# Water Shortages in Our Cities



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Turkish cities grapple with water shortages; authorities consider delaying school for a month * 
2 August 2007

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's two major cities are grappling with water shortages after record-low snow and rain falls in the winter and searing summer temperatures, officials said Thursday. 

Reservoirs are less than 5 percent full in the capital, Ankara, which has a 4 million population, according to the country's water authority, and the municipality on Wednesday began imposing two-days on, two-days off of water cuts at homes. 

A project to divert water from a nearby river was launched in March, but the water was not expected to reach the city until November. 

Authorities were considering delaying the start of the school year by a month -- to mid-October -- to avert possible spread of diseases at schools, Mayor Melih Gokcek said. Hospitals were being supplied with groundwater carried by tankers. 

Water cuts could be increased to four days, Ankara water department director Ihsan Fincan said Thursday. The municipality was planning to send 16,000 of its employees on summer vacation to save on water in the city, he said. 

The reservoirs of Istanbul, a metropolis of more than 10 million, have sufficient water to last another three to four months, according to water authority estimates. 

Istanbul has no plans to impose similar water cuts, Mayor Kadir Topbas said. The city was also working against time to divert water from nearby rivers. 

Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti or chief cleric of Istanbul, told private news channel NTV on Thursday that special prayers were being said across the city for rain. 

"In times of trouble, it is natural for people to seek Allah's help for problems that they cannot solve," he said. 

Sales of large, plastic water containers have surged in Ankara and elsewhere, with residents stockpiling on water, Posta newspaper reported. Sales of bottled drinking water were also up. 

In Ankara, the containers, which sold for about $4.50 before the water cuts, were now selling for $13. 

Bans on watering lawns and washing cars with hoses have been in place for months and there have been television ads and Friday sermons at mosques to encourage people to save on water. 

The drought has affected agriculture in parts of the country, preventing irrigation and drying up crops.


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

Yeah I heard about the "water-less" days in the radio... wtf - if that happened here I would go crazy - I mean how can you deny your people the single most basic thing to survive? hno:


No risk of running out here in Denmark though.. our underground is packed with crystal clear water :happy:


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

Wow, that's really bad, the Mediterranean has really been suffering from a brutally hot summer. 
Related to that here in Britain it's been an exceedingly wet summer (goddamn lazy Azores high), but drought has been an ever increasing problem over the past few years here too. Obviously it's not nearly so bad, and Turkey is more suited to such heat, but droughts really are the worst things. I guess it's reasonable to shut off main supplies when the reservoirs are so low, but there should be adequate relief. - Say communal taps for streets which give people drinking water (so they don't need to buy bottles on the effected days) but do not allow for more wasteful usage. I wasn't around in the 1975/76 drought in England, but I've heard stories of that nature.


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## steric (Aug 3, 2007)

As scary as it sounds, this will force people to think entirely differently about conserving water there. If Turkish are anything like Americans, it takes a disaster to make anything happen and sometimes not even then.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Zimbabwe city warns of health risk as it cuts water *

HARARE, July 18 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo, warned residents on Wednesday to guard against outbreaks of disease as it was forced to cut their water supply. Authorities said they had decommissioned one of Bulawayo's three remaining dams because water levels were too low, leaving in operation only two of the five dams that supply the southern city of about one million people. 

Bulawayo has faced water problems before but this is the first time it has had to issue a health warning and officials said the water shortage was likely to get worse. 

"The city council is aware that water cuts may result in the outbreak of diseases and we wish to advise members of the public to take preventive measures," Bulawayo spokesman Pathisa Nyathi was quoted by the state-owned Chronicle newspaper as saying. 

"Water will be available for seven hours in every two days and during that time people are advised to fill their containers and cover them up," Nyathi said. 

Last month more than 20 children died from a diarrhoea outbreak in a Zimbabwe mining town over a two-week period after drinking suspected contaminated water, official media reported. 

Urban areas in Zimbabwe are struggling to provide services due to ageing infrastructure, including burst sewer pipes, and because foreign currency shortages have hampered imports of raw materials such as water treatment chemicals. 

Earlier this year several people contracted cholera in two Harare townships after drinking contaminated water from shallow wells due to a breakdown in municipal services. 

Inflation in Zimbabwe has risen above 4,500 percent, the highest in the world, while an eight-year economic recession has hit urban workers and resulted in shortages of fuel and food.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Ankara mayor under fire in water crisis *

ANKARA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - The mayor of Turkey's capital Ankara is facing growing calls for his resignation and for government intervention after a fourth day without water in the city of four million people. 

Ankara began water rationing nine days ago after levels in reservoirs feeding the city fell to just 4 percent of capacity. This means there is only water for two more months. 

The municipality then had to turn off the taps completely after a major pipe burst earlier this week. It now says water will be flowing again to the whole city by Friday. 

"In a normal country, a mayor who lacks so much foresight even though he has been in power for 13 years apologises to the people and resigns immediately," said Meral Tamer, a columnist in liberal Milliyet newspaper. 

Newspapers asked Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who was a popular mayor of Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, in the 1990s, to intervene in the crisis. Mayor Melih Gokcek belongs to Erdogan's centre-right, Islamist-rooted AK Party. 

Gokcek has blamed the water shortage on global warming, but his critics say he failed to invest in new dams over the years despite repeated warnings from experts. 

They say Gokcek preferred image-boosting investments such as expensive highways to spending on vital infrastructure and that this has left the city more vulnerable to climate shocks. 

Gokcek has rejected the charges of negligence and has promised to bring water from a nearby river to Ankara by the end of this year. 

Much of Turkey is suffering one of its driest years on record, but the capital, located in the sunbaked, dry interior, has been especially hard hit. 

The future regime of water supply cuts has yet to be determined. 

Gokcek made headlines last week when he asked residents to take longer vacations and suggested schools reopen late to help curb water consumption. 

Some Ankara residents support Gokcek's suggestion. 

"I am going to my mother's place for the weekend. You should also leave Ankara immediately," the head of Turkey's agricultural chambers, Semsi Bayraktar, told reporters.


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## sk (Dec 6, 2005)

we have the same problem in cyprus ,we will introduce though mobile desalination plants.
of course in the case of turkey this must be done in a huge scale,but its a good temporary solution until it snows.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Mobile desalination plants? What does that look like? Would they have vans going around with pumps and pipes to filter the water?


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## sk (Dec 6, 2005)

i havent seen one myself
the first mobile desalination plant in cyprus will function in may 2008.
we already have two proper desalination plants functioning and one under construction
here are pics of mobile desalination plants found in the internet


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## invincible (Sep 13, 2002)

Most Australian cities (except for those in the tropics) are in water restrictions.

Melbourne has been on restrictions for years now, and we are currently in Stage 3a restrictions with storages at 36.9%. Thanks to some decent rain during winter, we will most likely be spared from Stage 4 restrictions in summer.

Gardens can only be watered on two designated days per week (depends on your house number), between 6am and 8am if you're using a manual system (eg. hose, watering can) or 12am and 2am for automatic sprinkler systems.

The only parts of cars which can be washed using tap water are the mirrors, windows and lights and only one in four sports grounds can be watered.

It means that many households now collect their own water for watering gardens, commercial car washes are doing very well and some sports grounds/golf courses are trucking water in.









You can see that 2006 was a very bad year - there is typically a rise during the winter and spring months but last year it just went straight down.

Many people support permanent Stage 1 restrictions, which cover common sense stuff like not watering gardens in the middle of the day or sweeping rather than hosing down concrete surfaces.


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## Istanbullu (May 20, 2004)

Mayor of Ankara is a bloody moron!


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## gladisimo (Dec 11, 2006)

How do they enforce the water restriction?

Particularly the car thing, they're only allowed to wash the mirrors and windows...


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

gladisimo said:


> How do they enforce the water restriction?
> 
> Particularly the car thing, they're only allowed to wash the mirrors and windows...


Satellite surveillance and water sampling conducted by a team of men in black vans 


( I'm, guessing they rely on people calling the athorities if seeing others waste water - or maybe look at the gages to certain areas and compare with normal figues... :dunno: )


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## Xelebes (Apr 1, 2007)

Edmonton is apparently running out of an additive in our drinking water.

=============================================



Edmonton water supply short on fluoride

Bill Mah, edmontonjournal.com
Published: August 10, 2007 4:34 pm

Look ma, no fluoride!

The chemical that many municipalities add to water to prevent tooth decay is in such short supply that Edmonton could run out this fall if an expected shipment falls through.

"At this time we have sufficient fluoride to meet Edmonton's needs until the fall," said Mike Gibbs, spokesman for Epcor, which supplies water to the Edmonton region.

"But it is a situation that we're closely monitoring and actually what's happening is there's a shortage in North America of fluoride."

The company has its regular two-month supply in stock, enough to last to the end of September. It has ordered another shipment to last until December. But a reliable supply of fluoride is no longer a sure thing.

Municipalities in the U.S. and Canada are scrambling for fluoride, a byproduct of phosphate mining, which has soared in price and dwindled in availability in recent months.

In the United States, the shortage has been attributed to Hurricane Katrina damaging Gulf Coast manufacturing facilities two years ago, and to a downturn in the phosphate mining industry and the shutdowns of some American suppliers.

"We are monitoring it. We have enough for now but if we do run into a situation where we're not able to add fluoride to drinking water because of the shortage, we'll notify the public," Gibbs said.

"We'll have a better idea in the next month or two, whether we'll be in a situation."

U.S. cities as diverse as New Orleans, Portland, Maine and Greensboro, N.C. have reported shortages or temporarily suspended adding the compound to their water supplies.

Ottawa has also run short of fluoride for short periods this year and has seen prices for fluoride double to $566 per metric tonne this year from $285 per metric tonne in 2006.

Closer to home, Red Deer city officials told the Red Deer Advocate newspaper that the city's water went without fluoride for a period two weeks ago. The city is anticipating an extended shortage because of spotty deliveries.

In Edmonton, Epcor adds 0.8 parts of fluoride per one million parts of water. The city has treated its water with fluoride since 1967, after Edmontonians voted to do so in a plebiscite a year earlier.

Gibbs said the utility is protected from price spikes because it signed long-term contracts.

One option in case of a long-term local fluoride shortage may be to slightly reduce the level put in water until supplies recover, Gibbs said.

Fluorides protect tooth enamel against acids that cause cavities. According to Health Canada, many studies show fluoridated water greatly reduces the number of cavities in children's teeth. About 40 per cent of Canadians receive fluoridated water.

Kimberly Carriere, spokeswoman for the Alberta Dental Association, said going without fluoridated water for short periods isn't likely to harm dental health.

"For long periods, you'd certainly see an increase in dental caries but you do have fluoride in your toothpaste so the impact wouldn't be that large in the short term," Carriere said.

Capital Health has been watching for a fluoride shortage since it received an alert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month.

The health region also downplays the health impact of a temporary fluoride interruption.

"Since we have been using fluoride in the water for a long period of time, a temporary shortage - even for weeks - would not affect things too much," said Nelson Fok, associate director of environmental public health.

"If (a shortage) does happen, we would work with the dental association and so on and ask the public, especially children, to make sure they brush their teeth with fluoridated toothpaste and floss their teeth. All those things will help."


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*World Water Week to focus on climate change, biofuels *

STOCKHOLM, Aug 11, 2007 (AFP) - Climate change and a potential water shortage in some regions, also due to the diversion of water to crops for biofuels, will be at the centre of the 2007 World Water Week which opens here Monday, with 2,500 international experts expected to attend. 

The theme of the annual event's 17th edition will be "Progress and Prospects on Water: Striving for Sustainability in a Changing World." 

Organiser Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) noted that water was playing a key role in global warming. 

"It is through water people are impacted the most by climate change," SIWI spokesman David Trouba told AFP. 

World Water Week will also discuss biofuels, destined to partially offset a coming oil shortage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but which also need huge amounts of water. 

"Where will the water to grow the food needed to feed a growing population come from if more and more water is diverted to crops for biofuels production?" asked Trouba. 

The European Union wants biofuels to account for 10 percent of the total of motor fuels in 2020, against an estimated 1.6 percent last year. 

There are two main kinds of biofuels: ethanols, sometimes called "biopetrol" and which are reserved for petrol-fueled engines; and biodiesels, used in diesel motors. 

At the moment biodiesel is much more widely used than ethanol in Europe, in a proportion of 80 percent to 20 percent. 

Ethanol is made from sugar beet, wheat, corn and sugar cane. 

Biodiesels, known also by the scientific name EMHV (methylic ester of vegetable oil), or diester, are extracted from colza, sunflower, soya and palm oils, and mixed with diesel fuel. 

Medical aspects of polluted water will also be tackled during World Water Week and widely lacking sanitary facilities in developing countries have prompted organisers to state, "Hurry up! 2.6 billion are queuing to use the toilet." 

"The results are devastating: diarrhea resulting from poor sanitation and hygiene is responsible for the death of more than two million impoverished children each year," said SIWI. 

And Trouba warned that "50 to 70 percent of the world's hospitals are full of people sick with easily preventable water-related diseases." 

Bank and company investments in the water sector and water management between neighbouring states will also be broached during World Water Week. 

The event will be opened by Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and close on August 18.


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## Grotlaufen (Mar 2, 2007)

More cities should be located in the mountains or near them. Then it´ll be easy to obtain fresh, crystal clear refreshing water. More cities should be situated like Vienna and Teheran!


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## beanhead4529 (Aug 11, 2007)

when i was in the philippines for about a month, there were severe water shortages in metro manila due to a lack of rain


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## tiger (Aug 21, 2004)

Grotlaufen said:


> More cities should be located in the mountains or near them. Then it´ll be easy to obtain fresh, crystal clear refreshing water. More cities should be situated like Vienna and Teheran!


Chongqing is like this,but we were flooded recently.This is the first time I see the flood since I was born.I think the weather is changing.


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## invincible (Sep 13, 2002)

gladisimo said:


> How do they enforce the water restriction?
> 
> Particularly the car thing, they're only allowed to wash the mirrors and windows...


Most of it relies on trusting people to understand the lack of water (which isn't even that bad compared to other cities worldwide and domestically) and conserve, but there are extremely occasional patrols by employees of the water companies.

Most enforcement relies on neighbours and so on. There was a time when there was a stigma associated with having green grass when everyone else's was brown, but it's not as bad now that it actually rains and many people collect their own water.

People who disobey restrictions can have their water supply reduced to a trickle, so that there's just enough to cook with.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

These types of water bans are more symbolic and rely on self-control. The objective is to get the message across. It's very easy to ignore it and continue with the daily routines, but hopefully blasting a water ban all over the media will make them think twice before they consider violating such a ban.


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## Macca-GC (May 20, 2004)

South East Queensland is now on Level 5 water restrictions which include:

Residents are being asked to make significant indoor water use savings - such as 4 minute showers. Specific restrictions include: 

Gardens - only water existing gardens with buckets or watering cans on allocated days between 4pm–7pm. You can use tank or grey water at anytime.
Vehicles - only use a bucket to spot clean mirrors, lights, glass and number plates 
Pools - From 1 July, only top up existing swimming pools from town water as a last resort and only where a rainwater tank or downpipe rainwater diverter is fitted and the premises complies with three of the following - a swimming pool cover, water efficient taps and showerheads, water efficient toilets, water efficient washing machine
New or renovated pools - may only be filled with water sourced from areas not under Level 5 restrictions (ie brought in by truck)
High water users – must submit a water use assessment form to audit their water use and identify saving opportunities. 

Residents are being asked to use less than 140L per person, per day, and households less than 800L per day.

Businesses have been required to submit water conservation plans

Brisbane's dams are down to 16.79% and falling at about 1% per month.

The Gold Coast was using approximately 280 Million Litres per day in 2001. We're now down to using between 130 and 140 Million litres per day, despite our population having grown by about 70,000 people over that period.


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## PedroGabriel (Feb 5, 2007)

PresidentBjork said:


> Wow, that's really bad, the Mediterranean has really been suffering from a brutally hot summer.
> Related to that here in Britain it's been an exceedingly wet summer (goddamn lazy Azores high), but drought has been an ever increasing problem over the past few years here too.


thanks to that, we had the wettest summer ever. lol. Although it can't be compared with Britain obviously. And no single heat wave, this morning even rained a bit (remember it is August it is not suppose to rain at all), although now it is very sunny and really hot. 

We had severe water shortage in the drought years, people should not forget it, despite the mild and wet 2007. So they should be happy and fill some reservoirs with water, cause this is just an abnormal year, and spring was hot! Some mainland hotels in the Algarve started using water from the ocean, using a machine, for gardening. This is important cause gardens were very hardly affected during the drought, and if in drought that water can be used to human consumption. Until now, in Portugal, those machines were only available in the Island of Porto Santo, a arid small dune island near Madeira. The new dam in Alentejo is also important for that area (the hottest and driest of Portugal), that is suffering desertification, they plan to cultivate sugar cane and soy beans for biodeasel and some resorts will make it greener in the near future.


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## RafflesCity (Sep 11, 2002)

Singapore teams up with WHO to improve water management


16 Aug 07










MORE than 1.1 billion people worldwide who lack access to safe water could benefit from Singapore's expertise, with the signing of an agreement yesterday between the Singapore government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to jointly promote safe management of drinking water. 


The agreement was signed in Stockholm at the annual World Water Week conference, where PUB Singapore was awarded the Stockholm Industry Water Award for its exemplary model of water management. 

The agreement runs till 2015 and will see the WHO work with Singapore to improve procedures in several areas. These include the safe use of wastewater for direct and indirect drinking, intra-urban water catchment management, desalination and advanced chemical treatment of waste or sea-water, and the ability of a country's drinking water infrastructure to withstand disruptions or restrictions in supply.

The WHO and Singapore will collaborate on research and organise workshops for capacity building in Asia. Singapore will also second its experts and government officers to the WHO, host conferences, and support the WHO's response to regional chemical contamination of water resources.

Worldwide, more than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water. 

Over 1.6 million people lose their lives each year because they lack access to safe water and sanitation, with 90 per cent of the deaths occurring among children under five in developing countries, a government release said.

Separately, PUB said it has received over $3 million in sponsorship money towards the Singapore International Water Week, which will be held for the first time in June next year.

Players like Black and Veatch, Dayen, Hyflux, Keppel Corp, Salcon, Semb-Corp Industries, United Engineers and Veolia Water have been the first to come on board as founding sponsors, while the Singapore Millennium Foundation has pledged $1.5 million over five years for the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, said PUB chief executive Khoo Teng Chye. 

By MATTHEW PHAN


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Converting waste water into drinkable water is a very controversial scheme despite the existence of technology to do so. It's a huge public relations nightmare.

They key to reducing the impact of water shortages is to conserve. Having an alternate source of water will only do so much when people continue to waste.


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## ignoramus (Jun 16, 2004)

RafflesCity said:


> Singapore teams up with WHO to improve water management
> 
> 
> 16 Aug 07
> ...


Its amazing why other countries are not yet adopting this technology which has literally been perfected. Because of some stigma (which for me disappears when they mix recycled water with rain water in a reservoir), they rather deprive themselves of a critical water resource and continue to pray for rain and pray for people to save water. That's just wishful thinking. In a perfect society, we won't need new water resources, our current supplies are already enough.

The issue of water woes will only be solved if people both save water and invest in new water technologies altogether. Depending on a single one alone (as in the case of most countries) is useless. Maximise gain minimise loss. Unfortunately some countries don't even adopt any of the two practices above.

Since we can't ensure every drop of water is not wasted, we can ensure every single drop of water wasted is recycled. Even if water is wasted, at least we know "honestly" its being recycled, instead of being not wasted. Wasting a bit of water is worse than Wasting more water and recycling the wasted water.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

ignoramus said:


> Its amazing why other countries are not yet adopting this technology which has literally been perfected. Because of some stigma (which for me disappears when they mix recycled water with rain water in a reservoir), they rather deprive themselves of a critical water resource and continue to pray for rain and pray for people to save water. That's just wishful thinking. In a perfect society, we won't need new water resources, our current supplies are already enough.
> 
> The issue of water woes will only be solved if people both save water and invest in new water technologies altogether. Depending on a single one alone (as in the case of most countries) is useless. Maximise gain minimise loss. Unfortunately some countries don't even adopt any of the two practices above.
> 
> Since we can't ensure every drop of water is not wasted, we can ensure every single drop of water wasted is recycled. Even if water is wasted, at least we know "honestly" its being recycled, instead of being not wasted. Wasting a bit of water is worse than Wasting more water and recycling the wasted water.


Re-using wastewater will not solve water shortages due to drought. It is not a long-term solution since efficiency is not perfect when wastewater is pushed through the process. If a region sees a prolonged drought, then they ought to adopt a more conservative approach to usage since maintaining existing consumption levels with decreasing returns from recycling will still cause a usage problem.

The next issue comes with industrial use. How easy is it to convert the chemicals-laden wastewater into something drinkable? Is the cost worth it? Regular household wastewater wouldn't be hard to filter through, but for a large city, the industrial component would make up a sizeable portion of wastewater.

The problem with water shortages these days is typically due to cyclical changes to weather patterns. It might be dry this year but it could flood next year. The variability of weather patterns these days makes such an expensive investment in renewable water technologies *unsustainable*. Singapore launched the water recycling scheme because Malaysia threatened to stop exporting water, not because of a hedging strategy for drought or weather-related disasters.

The key to solving our water woes is education, conservation, and exploration of new technologies. The first two are easy to do. The third one won't be useful unless it is quite certain the existing sources have been exhausted, which is unconvincing without a few decades of empirical data.

Paying the money to build something that won't solve the problem is indeed wishful thinking.


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

Enough water here.


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## RafflesCity (Sep 11, 2002)

ignoramus said:


> Its amazing why other countries are not yet adopting this technology which has literally been perfected. Because of some stigma (which for me disappears when they mix recycled water with rain water in a reservoir), they rather deprive themselves of a critical water resource and continue to pray for rain and pray for people to save water. That's just wishful thinking. In a perfect society, we won't need new water resources, our current supplies are already enough.
> 
> The issue of water woes will only be solved if people both save water and invest in new water technologies altogether. Depending on a single one alone (as in the case of most countries) is useless. Maximise gain minimise loss. Unfortunately some countries don't even adopt any of the two practices above.
> 
> Since we can't ensure every drop of water is not wasted, we can ensure every single drop of water wasted is recycled. Even if water is wasted, at least we know "honestly" its being recycled, instead of being not wasted. Wasting a bit of water is worse than Wasting more water and recycling the wasted water.


On the contrary, I believe there is a rapidly growing global interest in harnessing technologies like NEWater to diversify water sources to tackle the issue, more so with the increasingly unpredictable climate and increasing urbanization. As with with new technologies and concepts, education is key to gaining widespread public acceptance. The emphasis of recycling should be stressed. Personally I did baulk at the idea a few years back, but not anymore. For your info, NEWater is now being supplied to many of the major shopping centres in Orchard Rd and gradually islandwide.

Singapore lends expertise in wastewater management to Queensland

11 Apr 07










SINGAPORE : Singapore's expertise in the water industry has gained international recognition. 

Besides lending its experience in wastewater management to Queensland, Australia, it is also hosting an international event next year where key global players will meet. 

Recycled water, known here as NEWater, has helped Singapore ensure its water sustainability. 

Now the state of Queensland in Australia will be doing the same. 

At a summit on desalination and water re-use in Singapore, a minister from Queensland said by the end of next year, the Australian state will use recycled water as part of drinking water. 

It will pump recycled water into its dams and reservoirs, before piping it to homes - similar to what Singapore is doing. 

It has been getting advice from Singapore, with one of PUB's top engineers sitting on its panel of international experts. 

Harry Seah from PUB's Director for Technology Office has been an advisor on Queensland's Expert Advisory Panel set up by the state's Water Commission since early this year. 

"We've been working especially with the PUB on implementation of water recycling in Queensland, using some of their previous expertise and get the NEWater scheme up and running," says Craig Wallace, Minister for Natural Resources and Water, Queensland, Australia. 

"That's part of my visit - to attend the water summit and to have a look at some of the NEWater factories and see the regulation in use. We'll certainly be using that expertise and also the expertise Singapore played in rolling out the projects." 

In getting its people to accept the idea, Queensland held a public education programme to address some concerns about using recycled water as well as help residents overcome the "yuck" factor. 

"Before the process is explained, some people do have some impressions which are incorrect, and unfortunately are peddled by some people in our community who want to give the wrong impression. But I think the public of Queensland, as the public of Singapore has shown, will be too smart for those peddlers of misinformation," says Mr Wallace. 

"We can demonstrate that the water is pure and clean. It will be a major boost not only for our drinking water supply in south east Queensland but also industrial supplies." 

Mr Wallace says 70% of its population has given the idea the thumbs up. 

Queensland has been recycling 13% of its wastewater, but that is primarily used for irrigation of golf courses, sugar cane plantations, pastures and other industry. 

This is the first time it is using recycled water for potable use. 

The state has been facing acute water shortage as a result of Australia's worst drought in more than a century. 

Besides Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory is also exploring the use of recycled water as part of its drinking supply. 

Mr Wallace adds the state will be building an education centre on water recycling, similar to the NEWater Visitor Centre in Bedok, to educate residents and children on the topic. 

Meanwhile, Singapore will be hosting another international water event next year. 

The Singapore International Water Week, to be held in June, aims to create business and technology networking opportunities among water experts. 

There will also be fun-filled water festival that will have activities which bring Singaporeans and the international participants together. 

"The highlight of the Singapore Water Week will be an international water prize. It will be awarded to individuals who have applied innovative technologies to solve water problems or implemented effective policies that have significantly improved living conditions," says Singapore's Environment and Water Resources Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim. 

"This prize recognises the real, wide-scale benefits that have been achieved through innovation and effective management." 

Details of the prize will be announced later, but PUB says it will most likely be in cash form, similar to the annual Stockholm Water Prize. 

Water is an important resource globally and the Singapore government has identified water and the environment as a key growth sector. It has allocated some $330 million over the next five years to promote R&D in this industry. 

The Singapore Desalination and Water Reuse Leadership Summit, which will be on till Thursday, is attended by more than 100 global leaders. 

It aims to promote awareness of global issues on water reuse and desalination among participants, and provide a platform to share best practices. 

Delegates will also get to tour Singapore's water recycling plants and visit the NEWater Visitor Centre in Bedok. 


Hasnita A Majid, Channel NewsAsia


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*City's water supply in dire straits *
23 July 2007
Hong Kong Standard

Hong Kong could begin to feel the pinch of increased water demand in the mainland as early as five years from now, an academic has warned. 

Hong Kong University associate professor of geography Frederick Lee Yok-shiu said he estimates mainland authorities may decrease the supply to Hong Kong in favor of Pearl River Delta cities such as Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou within the next five to seven years. 

"Five, six, or seven years down the line, increasing competition may lead to a change in the way water [from Guangdong] is going to be distributed among the different cities," Lee told The Standard. 

WWF Hong Kong senior conservation officer Alan Leung Sze-lun said: "It would obviously affect daily life." 

The Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development released a report last week highlighting the mainland's dire water situation among its myriad other economic woes that have been exacerbated by unbridled economic development. "Among the 600 larger cities, 400 suffer from water shortages," the report said. 

China has one of the lowest water resources per capita in the world, and also faces severe pollution of many of its water sources that poses a "major threat to human health." 

The report added: "China's water situation is of high concern ... Many water courses, lakes and coastal waters are severely polluted as a result of agricultural, industrial and domestic discharges." 

Leung said the water shortage is exacerbated by heavy pollution in Guangdong. Though the region receives adequate rainfall, the rivers are increasingly polluted, thus further depleting reserves. 

The mainland's shortage has yet to affect Hong Kong, and changes would not occur until at least the end of next year because of an agreement signed by Guangdong suppliers in 2006 guaranteeing an unchanging water supply to Hong Kong. 

"In the foreseeable future, the next four to five years, there will be no problems," Water Supplies Department senior engineer Suen Kwok-keung said. 

Suen would not say whether he expects prices to rise when the agreement lapses and the two regions renegotiate next year, but he said the city is investigating alternatives to mainland supply. 

The department is currently studying alternative water resources in its Total Water Management Program, including desalinization of seawater. 

But the high cost of desalinization may place it low on the list of immediate options to address an impending water problem. 

Suen said desalinized water costs HK$7.80-HK$8.40 per cubic meter compared with the HK$4.50 per cubic meter cost of imported water plus treatment. Such a price disparity, coupled with significant government subsidies of imported water, may shelve desalinization until the situation becomes dire. "If the cost of water rises dramatically, it makes desalinization financially viable," Lee said. 

Other options include a water recycling program on a city and household level. Lee advocates such a water recycling system, whereby "gray" water, or household wastewater, could be processed and reused as nonpotable water. 

The program, according to Lee, would need to be legally mandated for all new buildings in order to have any kind of effect. 

But once again, the low cost of water usage currently in the city makes a fight against wastage difficult. 

"Right now, water's too cheap for this kind of initiative," Lee said. 

He suggests the government cut its 50 percent subsidy of water for city consumers, though he admits that politically it would be "an extremely unpopular move." 

In the short term, raising public awareness about water scarcity may be the most feasible move. 

Lawmaker Choy So-yuk said the "fastest way of partially solving our water consumption problem" is to promote water saving throughout the territory. Suen said the Water Supplies Department is primarily trying to educate the city's youth before bad habits form. 

His department has held public seminars and roving exhibitions at schools, sponsored promotional events with schools and children's magazines, and brought in educational visits to tour water treatment works in Hong Kong. 

Choy said the government must also bear some of the burden. 

"The government should immediately address this problem of meeting water demand as an issue of self- reliance," she said. 

Choy said she would call for the government to conduct a comprehensive study of how to gradually solve the imminent water shortage problem, and to have a target year by which the city would rely on its own water supply. 

"This is for Hong Kong's benefit in the long run," Choy said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Coalition: 29 cities have agreed to conserve water *
12 July 2007

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) - Twenty municipalities in Canada and nine in the United States have adopted a goal of reducing water consumption 15 percent by 2015, according to a coalition of Great Lakes cities. 

Among the largest participants are Chicago; Grand Rapids; Buffalo, N.Y.; Hamilton, Ontario; Montreal; Rochester, N.Y.; Toledo, Ohio; and Toronto. 

Eleven of the 29 municipalities already have formal water-conservation plans in place, officials at the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative said Thursday. 

The Chicago-based group is a coalition of mayors and other local officials from the two neighboring nations that works with federal, state and provincial governments to advance the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes. 

The mayors within the group, which is meeting in Grand Rapids through Friday, passed a resolution last year to which municipalities could voluntarily commit that calls for the 15 percent reduction in water use. Some cities, such as Toronto, already had established conservation programs. 

Toronto's plan, in place since 2001, will cost an estimated $74.3 million through 2011 but save the city more than $220 million in equivalent capital-infrastructure costs. 

It's also expected to save $29 million in operating costs during the period and $4.5 million per year thereafter. The Toronto plan also will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and lower residential water bills, the coalition said. 

The group's representatives plan to reconvene before 2015 to develop a 2025 goal.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Californians urged to cut water after driest year *

LOS ANGELES, July 1 (Reuters) - Southern Californians, fond of their private pools, golf courses, garden sprinklers and the ubiquitous car wash, are being urged to reform their water-guzzling ways after the region's driest year on record. 

A mere 3.2 inches (8.1 cm) of rain -- less than a quarter as much as usual -- fell on downtown Los Angeles in the year beginning on July 1, 2006, the lowest since records began 130 years ago. 

A hot summer of short showers is forecast to follow. 

Rainfall totals were little better in other nearby cities, something experts say is a reminder that current water consumption levels seem unsustainable. 

The water sources hundreds of miles away that transformed Los Angeles from a semi-arid town 100 years ago into the nation's second-largest city are also shrinking. 

"We have a system that is at risk, especially if we continue to have population growth, putting people in dry places and figuring a way to overcome local water limits," said David Carle, author of "Water and the California Dream." 

Local water sources would support a population of about 3 million in southern California. Yet 18 million people now live here. 

The Eastern Sierra mountains, from where Los Angeles gets about half of its water supply, had its second-lowest snowpack on record this year. The Colorado River, whose waters are piped in via a 242-mile (389-km) aqueduct, is in its eighth year of drought. 

Mandatory cuts are not envisaged for now, but officials have urged homeowners to cut water usage by about 10 percent, or 20 gallons (76 litres) a day. 

"We have spent years preparing for years like this," said Andy Sienkiewich, resource implementation manager at the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California, which serves some 18 million people. 

"We have built up substantial water storage reserves, both underground and in surface water reservoirs. We have also invested heavily in waste water recycling and water conservation measures," Sienkiewich said. 

SPRINKLERS WATER SIDEWALKS 

Low-flush toilets and clothes washers that save up to 50 percent of water have resulted in huge savings over the years. 

But the biggest challenge lies in Southern California backyards where home sprinklers keeping lawns lush and green account for as much as 70 percent of summer water use. 

"What's growing in areas of Southern California is mostly not native vegetation. They have created urban forests of lawns and trees that are dependent on a whole lot of water," said Carle. 

"I have seen sprinklers not only watering the grass but watering the road, the driveway and the sidewalk." 

Over-watering -- not drought -- is the most common cause of plant deaths in Southern California gardens. 

So-called "smart sprinklers" linked to satellite weather systems that adjust watering depending on forecast rain or clouds are on the rise. 

More than 30 Los Angeles city parks are using the weather-based sprinklers but the cost and lack of mass retail distribution mean they have yet to gain widespread home use. 

The MWD says it has had some success with training programs for homeowners, businesses and the building industry that encourage replacing lawns with drought resistant plants like cactus and rocks. 

But water officials admit they have their work cut out for them trying to wean southern Californians off their passion for lawns. 

In the last official California drought, from 1987-1993, some homeowners in Santa Barbara made headlines by painting their shriveled-up grass with green paint. 

Carle said Southern California has a history of long droughts, one of them lasting 100 years, back to the 10th century. 

But that was before mass population increases spurred by aqueducts built by Los Angeles engineer William Mulholland at the turn of the 20th century.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Desalination no answer to water crisis-WWF *

GENEVA, June 19 (Reuters) - Removing salt from sea water to overcome a worldwide shortage of drinking water could end up worsening the crisis, environmental group WWF warned on Tuesday. 

Desalination, the filtering and evaporation of sea water, is very energy-intensive and involves significant emissions of greenhouse gases that scientists say are a factor in the shrinking supplies of freshwater, the Swiss-based group said. 

Spain, Saudi Arabia, Australia and other arid countries should rely more on water conservation and recycling and avoid huge desalination projects that have been linked to pollution and ecosystem damage. 

"The quite possibly mistaken lure of widespread water availability from desalination ... has the potential to drive a major misdirection of public attention, policy and funds away from the pressing need to use all water wisely," it said. 

Concerns about global warming, which could exacerbate droughts and erode the world's icecaps and glaciers, which provide 69 percent of global freshwater supplies, are expected to spur investments in the technology. 

Some farmers have used water from desalination to grow "unsuitably thirsty crops in fundamentally dry areas," the WWF said, an unsustainable trend given its high energy costs: "It seems unlikely that desalinated agriculture is economic anywhere". 

"Regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment," it said. 

The WWF, or World Wildlife Fund, estimated there were more than 10,000 desalination plants around the world. It said the sector would likely grow exponentially in coming years as governments seek to supply water to fast-growing arid areas in the United States, India, China and elsewhere. 

Half of the world's desalination capacity is in the Gulf area, where wealthy oil-producing nations use it for about 60 percent of their water needs. 

Australian cities have also relied heavily on the technology and Spain has used it extensively to support real estate development, agriculture and even golf courses along its Mediterranean coast. 

Large-scale desalination engineering could also endanger sea life, the WWF said, urging further research into the tolerance of marine organisms and ecosystems to higher salinity and brine waste, byproducts of the salt removal process. 

While desalination could have important uses in some cases, such as environments with brackish water, the WWF said that big plants ought to be approved only in circumstances where they meet a real need and must be built and operated in a way that minimises broader environmental damage.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*The new public enemy #1: bottled water *

WASHINGTON, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - It's a hugely beneficial liquid in a slim cylinder of plastic, but for US environmentalists, it is the new public enemy number one: bottled water. 

With US bottled water sales growing nearly 10 percent annually -- and the trash from tossed containers climbing just as quickly -- calls for Americans to go back to drinking tap water have surged since the beginning of summer. 

"This country has some of the best public water supplies in the world," the New York Times said in an editorial earlier this month. 

"Instead of consuming four billion gallons (15 billion liters) of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet's health." 

As was pointed out at World Water Week in Stockholm on Monday, US personal consumption per capita, including water from all sources, hits 400 liters (106 gallons) each day -- compared to 10 liters (2.6 gallons) a person in developing countries. 

And US consumers are drinking more bottled water by the day. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, growth in bottled water sales last year was 9.7 percent, making the total market worth about 11 billion dollars. 

Bottled water in the United States does not mean mineral water, even if Americans grumble more and more about paying a high price to drink water with little to distinguish it. 

At the end of July beverage giant PepsiCo was forced by public pressure to explain on its Aquafina bottled water that the contents inside come from ... the tap. 

Pepsi's response "is an important first step," said Gigi Kellett, director of the "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign. 

"Concerns about the bottled water industry, and increasing corporate control of water, are growing across the country," she said. 

From mineral springs or from public pipes, water once in a bottle is expensive. The New York Times estimated that for some consumers the bill could hit 1,400 dollars a year -- for an amount that, taken from a home faucet, might cost less than half a dollar. 

And it is not always better. 

"Bottled water sold in the United States is not necessarily cleaner or safer than most tap water, according to a four-year scientific study," the National Resources Defense Council recently reported. It also said regulation has not guaranteed more pure water in bottles. 

Another point of attack is the packaging waste, which Earth Policy Institute tied to an issue of US security policy: oil imports. 

According to the institute, it costs the United States 1.5 million barrels of oil a year to produce the plastic bottles used for water. 

And if one adds the energy required to transport it -- especially premium water imported all the way from France, Italy and even the Fiji islands -- the negative impact on the environment rises quickly. 

The anti-bottled water campaign has gotten political support: the mayor of San Francisco has stopped supplying water in containers to his staff, telling them to drink what comes out of the faucet. 

And New York has launched a campaign to persuade its inhabitants to stick to public sources to quench their thirst. 

Feeling they were at the center of the target, bottled water producers went on the defense last week, in part arguing that bottled water helps liberate consumers from calorie-heavy sweet sodas. 

"The bottled water industry has recently been the target of misguided and confusing criticism by activist groups and a handful of mayors who have presented misinformation and subjective criticism as facts," the International Bottled Water Association said. 

Association president Joseph Doss said they were being unfairly singled out. 

"If the debate is about the impact of plastic packaging on the environment, a narrow focus on bottled water spotlights only a small portion of the packaged beverage category and an even smaller sliver of the universe of packaged products," he said. 

"Any efforts to reduce the resources necessary to produce and distribute packaged goods -- and increase recycling rates -- must focus on all packaging," he said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*California officials expect to cut water supplies *

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 5 (Reuters) - California's major urban areas and farmers should brace for cuts in water supplies following a federal judge's ruling that limits how much water may be pumped from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, water officials from around the state said on Wednesday. 

U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ruled on Friday that less water must be pumped from the inland delta system east of San Francisco to protect the delta smelt fish as it spawns. 

Farms throughout California's Central Valley depend on delta water to irrigate fields and the water is conveyed to cities and towns in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles region. An estimated 25 million Californians use delta water. 

Cuts in delta water supplies would come on the heels of a winter in California with little rainfall and as much of the most populous U.S. state contends with an especially dry summer. At least 15 people have died in Los Angeles County, the state's biggest county, amid a heat wave this week. 

Wanger's ruling will force water agencies to impose unprecedented conservation programs, said Roger Patterson, an assistant general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, during a telephone conference call. 

"We have moved into an area of tremendous uncertainty," Patterson said. 

Other officials on the conference call also said they were concerned about potential cuts in water supplies and how drawn down supplies would be replaced. 

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, has said Wanger's decision would have a "devastating impact" on California's economy and that it strengthens his case for a $5.9 billion water works plan he proposed in January. 

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, wants to invest $4.5 billion in surface and groundwater storage and put $1 billion toward restoring the delta, a proposal that would include building a new conveyance system to draw water from the delta and deliver it throughout California. 

Democrats who control California's legislature oppose new dam construction and a new delta conveyance is controversial. California voters rejected a measure in 1982 calling for building such a conveyance known as the Peripheral Canal. 

(Reporting by Jim Christie)


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water conservation in LA relatively flat *
10 December 2007

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Despite a plea from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to conserve water, residents and businesses have failed to reach that mark, according to city records. 

Water use remained relatively flat from June, when Villaraigosa asked for a 10 percent reduction, through October, compared with the same period last year. City water officials said they planned to wait several more months to see if water supplies improve before resorting to harsher measures. 

Southern California cities have called upon residents to conserve water because of a drought in the Colorado River basin and a less than abundant snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

Some critics believe Villaraigosa should endorse mandatory restrictions, much like those that have helped the city of Long Beach reap significant water savings this fall. 

"More than anything, I want a commitment from the mayor to work toward a more sustainable future and to reduce water use in Los Angeles," said Miriam Torres of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. "People in Los Angeles have to think of water as a precious resource and not a commodity." 

The next step could be to start enforcing an ordinance that restricts times for lawn sprinkling and other water uses. 

City consumers used a little less than 1 percent more water from June through October than they did in the same period last year, according to records from the Department of Water and Power. 

But the mayor's request may have had some effect. Water use was up more than 20 percent in May compared to the same month in 2006. 

"Use was running completely in the wrong direction," said DWP spokesman Joseph Ramallo. "We've arrested a problem."


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## invincible (Sep 13, 2002)

Just enforce restrictions, they're not hard to follow at all.

After all, there's just been a massive shift here, with many houses being built with or installing rainwater and greywater collection systems.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water-starved China begins work on massive water diversion project *
28 December 2007

BEIJING (AP) - China started digging Friday an ambitious water diversion project that will see vast amounts transported from the fertile south of the country to the arid north, state media reported. 

Work started on a tunnel underneath the Yellow River in the eastern province of Shandong as part of a planned 486 billion yuan (US$66 billion, euro45 billion) network of canals aimed to divert water from the southern Yangtze River, the official Xinhua News Agency said. 

Building the South-North Water Diversion project, which was approved in 2002, could take 60 years, the government has said. 

The Yellow River tunnel will be completed in three years, Xinhua said. 

China, especially the northern part, is undergoing a serious water shortage, with 130 cities facing extreme shortages. Intense demand by booming Chinese industries, farms and sprawling cities has left many areas without adequate water supplies. 

China supports 21 percent of the world's population with just 7 percent of its fresh water supplies.


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## Jim856796 (Jun 1, 2006)

Is there always the worry of a water shortage in any major city (unless that city has tons of lakes)?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Jim856796 said:


> Is there always the worry of a water shortage in any major city (unless that city has tons of lakes)?


Depends. Tropical cities get a lot of moisture, and if the excess is stored properly, they don't need to go to a lake or the ocean for water.


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## davidearl (Sep 10, 2007)

Where does Las Vegas and Phoenix get most of their water from?? I just don't understand how we can sustain those 2 cities into the future... seems so wasteful


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Dimension said:


> http://www.cglg.org/projects/water/CompactImplementation.asp
> http://www.glc.org/
> 
> Looks like no water will be leaving the Great Lakes to aid in any of the water crises in the US and Canada or even the world.


Good. The Great Lakes have no water to spare. If their water was siphoned for consumption outside the drainage basin then shipping and the local climate would be threatened.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Cyprus water shipment suffers more setbacks *

NICOSIA, July 23 (Reuters) - Repeated delays in shipping much needed water from Greece has left one of Cyprus's largest cities with only two weeks' supply of water as the country faces severe drought, officials said on Wednesday.

New setbacks in getting drinking water off a ship for the 177,000 residents of Limassol, a port city in the south, has left its reservoir with only 0.8 million cubic metres of supplies.

The city requires 45,000 cubic metres of water per day.

"The way things are going now, it's not enough to last even 20 days. It's possibly enough for 17 or 18 days," said Kyriakos Kyrrou, an official from Cyprus's water department.

"But whatever happens, people will get water," he told Reuters.

Cyprus, facing its worst water shortage in decades, has ordered 8.0 million cubic metres of water from Greece. Ships will carry out about 200 shuttles until November.

But the project has faced repeated setbacks. Initially, the ship-to-shore pipeline was not ready when a boat docked at the end of June because of a short pipe.

When it was finally hooked-up, authorities ruled the water had to be discharged into boreholes instead of the supply network because it had been on the boat for too many days.

Part of the pipeline had to be disconnected at the weekend because of an air blockage, and authorities say it may be back online only by next Sunday.

Cyprus has two water desalination plants producing 100,000 cubic metres of water daily, supplying the capital Nicosia and eastern areas of the island.

Authorities said they would divert some of the desalinated water to Limassol if the situation deteriorates further.

"All I can say is God help us," said hotel employee Stavroulla Soteriou, 55, in Limassol. "I really don't know what more we can do once the water runs out."


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## Twoaday (May 22, 2006)

*agreed*



hoosier said:


> Good. The Great Lakes have no water to spare. If their water was siphoned for consumption outside the drainage basin then shipping and the local climate would be threatened.


Agreed approval of the Great Lakes Compact was a good move for those states as there have from time to time been plans to ship water out of the basin. And of course removing the water from the basin has the potential for all sorts of negative consequences.


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## l'eau (Jul 7, 2008)

Istanbullu said:


> Mayor of Ankara is a bloody moron!


absolutely *RIGHT!!!*


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water worries lead cities, businesses and homeowners to ancient art of rainwater harvesting *
30 August 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Tara Hui climbed under her deck, nudged past a cluster of 55-gallon barrels and a roosting chicken, and pointed to a shiny metal gutter spout.

"See that?" she said. "That's where the rainwater comes in from the roof."

Hui is one of a growing band of people across the country turning to collected rainwater for non-drinking uses like watering plants, flushing toilets and washing laundry.

Concern over drought and wasted resources, and stricter water conservation laws have revitalized the practice of capturing rainwater during storms and stockpiling it for use in drier times. A fixture of building design in the Roman empire and in outposts along the American frontier, rainwater harvesting is making a comeback in states including Texas, North Carolina, and California.

"We call it 'the movement that's taking the nation by storm,'" said Robyn Hadley, spokeswoman for the Austin, Texas-based American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, whose membership has jumped by more than 40 percent this year.

Hui, 37, got her first 55-gallon plastic barrel for free five years ago. The barrel had been packed with maraschino cherries, so when rain first filled it the water smelled like candied fruit.

Now, she has a daisy chain of 25 linked barrels under her back deck with a combined capacity of nearly 1,250 gallons. She built the system herself, after searching the Internet for information and buying the necessary plumbing parts at a hardware store. The whole setup cost her $200.

The average American uses 101 gallons of water a day at home and in the yard. Add in agricultural and industrial water use and that climbs to an average of 1,430 gallons per day per person.

Scientists warn that climate change will result in more severe droughts and erratic storms worldwide, and this spring was the driest in California's 114 years of record-keeping. Extreme drought and abnormally dry conditions persist across large swaths of the country, with states in the West and Southeast hardest hit.

Even in a drought, it only takes a few hours of heavy rain to fill all 25 of Hui's barrels. She uses that water throughout the summer to irrigate her backyard.

This fall, San Francisco will try to recruit more people to hoard the rain. The city will be putting $100,000 toward hosting how-to workshops and offering rebates and discounts on rainwater catchment tanks.

In addition to conserving water, these efforts help alleviate the problem of storm runoff. Asphalt-covered roads, sidewalks and parking lots repel storm water, forcing it down storm drains and into creeks rather than allowing it to soak into soil. Big flushes of storm water in water treatment systems can send raw sewage flowing into the ocean. Overloaded streams can cause flooding and damage salmon habitat.

Elsewhere, roofs are being used to collect rain from Austin to Seattle. Santa Monica's new library sits atop a 200,000-gallon rainwater cistern, and in August the city launched a rainwater rebate program for homeowners. In Marin County, a recent seminar on rainwater harvesting attracted a standing-room-only crowd of several hundred.

Doug Pushard, a software entrepreneur and rain collection enthusiast based in Santa Fe, N.M., runs HarvestH2O.com, a Web-based organization providing information on rainwater harvesting. It got more than 23,000 page views in July, almost triple the number he got in the same month last year, along with numerous calls and e-mails.

New companies and ingenuity in plumbing and policy are pushing rainwater harvesting from the off-the-grid fringe to the core of 21st century green building design.

"You still have to be a tinkerer to make things work, but that's changing," said Pushard.

Every year, Sunset Magazine sponsors several "idea houses" featuring sustainable building design. As many as 40,000 people stream through each house to study the latest in green architecture. The 2007 idea houses in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe collected rainwater, as will this year's idea house in Monterey.

"We're going to see a lot more design features for recycled water and rainwater catchment," said Dave Walls, executive director of the California Building Standards Commission, which in July adopted new building codes for the state requiring new buildings to strictly conserve water.

In June, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave a Washington-based nonprofit $4.2 million to determine whether rainwater harvesting could provide potable water to the billions of poor people worldwide who lack access to clean water. Drought-prone and groundwater-scarce places like Australia, the Bahamas, Iran and parts of India are already busy pooling precipitation.

"People don't think about where their water comes from or how much they use," Hui said as she used her collected rainwater for irrigation. "We all need to."


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## gladisimo (Dec 11, 2006)

The SF East Bay has been hit by water shortage this year. It actually doesn't sound like such a bad idea if you can filter the water properly, to supplement your water system.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*San Diego mayor declares water shortage emergency *
29 July 2008

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Mayor Jerry Sanders has declared a San Diego water shortage emergency and he's asking residents to voluntarily conserve or face mandatory curbs.

The City Council voted unanimously Monday on the so-called Stage 1 water shortage emergency. The council's Natural Resources and Culture Committee will hold hearings in September to consider mandatory cutbacks.

Sanders says San Diego's water use dropped by 7 percent after he initially called for voluntary conservation in February, but consumption has now returned to previous levels.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water use in Long Beach decreases 9 percent after call for conservation, higher rates *
10 October 2008

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Demand for water in Long Beach dipped to a 10-year low as residents heeded a citywide call to conserve water and responded to higher rates.

The Long Beach Water Department issued a report this week that showed water demand was 9.2 percent below the 10-year average. Customers used 6,368 acre-feet less water this fiscal year than the year before. An acre-foot refers to about how much water a family of four typically uses in a year.

In September 2007, the department declared that a water shortage was imminent and urged conservation. Under the declaration, residents couldn't wash their driveways with a garden hose and restaurants were barred from serving customers a glass of water unless they ask for it.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water supplies may drop for Calif. cities, farms *
14 November 2008

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - California fish and wildlife managers on Friday approved new rules that could severely restrict pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect a native fish, triggering protests from farmers and cities reeling already from water shortages.

The Fish and Game Commission voted 3-0 to enact emergency regulations that may scale back water pumping from December through February to safeguard the longfin smelt, considered a bellwether species for the estuary.

"Clearly as a society we haven't erred on the side of the fish in the past; we've erred on the side of the water supply," said Commissioner Michael Sutton. "We have to come down on the side of the fish. If we don't take care of these ecosystems, they're not going to yield us the services for much longer."

Pumping restrictions would only kick in if scientists find a certain number of dead or living longfin smelt in various sampling locations throughout the delta, including near the massive pumps that send water to more than 25 million Southern Californians.

Water officials say they expect some reductions will happen.

The regulations could slash state and federal water deliveries by up to 1.1 million acre feet, bringing California's total water supply to slightly more than half of what it would be in an average year.

That's in addition to recent water cutbacks imposed by the state Department of Water Resources, which plans to deliver just 15 percent of the amount that local water agencies request every year.

The combination "could create a water supply and delivery crisis the likes of which Californians have not seen in decades," warned Director Lester Snow in a statement.

Another dry winter may prompt widespread water rationing in cities from the San Francisco Bay area to San Diego, and a drop in the diversity of crops planted over the coming months, said Carl Torgersen, who operates the State Water Project for the department.

Major agriculture groups said new cuts could cripple farming families already struggling to do business since a federal judge ordered federal and state agencies to restrict pumping last year to protect the threatened delta smelt, the longfin's cousin.

"So much uncertainty around the water supply will make it hard for farmers to get crop loans," said Sarah Woolf, a spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District. "Growers will have to give their first priority to permanent crops like almonds and pistachios and grapes, rather than planting things like lettuce and broccoli."

The new regulations for longfin smelt will be in force only while the fish migrate, spawn and hatch in the estuary, for a 90-day period starting Dec. 1.

If scientists find fish in dangerous conditions during that timeframe, the rules will trigger an evaluation process that involves five state and federal agencies and ultimately falls to Department of Fish and Game Director Don Koch for a final decision.

Koch said he reserves the right to take no action, especially if a forthcoming federal plan to protect the delta smelt is found to also protect the longfin.

Until Feb. 4, when the commission is scheduled to decide whether the longfin smelt qualifies for listing under the state Endangered Species Act, the fish will enjoy the same protections as endangered species. In the meantime, any dredging in the estuary also will be temporarily banned so the species' floating larvae can develop safely.

Laura King Moon, whose organization represents districts that provide water to Los Angeles and Alameda counties, said the regulations risked slowing California's economy in the midst of a downturn.

"This may not be felt in residential neighborhoods immediately, but it will add to our cities' calls for increased voluntary conservation and increase water prices," said King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors. "This will eat further into drought reserves that have been set aside in the event of another dry year."

Without the protections, however, biologists warned the silvery, 5-inch-long fish might not survive.

The population of the longfin smelt is 3 percent of the level measured less than 20 years ago, according to a petition filed by the Center of Biological Diversity, which asked the commission to list the species as endangered.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Experts: Half world faces water shortage by 2080 *
18 November 2008

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Half the world's population could face a shortage of clean water by 2080 because of climate change, experts warned Tuesday.

Wong Poh Poh, a professor at the National University of Singapore, told a regional conference that global warming was disrupting water flow patterns and increasing the severity of floods, droughts and storms -- all of which reduce the availability of drinking water.

Wong said the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that as many as 2 billion people won't have sufficient access to clean water by 2050. That figure is expected to rise to 3.2 billion by 2080 -- nearly tripling the number who now do without it.

Reduced access to clean water -- which refers to water that can be used for drinking, bathing or cooking -- forces many villagers in poor countries to walk miles to reach supplies. Others, including those living in urban shanties, suffer from diseases caused by drinking from unclean sources.

At the beginning of the decade, the World Health Organization estimated that 1.1 billion people did not have sufficient access to clean water.

Asia, home to more than 4 billion people, is the most vulnerable region, especially India and China, where booming populations have placed tremendous stress on water sources, said Wong, a member of the U.N. panel.

"In Asia, water distribution is uneven and large areas are under water stress. Climate change is going to exacerbate this scarcity," he told the two-day Asia Pacific Regional Water Conference attended by policy makers, government officials, academics, businessmen and consumer group representatives.

Scientists have said global climate change takes many forms, causing droughts in some areas while increasing flooding and the severity of cyclones in others. Droughts reduce water supply, and floods destroy the quality of water. Rising sea levels, for instance, increase the salt content at the mouths of many rivers, from which many Asians draw their drinking water.

"As human civilization develops, the environment is increasingly affected in negative ways. Floods, drought, changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures are signs of our misdeeds to nature," said Rozali Ismail, head of a state water association in Malaysia.

Wong and others at the conference called on governments to embrace the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty to fight global warming and protect water resources, as a short-term solution.

But eventually governments must build infrastructure to protect coastal areas, improve management of water basins and adopt new technologies to enhance availability and reliability of water resources, Wong said.

The United Nations is currently campaigning to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol -- which regulates the emissions of 37 industrial countries -- with another accord at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Kyoto Protocol was signed by 183 nations in 1997. But the United States -- long the world's biggest emitter, though it is now rivaled by China -- rejected the plan over concerns it would harm the American economy.

Developing countries such as China and India also refused to accept a binding arrangement that they said would limit their development.


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

Many Middle East countries are using desalination plants to produce clean water from sea and other countries will follow when the need becomes greater.


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## Greg (Nov 9, 2003)

Whiteeclipse said:


> Many Middle East countries are using desalination plants to produce clean water from sea and other countries will follow when the need becomes greater.


This is environmentally stupid and the amount of energy needed is by far to large. Much could be done with water-recycling systems, sewage plants etc.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

I don't think water recycling technology alone can satisfy the water needs for such a large population spread across a huge piece of land.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

Certainly many US cities in the southwest, the Pheonixes & the Las Vegas plus many of the ones in California, already face a critical water shortage. 

Yet the US is in a better position to solve this problem than many other countries, should it choose to doso. 

Since much of the growth is thru immigration, it can redirect the immigrant growth away from the Sunbelt to cities along the Great Lakes Snowbelt that have plenty of water & excess housing & infrastructure. 

If you want to come to the US fine, but plan on settling in Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Cincinnatti, rather than Vegas or Pheonix!


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

bayviews, good point but the climate is much better in Vegas and Phoenix.


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## xXFallenXx (Jun 15, 2007)

^ How so? It's oppressively hot 6 months out of the year in both of those locations.


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

xXFallenXx said:


> ^ How so? It's oppressively hot 6 months out of the year in both of those locations.


Some people would rather deal with the heat then the snow.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Chilean glacier will vanish in 50 years: study *
1 November 2008
Agence France Presse

Chile's official water authority warned Saturday that the Echaurren glacier near Santiago, which supplies the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, could disappear in the next half century.

In a new report on Chile's glaciers the main water company -- Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) -- said the ice fields of Echaurren are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.

"These glaciers are vanishing," said Antonio Vergara of the DGA, who has worked on glacier research on the fields for 35 years.

At the current rate of decline, Echaurren and other smaller glaciers near Santiago could disappear over the next 50 years.

The river Maipo and its smaller tributaries, key water sources for Santiago, its environs and agriculture in region, all flow from Echaurren.

The water shortage would force Chileans to seek new sources of water and would cause "large-scale population displacement in central Chile," said Vergara.

Located 50 kilometers (21 miles) east of Santiago, on the western slopes of the Andes mountain range, the Echaurren glacier is one of the 10 most studied ice fields in the world, and is considered a "landmark in the global studies of climate change," said DGA director Rodrigo Weisner.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water crisis requires more than a cold shower *
25 November 2008
The Age

Domestic water use is easy to cut. It isn't the whole problem.

JUST in case anyone thought that a weekend of heavy rain might have made all the difference, the State Government yesterday reminded Melburnians that they are still living with the consequences of severe drought and will do so for the foreseeable future. The long-threatened move to stage 4 water restrictions, under which all outdoor watering would be banned, has been averted yet again. Domestic water users are being prompted to do a little bit extra, however, to ensure that the outdoor ban doesn't happen. In order to keep stage 3a restrictions in place, people are now asked to make do with 155 litres a day each instead of the present average of 165 litres. In case consumers are not sure how this can be done, a $5.4million advertising campaign is about to begin, offering such tips as reducing showers from seven minutes to four, preferably using a water-efficient shower head.

There is no doubt about the gravity of the water shortage: Melbourne's catchments are at 33per cent of capacity, compared with 40 per cent at this time last year - and that was hardly adequate. And we cannot deny the need for all of us to reduce our consumption, through shorter showers and whatever else we may be able to do. However, each time a new batch of restrictions, voluntary or otherwise, is trundled out, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Government's attitude to water management remains one of relying on ad hoc local responses and, as far as it is available, engineering wizardry. What continues to be missing from the Government's pronouncements on water is a sense that it must deal with the drought, exacerbated by climate change, as a crisis affecting not just Melbourne, or even Victoria, but the whole of south-eastern Australia. The Government is intent on connecting Melbourne's water supply with the ecologically stressed Murray-Darling Basin through the Goulburn pipeline, yet it talks as though the Murray-Darling has one set of problems and the metropolitan area another.

Those responsible for studying water resources and water allocation have no such illusion. While the Government has been conjuring up visions of a future shaped by pipelines, desalination plants and high-tech shower nozzles, the CSIRO has been completing a comprehensive study of water availability in the Murray-Darling Basin. The report, submitted to the Federal Government last month, provides a set of statistical markers for what anyone who has lived through this drought knows anecdotally to be true. In the southern part of the basin, the drought of 1996-2006 resulted in the lowest catchment run-off on record, and drought conditions have worsened in this part of the basin in the past two years. And, lest anyone still be tempted to describe the severe drought not as a consequence of climate change but as a cyclical event, the report makes a sobering comparison. Instead of the usual "once-in-100-years" line favoured by those who prefer the cyclical explanation, the CSIRO scientists say, if climate change is not taken into account this drought would actually be a once-in-300-years event.

It is from that threatened southern Murray-Darling Basin that 75billion litres will be diverted down the Goulburn pipeline to Melbourne. The State Government is investing $1 billion in new irrigation infrastructure in the hope of stemming the amount of water that is "lost" each year, and thus keeping both farmers and city domestic consumers happily supplied. Or so the theory has it.

And then there is the $3.1 billion desalination plant planned for Wonthaggi, which, apart from doubts raised about its environmental impact on marine areas, will be an enormous energy investment, with an effect equivalent to the pollution from 250,000 cars.

Earlier this year, in our "Watershed" special reports, The Age questioned the highly engineered water strategy being pursued by the state - while also recognising that after almost 12 years of drought and a failure to act earlier, alternatives such as recycling sewage for drinking water and reducing the amount of land used for irrigated agriculture, which consumes 77 per cent of the state's water, are harder to sell politically. Meanwhile, the Government can reasonably ask Melburnians to shower frugally and water their gardens with the sudsy residue, as indeed we should. It won't, however, make the tough, politically unpalatable questions go away.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Cholera-hit Zimbabwe restores water to most parts of capital *
3 December 2008
Agence France Presse

Zimbabwe authorities on Wednesday restored water to most parts of the capital Harare after a cut more than 48 hours ago amid a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 500, a minister said.

"As of last night, pumping capacity has been increased to 80 percent and the greater part of the central business district (in Harare) and most high density suburbs are receiving normal supplies," water resources deputy minister Walter Mzembi told AFP.

Taps in Harare ran dry on Saturday after the state-run water company, ZINWA, ran short of aluminium sulphate, a chemical used to purify water.

The water cuts compounded fears over the spread of cholera. The death toll from the outbreak has now risen to 565, with 12,546 cases of the acute intestinal disease reported nationwide, according to the United Nations on Wednesday.

The water shortage had resulted in people digging shallow wells, while some made brisk business in selling water.

An AFP correspondent reported that although water had been restored in Harare's central business district and other residential areas, some areas only receive water in the evenings.


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## N1V1 (Apr 20, 2008)

I live in the land of the rain, so no problems with water shortages here.


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

*Israel Facing Worst Water Crisis in More Than 100 Years*

The Sea of Galilee, Israel’s largest fresh water source, is drying up.

Four consecutive years of drought, increased consumption stemming from population growth, and what some are calling mismanagement have contributed to the worst water crisis in Israel’s history.

Israel’s three main water sources – the Sea of Galilee and the mountain and coastal aquifers – are almost empty, Uri Schor, spokesman for Israel’s Water Authority,
told CNSNews.com.

The Sea of Galilee alone is nearly 18 feet below its full level. “This is the worst crisis there ever was [since measurements were taken],” Schor said.

The crisis may be particularly acute next summer, if this winter doesn’t bring a lot of rain. Israel’s rainfall comes only during the winter months. The rest of the year is dry.

Israel is now trying to cut down on water demand, Schor said. The Water Authority has launched an advertising campaign urging Israelis to conserve water, and it already has cut potable water supplies to agriculture.

A large part of the water used by agriculture is recycled wastewater, Shaul Arlosoroff, a water resources management consultant, told CNSNews.com.

In fact, Israel is renowned for its water recycling expertise. On Monday, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm signed a water technologies partnership agreement with Israel, making Michigan the first U.S. state to do so.

The joint declaration establishes a working group between the two states to focus on “energy efficiency and innovative technology” that will improve water quality and increase water re-use.

“As one-fifth of the Earth’s freshwater supply, the Great Lakes are a world-class natural resource and an essential part of our economic transformation,” said Michigan Lieutenant Governor John D. Cherry, Jr., immediate past chairman of the Great Lakes Commission. 

“Partnering with Israel on technologies to protect and preserve our water will help not only to ensure that we are good stewards of this resource but will also help to create jobs here in Michigan.”

Desalination

Critics say Israel’s water supply has been mismanaged. They say the government should have built more desalination plants years ago.

Israel has two large water desalination plants, and a third is expected to come online next year. Several more plants are planned. By 2020, Israel should be able to desalinate some 750 million cubic meters annually – the amount currently used by the Israeli public.

Schor argues that if Israel had sunk the money into desalination plants years ago, and there would not have been a shortfall in rain causing drought, the Israeli public might have complained that the money should have gone to other projects.

The water shortage is not unique to Israel. Jordan’s problem is said to be even worse, and the Palestinians are demanding that Israel give them more water.

Israel gives the Palestinians a fixed quota of water, regardless of population growth. The Palestinians are allotted about one-quarter to one-fifth of what Israelis use, said Dr. Marwan Haddad from the College of Engineering at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells or develop water-related projects unless they get permission from Israel, Haddad told CNSNews.com.

Haddad complained that Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of Jewish people in the West Bank. While they have continuous water supply, Palestinian cities receive water only three to four hours a week, and must store it in large tanks on rooftops, he said.

Arlosoroff said that water consumption around the world is directly linked to the GDP. So Palestinians with an annual GDP of $1,000 per capita cannot expect to use what Israelis use at $27,000 per capita.

The issue of water here is so critical that it features in peace agreements.

Israel agreed to give a certain amount of water to Jordan annually as part of the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. Water is one of six final status issues on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process agenda along with Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, security, Israeli settlements and borders.

Arlosoroff believes the water dispute, although complicated, could be easier to solve than any of the other final status issues.

International organizations that give aid to the Palestinians have helped to alleviate some of the problems.

The U.S. Agency for International Development inaugurated a $45 million water supply project in Hebron last month, which was intended to significantly improve the quality and distribution of drinking water to about 550,000 Palestinians in the southern West Bank.

According to USAID’s Web site, it has provided $734 million to the Water Resources and Infrastructure activities of the Palestinians since 1993. They are working to rehabilitate deteriorated water networks, replace old water pumps, and repair badly deteriorated sewage systems.

In many places, raw sewage has been discharged directly into dry riverbeds causing health problems and contaminating aquifers, USAID says.

According to Schor, Palestinians currently use only potable water for all of their agriculture. If they could recycle their wastewater, it would increase their water supply by 30 to 40 percent, he said.

If Israel does not have a rainy winter this year the government will have to ban all lawn-watering, both public and private, next summer. Otherwise, people won’t have water coming out of the tap, Schor said.

In the meantime, he said, the best thing to do is “pray and pray a lot” for a very rainy winter.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=39581


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

*Jordan grapples with water crisis*

The 3.5-billion-euro (4.5-billion-dollar) "Peace Canal" is the heart of the government's vision of slaking thirst in a country that is mostly bone-dry desert and one of the 10 driest places in the world.

At present, the country's main conduit is the 110-kilometre (68-mile) King Abdullah Canal, which brings "blue gold" down the valley of the River Jordan from a range of small rivers in the north of the country.

It irrigates around 8,000 farms and provides the capital, Amman, with its key supplies of water.

But five successive years of below-average rainfall have added significantly to the country's water stress, fuelling fears that worse is to come when man-made climate change really bites.

In theory, 250 million cubic metres (8.8 billion cu. feet) of water are earmarked for irrigation from the canal, but this figure has been notional for several years.

"We are one of the poorest countries in the world in water resources. I am worried for the future that we will receive less quantity of water than we have now because of climate change," said Shafig Habash, managing director of the King Abdullah Canal's control centre in Deir Alla.

"The climate is really changing," he told AFP. "We see it and we feel it. I remember, 15 to 20 years ago, the rain was more heavy and the temperatures were less."

UN talks on addressing global warming run from December 1-12 in Poznan, Poland.

The negotiations are a stepping stone towards a new global pact in December 2009 for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for damaging Earth's delicate climate system.

Scientists say drought is likely to accentuate in countries that are already badly water-stressed, especially the Middle East and the Mediterranean rim.

Jordan is placing its hopes on the Peace Canal, which would stabilise the Dead Sea -- retreating at the rate of a metre (more than three feet) a year -- by taking water from the Red Sea 180 kilometres away.

Although the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, is below the Red Sea, the pipeline would have to cross higher land in order to reach it, which entails a major pumping effort. En route, a desalination plant would remove the salt, providing 850 million cu. m. (29.75 billion cu. ft.) of potable water each year. 

The World Bank is carrying out a feasibility study into the scheme. But even before it clears the technical hurdles and seeks to assemble a mountain of funds, the project faces enormous diplomatic problems.

It has to be approved by Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, and thus becomes a card in the poker game of Middle East peace.

Environmentalists, too, have their doubts, fearing that an influx of seawater could have a bad impact on the Dead Sea's strange yet fragile ecosystem.

Munqeth Mehyar, president of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), said a first, key task is to inform local people about water stress, warn them that it is likely to get worse as a result of climate change and advise them of how to curb wastage and grow different crops.

"When we talk about climate change, a single person in Jordan Valley would feel really helpless," he said. "They would ask: 'What can I do if the developed countries are really putting so much CO2 [carbon dioxide] into the atmosphere?'

"We are preparing them to look for crops that use a lot less water, methods for irrigation and methods for reusing the water. All that is in order to prepare them to use less and less water in the future."

Khawla Dalki, a teacher of English at North Shuna, a village in the far north of the Jordan Valley close to the Syrian border, said awareness of Jordan's water problems was making only painful progress.

"I started talking about it about four years ago, but it's very slow in fact," she said.

"If they get some information about how to deal with this problem, they could be a good example for their parents, their families or their neighbours." 

http://www.physorg.com/news147082280.html


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Euro-Med water conference to hold in Jordan next month *

AMMAN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A much-delayed Euro-Med gathering on water is expected to kick off in Jordan next month after a series of bargaining and dealings, a Jordanian official said on Wednesday.

"It has been agreed in principle to hold the conference in Jordan on Dec. 18," said Jordanian Minister of State for Information Nasser Judeh.

"Problems related to the conference and the postponement have been solved and the Arab League (AL) will take part as an active member," he added.

The Euro-Med Ministerial Conference on Water was originally slated on Oct. 28 at the shores of the Dead Sea. However, it was delayed just two days ahead of its opening due to disputes on the participation of the AL and its membership in "Union for the Mediterranean" (UPM).

Israel was reportedly against AL's presence as the conference falls within the framework of UPM, saying the league would oppose its participation in the UPM.

However, foreign ministers from concerning states struck a deal at a meeting earlier this month in France, deciding that Israel and the AL will take part in the conference side by side.

The AL was granted a full-time seat at the forum and Israel agreed in exchange for one of five deputy secretary-general posts for an initial three-year period.

According to earlier schedule, the two-day conference will seek to lay a broad framework for a long-term regional water strategy and make the first concrete plans in the field.

Participants will also discuss and define the main challenges and difficulties as well as solutions to address the water shortage in countries like Jordan, which is one of the world' s top 10 states deprived of the resources.


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/95-the-incredible-shrinking-lake-chad-that-is/


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Asia's woes in spotlight at World Water Forum *
20 March 2009
Agence France Presse

Burgeoning population growth, poor resource management and floods and droughts amplified by climate change hamper efforts by Asian countries to provide clean water and decent sanitation, the World Water Forum heard Friday.

Ministers from major Asian nations, in a side event at the seven-day arena in Istanbul, admitted they faced a major challenge in trying to meet surging demand for freshwater while at the same time conserve it.

Chinese Water Minister Chen Lei said his country's population, the largest in the world, had to grapple with water wealth that was unevenly distributed and sometimes sparse.

The mismatch "gives rise to intensive conflicts between socio-economic development, water resources and the water environment," he said.

The Asia-Pacific occupies 61 percent of the world's population, but its water resources only account for one third of the global total, according to a report issued at the meeting.

Half a billion people in the region still lack safe drinking water and 1.8 billion are without access to basic sanitation. Of the available sources of renewable water, 79 percent is used up by agriculture.

In some of Asia's breadbaskets, such as the Punjab in India and the North China plain, unreplenished extraction is causing water tables to fall by between two and three metres (6.5 to 6.75 feet) per year, while the glaciers in the Himalayas are shrinking faster than in any part of the world.

All this amounts to a grim outlook for farming, food security and access to safe water and sewerage, the report said.

"At its most dire, the region's water circumstances set the scene for tragedies and unfathomable suffering on a daily basis," it warned.

Bangladesh Water Minister Ramesh Chandra Sen said his country faced "daunting challenges."

"Every year, abundance of water during the monsoon causes disasters like floods and river bank erosions, and scarcity of freshwater during the dry season causes salinity ingression, drought," and other problems, he said.

Added to that was contamination of groundwater, drawn from shallow tubewells, by naturally occurring arsenic, he said.

Health experts say as many as 70 million people in India and Bangladesh are exposed to excessive concentrations of arsenic and fluoride. Some experts describe it baldly as the biggest mass poisoning in history.

Indonesia's minister of public works, Djoko Kirmanto, said countries in Southeast Asia were already beginning to be affected by climate change, which was affecting rainfall patterns and harvests.

"Recently, severe water-related disasters, such as floods, droughts, tsunami, rainstorms, landslides, water-borne diseases and epidemic have occurred in high intensity," he said.

Ministers outlined national water programmes, in water supply and conservation and flood control, and promised to work in regional fora to address competition for water supplies.

China's Chen defended his country against accusations of water misuse and pollution.

Greens point to problems of over-extraction of aquifers and river pollution, and say the Three Gorges dam and programmes to divert water towards the dry north of the country could unleash ecological disaster.

"Over the past 30 years, China has sustained a nearly 10 percent annual economic growth rate at a one percent annual growth rate of water use," Chen said.

"By 2020, when an all-round, well-off society becomes a reality in China, the Chinese people will be safely protected from floods, have access to safe and clean drinking water in both urban and rural areas (and) enjoy (a) remarkably improved water environment."

The World Water Forum, wrapping up on Sunday, has drawn around 27,000 experts, policymakers and activists to round tables, seminars and debates on the worsening problems of freshwater.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water should be basic human right: Council of Europe *
20 March 2009
Agence France Presse

Access to water should be recognised as a basic human right, a senior Council of Europe official said Friday ahead of World Water Day.

"A rights-based approach to water would be a very important means for civil society to hold ... governments accountable for ensuring access to an adequate quantity of good quality water as well as sanitation," the head of the parliamentary assembly of the pan-European body, Lluis Maria de Puig, added.

"The challenges to be tackled are numerous: chronic water shortages in the south, floods in the north and problems with water management and quality in central Europe," he said in a statement.

De Puig singled out the fact that Europe was still failing to treat more than half of its urban water pollution.

"Forty-one million people in Europe do not have access to safe drinking water, and 85 million lack access to basic sanitation," he said.

"Proper water governance that offers sustainable access to water and sanitation is not possible without legislation."

De Puig called on his parliamentary colleagues in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe to act as advocates of the right to water and sanitation.

"The right to sufficient quantities of high-quality water that is easily accessible for all population groups needs to be enshrined in our constitutions," he said.

World Water Day is to be marked on Sunday.


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## StephenP (Jul 17, 2008)

In a few years time, Scotland can be one of the worlds greatest exporters of water. Scotland has too much water for just us.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Diarrhoea near epidemic in Bangladesh heatwave: clinic *
27 April 2009
Agence France Presse

Cases of diarrhoea in Dhaka are reaching epidemic levels, a health expert warned Monday, as the Bangladeshi capital faced record temperatures, a severe water shortage and power cuts.

Azharul Islam Khan, a doctor at Bangladesh's biggest diarrhoea hospital, said the clinic was seeing around 800 new patients a day.

"We're treating the highest number of patients in the pre-monsoon season during our 45 years in existence," Khan, of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, said.

"The situation is very grim and reaching epidemic levels in Dhaka and its outskirts. An acute crisis of water and unusually prolonged heat wave are to blame for such a severe outbreak."

Sixteen people have died of diarrhoea-related illnesses and the hospital has treated more than 40,000 patients since the beginning of March, a hospital spokesperson said.

Temperatures in Dhaka reached 42.2 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday, the highest in 14 years, according to weather officials, with no rain forecast for the next week.


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## Jim856796 (Jun 1, 2006)

Some of the good lakes (such as Lake Chad and the Aral Sea) are drying up because of overuse and it will take forever to refill them, even if canals are constructed.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Overnight downpour no fix for water woes in Mumbai, where city has cut water supply by 30 pct*
8 July 2009

MUMBAI, India (AP) - City authorities have cut water supplies to India's financial capital by nearly one-third, despite an overnight downpour Wednesday that caused flooding but failed to replenish Mumbai's dangerously low water levels.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) cut water to the city by 30 percent on Monday, the steepest rationing in a decade, S.S. Kurlekar, BMC's chief hydraulic engineer, said Wednesday.

"We may increase the cut-off percent because sufficient rain hasn't arrived yet," Kurlekar said, adding that a decision will be made Monday.

The BMC first introduced a cut of 10 percent on June 8, but raised it to 20 percent on June 20 after expected monsoon rains failed to fall.

It has also suspended water supplies to some construction sites and ordered cutbacks to swimming pools, whirlpool baths, gardens and city hotels, the Times of India reported Wednesday.

The delayed onset of India's annual monsoon has reduced water at two of the six lakes that supply water to Mumbai's more than 13 million inhabitants to below drawable levels, the Times of India said.

Local media have reported residents stockpiling water and 18 hour-a-day water cuts in some parts of the city.

"We may have to switch over to tanker water or bore wells. It does add 2 or 3 percent to the cost of construction," said Mohan Date, assistant vice president of projects for the Lodha Group, which is building 28 developments around Mumbai. He said the firm would continue harvesting rainwater at construction sites to help mitigate the supply cuts.

Suresh Rangarajan, a spokesman for the Indian Hotels Company Ltd., which operates four luxury Taj hotels in Mumbai, said the hotels would work with city authorities to deal with the shortages and ensure that guest services aren't interrupted.

The hotels use private as well as city water sources.

The swimming pool at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel "will not be shut down," he said.

Heavy overnight rains Wednesday did little to mitigate the shortage, but caused flooding in low-lying areas, intense traffic snarls and some school closures. They also temporarily interrupted train and airport traffic in Mumbai, the Press Trust of India reported. Some residents put out large drums to collect rain water to use for washing and bathing.

Colaba, in south Mumbai, recorded 2.9 inches (73.7 millimeters) of rainfall in the 24 hours ending at 8:30 am, but since the June 1 start of monsoon season, cumulative rainfall has been 39 percent -- or 8.7 inches (221.2 millimeters) -- less than normal, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.

For the country as a whole, cumulative rainfall was 43 percent below average since June 1.

That has created potentially serious problems not just for urban residents, but also for India's heavily agricultural economy. The U.S. Agricultural Department attache in New Delhi said India could face a "severe drought" in a report last week.

India is one of the world's largest producers of cotton, rice and sugar, among other crops, and 60 percent of crop land is not irrigated, according to Goldman Sachs.

Weak rainfall could reduce agricultural growth to 1.4 percent annually, half the long-term average, putting downward pressure on India's overall economic growth and threatening a spike in food prices, Goldman Sachs warned last week.


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## Ribarca (Jan 28, 2005)

Barcelona always had major major water issues. Last year as a result of a drought made resulted in all reservoirs around the city being at critical levels. Water had to be imported by boat even. 

A desalination plant opened this year. It's the largest in Europe an done of the largest in the word.

Fom the GE website:

Spain, one of the most arid European countries, has a long-standing water supply strategy to desalinate and use brackish river water. That effort has just taken a giant step forward as GE and Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATLL) have announced the opening of one of the world’s largest and most technologically advanced river water desalination plants, near Barcelona.

The plant employs advanced electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology from GE to tap the Llobregat and to ensure a clean, reliable water supply for Barcelona and the surrounding Catalonia region.

The EDR plant, operated by water utility Aigües Ter-Llobregat in Abrera, treats 220,000 cubic meters/day of water (58 million gallons/day). It runs in conjunction with ATLL’s existing water treatment plant which uses conventional treatment technology. The EDR plant’s output is blended with the output of the conventional plant to produce a combined stream that is adequate for the region’s needs, meets all water quality standards and is cost-effective.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Mumbai considers cloud seeding to make it rain: reports *
10 July 2009
Agence France Presse

The civic authorities in India's financial capital Mumbai are considering cloud seeding amid growing water shortages caused by a lack of consistent monsoon rain, media here reported Friday.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said it had consulted the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and a company that conducted a cloud seeding experiment in 1992 for the best time to carry out the process.

The poor monsoon has seen water levels drop markedly at the six lakes that supply Mumbai with 3.3 billion litres (872 million US gallons) of water every day. A 30 percent cut in supplies was introduced this week.

"Over the coming week, we will consult the IMD to work out how to efficiently and effectively carry out the process of cloud seeding," senior BMC official Anil Diggikar was quoted as saying in The Hindustan Times newspaper.

The process involves spraying the chemical compound silver iodide or dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) from an aircraft onto clouds to induce rainfall.

Diggikar ruled out another proposal mooted to alleviate the water shortage, desalination, because of the length of time it would take to set up plants and cost, the domestic Press Trust of India news agency said.

Like many Indian cities, Mumbai depends on the annual monsoon to replenish water stocks. The rains had been due to arrive on June 8 but only hit the city at the end of last month.

Since then, they have been intermittent, raising fears about water supplies and agricultural resources in western Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital.

The IMD said 63.4 millimetres (2.5 inches) of rain fell in the Colaba area of south Mumbai in the 24 hours to 8:30 am (0300 GMT) Friday. Heavy rain is forecast for Friday and Saturday.


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## NICKKK1995 (Jun 14, 2009)

Melbourne water supply is at 26.6%.
Restrictions are in force but it doesn't seem to be helping as much, although we have been getting some rain this winter


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## rosn19 (Oct 10, 2008)

Here it hasn't rained in such a long time that I don't even remember how rain sounds like, and yet we don't have water shortages, it usually never rains here, we only get about 400 mm of precipitation a year, mostly in sporadic and strong super cell thunderstorms during the Spring and Summer, during the Autumn and Winter it is rare for rain to happen, but if any precipitation does happen it is usually in the form of sleet or snow about once every 5 years.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*FACTBOX-Facts on world's water shortage *

June 16 (Reuters) - With California in its third year of drought, concern over access to clean water is no longer limited to the developing world.

Here are some facts about global water scarcity, according to the World Health Organization.

* Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent and is getting worse as water needs rise with population growth, urbanization and increased usage by households and industry.

* Almost one-fifth of the world's population (about 1.2 billion people) lives in areas where water is scarce. One quarter of the population lives in developing countries that face water shortages due to lack of infrastructure.

* Poor water quality can increase the risk of cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery and other infections. Water scarcity can lead to typhus, plague and trachoma, an eye infection that can cause blindness.

* Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes, which increases the risk of contamination and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which carry dengue fever, malaria and other diseases.

* A lack of water has increased the use of wastewater for farming. More than 10 percent of the world's people consume foods irrigated by wastewater that may contain chemicals or disease-causing organisms.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

Cities with plenty of water:

Rochester
Buffalo
Erie
Cleveland
Toledo
Detroit
Gary
Chicago
Milwaukee
Duluth

So when are you moving to the US Great Lakes?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Smart tech could save billions of litres of water *

LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Americans can save some of the 225 billion gallons of water (852 billion litres) wasted each year through over-watering by installing smart systems which deliver just the right amount of moisture.

Homeowners and companies over-water their grass and plants by between 30 and 300 percent, said Chris Spain, chief sustainability officer at water management company HydroPoint, citing a report by the American Water Works Association.

"The reason for the waste is because of dumb technology," Spain said. "There are 45 million irrigation systems in the U.S. (controlled) by simple timers. They do a great job of keeping time but a lousy job of irrigating to what the land requires."

City landscaping, or "urban irrigation", makes up 58 percent of urban water use, Spain said, adding that the water wasted generates over 544,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.

Smart irrigation systems are programmed to optimize water use based on parameters including plant and soil types and amount of sunlight, and also feature weather sensors that monitor soil moisture levels following rainfall.

"U.S. water-related energy use is at least 521 million megawatt hours a year -- equivalent to 13 percent of the nation's electricity consumption," said a River Network Carbon Footprint of Water report published in May.

"The carbon associated with moving, treating and heating water in the U.S. is at least 290 million tonnes a year."

Climate change also affects water levels, with western states experiencing their driest years since records began.

This year marks the third of drought for the most-populous state of California where lawmakers are urging residents to take shorter showers and water lawns less frequently to cut consumption a fifth.

Several studies found that smart irrigation systems command water savings of between 16 and 30 percent over traditional timer-based controllers, which come at a similar cost.

"It's not like solar, lighting or other systems which require vast infrastructure changes," Spain said, adding that his clients have saved $75 million in water cost savings.

Jennifer Riley-Chetwynd of Rain Bird said her company saw a corporate headquarters nearly halve water used for irrigation from 416,000 gallons per year to 214,000 gallons.

Over-watering also pollutes and damages buildings, drawing $375 million in insurance claims in California in 2005, according to the California Insurance Association.

New California legislation makes smart irrigation controllers mandatory for new properties from 2012, Spain added.

BRITAIN

The United States is not alone with concerns over water.

A joint study published on Wednesday by the UK's Energy Saving Trust and the Environment Agency warned that as new homes became more and more energy efficient, hot water use could overtake heating as the main cause of carbon emissions.

"Six percent of the UK's annual carbon emissions are related to water use -- nearly 90 percent of that is from hot water use in the home," the report said.

Britain's Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee also issued a report on Wednesday to water regulator Ofwat warning that water scarcity will become "an increasingly critical issue in the South and East of England" and urging improved water efficiency.


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## ontarian (Jul 22, 2009)

Makes me glad I live in Canada, even if it has seemed to rain every day this summer. hno:


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*China says to adjust water pricing to avoid waste *

BEIJING, July 23 (Reuters) - China will adjust water pricing because the treatment of sewage is now too cheap and water resources should be used more efficiently, the Chinese central planning agency said on Thursday.

The National Development and Reform Commission said local governments would need to implement the changes gradually and cushion the impact on low-income groups by increasing subsidies.

The prices of water used for industrial and commercial purposes should be unified, it added in a statement on its website. It also encouraged more recycling.

It did not give any specific details about how pricing would be adjusted.

Rapid expansion of cities and factories has put a heavy strain on water resources, and China has been trying to cut usage to alleviate chronic shortages that it fears could undermine its ability to feed itself and crimp economic growth in the long run.


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## Bombay Boy (May 6, 2005)

luckily we got some good monsoon rain in the last 2 weeks. lake levels are now near over-flow level

the weather sure is changing though. this is the weakest monsoon that i can remember


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## limeyellow (Jun 28, 2009)

*Melbourne the nation's driest capital*
Peter Ker and Sarah-Jane Collins
July 30, 2009 
MELBOURNE is carving a new reputation as Australia’s driest capital city, giving further credence to dire bushfire warnings for the coming summer.

As a leaked report warned that fire risk this season could exceed the catastrophic summer of 2009, Premier John Brumby called the state’s top fire officials to a private meeting late on Tuesday.

Mr Brumby is believed to have urged the officials from Victoria’s fire organisations to avoid parochialism and competitive tension between their agencies, as preparations for summer gather pace.

His call for unity was met with accord from those in the room.

The leaked report by the Department of Sustainability and Environment warned that sustained drought and the likelihood of further drying under an El Nino weather pattern had created a perilous environment for bushfires.

The report, by fire expert Paul Brockhoff, named Melbourne and its hinterlands as among Victoria’s driest and most at-risk regions.

Statistics released by the Bureau of Meteorology yesterday support the findings, with Melbourne clearly Australia’s most rain-starved capital city this year.

With just 158 millimetres falling in the city gauge, Melbourne has been almost twice as parched as the next driest city, Adelaide, which has received 307 millimetres since January 1.

Sydney has received more than four times as much rain as Melbourne, mocking Victoria’s reputation as ‘‘the garden state’’.

Mr Brockhoff’s report warned that the absence of rain had dried the Victorian landscape to such an extent that official methods for predicting fire behaviour could now prove inaccurate.

DSE fire chief Ewan Waller conceded that current conditions challenged fire prediction methods, but he insisted the department was not reviewing its methods.

‘‘Underestimations from the [modelling formula] can occur when we are in long-term drought conditions, in which case we always work with the Bureau of Meteorology to make marginal adjustments,’’ he said.

Mr Brumby yesterday said Victoria had a ‘‘single objective’’ to make the state ‘‘fire ready’’ for summer.

‘‘All of the advice at the moment is that this [summer] will be as bad, if not worse than anything we’ve seen in the last decade,’’ he said.

Mr Brumby said towns in high-risk locations were being identified across the state, and plans to protect them were being developed.

‘‘Individuals and their families will also need to focus on their own homes and their own farms and making them safer,’’ he said.

Nationals leader Peter Ryan said the DSE report painted ‘‘a pretty dire picture’’ and he accused the Government of lacking a co-ordinated response to the threat.

‘‘The Government has to better co-ordinate the message it is giving to Victorians as to how we as a state are going to combat the threat of fire,’’ he said.

‘‘At the moment it is happening on an incredibly ad hoc basis, it is confusing and alarming people.’’


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## socrates#1fan (Jul 1, 2008)

I live in the Great Lakes region, water is one of our last concerns. 
Also, if I remember correctly we can't sell it to anyone, not even other states! :lol:
It is all ours!!!! :crazy:


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water crisis in parched northern China *
3 August 2009
Agence France Presse

The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to irrigate his plot of land, even though he lives right next to the largest water project in history.

The elderly farmer watches in despair as his corn crop wilts under the scorching northern China sun, knowing that a fresh, abundant stream is only a stone's throw away.

"We ordinary people don't dare use that water," Li told AFP as he nodded toward the fenced-in canal, part of China's hugely ambitious but troubled South-North Water Diversion Project.

"That water is for Beijing, and people here do not steal water."

The temperatures have approached 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks this summer in Hebei province, a region surrounding Beijing that has been stricken by drought for much of the last decade.

But although Li's crops are withering away, he is getting no sympathy from the authorities -- quite the opposite.

Earlier this year the government announced that the completion of the project's central canal, stretching 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from a tributary of the Yangtze river to Beijing, will be delayed five years to 2014.

This means that instead of being a beneficiary of the project, Hebei will now be tasked with supplying water to the capital until the project is completed.

The delay will further complicate a water shortage in northern China that experts say is caused by global warming, drought and rising demand from 96 million people who live in the booming Beijing region that includes Hebei.

Currently a 300-kilometre portion of the canal from the Hebei city of Shijiazhuang to Beijing is supplying emergency water to the capital from three reservoirs that previously provided water to the parched province.

The canal, which sits above Li's farmland, abruptly disappears as it nears the dry riverbed of the North Yishui river only to reappear on the opposite bank next to a large pump station that sucks the water through pipes underneath the dusty riverbed.

"There has been no water in the river for 30 years," the bronzed Li said, sweating under a straw hat, a partially capped silver tooth gleaming in the sunlight.

His family's well dried up about 10 years ago, so he like other villagers must now rely on water from a machine-pumped well -- and pay for it, making irrigation prohibitively expensive.

"At first the machine-pumped well was only 30 or 40 metres deep, now it is well over 100 metres deep," Li said of the falling underground water table, a phenomenon seen throughout north China.

This situation should have been alleviated by the water diversion project -- an unprecedented 400-billion-yuan (58-billion-dollar) plan to channel water from the humid south to the parched north along three separate lines.

"Now that (construction of the canal) has been pushed back for five years, we will see a deepening of the crisis in the North China region," said Zhang Junfeng, a water expert with Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental group.

"The North-South project was supposed to come on line earlier and it was designed to reduce the amount of underground water being used in urban areas."

The delay means that the region will have to rely on pumping more underground water to meet demand.

Zhang estimates that Beijing already pumps up to two thirds of its water from underground aquifers with wells in some place up to 1,000 metres deep.

Government officials with the South-North project and the Hebei water resources authority refused to be interviewed for this article.

But according to plans, in 2014 about 13 billion cubic metres (460 billion cubic feet) of water is expected to be channelled along the central canal from the Yangtze tributary every year, with one tenth earmarked for Beijing.

The rest will go to Hebei and other cities and regions along the route, while a significant amount will be lost to evaporation and leakage, the government has said.

Beijing's total water consumption in 2008 was 3.5 billion cubic metres, according to government figures.

According to state press reports, the delay in construction stems from the rising costs of the project as well as the resettlement of up to 300,000 people still living along the route of the canal.

Costly plants to treat badly polluted water along the project's eastern line have also put the construction and the delivery of water on that line behind schedule, they said.

A western line that was to transfer water from the headwaters of the Yangtze river to the Yellow river along the Tibetan plateau, which had been scheduled to break ground in 2010, has been postponed indefinitely, reports said.

If the western line is scrapped completely the overall cost of the project will fall significantly, they said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Obama administration official says California water woes are national priority *
12 August 2009

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California's ongoing water crisis is a major national priority, akin to restoring the Chesapeake Bay or Florida's Everglades, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will hold a public meeting in Washington next month to discuss plans to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the freshwater estuary that supplies drinking water to two-thirds of Californians and is one of the most vital wildlife habitats on the West Coast, Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said.

Hayes was in Sacramento to update farmers, city dwellers and environmentalists about federal efforts to free up water for crops and fisheries, and to preside over the latest round of water fights as the state hobbles through its third year of drought.

"California's delta is as important a national resource as the Everglades, or the Great Lakes in the Midwest, or the Chesapeake Bay," Hayes said. "Not only is it a crucial ecosystem that is in peril, but more than 20 million Americans in the most populated state in the nation rely on it for their drinking water. The status quo is not sustainable."

Water is a precious resource in California. In recent years, legal battles over dwindling supplies have interrupted and reduced irrigation flows to the San Joaquin Valley, which supplies much of the nation's produce, forcing farmers to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres and idle farmworkers.

Low rainfall also has meant there is less water in the delta and rivers to sustain native fish, which has resulted in the cancellation of commercial salmon fishing season for the past two years.

In late June, Salazar traveled to Fresno, the heart of the valley, and assigned Hayes to help find solutions to ease the toll of the state's water shortage on growers.

Since then, the government has directed millions in stimulus funds to the federal Central Valley Project, which manages the dams and canals that move water around the state, and to farmers to build more than 90 new wells to pump more groundwater.

Still, in valley towns where lines for emergency rations of rice, dried beans and canned goods have at times stretched for a block, officials warned that wasn't enough to put jobless families back to work.

Fifty mayors are calling for President Barack Obama to visit the area himself, saying three years of drought coupled with court-ordered protections for threatened fish species have sapped critical irrigation supplies.

Hayes said relaxing protections for endangered species would not solve the state's water woes. Solutions need to restore the delta ecosystem as a whole.

"This ecosystem is one of the jewels of the West Coast," Hayes said. "Some new engineering may be what saves California."

State and federal agencies are evaluating several conservation strategies for the estuary, including a controversial proposal that could cost up to $17 billion to build a canal to move water around the ecosystem.

Speaking before Hayes at Wednesday's meeting, residents of the fragile delta islands said they feared those plans ignored their livelihoods and communities.

Environmentalists and fishermen said any federal solutions should prioritize safeguarding vulnerable native species, expecially the record-low numbers of chinook salmon that once flourished off the coasts of California and Oregon.

Gary Bobker, program director of the Bay Institute, a nonprofit environmental organization, said the delta "has a compromised immune system and any one of the stressors could push it over the edge."


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## aaabbbccc (Mar 8, 2009)

marrakech morocco is an amazing city and very green but it is located in a semi arid region 
all this suburban sprawl malls hotels new homes resorts plazas mosques even churches that are being built and so many new parks gold courses 
one day they will realize OH SHIT NO MORE WATER !!


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## dark_shadow1 (May 24, 2009)

It happens in Israel as well. The water supply is still fine but water is now more expensive and a few billion $ are spent on water desalination. The annual water consumption in Israel is around 2 billion cubic meters and the plan is to desalinate around 450 million cubic meters in 2012 and even more later.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Kenya's rural drought hurts the big city: power cuts, high food prices create urban despair *
26 August 2009

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Crops have shriveled, hundreds of cattle are dead and the World Food Program said 3.8 million Kenyans need emergency food aid because of a prolonged drought, which is even causing electrical blackouts in the capital.

With rivers thinning to a trickle and mountaintop glaciers shrinking, there's not enough water to fully run hydroelectric plants. Authorities this month began rationing power in the capital, darkening homes and businesses at least three days a week.

In Nairobi's posh, leafy neighborhoods, light bulbs flicker as generators rumble to life. Gym treadmills in luxury hotels jolt to a halt.

The slums, where roughly half the capital's 4 million residents live, are being hit the worst. Taps have run dry and residents often wait for days for trucks to deliver expensive potable water.

Business owners say they're losing money, harming Kenya's rebound from the violent aftermath of a 2007 presidential election that eviscerated the economy and killed more than 1,000 people.

In Nairobi's Kosovo slum, hotel manager Irungu wa Kogi said he's already laid off two waiters. Before the power cuts, the main attraction at his small, tin-roofed hotel was a television. Now the television -- and the restaurant -- are silent.

"A lot of young men are becoming unemployed and they can't provide for their families," he said. "Crime will definitely go up."

Prime Minister Raila Odinga this month warned of a "catastrophe" if seasonal rains don't come in October ad November, expressing fear that inter-clan violence could ensue. Kenya's grain harvest is expected to be 28 percent lower. Food prices have jumped by as much as 130 percent.

In Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum, tailor Joseph Owino, 40, said he expects that power cuts and customer's financial problems will slash his income this month by some 80 percent, to less than US$12 (euro8.38). He and his six children now eat a meager breakfast of maize meal and black tea and skip lunch.

"We buy hoofs which have been thrown away and cook them with vegetables so that it has a meaty taste," he said. "Don't even ask me the last time I drank a soda."

In the parched countryside, its even worse. In many places, the air stinks of rotting cattle carcasses.

Peruan Lesakut, a Maasai herdsman, said he had 120 cattle in July but now has only 56, all emaciated.

"I cannot sell my animals," he said. "I will stay here until they all die."

Eunice Wairimu's maize, bean and potato harvests on her small farm in Laikipia, 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of Nairobi, have failed for the past three years. The 45-year-old relies on handouts from the U.N.'s World Food Program.

"I can't say the last time I used sugar or ate meat," she said in her one-room home.

Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist, told The Associated Press she is worried about Kenya's future.

"We see carcasses of animals everywhere," said Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work in conservation, women's rights and clean government. "You could easily see carcasses of people everywhere."

The WFP has called for US$230 million (euro160.58 million) in donations to feed hungry Kenyans.

"Life has never been easy for the poor in Kenya, but right now conditions are more desperate than they have been for a decade," said Burkard Oberle, WFP's Kenya Country Director, on Tuesday.

WFP already is providing emergency food aid to some 2.5 million Kenyans, but another 1.3 million still need help, said spokeswoman Gabrielle Menezes.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Frigid weather knocks out water in El Paso*
7 February 2011

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - El Paso's mayor declared a water emergency Sunday to stiffen enforcement of a ban that restricts residents and businesses from using water for anything but drinking.

Mayor John Cook took the step after frigid temperatures put some of El Paso's water distribution network out of commission, prompting a water shortage.

The emergency proclamation allows the city to cut off water service to customers found to have violated the restrictions. Hospitals and other emergency services are exempt. A citywide alert continues urging the public to boil water before drinking.

A statement issued by the city says the restrictions will remain in effect indefinitely.

Some improvement had been seen in reservoir levels Sunday, City Manager Joyce Wilson told the El Paso Times on Sunday. However, El Paso Water Utilities customers have been asked to boil their drinking water and refrain from showering, using dishwaters, washing cars and other activities that might use large quantities of water.

"The bottom line is there are still a lot of breaks and leaks throughout the system," Wilson said. "The water demand, in terms of what they are pumping, is still very high compared to what it should be."

The 72 hours of sub-freezing temperatures in El Paso is unique in recent history, Wilson said.

"This has impacted everything. This community was not built for sustained sub-freezing temperatures," she said.

Meanwhile, in South Texas, marine biologists and volunteers worked urgently to try to save hundreds of sea turtles left stunned by the frigid conditions along the beaches of South Padre Island and Boca Chica, near the mouth of the Rio Grande.

Rescuers had found 575 sea turtles in hypothermic shock because of the weather, said Kat Lillie of Sea Turtle Inc. That was nearly double the record set in the 1980s, she said. Twenty died, however, and the toll was expected to rise, said Jeff George, a curator with the nonprofit turtle rescue group.

Most of the inert turtles were found on the beach, but some were rescued from the cold surf, Lillie said.

"We saved as many as possible, but there are places we couldn't access," she told the Valley Morning Star of Harlingen, Texas, for a story in Sunday editions.

Most will be released once the Gulf of Mexico surf warms, George said.

However, Super Bowl fans trying to catch flights home from Sunday's game should not find any weather-related complications, an American Airlines spokeswoman said.

There have been no flight cancellations at Fort Worth, Texas-based American's base at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and few at its hub at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, said spokeswoman Mary Sanderson. Most of the inclement weather expected for Monday was expected to pass between the two hubs, she said.

However, she urged travelers to arrive at DFW three hours before flight time to pass through security because of the surge of homeward-bound passengers expected at the airport.

Warming weather was leaving the rest of Texas to deal with widespread water pipe breaks as more frigid temperatures loom for North and West Texas at midweek, along with the promise of sleet and snow for North Texas.

------

Information from: El Paso Times, http://www.elpasotimes.com


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Chennai water tankers suck suburbs dry *
26 May 2011
The Times of India

CHENNAI: The soaring heat and the rising demand for water in the city have water tankers making a beeline to the suburbs and exploiting groundwater and farm wells. This has raised concerns among farmers in the agricultural villages bordering the city.

Suburban residents are also concerned about the steep fall in groundwater levels. Residential areas such as Medavakkam, Pallikaranai, Tambaram, Chitlapakkam, Old Pallavaram, Zamin Royapettah, Hastinapuram, Chromepet, Selaiyur and Puli Koradu face severe water shortage. Residents here get water once in a fortnight.

The local bodies of Perungudi, Okkiyam-Thoraipakkam, Karapakkam, Sholinganallur, Semmancheri and Navalur on the Old Mahabalipuram Road are ill-equipped to provide water as they are short of manpower and funds. Residents recall that when they moved into the locality a decade ago, water was available at a depth of 10 feet. Today, many don't find a trace of water at 100 feet, because of extraction of water from wells by tankers.

With the sowing season about to began, farmers are a concerned lot. There are more than a dozen agricultural villages around the city including Kovilambakkam, Nanmangalam, Sittalapakkam, Perumbakkam, Kundrathur, Gowl Bazaar, Polizhalur, Madambakkam, Vengaivasal, Madurapakkam and Agaram Then, where paddy is cultivated in large tracks of land for centuries. Farming is still a major occupation in many villages including Sholinganallur and Ottiyambakkam. Paddy cultivation is done on 8,000 acres in the suburbs, especially around Tambaram and off OMR. The area of cultivation used to be 12,000 acres a few years ago. Depletion of water resources is a big reason for the shrinking of farmlands in the suburbs.

Every day around 500 tanker lorries operate on OMR. They take water from farm wells of adjoining areas and supply water to residential areas in the city and software companies on the IT Corridor. "This is a perennial problem for us. We conserve water to use it for summer for farming, but tanker lorries take away all the water, drying up aquifiers" said K Sakthivel, a resident in Sholinganallur.

Lorries make hundreds of trips to many areas around the city targeting farm wells. Each farm well, on an average, is 50 feet deep and a tanker-lorry has a capacity of 12,000 litres. A farm well owner is paid Rs 60 - Rs 70 per load which is then sold for twelve times higher the price to buyers. While private tankers operating in the southern suburbs cater to the needs of software companies and residential areas along OMR and the city, lorries in Poonamallee and Ambattur supply water to hotels, companies and residential areas in the city.

Tanker lorry operators had another argument. "The existing water supply by Metrowater is limited. Our role is crucial in bridging that gap," said N Nijalingam, president, South Chennai Private Tanker Lorry Owners' Association.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*China invests billions to avert water crisis*
AFP _Excerpt_
Wed, Oct 12, 2011 

China is to invest up to 4 trillion yuan ($600 billion) over the next decade to overcome a huge water shortage that threatens the country's economic growth, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The vice minister of water resources said China's unbridled economic growth had left up to 40 percent of its rivers badly polluted and the country faced "huge pressures" on supplies of water.

*********************************

Over 46,000 reservoirs in China need to be rebuilt or reinforced to ensure that surrounding farmlands and communities are safe from flooding and have enough water for irrigation, he said.

More funding would also be needed to protect the reservoir of the $22.5 billion Three Gorges Dam -- the world's largest -- from geological disasters and pollution, he said.

*********************************

Jiao also said the government would build more water transfer projects and hydroelectric dams and strengthen efforts to ensure the supply of safe drinking water.

China's north suffers regular droughts, while annual flooding wreaks havoc on farm areas in the south.

The government is building a huge $60 billion south-to-north project that aims to divert water to the drought stricken region around China's capital, Beijing.


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## chicagogeorge (Nov 30, 2004)

socrates#1fan said:


> I live in the Great Lakes region, water is one of our last concerns.
> Also, if I remember correctly we can't sell it to anyone, not even other states! :lol:
> It is all ours!!!! :crazy:



This is correct

http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/blog/great_lakes_compact/

But I wouldn't mind selling some of Lake Michigan's water to our western states... For a very very high price :cheers:

If anyone is interested in the Great Lakes water levels 
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/now/wlevels/levels.html


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Serious water shortage hits Luanda*
AFP
Fri, Feb 17, 2012

The water utility in Angola's capital vowed Friday to repair a burst water main within days, to end severe shortages that have lasted a week across much of Luanda.

Residents have to trek long distances to find water, which is so scarce that prices have doubled this week due to the shortage, jumping from 7,000 to as much as 14,000 kwanzas ($70 to $140) for a cistern full.

The increase was even steeper for 25-litre containers, soaring from 20 to 50 kwanzas in some neighbourhoods.

"The shortage is due to a maintenance problem in an aqueduct serving the capital... worsened when a construction company ruptured a main," said water utility Epal's spokesman Domingos Pacienca.

"Epal is is doing everything possible to repair the damaged main so that the people won't suffer shortages," he added, vowing to restore the system to normal by Sunday.

Normal is especially relative in this city of seven million, where most people live without running water or electricity.

The UN children's agency UNICEF estimates that 87 percent of the urban population lives in shacks, even though the nation's oil riches have given Angola one of the world's fastest-growing economies.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Water shortage a global threat without urgent reform: OECD*
AFP 
Wed, Mar 7, 2012

Urgent reforms to raise efficiency in the way water is used around the world are needed to avert serious shortages in the next decades, and markets in water can help, the OECD said on Wednesday.

In about 40 years' time more than four out of 10 people in the world may be living in river areas in the grip of severe shortage, it warned.

"Efficient use of water is essential, and pricing it properly can discourage waste," the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

"Economic instruments such as water markets can help to achieve this in a flexible way."

The OECD, a forum and source of advice on policy in many fields for governments in advanced countries, was commenting on the release of a study it published called Meeting the Water Reform Challenge ahead of a world water forum in Marseille, southern France, on Tuesday.

The organisation warned that reform was needed urgently "if the world is to head off serious deterioration in the quality and quantity of water available."

OECD secretary general Angel Gurria warned that "without major policy changes, we risk high costs to economic growth, human health, and the environment."

But much could be done, he said. "Economic instruments like tariffs, taxes and transfers -- the 3Ts -- are powerful tools to ensure an efficient use of water."

The report pointed to some of the factors raising pressure on water resources, citing rapid urbanisation, population growth and changing economic dynamics for managing water supply.

Competition for the use of sources of water would increase because demand was forecast to rise by 55 percent up to 2050.

"By that time, 3.9 billion people -- more than 40 percent of the world's population -- are likely to be living in river basins facing severe water stress."

More than 240 million people, living for the most part in rural areas, would probably not have improved access to water by 2050 and nearly 1.4 billion people would not have basic sanitation.

Increased pollution from agriculture and poor treatment of waste would contaminate ground water, rivers and oceans.

"Governments should pay closer attention to the way in which their water, energy, agriculture and environmental policies interact," the OECD advised.


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## FAAN (Jun 24, 2011)

Its a sad situation in a lot of place of the world. But here in Brazil are 12% of all freshwater on the planet and as in most Brazilian cities, the water in my town is never lacking.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Beijing to see acute water shortage in 2012*
Updated: 2012-04-24 12:21
(Xinhua) 

BEIJING - Beijing is expected to face a water shortage of 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2012, accounting for a third of the city's annual water usage, according to local water authorities.

The municipal government will work to keep the capital's water consumption within 3.7 billion cubic meters this year, as only 2.4 billion cubic meters will be supplied by local water resources, Cheng Jing, head of the Beijing Water Authority, said Monday.

The gap is expected to be bridged via a combination of measures, including the use of recycled water, water diversion and moderate exploitation of underground water, Cheng said.

Beijing has been plagued by droughts for 13 consecutive years, with its fast-paced economic development and ever-growing population exacerbating the water shortage, according to Cheng.

The available per capita water usage in Beijing has dropped to 100 cubic meters, about one-tenth of the internationally acknowledged warning level.

Local authorities have tightened water management by setting a ceiling for the city's annual water consumption at 4 billion cubic meters by 2015.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*India's capital in water crisis after supplies cut*
AFP 
15 June 2012

Large parts of New Delhi were struggling with acute water shortages on Friday after a neighbouring state cut its supplies at the peak of summer, officials said.

The sprawling Indian capital, with a population of 16 million sweltering in 43 degree C (109.4 F) summer heat, relies on four neighbouring states for its water -- Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand.

Haryana, the biggest supplier, cut its flow to the city on Thursday and about three million people have suffered shortages or been completely cut off, according to the Delhi Jal Board, a government agency responsible for water supply.

Some of the capital's smartest districts are among the affected areas, and the crisis reflects growing water stresses in the country of 1.2 billion people.

"Suddenly, Haryana is refusing to release water to Delhi," a top Delhi Jal Board official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

"We are struggling at all levels. Every minute we are registering complaints of water shortage. This crisis has left us in a mess."

Several states across India face major challenges over water supply, triggering long-running legal battles over water sharing.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit accused Haryana, which says it has to conserve water for its own residents, of "playing foul" with the capital.

"We are not asking for any favours. We want what is due to us," Dikshit said in a statement Thursday.

In the peak of summer, New Delhi needs 1,100 million gallons of water every day, according to the Delhi Jal Board, but public water providers are able to only supply 835 million gallons.

"There is always a supply-demand gap but this gap is just widening and worsening the crisis," said Himanshu Thakkar, an expert on water management at the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People research group in New Delhi.

According to a federal government report on water consumption in 2010, usage per capita in Delhi is higher than in most European cities.

"Delhi is a privileged city, it is a spoilt child. It does not use rain water harvesting, refuses to recharge 600 water bodies (reservoirs) and just chooses to complain about shortages," said Thakkar.

A 2011 study by experts published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US journal, estimated that more than one billion urban Indians will face serious water shortages by 2050.

India's six biggest cities -- Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad -- are among those most affected by the shortages.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Need to use water judiciously: experts*
Hindustan Times
Fri 15 Jun, 2012

New Delhi, June 15 -- At a time when the city is reeling under acute water shortage, experts have questioned the use of the precious commodity for non-essential purposes, especially for nondrinking use.

While some question the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) for setting up a packaged drinking water bottling plant and selling branded water, others rue the use of treated water for golf courses and water parks.

"Delhi is a water-scarce state... Why should DJB run a bottling plant" said Himanshu Thakkar, an environmentalist.

DJB's plant at Greater Kailash bottles about 3.5 lakh litres per day into 20-litre, 2-litres, 1.5-litre, 1-litre and even 500 ml jars.

The DJB calls it a "minuscule" amount, but experts say that in times of scarcity, even 100 litres per person would benefit 3,500 persons directly.

"There is a reason for the Greater Kailash plant. When it was started, the Sonia Vihar plant was not operational and many south Delhi areas did not get adequate water," said a DJB spokesperson. The facility is benefiting consumers even today, the DJB official argued.

Golf courses and water parks, both catering to a niche segment, are known water guzzlers and targets of environmentalists. The average water consumption of an 18-hole golf course is 1 lakh litres per day. There are a minimum of eight golf courses in Delhi and at least six water parks.

Environmentalist Manoj Misra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan agreed, "Fresh treated water should not at all be used for nonpotable needs. Only re-cycled water should be used."

But the DJB said it can hardly do anything about it. "Golf course land does not belong to us and hence that is not in our purview," the spokesperson said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Houston, Dallas, Austin mayors voice support for $2 billion measure to finance water projects*
Associated Press
20 February 2013

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - The mayors of Houston, Dallas and Austin told lawmakers on Tuesday that they support a proposed $2 billion fund to finance water projects across the state and would like to see less red tape and more conservation efforts.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker told the House Natural Resources Committee that she supports using money from the Rainy Day Fund to create a water development bank that would help local authorities build new water projects and finance conservation efforts. Houston has invested in numerous water projects and delivers 495 million gallons a day to 470,000 customers.

Parker said the fund would help the rest of the state make sure there is enough water for Texas' growing population.

"If the rest of the state doesn't make the same significant investment that we have, then we are out there by ourselves, and we may lose our competitive edge as a state going into the future," she said.

The committee was hearing testimony on House Bill 4, a proposal by Rep. Alan Ritter, R-Nederland, to create a revolving, $2 billion fund that the State Water Development Board would use to leverage financing for water projects. The board says Texans need to spend $53 billion over the next 50 years to make sure the state has enough water for a growing population, with half of the money coming from the state.

Luke Metzger, director of the advocacy group Environment Texas, told the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday that it was critical that the state emphasizes conservation and ensures enough water is left behind for the eco-system. He pointed out that large-scale water projects, such as new reservoirs, can have a negative impact on the environment.

"In 1968, the State Water Plan predicted that by the year 2020 you would need 32 million acre-feet of water. Of course it's almost 2020 now, and we're only using 18 million acre-feet," he said. "It's critical that in planning for the next 50 years, we are flexible and we're careful not to burden Texans in the future with huge debts for projects we might not need."

He pointed out that San Antonio grew by more than 65 percent while still using the same amount of water and said other cities could follow that model. He said plans are for the state to meet 34 percent of future water needs through conservation and called on the committee to set aside that much of the new water fund for projects that save water.

Just fixing leaky water mains could save enough water for 2.7 million Texans, Metzger said.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings called on lawmakers to change the permitting process to make it easier and cheaper to build new water facilities. He cited the experience of Dallas, which tried to build a new reservoir on the Neches River called Lake Fastrill.

The city spent millions of dollars on developing the project, filing permits and ultimately on litigation, only to have the U.S. Supreme Court rule against the city, killing the project.

"The lengthy permitting process creates a situation where local governments must make a wager on getting water," Rawlings said. "If we don't deal with these water needs, in 2060 it will cost us about half a million jobs in the area and $64 billion in projected income."

So far no group has come out against creating what would be called the State Water Infrastructure Fund for Texas, or SWIFT. But the measure may require Republican lawmakers to vote in favor of lifting the state's constitutional spending limit, which many conservatives do not want on their record.

Lawmakers feel a new urgency in dealing with the state's water shortage following the worst single-year drought in the state's history in 2011. Much of the state remains in drought and experts warn that it may continue and become the worst multi-year drought on record.

Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell also testified Tuesday in support of the water fund, saying it would eliminate the need to charge a fee for every water tap in the state.

Jim Parks, executive director of the North Texas Municipal Water District, explained to lawmakers that his system currently serves 1.6 million customers and is projected to serve 3.8 million in 50 years. He said the authority has convinced customers to reduce water usage by 12 percent through an education project, but at the same time one of the district's reservoirs, Lake Texhoma, is currently off-limits because of an invasive species.

He also said the new fund needs less red tape than current ones, which he said discourages his district from using them.

--------

On the Internet:

House Bill 4: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess83R&BillHB4

Senate Bill 4: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess83R&BillSB4


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## Eric Offereins (Jan 1, 2004)

We have no shortage of water in Rotterdam. IN order to prevent flooding of streets in heavy rain, we build storage areas for rainwater in some of our buildings and in this underground parking garage:


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Salt Lake City enters Stage 2 water shortage response, first time since 2004 *
May 27, 2021
_Excerpt_ 

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – A Stage 2 water shortage response has been triggered for Salt Lake City and County water customers.

Mayor Erin Mendenall declared the water shortage Thursday, saying the dramatically low mountain snowmelt and stream flows are to blame. The creeks supplying a portion of the water for more than 360,000 water customers are ranging from only 22% to 52% of average this year.

“All indicators point to a severe drought in the coming months in Salt Lake City and across our state,” says Mayor Mendenhall. “Relying on data and advice from our water supply experts, we will increase our conservation efforts from an earlier Stage 1 to Stage 2 of our City Water Shortage Contingency Plan.”

More : Salt Lake City enters Stage 2 water shortage response, first time since 2004


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

Forecasts call for a large reduction in snow pack over the coming decades. It's a problem throughout the western US and Canada. Even places not normally associated with water shortages like Vancouver, are looking at a 85% reduction in snow pack by 2100. The whole region is getting hotter and dryer.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Yes, the regular supplies are running low yet the storms are getting stronger with sudden huge deluges that can't really be effectively captured, stored, and retained to even out our overall drier conditions.


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

We'd be wise to figure out how to better capture those huge deluges. Even if it costs billions it's still more cost effective than water shortages and crop failure.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Las Vegas pushes land swap to balance growth, conservation *
June 18, 2021
_Excerpt_ 

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Record-breaking heat and historic drought in the U.S. West are doing little to discourage cities from planning to welcome millions of new residents in the decades ahead.

From Phoenix to Boise, officials are preparing for a future both with more people and less water, seeking to balance growth and conservation. Development is constrained by the fact that 46% of the 11-state Western region is federal land, managed by agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that are tasked with maintaining it for future generations.

That’s led officials in states like Nevada and Utah to lobby the federal government to approve land transfers to allow developers to build homes and businesses on what had been public land. Supporters in the two states have won over environmentalists in the past with provisions that allocate proceeds to conservation projects, preserve other federal lands and prevent road construction, logging or energy exploration.

More : Las Vegas pushes land swap to balance growth, conservation


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## Tucson2018 (Jun 1, 2018)

Here in Tucson, I'm not as worried about water shortages as I would living in Las Vegas or even Phoenix. Tucson does get its monsoon season every summer, and it's been raining and raining. Tucson generally gets anywhere from 10-13 inches of rain a year, 7-8 inches in Phoenix and 3-4 inches in Las Vegas.. Last Year we didn't have a monsoon season, only 2+ inches of rain for the entire year, but it's been said that if you miss a monsoon season one year, you'll make up for it the next year, and that seems to be what's happening. I'm happy for the wildlife and plants and my own plants, which respond very little to hose water. It's the electrolytes in rain that really spurs them on. Cacti can't handle water very well, and I've got 3 cacti all but lying on their side, drunk with too much water. Phoenix does get some monsoon rains but weaker than Tucson.


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