WaterWired

Bottled Water Debate on NPR

NPR's Talk of the Nation's 23 July 2007 show (click here) featured a discussion/debate on bottled water.

Featured speakers:

Ross "Rocky" Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, who recently banned SLC departments from using taxpayers' money to purchase bottled water.

Bill Marsh, author of "A Battle Between the Bottle and the Faucet", recently published in the New York Times (see my 15 July 2007 post).

Joesph Doss, president and CEO of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA).

Good show - give a listen.

By the way, while at the Eugene (OR) airport on Monday I saw a local brand of bottled water that proclaimed it had "mono-atomic minerals". So, single atom minerals - if I recall my mineralogy, that would mean things like gold, silver, platinum, native copper,.....??? It was $2.50 for a 17-ounce bottle, which is almost $19 per gallon. Oh yeah, it was also pH balanced (7.7) with extra oxygen. What was that P.T. Barnum said? Probably a big seller in Eugene (a "Boulder-type" town).

I read yet another assessment of top municipal waters in the USA. This time it was Salt Lake City, with Charleston, SC, in second place. Guess Mayor Rocky can justify his actions.

Here is a related story ("Advocates Hope to Turn Tide Against Bottled Water") from the 22 July 2007 Chicago Tribune (you may have to register to read it - free).

"If you don't know where you're going you'll wind up someplace else." -- Yogi Berra

Forensic Hydrology

Southwest Hydrology, the trade magazine published bi-monthly by the University of Arizona's SAHRA (Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas) Program, features "Forensic Hydrology" in its current (July-August 2007; volume 6, number 4) issue. As Publisher Betsy Woodhouse indicates, "forensic hydrology" has traditionally dealt with investigations of water contamination and the need to identify the causes, sources, and perpetrators. But the term can be more loosely defined to include any investigation of the history of a parcel of water.

It's the broader definition that is employed in the current issue. I've listed the contents below.

• Overview article by Richard W. Hurst;
• Three articles about using environmental isotopes to track ground water sources, perchlorate origins, and salinity sources;
• Randy Bassett's article about when forensic isotope analyses go bad;
• Tools for petroleum hydrocarbon releases;
• Environmental forensics; and
• Microbial source tracking (MST) to identify sources of fecal coliform.

The last article also provides a link to the 331-page report done for the New Mexico Environment Department. Largest sources of E. coli in the Middle Rio Grande basin: avian (33.5%) and canine (21.9%).

You can download the entire issue below or clink on the link at the beginning of this post.

Download SWHVol6Issue4.pdf

Subscriptions to Southwest Hydrology are free; just go to the magazine's page WWW page or email them at [email protected]. Don't let the name fool you; it covers far more than just the Southwest USA. Betsy Woodhouse, who also founded it, has done an excellent job with this magazine.

"The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand but in what direction you are moving." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Depopulating the American Southwest: Is the Time Coming?

Aqua Blog Maven, who runs the excellent Aquafornia blog, alerted me to this article from the 22 July 2007 Toronto Star speculating that global warming, water scarcity, etc., might trigger a depopulation of the Southwest USA.

The article notes cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Buffalo, Rochester, et al. - the "Rust Belt" cities - have fresh water, lower temperatures, relatively cheap housing, no forest fires, etc.

The article will make you think. Remember what Marc Reisner said about the American West being a beachhead.

10,000,000 people in the Phoenix-Tucson megalopolis in 2050? Uh-huh. Where's the water coming from? Agriculture transfers? Desalination? The Great Lakes? What was I saying about draconian measures?

"The signifcant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when they were created." -- Albert Einstein.

The "Lake" in Darfur: Euphoria and Myopia "Rain"

There has been a lot of press recently about the discovery by Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing of a large lake, about the size of Massachusetts, in Darfur. This has given way to euphoria over the belief that all this water could mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Before we pat ourselves on the back, let's do a little reality check.

1) Dr. Farouk El-Baz's team did not discover a lake, they found the contours of a lake basin (see blue-green area in the above photo labeled "Northern Darfur Megalake") that presumably held surface water in the past when the region was wetter. The satellite radar data produced signatures similar to those noted in the East Uweinat basin (also discovered by El- Baz) in southwestern Egypt, so it is logical to assume that the Darfur radar data indicate a similar feature. In the East Uweinat basin, hundreds of wells now irrigate about 150,000 acres (about 61,000 hectares) of crops.

2) From (1) above, it's logical to assume that since the lake is no longer there, some of the water it once held infiltrated downward to fill the pores of the sandstone (presumably) underlying the region, producing a substantial subsurface water body from which water can be extracted by wells.

3) Satellite data, as with all remotely-sensed data, need ground truthing. Until wells are drilled into the rocks beneath the basin, we will not know for sure whether underground water is present, how much there is, how much can be extracted by wells, and how long it will last.

4) If underground water is present, what is its quality? Will it be potable water, or suitable for irrigated agriculture? Will the land be suitable for irrigated agriculture?

5) Let's assume that lots of good-quality underground water does exist. Who will control access to it? How will it be used? Who will pay to maintain it? Will the Sudanese government insist on large-scale irrigated agriculture development as Egypt opted for in the East Uweinat basin, a practice that would be foreign to many of the Darfur people? The water could just as easily be used to subjugate the people as to liberate them. Given Khartoum's track record in Darfur, it stretches the imagination to think that the water would be used beneficently. And let's not forget that water is not the only issue in Darfur. It's more complicated than than; read Lydia Polgreen's article, "A Godsend for Darfur, or a Curse?", in the 22 July 2007 issue New York Times.

Here is the BU news release.

But first, let's find the water.

"Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theories; then you can borrow money from them." -- Mark Twain

The Struggle to Secure Water in the Southwest USA

While trying to think of a title for this post, I realized why not just parrot the title (with a "USA" added) of the May-June 2007 issue of Western Water magazine, published bi-monthly by the Water Education Foundation (WEF) in Sacramento, CA. You will have to pay $3 to read the entire issue but it's worth it.

Before I delve into the article and the issues it broaches, let me say that the WEF is an excellent source for information and educational materials for teachers, students, and others interested in the mysterious, wonderful, frustrating milieu we call "Western water". Check it out. 

Back to the article - Editor Rita Sudman Schmidt assembled a group of Colorado Basin "movers and shakers" to discuss the region's water future. The idea for this discussion had been floated to the WEF by Rita Maguire, former head of Arizona's DWR (ADWR) and now CEO of Think AZ, a research institute working on public policy issues in AZ. Maguire wanted to look beyond Arizona and the WEF was the mechanism for her to do this. She wrote a white paper, and the group addressed some of the issues she raised in it.

I met Maguire in Merida, Mexico, several years ago when we both spoke at a workshop organized by the US and Mexican National Academies of Sciences. She impressed me.

Appropriately, the meeting took place in Las Vegas last March with Maguire facilitating. The discussion group consisted of:

• Patricia Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority
• Herb Guenther, Arizona DWR
• Jeff Kightlinger, Metropolitan Water District of SoCal
• Jerry Zimmerman, Colorado River Board of California
• Dennis Strong, Utah DWR
• Jayne Harkins, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation - Lower Colorado Region Office
• Sid Wilson, Central Arizona Project

Note that three Colorado Basin states are not represented: New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of the article, but some of my impressions. Be forewarned: this may be some pretty stream-of-consciousness type stuff.

One of the things that struck me was the continued growth in the Las Vegas area that is spilling over into Mohave County, Arizona - both to the southeast (Kingman, AZ, area) and northeast (Mesquite, NV area) of Las Vegas.

I drove through Mesquite four years ago en route to Las Vegas from Albuquerque and was amazed at what it had become in the 15 years since I had last been there. I also drove through St. George, Utah, and was similarly awed. It was fitting that before seeing either place, I had driven past Lake Powell, which at the time was about 35% of capacity. The last time I had seen Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam was the spring of 1983, when Reclamation was sweating the lake spilling over the top of the dam. 

Kingman is off the above map, about 80 miles southeast of Boulder City/Hoover Dam on Highway 93. It is on Interstate 40 (old Route 66); see the map below. Kingman is the seat of Mohave County, with a metropolitan area of about 35,000. I always think of it (albeit unfairly) as nothing more than the childhood home of Andy Devine (born in Flagstaff, actually) - who played Jingles, Wild Bill Hickok's comedic sidekick in the 1950s TV series, and hosted the kiddie show Andy's Gang - and little else. I'm showing my age.

I read several months ago of a developer's plans to build 60,000 homes in the Kingman area. I thought it was a misprint. How many people can local Dairy Queens employ? But it was not a misprint. According to the Western Water article, the NW corner of Arizona will grow by 500,000 people in the next 25 years! Las Vegas is fueling the growth. A new bridge is being constructed across the Colorado River just below Hoover Dam. When completed in 2010 it will connect Interstate 15 with Highway 93 and significantly shorten the commuting time between Kingman and Las Vegas.

Now, my take on all this.

1. Where is the water for all the new residents in NW Arizona and elsewhere coming from? Ground water is being increasingly invoked as a potential source; ADWR is studying aquifers in Mohave County. But is pumping ground water sustainable? And how about the transboundary nature of certain aquifers? Current compacts among states really don't deal with ground water very well, if at all [see my 15 July 2007 post]. When ground water is treated, it's often viewed as "tributary" ground water - connected to surface water. But if you are pumping from depths of 2000 feet, that assumption may not be a good one. And what do you do when the ground water is gone?
2. What the article further illustrated to me is the continuing disconnect between land use planning and water planning. We recognize it, but do little about it. Do we really want or need 500,000 more people in NW Arizona? Remember, that growth is due to growth in another state (Nevada) that is spilling into Arizona as people look for cheaper housing. In the face of higher energy prices, are all most of these people going to commute to the Las Vegas area? Are these communities really supposed to be sustainable for 100 or 200 years?
3. The article reminded me of a perceptive comment from a US government scientist a few years ago. He was giving a Southwest USA drought talk, and afterwards, he said that what drove him crazy was seeing Western governors going to Washington with their palms outstretched asking for drought-relief money while preaching the virtues of growth back home. Political courage, anyone?
4. What really disturbs me is that these problems are regional in nature, yet we are dealing with them piecemeal - sometimes not even at the state level, but at the county or municipal level. What Clark County (Las Vegas area) does influences Mohave County and the state of Arizona. Yet Clark County doesn't factor that into its decisions and policies. The converse is true as well. But we all examine the problems from our own little perspective - what's good for AZ, or NV, or Kingman, caring little about how our decisions impact the other folks.
5. With all due respect to the discussants, who are very bright people, I did not read anything provocative or visionary. The people represented certain water constituencies, so I didn't expect them to propose solutions that might counter their constituencies' agendas.   
6. A friend of mine recently told me he thought the future would see power being concentrated in smaller governmental units, away from states, to counties and municipalities. In the Southwest USA, I think the opposite might occur, where "regional authorities" run the show. Given our track record, that might not be such a bad idea. Certainly, draconian measures may be required. But we need to do a better job than we are doing now.
7. Andy's Gang was ahead of its time, what with Froggy the Gremlin and his wonderful double entendres, his foil, played by Vito Scotti, Midnight the Cat, Squeaky the Mouse, Gunga Ram, et al.

After I read the Western Water article, I went back to the late Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert to reread some passages [recall that the complete title is Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water]. His book, selected one of the best 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century by the Modern Library, should be required reading for everyone in the West and for all people crossing the Mississippi en route here. The man was prescient. Here's what struck me:

"Westerners call what they have established out here a civilization, but it would be more accurate to call it a beachhead." -- Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, p. 3.