002 - Ellen's Water News

[Guest guest]

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-b234-68\

d74a3c19ed

 

 

 

 

 

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