Climate Change Could Diminish Drinking Water More Than Expected

Climate Change Could Diminish Drinking Water More Then Expected

When saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline.by Staff WritersColumbus OH (SPX) Nov 07, 2007As sea levels rise, coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University. Hydrologists here have simulated how saltwater will intrude into fresh water aquifers, given the sea level rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has concluded that within the next 100 years, sea level could rise as much as 23 inches, flooding coasts worldwide.

Scientists previously assumed that, as saltwater moved inland, it would penetrate underground only as far as it did above ground. But this new research shows that when saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline. In some cases, a zone of mixed, or brackish, water can extend 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.

Like saltwater, brackish water is not safe to drink because it causes dehydration. Water that contains less than 250 milligrams of salt per liter is considered fresh water and safe to drink.
Motomu Ibaraki, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, led the study. Graduate student Jun Mizuno presented the results Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver.

"Most people are probably aware of the damage that rising sea levels can do above ground, but not underground, which is where the fresh water is," Ibaraki said. "Climate change is already diminishing fresh water resources, with changes in precipitation patterns and the melting of glaciers. With this work, we are pointing out another way that climate change can potentially reduce available drinking water. The coastlines that are vulnerable include some of the most densely populated regions of the world."

In the United States, lands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico -- especially Florida and Louisiana -- are most likely to be flooded as sea levels rise. Vulnerable areas worldwide include Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and northern Europe. "Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in coastal areas, less than 60 kilometers from the shoreline," Mizuno said. "These regions may face loss of freshwater resources more than we originally thought."

Scientists have used the IPCC reports to draw maps of how the world's coastlines will change as waters rise, and they have produced some of the most striking images of the potential consequences of climate change.

Ibaraki said that he would like to create similar maps that show how the water supply could be affected. That's not an easy task, since scientists don't know exactly where all of the world's fresh water is located, or how much is there. Nor do they know the details of the subterranean structure in many places. One finding of this study is that saltwater will penetrate further into areas that have a complex underground structure.
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So not only will we have diminished fresh water supplies, we will also have to worry about brackish water penetrating further into the fresh water left underground. It is quite a conundrum we are creating for ourselves.

Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices

No, not the South of Africa or Australia, the Southwest United States. The country where we believe that waste is ok because water lasts forever...Until it's gone. Don't tell me climate change isn't part of this as well as WASTEFULNESS. Why is it humans simply cannot read the signs and always wait until it is too late? What is it in our natures that precludes us always living in denial? We cannot afford to do this any longer. IT IS HERE. And from the map here it looks as though 3/4 of the U.S. is in some form of drought. And we were warned. Tough choices, indeed.

Drought Brings South Tough Choices


By BRENDA GOODMAN
Published: October 16, 2007

ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.

In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose “not essential to public health and safety.” He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.

“Now I don’t want to have to use these powers,” Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials. “As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help.”

Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.

Last week, Mayor Charles L. Turner of Siler City declared a water shortage emergency and ordered each “household, business and industry” to reduce water use by 50 percent. Penalties for not complying range from stiff fines to the termination of water service.

“It’s really alarming,” said Janice Terry, co-owner of the Best Foods cafeteria in Siler City. To curtail water use, Best Foods has swapped its dishes for paper plates and foam cups.

Most controversially, it has stopped offering tap water to customers, making them buy 69-cent bottles of water instead. “We’ve had people walk out,” Ms. Terry said. “They get mad when they can’t get a free glass of water.”

For the better part of 18 months, cloudless blue skies and high temperatures have shriveled crops and bronzed lawns from North Carolina to Alabama, quietly creating what David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist of Georgia, has dubbed “the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters,” a reference to that comedian’s repeated lament that he got “no respect.”

“People pay attention to hurricanes,” Mr. Stooksbury said. “They pay attention to tornadoes and earthquakes. But a drought will sneak up on you.”

snip

Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, at a news conference last week, begged people in her city to conserve water. “Please, please, please do not use water unnecessarily,” Ms. Franklin said. “This is not a test.”

Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.

“I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing,” said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. “Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis.”

snip

Within two weeks, Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue recommendations on tightening water restrictions, which may include mandatory cutbacks on commercial and industrial users.

If that happens, experts at the National Drought Mitigation Center said, it would be the first time a major metropolitan area in the United States had been forced to take such drastic action to save its water supply.

“The situation is very dire,” Mr. Hayes said.

Increase In Ethanol Production From Corn Could Significantly Impact Water Quality

Increase In Ethanol Production From Corn Could Significantly Impact Water Quality


ENERGY TECH
Increase In Ethanol Production From Corn Could Significantly Impact Water Quality

In terms of water quantity, the committee found that agricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into regions with little agriculture, especially dry areas, could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States. The amount of rainfall and other hydroclimate conditions from region to region causes significant variations in the water requirement for the same crop, the report says.

by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 16, 2007

If projected increases in the use of corn for ethanol production occur, the harm to water quality could be considerable, and water supply problems at the regional and local levels could also arise, says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report examined policy options and identified opportunities for new agricultural techniques and technologies to help minimize effects of biofuel production on water resources.

Recent increases in oil prices in conjunction with subsidy policies have led to a dramatic expansion in corn ethanol production and high interest in further expansion over the next decade, says the report. Indeed, because of strong national interest in greater energy independence, in this year's State of the Union address, President Bush called for the production of 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017, which would equal about 15 percent of the U.S. liquid transportation fuels.

A National Research Council committee was convened to look at how shifts in the nation's agriculture to include more energy crops, and potentially more crops overall, could affect water management and long-term sustainability of biofuel production. Based on findings presented at a July colloquium, the committee came to several conclusions about biofuel production and identified options for addressing them.

In terms of water quantity, the committee found that agricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into regions with little agriculture, especially dry areas, could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States. The amount of rainfall and other hydroclimate conditions from region to region causes significant variations in the water requirement for the same crop, the report says.

For example, 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 country. Water demands for drinking, industry, and such uses as hydropower, fish habitat, and recreation could compete with, and in some cases, constrain the use of water for biofuel crops in some regions. Consequently, growing biofuel crops requiring additional irrigation in areas with limited water supplies is a major concern, the report says.

Even though a large body of information exists for the nation's agricultural water requirements, fundamental knowledge gaps prevent making reliable assessments about the water impacts of future large scale production of feedstocks other than corn, such as switchgrass and native grasses.

In addition, other aspects of crop production for biofuel may not be fully anticipated using the frameworks that exist for food crops. For example, biofuel crops could be irrigated with wastewater that is biologically and chemically unsuitable for use with food crops, or genetically modified crops that are more water efficient could be developed.

The quality of groundwater, rivers, and coastal and offshore waters could be impacted by increased fertilizer and pesticide use for biofuels, the report says. High levels of nitrogen in stream flows are a major cause of low-oxygen or "hypoxic" regions, commonly known as "dead zones," which are lethal for most living creatures and cover broad areas of the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and other regions.

End of excerpt

Yes, and we know why Bush called for expansion of corn ethanol production.... because the same players are behind it, like Archer Daniels Midland, a company in the pockets of government that is one of the country's worst polluters:

Archer Daniels Midland

Also see:

How the agribusiness industry shapes public policy

And they do the same thing regarding water.

See my other entries on biofuels:

Water Scarcity And Biofuel

Biofuels In Africa: Economic Boon Or Food Threat?

Zimbabwe's Water Crisis

Why is it that governnments can never afford adequate water resources for their poor people, but they all legislate from fancy buildings in fine clothes?

The Water Crisis Looms Large Over Our Planet

By Jan Moore

It is a tragic scenario we see playing out on our only home. With new predictions from scientists that Arctic glaciers may be gone within 23 years and glaciers around the world melting three times faster than worse case scenatios, what are we going to do to preserve the dwindling fresh water resources we are certain to see strained in the next fifteen to twenty years even more than they are now?

One-third of the world’s population is now in need of potable water which was a scenario not predicted to happen until around 2025 and which is now predicted to get worse unless things change drastically. We are nearly twenty years ahead of predictions on this and yet we are woefully unprepared for the consequences. There is no other way to state this: unless we work to solve this global water crisis now, many of the poor and malnourished in our world where this crisis is most dire will die.

A report by the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, put out last year painted a bleak picture of global access to fresh water and warned us that this Earth cannot continue by doing business as usual. The time for doing business as usual is over. However, are we listening?

We are reaching the breaking point in many areas of our world due to waste, pollution, mismanagement, lack of water infrastructure, inadequate water infrastructure, and privitization. However, the most damning reason for this is our own lack of will and a basic misunderstanding by people (especially in America) that water is an infinite resource that we can continue to use without any concern for tomorrow. It isn't. And we can't.

Therefore, areas where the poor are looking for a way to not only lift themselves out of poverty but also have a chance at survival must be shown ways to conserve water such as rain catchement, rain agriculture, and effective conservation. This also then ties into people in these areas having information about the climate crisis and its effects and how they can best deal with those effects. The Yellow River basin in China which feeds literally millions of people is just one example of resources exhausted to the point where they can no longer sustain life. Where would those millions of people go?

Just what are we doing?

Is it really that hard to bring better agricultural techniques to farmers in these countries? Is it really that hard to teach them how to deal with the affects of climate change? Is it really that hard to actually do as we say must be done?

* rain water agriculture- cheap, efficient, and saves water.

* rain water catchment (off houses and roads)- cheap, efficient, and saves water. And of course, the health and safety of those using it must also be taken into consideration.

* less water intensive crops that yield more to give farmers more for their planting.

* pressure bought to bear on governments to shore up water infrastructure and work to eliminate corruption and mismanagement.

* planting trees in the most deforested areas to bring water to the source and provide sustinence.

* also providing information and services for women and men in third world countries regarding birth control and health.

These are just some ways to begin which are all possible, but like with anything else those involved in it must also feel hope for the future.

As to how that should happen, we need a "Marshall Plan" (reference to the Honorable Al Gore's term from his book Earth In The Balance) to modernize Africa and look at the priorities of those who live there and in other areas of our world where the climate/water crisis will change their relationship to the planet instead of just throwing money at it (but it cannot be disputed that money is also important, though not the only factor.) But action must begin now or the need for water globally will far exceed capacity to provide it. Howewer, by doing the moral thing we could actually decrease global demand by half. I think the choice is clear, and it is a choice we all have to make.


Water is life

In Ladakh Glacier Melt Raises Fear Of Water Woes

In Ladakh Glacier Melt Raises Fear Of Water Woes

In Ladakh, glacier melt raises fears of water woes
by Staff Writers

Leh, India (AFP) Sept 19, 2007

Rinchen Wangchuck remembers slipsliding his way down a glacier that stretched far down the mountains toward his village in the Nubra Valley, in India's far north, after school ended for the summer. Today, Wangchuck says that glacier is all but gone.

Like him, many who live in the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh where glaciers are a part of daily life are reporting similar disquieting changes.

"As a young boy I remember the road wouldn't be open. We used to trek across the glacier. You slid a lot of the way," recalled Wangchuck, 37, now head of the environmental organisation Snow Leopard Conservancy.

Wangchuck often travels the 40 kilometres (26 miles) from Ladakh's capital Leh to the Khardung-La pass that lets into the valley and says he has watched the glacier on the north face of the Karakoram mountains shrink before his eyes.

"Twenty years ago the road opened into a wall of ice. Today that wall of ice is barely there," he said.

In a region where annual rainfall is around 50 millimetres (two inches) and glaciers provide 90 percent of the water, Ladakhis worry they may be among the first to feel the effects of global warming.

Trekking guide Sonam Chosgial, who leads climbing groups once or twice a year up to Stok peak, visible from Leh, says the glacier he passes on the way to the summit has shrunk too.

"Since the last five to six years it has been decreasing in size," he said. "You used to need to cross it in a more technical way. Now it is not very risky to do."

-- Locals see weather fluctuations and retreating snowlines --

Others report weather fluctuations -- snow and rain at odd times -- and a snowline that appears to be steadily creeping upwards.

In Ladakh, sandwiched between India's rivals Pakistan and China, weather data is closely guarded by the army and air force which have a heavy presence.

In any case, just a handful of the thousands of Himalayan glaciers are studied using a field method that provides a first-hand gauge of their retreat well before it becomes visible by satellite.

But what little information is available confirms what Ladakhis are seeing.

Measurements of one Ladakh glacier taken from 2001 to 2003 with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver show an estimated annual retreat of 15 to 20 metres (49 to 66 feet).

"This rate is chaos. That should not happen," said paleoclimatologist Bahadur Kotlia, who took the measurements of a glacier on the south face of the Karakoram mountains out of curiosity on his way to the Nubra valley for research.

A satellite-based study of 466 Himalayan glaciers published in January by scientists with the Indian Space Research Organisation estimated their area had reduced by 21 percent since the 1960s.

"I knew things are changing very dramatically but I never had a clue (of the) extent they are retreating," the study's lead author Anil Kulkarni, who has been studying Indian glaciers for 20 years, told AFP.

China last month reported a similar decrease over the same time span in glacier area in its northwest.

"This is half a percent per year so it's quite a fast shrinking," said Wilfried Haeberli, director of the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service coordinating body.

Scientists say temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade for the last 30 years.

Himalayan glaciers are the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, vital for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream.

-- Melting snows mean abundant water, but only for now --

The melting of the glaciers bodes particularly ill for rain-scarce Ladakh where water demand has risen in recent years, spurred by tourism.

In the old part of Leh, residents still get water from hand pumps using only as much as they can carry back up the alleys in buckets.

But in the new town, hotels and guesthouses with flushes and showers to supply are pumping up groundwater. Officials acknowledge that water use is uneven and unplanned.

"Very recently we started boring water,"said Chering Dorjay, head of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. "People are pumping too much water and water levels are going down."

Farmers, though, are reporting plenty of water in glacier-fed streams.

"In the last 20 years we have hardly had any drought. Without good snowfall there is still good water in the streams," said a concerned Dorjay. "That means whatever reserves we have are melting."

Scientists say that a period of water "luxury" -- as glaciers release water reserves built over thousands of years -- will precede the water woes to come.

"What is happening is a lot of snow is melting in winter itself," said glaciologist Kulkarni. "There may be a time when we do not feel the pinch, but this luxury aspect will not last that long."

The scientist's research showed that winter snowmelt in one Indian river basin had increased by 75 percent in the last 40 years.

Councillor Dorjay said officials are considering ways to hoard water, including reservoirs and artificial glaciers -- made by channeling winter streams into a depression to slow the water flow, which allows it to freeze.

Ladakh's "artificial glacier" man, who brought the technique to several villages more than a decade ago, said underground streams will also be affected by rising temperatures and declining snowfall.

"There used to be heavy snowfall even in Leh in winter -- two to three feet. Now there's hardly one foot," said Chewang Norphel, head of the Leh Nutrition Project. "The underground streams are also fed by snowfall."

But Norphel, as he visited the farming village of Nang where the fields were green with barley, peas and potatoes, tries to remain upbeat about Ladakh's changing climate.

"Perhaps it will rain more," he said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a classic example of the effects of climate change. Glaciers which provide the region's entire water supply are shrinking much faster than anyone had predicted, and in areas like Ladekh where there is minimal rainfall to begin with that does not bode well for the people there once the water is gone... especially if they waste it. And with tourism in the area going up what will they do? If they charge tourists more for their water use would tourism go down thus depriving them of income?

Methods mentioned to save the water they have are a step in the right direction, but hoarding alone will not save them if they do not have the moral will to conserve that which they hoard and find other ways to conserve. Perhaps with changing weather patterns it will at some point rain more, but can you really base your future on that?

Philanthropist Brings Hope, Safe Water To Women Around the World

Philanthropist Brings Hope, Safe Water To Women Around The World

September 20, 2007 - The afternoon heat in a rural India village of the Tamil Nadu region is stifling as the members of the women’s self-help group gather for their meeting. What unites them today is the defining need of their lives: water. Working together, they have secured an accessible, safe water source in their community. A woman dressed in a brightly colored sari stands up. Prior to the new water source, she says, each month the contaminated water made at least one of her four children sick and she would have to walk seven miles to the nearest clinic. Since the new water source was installed, she states proudly, she hasn’t needed to take her children for medical attention.

After relating this story, philanthropist Wynnette LaBrosse, founder of Agora Foundation, explained that it’s the power of safe water to transform the health and lives of women and girls like these that inspired her to enter the water and sanitation sector. “When I learned about the plight of women and girls in regard to lack of water and sanitation, I clearly saw that water is at the heart of almost every key women’s issue,” says LaBrosse. “I wanted to make a difference at this most essential level.”

With ready access to safe water, women and girls will no longer have to spend long hours walking to distant, often polluted water sources, nor will they have to care for children sick with water-related diseases. Instead, women can engage in income-generating activity and girls can go to school. Ms. LaBrosse sums it up concisely: “Water gives women their lives back; it gives girls a potential for creating their lives through education.”

In 2004, Agora Foundation provided $1 million to help launch WaterPartners’ WaterCredit Initiative, a unique program providing access to credit financing for the world’s poor so they can build and sustain their own water and sanitation systems.

“With WaterCredit, people gain a new sense of control over their lives,” says LaBrosse. “When visiting WaterPartners projects in India, we stopped in four villages. I met a woman who took out a loan for a water connection. Because she no longer had to spend hours each day collecting water, she started sewing clothes to earn money for herself and her family. She beamed with pride and with the dignity her handiwork and the loan brought her in the eyes of others – and in her own.” These, explains LaBrosse, are the outcomes that fuel Agora’s work.

end of excerpt

~~~~~~~~
This is a story of inspiration and hope. A story we need to see more often in this world regarding bringing safe water to people of the world, and in especially freeing women in developing and third world countries from the backbreaking and dangerous task of providing water to their families that is more often than not not fit for their consumption.

This is the crux of what makes us moral beings and to me is why we are on this Earth: To bring hope and life to those for whom those two things are in short supply but are just as much their right to have as for it is for us.

Water scarcity and working to end it is also a social and human rights issue as well as a moral issue. Women in many societies are looked upon as second class citizens and forced to do this back breaking work that is often dangerous and unhealthy bringing with it ill health, lack of education for them and their daughters, and a theft of their dignity as human beings. This is then in my view how you win hearts and minds and how you begin to repair the damage we have done socially, environmentally, morally, and spiritually to our world. Therefore, thank you to all those like Ms. LaBrosse who bring this life saving right to those in need.


WATER IS LIFE.

Facts and Figures

2.4. billion people in the world, in other words two fifths of the world population, do not have access to adequate health.

1.1. billion people in the world, in other words one sixth of the world population, do not have access to potable water.

2.2. million people in developing countries are dying every year, most of them children, from diseases linked to the lack of access to clean drinking water, inadequate health and poor hygiene.

6000 boys and girls die everyday from diseases linked to the lack of access to clean drinking water, inadequate health and poor hygiene.

The average distance a woman in Africa and Asia walks to collect water is 6 km.

The weight of water that women in Asia and Africa carry on their heads is equivalent to the baggage weight allowed by airlines (20 kg).

In developing countries one person uses an average of 10 liters of water per day. In the United Kingdom, one person uses an average of 135 liters of water everyday.

When you flush the toilet, you are using the same water amount that one person in the Third World uses all day to wash, clean, cook and drink.

In the last ten years, diarrhea has killed more girls and boys than all people who have died since World War II.

In China, Indonesia, and India, the people dying from diarrhea are double to those dying from HIV/AIDS.

The population of Nairobi, Kenya, pays five times more for one liter of water than does a North American citizen.

The Guatemalan a hand-washing initiative reduced 322,000 deaths from diarrhea in 1998.

1.5. billion people in the world are suffering from parasite infections due to solid waste in the environment, which could be controlled with hygiene, water and sanitation. These infections can cause malnutrition, anemia and delayed growth.

In China, Mexico and Vietnam, communities are practicing ecological healthiness.


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Sources:

Global Water Partnership, Understanding the Causes of Water Problems

Marcelina White, ¿Cómo afectará el ALCA a la mujer? (“How Will FTAA Affect Women?”), Women's EDGE

UNIFEM, Mujer, Medio Ambiente, Agua: Reflexiones sobre la promoción y protección del derecho de las mujeres al agua (“Women, Environment, Water: Reflections on the Promotion and Protection of Women’s Right to Water”), 24 de marzo del 2003

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, WASH Facts and Figures

WEDO, Conexiones No Escritas: Diferencias de Género en Cuanto al Uso y Manejo del Agua ("Unwritten Connections: Gender Differences Regarding the Use and Management of Water”)

World Water Development Report, El acceso al Agua como Derecho Humano (“Access to Water as a Human Right”)