Meanwhile, this Reuters analysis shows that insurers find it tough to price the risk from hydraulic fracturing.

A NASA scientist has for the first time tied specific weather events, such as the recent Texas drought and the 2010 heat wave in Russia, to human-induced climate change. TIME Magazine and The Atlantic both look at his scary math.

Record rainfall in April has helped take 19 counties in the United Kingdom out of drought, but water restrictions remain in London, east and southeast England, according to Bloomberg News.

Farms, cities and industries in the dry U.S. Southwest are guzzling water at an alarming rate, nearly double the sustainable benchmark, ScienceDaily reported. What are the scenarios for the region?

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Water for Oil Shale
The Army Corps of Engineers announced that oil companies and other industrial users in North Dakota will be able to tap Lake Sakakawea free of charge until the federal government develops a policy for “surplus” water in the reservoir, the Associated Press reports. At first, up to 100,000 acre-feet will be available. The corps operates Garrison Dam, which forms Lake Sakakawea.

Diesel for Fracking
The EPA has issued draft guidance for using diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing. The guidance, which is open for public comment, would apply to the 11 states where the EPA is the permitting authority. Several territories and most tribal lands would also be covered.

Tribal Water Rights
The Crow Tribe, the U.S. government and the state of Montana signed a water rights compact, which, along with a settlement that President Barack Obama signed in 2010, authorizes US$460 million for a water supply system and an irrigation project on the reservation.

Committee Hearings
Last week, a House subcommittee heard testimony about the technology used to extract unconventional fossil fuels, namely oil shale and oil sands.

On Wednesday, a Senate subcommittee will hold a hearing on corporate environmental responsibility. Representatives from GE, Intel, Proctor and Gamble, Eastman Chemical, and FedEx will share their views.

On Thursday, the full Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will convene to discuss the clean energy standard proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). The eight witnesses represent federal and state government, industry groups, utilities, and research organizations.

Energy Security
The Congressional Budget Office released a report on national energy security, which it defines as “the ability of U.S. households and businesses to accommodate disruptions of supply in energy markets.”

Rural Grants
The Rural Utilities Service, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program has US$497,000 in grant money for rural water projects. Applications must be submitted by June 7 through the grants.gov website.

Superfund
The EPA added three sites to its Superfund list for hazardous waste. Two are in California, and one is in Washington state.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

By Codi Yeager
Circle of Blue

By the end of next year, the United States Army Corps of Engineers will give Congress a set of proposals for stemming the flow of Asian carp and other invasive species between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin, White House officials announced last Tuesday. The recommendations will come two years before the scheduled release of a complete feasibility study that would allow work on a permanent solution to begin.

Three species of Asian carp, which are native to Eurasia, have been making their way through the Mississippi River watershed since escaping U.S. aquaculture facilities in the 1970s. The carp consume large quantities of plankton and can out compete native fish populations. Many fear the invasive carp could devastate the $US 7 billion sport-fishing industry in the Great Lakes, if the carp were to get past electric barriers in Chicago — and some data, though debated, suggests that they already have.

“It is a positive step to see that the Corps is starting to understand how urgent this is to the Great Lakes, and getting those options out for public consumption as quickly as possible is a positive step,” Joel Brammeier, President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, told Circle of Blue.

But he added that the Alliance believes the only permanent solution to the problem lies in cutting the connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin. Brammeier cited a power outage on May 2 that, for 13 minutes, shut down all three of the electric barriers that the Corps currently operates in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

“The power outage last week is a good indicator why tech solutions, however useful they are in the interim, are not a permanent solution that the Great Lakes can rely on,” he said. “We’ve been asking all along to focus on one solution — hydrological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins — and this decision does not do that. Getting options in front of Congress is good, but whether it leads to hydrological separation any faster is still up in the air.”

Is Faster Fast Enough?
When Congress receives the list of possible solutions from the Corps, legislators will then be able to select the option that they prefer. But the Corps will still have to perform more design and feasibility studies, meaning that work on a permanent solution may not begin any sooner than the original 2015 study deadline.

This is not fast enough for a number of Great Lakes states.

Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have pursued a number of legal avenues trying to force the Corps to take faster action. In February, their attempt to involve the U.S. Supreme Court was denied for a third time. And, despite Tuesday’s announcement, the states are still going forward with a lawsuit against the Corps and the Chicago Water District in federal district court.

“The Army Corps is just giving us more of the same,” Joy Yearout, spokeswoman for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, told Circle of Blue. “They are continuing to study ways to stop Asian carp that we know won’t work, when there are steps that could be taken now. That is why the lawsuit is still moving forward.”

Michigan and the other plaintiffs are pushing for permanent separation of the two watersheds, and say a study — released in January by the Great Lakes Commission and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative — shows it can be done. The report details three methods for watershed separation in Chicago, which range in price from $US 3.26 billion to $US 9.54 billion.

“The Great Lakes Commission finished their study this year that took a serious look at options for separation,” Yearout said. “The Army doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel — we want them to act now.”

Graphic © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue

Sharon and Arthur Stottsberry stopped by their lawyer's office in Marietta, Ohio. Click to see enlarged image.

CALDWELL, Ohio — The day before they received a $US 280,000 check for leasing their oil and gas development rights to Eclipse Energy, Arthur and Sharon Stottsberry stopped in Marietta to remind their attorney that they had almost an acre more to lease. I caught up with the Stottsberrys as they were leaving Jennifer Garrison’s office, as ebullient and keyed up as a retired senior couple from this part of southeastern Ohio is likely to get at this stage.

“Saturday morning we’ll have that check in hand,” said Mrs. Stottsberry. “And then we’ll believe it actually happened. We haven’t planned much about what to do. But when the check comes we’ll plan. The most important thing is I want to make sure my grandkids do well.”

Graphic © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue

Jennifer Garrison, lead attorney writing new generation mineral leases in Ohio. Click to see enlarged image.

As she described the mix of tempered elation and modest disorientation that comes with a financial windfall, Mr. Stottsberry stood quietly by his wife’s side, clutching the lease agreement that made much of the couple’s new prosperity possible. What’s more, that same agreement also contains enforceable safeguards for their water.

New Negotiations
The 24-page contract — largely designed and negotiated by Garrison — is a manifest of financial and environmental protection details that is pushing the old business of leasing oil and gas drilling rights into new legal and regulatory territory.

Until very recently, most oil and gas leases in Ohio were a few pages long, spelling out standard royalty rates and modest bonus payments per acre of leased minerals, including no protections for water and land. They were most often hammered out by energy companies working one-on-one with mineral owners, many of them unskilled in the back-and-forth of negotiation and unprepared emotionally to press for the best deal.

Over the last year, though, eastern and southeastern Ohio have emerged as a new stage in the shale oil and shale gas production boom that has engulfed at least a dozen other states across the country. America’s deep shales are yielding a bonanza of oil and gas that is rewriting what the United States thought it knew about energy supplies. And it’s prompting a fresh reckoning with the potential hazards of hydrocarbon development, especially water supply and contamination.

Ohio’s deep Marcellus and Utica shales are said by state and federal geologists to contain trillions of cubic feet of gas and billions of barrels of oil. The early production logs in Ohio indicate that Utica shale wells are capable of producing hundreds of barrels of oil and millions of cubic feet of gas a day.

The mineral leases that Garrison negotiates with energy companies reflect the high public expectations about financial returns from Ohio’s new energy fields. Her clients are receiving up to $US 5,250 an acre in bonus payments for a five-year lease. They also receive 20 percent royalties on oil and gas production. The lease signed by the Stottsberrys is one of two that Garrison has negotiated on behalf of nearly 300 clients who own 13,000 acres of mineral rights in two southeastern Ohio counties.

Water
Water remains a big part of the shale energy debate:

• Drilling for energy that lies in solid rock about a mile beneath the surface takes millions of gallons of water injected into wells to fracture the formations and release oil and gas.
• Across the Ohio River, in the four-year-old shale gas fields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, landowners have reported instances of water contamination near wells that have been “hydrofractured.” State regulators and the federal Environmental Protection Agency are investigating the causes.
• New state and federal regulations to protect water and air are starting to take effect in Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and other states where shale oil and gas production is soaring.

Garrison’s clients — among them the Stottsberrys — heard about the contamination incidents and expressed considerable resolve to prevent such damage on their land. The result is that her leases contain provisions for testing water before and after drilling occurs to make sure none of the chemicals used in the production process have contaminated drinking water. The leases also bar energy companies from drawing water for fracking from any water source on the leaseholders land. If there is a problem with the water, moreover, energy companies are required to address it immediately and provide a fresh water supply to the landowner.

These provisions go well beyond existing Ohio regulations.

“My job is to represent landowners,” Garrison told me. “The mineral lease is the law of the land. We try to help landowners get what they want in their leases. And they wanted to make sure their water was safe.”

Do you live in a shale energy-producing state? Send me an email at keith@circleofblue.org or post in the comments below.

–Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue senior editor

The charts below show the price of water in 2010, 2011, and 2012 for the 20 largest U.S. cities, plus 10 regionally representative cities, as well as the number of users in each city’s service area.

Graphic © Amanda Northrop / Circle of Blue

Water pricing for 30 major U.S. cities in 2010, 2011, 2012. Click each image above to see the larger version.

The survey does not measure an average bill, but, rather the cost of a constant volume of water across the nation’s major metropolitan areas — monthly water bills were calculated for a family of four at three daily consumption levels: low (190 liters or 50 gallons per person per day), medium (378 liters or 100 gallons), and high (568 liters or 150 gallons).

In other words, if a family of four were to move from city to city, but kept its consumption patterns the same, this is what that family would expect to pay for its water bill. The graphic below shows the rate changes in 30 major U.S. cities from 2010 to 2012.

Graphic © Amanda Northrop / Circle of Blue

Infographic of water prices in 30 major U.S. cities from 2010, 2011, and 2012. Click to see enlarged image.

Amanda Northrop is an undergraduate student at Grand Valley State University and a Traverse City-based design intern for Circle of Blue. This infographic was made to accompany an article written by Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton: The Price of Water 2012: 18 Percent Rise Since 2010, 7 Percent Over Last Year in 30 Major U.S. Cities. Reach Northrop at amanda@circleofblue.org.

How dirty are Canada’s oil sands? Reuters looks at Europe and Canada’s battle over how to classify crude from this unconventional source following the release of a new study that says emissions from oil-sand crude are only 12 percent higher than those from conventional crude.

The oil industry says it has put $US 71 billion into researching low-emission, renewable energy sources like biofuel, Bloomberg News reported.

Africa
Lead dust from a gold mining rush threatens tens of thousands of children in Nigeria and could contaminate water supplies, according to Médecins Sans Frontières, Bloomberg News reported.

Uganda’s government has threatened to expel Oxfam and the Uganda Land Alliance if the non-governmental organizations do not apologize for accusing the government of facilitating land grabs by international businesses, the Guardian reported. The government says the allegations have incited violence and tarnished the president’s name.

A South African mining company plans to develop a new 13-15 million tonne coal mine to supply the export market, but the timing of the project will depend on the availability of water and rail infrastructure, according to Reuters.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.