New Year Water Issues

Flooding in Brisbane, Australia suburbs January 2011

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

It has been awhile since I last posted. The holidays, a family member's illness, and generalized winter lethargy are to blame for the lack of comments and linkages. Water issues, on the other hand, do not take seasonal holidays, so some largely unrelated issues need at the least to be enumerated.

Once again the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission has had a trunk line water main break with a string of associated problems. Yesterday, on the coldest morning of the current season, much of the Beltway (I-95) in Prince Georges County, MD was closed for several hours due to flooding, and some serious damage was done to nearby surface streets, at least one commercial structure, and several automobiles. The U.S. Census Bureau's headquarters were shuttered for the day due to lack of water, and a number of local businesses had to close as well. Today residents of Prince Georges County served by that trunk water main have been instructed to continue boiling water before use.

Too much water has also been a problem in Australia, especially in Queensland. After years of drought and draconian restrictions on water use in some parts of Australia, the current summer with the strongest la niña in a generation or more has seen huge quantities of rain in some of that continent's normally arid and semi arid areas. Thousands of housing units have been damaged or destroyed, roads and other transportation facilities have been closed and damaged, and flooding in agricultural areas may contribute to a large uptick in world food prices in the next few months.

The role of global climate change in the Australian floods is a matter of debate. Less so is a report just issued suggesting that the Czech Republic may be the first state in the European Union to suffer from water supply problems due to warming air and redistribution of precipitation.

Drinking Water

Millrace, Mt. Vernon Distillery and Grist Mill Park, Fairfax, VA

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For residents of the Washington, DC area, there have been a number of drinking water issues in this current, exceptionally cold, early (meteorological) winter. Water main breaks have been all too common, especially in the District of Columbia and in portions of Maryland served by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. A combination of long periods of freezing weather and old pipes makes long established urban areas vulnerable to breaks. While the District of Columbia claims to be replacing old pipe at an accelerated rate, there are still many kilometers of old cast-iron pipe, so weather induced breaks are to be expected until warmer weather returns.

A second issue raised in Sunday's right-wing Washington Post is the presence of hexavalent chromium in the water supplies of a number of urban areas including Washington. While I have not seen the movie (I do not care for Julia Roberts in any role), apparently that chemical was the cause of the supposedly courageous activities of Erin Brokovich. Hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen, but at the moment its presence in drinking water is noted but not regulated. Current evidence indicates the chemical is in the water supplies of many urban area in the United States.

Related articles

• Tests find cancer-causing chemical in 89 percent of cities sampled (bespacific.com)
• Report: Probable carcinogen found in cities' drinking water (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Minerals, Mining, and Water III: Gold Mining and the Columbia River

Tiffany Mountain (1980 m)

Okanogan County, Washington

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It has been awhile since last I commented on mining, but today I came across several articles in various newspapers and other sources discussing mineral extraction in relation to water resources. A gold mine in Okanogan County, Washington has been a topic of concern for people in the Pacific Northwest for several years. The Canadian mining company operating the mine was recently fined by the State of Washington for filing false reports on water testing. Now that company wants to explore nearby areas for further mining activities, potentially profitable given the recent spikes in the price of gold. Draining into the Columbia River, the streams leading from the highland mining areas could bring arsenic, mercury and other toxic materials into the river. Water from the Columbia is used downstream for drinking water, for irrigation, and for recreation. While quite a distance away, the lower reaches of the river are also important salmon breeding areas.There is a fear of a toxic spill polluting that river in much the same way as smelter tailings and emissions at Trail, BC, just upstream on the Columbia, have contaminated nearby areas and Lake Roosevelt behind Grand Coulee Dam. There is an ongoing large-scale study of the contamination of the river by that smelter just across the international boundary. The Province of British Columbia is also conducting ongoing studies of contamination of air, water, and soil by the emissions from the smelter.

Related articles

• Massive study of Upper Columbia River underway (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• State fines Okanogan gold mine for false reports (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Smelter waste removed and beach rebuilt (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Teck discharges mercury into Columbia River (theglobeandmail.com)

Lead in Washington, DC's Drinking Water

Capitol from Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Court, Washington, DC

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In common with the situation in most other major cities in the eastern United States, lead in the local water supply has been a concern in Washington, DC for the past half century. Lead pipes and lead welds on water supply pipes made of other materials created a potential hazard for those consuming the water, especially for growing children. Over the past two decades there was a massive effort to reduce lead in the water supply. Now it is reported that effort was inadequate to reduce lead levels in about 15,000 residences. The deleterious effects of lead on the bodies and brains of those who are exposed to it in drinking water are numerous and profound, and there is a great concern about what this discovery may mean for those children living in the residences where lead levels remain high. An article in press expresses both the problems and the levels of hazard in Washington, DC (Brown, M.J., et al., Association between children’s blood lead levels, lead service lines, and water disinfection, Washington, DC, 1998–2006. Environ. Res. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.envres.2010.10.003).

Related articles

• New concerns about lead in D.C. water (washingtonpost.com)
• CDC: Partial pipe replacement didn't cut lead risk (sfgate.com)

Food Supply Notes

End of Sumer Corn, Fairfax City Farmers Market 2010

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While the course on World Food Supply: A Famine in Our Future will not be offered at OLLI, I have continued to collect materials and read about the subject. The other day the Guardian from the UK had a disturbing article Food Prices May Rise Up to 20%, Warns UN. A combination of factors, most of them related to climate, have resulted in poor grain harvests in various places. We have already noted here the effects of drought on Russian grain production, long-term drought in Africa and the devastation of agricultural land in Pakistan as a consequence of flooding. Crops in parts of North America were good, but increased demand for maize (corn) and other food crops for bio-fuels adds a great deal of uncertainty to price predictions. Added together, those factors lead to a decline in the world's supply of basic food and feed grains and promise to drive prices up. The increase in food prices in Africa and some of the poorer parts of Asia are all but certain to lead to increased hunger, though for the moment starvation and famine would appear to be over the horizon. It is quite worrisome, and it will be more so should the 2011 growing season in the Southern Hemisphere, including the grain producing areas of South America and Australia, produce poor yields.

On a loosley related issue, I am a great fan of bargain bins and used book sales. The other day I was at a local branch of one of the huge bookstore chains and happened on remaindered copy of a volume which I find fascinating, an encyclopedia of the world's food plants Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Food Plants (Washington, DC: National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-0372-5 for the North American edition of a book that was originally published in Australia). With the National Geographic's (should really be called the National Photographic!) signature color photography, the book is an excellent guide to the what, where, and why of world food plants and great fun to thumb through or to use as a reference to look up some unusual food plant or another.

Related articles

• The Global Warming Effects in Africa (brighthub.com)
• Global Food Outlook is Worrisome (scienceblogs.com)
• Rising Corn Prices Bring Fears of an Upswing in Food Costs (nytimes.com)

Pakistan Flooding

Pakistan late Summer 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

For a variety of reasons I have been a little obsessed with the floods of the 2010 summer monsoon season in Pakistan. My original idea had been to use Pakistan, a country very much in the news, as a central case study in the water resources course with the idea that the country is chronically short of water and subject to political pressures internally and from India related to water supply and use. Then a few months before the course began Pakistan was hit with excess rainfall and flooding of catastrophic levels. I decided it was wisest to severeky curtail the use of Pakistan as a case. Should I teach the course again, I will have the prospective of time to examine the issue of 2010's flooding, its potential links to global climate change, and the meaning of it to a country usually suffering from drought, or worried about a lack of water. Meanwhile, NASA's Earth Observatory has posted a fine view of the flooded area from space and a brief, but as almost always concise and informative description of that photo in "Flooding in Pakistan," well worth a look!

Treaties and Compacts

Boundary Waters of Canada and the United States

Source: International Joint Commission

On Wednesday the question was raised "What is the difference between a treaty and a compact?" I did not have a good answer at the time, and having devoted some research effort to the issue since, I still have not found a difference of consequence for most purposes, though there appears to be one of usage in the United States. In the dictionaries I have consulted, including paper ones on my shelves and online ones, there is virtually no difference in definition of the two terms, both being defined as agreements between individuals or states to resolve conflicts.

In the US the word "Compact" seems to be mostly used for agreements between states as in the "Great Lakes--St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is a legally binding interstate compact among the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The compact details how the states manage the use of the Great Lakes Basin's water supply and builds on the 1985 Great Lakes Charter and its 2001 Annex. The compact is the means by which the states implement the governors' commitments under the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement that also includes the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec." (quoted from Wikipedia entry). Of course there is an international component as two Canadian Provinces are also involved, though neither the US Federal Government nor the Government of Canada appear to be direct parties to the Compact.

Treaty, on the other hand, seems to be used in the US to mean an agreement between the Federal Government and a foreign country (or countries). One example is the longstanding Boundary Waters Treaty between the United States and Great Britain (acting for Canada) signed in 1909 and ratified the next year. Creating an International Joint Commission of the two national states, the treaty is an agreement to provide mechanisms for resolution of disputes over the rather numerous water issues that arise between them. A great number of streams cross the boundary, including two huge ones in the West, the Columbia and the Yukon. The Great Lakes - St. Lawrence River Basin is a large share of the boundary waters and the most important watershed for the economies of the Canada and the United States, and it is part of the zone covered by the treaty. The Compact noted above is apparently a response to the Treaty at the level of states and provinces which have great responsibilities for water issues in their respective countries.

This is a none too satisfactory response to the question raised, and the difference between treaties and compacts is one I shall devote some additional effort to leaning about once I have completed a series of projects which are more pressing at the moment.