Let free market determine price for water

by John Ford

Gazette’s Introductory Note: This editorial comment by attorney John Ford of Orange County, CA presents ideas that deserve consideration. Although relying strictly on “the free market” to set the price of an essential commodity would certainly create its own set of problems, allowing the real cost of providing water to play a major part in determining of the price we pay would certainly make sense. The Gazette has consistently advocated higher water prices as a means of conservation as well as a necessary part of a well-funded public water system. We forget that we live in a world of subsidized products. Water is not the only commodity for which we pay way less than the real cost. If “the free market” alone determined the price of gasoline, few of us would be driving cars and eating almonds trucked from California. While we certainly need to reform and simplify our antiquated water distribution system and increase the price we pay for water, we believe that water is an essential element that belongs to us all and that allowing “the free market” alone to determine its distribution and availability would result in water being distributed  the same way that money is distributed–with 1% of the population controlling most of it.–Hardly Waite.

As California searches for solutions to our ongoing drought, we would do well to look to how Australia successfully responded to a similarly severe drought nearly 20 years ago. In 1995, Australia found itself in the midst of the most serious drought since European settlement began. Rivers were drying up, and farms were going fallow all over the country. The crisis was so severe that Australia was forced to do something that was considered radical at the time: It adopted a market price for water.

The basic argument for a water market is straightforward. People should pay for the resources they use and they should pay what the resource is actually worth. If people have to pay a market price for water, then they will be encouraged to conserve in the ways that are the most economically efficient. In California, there is no market price for water. Water in this state is artificially cheap – this low price encourages overconsumption that is harmful to both our economy and our environment. A market price for water would solve this problem.

Australia proved the theory behind water markets could work in the real world. Australia is subject to regular (often severe) droughts. The severity of the drought that began in 1995 forced Australia to try a variety of measures to combat water scarcity. It tried everything, from mandated cutbacks to building huge, expensive desalination plants. Nothing worked. Then, in 2007 Australia adopted a national system for trading water rights, building on smaller programs created in a previous drought by some of Australia’s states. In doing so, they created a national market for water.

After water markets were adopted, water consumption in Australia fell by 35 percent. Today, water consumption in Sydney is only about 83 gallons per person per day. Compare this with 193 gallons a day in Irvine, 186 gallons in Anaheim and 219 gallons in Orange. Australia got its citizens to conserve by using prices. Because they have to pay the market price for water, residents of Sydney pay about $6.50 per 1,000 gallons of water. In Irvine, the cost is much less, at only $3.19 per 1,000 gallons. But because people in Sydney use so much less water, the average person there pays only about $196 per year for water, whereas residents of Irvine pay about $228 per year for water.

Put simply, markets worked. A modest price increase resulted in significant conservation with only a modest impact on consumers’ pocket books.

In California, there is no market price for water. Of California’s 58 counties, 22 restrict any trading of water for any reason. Water in California is governed by a convoluted morass of regulations and bureaucracy. The state has 3,000 separate water districts and agencies, many of which exist only to sell water to each other at artificially low prices. Orange County alone has 28 separate water agencies.

This bureaucratic tangle means that instead of adopting a rational system of water trading based on market prices, we have responded to our drought by putting restrictions on when a restaurant can serve a glass of water to its patrons. No serious person believes this sort of rule will have a measurable impact on conservation.

If leaders in Sacramento want to do something that would actually alleviate the drought in a way that would protect both our environment and our economy, they should take inspiration from Australia, do away with pointless red tape and adopt a market price for water.

Source: The Orange County Register.

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Thousands of mines with toxic water lie under the western US

Gazette’s Famous Water Pictures Series

Georg Frideric Handel (left) and King George I on the Thames River, 17 July 1717. Painting by Edouard Hamman (1819–88).

The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often published as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717 after King George I had requested a concert on the River Thames.

The usual explanation for the gala on-the-water concert is that the king was feeling heat from an opposing political faction gathering around his son, the Prince of Wales, and he staged a big public event to draw attention away from his son and to himself.

 Akademie für alte Musik Berlin performance.

Full Summer in Texas. Pure Water Products at Denton’s Farmers’ Market.  From left Theresia Munywoki, Kacy Ewing, Katey Shannon, and Kristen Lewis with twins. Visit them at the Denton Farmers’ Market on Saturdays or at our 523 N. Elm location weekdays. Or call 940 382 3814.

Click Picture for Larger View

Bee Sharper Puts the Numbers of Water Treatment into Context

Editor’s Note. Water contaminants like lead and arsenic are measured in parts per billion. To put these tiny amounts into context, here’s a BB Sharper comparison.

Year it was one billion seconds ago: 1959.

Year it was one billion minutes ago: c. AD 110.

Year it was one billion hours ago: BC 110,000.

Year it was one billion days ago: BC 2,640.000.

Parts per million represented by one drop in a bathtub full of water — 2.

Parts per million represented by one second in 12.5 days — 1.

Number of micrograms per litre (μg/L) represented by one part per billion — 1.

Number of micrograms per litre represented by one drop in 250 bathtubs full of water — 1.

Number of parts per billion represented by one second in 32 years — 1.

As Summer Heats Up, Algae in Lakes Cause Concern

As summer temperatures rise, the presence of algae in some surface waters in the US has increased. Not all algae produce toxins that affect public health, but increased growth in recent years of  harmful algal blooms is triggering some concern.  Last August, a major algal bloom in Lake Erie caused the city of Toledo, Ohio, to issue a “do not drink” order for more than 400,000 residents.  The EPA estimated in 2009 that  20 percent of the nation’s lakes are highly impacted by algae, and one-third contains some level of harmful algae.

In response to the rise in harmful algae in lakes, the  EPA determined toxin levels in tap water that are safe for human consumption and offered recommendations for how utilities can monitor and treat drinking water for algal toxins and notify the public if the water exceeds these levels.

Green scum produced by and containing cyanobacteria.

More About Algae

Algae are found naturally in lakes, streams, ponds and other surface waters. When conditions are favorable, they multiply rapidly and cause a “bloom” characterized by a pea-soup green color or blue-green scum. Their nature can be affected by the intensity of sunlight, water temperature, nutrient availability (especially nitrogen and phosphorous), pH, and water movement.

Most algae are not harmful. Last year’s Toledo algae scare was due to fresh water algae known as cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae.   Cyanobacteria proliferate in stagnant or slow-moving bodies of water with high levels of nutrients — nitrogen and phosphorous — often due to agricultural runoff or wastewater. When the ecosystem becomes unbalanced, non-harmful algae are often replaced by cyanobactria.

These fresh water algae can produce cyanotoxins, one of the more harmful types of algal toxins.

Cyanotoxins can cause health problems primarily affecting the nervous system, liver or skin. If present in recreational water or drinking water at high enough levels, a wide range of symptoms may occur — including fever, headaches, muscle and joint pain, blisters, stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, mouth ulcers and allergic reactions. These symptoms can occur immediately or several days after exposure.

Some of the most common classes of algal toxins are microcystins, anatoxins and cylindrospermopsins. Microcystins have a World Health Organization guideline of 1 mg/l for drinking water,  as do cylindrospermopsins which primarily affect the liver, and anatoxins which affect nerve synapses. However, appropriate standards for these toxins are still in development.

When cyanobacteria are present in a water source, the preferred strategy is to remove them from the water before toxins are released. This can be accomplished through processes such as dissolved air flotation. However, the best approach is to prevent the growth of algae that can produce the toxins through watershed management.

Many solutions are available to treat algal toxins. Disinfectants and oxidants such as chlorine, chloramine, ozone, ultraviolet (UV) and chlorine dioxide are frequently used in standard treatment facilities. Most algal cells can be removed by chlorine disinfection, in addition to coagulation, sedimentation and flocculation. Removal of the toxin is more difficult. Many standard water treatment strategies are used with some success.  These include granular activated carbon (GAC), ozone, advanced oxidation processes, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis (RO). At present there is no single recommended treatment for algal toxins.

Algae in water sources is, of course, of interest mainly as a public water issue. Point of use treatment for residential water has been infrequently considered, but the standard techniques of carbon filtration, chlorination, and reverse osmosis would seem to be the obvious final barrier strategies.

Reference: Water Technology.

Editorial: Water conservation becomes the standard, prudent thing to practice

Gazette Introductory Note: It’s good to be reminded now and again that rules and regulations often make sense. It’s our nature to dislike being “regulated,” but surely no one would honestly deny that the onerous restrictions placed upon Americans by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts have worked wonders to clean up our environment. The terrible burden of auto emissions standards placed upon the auto industry have performed a miracle in cleaning up our air, and contrary to the predictions of crusty regulation-haters,  requiring catalytic converts has not shut down the auto industry or made cars so expensive that no one can afford them. The following editorial from the Vancouver Sun reminds us that even the government sometimes knows what it’s doing.–Hardly Waite.

Every attempt at broad-brush solutions to problems seems accompanied by its black comedy of peculiarities. For example, bring in watering restrictions to deal with the prolonged dry spell that’s running down Metro Vancouver’s drinking water reservoirs and you generate seemingly wacky contradictions.

If you wash your car in the driveway with a hand-held, spring-loaded shut-off nozzle, that’s an offence but if you take it to a commercial car wash where automated robots do it, that’s fine, and you can do it every day if you are so inclined. You can’t refill your spa tub on the back deck but you can go indoors and use the soaker tub with whirlpool jets as often as you like. You can wash artificial turf but watering the natural lawn is a no-no.

Such oddities are always good for griping about city hall and its endless follies, but that’s all they’re good for. In most cases they are illusions. The robots at that commercial car wash are much more frugal than you. It’s estimated that washing a car by hand uses about from 300-500 litres of water. The car wash robots will use about 170 litres and wax, polish and dispose of the soapy water properly, not down the storm drain. An automatic dishwasher will clean your dinner dishes with one-sixth the water used in hand-washing and, because it’s so efficient with the hot water, will use only about half the energy. That energy is generated by spilling precious water through turbines or by burning fossil fuels, both of which exacerbate the connected problems of water reserves and climate change.

So once we have done with the mandatory Canadian ritual of huffing over apparent contradictions that prove we’re governed by fools, it’s more useful to back the wise philosophy of water frugality as a new norm imposed by climate change. Our rainy winters have encouraged us to think of fresh water as a limitless resource. But as prolonged droughts elsewhere and now in British Columbia and Canada’s western plains indicate, that’s not necessarily so.

If these dry conditions prove to be the new summer normal, prudence suggests we start thinking about water conservation as the standard rather than the exception. We should, even if this drought proves anomalous. On a range of possibilities, one must be that things could prove even more extreme in the future. The time seems ripe for a serious public conversation about what we should be doing to plan for our civic adaptation in the way we live that changing climate seems increasingly likely to impose with increasing severity, frequency and duration.

Source: The Vancouver Sun.

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 Except in the US, Fluoridated Drinking Water is Hard to Find

Although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control boasts that water fluoridation as one of the “top ten public health achievements of the twentieth century,” most of the western world, including the vast majority of western Europe, does not fluoridate its water supply.

At present, 97% of the western European population drinks non-fluoridated water. This includes: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and approximately 90% of both the United Kingdom and Spain. Although some of these countries fluoridate their salt, the majority do not. (The only western European countries that allow salt fluoridation are Austria, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland.)

Despite foregoing “one of the top ten public health achievements of the twentieth century,” tooth decay rates have declined in Europe just as fast over the past 50 years as they have in the United States. This raises serious questions about the CDC’s assertion that the decline of tooth decay in the United States since the 1950s is largely attributable to the advent of water fluoridation.

Reference: Fluoride Action Network.

California Drinking Water: Not Just Vanishing, But Also Widely Contaminated

by Tom Philpott

In normal years, California residents get about 30 percent of their drinking water from underground aquifers. And in droughts like the current one—with sources like snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains virtually non-existent—groundwater supplies two-thirds of our most populous state’s water needs. So it’s sobering news that about 20 percent of the groundwater that Californians rely on to keep their taps flowing carries high concentrations of contaminants like arsenic, uranium, and nitrate.

That’s the conclusion of a ten-year US Geological Survey study of 11,000 public-water wells across the state. The researchers tested the wells for a variety of contaminants, looking for levels above thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency and/or the California State Water Resources Board.

Interestingly, naturally occurring trace elements like arsenic, manganese, and uranium turned up at high levels much more commonly than did agriculture-related chemicals like nitrate.

In the ag-heavy San Joaquin Valley (the Central Valley’s Southern half), for example, you might expect plenty of nitrate in the water, because of heavy reliance on nitrogen fertilizers. Over the limit of 10 parts per million in water, nitrate can impede the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and has been linked to elevated rates of birth defects and cancers of the ovaries and thyroid. But while 4.9 percent of wells in the San Joaquin turned up over legal nitrate thresholds, arsenic (over legal limits in 11.2 percent of wells) and uranium (7.4 percent)—neither of which are used in farming—were more common.

But in the case of uranium—which heightens the risk of kidney trouble and cancer when consumed in water over long periods—agriculture isn’t off the hook. Kenneth Belitz, the study’s lead author and chief of the USGS’s National Water Quality Assessment Program, explains that before irrigation, the arid San Joaquin landscape supported very little vegetation, and the naturally occurring uranium in the landscape was relatively stable. But as farms sprouted up, irrigation water reacted with carbon dioxide from now-abundant plant roots to “mobilize” the uranium, pushing it downward at the rate of 5 to ten feet per year and eventually into the water table.

Conversely, some of the regions with highest nitrate levels are former ag areas that are now suburban, Belitz says: northern California’s Livermore Valley and southern California’s Santa Ana basin. That’s because nitrates, too, move through the soil strata at a rate of five to ten feet per year, and take years to accumulate in underground aquifers.

And that means that today’s ag-centric areas, including the San Joaquin Valley, could be slowly building up nitrate levels year by year that could lead to much higher nitrate levels in well water in coming decades, Belitz says.

For California residents and policymakers, the reports adds another distressing data point to the current water crisis. The fossil record and climate models suggests that precipitation levels will likely drop significantly compared to 20^th century norms going forward, according to UC Berkeley paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram—meaning an ever-growing reliance on groundwater for both farms and residents. Meanwhile, NASA research shows that this increasingly important resource is being drawn down at a much faster pace than it’s being replenished. And this latest USGS study suggests that the state’s precious, vanishing groundwater supply is widely contaminated. It’s enough to make you want to open a bottle of the state’s famous wine.

Source: Mother Jones.

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 Mark Your Calendar

The common garden hose is one 0f life’s treasures that we take for granted.  The hose is pretty amazing, though, when you think of it for what it is–a very inexpensive portable pipe that can bend around corners, roll up for storage,  and carry high volumes of water quickly over great distances. For most, the garden hose also evokes happy memories of childhood and summer days.

The only thing better than a garden hose is a garden hose with a filter.