No wonder fish are pissed at us

PATANCHERU, India – When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.

One of the things predicted for the future

Was escalating fights over water and water rights, between cities and farms, between states, between neighbors.

Via Bryan of Why Now? water rights negotiations between three Southern states have broken down:

WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne acknowledged Saturday that White House-brokered water negotiations among Alabama, Florida and Georgia have failed.

Without an agreement, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies will begin implementing a water-sharing plan of their own, Kempthorne said in a letter to the governors.

"Regrettably, it will necessarily be a solution being directed to the states instead of our much hoped for solution coming from the states," he wrote in the letter, released Saturday.

Bryan points out:

This involves three Republican states and a Republican mediator, and has been going on forever, because none of them wants to make any tough choices. None of these states has done anything to limit growth in areas where the infrastructure is inadequate, and all have cut taxes to the point that they can’t afford to pay for what’s needed.

And from the AP article, the finger-pointing begins:

The talks appeared to unravel further in recent days, with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue saying the water problems facing Florida and Alabama are not as critical as Georgia's and accusing the other states of approaching the talks without the same urgency as Georgia.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley responded by saying that prospects for a negotiated solution were "indeed dim" if Perdue could not acknowledge that Georgia's needs are no more critical than those of the other states.

Against that backdrop, Georgia officials said Saturday they will not make a severe drought declaration for the lower Flint River Basin in the southwest part of the state.

No politician wants to be the one to tell us to turn off our taps and stop wasting potable water. Telling people to cut back is not the American way. We want it and we want it now and we don't expect to have to pay for it.

But the bill has come due:

Then, in 2002, the third dry year in a row and the driest on record in many parts of the Southwest, the flow in the Colorado fell to a quarter of its long-term average. That got people's attention.

The Colorado supplies 30 million people in seven states and Mexico with water. Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Diego all depend on it, and starting this year so will Albuquerque. It irrigates four million acres of farmland, much of which would otherwise be desert, but which now produces billions of dollars' worth of crops. Gauges first installed in the 19th century provide a measure of the flow of the river in acre-feet, one acre-foot being a foot of water spread over an acre, or about 326,000 gallons. Today the operation of the pharaonic infrastructure that taps the Colorado—the dams and reservoirs and pipelines and aqueducts—is based entirely on data from those gauges. In 2002 water managers all along the river began to wonder whether that century of data gave them a full appreciation of the river's eccentricities. With the lawns dying in Denver, a water manager there asked Woodhouse: How often has it been this dry?

[snip]

In fact, the tree rings testified that in the centuries before Europeans settled the Southwest, the Colorado basin repeatedly experienced droughts more severe and protracted than any since then. During one 13-year megadrought in the 12th century, the flow in the river averaged around 12 million acre-feet, 80 percent of the average flow during the 20th century and considerably less than is taken out of it for human use today. Such a flow today would mean serious shortages, and serious water wars. "The Colorado River at 12 million acre-feet would be real ugly," says one water manager.

Unfortunately, global warming could make things even uglier. Last April, a month before Meko and Woodhouse published their latest results, a comprehensive study of climate models reported in Science predicted the Southwest's gradual descent into persistent Dust Bowl conditions by mid-century.

Global warming is here:

The future, though, won't be governed by that kind of natural fluctuation alone. Thanks to our emissions of greenhouse gases, it will be subject as well to a global one-way trend toward higher temperatures. In one talk at Lamont, climate theorist Isaac Held, from NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, gave two reasons why global warming seems almost certain to make the drylands drier. Both have to do with an atmospheric circulation pattern called Hadley cells. At the Equator, warm, moist air rises, cools, sheds its moisture in tropical downpours, then spreads toward both Poles. In the subtropics, at latitudes of about 30 degrees, the dry air descends to the surface, where it sucks up moisture, creating the world's deserts—the Sahara, the deserts of Australia, and the arid lands of the Southwest. Surface winds export the moisture out of the dry subtropics to temperate and tropical latitudes. Global warming will intensify the whole process. The upshot is, the dry regions will get drier, and the wet regions will get wetter.

Less water, weaker trees, bark beetle infestations, fires:

People are not yet suffering, but trees are. Forests in the West are dying, most impressively by burning. The damage done by wildfires in the U.S., the vast majority of them in the West, has soared since the late 1980s. In 2006 nearly ten million acres were destroyed—an all-time record matched the very next year. With temperatures in the region up four degrees F over the past 30 years, spring is coming sooner to the western mountains. The snowpack—already diminished by drought—melts earlier in the year, drying the land and giving the wildfire season a jump start. As hotter summers encroach on autumn, the fires are ending later as well.

Yes. We experienced this just this last year in California:



More people, more polluted oceans and dead zones, less potable water, breaking infrastructure, more contaminates.

No politician will ever admit the world is changing as we speak. Especially the Bush Republicans. It is not good for the economy to go negative. And we're going to have to take drastic steps to change our comfortable lifestyles and habits. No politician will dare tell us to do it.

We're going to have to do it ourselves.

(Psst .. turn off your taps.)

That's MY drinking water you're wasting!

Via Cookie Jill at skippy the bush kangaroo, The Christian Science Monitor:

Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which supply water and power to millions in the American Southwest, stand a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021 unless dramatic changes take place in how the region uses water, according to a new study.

Causes include growing population, rising demand for Colorado River water, which feeds both lakes, and global warming, according to scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who conducted the study.

The results underscore the importance of water-conservation measures that many communities throughout the region are putting into place. Other studies, some dating back nearly 20 years, have projected that Lake Mead could fall to virtually useless levels as climate warmed, but they lacked a sense of the timing. The new results, the Scripps scientists say, represent a first attempt to answer when lakes Mead and Powell would run dry, squeezing water supplies in Arizona, California, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Here in Southern California, we've been through droughts. The worst came with restrictions on water usage: no washing of cars, no watering of lawns, no automatic glasses of water given at restaurants, a certain percent drop demanded of each household based on the last year's usage unless appealed. We had neighbors reporting on each other, dead of night furtive sprinkler usage, general idiot behavior exposed for what it was. Politicians cringe at activating drought prevention programs. We need to make it part of normal life so people don't feel their liberties are being denied when they're asked not to waste water.

We need to educate from kindergarten up: respect potable water no matter where you live. Water that has been processed so that it is safe to drink is a wonderful luxury and we need to respect it.

Start by turning off the water while you brush your teeth. Do you realize how many gallons you just saved?

Update: In China: (my bold)

Beijing, China (AHN) - More than 40 percent of drinking water in rural China is unfit for drinking, a health ministry study said Monday. The drinking water in the country's rural areas has failed to meet government standards leading to outbreaks of diarrhea and other diseases, a Ministry of Health spokesman said.

[snip]

Unhealthy water led to outbreaks of diarrhea and other diseases, with 40.44 percent of surface water and 45.94 percent of ground water below the regulatory standards released in 2006.

The Ministry of Health and the National Committee for the Patriotic Public Health Campaign conducted a joint survey of nearly 7,000 samples from villages across the country. The survey found that 74.9 percent of people drank underground water while 25.1 percent drank surface water.

"Most people living in rural areas do not have their drinking water sterilized. Often they just drink the well water, which may have been polluted," Mao said.

The unhealthy water is mainly attributed to unchecked industrialization, polluting factories that cause disruptions to water supplies and microbial contamination.

However, in densely populated areas, 85.23 percent of people living in villages or counties often having their water boiled before drinking, thus lowering the chance of contracting a serious enteric infectious disease.

Hot water from the tap should never be used for cooking or drinking.

Oh. Wow. Thanks:

Lead is rarely found in source water, but can enter it through corroded plumbing. The Environmental Protection Agency says that older homes are more likely to have lead pipes and fixtures, but that even newer plumbing advertised as “lead-free” can still contain as much as 8 percent lead. A study published in The Journal of Environmental Health in 2002 found that tap water represented 14 to 20 percent of total lead exposure.

Scientists emphasize that the risk is small. But to minimize it, the E.P.A. says cold tap water should always be used for preparing baby formula, cooking and drinking. It also warns that boiling water does not remove lead but can actually increase its concentration.

So... don't drink the hot water while you are showering?

And how do you check for lead in your house? Low grades at the elementary school? Are we poisoning our kids by making them drink water? Do they have a test that enables people to check their water supply? WTF?

Wait a minute... does this make sense?

We are growing corn to make ethanol because we want to be less reliant on foreign oil (no more wars) and more environmentally friendly (fight global warming), right? So when businesses activate a coal burning plant to process ethanol (which is actually an extremely inefficient carbon to burn), isn't that kinda defeating the purpose? When we ignore the fact that some biofuels actually damage the enviroment more, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose? And when the ethanol mega farms begin using too much water from the ancient acquifers in Iowa, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose?

So when we grow so much corn that we flood the rivers with fertilizer and it poisons everything downstream and way out into the Gulf of Mexico, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose?:

JEFFERSON, Iowa - Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since World War II. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price.

The nation's corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing "dead zone" — a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate.

The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.

Who is getting rich off this nonsense? You want to take a guess? Maybe Bush's cronies or the Megafarms?

Update 12/19: Carl at Simply Left Behind makes the same points.

They've already noticed this in Iowa

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 The National Research Council has warned that the increased use of corn to produce ethanol could harm U.S. water quality and create water supply problems.

The NRC looked at how shifts in the nation's agriculture to include more energy crops, and potentially more crops overall, could affect water management and the long-term sustainability of biofuel production.

In terms of water quantity, researchers found agricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into dry regions could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States.

For example, the report noted that in the Northern and Southern Plains, corn generally uses more water than soybeans and cotton, while the reverse is true in the Pacific and mountain regions of the nation. Water demands for drinking and such uses as hydropower, fish habitat, and recreation could compete with, and in some cases constrain, the use of water for biofuel crops.

Consequently, researchers said, growing biofuel crops requiring additional irrigation in areas with limited water supplies is a major concern.

The study was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, Energy Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and National Research Council Day Fund.

Phila of Bouphonia posted on this:

Where numerous wells withdraw large quantities of water over time...regional declines in water levels may occur. In Iowa, the most widespread of these declines has occurred in the extensive Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer. Regional water levels have dropped about 100 feet in this aquifer since use began in the late 1800s, with the greatest lowering of water-levels near major pumping centers. Other declines of a more local nature have occurred, such as those in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City areas where the Silurian aquifer is heavily used.

In related news, ever-expanding ethanol crops in the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay are expected to poison it with agricultural runoff:

The study forecasted that farmers in the bay watershed area will field more than half a million acres of corn over the next five years, reports The Washington Post. Corn fields usually produce more polluted runoff than other crops, creating a problem for the bay.

“It’s going in the opposite direction from where we want to go,” Jim Pease, a Virginia Tech professor and one of the study’s authors, told the newspaper.

It seems logical that increased runoff from the ethanol boom could pose a problem for Iowa's groundwater, too.