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.
