by Mindy Lubber, via Ceres

This weekend in theaters in Los Angeles, and in coming weeks in Phoenix, San Diego and Atlanta, a powerful new documentary premiers. Look closely at the early screening locations and you just might guess the topic: water scarcity.

“Last Call at the Oasis” does far more than recount the alarming woes of our country’s most water-stressed regions; it’s a beautifully produced, detailed picture of an immense global crisis bearing down on us as we speak – and thankfully a roadmap of sorts to what we can do about it.

I hesitate these days to even string together words like “immense global crisis” – there’s much crisis fatigue, and so many people and issues screaming for our attention.

But water’s one of the really big issues – we literally can’t live without it, our economies depend on it and in many regions supplies are running short. Two billion people are already being affected by water shortages. Population growth and climate change add even more pressure to the situation.

In America, where clean water is taken for granted, it’s far too easy to forget this reality. But if we can view what’s portrayed in “Last Call” as a giant opportunity to change our world for the better, it just might infuse us with hope and energy instead of dread.

One of the experts interviewed in “Last Call” frames a key source of our problem with water. “We think of it as the air,” says Robert Glennon, a law professor at University of Arizona, “infinite and inexhaustible.”

But it’s neither – even in hydrologically-blessed countries like our own.

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by Manish Bapna and Betsy Otto, via WRI Insights Aqueduct

It’s rare for water to make waves at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of business leaders and finance ministers.

But the most recent Davos summit was an exception. A new eye-opening report ranked water supply among the top five global risks in terms of impact– on par with systemic financial failure and fiscal imbalances.

As we mark World Water Day, the alarming statistics underlying water scarcity are worth repeating. Worldwide 2.7 billion people are currently affected by water shortages. As the global population races toward 8 billion and beyond, upward trends in food demand and economic growth promise to further strain freshwater resources, especially in the developing world. Climate change, of course, is exacerbating these water challenges.

Clean, abundant water is essential for life and economic growth. Since it is a finite resource, we need to find solutions that will ensure we can use water more efficiently and mange water systems more wisely.

Making this happen is easier said than done. Success depends on the recognition of three essential characteristics. That is, water risk is: multi-dimensional; local; and requires a collective response.

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More than 1 in 3 U.S. counties could face a “high” or “extreme” risk of water shortages by 2050

by Dave Levitan, reposted from OnEarth

When the heat turns up in an overcrowded bar, patrons waiting for service tend to get thirstier. In the coming decades, a similar scenario may play out in the United States. According to a new study, more than a third of U.S. counties may be at “extreme” or “high” risk of water shortages by 2050. This won’t be due to a dearth in bartenders, of course, but the result of a swelling population, along with the potential temperature increases and precipitation changes associated with climate change.

The research, funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council (which publishes OnEarth), appeared last week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The first strike against water supplies comes from increases in population. Projections suggest fairly linear growth between now and mid-century, meaning the U.S. will have about 419.9 million people in 2050 (up from its current population of 313,000,000). All of those additional Americana will have to drink, and eat food grown with water, and turn on lights powered by water-guzzling power plants.

Then there’s climate change. Temperature is expected to increase somewhere between 1.5 and 3° Celsius, and the warming air will be able to hold more water. The resulting changes in precipitation aren’t uniform by any means. Models suggest that Texas and the Gulf states will lose more than one inch per year, while the northeastern U.S. could get between two and four extra inches per year.

Notably, the study’s results are not meant to be taken as strict prognoses. “This is not intended as a prediction that water shortages will occur, but rather where they are more likely to occur, and where there might be greater pressure on public officials and water users to better characterize, and creatively manage demand and supply,” said the study’s lead author Sujoy Roy of Tetra Tech Research and Development, in a press release.

The end result of all this — hotter temperatures, changed precipitation, more people withdrawing more water — is that 412 of 3,141 counties (13 percent) in the lower 48 might be at “extreme” risk of water shortages in 2050. Another 608 counties will be at high risk, while 1,192 and 929 will be at moderate and low risk, respectively. Without climate change? Just 29 counties (less than 1 percent) would be at extreme risk, 271 at high risk, and more than 2,000 would be at low risk. It’s enough to make you thirsty for real action on this whole climate change thing. I’ll cheers to that.

Dave Levitan is a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia. This piece was originally published at OnEarth.

By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Rather than face the unpleasant fact that hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells actually can lead to contamination of underground water supplies, Republicans on a subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday decided to shoot the messenger.

The messenger – no surprise here – is the Environmental Protection Agency, which in early December released a draft report based on a three-year investigation into possible groundwater contamination by natural gas drilling near Pavillion, Wyoming. The report concluded that hydraulic fracturing and other gas development drilling practices likely contributed to the contamination of groundwater by a suite of chemicals including materials found in fracking fluids. EPA is now in the process of having the draft report peer reviewed.

As Region 8 EPA administrator Jim Martin said in his prepared testimony today, aquifers appear to have been contaminated by fracking fluid:

Analysis of samples taken from the deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of benzene, methane, and synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids.

That carefully calibrated conclusion – including EPA statements that the geology around Pavillion is unique and that the study’s conclusions aren’t transferable to other gas producing areas – has shaken defenders of the oil and gas industry and its widespread practice of hydraulic fracturing. That process pumps a mixture of water, chemicals and sand at high pressure deep underground to stimulate production of natural gas from shale formations. Combined with advances in horizontal drilling it has opened up vast new reserves of shale gas for development extending from New York State to Texas.

As concerns about threats to drinking water supplies have mounted with the spread of hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas industry and its allies have frequently claimed that there has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination through fracking. Typical of those claims was ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson’s statement in congressional testimony in 2010 that “There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing.”

Because the EPA’s draft report deals a serious if not fatal blow to those claims, the industry is fighting furiously to discredit the EPA’s methods and conclusions in the Pavillion study.

Appearing before the subcommittee today, Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, accused EPA of being “a political body, not a disinterested scientific institution” and charged the agency had rushed its report “without proper review and verification.”

Republican members of the science committee went even further. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), chairman of the panel’s energy and environment subcommittee, accused EPA of practicing “press release science” and “outcome-driven” regulation. Rep. Ralph M. Hall, chairman of the full committee, said the agency was “trying to build a case” for shutting down oil and gas production around the country.

But ranting and raving won’t make the damage disappear.

As EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a letter sent last month to Wyoming Gov. Matthew H. Mead,  her agency’s study of the Pavillion issue was “rigorous, transparent and objective.” The evidence “supporting the likely role of fracturing in the observed contamination is exhaustively presented in our draft report,” she said.

by Tom Kenworthy

Western states that rely on snowpack for their water supplies are going to face a challenging future because of climate change, a senior Department of Interior official warned a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

“Warming and associated loss of snowpack will persist over much of the western United States,” Assistant DOI secretary Anne Castle said in her written testimony to the water and power subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A recent Bureau of Reclamation report, Castle said, has concluded that “this loss of snowpack storage is expected to result in a decrease in the amount of reliable water supply in areas where snow has been a major component of the hydrologic system.”

The Senate subcommittee hearing comes a week after the Global Climate Project reported that worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels had risen by 5.9 percent in 2010, the biggest annual increase in history.

Climate change is already producing dramatic changes in the water cycle in the U.S., and more changes are coming, according to the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program’s 2009 report on climate change impacts.

“Evidence is mounting that human-induced climate change is already altering many many of the exsiting patterns of precipitation in the United States, including when, where, how much, and what kind of precipitation falls,” the report says. And it predicts that “dry areas will become drier and and wet areas wetter,” with particularly severe effects in the Southwest which is expected to have more severe and more prolonged droughts.

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JR:  In one District west of Fort Worth, “the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40% in the first half of 2011, up from 25% in 2010.”

– RL Miller has more on the collision between Texas’s record drought and its water-guzzling fossil-fuel dependence in this Daily Kos cross-post.

In case anyone missed it, Texas had a big drought last summer — the worst one year drought in the state’s history [see "Worst Texas Drought in Centuries].  Lakes dried, animals were slaughtered, cities imposed lawn watering restrictions, the governor prayed for rain. About the only part of the state unaffected were the wind turbines of West Texas, spinning merrily along and oblivious to near-apocalyptic conditions.

Droughts end, and places recover. Unless they don’t.

Talk has been circulating among the doom-and-gloom sector of the Left of Texas as a failed state. It’s easy to dismiss as a tit-for-tat, revenge for Texas’ talk of secession. Until one looks hard at the water.

The state’s water shortage is structural, warns the Texas Water Development Board. Currently the state needs 18 million acre-feet of water, and it has 17 million acre-feet available to it. Aquifers deplete. Population grows. By 2060, the state is expected to need 22 million acre-feet but only have 15.3 million acre-feet available to it. Because some dry places simply can’t have water piped, the total shortfall is projected to be 8.3 million acre-feet. Roughly, the state will have 2 gallons of water available to it for every 3 gallons it needs.

Houston, we have a problem.

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UpStart [uhp-stahrt]n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.

by Adam James

In 2009, America earned a D- in drinking water, according to the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card. Why? Every day leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water (over 11,000 swimming pools). That, combined with the $11 billion annual shortfall to replace aging water facilities, makes the U.S. a very water-inefficient country.

By 2020, California estimates it will incur “water shortages equal to the needs of 4-12 million families of four.” Sadly, with a growing population, increased migration to urban areas, and global warming, these shortages promise to become far more common. A study released by the NRDC found that more than 1,100 U.S. counties face water shortages as a result of climate change. Of those, 400 are in the “extreme risk” category, representing a 14x increase over previous estimates.  The agricultural value of the crops in those 400 counties represents over $105 billion in GDP.

Compounding the problem is that the emissions from the 7,000,000 gallons for water lost from leakage are estimated to contribute 13.5 million kg of CO2e to the atmosphere daily — accelerating climate change and further exacerbating the vicious cycle.

The UpStart Solution:

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By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress.

A little more than a week ago, a grand experiment long in the making began unfolding on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State: the removal of two large dams on the Elwha River and one of the most important river restoration efforts ever undertaken. Dave Reynolds of the National Park Service explained the beginning of the process at Glines Canyon dam, while jackhammers and construction crews work behind him:

I think this is a historic day for the National Park Service and for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the start of this three-year process here at Glines Canyon dam and, in a few days, at Elwha Dam. Of course preparations have been ongoing all summer, but this is a great day to really get removal started and the beginning of this process. It’s a new beginning for the Elwha River.

Watch it (video courtesy of Peninsula Daily News):

Appropriately enough, much of the media coverage – including an ambitious multi-media report by the Seattle Times – focused on how the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams will restore epic salmon runs that were destroyed nearly a century ago and heal a 70-mile river ecosystem stretching from the ocean to the mountains of Olympic National Park.

But almost lost in the coverage was another important story: that restoration of rivers and landscapes scarred by old commercial enterprises can be an economic boon as well. At the Elwha River, a National Park Service study of the dam removal project found that 1,150–1,240 jobs will be generated by dam removal and river restoration, while even more jobs will be generated from increased tourism to Clallam County, Washington.

Restoration, especially in the western U.S., is a serious job creator. As the Center for American Progress’ recent report entitled “The Jobs Case for Conservation,” concluded in regard to restoration:

Thousands of long- and short-term jobs can be created through restoration and reforestation of public lands. Various government and independent analyses have found that every $1 million invested in restoration activities such as river and road restoration, hazardous fuels reduction, and tree planting creates between 13 and 30 direct, indirect, and induced jobs, many in the private sector.

And so it will be on the Elwha River project. In its 2005 environmental and economic analysis of the proposal to remove both dams, the National Park Service projected that total benefits over the 100 years following removal would be about $355 million, almost twice the cost of actually removing the structures. Most of the benefit would come from increased fishing, recreation and tourism opportunities.

At the same time as excavators began breaking down the concrete of the two Elwha River dams, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the completion of technical studies on another possible Pacific Northwest dam removal project: a plan to tear out four dams on the Klamath River near the border of California and Oregon. That project would create some 450 jobs annually from both dam removals and improvements to fisheries and water quality.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said the studies were proof of the great economic potential in restoring degraded natural resources:

This is just one example of the tremendous opportunity we have to get Oregonians back to work across the state restoring the health of our watersheds, fisheries and forests and better position Oregon for long-term prosperity.

How hot has it been?  The first 9 days of August saw “Heat Records Outnumbering Cold Records by Amazing 24 to 1,” CapitalClimate reported.

This year’s record heat has spawned cow-killing algae, caused sidewalks to explode, and turned reservoirs blood-red. Now it’s causing an even costlier problem for communities in the U.S. – exploding water pipes.

As severe heat dries out the ground, old pipes shift around and are more susceptible to breaking. The problem is exacerbated by an increased demand for water during hot days. Towns across the U.S. are seeing increased rates of water pipe failures; Oklahoma saw 685 water main breaks since July – about four times the normal rate.

Kemp, Texas was the most recent victim. Last Wednesday, town officials were forced to shut off water supplies for the 1,110 residents after 14 water pipes burst:

Kemp Mayor Donald Kile says the old infrastructure has a lot to do with the problem. The local water treatment plant was last replaced 40 years ago, and a lot of the town’s 30 miles of pipelines were installed in the 1930s and haven’t been updated in years.
“It’s sad to say, but it’s poor planning,” said Kile, who was elected mayor recently. “When they put that water treatment plant in, they should have implemented something then….  It just wasn’t ever done.”

With virtually no updates to its water infrastructure in 40 years, Kemp is facing a serious water-reliability crisis. And the town is representative of the rest of the country: the Environmental protection agency says that about 700 water main ruptures take place in the U.S. daily because of aging pipelines. The EPA estimates the U.S. will need to invest in over $334 billion in water infrastructure over the next 25 years.

Climate change will make the problem far worse.

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