Five Great Lakes states working to keep the invasive species out of the lakes presented their arguments before a federal judge in a Chicago courtroom on Monday. The Supreme Court had declined to hear a similar case earlier this year, prompting attorneys general from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania to sue in U.S. District Court in July. The states are seeking to force the closure of Chicago-area shipping locks that could let the fish into the lakes, fearing that the plankton-sucking fish would devastate the region’s $7 billion sportfishing industry. Chicago-area businesspeople oppose the move because of its potential impact on the region’s shipping and charter industries, and they argue that the scientific evidence for the imminent threat is flimsy.

In a three-hour hearing Aug. 23 in Chicago’s U.S. District Court, attorneys from Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota laid out their case for an emergency injunction to close the locks. Robert Reichel, Michigan’s assistant attorney general, called the Asian carp threat a “biological tipping point” for the Great Lakes, the Chicago Tribune reported. The lakes—the largest freshwater system on the planet containing 20 percent of the earth’s fresh water—have been hammered by a host of invasive aquatic species over the past 60 years, including sea lampreys, alewives and zebra mussels.

Asian carp have been making their way up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades after being introduced in southern states as a way to clean algae from catfish ponds. Along they way, the voracious plankton eaters have forced out native fish populations and driven recreational boaters of the rivers by their habit of leaping into the air at the sound of boat motors.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the Chicago-area locks, also operates a electric barrier in an attempt to keep the carp from getting rom the Illinois River into the Great Lakes, and has been studying other control measures. State officials argue that the corps should be doing more to block the threat, and doing it faster.

“What the corps is doing today, maintaining routine operations of the locks … is creating a risk where harm will follow,” Reichel told U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow. The judge agreed to consider the injunction request following three days of hearings that start Sept. 7.

As if to illustrate the dangers that Asian carp pose to boaters, a leaping carp smacked a kayaker in the head Aug. 24 during the 340-mile Missouri River race, knocking him out of contention. Houston resident Brad Pennington had been considered a contender to win the race before the mishap, the Associated Press reported, but the impact from the fish left him with a pounding headache that forced him to withdraw.

“It felt like a brick hit me,” he told the news agency.

On Thursday, Aug. 26, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation announced that it was donating $500,000 to the Great Lakes Commission to help the international commission figure out the best way to keep the invasive species out of the lakes.

“Our problem is bigger than Asian carp alone,” Tim Eder, Great Lakes Commission executive director, said in a news release about the grant. “It’s time for us to prevent future invasive species movement in a way that protects the array of benefits that Chicago’s waterway system provides.”

Sources: Associated Press, Bloomberg Businessweek, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Chicago Tribune

Kyrgyzstan launched a $200 million hydroelectric power plant Monday that will allow the Central Asian country to move closer to securing its energy supply but might also intensify the water competition in the region, Reuters reports.

The first unit of the Kambarata-2 hydropower facility, which is partly funded by Russia, is one of several projects planned along the Naryn River. A second $200 million unit is also planned for the Kambarata-2, and would be followed by a third unit along with the construction of the larger Kambarata-1 project, Kyrgyzstan’s acting President Roza Otunbayeva said.

The facilities are part of the country’s strategy to secure its energy supply and boost its export potential. Electricity production already makes about 10 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s gross domestic product, Otunbayeva added. The new unit will allow the country to produce up to 700 million kilowatt hours per year of electricity in addition to its overall annual production of 14 billion kilowatt hours.

But the project might also divert water from Kyrgyzstan’s neighbors, prompting experts to predict that it might hurt the fragile relations over the shared water resources in the region. Kyrgyzstan’s hydropower ambitions have previously vexed its closest downstream neighbor Uzbekistan, which relies on rivers that originate or pass through Kyrgyzstan, as well as neighboring Tajikistan to irrigate its arid cotton fields and farmland.

Otunbayeva said that the planned facilities will be coordinated with Uzbekistan.

The launch of the project is good news for Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, which has struggled to maintain control over domestic affairs after political turmoil in April ousted the previous administration, and inter-ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan in June resulted in nearly 400 deaths.

As the first hydropower station in Kyrgyzstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which determined the water and energy policy in Central Asia for decades, Kambarata-2 is expected to strengthen the country’s position in a complex water-and-energy grid in the region.

Sources: Reuters, Radio Free Europe

Read more of Circle of Blue’s Central Asia water coverage.

By Steve Kellman and Molly Ramsey
Circle of Blue

Prompted by upgrades in drilling technology and immense reserves of natural gas contained in carbon-rich shales that lies miles deep, a boom in natural gas development is well underway across the United States that is also causing states to scramble to review their drilling regulations and cleanup requirements. At risk is the safety of groundwater that millions of people use in their homes and businesses.

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Michigan is the latest state to confront the deep shale gas trend as gas companies snatched up leases earlier this year in the Collingwood Shale formation that lies two miles below the surface under the northern part of the state. A May auction of state mineral leases brought in a record $178 million—nearly as much as the state had earned in the past 82 years of lease sales combined.

State officials said they are prepared for the boom, and are reviewing regulations for spacing the wells, and for managing freshwater supplies to the wells, each of which will use 5 million gallons of water or more.

Michigan has “very strong casing and sealing standards which have been successful in protecting fresh water resources,” according to Tom Wellman, mineral and land management manager at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE). Wellman told Circle of Blue that the high cost of drilling the deep horizontal wells needed to tap formations like the Collingwood Shale will limit the number of wells drilled to one every 640 acres—or one square mile—rather than the one well per 80 acres that was common previously.

Hal Fitch, director of the DNRE’s geological survey office, told Circle of Blue that Michigan has a long history with hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking or hydrofracking, the drilling practice that fractures the shale with water and chemicals under high pressure, since most of the gas drilling in the state has involved the technique. But he noted that the deep horizontal wells being drilled into the Collingwood formation require far more water than was needed to develop shallower Antrim Shale wells, which were largely developed in the 1990s. A successful test well drilled by a subsidiary of Canada’s Encana Corporation in Missaukee County required five million gallons of water, Fitch noted.

The DNRE will examine the potential effect of water withdrawals on the immediate surroundings of a well site, Fitch said, particularly if it is near wetlands or a lake, to assure that the drilling activity does not deplete the aquifer. But the agency does not track the cumulative effects of water withdrawals across a watershed.

Fitch added that the DNRE has not received any reports of groundwater problems due to the recent drilling. The next big state lease sale occurs in October, and will provide officials fresh evidence of the industry’s interest in the Collingwood Shale.

In other states, the natural gas industry has already committed to spend billions on developing shale gas reserves, but have been confronted by civic resistance and political opposition.

As many as 363 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may be recoverable from the mile-deep Marcellus Shale formation that stretches under New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, according to Penn State geologist Terry Engelder. That’s enough natural gas to supply the entire nation—which consumed 22.8 trillion cubic feet in 2009—for 15 years. The huge reserve excited gas developers, and touched off a backlash from landowners who fear the possibility of poisoned waterways and contaminated drinking wells.

New York has instituted a drilling moratorium, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency canceled a public hearing on August 12th after learning that more than 8,000 people might attend. The agency said it was concerned about crowd control and public safety. The EPA’s previous public hearing, in Canonsburg, Pa., drew more than 1,200 people. The EPA plans to reschedule the New York hearing for September.

Accidents
Recent well accidents in Pennsylvania have heightened public alarm.

A June 3 gas well blowout in Clearfield County that sprayed natural gas and wastewater into the air for 16 hours was one such accident. The geyser reached as high as 75 feet, according to press accounts, before an emergency response team flown in from Texas was able to cap the well. The blowout was blamed on untrained personnel and improper control procedures, and the well operators were fined $400,000 and ordered to suspend all well operations in the state for 40 days .

Pennsylvania Changes Its Tune
The states that sit atop the Marcellus Shale formation have taken differing approaches to regulate the gas boom.
Pennsylvania, of course, is the birthplace of the American hydrocarbon development industry. More than 350,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled since the first commercial oil well began production was in 1859. The state began regulating drilling nearly a century later, in 1956 (PDF).

Given its history with the oil and gas industry, Pennsylvania regulators initially reacted nonchalantly to the latest round of development. Ron Gilius, former director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, was quoted during a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair as saying, “What do you have to be afraid of? It’s only sand and water.”

Meanwhile four months ago, the bureau’s current director, Scott Perry, said, “There has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else,” the Vanity Fair report added, quoting a remark that Perry made to the Scranton Times Tribune.

State regulators are starting to change their tune. John Hangar—secretary of the state’s DEP, and Perry’s boss—told National Public Radio (NPR) in a June 16 story that “gas drilling wastewater is exceptionally polluted. It’s nasty, nasty stuff.”
The department now has a web page devoted to news on the Marcellus Shale formation. The site contains answers to frequently asked questions about the area, descriptions of the regulations governing its development, information for landowners considering leasing their mineral rights to oil and gas companies, and a list of the hazardous components in various hydraulic fracturing solutions.

In August, the DEP fined a division of Marcellus Shale operator Atlas Energy Inc., $97,350 for a December incident in which used hydraulic fracturing fluids escaped from a wastewater pit and contaminated a watershed in Hopewell Township.

“It is unacceptable for drilling companies in Pennsylvania to threaten public safety or harm the environment through careless acts, such as this,” George Jugovic Jr., DEP’s southwest regional director, said in a statement. “The Marcellus Shale offers significant economic opportunities for Pennsylvania, but these companies must adopt operating standards that prevent these sorts of accidents and they must make protecting our water resources a top priority.”

The state’s Environmental Quality Board proposed a series of new rules in May that “updates existing requirements regarding the drilling, casing, cementing, testing, monitoring and plugging of oil and gas wells, and the protection of water supplies.”

Ray Walker, vice president of the Texas-based oil and natural gas company Range Resources and chairman of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, told NPR that he welcomes stricter standards.

“It’s always better and cheaper to do it right the first time,” he said. Walker’s company is a major player in Pennsylvania, having been dubbed “King of the Marcellus Shale” by Forbes magazine. In July, the company volunteered to disclose the chemical additives being used in the fracking fluid pumped into its wells, after years of industry resistance to their disclosure.

Despite the industry support, some believe that Pennsylvania’s proposed rules don’t go far enough.
The Sierra Club and Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm, commissioned a review of the rule changes by a petroleum and environmental engineer who recommended 47 ways to strengthen the regulations. The recommended changes include setting stronger standards for the surface casing used to protect freshwater aquifers, and a 24-hour deadline to respond to contamination complaints.

New York Draws a Line in the Sand
New York State, since 2008, has taken a hard line against fracking holding up permits for gas drilling in the state’s portion of the Marcellus Shale formation as the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) conducts a review of the practice.

On August 3, the state Senate voted for a moratorium on new wells until May 15, 2011, which would give the DEC more time to finish its review of the practice and issue new permitting guidelines. The proposed moratorium would need to be passed by the state Assembly and signed into law by Governor David Paterson before becoming law.

Farther west, where states have had a longer history with the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the industry-friendly state of Wyoming has introduced what the New York Times described (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/energy-environment/24gas.html?pagewanted=2) as “some of the nation’s toughest rules governing fracturing” in June, including requirements that companies disclose the ingredients in their fracking fluids to state regulators. The disclosure requirement was the first in the nation, according to Environment & Energy Publishing.

Still, the new rules to not require that those ingredients be disclosed to the public.

Colorado revamped its oil and gas laws in 2007 to require that companies maintain an inventory of the chemicals used at each well, Environment & Energy Publishing reported. The inventory must be maintained for the life of the well plus an additional five years. While the companies do not have to file the list with state regulators, they are required to provide it to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on request, and the agency can then share the information with health officials or a treating physician under a confidentiality agreement.

Protecting The Water Supply For 15 Million People
State agencies are not the only regulators weighing in on hydraulic fracturing.

The multi-state Delaware River Basin Commission, which oversees the 330-mile Delaware River that flows through New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, took a tough stance in May 2009, requiring commission approval of any natural gas drilling in the basin. The commission cited concerns that the massive amounts of water required for hydraulic fracturing would deplete the aquifers, that drilling operations could pollute groundwater or surface water, and that the recovered fracking fluids would not be treated and disposed of properly.

More than 15 million people depend on the basin for their drinking water, farming and industrial needs, according to the commission.

States Fill Federal Gap
One reason that states are reviewing their regulations and considering further environmental safeguards is the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, which specifically exempts fracking from the Safe Water Drinking Act and Clean Water Act. The EPA is now conducting a $1.9 million study of fracking’s effects on water resources as it considers whether additional federal protections should be put in place.

In a recent interview with The Financial Times, the man who helped set off the natural gas boom in Pennsylvania said that passing nationwide regulations governing hydraulic fracturing would be problematic, given the geological variations between regions and the complexity of the industry itself. As many as 200 gas producers are involved in gas shale drilling, Engelder estimated, each with its own set of rules for fracking.

“Industry has to experiment,” Engelder said. “Industry has to learn what went wrong to get it right next time. The industry evolves that way and writing reports is not going to replace the experience of doing this… I would defend the system of free enterprise here.”

Others argue that a more comprehensive regulatory approach is crucial to provide adequate protection to the environment.

Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the New York Times that hydrofracking and its effects are long overdue for tighter regulation.

“Any one accident might not be on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Mall said. “But accidents are happening all the time, and there’s no regime in place that broadly protects the health of communities and the surrounding environment where drilling is being done.”

Steve Kellman and Molly Ramsey are Michigan-based reporters for Circle of Blue. Reach Kellman at steve@circleofblue.org and Ramsey at mollyr@circleofblue.org. Read more about natural gas drilling in the United States on Circle of Blue’s Choke Point:U.S. series.

Photo courtesy Laura Cunningham, Basin and Range Watch

Developers have presented the federal Bureau of Land Management with 75 applications to build solar facilities in the Mojave desert.

By Nicholas L. Cain
Circle of Blue

California’s Mojave Desert, which drivers cross on Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, encompasses 20 million acres of land and three national parks, hosts 2,500 species of plants and animals, is shadowed by mountain ridges that rise to nearly 12,000 feet, and has the largest collection of solar thermal power plants in the world.

Between 1984 and 1991, Luz International Ltd., a Los Angeles—based engineering company, developed and built nine solar electricity generating stations in the Mojave that produce a total of 354 megawatts, about the same amount as a small coal-fired utility.

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Six years ago Arnold Goldman, the founder of Luz, formed BrightSource Energy, moved the company to Oakland, and got busy modernizing the design and preparing for the biggest dash for cash ever seen in the solar thermal industry.

Developers have presented the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees almost all of the Mojave, with 75 applications to build solar facilities in the desert that could affect 647,000 acres, according to Here Comes The Sun, a March 2009 study by Oregon State University graduate students. The California Energy Commission is close to final decisions on the first five solar thermal plants—including one proposed by BrightSource—that together would span 22,000 acres, generate 2,470 megawatts and cost roughly $15 billion.

The BLM is reviewing 33 other solar power plant applications in Arizona that cover 452,000 acres of federal land in the Sonoran Desert, mostly in the south and southwest sections of the state, according to a 21-page report released in July by Senator John Kyl (R-Ariz.). Of those proposed plants, 29 would use some form of solar thermal technology. Ten more applications for solar plants are under review by state environmental authorities in Arizona.

Southern Nevada is the focus of 63 utility-scale solar plants, according to the BLM.

Solar’s Water Risks, Alternatives
Tens of billions of dollars are on the table for steam generator builders like Siemens and General Electric Co., for contractors like Bechtel Corp., and thousands of skilled workers anxious to earn paychecks building big showcases of what’s possible in the emerging clean energy economy. But also in play is the credibility of the Obama administration, which is issuing billion-dollar loan guarantees and fast tracking projects on federal land, as well as whether utility-scale solar plants can significantly reduce environmental risks and still provide southern California home and business owners competitively-priced electricity.

On that last point there is some dispute. In the competition between energy and water, none of the market-ready energy alternatives are free of environmental risks, and only a handful eliminate concerns about water withdrawals from lakes, rivers and aquifers, as well as water consumption from evaporation.

Solar photovoltaic power, which generates energy directly from sunlight, uses virtually no water. Six utility-scale solar PV plants were put online last year in the United States, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), a trade group.

The U.S. wind energy industry, which generated 35,000 megawatts last year, and has been growing by more than 35 percent annually over the last five years, uses no water. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a trade group, said in its annual report that wind generators prevented emissions of 62 million tons of carbon last year, and saved 20 billion gallons of water.

Also coming online is energy generated from wave power that does not use fresh water. The country’s first utility-scale wave power project is the 1.5-megawatt wave energy park located 2.5 miles off the Oregon coast near Reedsport. It uses PowerBuoys, manufactured in Oregon, that move up and down with wave motion, causing an internal piston-like structure to drive an electrical generator.

Solar thermal designs that focus sunlight on water to generate steam to power turbines eliminate climate-changing emissions. They also eliminate the need to produce coal, natural gas and uranium, all of which are significant sources of land damage, as well as air and water pollution.

But utility scale plants cover thousands of acres. The Center for Biological Diversity and the local chapter of the Sierra Club assert that the big solar plants, photovoltaic or concentrated solar power (CSP), will damage sensitive plants and put more pressure on the endangered desert tortoise.

More significantly, researchers at several federal agencies and in Congress have expressed concern about supplies of water that the concentrated solar plants use for cooling, water that is already scarce in the desert regions of California, the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain states. Solar thermal plants that use conventional cooling technology withdraw 98 percent less water from aquifers and rivers than coal and nuclear plants, and 90 percent less than natural gas-fired power plants, according to the Department of Energy. But they consume through evaporation from cooling three times as much water as a coal-fired power plant. A conventionally cooled solar thermal plant uses 740 to 890 gallons to generate one megawatt hour of electricity. A conventionally cooled coal plants uses 200 to 300 gallons, according to the Energy Department.

In May, Sen. Kyl issued a report on water supplies and solar thermal plants that further clarified these concerns. The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said the report, estimated that by 2050 CSP plants could produce 53 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power tens of millions of homes in states like Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimated that the total water use for these projects, using conventional cooling methods, would be 164 billion gallons of water a year. That’s roughly the same amount of water that the entire U.S. coal-fired utility industry consumes in 50 days.

Arizona, California Set Solar Pace
In Arizona, the CSP plants would consume about a third — an estimated 53 billion gallons of water a year — “representing the largest percentage of any state’s water requirement to produce solar power,” according to the Kyl report. National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis warned the BLM in a formal memorandum last year that federal approval of dozens of solar plants in southern Nevada could affect water supplies across the region.

“Arizona lawmakers have an obligation to protect the state’s limited water supply and put its water resources to their highest and best use,” said the authors of the Kyl report.” Using Arizona’s water supplies to produce conventional CSP that will most likely be exported out of state does neither.”

“Despite the seriousness of water constraints,” the report added, “solar power companies have largely ignored water concerns and continue to propose water-intensive conventional CSP plants in Arizona.”

Solar photovoltaic power plants use virtually no water.

In California, the state energy commission has responded to such concerns by requiring water-conserving air-cooled systems. BrightSource’s proposed 370-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electrical Generating System plant will use 100 acre-feet or 32.5 million gallons of water a year, or about what a similar-size coal-fired plant consumes in a few days.

“One hundred acre feet of water is not a lot of water, but given the arid location, project developers and regulators must ensure there are no irreversible local impacts,” said Peter H. Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, one of the nation’s foremost water research organizations and Circle of Blue’s parent.

Indeed, say authorities, when compared to conventional coal and nuclear powered thermal plants, the BrightSource solar generating station by itself is a water miser. The same is true for the $6 billion, 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside County that is nearing final federal and state approval. It will use 196 million gallons of water a year. The nearly same size 995-megawatt Cholla Power Plant in northeastern Arizona near Holbrook, withdraws and uses nearly 43 million gallons of water a day.

California, according to the Energy Information Administration, is home to 1,102 megawatts of utility-scale solar generating capacity, which is most of the solar generating capacity in the U.S. The next highest state is New Jersey, with 128 megawatts of solar generating capacity. Last year, according to the Energy Department, 25 new solar thermal and photovoltaic plants came on line or began construction, and will add 145 megawatts of generating capacity. This year, 13 more solar plants are scheduled to come online or begin construction, and add 468 megawatts of capacity.

When compared to development in the fossil fuel sector, solar’s additional capacity is tiny. In 2009 and 2010, utilities added 25 new coal-fired plants that have a generating capacity of 11,000 megawatts, said the Energy Department. And 186 natural gas-fired plants were under development during the same period that generate over 21,000 megawatts.

The sun, in other words, accounts for well under one percent of all electricity in a country that has over 1 million megawatts of electrical generating capacity, according to the Energy Department.

California authorities are anxious to change that. On August 25, the California Energy Commission approved the construction of the proposed 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project, the first solar thermal power project permitted in 20 years. The last solar thermal power plants that the Energy Commission approved were Luz Solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) IX and Luz SEGS X in February 1990.

Earlier, on Aug. 3 a three-member panel of the California Energy Commission recommended that the full five-member board grant BrightSource a construction permit for the Ivanpah plant. The BLM must also approve construction. But that decision is expected to be a formality. The BLM earlier this month released a favorable environmental impact statement, and in February, the Obama administration awarded BrightSource a $1.37 billion loan guarantee to build the $3 billion plant.

The BrightSource design could set a new industry standard for electrical generation and water conservation. It uses a “power tower” surrounded by curved mirrors to focus solar energy on a boiler. In filings with the state, BrightSource said it will obtain the water needed by the facility from on-site wells. Water will be filtered before being used to rinse mirrors or added to the generation process. Runoff from mirror-washing will be used to irrigate landscaping.

“One of the significant advantages of power tower technology,” according to Keely Wachs, the company’s senior director of communications, “is the ability to produce superheated steam, which reduces the efficiency impact to the overall plant when dry cooling.”

Weighing the Environmental Costs, Benefits
Ileene Anderson, a biologist and public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a wildlife conservation group, still worries about “overdrawing groundwater aquifers in the Mojave” and nearby regions and that the Ivanpah project is “in the wrong location.”

“Springs in the Clark Mountains are just south and west of the project site,” Anderson said. “We’re very much in favor of solar energy and getting off fossil fuels, but the projects must be sited appropriately.”

BrightSource, in response, noted that it selects sites that are “near roads and existing transmission lines.” The Ivanpah project is within five miles of an existing natural gas power plant and is “bisected by a transmission corridor containing three power lines,” said the company in an email message.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in a January 2009 letter to the energy commission, noted that other area users of groundwater, including a neighboring golf course, had suffered from brackish water intrusion to their wells. Brackish water often contains salt or other minerals and is thus not usable for irrigation.

As to concerns raised by the NRDC that an increase of groundwater pumping could harm the Primm Valley golf course, Gleick noted that, “If I had a choice of where to ‘spend’ my water in the desert, and we do, as a state, I’d far rather see it go to producing solar energy than lush golf greens.”

Indeed, in the competition between energy and water, other states are also grappling with the solar tradeoffs. Solar Millennium AG, a developer of utility scale solar projects, recently decided to change the design of a large solar thermal project it planned for Nevada from wet to dry cooling.

Environmentalists are mixed about whether the affects of solar-thermal outweigh the benefits.

“Sierra Club supports the most efficient power generation technology, but we look at individual projects on a case-by-case basis,” noted spokesman David Graham-Caso. “We’re looking for anything that can help utilities move off coal.”

Anderson of the Center For Biological Diversity notes that although the scale and potential affects of planned solar-thermal projects are a concern, in the “appropriate places” the projects should go forward because “species will be affected by climate change as well, even in the Mojave area. “

Nicholas L. Cain is an environmental researcher who is studying for a PhD in political science at Claremont Graduate University. He is a former employee of the Pacific Institute. Read more of our Choke Point: U.S. coverage on Circle of Blue.

Welcome to Circle of Blue Radio’s Series 5 in 15, where we’re asking global thought leaders five questions in 15 minutes, more or less. These are experts working in journalism, science, communication design and water. I’m J. Carl Ganter. Today’s program is underwritten by Traverse Internet Law, tech savvy lawyers representing internet and technology companies.

Play James G. Workman and the Heart of Dryness

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Photo courtesy James G. Workman.

Since the mid-1990s the Botswanan government tried relocating the Bushmen off the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James G. Workman is an award-winning journalist and has served as an environmental consultant to U.S.-cabinet members.

Photo courtesy James G. Workman.

Wild Tsama melons are gathered into a secure Kalahari equivalent of a water tower.

Photo courtesy James G. Workman.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is the second largest game reserve in the world and mostly inaccessible.

Photo courtesy James G. Workman.

Workman uses the Bushmen’s story to reflect on the global water an climate crises.

J. Carl Ganter: Circle of Blue’s Molly Ramsey spoke with James Workman, author of “Heart of Dryness”. To find more articles and broadcasts on water, design, policy, and related issues, be sure to tune in to Circle of Blue online at circleofblue.org.

Our them is composed by Nedev Kahn, and Circle of Blue Radio is underwritten by Traverse Legal, PLC, internet attorneys specializing in trademark infringement litigation, copyright infringement litigation, patent litigation and patent prosecution. Join us gain for Circle of Blue Radio’s 5 in 15. I’m J. Carl Ganter.

Tar Sands Soiled Oil

Alberta’s tar sands are at the leading edge of a new era of hydrocarbon development in North America and the world. Industry executives and the Department of Energy assert that the transition from conventional to unconventional sources of oil, like tar sands, is essential for satisfying American demand for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels. This includes expanding the upper Midwest’s existing 17 refineries, five of which are located along the Great Lakes, to process Alberta’s reserves.

At the end of the 2,000 miles of pipeline carrying tar sands oil into the United States is a Marathon Oil Corp. refinery in Detroit. Since 2008, Marathon has invested an estimated $2.2 billion in expanding the facility so it can process 115,000 barrels per day from so-called “heavy oil” into transportation fuels. Meanwhile the overhaul has increased community members’ concerns about the potential environmental and health risks, with some residents hoping the energy company will buy out their homes.

Photographs by Heather Rousseau, J. Carl Ganter, Sierra Crane-Murdoch and Aaron Jaffe. Original music by Brian Griffith.

Photo creative commons by Judy Malley

Sitka, Alaska.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

S2C Global—one of two companies in a partnership to export water from Sitka, Alaska to India—envisions water hubs in the Arabian Sea, East China Sea and Caribbean Sea, according to its 2010 second quarter U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report.

In July, S2C announced a water hub in India for distributing water from Sitka, a town of 8,600 people on Baranof Island in the Alaskan panhandle. S2C’s president Rod Bartlett, who had previously restricted his comments to press releases, spoke with Circle of Blue on Wednesday about the company’s business plans.

While the East China and Caribbean hubs are planned expansions, S2C is concentrating on its Arabian Sea hub on the west coast of India to prove the feasibility of a regular bulk water trade. The company expects to complete its first shipment by the end of 2010.

Bartlett’s Bulk Water Vision
Bartlett sees bulk water as a logistics exercise. Pricing, supply and demand, transport costs and infrastructure must square. Only in the last 18 months has it become viable for large-volume water shipments, he said. The global economic crisis left a glut of tanker ships in its wake, pushing down the cost of chartering a vessel. Even cheaper are water bags, but the technology is still viewed as a promising curiosity.

The economy will eventually recover and charter prices will rise, but Bartlett expects the shipping trade will find a new equilibrium that offers bulk water purveyors entry into the market.

Distance, Desalination Issues May Stand in the Way
As befits the president of a company, Bartlett is bullish about his trade, but other people familiar with the bulk water industry are skeptical about the viability of an Alaska-to-India water business. Two concerns that came up most often in discussions were the price S2C is paying for the water and the transport distance between markets.

“They’re getting killed at dockside with a penny a gallon,” said Terry Spragg, designer of the Spragg Bag water delivery system, about S2C’s contract price with Sitka. “I could desalinate water for less than a penny a gallon right off my coast if you’re talking municipal and industrial purposes. If you’re talking bottled water, you could get water from Fiji cheaper. Fiji Water already has a market. I just don’t see how Alaska can compete shipping water at the dockside price they are trying to negotiate.”

“The premium market is the only way they could go and there are closer export markets with premium supplies: New Zealand and Tasmania,” Spragg added.

New Zealand is roughly 4,000 km closer to the Persian Gulf than Sitka: a considerable advantage because shipping costs are largely a function of distance.

Bartlett contends that distance is less a consideration than infrastructure. Sitka’s deep water port and dockside supply pipeline mean scale efficiencies for the amount of water that they can move.

“The direct competition is desalination,” Bartlett said. “But with desalination, the real costs are not reported. Many countries do not attach a market cost to the electricity used. They don’t factor the amortized cost of the plants into the per unit water cost, and they don’t account for the environmental costs.”

Graphic by Aubrey Ann Parker

Sitka, Alaska to sell bulk water exports to India. Click on image to see the complete infographic.

Strict environmental standards in Australia have driven up the cost of desalinated water to nearly $0.07 per gallon on average, according to an article in The New York Times. Bartlett says S2C can buy water from the city of Sitka, load it, ship it to India and unload it for the same price. Meanwhile water shipments can be turned on and off in response to demand, thereby avoiding the capital burden of a multi-billion dollar desalination plant mothballed during a rainy period.

Not a Money Mecca
Besides pricing and location considerations, potential deals in the bulk water business as a whole have been undermined by past chicanery, according to John Anderson of CWE, Inc., a New Jersey-based company involved in bulk water logistics and consulting.

“I think some of the greed in the shipped water trade is adversely affecting any sale taking place,” Anderson said. “People think it’s a money Mecca, but it’s not.”

Anderson, who has worked in the industry since 1993, told Circle of Blue that tanker owners are the ultimate arbiters in the business since they control the means of transport. He knows tanker operators who have soured on the trade because prices were changed at the last minute by water depot owners looking for a better deal.

“Tanker owners are adverse to risk,” Anderson said. “They are not going to take a tanker out of rotation and not have all the pieces in place.”

Though Anderson said the bulk water trade is territorial with insiders protecting proprietary information that gives them an edge, Spragg said that openness is essential for companies trying to kickstart a business.

“They should be as transparent as possible,” Spragg said. “That’s the only way to get this thing off the ground.”

Much of the business hinges on relationships with tanker owners, Anderson said, and an ability to manage often overlooked micro-details: things such as import permits and code regulations. Anderson said he knew of one transaction that was scuttled when the water importer failed to notify health inspectors and the ship was unable to unload.

Because it is a small company, S2C does not have the strength to develop the water hub alone. However, the company does have the strength to bring in an Indian partner in a joint venture to build the infrastructure, Bartlett stressed, adding that S2C is looking to incorporate an Indian subsidiary.

Bringing Water to the People
Bartlett said permits on both ends of the route are being finalized and construction for the India hub is in place. The tank farm to store the water is pre-fabricated while the pipeline at the Indian port is being fast-tracked by port officials.

“It can all be done very quickly,” he said, “once we say ‘go’.”

“There is plenty of water in the world,” he added, “but people don’t live where the water is and they aren’t all going to move north. Water has to come to the people, be it through pipelines or ships.”

Brett Walton is a Seattle-based reporter for Circle of Blue. Reach Walton at brett@circleofblue.org. Read more about bulk water exports on Circle of Blue.

We all use water, for all kinds of things. We use water directly in our homes. We use water indirectly to produce the food we eat, the semiconductors we use, and the clothes we wear. We use water in our offices and businesses and work. But how many of us really have a sense of what our water use is, or the energy and greenhouse gases embedded in that use?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.

Read his full bio…

The Pacific Institute has just created and released our home Water-Energy-Climate Calculator, called WECalc, to help you figure out your direct water use at home. While there are other important pieces to your water footprint, such as your diet (I’ve tackled this elsewhere, for example in Water for Beef), one good place to start is at home: WECalc asks you a series of questions about your home or apartment water-use habits, and based on your replies, estimates your water use. [WECalc was made possible with support from the Argosy Foundation.] At the same time, it estimates your water-related energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions and, even better, offers explicit suggestions for saving water, energy, and money. When I ran my home information through WECalc, I found that I’m spending about $230 per year to heat water, and that my overall household water use requires energy to the tune of 2,500 lb of carbon emissions per year (like driving a car for 76 days). And I’m way below average!

http://www.wecalc.org/

The Water-Energy-Climate Calculator (WECalc) can help us understand our home water use, and its consequences for our energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.

The bulk of my water-related carbon emissions are associated with the hot water use in the shower, not an uncommon finding. So if you haven’t got a good low-flow shower head—which WECalc will suggest, along with other specific recommendations based on your answers—you’re probably missing one simple and inexpensive way to save water and energy.

And it’s much more than the shower. Saving water saves energy because capturing, transporting, treating, and using water is highly energy-intensive. And energy use releases greenhouse gases to the atmosphere: use less water, emit fewer greenhouse gases. A major Pacific Institute report on water conservation and efficiency found that implementing widely available, cost-effective technologies and practices could reduce California’s current urban water use by a third, and the California Energy Commission concluded that water conservation and efficiency improvements could save a vast amount of energy at far less cost than traditional energy-efficiency programs (which are themselves far cheaper than building new energy supplies). When you account for all the other benefits that flow from saving water—like lower energy bills, reduced landscaping costs, and the reduction in waste water—water efficiency measures become very cost-effective, and in some cases are worth doing even if water is free.

The Calculator also offers the option of entering information from your water bill directly and exploring different options for fixtures, with detailed information on national and state efficiency standards, recommendations for new technologies and strategies to save water, and insights into where all of your water actually goes.

Knowledge is power, they say. And the more we know about our water use, the more likely we are to begin to make better and more informed decisions.

Peter Gleick

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

Click image to enlarge.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

Households in American cities building new sewage treatment infrastructure pay up to 15 times more on their sewer bills than cities with old wastewater treatment systems, according to a Circle of Blue survey of residential wastewater rates in 30 major U.S. cities.

But customers in cities with old systems are likely to soon see their rates rise. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in July that it is considering stricter water quality regulations. Final revisions to the current standards, which were set in 1983, will not come until next summer. If wastewater treatment plants are forced to overhaul their systems, customers could see significantly larger numbers on their sewer bills.

The Circle of Blue survey found that a family of four using 100 gallons per person per day pays $13.92 per month in Salt Lake City, which has delayed building a new wastewater treatment plant thanks to a unique billing system, compared to $208.60 per month in Atlanta, which is undergoing a $4 billion modernization and expansion.

The wastewater pricing findings complement Circle of Blue’s water pricing survey, completed in April. Circle of Blue calculated sewer charges based on rates in July 2010 for the same cities, and used the combined results to create a complete picture of the price of water in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

The wide range for wastewater rates is explained by billing and building, that is, where a utility gets its money and how it spends it.

“Wastewater has more of a history of paying costs through property taxes [than water],” said Chris Woodcock, president of Woodcock and Associates, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm on water and wastewater rates. “That is the disparity on the low side. Also, some places charge more for high strength waste. That would cost more for large users than small users and would tend to lower the residential rates.”

That is the case in Salt Lake City, which has one of the lowest residential rates of the cities surveyed. Jim Lewis, the finance administrator for SLC Public Utilities, said that the city’s rate structure is based on the waste concentration in the water.

“Those agencies that put more waste into the system pay more,” Lewis told Circle of Blue. “That’s what unique to us.”

Most cities in the survey charge for wastewater based on winter consumption because sewer charges pay to clean what goes down the drain. And since outdoor water use is lowest in the winter, it is assumed that most residential use at that time of the year is going into the sewer system. As a result, the charges for this survey were calculated assuming winter consumption.

Graphic by Kalin Wood

30 City Waste Water Rates Interactive Map. Click each section for graphical comparisons.

Few cities use a rate structure based on waste concentration. Most charge a uniform rate per 1,000 gallons or hundred cubic feet. Some are adopting a block pricing model similar to water charges. Block prices increase the unit price of water as consumption increases so that high-volume users are paying a higher average rate.

In Salt Lake City, the financial burden for the rate structure implemented in 2002 fell heavily on restaurants. Yet, with better maintenance and more vigilance about what goes down the drain, restaurants have decreased their sewer costs and discharge, Lewis said.

The utility noticed an increasing amount of biological oxygen demand and suspended solids in its wastewater—the two main measures of the strength of wastewater discharge. A new treatment plant was considered, but the rate restructuring caused waste concentrations to flatten, delaying the need for a new plant by 10 to 15 years, Lewis said.

Building new infrastructure is one reason wastewater costs increase—cities in the midst of capital improvements such as Atlanta and Seattle have the highest rates in the survey. While treatment plants are costly, more cities are dealing with the problem of combined sewer overflows—disentangling storm water drains from the sewer system.

“A lot of sewer systems built initially in cities combined the sewers and the street drainage,” Woodcock said. “What happens when there is a big rain storm is the combined sewage and storm water can’t be treated properly because the volume is so high and a bunch overflows untreated. As a result the government has said you can’t do that anymore and have to separate these systems. That’s been very expensive for communities that had combined systems.”

Combined sewer overflows are just one part of Atlanta’s $4.1-billion sewer system overhaul. The final bill, with interest, will be more than $7 billion, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. City voters passed a one cent sales tax in 2008 to pay for part of the city’s capital improvement program, but most of the project is being paid for by rate increases.

“It’s a generational expense for a generational asset and generational benefits,” Rob Hunter, commissioner of the city’s Watershed Management Department, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Unless you want the water and sewer system to get in the condition they were in, you need to invest in it.”

These types of decisions are going to be more common in the future as cities come up against the dual pressures of decrepit infrastructure and growing service populations. With this in mind, city leaders are cautioning that cheaper, in terms of water and sewer rates, is not always best.

“Lower rates are not always a marker of success,” said Annie Kolb-Nelson, public information officer for King County Waste Water Division, which treats Seattle’s sewage. “Low rates lead to environmental degradation.”

Wastewater: Graphical Comparison

Graphic by Kalin Wood

See map graphic above for more comparisons.

Kolb-Nelson said King County has taken a proactive approach to its sewer system, investing $388 million between 1988 and 2005 in combined sewer overflow program and other system upgrades. The county is also building the $1.8 billion Brightwater treatment plant.

But Brightwater has been plagued by cost overruns, and is also a year and a half behind schedule. Kolb-Nelson said that current high rates will stabilize in the future once the plant begins operating in 2011.

Even though Seattle and Atlanta have taken on costly upgrades, that sentiment of public investment is absent in many cities, Woodcock said.

“We’re seeing more and more in both water and wastewater, policymakers afraid of rate increases, cutting back on repairs and replacement and putting it off to future generations. It’s sort of odd when you think about it. We wouldn’t ask our children to pay off our credit card bills, yet we’re asking them to do that with our water and sewer systems.”

Ultimately it comes down to how clean we want our water systems. A decision to remove the increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals in public water supplies would make treatment costs even higher, Woodcock said.

Brett Walton is a Seattle-based journalist for Circle of Blue. Reach Walton at brett@circleofblue.org and read more about water pricing U.S. cities on Circle of Blue.

In April Circle of Blue released a survey of water pricing systems in 30 major U.S. cities. We return to that list to examine the wastewater costs of those same urban centers. While treatment plants are costly, more cities are dealing with the problem of combined sewer overflows—disentangling storm water drains from the sewer system.

Developing new infrastructure is leading to increased up-front costs for wastewater treatment—cities in the midst of capital improvements such as Atlanta and Seattle have the highest rates in the survey. And if other plants are forced to overhaul their systems, customers could see significantly larger numbers on their sewer bills. We cannot ignore the arriving wave of rehabilitation and replacement we will face over the next several decades. To do so would put the achievements of the last 30-40 years and our nation’s waters and public health at risk. Click the map below for regional overviews of cities surveyed.

Graphic by Kalin Wood

30 City Waste Water Rates Interactive Map. Click each section for graphical comparisons.

Midwest Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.

Mountain Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.

West Coast Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.

Texas Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.

Southeast Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.

East Coast Map

Graphic by Kalin Wood

Water Pricing Graphical Comparison Infographic. Click to Enlarge.