Superstorm Sandy Recovery
Some beaches in New Jersey lost an unprecedented amount of coastline during Superstorm Sandy. Now, The New York Times reported, some are questioning the wisdom of rebuilding already vulnerable beaches and coastal communities.

Fracking and Water Supplies
Oil and gas operations damaged at least 161 homes, farms, churches and businesses in Pennsylvania between 2008 and 2012. The Scranton Times-Tribune analyzed just under 1,000 letters sent by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection that responded to water-quality complaints by area residents.

In North Dakota, towns are fighting over rights to the multi-million dollar water-supply market that feeds the states multimillion-dollar hydraulic fracturing industry. Supplies are not immediately limited in the state, Reuters reported, but the potential for profit from water caused disputes among local interest groups.

The post The Stream, May 20: Drying Out the High Plains Aquifer appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Energy companies will be able to disclose the chemicals through FracFocus, an industry-sponsored website that a recent Harvard Law School study criticized for being too lax. Companies can wait until after a well has been fractured to report the chemicals. They can submit an affidavit claiming the chemical mix is a trade secret to avoid some reporting requirements, but the BLM does reserve the power to see the properties of any chemical proposed for exemption.

Construction standards for the cement well casings are altered slightly in the revised regulations.

As for wastewater, environmental groups wanted the BLM to require that it be stored in closed tanks but the agency will accept storage in lined pits. The BLM will continue to study the costs and benefits of a tanks-only rule.

Climate Change and Infrastructure
The Government Accountability Office, an internal watchdog, says that the federal government has important information for making infrastructure more resilient to climate change but that this information often does not reach local government officials, who generally decide what to build and where and when.

The GAO recommends that several federal agencies take steps to incorporate climate change planning into design standards and environmental reviews while improving the flow of information from the top down.

The GAO’s findings jibe with Circle of Blue’s reporting on how climate change is altering the calculus for water and sewer infrastructure.

Water Abroad
The U.S. Agency for International Development released its first strategy for water and human development. The strategy focuses on two areas: health and agriculture. Circle of Blue will have a more detailed report later this week.

Arctic Infrastructure
The Arctic is melting and the U.S. is not prepared for new maritime demands. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it will study the environmental effects of building a deep port on the Seward Peninsula in western Alaska. Such a port, along with supporting facilities, would be necessary to handle an increase in all sorts of maritime traffic.

A draft review will be published no earlier than December 2013. To comment on what should be included in the study, email michael.9.salyer@usace.army.mil, using the subject line: “NOI Comments; Environmental Impact Statement for Arctic Deep Draft Ports Navigation Improvements Feasibility Study.”

The polar region is a hot topic. A few days earlier the Obama administration released a national strategy for the Arctic. The 13-page document envisions a region “free of conflict…where economic and energy resources are developed in a sustainable manner that also respects the fragile environment and the interests and cultures of indigenous peoples.”

Great Lakes Water Quality
In the last 25 years, water quality has improved in some areas and seen significant changes in others, according to a biennial report from the commission that manages waters shared by Canada and the U.S.

The International Joint Commission looked at chemical, biological, and physical markers. Concentrations of chemicals have largely declined. Biologically, results are mixed. Dozens of non-native species have been introduced; trout populations are stable but below targets. Sturgeon, on the other hand, have started to bounce back. The two physical indicators – surface water temperature and ice cover – point to a warming trend and future management challenges.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
Two Department of Energy projects moved forward. The department confirmed that it will pay $US 167 million, half the total cost, for a facility to capture carbon from a commercial power plant southwest of Houston, Texas. The product will be used in nearby oil fields to get more carbon out of the ground.

The environmental review for a CCS project in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is available. With a proposed $US 261 million in federal assistance, the project would trap carbon emissions from a gasification plant and use them for oil production in Texas. Public comments are being accepted through June 25 and can be emailed to LeucadiaEIS@netl.doe.gov.

In other carbon news, the Energy Department gave the green light for Freeport LNG to export liquefied natural gas to countries without a U.S. free trade agreement. The company still needs approval from a different set of federal regulators to build the facility, to be located at an existing terminal in Texas.

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.

The post Federal Water Tap, May 20: Fracking Regulations, Arctic Strategy, Infrastructure appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

The Senate confirmed Ernest Moniz, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, as the next secretary of energy in a unanimous 97-0 vote Thursday.

Ernest Moniz, President Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Energy, testified in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee April 9 (Screen capture courtesy of www.energy.senate.gov. Click image to enlarge.

The vote was a rare moment of bipartisanship for an exceptionally divided Congress. Moniz, who will replace current Secretary Steven Chu, has appealed to both sides of the aisle since he passed through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a 21 to 1 vote in April.

Republicans and oil and gas industry representatives support Moniz’s more aggressive views toward naturalgas development on U.S. soil. He directed a widely cited MIT study in 2010 that emphasized natural gas’ critical role in the U.S. energy supply picture for the foreseeable future as a bridge to lower-carbon fuel sources.

“Secretary Moniz understands the energy revolution underway in the United States,” Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, wrote in a release.

Moniz also said that he believes in developing as many energy sources as possible, with a special focus on minimizing environmental harm related to fossil fuels, and cultivating renewables.

Whenever he was challenged on a politically divisive topic during his nomination process—in particular federal regulation of domestic hydraulic fracturing and international exports—Moniz deferred to Energy’s role as an innovation catalyst.

Despite its name, the department has relatively little regulatory authority over the United States’ energy landscape. It primarily funds and directs technology research and development.

Some environmental advocacy groups voiced concerns about Moniz’s financial ties to the hydraulic fracturing industry. He has long-standing financial ties with industry consulting and research groups, but said during his confirmation hearing that he will adhere to all federal ethics and disclosure policies.

Uphill Confirmation Battle for EPA Administrator Nominee
Also on Thursday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee confirmed Gina McCarthy, nominated by President Barack Obama to replace current Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.

McCarthy, EPA’s current assistant administrator for air and radiation, passed by a 10-8 vote along party lines after a contentious hearing. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), the committee chair, and ranking minority member Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) frequently cut each other off during the hearing, an obvious sign of the partisan divide that may eventually block McCarthy’s nomination completely.

Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s nominee for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, testified before the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee April 11 (Screen capture courtesy of www.epw.senate.gov). Click image to enlarge.

Many of President Obama’s climate change-related agenda items will move through EPA, so the stakes are high for selecting the administrator. The agency also plays a direct role in enforcing the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other resource management, conservation, and pollution-focused legislation.

Sen. Vitter and his colleagues mounted an aggressive campaign recently against what they say is a deep lack of transparency in EPA. The agency, Sen. Vitter has said and written, is hiding alliances with “far-left” environmental groups and woefully mismanaging information.

But McCarthy also championed a series of air-pollution regulations in her EPA tenure so far, The Washington Post reported, including soot and mercury-emissions limits for power plants.

Some Republicans are afraid she will impose more regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, natural gas related pollution, and other postponed pollution rules that they see as job and growth killing.

Sen. Vitter and his colleagues submitted over 1,000 questions to McCarthy during her nomination process. While Sen. Vitter said he saw enough progress in the answers to move forward with the committee vote, he still held out the threat of a filibuster on the Senate floor.

“I would just urge my colleagues, put aside the filibuster. If you don’t like the EPA — you obviously don’t … that’s your right to vote no. But please let’s treat her well,” Sen. Boxer said during the hearing.

Follow the Water Main for more as McCarthy’s nomination moves toward a full Senate vote.

Sources: The Boston Globe, The Washington Post

The post Washington Water Main, May 17: Moniz Confirmed as Next Energy Secretary, EPA Administrator Nominee Narrowly Passes Committee appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Affordable flood insurance will remain available to current homeowners in high flood-risk areas of the United Kingdom until the end of July, one month after a deal between the government and insurance companies expires, the Guardian reported. Beyond this deadline, coverage policies and rates could change dramatically in the absence of a new deal.

Water Supply
South Africa and Lesotho are in the process of approving the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, Business Day Live reported. The $US 1.3 billion project, to be paid for by South Africa, will increase water supply for South Africa and hydropower generation for Lesotho when it is completed in 2020.

International funding for humanitarian aid in Yemen is necessary for the country to stabilize and successfully recover from its revolution, according to a top United Nations official in the country, Reuters reported. One major problem Yemen faces is water scarcity—more than half of the population lacks access to safe drinking water, the report said.

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.

The post The Stream, May 17: The Cost of Natural Disasters appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Depleted Cities
More than half of all cities around the world with populations of 100,000 people or more sit in depleted water basins. A new study from The Nature Conservancy, The Atlantic Cities reported, says that urban-rural partnerships can decrease regional consumption and replenish supplies.

State Enforcement and Planning
California cannot employ enough state workers to manage its complex water-delivery system, costing taxpayers extra millions and affecting cities and farms across the state. The state Department of Water Resources, The Sacramento Bee reported, has become a training ground for private utilities and other government offices.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper ordered his state’s water conservation board to draft a management plan for the state as demand is set to balloon by 2050 with limited resources to draw upon. This is the next step in a process started two years ago, Denver Business Journal reported, to close demand-supply gaps with minimal regulatory interference.

The post The Stream, May 16: Life in 1.5 Billion-Year-Old Water appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Image courtesy of Aviva Imhof/International Rivers

The sun sets over the Xingu River where Brazil is building the world’s third largest dam by generating capacity. Deforestation in the Amazon may decrease the dam’s hydropower potential, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Click image to enlarge.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

A controversial dam under construction on an Amazon River tributary in Brazil may deliver less electricity than promised if trees in the wider rainforest continue to be cut down, according to a study published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 11,233-megawatt Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River will be the world’s third largest hydropower facility by generating capacity when it is completed in 2015.

Because plans for a large reservoir were scrapped to mollify indigenous and environmental groups, the facility’s power output will fluctuate with seasonal river flows. In an average year Belo Monte, now a “run of the river” dam with a smaller reservoir, will generate just 40 percent of its installed capacity.

But if Brazil does not rein in deforestation in the Amazon basin, Belo Monte’s power potential may fall well short of expectations, says Claudia Stickler, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute.

The study is one of the first to assess the effects of regional deforestation on hydropower potential.

Under a “business-as-usual” scenario of 40 percent loss of forest cover in the Amazon by 2050, Belo Monte would generate nearly 40 percent less electricity than its developer anticipates, the study claims. That is on top of the expected reductions in average annual generation due to the dam’s redesign. The Amazon has lost about 17 percent of its forest cover already, according to study co-author Michael Coe of the Woods Hole Research Center.

“We recommend that forest policy be considered in connection with energy policy,” Stickler told Circle of Blue. “There should be integrated thinking about land use and energy.”

The Water-Energy-Land Use Cycle

The study turns conventional thinking – that deforestation increases river flows, and thus increases hydropower potential – on its head.

The problem with the accepted wisdom, Stickler said, is that people are not thinking broadly enough.

Stickler and her colleagues assessed how different deforestation rates in both the Xingu basin and the Amazon basin as a whole affected two variables: evapotranspiration (ET) and rainfall. ET measures how much water is consumed by a plant. Together, these two variables influence river flows.

Forests are typically cleared to grow crops, which have a lower ET. Within an isolated basin, this vegetation change would increase river flows.

Rainfall, the authors found, plays a much bigger role than ET in determining how much water makes its way into the Xingu River. And rainfall can only be understood within a regional context, which is the conventional wisdom’s blind spot. The water vapor transpired by trees in the eastern basin and the energy they absorb from the sun help to create rain downwind to the west.

Thus, regional deforestation has a greater effect on rainfall within the Xingu basin than local deforestation itself. The study found no difference in local rainfall between a 20 percent and a 40 percent reduction in Xingu basin forest, so long as the Amazon forest remained intact.

“Once you’ve deforested much of the Amazon basin, [the loss of rainfall] far outweighs any bump you may see from decreased evapotranspiration,” Coe told Circle of Blue. Similar connections between regional forest cover and precipitation have been documented for Southeast Asia and Central Africa, both dam-building hot spots.

The study used current climate models and did not account for changes that might occur because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors then applied their new river discharge figures to the models used by Belo Monte engineers to calculate hydropower potential. Electricity generation at Belo Monte falls as deforestation in the Amazon increases.

Dominick Spracklen, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds, called the study “intriguing.” Last year Spracklen published one of the first papers to use observational data to show that tropical forests produce rain that falls hundreds of kilometers away.

“Most people only think about ET as a ‘waste’ of water rather than as a potential source of additional rain and discharge downwind,” Spracklen wrote in an email to Circle of Blue. “The paper demonstrates the need to rethink this and highlights the need to slow deforestation to maintain rainfall patterns, river discharge and ensure sustainable hydroelectric power generation into the future. Hopefully the work will encourage hydroelectric power companies to contribute to efforts to slow deforestation and restore tropical forests on degraded land.”

Hydropower accounted for 85 percent of Brazil’s electricity generation in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Brazil has ambitious development plans for its rivers as it seeks to meet self-imposed goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. South America’s largest economy wants to source half of new electricity supplies from hydropower, the country’s secretary of planning and development told The Economist. Of the 48 dams on the drawing board, 30 are located in the Amazon rainforest.

If hydropower becomes less reliable because of decreased precipitation, electricity rationing could occur, as Venezuela was forced to do in the winter and spring of 2010 when a drought dropped water levels behind its primary hydroelectric dam. Or, the country would need to invest in expensive back up capacity powered by fossil fuels.

Thanks to better enforcement by state and federal officials, deforestation rates in Brazil have decreased in the last few years, Coe said.

The study makes clear that in the Amazon the consequences of local land-use decisions can be felt hundreds of kilometers away.

“Even if we reforest the entire Xingu basin, it wouldn’t make much of a difference [for river flows] if we didn’t reforest the rest of the Amazon,” Stickler said.

The post Study: Fewer Trees in the Amazon, Less Hydropower from Dams appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Image courtesy of Konikow / U.S. Geological Survey

The United States has lost enough groundwater to fill Lake Erie twice. The biggest declines occurred in the Southern Great Plains, the Mississippi River Delta, and the Central Valley of California. Two aquifer systems in the Pacific Northwest show net increases since 1900, but those trends have reversed in the last few decades. Click image to enlarge.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

Groundwater is often compared to a bank account. By this analogy, the United States is making significantly more withdrawals than deposits, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s first national assessment of groundwater depletion.

Between 1900 and 2008, U.S. groundwater reserves dropped by nearly 1 trillion cubic meters (264 trillion gallons), or enough water to fill Lake Erie — twice.

And the problem is getting worse. The rate of depletion from 2000 to 2008 was nearly three times greater than the average rate of depletion for the entire study period.

Groundwater is a vital part of the country’s water supply system, accounting for one out of every five gallons withdrawn according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Falling groundwater tables have prompted Texas to sue New Mexico this year over the effect on flows in the Rio Grande. Wells are dropping in much of the High Plains, leading to higher energy costs for irrigation and new pumping restrictions. Groundwater depletion in the U.S. even affects global sea levels.

One Report, Dozens of Stories

The study looked at 40 major aquifer systems, so there are dozens of local stories held within this one report. The broader narrative, however, is clear, the report’s author told Circle of Blue: national groundwater use is on an unsustainable course.

“In many of these systems, we’re removing water faster than it is being replenished,” said Leonard Konikow, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist. “That is not sustainable in the long run.”

Two out of every three gallons of groundwater in the U.S. is used for irrigation, and the biggest depletions occurred in prime farming territory: the Mississippi River Delta, the Central Valley of California, and the Southern Great Plains, which draws from the renowned Ogallala Aquifer, the Fort Knox of the country’s subterranean water banks.

Because of recent drought, wells have dropped even lower in the last three years, according to state and local data — declines that did not factor into the USGS analysis. The Texas Water Development Board, for example, reported a median decline of 1.5 meters (4.8 feet) in 101 of its 110 monitoring wells in 2011. The remaining nine wells in its network saw an increase in water levels.

Some areas, particularly the state of Arizona, have taken steps to curb groundwater use. Arizona passed a groundwater management law in 1980. The conversion of thirsty farmland around Phoenix into suburban sprawl has helped, too, as has the delivery of Colorado River water, which is pumped underground to top off the aquifers. Deliveries to Phoenix, via the Central Arizona Project canal, began in 1985. Groundwater reserves in the state are now recovering, but reliance on a Colorado River that already promises more water than it can deliver — and whose flows could be cut as much as 9 percent by 2060 because of climate change — is a risky long-term proposition.

Other aquifers in the USGS study also benefited from canal systems that brought surface water from afar. Two aquifers in the Pacific Northwest actually saw net increases in groundwater storage over the entire study period. But those trends have reversed in the last few decades, and both the Columbia Plateau and the Snake River Plain aquifers have been running deficits since the 1970s, when farmers developed groundwater irrigation schemes.

Local Solutions, Local and Global Effects

Groundwater is typically controlled locally in the United States, resulting in a buffet of strategies to cope with the declines. Pumping restrictions are common, used in Texas and Kansas. Also in Kansas, Wichita is injecting flood waters underground, and farmers in northeast Oregon want to do the same with a small fraction of the Columbia River’s winter flows. Meanwhile, land-fallowing programs have sprouted in Colorado.

A number of effects follow extensive groundwater pumping. For one, it can siphon water away from rivers. In January, for instance, Texas filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that groundwater withdrawals in New Mexico were cutting into its share of the water from the Rio Grande.

Another problem is that if too much pumping happens, the land can drop along with the water table, a process called subsidence. Stretches of California’s Central Valley have dropped several meters in elevation since widespread pumping began there in the 1920s.

The least well known effect is on sea levels. According to Konikow’s calculations, roughly 1.3 percent of global sea level rise in the 20th century and 2.3 percent of the rise from 2000 to 2008, when pumping accelerated, can be attributed to groundwater depletion in the United States — and that is just the contribution from one country. Add the rest of the world, and groundwater withdrawals are responsible for 6 percent of the observed rise in the oceans, Konikow reckons. (Other estimates have put the figure several times higher, but Konikow told Circle of Blue that those studies overstate the effect.)

Konikow acknowledges that his estimates for U.S. groundwater depletion are not perfect. Scientists cannot measure the volume of an aquifer directly. Instead, they extrapolate from various measurements, based on well depths and the porosity of soils. Konikow told Circle of Blue that the margin of error for the study is approximately 20 percent above and below the 1-trillion-cubic-meter (264-trillion-gallon) estimate of depletion.

The post U.S. Groundwater Losses Between 1900-2008: Enough To Fill Lake Erie Twice appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

“The water shortage is spreading like a creeping paralysis,” claims a major national magazine, printing the words beneath before-and-after photographs of the reservoir behind Arizona’s Roosevelt Dam.

In the first photo, the reservoir is brimmed with water. Five dry years later, it is a dusty basin.

“We are using up our underground supply faster than nature can replenish it,” the article continues. “The Middle West and industrial East are feeling the pinch but in the semiarid Southwest the trouble is coming to a head.”

This is not a passage about last year’s historic drought in the Great Plains, nor is it gleaned from a recent special edition, such as National Geographic’s water issue published in 2010.

The author Lester Velie wrote these words for the May 15 edition of Collier’s – in 1948.

Velie argues that the U.S. water crisis – though he never uses that term – in the post-war era is not a matter of insufficient rainfall. It is due to demand, he says:

“But drought, even as war and pestilence, must pass. The kind of water shortage many communities face has nothing to do with drought. Far from passing, the shortage is, as one alarmed geologist described it, ‘spreading like a creeping paralysis.’ We are using up our underground water faster than nature can replenish it. Stored by years of rainfall it has become in some areas an exhausted resource. Chalk it up to overpumping. We are also running out of surface water – our river and lakes. Blame overpopulation.”

I found the article while doing research for my story on agricultural and economic transitions in the Texas high plains. As far as I can tell, the Collier’s piece is the first story in the American popular press to argue that water shortages are a national problem and not just a regional phenomenon. (You can read the first few paragraphs of Velie’s article here. After the jump, it continues on page 11 here.)

Reading Velie’s reporting is a mind trip (a trip I do recommend you take). The stuff could have been printed yesterday. In some ways it probably was because the language is the same. Water wars, water as lifeblood, the increased cost of pumping from shrinking wells, a Colorado River with more claims to water than actual supply – Velie writes about all of these.

Even the concept of water footprinting, years before the term was created, comes up when Velie mentions that 246,000 liters (65,000 gallons) of water are needed to produce one ton of steel and 57 liters (15 gallons) of water to make a gallon of beer.

The remedies too are familiar. Velie hears people talking about cloud seeding and desalination, and he finds vigilantes checking water meters to guard against wasteful scofflaws in a Southern California coastal town that earned the temporary appellation “Sahara Barbara”.

Velie’s ultimate prescription is another old song: conservation.

“One hundred and forty-five million of us can’t live on this continent of ours without drawing on its water,” he writes in his concluding paragraph. “We found we could use wood and still conserve trees. We can do the same with water. It looks as if we’ll have to stop letting our most basic resource flow down the drain.”

At that point, only eight states had laws governing the use of groundwater. As I have written for Circle of Blue, new restrictions on groundwater withdrawals – some voluntary, some mandatory – are cropping up in states across the U.S. West now.

A catastrophic water crisis has not occurred in the U.S. because water managers policymakers have responded. Utilities tightened valves to keep more of their product in the pipe. Toilets, showers and washing machines use less water thanks to new standards. Industries and cities have embraced water recycling and are trimming away additional waste. Farmers have accepted restrictions, bought efficient sprinklers, or sold water to urban areas where it creates more wealth per unit.

The question now is whether the present state of affairs is different from past claims of crisis. Water shortages have certainly altered some regions. Irrigated acreage in the Texas high plains is down a quarter since its peak in the 1970s. Aquifer depletion, according to a study released last week from the U.S. Geological Survey, has increased nationally since 2000.

However, the direst pronouncement in the Collier’s article, that growth in the U.S. Southwest could shut down in two decades because of no water, has not come to pass. Improvements in water efficiency have averted calamity.

The story for this century is how to continue those gains as the population increases and the water cycle and water supply wobble in new patterns.

Know of any earlier stories from the national press of a U.S. water quantity crisis? Email them to me at brett@circleofblue.org

The post U.S. Marks At Least 65 Years of National Water Crisis appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Photo courtesy of EPWChairBoxer via Flickr

From left to right: Senators David Vitter (R-Louisiana), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Tom Carper (D-Delaware), and Barbara Boxer (D-California), members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

On Wednesday, for the first time since 2007, the Senate voted 83-14 in favor of a renewed Water Resources Development Act (WRDA).

The bill authorizes major national water-infrastructure projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in coastal storm and flood protection, waterway navigation access, ecosystem restoration. Without specifically mentioning climate change — in an effort to avoid Republican obstruction in Congress — WRDA still authorizes scientific studies and extreme-weather mitigation projects, anticipating more severe storms in the future.

“The bill approved by the Senate today is a step forward in adopting a more rational, cost-effective, watershed-based approach to water resource management,” Bob Bendick, The Nature Conservancy’s director of U.S. government relations, said in a statement.

Bipartisan support ushered WRDA along since it was unanimously approved by the Senate Environment and Natural Resources committee in March. Co-authors Barbara Boxer ( D-California), the environment committee chair, and David Vitter (R-Louisiana), the committee’s ranking member, often focused on WRDA’s job-creating potential: they estimate up to 500,000 new positions.

However, both sides still voiced concerns about the bill.

A coalition of conservation groups argued that WRDA’s Project Acceleration section made it too easy to avoid necessary regulatory environmental reviews for the Army Corps’ work.

In response, Boxer and Vitter agreed to ‘sunset’ that provision, or discontinue it in 10 years pending a formal renewal.

The Nature Conservancy said in a news release that, despite their ongoing objections to several provisions, they were pleased about the “substantial net environmental benefits” promised by the legislation.

WRDA’s price tag will likely be the bigger hurdle to its potential final passage. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate places the overall cost at $US 12.5 billion over 10 years.

The Obama administration said last week that WRDA effectively triples federal spending on harbor maintenance with no promised national-scale return on investment.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives, The Hill reported, have also voiced concerns that the Obama administration could pick which water facilities are funded.

Follow the Water Main to track WRDA’s progress toward a House vote.

The post Washington Water Main, May 15: Senate Passes Major Water Infrastructure Bill appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.

Evacuations
Bangladesh is trying to evacuate 1 million people from coastal areas ahead of Cyclone Mahasen, which is expected to bring heavy rains and flooding when it hits early Thursday, Xinhua reported. The storm has already left seven people dead in Sri Lanka.

The community of Newtok, Alaska is facing a slow evacuation as sea level rise and erosion eat away at the town and threaten to make its residents America’s “first climate refugees”, the Guardian reported. The highest point in the town could be below water by 2017, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study.

Hydropower
China’s tallest hydropower dam is one step closer to being built after receiving approval from the country’s environment ministry, despite acknowledgements that it could have a negative effect on rare fish and plants, according to AlertNet. The dam is planned for the Dadu River in Sichuan Province.

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.

The post The Stream, May 15: Chickens and Water Quality appeared first on Circle of Blue WaterNews.