WaterWired

Videos: 'Comics for Conservation'

Thanks to Emily Green for these cute videos promoting water conservation.

From the site:

Comics all over the US are getting together to help spread the word about the importance of conserving water. Help your favorite comedian win $500 for the environmental charity of their choice by liking their YouTube Video.

For more information and more comics, go to www.wylandfoundation.org/comicsforconser­­vation

A special thank you to the improv for their support of Comics for Conservation.

Everyone can do their part this Earth Month. Save Water! Save the Planet! Go to mywaterpledge.com

 

Yakov Smirnoff:

 

Jon Lovitz:

 

Okay, maybe they're not award-winners. I liked Bradley's the best. View them all here. 

"The good news is that real-world hands-on conservation is alive and well and catching on across the America I travel." -- Ted Nugent

Paper: The 'Double Whammy' - How the USBR Can Help the West Adapt to Drought & Climate Change

Okay - here is the full title: Federal Water Law and the 'Double Whammy': How the Bureau of Reclamation Can Help the West Adapt to Drought and Climate Change by Reed D. Benson

This paper was sent around on one of my lists but it's now available here, where you can download a PDF:

Download Benson_SSRN-id2049522

Abstract

The water resources of the American West — especially the Southwest — are at risk from climate change, as an already arid region grows even drier, warmer, and prone to drought. The dual threat of drought and climate change is a particular challenge for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which operates hundreds of federal water projects throughout the region. USBR has some authority to deal with these problems under the 2009 SECURE Water Act (for climate change) and the 1992 Drought Relief Act (for drought). This article considers USBR’s climate change and drought programs, examining both the authorities and the implementation. It concludes with recommendations on how USBR could better use the Drought Relief Act to help reduce the impacts of future water shortages.

Enjoy!

“Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.” - Dwight Morrow

Tuesday Twofer Pubs: 1) Governance & USA Integrated Freshwater Management; 2) The Law & Policy of Hydrofracking

A couple of publications came across my screen yesterday, courtesy of Ken Reid of AWRA. Both look vary good.

If you have trouble accessing them here, you can find them on the 2013 Reports and Publications page of the Sustainable Water Resources site.

1) The Role of Governance in Shaping Freshwater Management in America: Toward Integrated Resources Planning, by Sarah Hughes and Robert Wilkinson

Download US_Freshwater_Management

Introduction

Freshwater is one of the world’s most precious resources, and managing it sustainably is a critically important goal. Fresh water and healthy aquatic ecosystems provide valuable services that society has come to depend on (Daily 1997). While many factors determine the outcomes of freshwater management in the U.S., the aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which we can attribute these outcomes to the operation and evolution of governance systems. In this paper, we refer to “governance” as the steering influence of the rules, decision making processes, and incentives provided by both governmental and non-governmental actors, including the private sector and civil society.

In short, while the principles and objectives for freshwater management have changed significantly over the last 100 years, governance has remained a key factor determining freshwater management outcomes in the U.S. Governance systems have helped to distribute authority and incentives in freshwater management; they shape our responses to social and environmental change, and they determine whose voices are heard, and in what decision making venues. In turn, governance systems have created freshwater management challenges and solutions, and they will continue to do so in the future. As society’s goals for freshwater management change, our governance systems may also need to be changed. New challenges and expectations are confronting local, state and national level agencies in the U.S. that are designed to execute basic service functions in a static environment (Gleick 2003; Christian-Smith et al. 2012). Governance innovations – such as integrated resources planning and collaborative decision-making – have important potential to address these new challenges.

 This paper examines the role of governance in U.S. freshwater management chronologically: first in the historic dam-building era of 1900-1970; second in the current demand-management era from 1970 to the present; and finally in the context of addressing the challenges of the future, including climate change and aging infrastructure. We conclude that innovations in governance are a key to achieving long-term freshwater sustainability in the U.S.

2) The Law and Policy of Hydraulic Fracturing: Addressing the Issues of the Natural Gas Boom, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Vol. 63, Issue 4, 2013

This issue of the journal contains a series of articles on hydraulic fracturing, some of which go beyond water resource concerns. The articles include such topics as state preemption, regulatory issues, horizontal drilling, water management, clean energy, climate change, the Gulf oil spill, and others.

Download 63CaseWResLRev4

Introduction

For at least four decades, energy and the environment have occupied important places in American policy and legal debates. At one time nuclear power played a central role in the energy field. More recently, advances in drilling technology and changes in energy economics have made the potential for obtaining oil and gas from shale formations around the United States increasingly attractive while provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which unlike other environmental statutes contains few if any exceptions. Professor Robbins explores a wide range of potential violations of the Endangered Species Act and their implications for the expansion of fracking.

The other piece that seeks to place hydraulic fracturing into existing regulatory frameworks is by Nicholas Schroeck and Stephanie Karisny. These authors emphasize provisions applicable to the Great Lakes that might have implications for the regulation of fracking in the region: the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, which was negotiated by the eight Great Lakes states in the United States and the two Great Lakes provinces in Canada, as well as the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, which was endorsed by the legislatures of the Great Lakes states and approved by Congress. In particular, provisions that restrict new and increased diversions of water from the Great Lakes could serve as the predicate for restrictions on fracking. Further, Schroeck and Karisny propose new binational regulations to supplement the provisions of the Compact.

Our third broad theme picks up on Professor Merrill’s second question, about the risks of hydraulic fracturing. Joseph Tomain takes a less sanguine view of the risks and a more pessimistic view of the implications of fracking for the development of clean energy. In addition to the prospect of water pollution that Merrill emphasized, Tomain notes the threats of air pollution and community disruption. Indeed, he warns that the growth of the shale industry could reinvigorate the dominant hydrocarbon-based energy system at the expense of less polluting energy sources. Tomain concludes with a series of suggested regulatory initiatives at the federal and state levels.

Elizabeth Burleson also casts a skeptical eye on fracking. She emphasizes that in many places the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling results in the emission of large quantities of methane, which contributes to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and aggravates the problem of climate change. To address this concern, Burleson emphasizes the potential for ameliorating the consequences of methane emissions through a combination of monitoring, technology-forcing measures, cap-and- trade mechanisms, and other devices that could enhance the prospects for mitigating climate change.

The last paper exploring the risks of fracking comes from Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, who analyzes the implications of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for regulations of hydraulic fracturing. She focuses on three principal aspects. First, she emphasizes the inherent conflicts of interest that undermined the effectiveness of the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. This agency had primary responsibility for regulating offshore drilling but also was in charge of leasing offshore drilling locations. Second, regulators gave insufficient attention to knowledge gaps in understanding the risks of offshore drilling and did not adequately factor known risks into their approach. Third, authorities were not adequately prepared to address emergencies that might arise from the use of this technology.

The final piece in the symposium focuses on economic issues. Timothy Fitzgerald addresses three different aspects of this subject: the extent to which the new technology enables substantial productivity increases, the growth in energy supply arising from this technology, and the tradeoffs between increased energy production and environmental quality. He emphasizes the continuing uncertainties in our knowledge that prevent us from accurately assessing the costs and benefits of the new technology.

This remarkable set of papers and the symposium itself were the result of initiatives undertaken by the editors of the Law Review. Particular credit belongs to Paul Janowicz, the symposium editor, and Benjamin Ristau, the editor-in-chief. As faculty advisor to the Review, I am delighted to have this opportunity to honor their extraordinary work on this project and to recognize the remarkable work of the editors of Volume 63 throughout their tenure on the board. 

Excellent! Enjoy!

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know that we don't know. But there also unknown unknowns. These are things that we don't know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld (thanks to Bill and Rosemarie Alley, Too Hot To Touch, p. 272)

GRACE Guru: Groundwater's Going...Going...

The GRACE Guru himself, Jay Famiglietti, sent me the figure below from a recent paper [J. S. Famiglietti and M. Rodell, Water in the Balance, Science, 340, 1300 (2013)] showing changes in water storage in various parts of the USA. As far as groundwater goes, it's not a pretty picture.

Here is the UCI-UHCCM press release:

Download UCCHM Press Release 1

The photo: View this photo 

The paper: Download Water in the Balance_SciencePerspectives_2013

Here is a story from Science Daily.

Jay and his co-author Matthew Rodell make the point that the GRACE data are critical to monitoring and managing regional (> 200,000 square kilometers or 80,000 square miles) water resource systems, including aquifer systems. Future GRACE missions should be developed to increase apatial resolution to about 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles) and temporal resolution from monthly to weekly or biweekly.

From the Science Daily article [emboldening mine]:

"GRACE data provide new insights into regions in the U.S. and around the world where water issues have already approached the crisis stage. Their potential for game-changing contributions to regional water management is just beginning to be realized," says Famiglietti, who believes that maps like his and Rodell's make a strong case for immediate action, and ultimately, for a comprehensive, national water policy in the United States.

Love that last statement! A US national water policy? Maybe...just maybe....Nahhh!!!

The GRACE data are really something, As Jay, others, and I have noted, it is a game changer with regard to water management and also transnational water issues - the whole conflict issue.

I do have one concern with the enthusiasm over GRACE: people - some water managers, policymakers and decisionmakers - might begin to think that all we need are the GRACE data and no longer will have to collect information on groundwater levels, streamflow (stream gaging), soil moisture, ('ground-truthing') etc. I can hear them [legislators?] now: 'Think of all the money we can save!' Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with respect to groundwater. We need to collect groundwater-level data and monitor groundwater withdrawals; in fact, we need to expand both activities. We also need to assess how much groundwater we have. GRACE data cannot do this; they can only inform us of changes in the amount of groundwater stored.

I know of no substitute for good old-fashioned hydraulic head data to calibrate and validate groundwater management models. GRACE data can help in the modeling process, but as of now, and the foreseeable future, GRACE cannot do it all. It's another tool - albeit a highly sophisticated one - in the toolbox. I know Jay knows this. 

Both Jay and I will be panelists at the upcoming groundwater event at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, Underground Intelligence: The need to map, monitor, and manage Canada’s groundwater resources in an era of drought and climate change, on 25 June 2013: 

Download POWI-GroundwaterAgenda-June10

Should be fun; Zetland will be there, too.

Figure Caption: Groundwater storage trends around the United States as measured by the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites between 2003 and 2012. GRACE data show water losses in major U.S. agricultural regions such as (1) California’s Central Valley (-1.5 ± 0.1 centimeters, or -0.59 ± 0.04 inches, per year) and (2) the Southern High Plains Aquifer (-2.5 ± 0.2 centimeters, or -0.98 ± 0.08 inches, per year), caused by overreliance on groundwater to supply irrigation water. Regions where groundwater is being depleted as a result of prolonged drought include (3) Houston (-2.3 ± 0.6 centimeters, or -0.9 inches, per year), (4) Alabama (-2.1 ± 0.8 centimeters, or -0.83 inches, per year) and (5) the Mid-Atlantic (-1.8 ± 0.6 centimeters, or -0.71 inches, per year). Water storage is increasing in (6), the flood-prone Upper Missouri River basin (2.5 ± 0.2 centimeters, or 0.98 inches, per year).

 The graphs surrounding the main image are monthly time series of GRACE-derived anomalies of total water storage (in centimeter-equivalent water height) for the points annotated (1) – (6). Monthly data are displayed as darker blue lines. Trend lines (in centimeters per year), in red, have been added to each time series plot. Monthly errors are shown as light blue shading..

 Data from University of Texas CSR Release-05 and prepared by Caroline de Linage, UC Irvine.

 From J. S. Famiglietti and M. Rodell, Water in the Balance, Science, 340, 1300 (2013). Figure appears as Figure S1 in Supplementary Online Materials, www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/science.1236460/DC1 

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Video: 'Water Policy for the People'; See You in Toronna, @aguanomics!

David Zetland, economist extraordinaire, gave this TEDx presentation at Wageningen University in June 2012.

The blurb from the WWW site:

David Zetland is a senior water economist in the Department of Environmental Economics and Natural Resources at Wageningen University in the Netherlands where he is working on an EU-funded project, "Evaluating Economic Policy Instruments for Sustainable Water Management in Europe." He blogs on water, economics and politics ataguanomics.com and is the author of The End of Abundance: Economic Solutions to Water Scarcity (2011). He is passionate about making it easier for people to accomplish their goals, improving the ways we interact with each other, and enjoying the beauty of the natural and human worlds.

Here is his assessment of the talk:

In the talk ("Pushing a String"), I spoke on the difference between markets/ecosystems in which push/pull competition produces more robust outcomes and water systems where push mechanisms give very little power to consumers, who are faced with the option of accepting the service/choices they are given or giving feedback that's ignored (i.e., pushing on a string). I go on to give fail examples of Las Vegas (sell you cheap water then tell you how to use it), Westlands Water District and the millenium development goal for clean drinking water. I also provide win examples to show how each of these fails could be reversed.

The talk was a challenge for me, not just because my mike fell off, but also because I was using no notes, trying to work a string (not very well, unfortunately), and speaking on this topic for the first time. That said, I think I did a decent job (7/10), and the chocolate was quite good.

 

Both David and I will be panelists at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs' groundwater event on 25 June 2013: 

Download POWI-GroundwaterAgenda-June10

Should be fun.

"If climate change is a monster, water is its teeth." - Unknown