Is there such a thing as ‘peak water’? There is a vast amount of water on the planet—but we are facing a crisis of running out of sustainably managed water. Humans already appropriate over 50% of all renewable and accessible freshwater flows, and yet billions still lack the most basic water services.
So says Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and one of the world’s leading water experts and lead author of The World’s Water 2008-2009. The new report addresses topics from “peak water” to climate change impacts, and warns that water will increasingly be the cause of violence and even war. The report warns that a swelling global population, changing diets and mankind’s expanding “water footprint” could mean an end to the era of cheap water.
By “peak water,” Gleick means “peak ecological water”- the critical point where ecological disruptions exceed the human benefit obtained. This point has already been reached in many areas of the world. A prime example is China, where water resources are over-allocated, inefficiently used, and grossly polluted by human and industrial wastes. Rivers and lakes are dead and dying, groundwater aquifers are over-pumped, uncounted species of aquatic life have been driven to extinction, and direct adverse impacts on both human and ecosystem health are widespread and growing.
A significant part of the problem is the huge, and often deeply inefficient, use of water by industry and agriculture. UN calculations suggest that more than one third of the world’s population is already suffering from water shortages. By 2020, water use is expected to increase by 40% from current levels, and by 2025, two out of three people could be living under conditions of “water stress”.
Most of the planet’s glaciers are melting so fast that many will disappear by the middle of the century. The total mass left in the glaciers is now thought to be at the lowest level for thousands of years.
Figures from the World Glacier Monitoring Service for 2005-06 showed the biggest loss of ice in a single year since those records began, and based on historic reconstructions, it was thought to be the worst year for 5,000 years. Although melt rates for 2007 fell substantially from record levels of the previous year, the loss of ice was still the third worst on record. The full report – “Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures” – is available here.
The shrinking and thinning of many glaciers world-wide puts at risk water supplies for hundreds of millions — if not billions — of people. Glaciers may completely disappear from many mountain ranges in the 21st century.
The technology – a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs – can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot – about one mile an hour – meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.
As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity. Cylinders arranged over a cubic meter of the sea or river bed in a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts. This is more efficient than similar-sized turbines or wave generators, and the amount of power produced can increase sharply if the flow is faster or if more cylinders are added. A “field” of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-story house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Systems could be sited on river beds or suspended in the ocean.
Existing turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth’s currents are slower than three knots.
Because the parts only oscillate slowly, the technology is likely to be less harmful to aquatic wildlife than dams or water turbines. And as the installations can be positioned far below the surface of the sea, there would be less interference with shipping, recreational boat users, fishing and tourism.
A research team led by Professor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University has uncovered evidence that the Naimona’nyi glacier high in the Himalayas of Tibet is dwindling faster than anyone thought possible – and it’s not just by receding, it’s being decapitated and losing mass.
Naimona’nyi is the highest glacier (6050 masl) yet found to be losing mass annually, suggesting that other high-elevation glaciers in low and mid-latitudes could experience similar mass loss under a warmer Earth scenario. In 2002 Thompson predicted that the ice fields capping Kilimanjaro would disappear between 2015 and 2020.
Glaciers can be dated by looking for traces of radioactivity buried in the ice. These are the leftovers from US and Soviet atomic bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Naimona’nyi samples, there was no sign of the tests – the glacier had melted so much that the exposed surface of the glacier dated to 1944.
Scientists believe that the missing signal means that this Tibetan ice field has been shrinking at least since the A-bomb test half a century ago. Thompson compares glaciers to water towers: they collect water from the monsoon in the wet season and release it in the dry season. Himalayan glaciers store about 12,000 cubic kilometers (2,879 cubic miles) of fresh water – more freshwater than in Lake Superior. Shrinking glaciers mean less fresh water, seriously affecting the Indian subcontinent’s great rivers – the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra – which provide water for more than 500 million people.
ProPublica studied Sublette County, Wyoming and six other contamination sites and found that water contamination in drilling areas around the country is far more prevalent than the EPA asserts. Tests on well water in Sublette County showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.
Hydraulic fracturing shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release natural gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.
ProPublica’s investigation found that the 2004 EPA study was not as conclusive as it claimed to be. Close review showed that the body of the study contains damaging information that wasn’t mentioned in the conclusion. Rather, the study foreshadowed many of the problems now being reported across the country.
The contamination in Sublette County is significant because it is the first to be documented by a federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But more than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The precise nature and concentrations of the chemicals used by industry are considered trade secrets. Not even the EPA knows exactly what’s in the drilling fluids. Of the 300-odd compounds that private researchers and the Bureau of Land Management suspect are being used, 65 are listed as hazardous by the federal government. Many of the rest are unstudied and unregulated.
PacifiCorp has agreed to remove four dams on the Klamath River as part of a broader effort to restore the river and revive its ailing salmon and steelhead runs and aid fishing, tribal and farming communities. If the dams come down it would be the biggest dam removal and river restoration effort the world has ever seen.
The Agreement in Principle released today is intended to guide the development of a final settlement agreement in June 2009 and includes provisions to remove PacifiCorp’s four mainstem dams in 2020, a century after the construction of the first dam, Copco 1. Dam removal will re-open over 300 miles of habitat for the Klamath’s salmon and steelhead populations and eliminate water quality problems caused by the reservoirs.
But the deal came under immediate attack from tribes environmentalists who called it a scheme riddled with loopholes that favor farmers and other allies of the outgoing president. They say it makes no sense to strike a deal with just weeks left before Barack Obama becomes president.
Specific provisions of the agreement include:
PacifiCorp agrees to contribute as much as $200 million to cover the cost of removing its four dams and restoring the river. Dam removal funds would be obtained from ratepayers in Oregon and California before removal begins.
If the costs of dam removal exceed PacifiCorp’s contribution, California and Oregon together would contribute up to $250 million. Current estimates of dam removal costs range between $75 million and $200 million.
In accordance with all applicable environmental laws, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior will assess the method and impacts of dam removal, and will make a final determination on the benefits and costs of dam removal by March 31st, 2012. California and Oregon will make similar determinations shortly after the federal government.
Federal legislation will be required to implement provisions of the initial agreement. The legislation will establish the transfer of the dams to the federal government, although an independent third-party will be identified to actually remove the dams.
This LA Times article (cross-posted at Truthout) quotes Tom Schlosser, an attorney for the Hoopa tribe of Northern California:
“It’s just nutty to commit to this with Bush heading out the door.”
Environmentalists fear PacifiCorp will exploit the agreement as a delaying tactic, arguing that the deal has loopholes that allow the company to back out as late as 2012. The agreement will essentially shut down California’s water quality hearings on the Klamath dams.
PacifiCorp’s four dams produce a nominal amount of power which can be replaced using renewables and efficiency measures without contributing to global warming. A study by the California Energy Commission and the Department of the Interior found that removing the dams and replacing their power would save PacifiCorp customers up to $285 million over 30 years.
The dams, built between 1908 and 1962, cut off hundreds of miles of once-productive salmon spawning and rearing habitat in the Upper Klamath, which was once the third most productive salmon river on the west coast. The dams also create toxic conditions in the reservoirs that threaten the health of fish and people.
The $200 million from Pacificorps for dam removal and river restoration would come from boosted electricity rates for customers in the Pacific Northwest. PacifiCorp chairman Greg Abel said rates could rise as much as 2%. The agreement would give the company protection from liability and time to find replacement power.
Portland-based PacifiCorp is owned by billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The researchers discovered that a critical surface temperature feedback is twice as strong as what had been projected by earlier studies. Noah Diffenbaugh, senior author of the paper and an associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue, explains:
“The heat trapping from elevated greenhouse gases triggers the warming, but the additional warming caused by the loss of snow is what really creates the big changes in surface runoff. Scientists have known about this general effect for years. The big surprise here is how much the complex topography plays a role, essentially doubling the threat to water resources in the West.”
A new IPCC report finds that the effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle are global in scope. Climate Change and Water, IPCC Technical Paper VI, warns we should be prepared for:
Precipitation increases in high latitudes and parts of the tropics and decreases in some subtropical and lower mid-latitude regions.
An increase in annual average river runoff and water availability at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas and a decrease over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics.
Increased precipitation intensity and variability, increasing the risks of flooding and drought in many areas.
Declining water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover.
Higher water temperatures and changes in extremes, including floods and droughts, affecting water quality and exacerbating many forms of water pollution.
“As California faces one of its worst droughts in two decades, building projects are being curtailed for the first time under state law by the inability of developers to find long-term water supplies.
“Water authorities and other government agencies scattered throughout the state, including here in sprawling Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, have begun denying, delaying or challenging authorization for dozens of housing tracts and other developments under a state law that requires a 20-year water supply as a condition for building.”
What’s stands out in this article is the fact that in California developers have to prove the availability of water, and development is denied if the water isn’t there. In Oregon, cities are forced by law provide the services required to support development. Building moratoria can be declared only under severely limited circumstances, only for a short period of time, and only for the purpose of coming up with a plan to provide the necessary services.
A big difference is that in California housing developments can erupt outside of cities (urban growth boundaries don’t exist). But the idea that growth needn’t always be accommodated is one that we should take to heart.
“Loss of glaciers in the Andes mountain range is threatening the water supply of 30 million people, and scientists say the lower altitude glaciers could disappear in 10 years.”
The article reports that one of the highest glaciers in South America – Chacaltaya in Bolivia – is expected to vanish this year. Although the glacier is over 18,000 years old, it is already 99% gone. Of the 18 currently existing mountain glaciers in Peru, 22% of the surface has been lost over the past 27 to 35 years. Models project that many of the lower-altitude glaciers will disappear during the next 10 to 20 years.
70% of the world’s tropical glaciers are in the high Andes Cordillera of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Shrinking water supplies will leave mountain communities, agriculture, and entire ecosystems high and dry.
Near the small community of Pucarumi in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes, indigenous potatoes can no longer be planted in lower elevation fields because there is no longer sufficient water.
The article quotes a local alpaca herder:
“We must seed them to greater height. But every year that happens, also we have less earth in mountains, Felipe says. “In few years more, no longer we will have a place to seed these potatoes.”
Large cities in the region depend on glacial runoffs for their water supply. Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, draws 50% of its water supply from the glacial basin, and Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, draws 30% of its water supply.
Power supplies also will be affected as most countries in the Andes are dependent on hydroelectric power generation. Peru gets 81 percent of its electricity from hydropower, Colombia generates 73% from hydropower, Ecuador is 72% hydro-dependent, and Bolivia, 50%.
One of the predicted consequences of global warming is increased drought. It looks like that prediction is already proving true.
Spain in general and Catalonia in particular are experiencing unprecedented drought. Water reserves across Spain have dropped to under 50% of capacity. In Barcelona, water reserves have dropped to less than 20% of capacity. If they drop below 15%, the water from the dams cannot be used. To cope with the crisis, the city is spending 22 million euros ($34.4 million) to bring five days worth of water in by boat from other parts of Europe.
Across the globe in China, Beijing and the surrounding area are experiencing the worst drought in 57 years. Drinking water supplies for millions of people and 19.4 million hectares of crops in the “breadbasket” of the country are at risk. To add to the problem, overtaxed aquifers in the area have been dropping by one to two meters in a year. As a consequence, 50,000 wells have gone dry.
