exist in a free market. To put it another way, with government intervention, water shortages are virtually guaranteed.  I happen to agree with Mr. Brown, however, it’s easier to acknowledge what [...]

(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, Aquadoc, WaterWired)
John Cloud’s TIME article on the Top 10 Food Trends of 2008 lists the war on bottled water as #4:
In 1992’s The Player, Tim Robbins’ character, the consummate Hollywood insider, showed his sophistication at restaurants through his ability to differentiate among various kinds of bottled water. But today, that same [...]

(Feb. 17, 2009, Aguanomics)
Tom Graff of EDF asks:
Can we use the attention the drought has focused on water to address long-term issues, including most notably the effects of climate change, simultaneously with the focus on addressing this year’s immediate drought-related problems?…and here’s what I said:
Now is the time to introduce the radical (!) notion of [...]

(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 [...]

(Jan. 23, 2009, Aguanomics)
Speaking of water managers out of control, Aquadoc mentions “ethics” in this WaterWired post:
Several years ago, I listened to a talk by a Federal scientist about climate change in the Southwest. After the talk, he was unusually candid. What really annoyed him was seeing Western governors trekking to DC, hats in hands, [...]

(Jan. 21, 2009, Aguanomics)
So, a few days ago Mike Wade said that “water markets” already exist in California, but facts appear to contradict that assertion.
As a businessman once said to me “Water markets? Great — where does the WSJ publish the price?”
In fact, water IS traded here and there in California, but there are so [...]