Proposed water treatment tax targets toothpaste, anti-depressants and pop
Posted on | July 18, 2009 | No Comments
YOU’VE got to love a politician who braves July heat in a suit in Washington DC to suggest that companies whose products either rely on clean water or contaminate it be tapped for a new tax to upgrade the country’s crumbling water treatment systems. On Wednesday, July 15, Representative Earl Blumenauer, (D-ORE) introduced the “Water Protection and Reinvestment Act,” H.R.3202, which would establish a $10 billion annual fund for repairing America’s corroded pipes and overburdened sewer systems.
Click here for more on the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act
Bundanoon bottle ban began down under
Posted on | July 18, 2009 | No Comments
THE TOWN of Bundanoon in New South Wales, Australia, became an accidental champion in the crusade against bottled water last week, suggested the New York Times on Thursday. As the Times has it, Bundanoon’s rejection of bottled water began with a bid by a bottling company to tap the local aquifer. From the story:
According to Huw Kingston, the owner of Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe and a leader of the ‘Bundy on Tap’ campaign, the ban did not begin as an environmental crusade. It started when a bottling company sought permission to extract millions of liters of water from the local aquifer.
At first, residents were upset at the prospect of tanker trucks rumbling through their quiet streets. But as opposition grew, Mr. Kingston said many residents began to question the idea of trucking water about 100 miles north to a bottling plant in Sydney, only to transport it somewhere else — possibly even back to Bundanoon — for sale.
“We became aware, as a community, of what the bottled-water industry was all about,” Mr. Kingston said. “So the idea was floated that if we don’t want an extraction plant in our town, maybe we shouldn’t be selling the end product at all.”
One wonders what a community coming together to reject a bottling plant is if it isn’t an “environmental crusade.” The implication that Bundanoonians are inadvertent campaigners looks like a straw man set up by the New York Times, and its coyness undermines new depth that the still very good story brings to the Bundanoon ban on the bottle. To read it, click on the sign on the tree.
This post has been updated. The headline has been changed.
Cadiz Inc woos Riverside utility for Mojave groundwater mining project
Posted on | July 17, 2009 | No Comments
WESTERN Municipal Water District in Riverside is among five Southern California suppliers that have expressed interest in a controversial proposal to store and draw water from ancient aquifers in the Mojave Desert, reports the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
The $200 million project in the Cadiz Valley, about 40 miles east of Twentynine Palms, would involve burying 44 miles of pipeline to move surplus Colorado River water to an underground basin the size of Rhode Island.
via Aquafornia
To read Chance of Rain on the legacy of political palm-greasing behind the Cadiz project, click on the dollar bill.
To read Chance of Rain about how palms are greased, click on the five dollar bill.
To read Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik, along with a long list of distinguished Los Angeles Times reporters on Cadiz, click on the masthead.
This post has been updated. The links have been increased.
Chance of rain in 2080
Posted on | July 17, 2009 | No Comments
From the multi agency White House Global Climate Change Impacts report Southwest chapter, a look at a future with less fresh water and more people. To read the report, click on the Lower Emissions Scenario.
Via the Great Basin Water Network and Dr. James Deacon, Distinguished Emeritus Professor, University of Nevada Las Vegas Departments of Environmental Studies and Biology.
Bankruptcy in the Mojave
Posted on | July 17, 2009 | No Comments
IMAGE OF THE DAY: an unfinished shopping mall in Summerlin, Howard Hughes’ “masterplanned” community in Greater Las Vegas. From Las Vegas Sun photographer Steve Marcus with story by Steve Green. To read it, click on the abandoned building site.
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