From: "Deane Rimerman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: August 31, 2008 11:18:23 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [EF!] 002 - Ellen's Water News
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australia:
The Senate will hold an urgent inquiry into the immediate availability
of water for the Murray River, the Coorong and lower lakes in South
Australia. Greens leader Bob Brown said he believed the inquiry would
be better able to determine water storages than the independent audit
of the Murray-Darling Basin promised two weeks ago by Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd. The motion was moved by new Greens senator Sarah
Hanson-Young and supported by the Government, the Opposition and South
Australian Independent senator Nick Xenophon. It calls on the Senate's
Rural and Regional Committee to report no later than September 30 on
the volume of water and ways in which it could be provided into the
Murray-Darling system to replenish the lower lakes and Coorong.
Senator Hanson-Young said, ''The multi-party support indicates the
scope of this environmental crisis. It shows acceptance by all sides
of politics that we have to act.'' The Senate also supported the
Greens' motion for a second inquiry due to report on December 4, which
will examine the implications on the long-term sustainable management
of the Murray-Darling Basin system. Senator Brown said the support by
all parties was an ''early dividend'' for those Australians who
supported a return to the Senate with a balance of power out of the
hands of the two major parties. ''It is a very early indication of how
a balance of power in the Senate can lead to very good outcomes,''
Senator Brown said. He said the inquiry would have greater power than
an independent audit and would also be able to, for example, examine
water volumes in the Snowy Hydro Scheme. Figures issued yesterday by
the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that irrigation water use
fell by 29 per cent in 2006-07 to 7636 gigalitres. The largest decline
was in water used for rice growing, which fell by 81 per cent,
followed by a 50 per cent decline in irrigation water use for cotton
growing and a 30 per cent fall in the amount of water used for pasture
and grazing. Earlier this month, the Australian Conservation
Foundation proposed the Government buy six stations in the northern
part of the Murray-Darling Basin in far-western NSW and Queensland to
free up 300GL to increase water flows downstream.
http://forests.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=105437
USA:
The crisis of the Clean Water Act, however, is growing and cities,
counties, states and private citizens should be joining together to
demand that Congress pass Oberstar-Feingold, and halt the march to
return to pre-Nixon water degradation in Arizona and across the
country. Senator Obama says he will help. The breakdown is a result of
United States v. Rapanos, a Supreme Court decision in June 2006 that
addressed the Clean Water Act's ability to protect wetlands that had
uncertain connections to bodies of water. The court case addressed the
corps' authority under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to regulate
wetlands. In 1975, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that
the old Phelps Dodge Douglas, Ariz., smelter couldn't discharge
pollution into a nearby arroyo under the act; the first of many
precedents for the act's broad authority prior to 2006. An earlier
2001 Supreme Court case did halt protection of isolated waterways for
migrating birds, the first step in reducing authority. The Rapanos
decision resulted in a strange split reflective of the politics of the
court. Four members of the court wanted the old authority of the act
to apply; four wanted a restrictive interpretation that said that the
water had to be flowing for the act to regulate. Justice Anthony
Kennedy insisted that there needed to be a "significant nexus" between
a streambed and "a navigable water of the United States." Suddenly,
every potential streambed in the country required an analysis of
whether it was connected to another that could have or has had
watercraft on it before it could be protected from pollution or
disruption. What turmoil this stirred in the West, where the sunsets
are magnificent, very little water is perennial and many tributaries
to sometimes-peripheral streams are dry. Who knows what all the
Supremes were thinking about regarding our arid ecology as they
pondered how to regulate the country's waterways.
California:
California voters rose up by a 3-to-2 margin in 1982 and torpedoed the
most contentious water project in state history -- the Peripheral
Canal. The 42-mile ditch would have linked the Sacramento River to
pumps near Stockton that send water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta to thirsty Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. But
rejection of Proposition 9 didn't settle anything. Instead, it locked
state water politics, which revolve around the delta, into a chronic
stalemate. Crops on the San Joaquin Valley's west side die for lack of
water. Fishing boats wait out a ban on salmon. No one is winning.
Today, some think only one thing may break the delta deadlock: an epic
disaster. The potential for such an event grows every year.
Century-old levees within the delta grow ever weaker, raising
prospects of a Hurricane Katrina-like catastrophe -- a flood of salty
water that would submerge hundreds of square miles of farmland and
historic towns like Isleton and Locke. It might happen after an
earthquake. Or it might happen as a result of erosion as sea levels
rise amid global warming. No one knows when the delta will reach that
tipping point. That it eventually will is viewed as certain. "Major
changes in the Delta and in California's use of Delta resources are
inevitable," said a December report by Delta Vision, a two-year-old
task force created by Gov. Schwarzenegger to find ways to avert a
water disaster. "Current patterns of use are unsustainable, and
catastrophic events, such as an earthquake, could cause dramatic
changes in minutes." The Peripheral Canal succumbed to fears that it
would cost a fortune and suck the delta dry. But since its rejection,
pumping from the delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern
California has risen more than one-third anyway. In 2004, just as the
fish decline became apparent, pumping reached its highest level. The
last effort to solve the delta's problems, called CalFed, took almost
a decade and collapsed when Congress and the Legislature balked at
writing blank checks for solutions designed to keep everyone happy.
Now, the Delta Vision task force is working on a new effort to repair
the broken delta. Its biggest problem could be that every conceivable
solution has its avid supporters, but also its bitter critics.
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/817658.html
On Friday July 11, the day before the Water Board's CEQA process was
to initiate, PacifiCorp withdrew their clean water permit application.
The withdrawal letter stated that PacifiCorp was withdrawing in order
to "facilitate settlement negotiations." However, since withdrawal,
there have been no meetings between PacifiCorp and the Klamath
Settlement Group and no settlement proposal has been offered to the
Klamath Settlement Group for consideration. According to the Water
Board, this situation -- the withdrawal of a water quality
certification permit application without resubmitting another
alternative application – is highly uncommon. So uncommon that it has
led the Water Board to send an official letter to PacifiCorp
requesting that the application be resubmitted by September 30th so
that mounting water quality and fisheries issues can be properly
addressed. http://www.klamathriver.org/KlamathDamsQA.html
CALIFORNIA SUPPORTS WINNEMUM WINTU TRIBE: SENATE PASSES JOINT
RESOLUTION - The California Senate on Wednesday passed a Joint
Resolution urging the federal government to restore federal
recognition status to the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. The resolution,
authored by Assembly Member Huffman, passed with 24 votes. The Tribe
has played a big leadership role in the battle to restore the
California Delta and Central Valley rivers and stop the raising of
Shasta Dam.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/08/13/18526056.php
World-wide:
The world grows more than enough food to sustain the global
population, but half of that food is wasted -- and thus half of the
water used in food production is wasted as well, says a new report
from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization,
International Water Management Institute, and Stockholm Water
Management Institute. In developing countries, food spoils or is
damaged by insects; in developed countries, it's more often just
tossed out. The United States and other industrialized countries throw
out some 30 percent of their food each year, says the report: "That
corresponds to [10.6 trillion gallons] of irrigation water, enough
water to meet the household needs of 500 million people." The
organizations call for a 50 percent reduction in global food waste by
2025, pointing out that 1 billion people already live with
insufficient water. "Unless we change our practices," says the FAO's
Pasquale Steduto, "water will be a key constraint to food production
in the future."
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?
id=88ef5435-97e3-4f83-b234-68d74a3c19ed
Norway:
On 3rd April, the Norwegian Parliament passed a law to ensure that
water and sanitation infrastructure be publicly owned for the
indefinite future. The French water company, Veolia, is clearly
disappointed, and will not be able to invest in Norway as they have
planned. Fagforbundet, PSIs affiliate, and the biggest public sector
union in Norway has welcomed the new legislation. The union considers
that public ownership is vital to ensure good quality drinking water.
"Veolia is not interested in quality. They are just going for the
profit'', said Stein Gulbrandsen, from the Division for Public
Transport and Technical Staff (SST) in Fagforbundet. Veolia has been
campaigning in the Norwegian municipalities to gain support and to
press local politicians to privatise the management of water and
sanitation. Last Autumn, all mayors and leading administrators
received a letter and an information newspaper, from Veolia about the
benefits the company could offer. "We only gave them information about
public-private solutions," a representative from Veolia explained.
Howeve, the company has been lobbying hard in advance of the vote in
Parliament, and have made public their view that compulsory public
ownership will ensure neither quality nor control. Fagforbundet will
pushing for substantial investments when the next budget is drawn up.
"Private investors might have been able to do the upgrading faster,
but that's not the question here. Water and sanitation are not for
sale. The people of Norway do not want to pay multinational companies
to make a profit so they can enjoy good quality drinking water and
sanitation in their homes", said Stein Gulbrandsen.
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?RefID=102564
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