WaterWired

A Watery Foundation Indeed: Tom Swihart's Florida Water Blog/WWW Site and Book

Tom Swihart, who spent a career in water management with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, just started a blog/WWW site, Watery Foundation, devoted to Florida's water issues. He also Tweets.

He's also writing a book on the subject, due out in May: Florida's Water: A Fragile Resource in a Vulnerable (get those dikes up!).

A description of the book :

It combines a description of the “watery foundation” of the state, a history of water management in Florida, separate chapters on each of the five water management districts, and a series of issue chapters.  I also included a detailed chronology of water management and a detailed glossary.   So far as I know, it is the only account of a state’s water management experience written by one who has actually been involved in it.

I am always interested in Florida; most of the people I grew up with in New York now seem to live there. And I think the world of Cynthia Barnett, author of Mirage. She has a forthcoming book as well.

Like I said, get those dikes constructed.

"Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long." -- James Lovelock

Second UNESCO/UC-Irvine 2011 Groundwater Conference: Irvine, 30 November-3 December

Note added on 6 September 2011: This conference has been canceled and will not be rescheduled.

Professor Jean Fried just sent me the first announcement for the Second UNESCO/UCI 2011 Conference on Groundwater Resources Management: Adaptation Measures to Water Scarcity - Science and Policy Responses:

Download Second_Irvine_Groundwater_Conf_First_Annc

From the UNESCO-IHP WWW site:

Groundwater resources play a unique role in responding to the challenges posed by water scarcity and climate change. The sustainable management of these resources provides essential qdaptation solutions based on innovative methodologies and new technological approaches.

The Second UNESCO/UCI 2011 Conference on Groundwater Resources Management: Adaptation Measures to Water Scarcity - Science and Policy Responses will evaluate the progress made in groundwater management since the First Conference in 2008. It will also explore the areas where further progress can and should be made as well as identify the needs for legal, institutional and policy instruments and their links to science.

The four-day event will consist of plenary sessions, parallel technical sessions and a number of workshops (optional). The four themes of the conference are: 1) Role of groundwater in adapting to the impacts of global and climate changes; 2) Strengthening groundwater management for sustainable ddevelopment; 3) Innovative methods and technologies for groundwater management; 4) Groundwater education, cooperation and governance.

The Conference results will be presented at the 6th World Water Forum (March 2012, Marseille, France) and the Earth Summit Rio +20 (May 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

The WWW site is not yet available; if you click on the the conference link, the PDF will open.

Too bad these dates virtually coincide with those of NGWA's Ground Water Expo in Las Vegas: 29 November - 2 December. I understand that it's hard to find a 'non-conflicting' spot for a meeting, but the UNESCO/UCI folks should have foreseen this one. The NGWA event, the signature USA annual groundwater event, has been held at virtually the same time of the year for as long as I can remember.

Interestingly enough, this same conflict occurredwith the first UNESCO/UCI conference and the Expo in 2008. It didn't seem to depress the NGWA Expo's attendance, even among the scientists and engineers, the ones most likely to attend the UNESCO/UCI conference.

Today's quote, at the risk of a fatwa:

"We are but walking water." -- The Prophet Muhammad

Admitting Failure: It Don't Come Easy

Sorry for the poor English; I'm channeling Ringo Starr's 1971 hit. OMG! It's40 years old?

So who would create a WWW site/blog titled, Admitting Failure? It is hard enough to admit a mistake, but failure? Who wants to do that, especially when you're an organization that relies on donors?

I speak from experience here - I head a foundation involved in WaSH in Central America and issues of failure and unsustainable projects sometimes keep me up at night. You hate to admit failure when you are spending donors' money; you fear they will stop donating. But you must do it; it's called 'honesty' and 'accountability'.

So who is devoting a site to failure?  

Engineers Without Borders-Canada, that's who. From the homepage:

The development community is failing… to learn from failure. Instead of recognizing these experiences as learning opportunities, we hide them away out of fear and embarrassment.

No more. This site is an open space for development professionals who recognize that the only “bad” failure is one that’s repeated. Those who are willing to share their missteps to ensure they don’t happen again. It is a community and a resource, all designed to establish new levels of transparency, collaboration, and innovation within the development sector.

Get involved – share failures, build knowledge and encourage others to do the same – so we all benefit, today.

My hat's off to these folks. They even have a failure report:

 

 Almost ten years ago I remember the annual meeting of a hydrophilanthropy for which I volunteered. Each group would get up and describe its most recent project. I suggested to one of the leaders that we have some reports on failed projects so we could learn even more. The look on his face told me that was a bad suggestion on my part. Yep, everything was fine.

This site promises to be a great resource; I hope the development community takes full advantage of it.

We all need to admit, and learn from, failure. Take my word for it.

Thanks to Aguanomics, where I found this site.

“All my successes have been built on my failures.” – Benjamin Disraeli (from the site)

LWI Report: Well Rehabilitation in Nicaragua

 Living Water International (LWI) just sent me the final report of this project that was supported  by the Ann Campana Judge Foundation and the National Ground Water Research and Educational Foundation (NGWREF).

The project involved the rehabilitation of wells in six communities in Nicaragua. These wells provide drnking water to 1.070 persons. A new India Mark II hand pump was installed in each well.

 Download LWI Nicaragua report- ACJF and NGWREF

Very good work!

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." - Charles Darwin

Is WaterWired Aboard the Barlow Bandwagon?

That just may be true. Is a Shill alert in order?

I met Maude Barlow last night at the Water, Conflict, and Human Rights: Emerging Challenges and Solutions Conference in Salt Lake City.

At the hotel, while waiting for our ride to the venue, she greeted me warmly (we had never met before). We chatted in the car, before and after her talk, and on the ride back to the hotel.

Here's our picture taken by friend Dorian Roffe-Hammond. I could not entice her to make horns above my head. It was great seeing Roffe-Hammond, who drove 12 hours from his  new home in Lincoln, NE (he's now a graduate student at UNL) to attend the conference.

I enjoyed her talk. She's a very good speaker - not given to fiery rhetoric but reasoned speech. She spoke fondly of Peter Gleick, Robert Glennon, Jamie Workman and his book, Heart of Dryness, and the Great Basin Water Network, the group working to keep Great Basin water resources out of the hands of SNWA.

I still don't agree with all she says, but I found myself agreeing with her more than I thought, especially on the issues of the human rights to water and sanitation and the plight of those who don't have access to both. We're also not as enthused about markets as some are, although I would guess that she is less enthused than I. 

But I don't necessarily believe that water privatization is bad. How it's done - with proper oversight and clear expectations - matters greatly.

She said she is trying to join two 'threads'': 1) scientists who are studying water shortages and water/ecosystem degradation; and 2) human rights proponents.

Barlow mentioned her three principles:

1) Nature put water where it's needed. With some exceptions (not elucidated), we should not be moving large amounts of water from watershed to watershed.

2) Water is a common heritage of all people - a 'public trust'.

3) There is a human right to water.

She concluded by responding to questions for about 25 minutes. A reception was held after her talk.

Peter Gleick, who will keynote tonmorrow, was also there and it was good to see him after nine years. Joseph Dellapenna, water lawyer extraordinaire from Villanova University , was also present. Good to see Joe; we'll be together on a panel on Friday.

I think of Barlow in the same way I think of filmmaker Michael Moore - I do not agree with all she says, but she's needed to poke a stick in society's eyes every so often. I suppose I could say the same about David Zetland (which might appall him).

It was a treat finally meeting Maude Barlow. A gracious, warm, caring, and psasionate person, she has to be one of the nicest persons I've ever met. We promised to stay in touch.

I will still call her when she gets her water facts wrong, but I have an entirely different level of respect and admiration for her.

"Legislation may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.