WaterWired

RWSN Synthesis Report: Code of Practice for Cost-Effective Boreholes

Kerstin Danert was kind enough to send me this Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) publication, Code of Practice for Cost-Effective Boreholes: Synthesis Report:

Download Synthesis Report Final

I posted other RWSN publications on 17 August 2010 - Water Well Costing and Pricing Field Note;  17 July 2010 - Water Well Construction Code and Accelerating Self Supply: A Case Study from Zambia; and  on 22 May 2010 - Seven Myths of the Rural Water Supply Sector.

Enjoy!

"An axe does not cut down a tree by itself." -- Burkina Faso proverb 

Paper: The Century Ahead - Searching for Sustainability

This paper from Christi Electris just came across my screen. It is from the open-access journal Sustainability and its special issue on Sustainable Futures.

Here is the email message that accompanied the paper:

We are happy to share with you a new article, "The Century Ahead: Searching for Sustainability", just published in the special issue on Sustainable Futures in the journal Sustainability. In this article, we highlight our water use and water stress scenario results to 2100 in our quantitative analysis of four very different futures.

The Century Ahead: Searching for Sustainability
Paul D. Raskin, Christi Electris and Richard A. Rosen
Tellus Institute, 11 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116, USA

Abstract: The global future lies before us as a highly uncertain and contested landscape with numerous perils along the way. This study explores possible pathways to sustainability by considering in quantitative detail four contrasting scenarios for the twenty-first century. The analysis reveals vividly the risks of conventional development approaches and the real danger of socio-ecological descent. Nonetheless, the paper underscores that a Great Transition scenario—turning toward a civilization of enhanced human well-being and environmental resilience—remains an option, and identifies a suite of strategic and value changes for getting there. A fundamental shift in the development paradigm is found to be an urgent necessity for assuring a sustainable future and, as well, a hopeful opportunity for creating a world of enriched lives, human amity, and a healthy ecosphere.

Download Century_Ahead_Searching_for_Sustainability

The authors deal with a lot more than just water: food, climate, energy, industry, land use, forestry, social aspects, etc.

I did not see the kitchen sink but it is probably in there somewhere.

Interesting to note that from paper receipt to publication was just about five weeks.

Take a look at some of the other papers in this special issue.

Enjoy!

"When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright."  -- Erich Fromm

Hip-Hop Hydrology - 'Water Cycle Jump'

From Bill Nye the Science Guy. Thanks to WaterHour and columbiawater. Here's the link.

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.: -- Unknown

 

Emily Green's The Week That Was, 15-21 August 2010 - And More!

Another excellent weekly compendium of water world events awaits us once again from the mind of  Emily Green.

Yes, it is time for another The Week That Was, 15-21 August 2010.

So what is this a picture of? Looks like something from my old stratigraphy and sedimentation book (remember Krumbein and Sloss?). Emily will tell you its significance. Looks like I should have saved some of those cross sections I drew lo those many years ago.

Sad story from Pakistan - more flood woes. Click here if you want to help.

And something unusual from - where else - the Balkans. In 1992 so many people in Bosnia were being killed and dumped into a lake that the bodies were clogging the culverts at a dam in Serbia. See what happens when you lose a battle in 1389 and can't let it go?

EPA announced that the allowable sediment load into Chesapeake Bay will be between 6.1 and 6.7 billion pounds per year. Whew, that's a relief! Last year it was 8.09 billion pounds. We're making progress!

And, from North Dakota, I learned this tidbit: "... the decision to build large-scale water projects usually is driven by political power rather than economic considerations." Perspicacious folks, those NoDaks!

And speaking of the above, read about the Kern Water Bank. Seems the state got fleeced on that one.

And Penn State says, 'FRAC you," but not to a bunch of spelling-challenged Battlestar Galactica  fans. They've now got a Marcellus Shale Center in Happy Valley.

Some more stuff: Las Vegas water; Hershey's syrup and the Gulf spill; watering lawns in LA; North Korea rains; hot Julys; precipitation in SoCal; wastewater treatment.

Emily's always entertaining and informative! Give her a read.

“...stop throwing bodies into the lake because they were clogging up the culverts in the dam.” -- appeal from Serbia to people in Bosnia who were throwing bnodies into a lake (1992)

Report: Serious Damage - Tribal Peoples and Large Dams

Lloyd G. Carter recently sent me this report from Survival International titled Serious Damage. It's about the effects of large dams - those higher than 15 m or with storage capacities exceeding 3 million cubic meters - on indigenous peoples.

Download Serious_Damage_final

If you think large hydroelectric dams provide 'green' energy, you might rethink your definition of 'green' after reading this report.

Here is the blurb from the WWW site:

To mark the UN Day of Indigenous People, Survival has released a new report highlighting the devastating impact on tribal people of a massive boom in dam-building for hydropower.

Drawing on examples from Asia, Africa and the Americas, Survival’s report Serious Damage exposes the untold cost of obtaining ‘green’ electricity from large hydroelectric dams.

A rapid increase in global dam-building is currently under way. The World Bank alone is pouring $11bn into 211 hydropower projects worldwide.

The impact on tribal people is profound. One Amazonian tribe, the Enawene Nawe, has learnt that Brazilian authorities plan to build 29 dams on its rivers. Across the Amazon, the territories of five uncontacted tribes will be affected.

The Penan tribe in Sarawak face eviction to make way for a dam, and tribes in Ethiopia could be forced to rely on food aid if a dam being built on the famous Omo River is not halted. One man from the Omo Valley’s Kwegu tribe, said, ‘Our land has become bad. They closed the water off tight and now we know hunger. Open the dam and let the water flow.’

Hundreds of Brazilian tribespeople will gather this week to speak out about the controversial Belo Monte dam, which threatens several tribes’ land and vital food supplies.

This brief report, just 18 pages, succinctly describes the problem, provides examples, and recommends solutions, most of which likely won't be enthusiastically accepted by large-dam proponents. 

Recommended reading; it's far too easy to forget about this issue.  

"The whole of this great arsenal of war factories in the Ruhr depends for its water on three enormous dams. The Moehne. The Eder. And, the Sorpe. They control the level of the canals and supply a lot of hydroelectric power as well. When those are full they hold four hundred million tons of water. Just think of the chaos if we could break those walls down." -- Barnes Wallis (played by Michael Redgrave), The Dam Busters (1955)