WaterWired

Best Medicine - A Sewer? Fresh Water Facts. More Water News Sources. Ahead of His Time

In the British Medical Journal's recent poll, clean water supplies and sanitation were rated the greatest medical advance since 1840, garnering 1,795 votes out of 11,000 cast. Second place (1,642) went to antibiotics, the first choice of the public voters. Most medical professionals who voted opted for anesthesia. The results were reported in the January 19, 2007 edition of www.timesonline.co.uk. The article noted that waterborne disease is responsible for about 80% of all sickness in the world.

I just returned from a very good meeting, the Third National Water Resources Policy Dialogue, convened by the American Water Resources Association (www.awra.org) in Arlington, VA, January 22-23. The title alone provoked a number of snide comments, such as "We have a national water resources policy?" But what got me were a couple of ill-advised statements. One speaker noted that the Sea of Galilee (aka Lake Kinneret) provides all the water for Israel and Jordan, oblivious to the fact that both countries also pump ground water. In another comment, that same speaker demonstrated his ignorance of basic hydrology by declaring that 20% of all the world's fresh water is contained in the Great Lakes [of Canada and the USA].

I've heard the latter comment a lot, reading it in newspaper articles and even hearing it from fellow water professionals. So what's wrong with it? Well, it neglects fresh ground water, which far exceeds fresh surface water. What the speaker should have said is that 20% of all the world's liquid fresh surface water is contained in the Great Lakes. Omission of the "liquid" modifier might be forgivable, but not the word "surface". Call me a nitpicker, but this is Hydrology 101 and whereas I don't expect the general populace to know the difference, professionals should. One estimate of the earth's fresh water is at:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclefreshstorage.html

which shows fresh ground water to be about 100x greater than fresh surface water.

Let me recommend some more good online water news sources.

U.S. Water News - www.uswaternews.com

The Water Report - www.thewaterreport.com

Brown and Caldwell's Water News - a group of seven (the eighth, Texas Water News, debuts February 28) water e-newsletters for regions of the USA, issued weekly unless otherwise indicated: California (daily); Pacific Northwest; Arizona (actually, the Southwest); Florida; Great Lakes; Northeast; Southeast. To subscribe, visit www.bcwaternews.com. To subscribe to the upcoming Texas version, go to www.bcwaternews.com/texas.

Brown and Caldwell's Water Resources page: www.bcwaternews.com/waterresources/index.htm

U.S. Geological Survey - water.usgs.gov

I'll close with a prescient comment made 114 years ago by John Wesley Powell (I believe at an irrigation conference in St. Louis). Recall that Powell also suggested that political boundaries should correspond to watershed boundaries.

"You are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights for there is not sufficient water to supply the land." -- John Wesley Powell, 1893

Ethics and Water, Part 2

I received some favorable comments (but not posted as such) on the first Ethics and Water post of January 17.

However, I was remiss in neglecting to mention something of interest to my post on ethics. My good friend and colleague at the Texas Tech University School of Law, Professor Gabriel Eckstein, convened a symposium on Precious, Worthless, or Immeasurable: The Value and Ethic of Water on November 2-4, 2005, in Lubbock. I was unable to attend this seminal event. You can get some information by going to www.watersymposium.net or www.texastechlawreview.org/symposium/symposium_index.htm. I have taken the liberty of pasting the introduction to the symposium below.

   "The value and ethic of water encompasses the complex inter-relationship between human beings and fresh water resources. It addresses how societies view and interact with this unique substance from diverse perspectives, sometimes complementary, but often contradictory. For some, water is an integral component of the natural environment; for others, it is a property right and a commodity that is subject to the free market; still others regard water as a heritage of cultural, religious, and societal significance. To all, however, water is an absolute necessity, a fundamental substance for life as we know it. 

    Despite, or possibly, because of the irreplaceable role that water plays in so many aspects of life and society, water is all too often the subject of controversy. Disputes over fresh water resources in the American West, the Middle East, and elsewhere have pitted farmers against municipalities, businesses against environmentalists, “haves” against “have nots”, and state against state. In the Klamath Basin of Oregon, for example, environmentalists and Native Americans have long challenged farmers and irrigators, as well as the government, for greater instream flows. In West Texas, millionaire T. Boone Pickens is sparking controversy by seeking to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer to sell to thirsty cities like Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso. In the Middle East, control over and access to scarce water resource is a major issue among Israel and the Palestinians, as well as their neighbors.

   Fundamental to all of these controversies is the diversity of values and ethics that adversaries ascribe to water. Such values and ethics are often at the core of disputes over water. These values and ethics greatly depend on personal perspectives, social and economic ideals, cultural, religious, and societal backgrounds, and even politics. Ultimately, they serve as the basis for legislative and regulatory action and business decision-making, as well as the means for resolving conflicts over water resources.

      The symposium – Precious, Worthless, or Immeasurable: The Value and Ethic of Water – will feature a diverse panel of experts from around the nation and abroad who will explore the value and ethic of water. They will do so by discussing how this precious liquid is valued and assessed with regard to law and regulations, economics and commerce, people and communities, culture and religion, and others aspects of society that are impacted by water. They will also consider how water is perceived by different communities, peoples, and entities throughout the world, as well as address the roles that the public, the private sector, and government agencies play in developing rules and standards for managing water resources at all levels of society, from the purely local to the decisively global."

I trust you will find this enlightening.

"Tell my soldiers what they really fight for, and the ranks would be empty in the morning." -- Frederick the Great.

Oregon Water Book

If you are interested in an excellent book about water in Oregon I recommend Rick Bastasch's The Oregon Water Handbook: A Guide to Water and Water Management, recently (December 2006) published by the Oregon State University Press and available from your favorite bookseller for about $25. The book is a revision of Rick's 1998 opus, Waters of Oregon: A Source Book on Oregon's Water and Water Management.

"There is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid people who ask questions." -- Chris Berman

Ethics and Water, Part 1

How often have you thought about ethics and water? If you are like me, probably not very often, and I am supposed to be a professor on the "cutting edge of thinking" in water. Sure, I have read articles about some ethical issues, such as our approach to water issues in the developing world, water pricing issues, location of waste disposal sites, professional practices, etc., but I never thought much about them. What's worse, in over 30 years of teaching I never really introduced many ethical considerations into my classes, except in a very cursory manner. 

All that changed about five years ago, when I came across a book that enlightened me about water and ethics: Navigating Rough Waters: Ethical Issues in the Water Industry, edited by Cheryl K. Davis and Robert E. McGinn (2001, published by the American Water Works Association). The book is a collection of 24 articles about - you guessed it - ethics and the water world. Davis, McGinn, and the AWWA have done us all a great service. Over the years there have many articles and books about ethical issues in water; what's different about this one is that it is the first in-depth treatment with a number of thoughtful articles and case studies. It covers water treatment, planning and management, international work, water privatization, manufacturing, consulting, "fear-mongering", sustainability, intergenerational equity, and more. It broaches issues that I probably would not have considered "ethical" questions.

The book has some excellent discussion topics at the end of the articles. Some of them deal with trying to decide what you should or should not tell the public about their water supply. For example,if you are a water utility manager and your water-quality testing identifies a "hot-button" chemcial (hexavalent chromium, arsenic, TCE, whatever) in the water but at concentrations well below the MPC or any known health risk, are you obligated to tell your customers, knowing full well there will be a demand to remove it from the water supply when there is no compelling evidence it is harmful? What if the customers want it removed, at an additional cost that will impact low-income customers? What are your obligations?

Let's try this one. Is it ethically incumbent upon water officials from developing countries to adopt and use less rigorous but affordable wastewater reuse standards geared to their countries instead of "importing" those that prevail in the developed world?

The conversion of wastewater into drinking water presents some interesting dilemmas. The book has an excellent little study about NDMA (N-nitrosodimethylamine) in the Orange County Water District's water supply and the praiseworthy approach taken by the OCWD.

What about a foreign, multinational firm that partners with a local firm to present a facade of "local control" to win a contract for a project in a developing country?

The book also discusses the Principle of Intergenerational Equity and the current generation's obligations to the ones following. 

I'm sure you can think of many other situations. I was so impressed with the book that I started broaching these topics in my classes and will continue to do so. I only wish I had some formal training in ethics.

The book costs about $150 and is well worth it. If you are an AWWA member there is a discount.

By the way, would it be ethical to get a friend who is an AWWA member to buy it for you? Just thought I would ask.

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." -- John Cotton Dana

Like Speed, Water Kills

As toxicologists are wont to say, it's not the substance that kills, but the dosage. Yeah, even plain old water can kill. The latest episode is a really sad one - the senseless death of a young mother who entered a radio-station promotion trying to win a Nintendo Wii game console for her children.

The folks at KDND-FM in Sacramento staged a promotional event where contestants were given 8-ounce bottles of water (Oh my God - bottled water is the culprit!) to drink every 10 minutes. The person who could do this the longest without going to the bathroom won the Wii. Jennifer Strange came in second, and a few hours later she was dead of water intoxication. A UC-Davis physician interviewed on KCAL (Los Angeles) said the excessive water causes the brain and other organs to swell, and the expanding brain, confined by the rigid skull, can cause death. 

The contestants were allegedly not informed that drinking too much water without urinating could be hazardous.

See the KCAL story at  http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_015200726.html, originally reported by the Associated Press.

"When water chokes you, what are you to drink to wash it down?" -- Aristotle