The week that was, March 6-12, 2016
Posted on | March 13, 2016 | No Comments
Almonds in drought on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Photo: Emily Green
“We’re not collecting any more money from the ratepayers. All we’re doing is, we’re taking money and saying we are reclassifying it from an account payable to income.” — Westlands Water District general manager Tom Birmingham to his board, California water district fined by SEC over “Enron” accounting, New York Times, 3/11/16
Westlands Water District is broker than it looks from the outside. Without “Enron accounting,” they can barely afford their debt service. — Instead of ‘Supermarket to the World,’ On the Public Record, 3/9/16
“There were six Goliaths in there and all I had was just a little pea stone.” — Nolen Scott Ely, Dimock, PA resident whose well was 
poisoned by fracking by Cabot Oil and Gas Corp, Jury awards families $4.24 million in contaminated water case, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3/11/2016
Dimock, which was featured in the 2010 fracking documentary “Gasland,” has been called “ground zero” in the fight over fracking. — Family wins case against fracking company after 7 years of polluted drinking water, Think Progress, 3/10/16
Prehistoric shark monster movie ‘Meg’ is in choppy waters, with the film-maker Eli Roth swimming away from the … story of a deep sea diver who unwittingly unleashes a 70-foot, 40-ton Carcharodon Megalodon, the ancestor of the great white shark. — Shark flick in choppy waters, The Independent, 3/12/16
On WYPR’s “A Blue View,” the National Aquarium’s John Racanelli profiles an undersea animal “so adorable” that it was named after Disney’s “shy little flying elephant.” Click on the image to learn more about the Dumbo octopus. Photo: Aquarium of the Pacific.
“Sure, it is like the vegan butcher, but it’s bigger,” Adelheid Koski, the president of the Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association, The world’s first full-fledged ‘water bar’ is about to open in Minneapolis, MinnPost.com, 3/7/16
The USGS has been tracking the advance of various species of “Asian” carp, including Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, or “silver carp,” thourgh the Mississippi and its tributaries north into the Great Lakes. Click on the image from an information sheet about the carp, its introduction, explosive spread and to appreciate why researchers are fighting to constrain it. Source: US Geological Survey
“The only solution is prevention,” — University of Minnesota researcher Jessica Eichmiller, Plan would bombard [carp] with water pressure, noise and underwater lights. Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/8/16
“We’ve learned the hard way that nature, especially the Bay’s oysters, are not inexhaustible.” — fisheries scientist William Goldsborough, Proposed oyster study draws watermen’s ire, Chesapeake Bay Journal, 3/10/16
The phone’s touch screen didn’t work under water. — Samsung’s latest Galaxy is far, far more resistant to water and criticism, Washington Post, 3/12/16
… although committing a crime in Venice might be just as easy as committing one in London or Paris, getting away from the scene of the crime could be much trickier. — ‘The Waters of Eternal Youth’ allows Guido Brunetti to shine once more, The Christian Science Monitor, 3/10/16
Here she stands today – minus her shield, part of her arms and a portion of her nose missing, but nevertheless still, I feel, so beautiful. — Sylvia Kent on Naiad – or water nymph, A lovely carved lady was lost for 100 years, Essex Chronicle, 3/10/16
Miguel Del Toral, a water expert for Region 5 of the EPA, wrote an internal memo raising the very real possibility that there was widespread lead contamination in Flint and that the city and state were conducting tests in a way guaranteed to minimize the amount of lead being found. — Cynthia Barnett interviews Curt Guyette, ACLU reporter who broke the Flint contamination story, In Flint crisis, a new model, Yale Environment 360, 3/10/16
“I understand in the Flint environment that any sign of elevation is going to make everyone go haywire, but here, the water system in Newark is still safe, it’s still drinkable,” — Newark mayor Ras J. Baraka, Elevated Lead Discovered in Newark Schools’ Water, New York Times, 3/10/16
National Weather Service rain gauges 3/13/16. Magenta and red identify major and moderate flooding.
The storm boss told Batman that he had inflated one of the seven rubber dams along the lower San Gabriel River. — L.A. County water catchers try to keep as much rain as possible from racing down rivers and into the ocean,
Los Angeles Times, 3/11/16
“We have seen flood events in this state but never from one tip of the state to the next,” Louisiana Lt Gov Billy Nungesser — Flooding across Louisiana, Mississippi, ABC News, 3/12/16
The water bill delays Lake Okeechobee clean up by eliminating a January 2015 deadline -which the state didn’t meet – for compliance with nutrient levels without creating a new deadline. More than 400 tons of phosphorus enter the lake each year and the state was supposed to reduce it to 105 tons. — Why the 2016 Water Bill represents an historic low tide for Florida voters, Eye on Miami, 3/13/16
Click on the image by legendary Florida landscape artist Curtis Arnett to learn about the original Highwayman’s appearance at two events benefiting the Everglades Grassy Waters Conservancy.
A new study investigates … enlarging Antarctica’s continental glacier via pumping ocean water onto the ice surface. — Can we slow sea level rise by pumping water onto Antarctica?, Christian Science Monitor, 3/10/16
Representing himself in the High Court, Mr Murphy claims that his constitutional right to bodily integrity had been infringed by Irish Water when it installed plastic covers that were “not fit for purpose.” — Protester dug up meter and posted it to Irish Water, court hears, Irish Times, 3/10/16
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