Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, recorded 192.3 mm in rainfall between June 1 and July 31. That is a 46 percent decline from the normal average rainfall for this period of around 360 mm.

The future looked bleak as State Met Director J P Gupta told the The Times of India that the monsoon trough line that was headed toward Uttar Pradesh (UP) had shifted toward the foothills of the Himalayas.

“There will be rains in the Himalayan region and areas adjacent to it in UP but [the] rest of the state would receive rains only in isolated places for next 2-3 days,” he said.

The Times reported that half of the agricultural land in Lucknow has not been sown because of the lack of rain. Mustard crops for example, were targeted for 800 hectares sown, but farmers were only able to plant about 400 hectares.

Gupta said that the monsoon may bring rain in a week or so as a low pressure area is currently developing over the bay of Bengal.

The Press Trust of India reported yesterday that Uttar Pradesh had declared 58 of 71 districts as “drought-hit”.

Read more here and here

Sources: The Times of India and The Press Trust of India

“The epidemic has successfully been contained and has ended,” Zimbabwe’s Health Minister Henry Madzorera was quoted by the state-run Herald newspaper

Red Cross and United Nations officials warned Thursday that another outbreak could come, noting that no real improvements have been made to the country’s dilapidated water and sanitation systems.

They also issued a call to neighboring countries to take preparatory steps in order to mitigate the spread of the disease, should it strike again.

Since the end of last year, cholera — an intestinal disease that is transmitted through dirty water — affected approximately 100,000 people and killed over 4,200 in Africa.

“Our concern is that the issues that drove the outbreak — the worst outbreak in 15 years in Africa — have not been addressed in any way,” Matthew Cochrane of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

Read more here and here

Source: Earth Times and The Herald (Zimbabwe)

Data for Yates County’s water withdrawal patterns, in the Finger Lakes region of New York, were part of New York State’s delayed reportage. New York, California and Texas have all contributed to the postponement in the final report’s publication. Photo by J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue (click image to enlarge).

by Connor Boals
Circle of Blue

Budget and personnel issues have delayed the 2005 U.S. Geological Survey national water use data, leaving many in the water world anxiously awaiting its release.

Eric Evenson, USGS Coordinator for the National Water Census, said that resource constraints and database fact checking are what has held the data back.

“It’s an activity that we basically conduct on a shoestring,” he said of the data collection.

The report, which tracks water use down to the county level, is released every five years. According to the USGS Web site, the 2000 data was released in March 2004, a four-year-and-three-month process. The 1995 data was made available in 1998, taking a little over three years.

As of August 2009, four years and seven months have passed, leaving some in the water world scratching their heads.

MULTIMEDIA: Google Earth Plug-In

Using the 2000 USGS data on U.S. water consumption, Circle of Blue generated a Google Earth module of water use by state.

“It prevents us from having a true picture of how much water we are withdrawing and what the implications of those withdrawals truly are,” said Robin Madel, a researcher for the non-profit H₂0 Conserve. “Especially as we head into a period of shifting climate and precipitation patterns”

“There’s been some funding issues,” USGS hydrologist Nancy Barber told Circle of Blue. “There is no significant national funding.”

Evenson said that in economically hard times, states do not have the funding to give analysis and can only provide access to their databases. In those cases, USGS provides the funding directly themselves.

Barber said that a lot of the “big states” like California, Texas and New York took longer to compile the data. New York was the last, she added.

Evenson said that New York, the last state to submit data, took more time because of personnel-related issues and database inconsistencies.

“It just took us considerably longer. We had to go back and recheck some databases,” he said. “It was a circumstance that this time it took us almost eight months longer than it normally should have.”

Whenever a significant change in values from the two previous reporting periods presents itself, part of the protocol is to recheck the data, Evenson said.

When the changes in values were reexamined, Evenson said, it was a mix of error and technological advancements, like upgrades to water cooling equipment which led to lower withdrawal rates in New York power plants.

“New York was not the only state that had some of those changes, it was just the last one that we were tracking down,” he said.

“We’re getting very close. The report is in colleague review,” he added. This step is the final step in which non-USGS experts review the report, and make notes before the final report is compiled, approved by the director and released in print and Web formats.

“It’s a fairly involved quality assurance program to make sure that the data is reviewed at multiple levels before its finalized,” he said.

The data is valuable to an array of non-profits, researchers, policy-makers and think tanks that use the data in their work.

“USGS data is the go-to resource and we have found it extremely valuable to the work we have done,” Eliot Metzger, project manager for the World Resources Institute (WRI) said. “To the extent more recent data had been available, it certainly would have helped enhance our analysis and its relevance to today’s policy discussions.”

Metzger said he recently drew on the data for a report he did for the WRI that focused on the relationship between energy and water use in the Southeastern United States. Metzger’s report was published on May 13, 2009.

Sharon Clarke, Land and Water Conservation Specialist at the Roaring Fork Conservancy, a non-profit devoted to watershed conservation in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, said they released their State of the Roaring Fork Watershed Report in December of this year, basing their section on water quantity on the 2000 data, because the 2005 data was not yet available.

The wait may be worth it to some, including Jess Chandler, a graduate student at Georgia Tech who co-authored the WRI report with Metzger.

“I am not an expert, but I would say that the USGS, regardless of delays, provides the best water data I have seen,” she said. “Maybe data users need to accept the trade-off in time and quality.”

The agency estimated total crop losses so far this year at $2.6 billion. In addition, livestock losses of about $974 million since November 2008 have also hit the industry.

“Extreme or exceptional drought conditions for the second year in a row and prolonged weather with over 100 degree temperatures have devastated agricultural crops and livestock operations, especially in central and South Texas,” said Carl Anderson, Agrilife Extension economist.

Anderson added that the affected area covers about 40 percent of Texas.

“Texas ranchers are continuing to deal with scorched pastures, record-setting high temperatures and empty water tanks as the drought continues to take its toll,” Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) President Dave Scott said.

“Rainfall in a large part of South Texas has been less than four inches since the start of this year,” said Jose Pena, Agrilife Extension economist. “Range and pasture conditions are in poor or only fair conditions over more than 85 percent of Texas.”

Read more here and here

Sources: Agrlife and Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA)

On Friday, July 17, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson issued a ruling that could cut Atlanta’s share of water from Lake Lanier in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River (ACR) system entirely unless Congress can pass a water-sharing bill in the next three years. If Congress fails to pass a bill, the judge said he would order Atlanta’s withdrawals be cut to 1970s use levels.

The ruling was the latest development in a nearly 20-year battle that began when Alabama filed suit in 1990, alleging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was withdrawing water from the reservoir for Atlanta, which was illegal and harmful to states downstream. Florida later joined the suit, and the proceedings have been put on hold many times as the states’ governors attempted to negotiate deals.

Judge Magnuson ruled that it was illegal for the Corps, which operates Lake Lanier, to draw water from the lake to meet Atlanta’s water demands. The Corps has been making withdrawals on behalf of Atlanta for decades, and Lanier is now the chief source of drinking water for decades.

“The problems faced in the ACF basin will continue to be repeated throughout this county, as population grows and more undeveloped land is developed,” Judge Magnuson said in his ruling. “Only by cooperating, planning and conserving can we avoid the situations that gave rise to this litigation.”

Read more here, here and here

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The research, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, will help scientists design drugs and other compounds to fight the parasite, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“Chronic infection with Schistosoma parasites makes life miserable for millions of people in tropical countries around the globe and can lead to death,” said Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “New drugs and other interventions are badly needed to reduce the impact of a disease that lowers quality of life and slows economic development.”

Fauci added that anemia, fever fatigue and other symptoms can make it hard for those suffering from the disease to work or attend school.

Schistosomiasis infects individuals when they wade or bathe in fresh water inhabited by tiny snails, which serve as the parasite’s intermediate host. The parasites are released into the water by the snails and burrow into bather’s skin, traveling to the blood vessels and maturing within the host’s body. Infected individuals then return the parasites to the water through urine and feces, continuing the cycle.

According to the NIH, schistosomiasis cases top 200 million every year, and some 20 million people are seriously disabled by severe anemia, chronic diarrhea, internal bleeding and organ damage caused by the worms, their eggs and autoimmune reactions. Though best known for causing chronic illness, schistosomiasis can be deadly. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, it kills some 280,000 people each year.

In an effort to find currently marketed drugs that might also be used against the disease, researchers compared their data on the parasite’s proteins to a database of existing drugs and found 66 instances of drugs that might be effective in combating schistosomiasis.

The Carter Center ranks schistosomiasis as the second most economically devastating parasitic disease behind malaria.

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: National Institutes of Health, Nature and The Carter Center

The funding initiative is being carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Indian Health Service (IHS), the document said.

“This investment is win-win. Addressing long-standing water issues in tribal communities is also going to bring in new jobs and new opportunities –- helping them get through the economic downturn and build a lasting foundation for prosperity,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. “EPA is committed to working with our tribal partners on solutions that benefit our environment, our health and our economy.”

According to 2007 IHS data, approximately 10 percent of tribal homes do not have safe drinking water and/or wastewater disposal facilities. In comparison, 0.6 percent of non-native homes in the United States lack such infrastructure, according to 2005 data by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The water and wastewater infrastructure programs are part of a significant effort to improve tribal access to safe and adequate drinking and wastewater facilities.

In Porterville, Calif., $6.3 million will go to a project to benefit 268 homes for the Tule River Tribe. The project will replace failing septic systems, which threaten public health and the environment, with a community wastewater system, the EPA said.

The White Mountain Apache Tribe in Whiteriver, Ariz., will receive just over $1 million for a surface water treatment facility, which will provide quality drinking water to more than 2,000 homes.

According to the EPA, the stimulus money will be used for projects for American Indian communities in 22 states.

Alaskan Native communities will receive the most funding –- about $19.9 million for 19 clean water projects and $7.9 million for 11 drinking water projects. The Navajo tribe will receive about $10.1 million for 30 clean water projects and $3.1 million for a drinking water project.

For a complete list of the clean water projects, click here
For a complete list of the drinking water projects, click here

Read more here and here

Sources: US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

An Environmental Working Group investigation, Is your bottled water worth it?, said that of 188 popular bottled water brands only 2 brands disclose the water’s source, how it has been purified and what chemical pollutant each bottle of water may contain.

“Many people assume bottled water is healthier and safer to drink than ordinary tap water. But some companies have lured consumers away from the tap with claims of health and purity that aren’t backed by public data,” Jane Houlihan, Senior Vice President for Environmental Working Group said. “The ugly truth is that under lax federal law, consumers know very little about the quality of bottled water on which they spend billions every year.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) also released a report that concluded that FDA consumer safety rules are less strict than the comparable EPA protections required for tap water.

The report, FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections For Tap Water, evaluated the extent to which FDA regulates the quality of bottled water, the extent to which federal and state authorities regulate accuracy of labels and claims regarding the purity, the source and the environmental impacts of bottled water.

Some key highlights from the GAO report were that although FDA’s quality standards are generally the same as the EPA’s, the FDA has failed to adopt the same standard for DEHP, a common plasticizer used in the manufacture of PVC plastics.

“Specifically, FDA deferred action on DEHP in a final rule published in 1996 and has yet to either adopt a standard or publish a reason for not doing so,” the report said.

The report said that FDA does not have the statutory authority to require bottlers to use certified laboratories for water quality tests or to report the results even if standards are violated.

The FDA and state requirements for bottled water labeling are the same as typical food label requirements, but the information provided to consumers is less than what the EPA requires from tap water under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The GAO recommended that FDA issues a standard of quality for DEHP, or publish its reasons for not doing so and implement its findings regarding methods that are feasible for conveying information to consumers regarding the quality and safety of bottled water.

Joe Doss, CEO of the International Bottled Water Associaton, testified before the subcommittee.

“Bottled water is comprehensively and stringently regulated in the United States at both the federal and state levels, which helps ensure its safety and quality,” Doss said. “At the federal level, bottled water is regulated as a packaged food product by the FDA under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It must meet FDA’s general food regulations as well as standards of identity, standards of quality, good manufacturing practices and labeling requirements specifically promulgated for bottled water.”

Read more here, here and here

Sources: Environmental Working Group, Government Accountability Office and The International Bottled Water Association

By not considering the tribes appeal, the Supreme Court effectively upheld a previous decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals –- which permits the Snowbowl resort to make snow.

The appellate court had previously ruled that snowmaking would not have a negative impact on the “spiritual fulfillment” of several tribes, who see the mountain as sacred ground, The Arizona Daily Star reported.

According to The Arizona Republic, a coalition of Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai and Apache tribes said that the plan to make artificial snow out of reclaimed wastewater would violate their religious freedom.

“Unfortunately, the court tended to take an ethnocentric point of view in dealing with the facts and issues, which is not what they’re supposed to do,” Howard Shanker, the attorney who represented the tribes, told the Arizona Daily Star.

The resort plans to pump water up from a water treatment plant in Flagstaff, which will require some 15 miles of pipe to move the water from the plant to the hill and additional 12 miles to distribute it along the slopes. The system, which will also require a 10-million gallon retention pond, will cost $12 million and should be in operation by October 2010.

According to the Arizona Republic, Snowbowl first began planning snowmaking in the late 1990s. The U.S. Forest Service, which owns the Coconino National Forest where Snowbowl is located, approved the plans. But the tribes sued the Forest Service, saying that the snowmaking would upset deities and that treated sewage would desecrate holy sites.

In January 2006, a federal judge ruled that the plan was acceptable. The coalition and environmental groups appealed, and the ruling was overturned in March 2007 by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Snowbowl’s owners asked that the case be reviewed by a larger panel, and the decision was overruled 8-3.

“Giving one religious sect a veto over the use of public park land would deprive others of the right to use what is, by definition, land that belongs to everyone,” Judge Carlos Bea wrote in the majority ruling.

Finally, the coalition petitioned the Supreme Court, which refused to see the case — effectively upholding the final Circuit Court decision.

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Daily Star and Sierra Club

Until now, citizens who practiced an “off-the-grid” lifestyle or used rainwater for domestic use had to keep their rainwater collection under wraps for fear of legal and criminal repercussions.

“I was so willing to go to jail for catching water on my roof and watering my garden,” Tom Bartels told The New York Times. “But now I’m not a criminal.” Bartels had been illegally watering his vegetables and fruit tress from water collected in his gutters.

But the law is still limited, because it only applies to people who have or would qualify for a well, Daily Camera reports. In the dry Southwestern climate of Colorado, every drop of water is allocated based on water rights, some of which have existed for more than a century.

Colorado typically receives about 100 million acre-feet of water annually from snowmelt and rain. Yet, only 15 percent makes it into the rivers, meaning that the amount of water used by rainwater collectors would most likely have little significance, according to Regan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Resources Research Institute at the Colorado State University.

Meanwhile, in nearby western states, such as Utah and Washington, rainwater collection is still largely illegal, as ownership of precipitation falls on whoever possesses water rights for a particular area of land.

Read more here and here

Sources: Daily Camera and The New York Times