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In Praise of Tap Water
Editorial, New York Times
On the streets of New York or Denver or San Mateo this summer, it seems the telltale cap of a water bottle is sticking out of every other satchel. Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons 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.
Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.
Next, there’s the environment. Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans. Add in the substantial amount of fuel used in transporting water, which is extremely heavy, and the impact on the environment is anything but refreshing.
Tap water may now be the equal of bottled water, but that could change. The more the wealthy opt out of drinking tap water, the less political support there will be for investing in maintaining America’s public water supply. That would be a serious loss. Access to cheap, clean water is basic to the nation’s health.
Some local governments have begun to fight back. Earlier this summer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom prohibited his city’s departments and agencies from buying bottled water, noting that San Francisco water is “some of the most pristine on the planet.” Salt Lake City has issued a similar decree, and New York City recently began an advertising campaign that touted its water as “clean,” “zero sugar” and even “stain free.”
The real change, though, will come when millions of ordinary consumers realize that they can save money, and save the planet, by turning in their water bottles and turning on the tap.
(1 August 2007)
A river ran through it
Claire Scobie, The Observer
The Murray is the lifeblood of Australia’s farming country, a legendary river that thundered 1,500 miles from the Snowy Mountains to the Indian Ocean. Now, it’s choking to death in the worst drought for a thousand years, sparking water rationing and suicides on devastated farms. But is the ‘big dry’ a national emergency, or a warning that the earth is running out of water?
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Australian farmers always know someone else who is doing it tougher. They pride themselves on their resilience. They take pleasure in living in ‘a sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains’. Conservative and deeply sceptical, many dismiss global warming as hogwash. But with unprecedented water scarcity and the Murray, the country’s greatest river system, on the verge of collapse, warning bells are ringing around the globe.
Financially, the drought is pinching as far away as the UK, hiking up the cost of bread in British supermarkets as wheat prices reach a 10-year high. Symbolically, it cuts much deeper. Commentators are looking on, nervously, wondering if what is becoming the norm in Sydney could be the future for Sydenham.
Professor Tim Flannery, an Australian environmental scientist and an international leader on climate change, has no doubts. ‘Australia is a harbinger of what is going to happen in other places in the world,’ he says. ‘This can happen anywhere. China may be next, or parts of western USA. There will be emerging water crises all over the world.’
(5 August 2007)
The Emerging Global Freshwater Crisis
Richard Embleton; Oil, be Seeing You
Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water yet more than one out of six people (1.1 billion) lack access to safe drinking water, and more than two out of six (2.6 billion) lack adequate sanitation.[16] And those numbers grow every year.
Now over half the world’s population live in heavily energy-dependent cities whose aging water infrastructure, even now before peak oil, is beginning to crumble. Even in wealthy North America, the cost of renewing and modernizing water and wastewater infrastructure is enormous, and there is urgency for rational assessment and informed decision making about the need for new or expanded infrastructure and about potential impacts on Great Lakes waters.[12]
Where will peak oil leave us?
(July 25, 2007)
Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil
Richard Embleton; Oil, be Seeing You
…In my article The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance, I explored the potential of future infrastructure maintenance problems on a broad range of sociatal infrastructure.
Nowhere, in my opinion, is this more critical than with regard to dams. The Great Lakes contain a full 18% of the total surface freshwater on the planet. All of that water is kept in check by hundreds of dams controlling both outflow and inflow. That is a tremendous amount of aging infrastructure that will need increasing amounts of energy-intensive maintenance to remain viable.
The energy that was available during the era when all that infrastructure was built won’t be available when it all has to be replaced or decommissioned. The results could be catastrophic.
(July 30, 2007)
Post Peak Dam Maintenance, or Lack Thereof
Richard Embleton; Oil, be Seeing You
“Dam failures are of particular concern because the failure of a large dam has the potential to cause more death and destruction than the failure of any other man-made structure. This is because of the destructive power of the flood wave that would be released by the sudden collapse of a large dam.”[2]
What will be the fate of the world’s large dams after peak oil as energy declines, technology falters and budgets for inspection and maintenance of these critical and dangerous facilities begin to be pared back in deference to perceived more immediate societal priorities?
(July 31, 2007)
