WaterWired

AWRA Conference on Riparian Ecosystems and Buffers: Working at the Water's Edge

The American Water Resources Association (AWRA) will convene this conference in lovely Virginia Beach, Virginia's largest city, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.

Click here for all the information.

From the conference WWW site:

The study of riparian ecosystems and the proliferation of initiatives and programs using riparian areas as buffers and living shorelines have demonstrated the need to remain on the cutting edge of science and practice when working at the water's edge. The Mid-Atlantic Region is home to some of the most aggressive programs to conserve and restore riparian areas and coastal shorelines in the world--making Virginia Beach, VA an ideal location for this conference.

We have worked hard over the past year to organize an excellent agenda which is guaranteed to provide you with new insights into the function and management of the critical riparian landscape and an enjoyable environment for networking with scientists and the managers who are implementing riparian programs and practices on the ground. Meet some of the most prominent scientists in the field of riparian ecosystem research from across the country and around the world. Learn about new approaches and emerging issues in 36 technical sessions and an extensive display of posters, hear from renowned environmental leaders in our plenary sessions, learn about new technology in the Exhibit Hall, and learn about coastal riparian ecosystems on our Field Trip. You will also have time to meet and greet new and old friends at our Reception, Luncheon, Lakeside Barbeque, and other networking events we have planned.

You can't miss this one if you are working in this field. It'll be a winner!

[Disclosure notice: I am on the AWRA's Board of Directors.]

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -- Will Durant

EPA Seeks Comments on Water Strategy to Respond to Climate Change

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking public comment on a draft strategy that describes the potential effects of climate change on clean water, drinking water, and ocean protection programs and outlines EPA actions to respond to these effects. The National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change (click here) focuses on actions designed to help managers adapt their water programs in response to a changing climate.

Other elements of the draft strategy include steps needed to strengthen links between climate research and water programs, and to improve education for water program professionals on potential climate change impacts. The strategy also identifies contributions that water programs can make to mitigate greenhouse gases. Some of the potential impacts of climate change on water resources reviewed in the strategy include increases in certain water pollution problems, changes in availability of drinking water supplies, and collective impacts on coastal areas. The public comment period is open for 60 days.

For more information contact: Roxanne Smith, (202) 564-4355 or [email protected]

Irrigation Districts Going Underground

No, we're not talking about the "underground economy" or something similar, but  really going underground, all in the name of saving water, and perhaps, bringing back the salmon.

Kate Ramsayer wrote in the 25 March 2008  edition of the Bend Bulletin that irrigation districts in Central Oregon are replacing their open canals with pipe to save water.

Ramsayer describes the project currently underway in the Swalley Irrigation District (SID), which is costing $11 million, funded by private and public groups and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB).

She writes:

The district decided to pipe the five miles through Bend because a consultant identified that as the area where most of the water was seeping out.

“That was where the worst water losses were,” said Jan Lee, the district’s general manager. “When subdivisions were built, they do blasting, and the basalt geology gets fractured even more.”

Piping those miles will save the district about a quarter of the water it diverts from the Deschutes, meaning better water quality and habitat for fish, Lee said.

Swalley would like to pipe most of its network of canals. But, according to Tod Heisler, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC), only about 20 percent of the region’s canal system would have to be piped to provide the water savings that biologists say is needed to create a healthy environment for fish and other aquatic wildlife.

What Lee says about the geology is true. The relatively young basalts on the eastern side of the Cascades Range are generally quite permeable, so unlined canals leak like sieves. I've heard some claim a canal can lose as much as 50% of its flow to leakage.

But that leakage likely becomes ground water recharge and can support a riparian ecotone along the canal that also serves as wildlife habitat. And people also like to see flowing surface water. The aforementioned are some of the reasons people don't want to pipe the water.

I remember speaking with one irrigation district manager in the Bend area a few years ago. He had just convinced his disctrict's board and its patrons to undertake costly piping that would ultimately pipe all the canal flow. Some of the old-timers fought him - they simply wanted to see the water flowing in the ditches and weren't concerned with restoring the aquatic ecosystem and bringing the salmon back to the headwaters streams from which their water came.

In fact, the manager told me an interesting story. When he first took the job in the late 1980s, one of the senior irrigators took him around to show him the ditch system. When they got to the stream that supplied the irrigation water, the old guy pointed at the stream and sternly warned, "If that stream still has water in it come August, then you ain't done your job." Almost 20 years later, we stood on the banks of that same stream in August, and there were a few cfs (cubic feet per second) in the channel. The manager told me that they expected to see salmon here in a few years. 

I asked him how he convinced the district's board and patrons to spend the money to pipe the water. He said, "I told them we could fight this [the environmental flow requirements for the salmon] in court, which might take a few million dollars and years of litigation, after which we'd almost certainly lose. Or, we can go ahead now and do the right thing. So it's your call." They decided, some of them grudgingly, to forego the legal fight and just do it. He then told me of his oldest patron, a 78-year-old rancher, who gets out there and moves pipe and welds it and puts the younger guys to shame.

"I'd rather be upstream with a shovel and a ditch than downstream with a decree." -- Western USA water saying

USGS-CDC Report on Domestic Well Water Quality

The USGS, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has released an online report on the occurrence of 11 priority water-quality constituents of possible health concern in domestic wells located in 16 states across the USA. It is available here.

Measures of  water-quality, water use, and other geospatial data (such as for land use and hydrogeology) are compiled, mapped and tabulated for each of the 16 states that are participating in CDC's Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (EPHT).  A brief summary is provided, also by state, on the occurrence of the water-quality constituents and comparisons of their concentrations to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) human-health water-quality benchmarks. Findings can be used to highlight general geographic areas within the states where concentrations may be of potential human-health concern.

The states include California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The overall purpose of the study is to demonstrate through a pilot effort how USGS water-quality, water-use, and associated geospatial data can be integrated in the CDC EPHT network, which is a relatively new nationwide, network of  existing  health and environmental data bases that are being used to drive actions to improve the health of communities. For more information on the breadth of the network, click here.

Ground-water quality in domestic wells is just one of many indicators tracked in the EPHT network. About 17 million privately owned wells across the USA supply water to individual households for drinking water and other household needs, serving about 15 percent of the population or more than 43 million Americans.

Monitoring the quality of water from domestic wells is primarily the well owner’s responsibility as such monitoring is not required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which focuses on public-water supplies. Comprehensive and consistent data on the quality of this resource is therefore limited, for many reasons, including the voluntary nature of testing for a limited number of constituents and a relatively small number of wells.

The 11 water-quality constituents selected for the pilot study (primarily on the basis of expected occurrence and potential human health impacts) included arsenic, atrazine, benzene, deethylatrazine, manganese, nitrate, perchloroethene (PCE), radon, strontium, trichloroethene (TCE), and uranium. USGS samples were collected using nationally consistent field and analytical methodology.

Overall,  inorganic constituents, including radon, arsenic, manganese, nitrate, strontium and uranium, had the largest percentages of samples with concentrations greater than their human-health benchmarks. With the exception of nitrate, these constituents are mostly of natural origin.   In contrast, organic compounds (such as pesticides and volatile organic compounds), whose occurrence in ground water is usually related to human activities, had the lowest percent of samples with concentrations greater than human-health benchmarks.

The newly released study, titled Summary of Selected U.S. Geological Survey Data on Domestic Well Water Quality for the Centers for Disease Control’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, by Roy C. Bartholomay, Janet M. Carter, Sharon L. Qi, Paul J. Squillace, and Gary L. Rowe is available online. Also available online are individual state summaries that include summary tables, graphs, and maps of the water-quality data done for each state. 

USGS anticipates the release of a comprehensive national analysis of domestic wells in Summer 2008, based on samples collected from 2,171 wells by the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. The wells extend across the U.S., including in 48 of 50 states, and represent 31 of the Nation’s 62 principal aquifers used for water supply, irrigation, and other uses. The occurrence and distribution of domestic well quality will be described at the national scale, as well as regionally by principal aquifers. The USGS study will cover 219 physical properties, major inorganic constituents, nutrients, trace elements, organic compounds, radionuclides, and investigate the co-occurrence and common mixtures of constituents of potential human health concern. For more information, visit here.

Ecological Infrastructure: Mounting Price and Risk of Neglect

Sandra Postel has a post on this topic on the AWRA blog. Here is what she says:

We typically think of water “infrastructure” as the collection of dams, levees, canals, pipelines, treatment plants and other engineering works that help provide water services to society. As Gerry Galloway pointed out in the last issue of IMPACT, this infrastructure is sorely in need of maintenance and upgrading. However, another class of infrastructure needs urgent attention as well: the aquatic ecosystems that provide so many valuable, but typically unpriced, goods and services to society.

Healthy rivers, floodplains, wetlands, and forested watersheds supply much more than water and fish. When functioning well, this “eco-infrastructure” stores seasonal floodwaters, helping to lessen flood damages. It recharges ground water, filters pollutants, purifies drinking water, and delivers nutrients to coastal fisheries. Most importantly, it provides the myriad habitats that support the diversity of plants and animals that perform so much of this work and keep the planet humming. It is difficult to place a dollar value on any one piece of this eco-infrastructure, but in 2005, scientists participating in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimated that wetlands alone provide services worth $200-940 billion per year.

The water strategies of the 20th Century worked largely against nature, rather than in concert with it. As a result, ecological infrastructure has been dismantled and degraded at a rapid rate. An estimated 25-55% of the world’s wetlands have been drained, 35% of global river flows are now intercepted by large dams and reservoirs, and more than 100 billion tons of nutrient-rich sediment that would otherwise have replenished deltas and coastal zones sits trapped in reservoirs. River flows are turned on and off like plumbing works, eliminating the natural flow patterns and habitats upon which myriad life forms depend.

Fortunately, forward-thinking planners, resource managers, and engineers from around the world are demonstrating that clean drinking water, flood control, and other human needs can be met in ways that use ecoinfrastructure rather than destroy it – and that such approaches often save money. For example, through watershed protection and aggressive conservation measures, cities as different as Bogotá, Colombia, and Boston, Massachusetts, have postponed construction of expensive water supply capital projects, saving their residents money while protecting critical ecosystems.

More typically, however, the benefits of capitalizing on nature’s services continue to go uncaptured. To cite just one example, following the Great Midwest Flood of 1993, U.S. researchers estimated that restoration of 13 million acres of wetlands in the upper portion of the Mississippi-Missouri watershed, at a cost of $2-3 billion, would have absorbed enough floodwater to have substantially reduced the $16 billion in flood damages. Unfortunately, instead of calling floodplains and wetlands back into active duty, officials in the region permitted even more floodplain development. According to Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, 28,000 new homes and 6,630 acres of commercial and industrial development have since been added on land that was under water in 1993.

Global warming and its anticipated effects on the hydrological cycle – including increased flooding, droughts, and storm intensity – will only add to the value of ecological infrastructure that helps mitigate these effects. For the same reason people buy home insurance and life insurance – to avoid catastrophic losses – societies need to buy more disaster insurance by investing in the protection and restoration of watersheds, floodplains, and wetlands.