Over a century ago, Mark Twain said, "...In California, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over."
What he couldn’t know then, was just how bad things would become.
What does it say when the price of drinking water is higher than the price of gasoline? There is a common sentiment that the "politics of water" is getting as treacherous as the fight for oil. Around the world there is a growing social movement to protect water as a common resource. Far too many people on our planet live without access to clean healthy water.
Let's explore how all of this will play out in local communities while sharing with each other our own methods of water conservation. Email barbara@voiceyourself.com with your story leads or concerns.
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Water for Sale; Thirst for Profit: Corporate Control of Water...
6000 die yearly from water illnesses.
Water has been characterized as the oil of the 21st century. Blue gold. It is essential to life, and yet humanity faces a growing water crisis as a result of severe mismanagement in water and sanitation, which will be exponentially exacerbated in the coming decades by population growth combined with declining resources. Latin America has the greatest income disparity in the world and the population's access to water reflects this inequality. Over 130 million people living in the region do not have access to potable water in their homes, and sanitation is in even poorer condition, as it is estimated that only one in six persons has adequate sanitation services. According to the 2007 Annual Report from the nonprofit organization Water For People, "Every day, nearly 6,000 people who share our world die from water-related illnesses - more than 2 million each year - and the vast majority of these are children...
By Lisa Boscov-Ellen - The Council on Hemispheric Affairs , June 19, 2009
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US Environment Chief Praises Dutch Water Systems
Flood barriers in Holland.
The U.S.' chief environmental official said Tuesday that America can learn much from the way the Dutch manage water - focusing more on living with it than on trying to control it at every turn. "As climate changes and we start seeing more and more rain we have to stop fighting it," Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said. "There's not enough energy in the world to fight it." Jackson is accompanied on the weeklong visit to the Netherlands by a delegation from Louisiana - a low-lying area, like the Netherlands.
By Toby Sterling - The Associated Press | Amsterdam , May 26, 2009
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Stopping selenium pollution — the debate continues
Selenium leaching from MTR sites.
Faced with new evidence that utilities across the country are dumping toxic sludge into waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to impose new restrictions on the level of contaminants power plants can discharge. Plants in Florida, Pennsylvania and several other states have flushed wastewater with levels of selenium and other toxins that far exceed the EPA’s freshwater and saltwater standards aimed at protecting aquatic life, according to data the agency has collected over the past few years. While selenium can be beneficial in tiny amounts, elevated levels damage not only fish but also birds and people who consume contaminated fish.
By Ken Ward Jr. - West Virgina Gazette | Charleston, W,V, , May 06, 2009
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EPA to the rescue
To Protect - Or NOT
Despite a coordinated, 25-year effort, the Chesapeake Bay is dying - plagued by massive dead zones, declining fisheries and water choked by bacteria and algae. Fortunately, there is still time to save it, if some basic tenets are followed: Good science must drive a "systems approach" to management that incorporates rigorous law enforcement and consequences for inaction. First, the science. Forty years of intense scientific investigation by leading estuarine scientists have documented precisely why the Chesapeake is degraded and how to fix it. From the molecular to the macro, we know how this marvel of nature works - or doesn't. Most important, science has taught us that the 200-mile-long Chesapeake Bay, with its 8,000 miles of shoreline, is only one part of a much larger ecological system.
By William C. Baker - The Baltimore Sun , May 06, 2009
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Transition of Food in the 21st Century
Huge Flow of Animal Waste by David Pimental
Listen to world leaders involved in food production define the issues and problems. Scientists, environmental activists, organic farmers,policy makers will help you think more consciously.
The Soil Association - Planet Earth , April 26, 2009
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Pharmaceuticals dumped into waterways — legally
Drug induced fishing?
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination that the federal government has consistently overlooked. Federal and industry officials say they don't know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them as drugs. Drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water.
By Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard - Associated Press , April 20, 2009
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Judge voids easier WV mountaintop mining permits
The destruction must stop!
A federal judge on Tuesday voided a streamlined permitting process for companies to fill valleys with materials left over from mountaintop removal mining. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin's ruling bars mine operators from using southern West Virginia valley fills authorized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under a nationwide permit issued in 2007. Goodwin said the permit violates the Clean Water Act and other federal laws,
By Tim Huber - The Associated Press , April 01, 2009
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US High-Tech Water Future Hinges on Cost, Politics
Sewage water transformed to drink.
Anyone who has visited Disneyland recently and taken a sip from a drinking fountain there may have unknowingly sampled a taste of the future - a small quantity of water that once flowed through a sewer. Orange County Water District officials say that's a good thing - the result of a successful, year-old project to purify wastewater and pump it into the ground to help restore depleted aquifers that provide most of the local water supply. The $481 million recycling plant, the world's largest of its kind, uses microfiltration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide disinfection to treat 70 million gallons of sewer water a day, enough to meet the drinking needs of 500,000 people.
By Steve Gorman | Los Angeles - Reuters , March 12, 2009
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Water - another global 'crisis'?
Intense rains reduce water available to farmers.
If you look at the numbers, it is hard to see how many East African communities made it through the long drought of 2005 and 2006. Among people who study human development, it is a widely-held view that each person needs about 20 litres of water each day for the basics - to drink, cook and wash sufficiently to avoid disease transmission. Yet at the height of the East African drought, people were getting by on less than five litres a day - in some cases, less than one litre a day, enough for just three glasses of drinking water and nothing left over.
By Richard Black | Environment reporter - BBC News , Feburary 03, 2009
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This Is Bad: We're Heading for 'Water Bankruptcy'
Entire crop lose a reality.
In less than 20 years water scarcity could lose the equivalent of the entire grain crops of India and the United States, said the World Economic Forum report, which added that food demand is expected to sky-rocket in coming decades. Across the world, water resources are strapped and climate change is sure to make things worse in many areas. One of the hardest hit will be Asia where melting glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone by 2100, leaving 2 billion people without drinking water. As if that weren't enough, "about 70 major rivers around the world are close to being totally drained in order to supply water for irrigation and reservoirs."
