Urban Water Thread

[M II A II R II K]

Water Plan for the Century: Philadelphia’s Breakthrough


May 19 2012

By Neal Peirce

Read More: http://citiwire.net/columns/water-pl...-breakthrough/

Could it be serious — a major American city makes water conservation the linchpin of its 21st-century planning, the ticket to a future that’s both “green” and economically vibrant? Answer: yes. And that grand old city is Philadelphia. Two centuries past the time it led America in population and power, a quarter-century past a wave of crippling industrial losses, Philadelphia is consciously making water conservation a centerpiece of its economic and environmental strategy — its goal to be the country’s “greenest” city.

- The focus is on stopping storm water from flooding drainage systems and sending untreated sewage and debris flowing into local rivers and streams. (Yearly, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates, more than 10 trillion gallons of untreated urban runoff flow into the nation’s surface waters.) To stem its discharges, Philadelphia is intent on filtering out, block by block, the fast, storm-induced runoff of pollutants — litter, oil, antifreeze, pesticides, bacteria from pet waste — that accumulate on concrete and asphalt surfaces, then wash into and pollute streams and rivers.

- Federal Clean Water Act rules could have obligated Philadelphia to spend as much as $10 billion for a system of massive tanks and tunnels to hold overflows — the “big engineering” solution many cities are following. By contrast, the cost of Philadelphia’s new water-conserving, storm-mitigating green infrastructure may be as little as $2 billion.

- But the benefit may go beyond budget savings, argues Howard Neukrug. First, it’s a route to environmental and social justice. Poor areas have more than their share, he argues, of streams laden with pollutants, plus buried or neglected waterways that are hard to reach and not very attractive when one does. So a city assist to “green” and improve those areas, making them accessible, safe and natural, with buried streams revived and more community open space created, is key, Neukrug insists, not just to the city’s environmental sustainability, but to real equity issues: improved safety and physical attractiveness. Such steps, he argues, don’t just create more greenery, save energy and cool the region in an era of global climate change. He contends they will also enable Philadelphia to draw a larger share of residents able to pay their bills.

- Some 15 parks have been made over with new trees or underground basins to absorb runoff; in alliance with the Trust for Public Land, efforts have begun to transform 500 acres of public land into green play spaces by 2015. Separately, the public schools are being engaged to redeem ugly asphalt-paved schoolyards with greenery — no small matter, notes Neukrug, because removing just 2.5 acres of asphalt and concrete saves 3 million gallons of storm water runoff a year. Some businesses have objected to Philadelphia’s plan since they’re now being charged for the runoff costs of their paved areas, not just the amounts of fresh water they consume. But the city’s “Green City, Clean Waters” initiative received approval from Pennsylvania regulators last June, and from the federal Environmental Protection Agency this April.

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[cabasse]

U.S. Supremes refuse to hear water wars appeal
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/n...er.html6/25/12

Dave Williams, Atlanta Business Chronicle

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear appeals by Florida and Alabama in their 20-year-old water war with Georgia.Without comment, the justices declined to review an appeals court decision denying the two states’ claim that water supply was not an authorized purpose for Lake Lanier when the federally managed reservoir was built in the 1950s. By rejecting the appeal, the Supreme Court made clear that Atlanta-area residents and businesses can continue to rely on the lake as the region’s primary source of drinking water, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said.

[M II A II R II K]

California Envisions Fix to Water Distribution


July 25, 2012

By FELICITY BARRINGER and JENNIFER MEDINA

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/us...imes&seid=auto

Plan: http://www.doi.gov/news/pressrelease...ation-Plan.cfm

Flanked by the interior secretary and a federal environmental watchdog, Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his plan to reconfigure the state’s oversubscribed water distribution system in hopes of satisfying the conflicting demands of Southern California cities, agribusinesses and environmentalists, which have competing claims on the flow of the Sacramento River, the state’s largest source of fresh water. The officials said their plan would ensure both that the ecosystem of the Sacramento River’s delta would be reinvigorated and that water deliveries to the south would become reliable.

- The officials said their plan would ensure both that the ecosystem of the Sacramento River’s delta would be reinvigorated and that water deliveries to the south would become reliable. The $14 billion blueprint envisions both the physical and psychological re-engineering of California’s plumbing, including the construction of twin 35-mile-long pipelines, each about as wide as a three-lane highway, that would tap river water from a more northerly, less polluted location. The pipelines would deliver the water straight to the conveyances in the south, largely replacing a system that pumps water from the murkier southern part of the 500,000-acre delta, disturbing the fragile ecosystem. It also includes financial incentives for consumers of water — municipalities and farming interests — to use less.

- The secretary and Mr. Brown emphasized that the new system would be a hedge against natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes or sea level rise that could collapse crucial levees and disrupt water supplies. Mr. Salazar said the water system was “at constant risk of failure.” Mr. Brown added: “We know there are a couple of big issues, earthquakes and climate change. And this facility is absolutely essential to deal with both of them.” Northern California legislators objected. “This rush to construction without the benefit of science is going to do irreparable harm, to Northern California in particular,” Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat from the Bay Area, said. The plan to move forward was announced at a news conference in Sacramento, about 35 miles from this small town at the northern edge of the delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet.

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[Don B.]

Fascinating read on Phoenix's water supplies and management:

http://phoenix.gov/webcms/groups/int...wsd2011wrp.pdf

Per capita water use in Phoenix dropped from 240 gallons per person, per day in 1990 to about 185 today.

Roughly 50% of Phoenix's water supplies come from the Verde and Salt River watersheds (a system of 13 reservoirs and canals, contained wholly within the state of Arizona), while 40% comes from the Colorado River via the CAP canal. The remainder is supplied by reclaimed water and groundwater pumping.

--don

[M II A II R II K]

Don’t Waste the Drought


August 16, 2012

By CHARLES FISHMAN

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/op...&smid=tw-share

WE’RE in the worst drought in the United States since the 1950s, and we’re wasting it. Though the drought has devastated corn crops and disrupted commerce on the Mississippi River, it also represents an opportunity to tackle long-ignored water problems and to reimagine how we manage, use and even think about water. [

- But just as the oil crisis of the 1970s spurred advances in fuel efficiency, so should the Drought of 2012 inspire efforts to reduce water consumption. Our nation’s water system is a mess, from cities to rural communities, for farmers and for factories. To take just one example: Water utilities go to the trouble to find water, clean it and pump it into water mains for delivery, but before it gets to any home or business, leaky pipes send 16 percent — about one in six gallons — back into the ground. So even in the midst of the drought, our utilities lose enough water every six days to supply the nation for a day. You can take a shorter shower, but it won’t make up for that.

- The average American uses 99 gallons of water at home each day. In the summer, half of that water goes to our lawns, way more than needed. There’s no reason to water in the middle of the day — when the sun steals so much of the water — or to water every day. The lawn-watering restrictions that cities impose during early drought should be made permanent, as Las Vegas and Fresno, Calif., have done. Plumbing fixtures need to be smarter, and more fun. How come I can’t buy a toilet that reports how much water it has used today, this month, this year? How come I can’t buy a spigot that tells me how much water my daughter’s shower took? If we saw the amount we were using, we’d turn off the tap.

- Building codes should be updated to require a new generation of buildings that use less water, in everything from toilets to air-conditioning systems. Zoning rules should be altered to require that all new buildings harvest the rainwater that falls on their land and roofs. The rainwater can be stored for use or returned to the ground. If a city with as primitive a water management system as New Delhi can require rainwater harvesting, so can we.

- The nation’s 55,000 water utilities need to redesign incomprehensible water bills with iPad-style graphics that clearly show how many gallons each customer used this month; how that amount compares to last month, and the same month last year; and how it compares to average use by families in the neighborhood. Americans are naturally competitive: customers who know how much water they consume, compared with their neighbors, typically cut their use.

- Golf courses are huge, often careless users of water. In the last decade, Las Vegas strictly limited the water its golf courses could use, and while the texture of the courses has changed, the golfing hasn’t. Other cities should follow Las Vegas’s example. We also need to rethink where we grow crops. Rice farmers in Texas have howled about having their irrigation water cut off. Rice farming? In Texas? Based on rainfall patterns and projections, we need to be brutally realistic about what kind of crops we should be growing, and where.

- Fixing leaky water mains should be a priority of every urban water utility. There are typically thousands of leaks in a municipal water system, but new digital technology can help utilities identify the biggest ones. Congress should approve a proposed infrastructure bank that would give municipalities low-interest loans to finance capital improvements for water management. Finally, we must get over our aversion to recycled water. Dirty water can be made as clean as you want it, and for most communities, the water they’ve already got in their pipes — storm water, wastewater — is the easiest, cheapest source of “new” water. San Antonio recycles almost all of its water, but it’s an exception — only 7 percent of water in the United States is reused. Water recycling should be as routine as every other kind of recycling.

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[M II A II R II K]

Need Your Water Treated? In the Philippines, Call a Mom & Pop Shop


08/25/2012

By Charles McGlynn

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

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Contrary to the well-known major municipal water privatizations of the last two decades (including that of Manila), the existing utility in Cebu City is not functionally obsolete, nor has it been systematically de-funded in order to justify a contract with a private vendor. Here, the city’s individual entrepreneurs have bypassed the municipal provider on their own.

- While water supply is certainly part of political discourse, the politics of water are rarely transparent. The public is seldom aware of the tradeoffs that are made. Governments are not about to implicitly offer a menu of choices when doing so might undermine a choice that has already been made. In the case of large scale water privatization, the money and complexity are such that contracts cannot be easily be broken without heavy losses and penalties. In 2002, the U.N. decreed that humans have a right to safe, sufficient and affordable water for personal domestic use. But this did not imply that it must be provided by the public sector. In fact, reaching international safe water goals is often the rationale used by international aid agencies to justify privatization.

- Cebu is one of several Asian mid-sized cities where small, private water providers thrive. These providers — hundreds of them — have taken 'small scale' to a new level: they are literally mom and pop operations. Where suppliers in other mid-sized Asian cities are part of a small network, in Cebu none of the private operations has a network. They do not complete with the Municipal Cebu Water Department, or extend its network cooperatively. Instead, all are relying on existing groundwater supplies, whether from a private well or a municipal connection.

- Cebu’s water has become contaminated with a combination of saltwater intrusion and bacteriological agents. The saltwater is a result of the pumping of more water than is being recharged; the pathogens stem from the lack of a sewerage system. The private suppliers that began to appear in the middle of the last decade are actually water purifying operations. As Cebu’s water quality deteriorated precipitously and the municipal water department did not respond adequately, these suppliers appeared in every barangay. Chlorination is the sole municipal method of treatment, and while it kills most pathogens, it does nothing to reduce salinity. The private purification operations handle both problems with aplomb. The systems cost about $4,500, and in many cases were staked by remittances from relatives living abroad. They distribute purified water in containers that range in size from a single cup (or baggie) up to five gallons.

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[M II A II R II K]

America's water mirage

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,5481542.story

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Americans operate under an illusion of water abundance. That fiction makes the reality of water scarcity a particularly hard concept to get across. From California to Florida, freshwater aquifers are being pumped so much faster than they recharge that many parts of the country can no longer rely on groundwater to supply future populations.

- But we can't see dried-out aquifers the way we could see black Dust Bowl storms in the 1930s or water pollution in the early 1970s. So we still pump with abandon to do things like soak the turf grass that covers 63,240 square miles of the nation. We flush toilets with this same fresh, potable water, after treating it at great expense to meet government standards for drinking. We fill the fridge with beef, the shopping bags with cotton T's, the gas tank with corn-made ethanol — all with little inkling of how we're draining to extinction the Ogallala aquifer that irrigates a quarter of the nation's agricultural harvest.

- Since Georgia's Lake Lanier, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is holding Chattahoochee River water again, Atlantans can turn on the lawn sprinklers, never having to think about how that action is wiping out an oyster fishery, and a way of life, downstream in Apalachicola, Fla. But Lake Mead is different. It's one of the few places in the United States where the illusion of water abundance is being exposed for what it is: a beautiful bubble doomed to pop, just like other great national illusions — the unending bull market, say, or upward-only housing prices. For 12 years, the nation's largest reservoir has dropped steadily to reveal a calcium-carbonate bathtub ring, evidence of human folly and nature's frailty — the over-allocation of the Colorado River and the drought still battering so much of the United States.

- The water sector and large water users are so adept at capturing water and moving it around our cities and regions that the average American never has to worry about how it all works — until it doesn't, just like credit default swaps or too-big-to-fail banks. The conveyance of clean water into our cities, and the movement of wastewater out, was among the greatest scientific achievements of the 20th century, one that saved countless lives. But now that achievement has metastasized into an unsustainable entitlement. As cheap water flows from our taps like magic, our freshwaters have become the single most degraded of America's major resources, identified by the USGS and other agencies as having lost a greater portion of their species and habitat than land ecosystems.

- More than any other factor, human use of that freshwater — for agricultural irrigation, energy production and water for our homes and businesses — is to blame. And yet, from Australia to Texas, people and businesses are proving how painless it is to live with a lot less water. In Australia, the backyard rainwater tank has become so ubiquitous that Australian Geographic named it one of its "100 Aussie icons," right up there with the boomerang and the didgeridoo. The water revolution Down Under is not about mega-technologies such as desalination plants but tiny technologies such as micro-irrigation for agriculture and waterless everything — waterless urinals, waterless carwashes, even waterless woks in the Chinese restaurants. Texans in San Antonio have cut their water use in half, mostly by breaking off their love affair with the lawn. In parched north and west Texas, cattle operations such as Dixon Ranches are figuring out how to raise livestock on nonirrigated grasslands by mimicking the historic grazing patterns of Plains bison.

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Lake Mead's "bathtub ring" is stark visual evidence of the misuse of a precious resource. (Julie Jacobson / Associated Press / March 23, 2012)

[M II A II R II K]

Water Piped to Denver Could Ease Stress on River

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/sc...-pipeline.html

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Among the proposals in a report by the Bureau of Reclamation, parts of which leaked out in advance of its expected release this week, are traditional solutions to water shortages, like decreasing demand through conservation and increasing supply through reuse or desalination projects. But also in the mix, and expected to remain in the final draft of the report, is a more extreme and contentious approach. It calls for building a pipeline from the Missouri River to Denver, nearly 600 miles to the west. Water would be doled out as needed along the route in Kansas, with the rest ultimately stored in reservoirs in the Denver area.

- Experts say the plan is reminiscent of those proposed in the middle of the last century, when grand and exorbitant federal water projects were commonplace — and not, with the benefit of hindsight, always advisable. The fact that the Missouri River pipeline idea made the final draft, water experts say, shows how serious the problem has become for the states of the Colorado River basin. “I pooh-poohed this kind of stuff back in the 1960s,” said Chuck Howe, a water policy expert and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But it’s no longer totally unrealistic. Currently, one can say ‘It’s worth a careful look.’ ” The pipeline would provide the Colorado River basin with 600,000 acre-feet of water annually, which could serve roughly a million single-family homes.

- But the loss of so much water from the Missouri and Mississippi River systems, which require flows high enough to sustain large vessel navigation, would most likely face strong political opposition. “If this gets any traction at all, people in the flyover states of the Missouri River basin probably will scream,” said Burke W. Griggs, the counsel for the Kansas Agriculture Department’s division of water resources. But, he added, the proposal “shows you the degree to which water-short entities in the Colorado River basin are willing to go to get water” from elsewhere, rather than fight each other over dwindling supplies, as they have intermittently for about a century.

- The new report addresses the adequacy of water supplies over the next 50 years in the Colorado basin, which includes the central and southern Rocky Mountains, the deserts of the Southwest and Southern California. The study, the officials said, will serve as a road map for future federal action in collaboration with the Colorado River basin states. The Denver Post described the pipeline option in an article last week. As far as future water supplies go, the outlook is not good. Most Colorado River water is currently used for agriculture, but that is beginning to shift as the cities of the Southwest continue to grow.

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[M II A II R II K]

Israelis to design San Diego-area desalination plant

Read More: http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=298645

The Israeli desalination giant that is already responsible for the brunt of Israel’s salty-to-fresh water transformation is now taking on San Diego, in the biggest desalination project to hit the western hemisphere. IDE Americas Inc., a subsidiary of Israel’s IDE Technologies Ltd, will be designing a 204,412-cubic-meter seawater desalination plant for the San Diego region, the company announced on Sunday. The $922 million plan, called Carlsbad Desalination Project, is being administered by Poseidon Resources (Channelside) LP, a subsidiary of Poseidon Water LLC, and will be carried out in partnership with the San Diego County Water Authority.

- Kiewit Shea Desalination, a joint venture between subsidiaries of companies Kiewit Corp. and J.F. Shea Construction Inc., will be providing the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the facility as well as the 10-mile (16- km.) pipeline required to deliver the treated water per day produced there, according to Poseidon Resources. Meanwhile, IDE Americas Inc. will design the processing plant, and will also be responsible for operation and maintenance (O&M) of the plant under a 30- year contract. For the design contract, IDE will be receiving $150m., while the O&M agreement will bring the company $500m. Construction of the plant will begin this year and is slated to begin bringing high-quality drinking water to the San Diego area by 2016, a statement from IDE Technologies said. The hope is that the new desalination plant will help San Diego County Water Authority alleviate its water shortage and achieve its goal of supplying 7 percent of the region’s water through desalination by 2020 – “creating a new map of the American water market,” the statement added.

- “The Carlsbad project that we’re about to embark upon will accelerate both the visibility of desalination in North America and the ability of potential clients, both public and private, to understand how creative project delivery, creative finance and innovative process design allow these types of projects to happen,” said Mark Lambert, CEO of IDE Americas. “The movement in the US toward desalination has been a long time coming, and we’re ready to lead the charge.” While there are many industrial desalination projects already throughout North and South America, there are very few such plants for the mainstream populations of these two continents, Felber told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. “This is a developing market as far as desalination is concerned,” he said. Because this is the first major mainstream desalination project in the region, IDE can by default end up in the “unique position as the leading desalination company in the whole area,” Felber explained.

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Carlsbad power station site in the San Diego area Photo: Courtesy IDE

[bnk]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2624469.html

Great Lakes Water Levels: Feds Look At Reducing Flow From Lake Huron And Michigan To St. Clair River

By JOHN FLESHER 02/05/13 07:29 PM ET EST



TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels ever recorded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday, capping more than a decade of below-normal rain and snowfall and higher temperatures that boost evaporation.

Measurements taken last month show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918, and the lakes could set additional records over the next few months, the corps said. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average and had declined 17 inches since January 2012.

The other Great Lakes – Superior, Erie and Ontario – were also well below average.

"We're in an extreme situation," said Keith Kompoltowicz, watershed hydrology chief for the corps district office in Detroit.

The low water has caused...

"Plunging water levels are beyond anyone's control, but the dredging crisis is man-made," said James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association.

Kompoltowicz said the Army corps might reconsider a long-debated proposal to place structures in a river to reduce the flow of water away from Lakes Huron and Lake Michigan, which are connected.

Scientists say ...

But studies have shown that Huron and Michigan fell by 10 to 16 inches because of dredging over the years to deepen the navigational channel in the St. Clair River, most recently in the 1960s. Dredging of the river, which is on the south end of Lake Huron, accelerated the flow of water southward from the two lakes toward Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.

Groups representing shoreline property owners, primarily in Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, have demanded action to slow the Lake Huron and Michigan outflow to make up for losses that resulted from dredging, which they contend are even greater than officials have acknowledged.

Although the Army corps produced a list of water-slowing options in 1972, including miniature dams and sills that resemble speed bumps along the river bottom, nothing was done because the lakes were in a period of above-average levels that lasted nearly three decades, Kompoltowicz said.

The corps has congressional authorization to take action but would need money for an updated study as a first step, he said. The Detroit office is considering a funding request, but it would have to compete with other projects nationwide and couldn't get into the budget before 2015.

"It's no guarantee that we're going to get it, especially in this budget climate," Kompoltowicz said. "But there are serious impacts to navigation and shoreline property owners from this extreme event. It's time to revisit this."

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