Happy Earth Day

Here’s a quick video of the planet we inhabit viewed from space…

EPA Wetlands Rule

So I know I’m behind the curve here, but here are some quick thoughts on the final compensatory wetlands rule issued by the EPA last week. The final version came out in the Federal Register today and is available here. Coverage from the Washington Post:

The regulation encourages expanded use of so-called “mitigation banking” where a developer can obtain a permit to destroy a wetland or stream if the developer agrees to invest in wetland creation or enhancement elsewhere. This approach has resulted in creation of businesses that specialize in wetlands creation for a price.

The policy implications of mitigation and wetlands banking are quite different than requiring developers to restore on site wetlands. The decision is likely a boon for those involved in the business end of wetlands banking as developers will seek out less expensive projects to meet the EPA requirements.  While I have not had time to parse the entire rule, I will direct you to a fellow graduate student’s discussion of the wetlands rule in the context of the carbon tracking and trading term “leakage”.  Unlike Caroline, I am not am not an expert on the ins and outs of carbon trading, so check out her response to a question about the new rule and “leakage”…

Teton Dam Resurrection

In 1976 the Teton Dam in Idaho failed. Here’s a video of the event:

High Country News is reporting the dam may return (article here). The Idaho Department of Water Resources has alloted $400,000 to determine the feasibility of rebuilding the dam. In addition to human safety concerns, there has been discussion the a return of the dam would result in damage to the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout spawning cycles. A 2006 petition to list the species under the Endangered Species Act failed as a result of the Fish and Wildlife Service finding the population was stable (here). A much more likely hook for litigation against rebuilding the dam is the fact that the reservoir behind the dam would drown bald eagle nesting grounds.

Given the catastrophic consequences of the dam collapse - the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses, I would be surprised if the plan found immediate widespread support. Irrespective of the need for additional storage especially in the context of climate variability and drought, I think the public relations campaign that would have to be mounted might be as costly as the actual reconstruction of the dam…

Energy-Water Nexus

Nature Reports Climate Change ran an article last month in their policy watch section called The energy-water nexus: deja-vu all over again? (subscription required). AAAS is urging policy makers to consider relationship between the two. While water supplies may be more at risk with warming climate, the demand for water-intensive alternative energy sources may increase. This inverse relationship between supply and demand could lead to serious disaster.

Further exacerbating such a disaster is conflicting jurisdiction. Starting on the national level, energy and water matters are governed by different Congressional committees. State law usually governs the manner in which water is managed and distributed (ie- prior appropriation, riparian, etc). But when it comes down to it, most conflict occurs on a local scale. The article cites the Georgia-Tennessee conflict previous covered on this blog.

More important than addressing confusing jurisdiction issues is acknowledgment of the fact that biofuels like corn-based ethanol require extensive irrigation (note- physiologically other potential bioenergy crops like switchgrass have a greater water use efficiency). According to Michael Webber at the University of Texas-Austin, given this requirement, at least 40 gallons of water are required for every mile traveled by an vehicle using corn-based ethanol. Gas-Electric hybrid vehicles using gas are also water intensive. My neighbors own two Toyota Priuses and somehow when they are extolling the societal benefits of their purchase, the fact that electricity is water intensive never comes up.

Webber figures that replacing all gasoline-powered vehicles with electric vehicles would require 17 times more water, nearly 11 gallons per mile, compared with the 0.6 gallons of water per mile it takes to power today’s gas-guzzlers. Hydrogen power is even more water intensive, as energy is generated by electrolysis.

There are no easy answers, but solely focusing on reducing our carbon dioxide emissions may leave us thirsting for a different policy down the road…

Groundwater Replenishment System

Back from my extended hiatus (spring break is a perk of grad school), I though I would start things off by discussing a technological solution to our residential water needs. You might have thought based on the post title this was about traditional augmentation plans. Nope, it’s about toilet-to-tap programs. That’s right, it’s just what it sounds like. Several months ago Slate ran an article about it, entitled It’s Time to Drink Toilet Water. Laugh at the bathroom humor if you must, but this is something warranting serious consideration.

The Groundwater Replenishment System (website here) treats and purifies sewage to meet the various drinking water standards and then pumps it back into the aquifer underlying Orange County, California. I think the concept of using aquifers as storage rather than reservoirs is very intriguing given the relative impracticality of future large projects since after the Floyd Dominy era sites for such projects a quite limited. Local municipalities and state governments are starting to finance their own storage projects. This one came with a 485 million dollar price tag, but the return in times of drought might offset the expense sooner rather than later.

The real question is how the public will accept effluent when the use is not solely non-potable. I think there has been a general acceptance and support of recycled water for landscaping and agricultural uses, but the thought of drinking it (no matter how clean/treated/purified) seems to give people a serious pause. While similar projects are used in El Paso and Fairfax, San Diego and Los Angeles have rejected them due to public outcry to the ‘yuck’ factor.

The first thought that came to mind when I read the Slate article was the 9th Circuit’s Navajo Nation v. US Forest Service case (note-en Banc review has been granted). The case involved recycled waste water to be used in artificial snow-making at Snow Bowl, a ski area in the San Fransisco Peaks (also an American Indian sacred site), outside of Flagstaff, Az. The disposition of the case rested on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act so I won’t go into those legal technical details. But basically, I always wondered if the ‘yuck’ factor of recycled waste water was an undiscussed, underlying, but ultimately decisive factor in the court’s rationale for rejecting the Forest Service approval of such a plan…

Crater Lake Aqua Project

Information about the National Park Service (NPS) plan announced today to bottle Crater Lake water and sell it in bulk to Las Vegas in an effort to finance WOT. Given the implications from such a project, I urge you to become informed and participate in the NPS public comment process. Here’s the pdf. Check out the coverage on WaterWired and Aquafornia…

World Water Day

I know there has been a dearth of posts as of late, to remedy this here are several videos from the Colbert Report about World Water Day (today) and the problems of bottled water…

Grand Canyon Flood

Wow. I’ve always wanted to see the “wild” canyon Powell wrote about. I suspect this is as close as we’ll ever get unfortunately. Still thrilling to consider.

The Guardian has coverage of positive and negative reactions from various individuals here (via restoringrivers). The lack of follow up releases is worrisome and I certainly don’t support administrative pressure to suppress scientific opinion. The experiment itself is exciting however and hopefully there will great sediment data coming out of it.

Great Lakes Update

The New York Times has updated coverage here. A leaked version of report is available here.

Supression of Great Lakes Science?

Accusations of abuse, suppression, and misrepresentation of science? Not unheard of as of late. The House Science Committee has charged that the current administration of reassigning (downward) a career federal scientist as a punitive measure for his report on human health threats caused by Great Lakes pollution. See the coverage in Science here, in Washington Post here.

Christopher De Rosa was the head of the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and his organization prepared a report using census and public health data from the Great Lakes region. The report concludes, “that more than 9 million people reside in the areas of concern, and many live in counties that have elevated rates of cancer, low birth weight, and other health problems.” PCBs, mercury, dioxin and other toxic waste have potential human health impacts, but no actual causal inferences are made. Such linkage would require further research. De Rosa’s director halted the release of the report and asked outside peer reviewers if it should be released given concerns about the statistics and data relied upon in the research. The agency was told while the concerns might be valid but the research was valuable and should be released. De Rosa has been critical of other health risks ignored by the administration, so it would not be unrealistic for his reassignment to be some sort of retaliation. That being said, such an assumption should not be made without proof.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. While science should inform policy, but it is only one input into the policy process. If De Rosa has experienced censorship because the administration believes that we should not pursue further research about causation then it should explicitly state that the rationale for that decision and be honest about the fact that the data is in conflict with whatever goal they have. After undergoing the peer-review process, they should not prevent the release of the report. The debate about toxic waste remediation is not one solely of science; our values inform that discussion as well. Censoring this scientific research does not hinder our expression of such values, both play into a policy decision (not to the exclusion of the other). Can we truly consider the CDC a source of “credible health information” if they choose to censor scientific research that does not neatly match the administration’s desired policies…