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Archive for November 1st, 2014
In France, Dam Is the Catalyst for a Flood of Young People’s Anger
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2014
New York Times: The protests began a year ago in this quiet corner of southwestern France, as a small and peaceful gathering of hippies, environmental activists and utopians of all types set up tents to oppose the construction of a nearby dam. In August, after local authorities sent diggers and then crushing machines to level the soil and destroy trees, clashes erupted between protesters and the police, turning this vast stretch of woodland into what many here called a war zone. More than a hundred protesters,...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on In France, Dam Is the Catalyst for a Flood of Young People’s AngerThat Sinking Feeling: Rising Sea Level Isn’t Cities’ Only Water Worry
Posted by NBC: None Given on November 1st, 2014
NBC: Some of the world’s expanding coastal cities face a two-pronged threat involving water: Sticking giant straws into the ground to suck up freshwater can cause the ground below to sink at the same time that sea levels are rising.
That interplay between subsiding land and rising seas highlights an underappreciated risk in global climate change, according to scientists.
It’s not known how many people live on coastal lands that are sinking due to excessive groundwater pumping, but about 150 million...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on That Sinking Feeling: Rising Sea Level Isn’t Cities’ Only Water WorryMission ready for climate change
Posted by High Country News: Joshua Zaffos on November 1st, 2014
High Country News: Arizona’s first major wildfire of 2014 ignited this past spring on Fort Huachuca, a U.S. Army base not far from the Mexico border. The incident marked the second time in three years the army was fending off flames in a part of the country where rain is always scarce and temperatures can peak into the '90s in April.
“As they have more hot and dry days when they can’t use tracers or do live (ammunition) training exercises, that impacts (the Army) and other military units, such as Navy SEALs or Special...
Politics & the pipeline: Plains bedfellows
Posted by Al Jazeera: None Given on November 1st, 2014
Al Jazeera: Pipelines break. They don’t break often, but when they do, the result can be catastrophic.
That’s what worries John Harter, a rancher who grew up in this rural, poor and conservative area of southern South Dakota. Harter, 51, still lives here, and owns land that the Keystone XL pipeline would cross if it’s ever approved.
Harter points to the 2010 spill of 860,000 gallons of tar sand oil from a pipeline crossing the Kalamazoo River in Michigan when people ask what he’s fighting against. Enbridge,...
Election-year water crisis taking toll Brazil’s economy
Posted by Reuters: Caroline Stauffer on November 1st, 2014
Reuters: After a grueling election campaign in which officials faced fierce criticism for downplaying the effects of a year-long drought, Brazil's most populous state is finally coming to terms with an uncomfortable reality: it is running out of water. São Paulo state accounts for a third of Brazil's economy and 40 percent of its industrial production, and the water crisis is already crimping factory and farm output as well as the service sector in a stagnant economy. "There is absolutely no doubt that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Election-year water crisis taking toll Brazil’s economyCould water markets help solve the American West’s water crisis?
Posted by Vox: Brad Plumer on November 1st, 2014
Vox: It's no secret that the American West is facing a severe water crisis.
The region -- home to over 60 million people and a huge chunk of US agriculture -- is in its 15th year of drought. Texas has suffered more than $25 billion in damages so far. Las Vegas is worried about plummeting water levels in Lake Mead. California has received so little rain that farmers are pillaging the state's hard-to-replenish groundwater aquifers at a shocking rate:
Maps of dry season (September–November) total water...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Could water markets help solve the American West’s water crisis?How to mend the conservation divide
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2014
New York Times: A SCHISM has recently divided those who love nature.
“New conservationists” have been shaking up the field, proposing new approaches that break old taboos — moving species to new ranges in advance of climate change, intervening in designated wilderness areas, using nonnative species as functional stand-ins for those that have become extinct, and embracing novel ecosystems that spring up in humanized landscapes.
Some “old conservationists” have reacted angrily to this, preferring to keep the...
Restoring wetlands can lessen soil sinkage, greenhouse gas emissions, study finds
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2014
ScienceDaily: The study, which is one of the first to continually measure the fluctuations of both carbon and methane as they cycle through wetlands, appears in the journal by Global Change Biology.
Worldwide, agricultural drainage of organic soils has resulted in vast soil subsidence and contributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The California Delta was drained more than a century ago for agriculture and human settlement and has since experienced subsidence rates that are among the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Restoring wetlands can lessen soil sinkage, greenhouse gas emissions, study findsPakistan: It’s time to get serious about climate change
Posted by Herald Tribune: None Given on November 1st, 2014
Herald Tribune: Sixty-seven years ago, 47 per cent of the land in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was covered by forests, including tracts of virgin forest land in Neelum Valley. Now, the area has been whittled down to just 12 per cent, as deforestation, landslides and sewage water have swept through the region and destroyed the green belt. “In the upper areas of AJK, where there is no liquefied petroleum gas facility, people are cutting the trees to use the wood for fuel in cooking and heating,” explained Secretary...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Pakistan: It’s time to get serious about climate changeFracking pollution just went airborne
Posted by Grist: Madeleine Thomas on November 1st, 2014
Grist: From contaminated groundwater to polytechnic displays at the kitchen faucet, most of the major concerns around fracking have centered around how fracking fluids and methane could be polluting our water supply. But we`ve started to suspect that fracking impacts the air, too, and a new study published this week in the journal of Environmental Health adds one more piece of evidence to the pile.
David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at University at Albany, State...