WaterWired

High Country News: Stream Restoration and Protection

The current online edition of the High Country News has a number of articles on stream restoration and protection. These you can view for free, and are online only.

• In Montana, counties are specifiying streamside setbacks to protect their waterways.
• Bill Zeedyk, the "Riparian Restoration Guru", using "induced meandering", helps streams achieve a healthy flow by using simple rock and wood structures. He "lets the water do the work." Some of my students at the University of New Mexico used his techniques in their field research.
• Dave Rosgen, the "Restoration Cowboy", has been going against the flow for years as he promulgates his approach to stream restoration (this article was originally published in 2003).

I have never met Zeedyk or Rosgen, but I know of them through their reputations.

I don't claim to know much about stream restoration. A former colleague of mine at the Desert Research Institute in the late 1970s - early 1980s, Bill Woessner, has influenced me. Bill has done much excellent work on "stream renaturalization" (he eschews the term "stream restoration") since he arrived at the University of Montana in 1981. He is now chair of Geosciences. One of Bill's pet peeves, which I share, is the fact that stream restoration techniques and practitioners often neglect to consider the ground water component.  

Pesky stuff, that ground water.

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” – Aldo Leopold

WHO: Safer Water, Better Health

From the World Health Organization:

The first-ever report depicting country-by-country estimates of the
burden of disease due to water, sanitation and hygiene highlights how
much disease could be prevented through increased access to safe water
and better hygiene.

This comprehensive overview provides the epidemiological evidence and
economic arguments for fully integrating water, sanitation and hygiene
in countries' disease reduction strategies -- a prerequisite to
achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It also provides the basis
for preventive action by all relevant sectors managing critical water
resources and services in support of public health efforts.

Lack of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene remains one of the world's
most urgent health issues.

Download the report.

Florida Purchases Sugar Land to Help Restore Everglades

Nope, that's not Sugar Land, TX, but land used to grow sugar cane for sugar production in Florida.

Florida is spending $1.75B to purchase about 292 square miles of U.S. Sugar Corporation's holdings in the Everglades (see map, courtesy of the Washington Post). Those holdings equal the land area of the entire city of New York - all five boroughs.

Read about it in the New York Times.

U.S. Sugar Corporation is the USA's largest sugar cane grower. Here is the complete media kit from U.S. Sugar, which contains the statement of President and CEO Robert H. Buker, Jr., the details, Q&A, etc:

Download us_sugar_media_kit.pdf

The South Florida Water Management District, a quasi-governmental entity of the State of Florida, will assume control of the land, which will not occur for 6 years.  

It's not quite a done deal yet, however. More work needs to be done over the next few months.

The importance of the land acquistion cannot be underestimated. The purchased land will add about 1 million acre-feet of storage, and taking land out of agricultural production will reduce the phosphorus and nitrogen loads to the system. The former was a particular issue. Some of the "natural plumbing" will be restored.

The negotiations were a well-kept secret, and the announcement surprised a number of people.

Let's hope the Everglades are on the road to better health. 

“Most agencies want to spend the money making things happen and not spend the money finding out if they work." – Dr. William Dietrich, UC-Berkeley geomorphologist

The Gulf of Mexico's Growing 'Dead Zone'; Iowa Flooding From 37,000 Feet

Not good news. The suffering and devastation caused by Midwest floods are bad enough, but there's even more bad news: more nutrients are going to be swept into the Gulf of Mexico.

This article from Time says that this year's hypoxic zone in the Gulf will be over 10,000 square miles, about the size of Massachusetts. In the past, the average has been about 6,000 square miles. 

En route to Chicago from Portland today we flew over Iowa and got an eagles' eye view of the flooding. The Des Moines, Cedar, and Iowa Rivers were quite obviously in flood stage in what some hydrologists are calling the 500-year flood. The Mississippi was also quite swollen. 

"We seem to be going in the opposite direction. We don't seem committed to fixing the problem." -- Donald Scavia, University of Michigan 

Are Golf Courses 'Green'?

An appropriate post on the eve of the U.S. Open.

As a youngster I worked summers as a caddy in the fresh air of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the salt-laden, moisture-soaked air of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Since I stopped caddying I have picked up golf clubs exactly once, in a moment of weakness about 18 years ago. And that was in Kennebunkport, Maine, at the golf club frequented by President George H.W. Bush. The Downeaster who was the club sentinel chided me for my tacky wardrobe - barely "golf-ready". "The President will be on the course today!" he said. "Of the USA?" I exclaimed. "No," he scolded, "Of the club!"

I'll try to be objective here.  

I remember when many of us - including yours truly - automatically assumed that golf courses were good land uses - after all, they were lush and green, cement- and asphalt-free. Wasn't it much nicer to see a beautiful fairway than a sea of tile roofs? Little did we know what lay under the surface.

But golf courses use a lot of water (and let's not forget the fertilizers and pesticides). The water and chemical use issues have been poorly-kept secrets for years. In general, golf courses are far from being "green". But the water use issue is front and center now, what with water shortages, droughts, global warming, and growth in water short-areas (e.g., Southwest USA) where courses are being built to satify demand.

Frank Deford, well-known sportswriter and commentator addressed this issue today on his weekly commentary on NPR. It's a good commentary. He made some interesting points:

• There are 16,000 (give or take) golf courses in the USA, half the world's total 
• USA golf courses occupy the same area as Delaware
• The courses average 312,000 gallons of water per day (from Audobon International)
• Each of the 57 golf courses in the Palm Springs, CA, area uses 1,000,000 gallons per day (It's a desert, stupid!)
• A poll of golfers indicated that 41% of those polled believe global warming is a myth

I used to go to a conference each summer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where the Chamber of Commerce bragged of the 100 golf courses in the immediate vicinity.

Deford noted that the May 2008 issue of Golf Digest featured a candid article by John Barton, "How green is golf?" about golf course water and chemical use and environmentalism. Barton states categorically that golf courses face a crisis over water.

The magazine also interviewed seven leading "thinkers" at the intersection of golf and the environment. Interesting to read what they think.

Although there is quite a way to go, things are getting better at some golf courses with respect to water and chemical use. "Organic" methods are gaining traction. Water use is being monitored. Golfers are becoming more aware. Maybe we'll get that "global warming myth" figure down to 30%.

An inveterate (invertebrate?) golfer-hydrologist once lectured me: "Don't forget - golf courses provide ground water recharge." "But what's in the recharge water?" I replied.

Now, if we could just get golfers out of those carts! 

"Golf is a good walk spoiled." -- Mark Twain

Safe Drinking Water Symposium at UNC

The Institute for the Environment (IE) at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) wiil host a symposium on Sustainable and Safe Drinkng Water in the Developing and Developed Countries: Where Science Meets Policy, 5-6 November 2008, in Chapel Hill, NC.

There will be an excellent international group of invited speakers: Joan Rose, John Briscoe, Walter Giger, Guy Howard, and Clarissa Brocklehurst.

Abstracts for poster and platform presentations are due 15 June 2008; click here for more information.

This looks like a good one.

"If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." -- Mother Teresa

Top Ten Reasons Why Environmental Agencies Should Address Water Quantity Issues

1) When water moves, the stuff in the water moves, too.  (Link to TMDLs)

2) Modelers can’t predict where the stuff will go without knowing where the water goes, when it goes there, and in what quantity. (Link to forecasting)

3) When the amount of water changes, concentrations of stuff in the water can change, too. (Link to reference conditions for water quality, and water quality standards)

4) When the amount of water changes, temperatures can change, too. (Link to habitat requirements)

5) When the amount of water changes, the spatial extent of certain habitats can change, as can the biogeochemistry of soils. (Link to water quality constituents' concentrations and habitat requirements)

6) Water quantity is needed for urban, industrial, agricultural, domestic, energy-producing, and environmental uses.  It’s a zero-sum game requiring astute tradeoffs and reliable tools. (Link to sustainability and environmental valuation)

7) Landscape changes affect water retention, runoff, ground water flow and recharge, evapotranspiration, and precipitation patterns and amounts.  As these components of water budgets change, water quality constituents' concentrations and loads change, affecting receiving water quality. (Link to TMDLs, habitat requirements)

8) Protection of ecosystems and maintenance of water quality may require the development of multi-objective tradeoff tools.  (Surely water quantity will be considered one of many objectives!)

9) Environmental agencies' missions are to protect human health and safeguard the natural environment.  Both of these aspects need clean water and appropriate quantities of it.  Not considering water quantity in the mission would be like taking a bath with only soap. (Link to sustainability and appeal to common sense!)

10) Who is asking the question, "What are the water quantity needs of the future, what tools will be available to allocate the water, and how are allocations made for the greatest good over time and space?"

Bonus reason #11:

11) Because I said so.

So what am I getting at? We need to consider water quality, water quantity, and ecosystems  together. Maybe even managed/allocated/regulated by a single agency at the state level.

Throw in land use planning, too.

I got most of these from a colleague. Enjoy!

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." -- President George W. Bush

EPA Climate Change Public Webcast - 8 May

The Office of Water of the EPA will host a public Webcast on 8 May 2008 , 2:30 - 4:30 PM EDT, to discuss and receive feedback on its National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change (available here).

Complete information, including Webcast registration, is available at this WWW site. Registration began on 23 April. You can also submit comments on the Strategy at the same site.

Here's the letter from Benjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant Administrator, announcing the Webcast, along wth additional information:

Download epa_climate_change_webcast.pdf

"The only reason some people get lost in thought is that it's unfamiliar territory." -- Paul Fix

Senate Grumbles About Pharmaceuticals Study

The U.S. Senate tore EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Benjamin H. Grumbles a "new one" for the Agency's laxity in the pharmaceuticals in drinking water kerfluffle. See the Associated Press story on the Senate hearing, as seen on the MSNBC WWW site.

From the story:

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, angrily chided Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA assistant administrator for water, for the agency’s failure to require testing for drugs and for public disclosure of test results.

“When a story like this breaks, why is it necessary for Sen. (Frank) Lautenberg to call a hearing on this? Why aren’t you working on this night and day?” Boxer asked. “The Associated Press did your work — and they’re telling us what’s in the water.”

Boxer set the critical tone in her opening remarks, when she praised the AP and the U.S. Geological Survey, which has conducted extensive testing, for informing the nation that “our water supplies can contain a mixture of pharmaceuticals. Notice I didn’t thank the EPA.”

Yes, the USGS was praised for its role in testing pharmaceuticals. Maybe now Congress will restore the funding the Bush Administration cut from the the USGS's National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. It would be even nicer if they gave that program a big increase.

Here's more from the story:

In other testimony, the senators were joined in their call for more research by Robert M. Hirsch, the USGS’s associate director for water.

“Whether or not there are adverse human health effects from cumulative lifetime exposures to the low concentrations of complex mixtures of pharmaceuticals found in the environment remains a research priority, particularly the effects on sensitive subpopulations such as children, women of child-bearing years, the elderly and people with suppressed immune systems,” Hirsch said.

As I said last month, this story is not new, it has been around for about 15 years. That does not mean it's okay to ignore pharmaceuticals in drinking water; we need to know what the concentrations are, whether they will increase, and whether they pose human/environmental health hazards at current and expected levels.

NGWA on Pharmaceuticals in Drinking Water: Some Useful Information

The National Ground Water Association (NGWA), the world's largest non-governmental organization devoted exlcusively to ground water, recently sent out these helpful items to its members. I received NGWA's okay to post these.

Key Points - This is a very brief summary of the issue of pharmaceutical compounds and EDCs (endocrine-disrupting chemicals) in water. This is intended for your own edification. Download key_pointsngwa.pdf

Talking Points - This provides some key points about what is known about the subject of pharmaceutical compounds and EDCs in water. You may find it useful in responding to inquiries. Download Talking_pts-NGWA.pdf

Clip & Copy - This is a two-page backgrounder on the issue that can be used to answer frequently asked questions by the public. Download Clip_Copy-NGWA.pdf

Template News Release - This news release provides some basic, practical information that may be helpful to private well owners if this issue is of concern locally. It focuses on general well construction, maintenance, and water testing practices, and also provides some specific information on proper disposal of unused drugs and EDCs.
Download news_release_template.pdf

The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security, and Water Quality will hold a hearing entitled, "Pharmaceuticals in the Nation's Water: Assessing Potential Risks and Actions to Address the Issue," on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

[Disclosure notice: I am a former NGWA board member and former chair of its largest division, the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers (AGWSE).]

Report: Well Water + Arsenic = Erectile Dysfunction. Is the Evidence Hard?

I just received this article from Todd Jarvis and thought it was worth posting; it wasn't a hard decision to make.

Kris Freeman summarizes the results of a study of well water from northeast Taiwan where the ground water has very high levels of arsenic, which may promote erectile dysfunction (ED). This region is one of the "classic" high arsenic areas that is often cited in the literature.

You can download the scientific article from Environmental Health Perspectives (116(4): 532-536, April 2008):

Download as_and_ed.pdf 

Here is the abstract:

Abstract
Background: Erectile dysfunction (ED) has a profound impact on the quality of life of many men. Many risk factors are associated with ED, such as aging, sex hormone levels, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes mellitus. Arsenic exposure could damage peripheral vessels and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, the relationship between arsenic exposure and ED has seldom been evaluated.

Objectives: In this study we aimed to investigate whether exposure to arsenic enhances the risk of ED.

Methods: We recruited 177 males ≥ 50 years of age through health examinations conducted in three hospitals in Taiwan. We used a questionnaire (International Index of Erectile Function-5) to measure the level of erectile function. Sex hormones, including total testosterone and sex hormone–binding globulin, were determined by radioimmunoassay. We used another standardized questionnaire to collect background and behavioral information (e.g., cigarette smoking ; alcohol, tea, or coffee drinking ; and physical activity) .

Results: The prevalence of ED was greater in the arsenic-endemic area (83.3%) than in the non–arsenic-endemic area (66.7%) . Subjects with arsenic exposure > 50 ppb had a significantly higher risk of developing ED than those with exposure ≤ 50 ppb, after adjusting for age, cigarette smoking, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease [odds ratio (OR) = 3.4]. Results also showed that the risk of developing severe ED was drastically enhanced by arsenic exposure (OR = 7.5) , after adjusting for free testosterone and traditional risk factors of ED.

Conclusions: Results suggested that chronic arsenic exposure has a negative impact on erectile function.

Upshot: If you drink ground water with high levels of arsenic, you may need that little blue pill.

Of course, if you are drinking water with high levels of arsenic, ED may be the least of your problems.

"An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger." -- Unknown

New Policies on 'Waters of the US' Jurisdiction

Jane Rowan, President of the American Water Resources Association(AWRA), posted this item on the AWRA blog.

She begins:

New guidance to determine federal jurisdiction of some “waters of the United States” may lead to a more holistic view of the watershed and justify a National Water Policy.

On June 5, 2007, the Assistant Secretary of the Army and the Assistant Administrator for Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), signed into effect a Memorandum for the Corps of Engineers Director of Civil Works (Corps) and EPA Regional Administrators to coordinate on Jurisdictional Determinations (JDs) under Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 404. This charge to collaboratively document JDs is a result of the Supreme Court decisions made under Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County vs. The US Army Corps of Engineers S 531 U.S. 159 (2001) (‘‘SWANCC’’) and the 2006 Supreme Court consolidated cases Rapanos v. U.S. and Carabell v. U.S. (known as the “Rapanos” decision).

And here's her ending [emboldening mine]:

Our nation must think creatively about implementing a water policy where all governmental agencies – federal, state, and local – apply similar methods to adequately value water resources to wisely manage their use.

Read her entire post - it's good stuff.

"Legislatures respond, they seldom lead." -- Jack Davies, former Minnesota state senator

AWRA Conference on Riparian Ecosystems and Buffers: Working at the Water's Edge

The American Water Resources Association (AWRA) will convene this conference in lovely Virginia Beach, Virginia's largest city, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.

Click here for all the information.

From the conference WWW site:

The study of riparian ecosystems and the proliferation of initiatives and programs using riparian areas as buffers and living shorelines have demonstrated the need to remain on the cutting edge of science and practice when working at the water's edge. The Mid-Atlantic Region is home to some of the most aggressive programs to conserve and restore riparian areas and coastal shorelines in the world--making Virginia Beach, VA an ideal location for this conference.

We have worked hard over the past year to organize an excellent agenda which is guaranteed to provide you with new insights into the function and management of the critical riparian landscape and an enjoyable environment for networking with scientists and the managers who are implementing riparian programs and practices on the ground. Meet some of the most prominent scientists in the field of riparian ecosystem research from across the country and around the world. Learn about new approaches and emerging issues in 36 technical sessions and an extensive display of posters, hear from renowned environmental leaders in our plenary sessions, learn about new technology in the Exhibit Hall, and learn about coastal riparian ecosystems on our Field Trip. You will also have time to meet and greet new and old friends at our Reception, Luncheon, Lakeside Barbeque, and other networking events we have planned.

You can't miss this one if you are working in this field. It'll be a winner!

[Disclosure notice: I am on the AWRA's Board of Directors.]

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -- Will Durant

Irrigation Districts Going Underground

No, we're not talking about the "underground economy" or something similar, but  really going underground, all in the name of saving water, and perhaps, bringing back the salmon.

Kate Ramsayer wrote in the 25 March 2008  edition of the Bend Bulletin that irrigation districts in Central Oregon are replacing their open canals with pipe to save water.

Ramsayer describes the project currently underway in the Swalley Irrigation District (SID), which is costing $11 million, funded by private and public groups and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB).

She writes:

The district decided to pipe the five miles through Bend because a consultant identified that as the area where most of the water was seeping out.

“That was where the worst water losses were,” said Jan Lee, the district’s general manager. “When subdivisions were built, they do blasting, and the basalt geology gets fractured even more.”

Piping those miles will save the district about a quarter of the water it diverts from the Deschutes, meaning better water quality and habitat for fish, Lee said.

Swalley would like to pipe most of its network of canals. But, according to Tod Heisler, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC), only about 20 percent of the region’s canal system would have to be piped to provide the water savings that biologists say is needed to create a healthy environment for fish and other aquatic wildlife.

What Lee says about the geology is true. The relatively young basalts on the eastern side of the Cascades Range are generally quite permeable, so unlined canals leak like sieves. I've heard some claim a canal can lose as much as 50% of its flow to leakage.

But that leakage likely becomes ground water recharge and can support a riparian ecotone along the canal that also serves as wildlife habitat. And people also like to see flowing surface water. The aforementioned are some of the reasons people don't want to pipe the water.

I remember speaking with one irrigation district manager in the Bend area a few years ago. He had just convinced his disctrict's board and its patrons to undertake costly piping that would ultimately pipe all the canal flow. Some of the old-timers fought him - they simply wanted to see the water flowing in the ditches and weren't concerned with restoring the aquatic ecosystem and bringing the salmon back to the headwaters streams from which their water came.

In fact, the manager told me an interesting story. When he first took the job in the late 1980s, one of the senior irrigators took him around to show him the ditch system. When they got to the stream that supplied the irrigation water, the old guy pointed at the stream and sternly warned, "If that stream still has water in it come August, then you ain't done your job." Almost 20 years later, we stood on the banks of that same stream in August, and there were a few cfs (cubic feet per second) in the channel. The manager told me that they expected to see salmon here in a few years. 

I asked him how he convinced the district's board and patrons to spend the money to pipe the water. He said, "I told them we could fight this [the environmental flow requirements for the salmon] in court, which might take a few million dollars and years of litigation, after which we'd almost certainly lose. Or, we can go ahead now and do the right thing. So it's your call." They decided, some of them grudgingly, to forego the legal fight and just do it. He then told me of his oldest patron, a 78-year-old rancher, who gets out there and moves pipe and welds it and puts the younger guys to shame.

"I'd rather be upstream with a shovel and a ditch than downstream with a decree." -- Western USA water saying

USGS-CDC Report on Domestic Well Water Quality

The USGS, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has released an online report on the occurrence of 11 priority water-quality constituents of possible health concern in domestic wells located in 16 states across the USA. It is available here.

Measures of  water-quality, water use, and other geospatial data (such as for land use and hydrogeology) are compiled, mapped and tabulated for each of the 16 states that are participating in CDC's Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (EPHT).  A brief summary is provided, also by state, on the occurrence of the water-quality constituents and comparisons of their concentrations to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) human-health water-quality benchmarks. Findings can be used to highlight general geographic areas within the states where concentrations may be of potential human-health concern.

The states include California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The overall purpose of the study is to demonstrate through a pilot effort how USGS water-quality, water-use, and associated geospatial data can be integrated in the CDC EPHT network, which is a relatively new nationwide, network of  existing  health and environmental data bases that are being used to drive actions to improve the health of communities. For more information on the breadth of the network, click here.

Ground-water quality in domestic wells is just one of many indicators tracked in the EPHT network. About 17 million privately owned wells across the USA supply water to individual households for drinking water and other household needs, serving about 15 percent of the population or more than 43 million Americans.

Monitoring the quality of water from domestic wells is primarily the well owner’s responsibility as such monitoring is not required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which focuses on public-water supplies. Comprehensive and consistent data on the quality of this resource is therefore limited, for many reasons, including the voluntary nature of testing for a limited number of constituents and a relatively small number of wells.

The 11 water-quality constituents selected for the pilot study (primarily on the basis of expected occurrence and potential human health impacts) included arsenic, atrazine, benzene, deethylatrazine, manganese, nitrate, perchloroethene (PCE), radon, strontium, trichloroethene (TCE), and uranium. USGS samples were collected using nationally consistent field and analytical methodology.

Overall,  inorganic constituents, including radon, arsenic, manganese, nitrate, strontium and uranium, had the largest percentages of samples with concentrations greater than their human-health benchmarks. With the exception of nitrate, these constituents are mostly of natural origin.   In contrast, organic compounds (such as pesticides and volatile organic compounds), whose occurrence in ground water is usually related to human activities, had the lowest percent of samples with concentrations greater than human-health benchmarks.

The newly released study, titled Summary of Selected U.S. Geological Survey Data on Domestic Well Water Quality for the Centers for Disease Control’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, by Roy C. Bartholomay, Janet M. Carter, Sharon L. Qi, Paul J. Squillace, and Gary L. Rowe is available online. Also available online are individual state summaries that include summary tables, graphs, and maps of the water-quality data done for each state. 

USGS anticipates the release of a comprehensive national analysis of domestic wells in Summer 2008, based on samples collected from 2,171 wells by the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. The wells extend across the U.S., including in 48 of 50 states, and represent 31 of the Nation’s 62 principal aquifers used for water supply, irrigation, and other uses. The occurrence and distribution of domestic well quality will be described at the national scale, as well as regionally by principal aquifers. The USGS study will cover 219 physical properties, major inorganic constituents, nutrients, trace elements, organic compounds, radionuclides, and investigate the co-occurrence and common mixtures of constituents of potential human health concern. For more information, visit here.

Ecological Infrastructure: Mounting Price and Risk of Neglect

Sandra Postel has a post on this topic on the AWRA blog. Here is what she says:

We typically think of water “infrastructure” as the collection of dams, levees, canals, pipelines, treatment plants and other engineering works that help provide water services to society. As Gerry Galloway pointed out in the last issue of IMPACT, this infrastructure is sorely in need of maintenance and upgrading. However, another class of infrastructure needs urgent attention as well: the aquatic ecosystems that provide so many valuable, but typically unpriced, goods and services to society.

Healthy rivers, floodplains, wetlands, and forested watersheds supply much more than water and fish. When functioning well, this “eco-infrastructure” stores seasonal floodwaters, helping to lessen flood damages. It recharges ground water, filters pollutants, purifies drinking water, and delivers nutrients to coastal fisheries. Most importantly, it provides the myriad habitats that support the diversity of plants and animals that perform so much of this work and keep the planet humming. It is difficult to place a dollar value on any one piece of this eco-infrastructure, but in 2005, scientists participating in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimated that wetlands alone provide services worth $200-940 billion per year.

The water strategies of the 20th Century worked largely against nature, rather than in concert with it. As a result, ecological infrastructure has been dismantled and degraded at a rapid rate. An estimated 25-55% of the world’s wetlands have been drained, 35% of global river flows are now intercepted by large dams and reservoirs, and more than 100 billion tons of nutrient-rich sediment that would otherwise have replenished deltas and coastal zones sits trapped in reservoirs. River flows are turned on and off like plumbing works, eliminating the natural flow patterns and habitats upon which myriad life forms depend.

Fortunately, forward-thinking planners, resource managers, and engineers from around the world are demonstrating that clean drinking water, flood control, and other human needs can be met in ways that use ecoinfrastructure rather than destroy it – and that such approaches often save money. For example, through watershed protection and aggressive conservation measures, cities as different as Bogotá, Colombia, and Boston, Massachusetts, have postponed construction of expensive water supply capital projects, saving their residents money while protecting critical ecosystems.

More typically, however, the benefits of capitalizing on nature’s services continue to go uncaptured. To cite just one example, following the Great Midwest Flood of 1993, U.S. researchers estimated that restoration of 13 million acres of wetlands in the upper portion of the Mississippi-Missouri watershed, at a cost of $2-3 billion, would have absorbed enough floodwater to have substantially reduced the $16 billion in flood damages. Unfortunately, instead of calling floodplains and wetlands back into active duty, officials in the region permitted even more floodplain development. According to Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, 28,000 new homes and 6,630 acres of commercial and industrial development have since been added on land that was under water in 1993.

Global warming and its anticipated effects on the hydrological cycle – including increased flooding, droughts, and storm intensity – will only add to the value of ecological infrastructure that helps mitigate these effects. For the same reason people buy home insurance and life insurance – to avoid catastrophic losses – societies need to buy more disaster insurance by investing in the protection and restoration of watersheds, floodplains, and wetlands.

Why No Salmon in the Sacramento?

Much has been made of and said about the dismal adult chinook salmon run predicted this year for the Sacramento River, normally the second-most productive salmon river (after the mighty Columbia River) on the USA's west coast. There is widespread belief that the Pacific chinook salmon commerical fishing will be shut down this year along all of California and most of Oregon.

Scientists are still not certain why the adult salmon run is expected to be around 63,000, down from almost 900,000  just a five years ago. Here is Jane Kay's article from the San Francisco Chronicle in which she attempts to explain why the run is so low this year.

Amid growing concern over an imminent shutdown of the commercial and sport chinook salmon season, scientists are struggling to figure out why the largest run on the West Coast hit rock bottom and what Californians can do to bring it back.

The chinook salmon - born in the rivers, growing in the bay and ocean, and returning to home rivers to spawn - need two essential conditions early in life to prosper: safe passage through the rivers to the bay and lots of seafood to eat once they reach the ocean.

Yet, the Sacramento River run of salmon that was expected to fill fish markets in May didn't find those life-sustaining conditions. And some scientists say that's the likeliest explanation for why the number of returning spawners plummeted last fall to roughly 90,000, about 10 percent of the peak reached just a few years ago.

The devastating one-two punch happened as the water projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta pumped record amounts of snowmelt and rainwater to farms and cities in Southern California, degrading the salmon's habitat. And once the chinook reached the ocean, they couldn't find the food they needed to survive where and when they needed it.

"You need good conditions in the rivers and ocean to get survival and good returns for spawning," said Stephen Ralston, supervisory research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and a science adviser to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC).

It is easy to blame the reduction on the reduced river flows. But Jerry Johns of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) says there are other factors.

"You can't just simply blame it on the pumps," he said. Ocean conditions, a reduction of phytoplankton in the bay, the amount of salmon fishing, natural die-off and other factors are part of the broader picture, he said.

Johns is correct; you need good ocean conditions in addition to good freshwater conditions, and apparently, those have not been there.

According to Peter Moyle [professor at UC-Davis], good ocean conditions can somewhat make up for drought in the river systems and vice versa. But ocean conditions have been "squirrelly" in the last several years with a number of anomalies that produced abnormally warm conditions not good for salmon, he said.

"Usually, salmon populations are at their worst when conditions are bad in both fresh water and salt water," Moyle said. Some scientists think that is what happened to the 2007 fall run.

Once in the ocean, salmon must gorge on small sea creatures to survive.

In 2005 and 2006, the years that the 2007 fall run needed food near the shore in the Gulf of the Farallones, the upwelling of nutrients apparently came too late to produce the small fish that feed the salmon.

For more explanations see this article by Tom Stienstra, and this editorial, both from the 23 March 20o8 San Francisco Chronicle.

"Let us consider an alternative style of thinking, which we can call 'creative thinking'. It is playfully instructive to note that the word 'reactive' and 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters. The only difference between the two is that you 'C' [see] differently." -- John Quincy Adams

More Ethanol Production = More Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia?

Well, the chickens are coming home to roost.

As I reported last April, the rush to plant more corn to produce more ethanol may have deleterious effects on our efforts to reduce the size of the hypoxic "dead" zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is now more than speculation about these effects.

Thanks to John Fleck I came across this post on Simon Donner's Maribo blog. Here is a large part of what Donner says:

The Mississippi dumps a massive amount of nitrogen, largely in the form of the soluble ion nitrate, into the Gulf each spring. It promotes the growth of a lot of algae, which eventually sinks to the bottom and decomposes. This consumes much of the oxygen in the bottom waters, making life tough for bottom-dwelling fish and creatures like shrimp. The Dead Zone has reached over 20,000 km2 in recent years.

The primary source of all that nitrogen is fertilizer applied to corn grown in the Midwest and Central US. Reducing the Dead Zone to less than 5000 km2 in size, as is suggested in US policy, will require up to a 55% decrease in nitrogen levels in the Mississippi.

The new US Energy Policy calls for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by the year 2022. Of that, 15 billion can be produced from corn starch. Our study found meeting those would cause a 10-34% increase in nitrogen loading to the Gulf of Mexico.

Meeting the hypoxia reduction goal was already a difficult challenge. If the US pursues this biofuels strategy, it will be impossible to shrink the Dead Zone without radically changing the US food production system. The one option would be to dramatically reduce the non-ethanol uses of corn. Since the majority of corn grain is used as animal feed, a trade-off between using corn to fuel animals and using corn to fuel cars could emerge.

Read the abstract of the article published by Donner and his colleague Christopher Kucharik.

For more reading on the subject: Zachary Sugg sent me this link to a publication from the World Resources Institute (WRI), Thirst for Corn: What 2007 Plantings Could Mean for the Environment, by Liz Marshall.

"If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set." -- Unknown

'Drink Two Glasses of Tap Water and Call Me in the Morning'

Maybe that's what your doctor will say the next time you call her.

Just to show that I don't exclusively excoriate bottled water, I'll also pick on municipal drinking water. The Associated Press reported today that it found pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supplies that serve 41 million Americans.

NPR has more, including graphics. Talk of the Nation interviewed water quality expert Dr. Joan Rose of Michigan State University on this issue.

Senate hearings are planned.

Here's the intro from the story by Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza, and Justin Pritchard:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, KY.

Supplies in Albuquerque, Austin, and Virgina Beach tested negative. Try again, guys.

So you have your own well or drink bottled water? In the clear, right? The story continues:

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

There are three issues to consider:

1. As we get better and better analytical equipment we can detect chemicals in lower and lower concentrations. These low concentrations may or may not be hazardous.
2. When we start looking for more chemicals, we find more. Are these "new" chemicals bad? Don't know - there may not be standards for them.
3. Most wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals.

Ethical issues often arise for water managers where drinking water is concerned. If a manager determines that there are contaminants in the drinking water she supplies, but they occur in concentrations below harmful levels or have no standards, should she report them to the public? It's a dilemma: if she reports them, people may get overly agitated, but if she doesn't, and it eventually surfaces (and it will), the manager will take a beating and even worse, good will and trust will suffer.

Here is the story from Fox News:

Download foxnews.com - Study Finds Over the Counter Drugs in Drinking ...pdf

I'm concerned, but I'm not about to go out and buy a year's supply of bottled water. This is not really a new issue; people have known for 15+ years that pharmaceuticals have been showing up in natural waters, and many professional societies have held "emerging contaminants" conferences on this issue (see this 1999 NRC report, Identifying Future Drinking Water Contaminants). And colleague Bev Herzog sent me this 1995 paper from Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) describing pharmaceuticals in ground water in Denmark:

Download phar_in_denmark_gwest.pdf 

Ona lighter note, friend Michael Dale noted that steroid levels downstream of a Nebraska feedlot were four times higher than upstream levels. And we all thought there were no major league baseball players in Nebraska.

We used to joke about '9-eyed carp' hanging around the outfall of the wastewater treatment plant. We'd better start looking for them. 

I suspect Erin Brockovich is just around the corner.

"I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers." -- Charles Kuralt

Flush Twice - It's a Long Way To Vegas

Much has been made by this week's 60-hour flushing of the Grand Canyon by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Water will be released from Lake Powell through Glen Canyon Dam at the rate of 41,500 cfs (cubic feet per second), which is the equivalent of about 30 MAF (million acre-feet) per year - just about double the Colorado's mean annual flow.  If you prefer, it's 310,000 gallons per second, almos