WaterWired

Bottled Ocean Drinking Water: Next Big Thing?

Just when I thought we might be making the world safe from overuse of bottled water, along comes something else that stretches the bounds of common sense: bottled deep (>200m) ocean water - for drinking water. Two recent articles in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the China Post discussed operations either planned or underway in Hawaii or Taiwan.

As drinking water, deep ocean water's "cachet" is its presumed isolation from atmospheric and near-surface pollutants, rendering it free from "bad stuff" while containing a variety of minerals.

Four companies already operate on Hawaii's Big Island. The water is used in beauty products, food, and for drinking water (desalted, of course). Deep Ocean Hawaii (shown - courtesy of the Star-Bulletin) recently began operating a vessel that will pump ocean water from a depth of about 600m and desalt about 80,000 gallons per day with the ability to expand to 500,000 gallons per day.

Koyo USA, Hawaii's top producer, sells its MaHaLo Hawaii Deep Sea water for about $67.50 (retail) for a 15-bottle case of 1.5 liter bottles. That's about $11.35 per gallon. They produce about 900,000 bottles per day, with 200,000 of those going to Japan.

In Taiwan, the government issued its first deep ocean water certificate to the Tungruen Company, which will sell it as drinking water. It will sell 0.5 liter bottles for about 75 cents each, or about $5.70 per gallon. Tungruen will pump water from a depth of about 710m.

View the articles at:

starbulletin.com/2007/04/30/business/story02.html

www.chinapost.com.tw/archive/detail.asp?ID=107016&GRP=&onNews=

Go figure....

But some reason prevails. ABC News recently reported about the "return" of tap water.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." -- H.L. Mencken

Snake-Columbia Basin Energy-Water Summit: Agenda

The Snake-Columbia Basin Energy-Water Summit is now just about four weeks away (see my earlier post on 11 May 2007).

The conference will be held June 25-27, 2007 in Boise, ID, at the Red Lion Boise Downtowner Hotel. The registration fee is $150, and that includes lunches, the icebreaker reception, and break refreshments.

You can register at our WWW site, where you can also get information about booking a hotel room.

We have produced a preliminary agenda, and here is an updated brochure:

Download snake_columbia_summit_agenda.pdf

Download snakecolumbia_energywater_summit_brochure.pdf

See you in Boise!

"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up." -- Steven Wright

Denver Water's Creative Conservation Ad Campaign

I found out about this great ad campaign for Denver Water from Robert Osborne's Watercrunch blog a while ago and forgot to repost it.

The ads were produced by Sukle Advertising + Design. Check out their WWW site - they have a sense of humor.

"Vodka corrupts; Absolut vodka corrupts absolutely." -- Stefan Kanfer

Effects of Climate Change on the Colorado River: Summary of 30 Years of Research

Brad Udall of Western Water Assessment has written an excellent, 5-page article summarizing six major studies on the effects of climate change on the Colorado River that have been produced since 1979.

Download wwa_may_2007_feature.pdf

I got this from John Fleck's excellent blog. John is the science writer for the Albuquerque Journal and has written extensively on Southwestern USA climate and water issues.

Udall reported that the studies differ in three major ways: 1) sources of future climate information; 2) techniques used to generate runoff from climate; and 3) uses of 'operations' models used to predict reservoir impacts.

Udall noted that as the years have progressed, climate effects on runoff have relied more on results from GCMs (General Circulation Models) and less on arbitrary assumptions about future temperatures and precipitation.  According to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) "the likelihood of significantly increased precipitation counterbalancing increased warming appears to be reduced." The most recent GCMs posit that precipitation in the basin will remain approximately the same, and temperature projections are in rough agreement with the scenarios and GCM results used in the past. 

What remains uncertain, according to Udall, is how much reduction in runoff will occur if current precipitation projections hold. In the six studies he cited, runoff changes ranged from -11% in 2100 to -45% in 2050. Udall noted that these two numbers roughly bracket the range of all previous studies that do not contain large increases in precipitation.

Looks like one thing is certain: more research is needed.

  "A conclusion is just the place where you got tired of thinking." -- Steven Wright

Penn and Teller Dis Bottled Water

Katie commented on my recent post Bottled Water and the Environment Presentation. She was kind enough to mention that Penn and Teller's three-part bottled water bash from their show Bullshit! is on YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IkUbW15ty70&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1J-01hkGOHo&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AcZjhW2Zwbo&mode=related&search=

Enjoy (but some of the language is strong)!

"Bozone: the invisible layer that surrounds stupid people and won't allow smart ideas to penetrate." -- Firesign Theater Newsgroup