American Industry Turns Fish Into Water Polluters

Fish are being grown in giant cages, nets, and ponds with the use of pesticides, hormones,  and antibiotics, all of which can result in significant water pollution.

Pollution also results from fish wastes and excessive food that goes into the water.  Escaping factory-farmed fish can also create dangerous genetic contamination.

Unfortunately, industrialized aquaculture facilities are replacing natural methods of fishing.

Addressing An Urgent Need, The EPA Is Providing Training and Assistance to the Nation’s Many Small Water Systems

More than 97 percent of the nation’s 157,000 public water systems serve fewer than 10,000 people, and more than 80 percent of these systems serve fewer than 500 people.

This is an often ignored fact. It is also overlooked that most of the regulatory energy of governmental agencies is directed toward the large treatment systems that serve metropolitan centers.  EPA standards do not apply to the many small systems that fall under the regulatory radar.

Many small systems face unique challenges in providing reliable drinking water and wastewater services that meet federal and state regulations. These challenges can include a lack of financial resources, aging infrastructure, management limitations and high staff turnover.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded nearly $15 million in funding to provide training and technical assistance to small drinking and wastewater systems – those serving fewer than 10,000 people – and to private well owners. The funding will help provide training and tools to improve small system operations and management practices, promoting sustainability and supporting EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment.

“Small systems form the backbone of our nation’s public water system and it is a priority for EPA to help them to meet water quality standards and provide clean water to communities,” said Nancy Stoner, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for Water. “This funding and technical assistance is part of EPA’s continuing efforts to promote sustainability and public health protection for communities served by small systems.”

For more information on EPA’s programs and tools to help small water systems, visit:http://water.epa.gov/grants_funding/sdwa/smallsystemsrfa.cfm

Full text of the EPA press release.

New Zealand Joins Ecuador in Granting Rights to A Body of Water

Introductory Note: In “The Gazette’s Great Water Article,”  Gene Franks wrote: “The degradation of water in modern America has been cruel and complete. Water has meaning only to the extent that it is useful to us. We speak of animal rights and children’s rights, meaning the rights of animals and children, but “water rights” refers only to the right of humans to exploit water. Water itself has no rights, no existence apart from our purposes.”  It is encouraging that at least two countries, New Zealand and Ecuador, have seen fit to officially recognize the legal rights of water.–Hardly Waite, Gazette Senior Editor.

From the dawn of history, and in cultures throughout the world, humans have been prone to imbue Earth’s life-giving rivers with qualities of life itself — a fitting tribute, no doubt, to the wellsprings upon which our past (and present) civilizations so heavily rely. But while modern thought has come to regard these essential waterways more clinically over the centuries, that might all be changing once again.

Meet the Whanganui. You might call it a river, but in the eyes of the law, it has the standings of a person.

In a landmark case for the Rights of Nature, officials in New Zealand recently granted the Whanganui, the nation’s third-longest river, with legal personhood “in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests”. The decision follows a long court battle for the river’s personhood initiated by the Whanganui River iwi, an indigenous community with strong cultural ties to the waterway.

Under the settlement, the river is regarded as a protected entity, under an arrangement in which representatives from both the iwi and the national government will serve as legal custodians towards the Whanganui’s best interests.

“Today’s agreement which recognises the status of the river as Te Awa Tupua (an integrated, living whole) and the inextricable relationship of iwi with the river is a major step towards the resolution of the historical grievances of Whanganui iwi and is important nationally,” says New Zealand’s Minister for Treaty for Waitangi Negotiations, Christopher Finlayson. (more…)

After 20 Years of Drilling, Russian Scientists Breached  Lake Vostok in  the Antarctic

It is the first time one of Antarctica’s subglacial lakes was penetrated.

On February 5,  2012, Russian scientists confirmed that they successfully drilled into Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake that has spent the last several million years isolated from Earth’s surface by a thick slab of ice. And it really is thick! — drilling down to the lake has taken 20 years of work. But the team has finally hit water, and the water could contain clues to (among other things) the mechanics of climate change.

It’s possible the lake contains new life forms, maybe bacteria. It’s also possible — and the initial samples seem to support this hypothesis — that it’s totally sterile, the only place on Earth with water but no life. Both options have the potential to help scientists understand more about life on Earth, and how it does or doesn’t survive in extreme conditions.

The untouched water in the lake will also allow researchers to compare ancient and current water, looking for changes that might help illuminate global warming and sea level rise.

Antarctica holds 70% of the planet’s fresh water as ice and subglacial liquid.  Understanding whether and how it is changing is key to understanding possible future rises in global sea levels.

Lake Vostok has been isolated from the surface for millions of years, and many hope it contains bizarre new life forms.  At present, however, that seems unlikely. The drillers have already sampled wedges of accretion ice – lake water that has naturally frozen onto the underside of the ice sheet – and although some researchers claim it contains bacteria, others write this off as contamination.

If Lake Vostok turns out to be sterile, that will make it the only place on Earth where there is water but no life.

For more information on the Lake Vostok project, see  Mysteries of Lake Vostok on brink of discovery.”

Russian scientists breached Lake Vostok in the Antarctic .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost Half of the Nation’s Land Area Is In Various Stages of Drought

For Academic Success You Just Have To Carry Water.  You Don’t Have to Actually Drink It.

by Hardly Waite

A  study presented at a psychology conference in London in April of 2012 suggests that students who bring water to drink while they  take exams may improve their grades.   This is, it is assumed, because they keep themselves hydrated.

The simple act of bringing water to the exam was linked to improvement in grades, although hypotheses put forth by the researchers indicated that they had not the slightest notion why. It was suggested that having water reduced anxiety.  The researchers did not examine whether the students actually drank the water,  so this does not rule out the possibility that the influence may have come wholly or partly from just having the bottle there.  Nor does it rule out the possibility that it was all simply coincidental that students who happened to take water into the exam scored higher and that neither the bottle nor the water had anything to do with the matter.

In all, 477 students took the exam. One important observation was that students in the higher grade levels were more likely to take water to exam sessions than students in earlier years.

The Medical News Today report on the research concludes:

[The chief researcher] said more research would be needed to tease apart these factors and their underlying explanations.  But whatever the result, he suggests it is probably a good thing for students to try and keep themselves hydrated while sitting exams. Judging from the results of this study, it appears that first year undergraduates in particular need to hear this message. There is an implication here for education policymakers too: whether students, at all levels of education, should have access to drinks during exams.

The Pure Water Gazette concludes:  A university psychologist  was desperately trying to put an academic publication on his record and all the good subjects, like the influence of  pencil color on penmanship, had already been exhausted.

For complete details of this important research, see Medical News Today.

 

Texas Capital Takes Water Conservation Seriously as Drought Lingers On

The severity of the drought in Texas was underlined in early Sept. by the shutdown of such familiar water features as downtown Austin fountains. This was mandated as the city of Austin issued a Stage 2 drought declaration.

The declaration was put in effect when the two main lakes, Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan, reached the 900,000 acre-foot trigger mandated by the city’s Drought Contingency Plan.

Here are some of the restrictions that went into place with the Stage 2 declaration.

• Hose-end irrigation may take place between midnight and 10 a.m. and between 7 p.m. and midnight on your assigned watering day.
• Automatic irrigation systems may operate between midnight and 5 a.m. and between 7 p.m. and midnight on your assigned watering day.
  • Please reduce system run times to fit within this schedule.
  • Please ensure that your system has a working rain sensor, or operate the system manually when rain is forecasted.
• Watering with a hand-held hose or bucket is allowed at any time on any day of the week.
• Drip irrigation is exempt from the schedule, due to increased efficiency.
• To water trees, soaker hoses may be used under the drip-line of the tree canopy or you may use your automatic tree bubblers.  Irrigating trees in this manner is exempt from the watering schedule
• Washing vehicles at home is prohibited. If you need to wash a vehicle, you may do so at a commercial carwash facility.
• Charity car washes are prohibited
• Fountains with either a fall or spray of water greater than four inches are prohibited; unless necessary to preserve aquatic life.
• Restaurants may not serve water unless requested by a customer
• Commercial properties (including restaurants and bars) may only operate patio misters between 4 p.m. and midnight.

Learn How to Care for a Tree During Drought at Austin Water’s Website.

What is ground water? When water falls as rain or snow, much of it either flows into rivers or is used to provide moisture to plants and crops. What is left over trickles down to the layers of rock that sit beneath the soil. And just like a giant sponge, this ground water is held in the spaces between the rocks and in the tiny inter-connected spaces between individual grains in a rock like sandstone. These bodies of wet rock are referred to as aquifers. Ground water does not sit still in the aquifer but is pushed and pulled by gravity and the weight of water above it. The movement of the water through the aquifer removes many impurities and it is often cleaner than water on the surface.

Africa Has Vast Hidden Water Resources, But They Must Be Used Wisely

“There is enough water for human need,  not human greed.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

Africa is a notoriously dry continent, but things may not be as bleak as one would suspect as climate change advances.

Currently, the situation appears bad.  At present only about 5% of arable land is irrigated.  Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water. Water for sanitation is in short supply.  Demand for water is set to grow markedly in coming decades due to population growth and the need for irrigation to grow crops.

Yet,  a BBC report says that Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater–with pools suspected to contain 100 times the amount to be found on the surface.

Researchers have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the African continent.

The researchers say their new maps indicate that many countries currently designated as “water scarce” have substantial groundwater reserves.

The new mapping that shows formerly unsuspected ground water resources leads to cautious optimism. Caution is necessary because although there are vast groundwater reserves, experts believe that rapid extraction through large boreholes might not work in the region and that moderation in harvesting groundwater may be necessary.  The lead author of the study told the BBC: “High-yielding boreholes should not be developed without a thorough understanding of the local groundwater conditions. Appropriately sited and developed boreholes for low yielding rural water supply and hand pumps are likely to be successful.”

Water was added to the aquifers over 5000 years ago.  It must be harvested respectfully.

BBC Report for More Details

 Osedax Live At the Bottom of the Ocean.  They Were Discovered On A Whale Carcass in 2002.

Among the ocean’s strangest inhabitants are some tiny worms that devour bones.  They inhabit and feed on dead whale skeletons and other bones on the sea floor.  It was recently discovered that they have a unique ability to release bone-melting acid which makes their lifestyle possible.

The worms are called Osedax, and like all worms in their family they get by without mouth, anus, or gut. The digestion of the bone they live on is made possible by their partnership with bacteria.  The worms are 3 to 4 cm long and they live in extremely hot and acidic vents in the sea.

While it had been clear that the worms and their bacteria rely on nutrients such as collagen or fat from the bones they inhabit, until now it was a mystery how the worms penetrate the bone to access their nutrients. They appear to lack physical equipment necessary for drilling bone. The recently discovered process involves secretion of acid to demineralize the bone.

Researcher Sigrid Katz, perhaps the world’s foremost Osedax expert, says, “The discovery of Osedax shows that nutrition is even more diverse than we imagined, and our results are a step further in understanding the special relationship between the worm and its bacteria.”

Osedax are a female dominated society.  Males never grow beyond 1 mm.  In case you couldn’t tell, the worm in the picture is a female.

Adapted from Science Daily.

Rainwater Harvesting in Texas–A Practical Approach to Water Shortage

For centuries, people have relied on rainwater harvesting to supply water for household, landscape, livestock, and agricultural uses. Before the advent of large centralized water supply systems, rainwater was collected from roofs and stored on site in tanks known as cisterns. With the development of large, reliable water treatment and distribution systems and more affordable well drilling equipment, rain harvesting was all but forgotten, even though it offered a source of pure, soft, low-sodium water.

A renewed interest in this time-honored approach of collecting water has emerged in Texas and elsewhere because of escalating environmental and economic costs of providing water by centralized water systems or by well drilling. The health benefits of rainwater, and potential cost savings associated with rainwater collection systems have further spurred this interest.

An Outstanding Texas Application of Rainwater Harvesting

 

Native American Seed, founded in 1988 by Jan and Bill Neiman, specializes in native wildflower and prairie grass seeds from the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana region. In mid 2011, as the drought in the area took hold, the scarcity of drinking water became an issue and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality began curtailing the watering of all native wildflower and prairie grass seed crop. Acting proactively, Native American Seed voluntarily cut back its farm production and – going a step farther – began to explore a more sustainable source of future water supply for its operations. They settled on rainwater harvesting.

The system that Native American Seed installed has a 30,000-gallon Pioneer Galaxy® tank, a 55-gallon first flush diverter, a 12V pump powered by a 185-watt solar panel, two sediment filters, one carbon filter, and an ultraviolet lamp. The pump and the treatment system are housed in a new pump house that was constructed of dry stacked cinder blocks with a plaster of surface bonding cement to insulate the pumping and filtration system in the pump house. The rainwater harvesting system is designed to meet up to 85% of the water demand (potable and non-potable) at the seed-cleaning plant.

Adapted from Texas Water Development Board News.