FSEM Water Resources

Here is an interesting article, by Associated Press through Google news…  small private landowners in mountains near Salt Lake City own land but no water rights; and one well known owner trying to obtain water rights has brought the matter to the attention of the media.

Salt Lake City owns all the water rights, and is desperate not to set a precedent that may mean it could lose significant amounts of water…  so land owners cannot build.Is that fair?

Could there be a solution? Collecting rainwater? Trucking water in?

It reminds me of both Sam’s discussion on water rights, and Caitlin’s comments on Las Vegas tightly controlling water use so that it has some for the future…

Caitlin found this link from a British newspaper about Bolivia writing a treaty to be presented to the United Nations that would recognize Earth as a living entity (have you heard of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis? summary here). The treaty seeks to establish 11 rights for nature, to include

• the right to life and to exist

• the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration

• the right to pure water and clean air

• the right to balance

• the right not to be polluted

• the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered

I find that water awareness goes in cycles. Just when Charles Fishman’s book is published, so other journalists have started writing about ‘the water crisis’…  just found this Huffington Post article in my google alert on water resources. It has facts and figures that would have shocked you at the beginning of the semester, but that I’m sure you find ‘old hat’ by now! It ties water scarcity to global climate change, which I believe was one of the very first posts on this blog, and it predicts war or conflict over water. It does try to end on a positive note – we can or should revolutionize our use of water (e.g. more crop per drop) – but the document cited has a 2009 date…

Makes me feel that our class did achieve a great deal and that maybe we are ahead of the curve on this!

Another book I recently bought for to consider whether it might be suitable to replace Pearce is by Steven Solomon, titled Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization

The book progresses through time from pre-history to the present explaining how people used technology to improve their water resources, and water in technology (water wheel, steam engine, hydro power) to improve their lives. He says that at present, we need to increase how much water their is (not possible) or increase our efficiency in use of water, or we will no longer be able to progress.

You can see the Amazon listing – with public reviews – here.

The author has a blog page here.

And there is an NPR interview with this author here!

What do you think: possible contender??!

I told you that on Thursday we will listen to parts of an interview with Charles Fishman, who has recently written a book on water…  You can read highlights of the interview, an excerpt from the book, and some summary material here. I also suggest you look at the comments – interesting what people got out of the interview.

I am looking for a new book to replace Pearce; do you think this might be a contender? Why or why not?

My Google Alert on water resources told me that the Indian government is hoping to announce a new national water policy next year, emphasizing conservation in the face of increasing scarcity… it has no information on HOW they will do this, other than to change people’s mind sets…

“New Delhi, Apr 11 (PTI) To solve the problem of water scarcity and encourage conservation of the fast depleting natural resource, the Centre will announce the new National Water Policy next year, the Government said today. Taking a step forward in reviewing the National Water Policy of 2002, the government had recently invited various stakeholders to provide their inputs on water conservation. Stressing the need to change people’s mindset about the precious natural resource, Water Resources Minister Salman Khurshid said the government could change laws to preserve water and if necessary, amend the Constitution. He was addressing a seminar here on charting South Asia’s water future. “We are sitting on a volcano and a major crisis is staring at us,” Khurshid said, adding that his ministry is keen to turn the water scarcity issue into a “people’s movement” to help change the public mindset. The Prime Minister has agreed to address a day-long session of state Chief Ministers on the issue, he said. The minister said while the Centre is formulating a new Water Policy which would incorporate central issues of governance such as environment and development, the states could form their own policies as water is a state subject. Last time the government had reviewed the National Water Policy in 2002. The Policy was to be reviewed from time to time to keep pace with the latest developments in the water sector.”

http://ibnlive.in.com/generalnewsfeed/news/govt-to-announce-water-policy-next-year-khurshid/644960.html

I asked Joni Wilson, UMW Director of Landscape & Grounds about the yellow water. She spoke with Dan Quann, Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing Manager, who explained that the discoloration was the result of water hydrants being flushed in connection with the Randolph and Mason construction project.

Apparently the water was technically safe, but would not have tasted good…

As we know, over time metal pipes normally collect deposits from the water running in them, but when the water flows in one direct little to no evidence of those deposits is seen. When the hydrants were flushed, the water flowed in the opposite direction for a time. This caused turbulence and a back-wash effect that led to those deposits being stirred up and dissolved in the water again, thus causing the discoloration.

For UMW as well as the rest of the city, domestic water is on the same loop as fire hydrant water; so when you flush hydrants, you can disturb domestic water…

Dan gave Joni some ‘City of Fredericksburg Water Distribution System 2009 Annual Water Quality Reports’, which she will give me – but I think I found the link online.

This page describes the report and what it shows; this page shows the data – looks like our water is pretty good.

I also found that the city has put out a request for proposals to be submitted for a study of the water and sewage management system – you can read that here; the introduction states,

“The City of Fredericksburg is seeking qualified management and consulting firms to perform a
thorough financial and management analysis of the City’s water and sewer systems. The City
specifically desires recommendations with regard to two areas:
1) The adequacy, equity, and efficiency of the City’s current fees and charges for
service; and
2) The efficiency and effectiveness of the City’s current organization concerning water
and sewer services.”

Interesting – relating to this class, one hopes that they are looking for efficiency in running both treatment and sewer systems as well as maintaining or updating the infrastructure of the system.

Since I’m on the Fred water web site, I thought I’d post info about domestic pricing, which you can read about here. This page allows one to calculate rates; my water meter (for a 4-bedroom house) is the first on the list, so I pay a base rate of $7.45 and then $0.185 per 100 gallons of water used; for sewer (which is, of course, inseparable even if my used water goes for watering plants, not down the sewer!), I pay a base rate of $8.56 plus $0.386 per 100 gallons. Note that sewer is more pricey than water – which makes sense if the water is from a fairly clean source, the city has to do more to clean up the sewer water than to clean up the water I am about to use…  If I use none, my bill is $16.01.

My normal water & trash bill is just over $100 every 2 months, so about $50/month. The trash portion is $15.75, so water & sewer is close to $35. Subtract the required ‘base fees’ ($16.01) and I’m paying about $19 per month for clean water delivered to my house and dirty water taken away. Phenomenally low, I think…  I doubt that my family would use less if we paid twice as much.

In case no one has ever heard of WWD before (don’t worry I wouldn’t have known either if it hadn’t been trending on my twitter) I thought I would post the link to the website for everyone to go and look at if they feel so inclined. here

Also thanks to my twitter I found this page that National Geographic has published about how we can make little changes in our lifestyles to help conserve water. If anyone took the water footprint calculator quiz you may recognize some of the articles since both pages are part of the sites publication on freshwater titled “There is no substitute for water.” here

One thing that I found very interesting  was that the article on the Nat. Geo. site linked to a page on the EPA’s website about locating one’s watershed. In case anyone was wondering ours is the Lower Rappahannock Watershed and you can read all about it here

Angela sent me this email on Friday – I don’t know which dorm she lives in, but here was her news!

“Today has been a big water issue for my dorm! This morning my whole dorm was surprised with YELLOW water. The water fountains, toilets, showers, everything was bright yellow. No one can tell us why it happened but the maintenance came and are instructing everyone to run their water to get the yellow water out of the system. I guess I have to but I’m feeling extremely guilty at this water waste!!! Maybe the tap water isn’t safer at times…”

Absolutely not!  I’ve asked Facilities Services what was going on and will share when I get some more info…  clearly, this would be one of those ‘crisis’ times that invokes instant distrust and is so difficult for public utilities to get over!! I suppose it could have been a prank – but a pretty elaborate one. It is common for students to put soap bubbles in the Palmieri Plaza fountain (between Monroe, Willard & Virginia halls) in the spring when it starts running again…

Kelsey emailed me that she was exploring Stumbleupon and found this page which reports that Pepsi has “managed to make a new plastic bottle consisting of only plant materials, therefore breaking the link and reliance on petroleum” – how neat is that?! I wonder if they will be using them for water bottles as well as soda… They will do a pilot in 2012 and hope to go into general production thereafter. The official Pepsi release is available here.

The report says that the new bottles use a “mix of switch grass, pine bark, corn husks” but also “allows for other plant materials including orange peel, potato peel and oat hulls to be used”.   The new bottles are indistinguishable from the old ones and have the same feel and strength…

As I looked this up at different sites to verify it, I found several comments saying that these bottles are not really biodegradable (e.g. here in the comments low on the page, and here under the Rose Bowl heading…) – I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with creation of PET plastic out of plant material. The molecular structure has been altered. But, in any case, it will a) reduce or remove use of petroleum in bottling and b) that means that petrol by-products are not leaching into the landfill/oceans as these things decompose.

Apparently Pepsi also makes SunChips – they recently came out with a compostable chip bag that was SUPER noisy! People didn’t like it, so they don’t use it on all varieties any more…

Goes to show what a HUGE company with dollars for research and devlopment can do when they realize that many of their ‘users’ would like to be environmentally friendly…