This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert -- specifically Utah's slickrock portion of it where I live -- hot 'n' dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly arid landscape, redrock powder is lifted up and carried hundreds of miles eastward until it settles on the broad shoulders of Colorado's majestic mountains, giving the snowpack there a pink hue.

Some call it watermelon snow. Friends who ski into the backcountry of the San Juan and La Plata mountain ranges in western Colorado tell me that the pink-snow phenomenon has lately been giving way to redder hues, so thick and frequent are the dust storms that roll in these days. A cross-section of a typical Colorado snowbank last winter revealed alternating dirt and snow layers that looked like a weird wilderness version of our flag, red and white stripes alternating against the sky's blue field.

The Forecast: Dust Followed by Mud

Here in the lowlands, we, too, are experiencing the drying of the West in new dusty ways. Our landscapes are often covered with what we jokingly refer to as "adobe rain" -- when rain falls through dust, spattering windows or laundry hung out to dry with brown stains. After a dust "event" this past spring, I wandered through the lot of a car dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the only color seemingly available was light tan. All those previously shiny, brightly painted cars had turned drab. I had to squint to read price stickers under opaque windows.

All of this is more than a mere smudge on our postcard-pretty scenery: Colorado's red snow is a warning that the climatological dynamic in the arid West is changing dramatically. Think of it as a harbinger -- and of more than simply a continuing version of the epic drought we've been experiencing these past several years.

The West is as dry as the East is wet, a vast and arid landscape of high plains and deserts broken by abrupt mountain ranges and deep canyons. Unlike eastern and midwestern America, where there are myriad rivers, streams, lakes, and giant underground lakes, or aquifers, to draw on, we depend on snowpack for about 90 percent of our fresh water. The Colorado River, running from its headwaters in the snow-loaded mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, is the principal water source for those states, and downstream for Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and southern California as well.

While being developed into a crucial water resource, the Colorado became the most dammed, piped, legislated, and litigated river in America. Its development spawned a major federal bureaucracy, the Bureau of Reclamation, as well as a hundred state agencies, water districts, and private contractors to keep it plumbed and distributed. Taken altogether, this complex infrastructure of dams, pipelines, and reservoirs proved to be the most expensive and ambitious public works project in the nation's history, but it enabled the Southwest states and southern California to boom and bloom.

The downside is that we are now dangerously close to the limits of what the Colorado River can provide, even in the very best of weather scenarios, and the weather is being neither so friendly nor cooperative these days. If Portland soon becomes as warm as Los Angeles and Seattle as warm as Sacramento, as some forecasters now predict, expect Las Vegas and Phoenix to be more like Death Valley.

If the Colorado River shut down tomorrow, there might be two, at most three, years of stored water in its massive reservoirs to keep Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and dozens of other cities that depend on it alive. That margin for survival gets thinner with each passing year and with each rise in the average temperature. Imagine a day in the not so distant future when the water finally runs out in one of those cities -- a kind of slow-motion Katrina in reverse, a city not flooded but parched, baked, blistered, and abandoned. If the Colorado River system failed to deliver, the impact on the nation's agriculture and economy would be comparable to an asteroid strike.

Too Much Too Soon, Then Too Little Too Late

Hot and dry is bad enough; chaotic weather only adds to our problems. As we practice it today, agriculture depends on cheap energy, a stable climate, and abundant water. Those last two are intimately mixed. Water has to be not just abundant, but predictable and reliable in its flow. And the words "predictable," "reliable," and "water" go together ever less comfortably in our neck of the woods.

Here's the problem. Despite the existence of the Colorado River's famous monster-dams like Hoover in Nevada and Glen Canyon in Utah and the mega-reservoirs -- Lake Mead and Lake Powell -- that gather behind them, we really count on the vast snowfields that store fresh water in our mountains to melt and trickle down to us slowly enough that our water lasts from the first spring runoff until the end of the fall growing season. Dust-covered snowpack, however, absorbs more heat, melts sooner, and often runs down into streams and rivers before our farmers can use it. In addition, as the temperature rises, spring storms that once brought storable snow are now more likely to come to us as rain, which only makes the situation worse.

This shift in the way our water reaches us is crucial in the West. Not only is snowpack shrinking as much as 25 percent in the Cascades of the Northwest and 15 percent in the snowfields of the Rocky Mountains, but it's arriving in the lowlands as much as a month earlier than usual. Farmers can't just tell their crops to adjust to the new pattern. Even California's rich food basket, the Central Valley, fed by one of the most complex and effective irrigation infrastructures in the country, is ultimately dependent on Sierra snowpack and predictable runoff.

We need a new term for what's happening -- perhaps "perturbulence" would describe the new helter-skelter weather pattern. In my Utah backyard, for example, this past May was unusually hot and unusually cold. At one point, we went from freezing to 80 degrees and back again in three short days. Not so long ago, seasonal changes came on here as if controlled by a dimmer switch, the shift from one season to the next being gradual. Now it's more like a toggle switch being abruptly shut on and off.

To add to the confusion, our summer monsoon season arrived six weeks early this year. A surprisingly wet spring seemed like good news amid the bigger picture of drought, but it turned out to mean that farmers had a hard time getting into their muddy fields to plant. Then when spring showers were so quickly followed by summer storms, some crops were actually suppressed, according to local gardeners and farmers.

The West at Your Doorstep?

Our soggy spring and summer, however, masked an epic drought that has touched almost every corner of the nation west of the Mississippi at one time or another over the past decade. Southern Texas right now is blazingly bone-dry. Seattle had a turn with record-breaking temperatures earlier this summer. In New Mexico, the drought has been less dramatic -- more like a steady drumbeat year after year.

A trip to the edge of Lake Powell in the canyon country of southern Utah in June revealed the bigger picture. A ten-story-high "bathtub ring" -- the band of white mineral deposits left behind on the reservoir's walls as the waterline dropped -- stretches the almost 200-mile length of the reservoir.

Recreational boat users, hoping against hope that the reservoir will refill, have regularly been issuing predictions about a return to "normal" levels, but it just hasn't happened. Side canyons, once submerged under 100 feet of water, have now been under the sun long enough to have turned into lush, mature habitats filled with willows and brush, birds and pack rats. A view from a cliff high above the once bustling, now ghostlike Hite Marina on the receding eastern side of Lake Powell shows the futility of chasing the retreating shoreline with cement: the water's edge and a much-extended boat-launching ramp now have 100 acres of dried mud, grass, and fresh shrubs between them.

After decades of frantic urban development and suburban sprawl across the states that draw water from the Colorado, demand has simply outstripped supply and it's only getting worse as the heat builds. Not surprisingly, a debate is building over what to do if there isn't enough water to fill both Lakes Powell and Mead, the principal reservoirs along the Colorado. Should the seven states that depend on the river live with two half-full reservoirs or a single full one, and if only one, which one? River managers have now realized that both massive "lakes" were always giant evaporation ponds in the middle of a desert and only more so as average temperatures climb. There is no sense in having twice as much water surface as necessary, which means twice as much evaporation, too.

Given the stakes, the debate over what to do if there isn't enough water is playing out like the preview to the all-out water war to come when the reality actually hits. Westerners are well aware that, as always, there will be winners and losers. The constituency for Lake Mead will no doubt prevail because of its proximity to Las Vegas and Phoenix, two cities that grew bloated on cheap but, as it has turned out, temporary water from the dammed Colorado. Already desperate to make up for their lost liquid, they will surely muster all their power and influence to keep the water flowing.

Las Vegas is now aiming to tap into an aquifer under the Snake Valley that straddles eastern Nevada and western Utah. Recently, a rancher friend who ekes out a precarious living there mentioned the obvious to me: the dusty surface of that arid high desert is barely held in place by a thin covering of brush, sage, and grass. Drop the water table even a few more inches and it all dies. The dust storms that would be generated by a future parched landscape like that might make it all the way to the Midwest or even farther. After decades in which Easterners ritualistically visited the American West, the West may be traveling east.

Those we pay to look ahead are now jockeying like mad for position in a future water-short West. A new era of ever more pipelines, wells, and dams is being dreamed up by the private contractors and bureaucrats swelling up like so many ticks on the construction and maintenance budgets of the West's heavily subsidized water-delivery infrastructure. It is unlikely, however, that their dreams will be fully realized. The low-hanging fruit -- the river canyons that could easily be dammed -- were picked decades ago and, unlike in the good ol' days when water simply ran towards money, citizens of our western states are now far more aware of the ecological costs of big dams and ever more awake to the unfolding consequences of dependence on unreliable water sources.

Making more water available never led to prudent use. Instead, cheap and easy water led to such foolishness as putting a golf course with expanses of irrigated green in every desert community, not to speak of rice and cotton farming in the Arizona desert.

Rip Your Strip

All of this is now changing. Fast. The airways across the Southwest are loaded these days with public service announcements urging us to conserve our water. "Rip your strip" may be a phrase unknown in much of the country, but everyone here knows exactly what it means: tear out the lawn between your front yard and the street and put in drought-resistant native plants instead.

Everyone is increasingly expected to do their part. In my little town of Torrey, Utah, we voluntarily ration our domestic water on weekends when the tourists are in town, taking long showers and spraying the dust and mud off their tires. Xeriscaping -- landscaping with drought-resistant native plants instead of thirsty grasses and ornamental shrubs -- is now fashionable as well as necessary, even required, in some western towns, a clear sign that at long last we get it. Yes, we live in a desert.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that this sort of thing, useful as it is, will be nearly enough. Our challenge is only marginally to take shorter showers. After all, 80 percent of Utah's water goes into agriculture, mostly to grow alfalfa to feed beef cows raised by ranchers heavily subsidized by federal grants and tax write-offs. They graze their cows almost for free on public lands and have successfully resisted even modest increases in fees to cover the costs of maintaining the allotments they use.

Utah legislators passed a law last session that gives agriculture precedence when there's not enough water to go around. Consider that a clear signal that the agricultural interests in the state don't have any intention of changing their water-profligate ways without a fight.

Sure, everyone agrees that we have to change, but we in the West are fond of focusing blame on personal bad habits that waste water -- and they couldn't be more real -- rather than corporate habits that waste so much more. The fact is that we Westerners have never paid anything like what our water truly costs and we lack disincentives to waste water and incentives to conserve it. Behind all that fuss you hear from us about the damn government and how independent-minded we Westerners are, is a long history of massive dam and pipeline projects financed by the American taxpayer, featuring artificially low prices and not a few crony-run boondoggles. Call it welfare water.

The Ruins in Our Future

A visit this summer to the most famous ruins in the West, the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park and hollowed out palaces at Chaco Culture National Historic Park, proved a striking, if grim, reminder that we weren't the first to pass this way -- or to face possibly civilization-challenging aridity problems. The pre-Colombian Anasazi culture flourished between 900 and 1150 A.D., culminating in a city in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, that until the nineteenth century contained the largest buildings in the Americas, now uncovered from centuries of drifting sands. Mesa Verde with its "skyscraper" cliffside dwellings, also flourished in the twelfth century and was similarly abandoned and forgotten for hundreds of years.

The mysteries of these deserted cities -- their purpose and the reasons they were abandoned -- may never be fully plumbed. This much is undeniable though, as one walks through cobbled plazas and toppled towers, and past sun-blasted walls: cities, dazzling in their day, arose suddenly in the desert, prospered, and then collapsed. Tree-ring data confirm that an epic drought, one lasting at least 50 years, coincided with their demise. Broken and battle-scarred bones unearthed in the charred ruins indicate that warfare followed drought. What the Anasazi experienced -- scarcity, the need to leave homes, and a struggle for whatever remained -- is getting easier to imagine in a water-short West. Only this time at stake will be Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Archaeologists at Chaco recently uncovered a sophisticated cistern system under the city. Anasazi builders, they now believe, learned how to harvest the runoff from the summer rains that poured down and spilled over the sandstone cliffs behind the ruins. Think of these as the Lake Meads and Powells of their time, capturing the torrential monsoon rains just as those reservoirs do the Colorado River's flash floods.

The cistern system provided temporary water security, but eventually it clearly proved inadequate. In the long run, Chaco couldn't be sustained because turbulent, unreliable flows of water are hard to tame. The descendants of those who left it behind settled the mesa-top villages of the Hopis in Arizona and of the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico. They learned to live on a smaller scale, with scant rain, and after many hundreds of years, they (unlike their once living and magnificent cities) remain. There is hope in that. It is no less possible now to understand limits, to practice precaution, and to build resilient communities.

Smoke Season

When it comes to the perturbed weather regime we are now entering, it's not just our agriculture and our sprawling cities that are having trouble adapting. The vitality of whole ecosystems is at stake. Native vegetation suffers, too. When critical moisture arrives before temperatures are warm enough for seeds to germinate, they don't. The native grasses on my land didn't thrive despite our cold, wet spring. Invasive cheat grass, however, blooms early, grows quickly, then dies and dries. It ignites easily and burns hot.

When higher temperatures evaporate the moisture in soils, they become drier in late summer and fall. Plants wither and are vulnerable to insect infestations. The vast expanse of mountains I can see out my window may seem like a classic alpine vista to the tourists who flock here every summer. A closer look, however, reveals expanding patches of gray and brown as beetle infestations kill off entire dried-out mountainsides. More than 2.5 million acres of Rocky Mountain woodlands have been destroyed by bark beetles so far. The once deep-green top of Grand Mesa in western Colorado is becoming a gray, grim dead zone, a ghostly forest waiting for lightning or some careless human to ignite it.

Dead forests, of course, are fuel for the dramatic, massive wildfires you now see so regularly on the TV news. We had quite a few of those wildfires this summer in Utah, but -- what with southern California burning -- they didn't make the evening news anywhere but here. That statement can be made all over the West. Both the frequency and size of fires are on the rise in our region. Early in the summer of 2008, while more than 2,000 separate wildfires raged across his state, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a point that many Western governors might soon be making. He claimed that California's fire season is now 365 days long. The infernos that licked the edges of the Los Angeles basin this August were at once catastrophic and routine.

Smoke is dust's inevitable twin in a West beset by climate chaos, and the lousy air quality we suffer when fires are raging is part of the new normal. A few years ago we could check the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website to see when winds might shift and bring relief. This summer, like last, there were so many fires and they were so widely distributed that it hardly mattered which way the wind blew: smoke was in our lungs and eyes one way or the other.

All of this adds up to a kind of habitat holocaust for wild species, from the tiniest micro-organisms in the soil to the largest mammals at the top of the food chain like elk and bears. Nobody makes it in a dead zone, whether it's a dust bowl or a desiccated forest.

Changes start at the bottom, as is usually true in ecosystems. When soil dries and the microbial dynamic changes, native plants either die or move uphill towards cooler temperatures and more moisture. The creatures that depend on their seeds, nuts, leaves, shade, and shelter follow the plants -- if they can. Animals normally adapt to slow change, but an avalanche of challenges is another matter. When species begin living at the precarious edge of their ability to tolerate the stress of it all, you have to expect wildlife populations to shift and dwindle. Then invasive species move in and a far different and diminished landscape emerges.

Human populations in the West will also shift and dwindle, with jarring consequences for all of America, if we do not learn quickly that watersheds have limits, especially within arid and unpredictable climates. The land also needs water. And such problems aren't just "Western." Dust storms and smoke won't just stay here.

There are, of course, enlightened and engaged citizens who are doing their best to address the growing challenge of a heated-up, chaotic climate. Conservation groups like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are working hard to protect critical habitat for stressed species and urging government land management agencies to include global warming in their plans and projections. The Glen Canyon Institute has raised the specter of a diminished Colorado River and is challenging water managers to get innovative and adopt policies that reward water conservation and punish waste. Across the West, people are waking up and learning about their own watersheds -- where their water comes from and where it goes. This, too, is hopeful. Time, unfortunately, is not on their side.

So, come see the beautiful West, our shining mountains, blue skies, and fabled canyons. It's all still here right now. Take pictures. Enjoy. But hurry...

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Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

The participants of the 2009 World Water Week in Stockholm last Friday unanimously said that water must be included in the COP-15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

At various sessions throughout the Week, a number of organizations and officials have articulated the reasons why water needs to be an integral part of the negotiation process on climate change and adaptation. Those reasons became key points of the “Stockholm Statement” which the assembled participants of the 2009 World Water Week unanimously supported at the final plenary session this morning.

Introduction: Climate change is happening and adding complexity to existing global challenges. A strong and fair agreement on future global commitments on climate change measures—both mitigation and adaptation—is crucial in order to secure future water resource availability. The negotiations towards a Copenhagen Agreement are therefore of great concern to the global water community.

The importance of water must be properly and adequately reflected within the COP-15 agreement, and in processes beyond COP-15. In recent months substantial efforts have been undertaken to ensure that this is achieved including the Dialogue on Climate Change Adaptation for Land and Water Management, the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul and during dialogues held at the Climate Change Negotiations.

Reflecting these efforts, and the urgent need to ensure that the global community is adequately prepared to respond to climate change, the following messages are conveyed from Stockholm to Copenhagen:

* Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt. Managing the resource effectively, including through well-conceived IWRM approaches and at a transboundary level, is central to successful adaptation planning and implementation, and to building the resilience of communities, countries and regions;

* Adaptation is a prerequisite for sustainable development and poverty reduction. Adaptation measures thus need proper integration within broader development goals and objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals;

* Integration of water with land and forest management is key to effective adaptation. We strongly endorse the Nairobi Statement on Integrated Land and Water Resources Management for Climate Change Adaptation; we also emphasize that water-related adaptation can and should support global mitigation actions;

* Ecosystem protection and sustainability is fundamental to adaptation and human development. We therefore urge increased efforts towards and investment in the protection and restoration of natural resources—including water—as an essential part of any adaptation process;

* Higher-quality information that is more effectively shared will strengthen responses. In particular there is a critical need for the water and climate communities to increase the sharing of information at all levels of policy and practice—from global to local, and from local to global;

* Vulnerability assessments and risk management are critical to sound adaptation practice. Knowing where and how the impacts of climate change are most likely to affect populations and ecosystems through the water cycle will help in the identification of areas for early intervention or ‘hot spots’; these include arid regions, areas highly dependent on groundwater, small island developing states, low-lying deltas and fragile mountainous areas;

* New and additional funds are essential. It is imperative that additional funding is allocated in support of developing adaptive strategies for vulnerable groups and ecosystems; there is a need for an initial mobilization of finance to assist vulnerable, low income countries already affected by climate change, followed by the establishment of a well-resourced mechanism for funding adaptation as part of ongoing climate negotiations.

Follow up
We urge the global water and climate communities to look beyond COP-15 and work through dialogue to strengthen global mechanisms that can enhance collective action on water and adaptation. These should include, but not be limited to, better sharing of knowledge and technology in support of adaptation measures in developing countries, active support for capacity building and access to improved levels of financing.

Finally, the water community expresses its commitment to strengthening institutional cooperation at all levels between the climate, water and wider development communities under appropriate mechanisms and institutional arrangements in order to work more collectively to address the immense development challenges ahead.

Reprinted from Stockholm Water Institute.

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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

The failure of governments in both rich and poor countries to prioritize basic sanitation is killing thousands of children every day, according to two reports released today by international aid agencies WaterAid and PATH. And a third report released yesterday suggests that the global economic crisis may increase the death rate, at least in Africa.

Public toilets in the developing world are fairly uncommon. Those that are available often fall into disrepair and disuse. Above, one of the glitzier example of public plumbing in the slums of Delhi, India.Kevin FergusonAll three reports offered this constructive advice: Promote access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene together as part of national health care agendas. “It’s just unfathomable that so little development aid is going to stop this enormous global killer,” says John Sauer, communications director for Water Advocates, a nonprofit group that works with PATH and WaterAid. “There’s no excuse not to prioritize funding for very simple, low-cost interventions. This is solvable.”

The World Health Organization estimates that 28 percent of the 9.7 million children who die before the age of 5 every year do so because of poor sanitation and unsafe water. Ironically, that death rate may climb because “the recent and positive focus on ... the delivery of health services” does not included preventative measures, such as providing proper sanitation, states the WaterAid report.

The WaterAid report does not call for diarrhea-prevention and treatment to be given preference over other diseases, just that it be included in the mix.

Likewise, the PATH report, titled Diarrheal Disease: Solutions to Defeat a Global Killer, notes that over the last decade, momentum has slowed, with declines in research and funding commitments and competing global health priorities. “The perceived lack of urgency and taboo nature of the illness may have also contributed to the current low level of awareness surrounding the issue,” states the PATH report.

Diarrhea, linked directly to unclean water and poor sanitation, is the second-biggest killer of young children, after acute respiratory infections, according to the WHO. That makes diarrhea, causing 17 percent of these deaths, more deadly than measles, malaria and HIV/AIDS combined, says WHO. When acute respiratory infections are factored in—hand washing with soap and clean water greatly reduces the incidence of respiratory infections, according to a 2005 report published in The Lancet—the mortality rate climbs to about 40 percent.

The reports did offer some good news. Some countries have learned to coordinate water and sanitation programs, says the WaterAid report: “Senegal is an example of a country that has got it right. The distribution of tasks and responsibilities between these structures was decided by an inter-ministerial decree, and the system is functioning well.” Ethiopia and Uganda have made some progress, as well, says the report.

Other evidence backs up these findings. For example, in Uganda, a six-month program to improve drinking water in the Soroti District found that households that obtained access to clean drinking water were more likely to improve their sanitation and hygiene practices as well. The Safe Drinking Water for Uganda (SDWU) pilot project, funded by Proctor and Gamble (P&G), and implemented by Population Services International and Africare from December 2007 through May 2008, “had a spill-over effect on other non-direct beneficiaries, who also adopted the hygiene practices promoted by the project,” according to Ruth Mufute, a regional director with Africare and author of the report. The project’s goal was to reduce the incidence of waterborne diseases among 1,500 persons by promoting the use of P&G’s PuR water disinfectant and better hygiene. However, lack of funding to support such projects means that residents typically revert to old habits, such as drinking from tainted wells, she says.

The fallout from the global financial crisis poses an additional impediment to expanding access to clean water, according to a report issued by AfricanEconomicOutlook.org, a coalition of intergovernmental agencies. The continent’s economic outlook has turned “decisively negative,” it said. “Growth in emerging economies is also expected to slow dramatically,” states the report. Economic growth in Africa is expected to be only 2.8 per cent in 2009, less than half of the 5.7 percent estimated for 2008.

The economic downturn could well impact childhood health. In central Africa, childhood mortality increased by 13 percent from 1991 to 2007. However, some countries with initially high mortality rates made remarkable progress in reducing childhood mortality, the report states. “A number of countries, even poor ones, have displayed noteworthy performances (Eritrea, Malawi and Namibia), raising the possibility that progress is possible with political will, adequate resources and targeted strategies,” states the report, which links poverty, poor sanitation and high rates of childhood mortality.

—

What WaterAid suggests to reduce childhood deaths:

1. All national health plans should confirm clear links between country health information systems, particularly disease prevalence data, and the process of planning and budgeting.

2. All countries should have a mechanism for inter-ministry coordination on reducing child mortality, with a joint agenda to deliver relevant strategies.

3. All national health plans should contain an adequate strategy for environmental health.

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Will Africa’s farmland become a ‘resource curse’?

Photo: rutloOur nation is in the midst of some serious energy and water problems, but what many may not realize is that these two issues are very closely linked (see the recent Wall Street Journal article on this topic). The truth is that energy and water are related in just about every way you can imagine and in ways that affect our lives everyday -- down to the lights and water in our homes that we too often take for granted. The water supply sector utilizes large amounts of energy to transport, treat, and deliver water. On the flip side, vast quantities of water are required to generate power.

First let’s start with how much water is used for energy. The United States thermoelectric industry uses 3.3 billion gallons of water every year [PDF]. That is 20 percent of all the water consumed in the country for non-agricultural uses. This number is currently predicted to grow to 7.3 billion gallons by the year 2030. Water is used in all stages in the creation of energy -- to extract, process, refine, and transport the fuels to power-generation sources. The power plant itself also uses vast amounts of water [PDF], particularly for the towers that cool the water heated in the generators.

Next, consider the energy used to produce and deliver water. California was among the first states to take a close look at this [PDF]. They discovered that almost 20 percent of all the electricity used in the state was used to supply and treat water. On average, 75 percent of the costs of producing municipal water are electricity costs related to capturing, treating, distributing, and using water. After the water is used, more energy is required to treat the wastewater.

To illustrate this point for Texas, I recently authored a report with the University of Texas to provide guidance for how the state can better integrate water and energy supply planning for the future. Check out the report to see our recommendations for steps Texas can take now to create a framework for more collaboration between energy and water planners and guidelines for improving data on the energy-water relationship.

As cities continue to grow, particularly in water scarce areas, these linkages between water and energy use are becoming more important. A growing community needs more power, which requires more water, which uses more power, and so on. Understanding this relationship highlights the importance of conserving water and practicing energy efficiency. For every kilowatt saved, water is also saved. For every gallon of water not used, energy demand is reduced. Investments in and incentives for energy and water conservation must be our highest priority.

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A Penny Saved Is…

Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

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At SEJ, doom and gloom without the sense of humor

ISTANBUL -- Fresh water and money have one thing in common: Their mismanagement has left billions of people without ready access to either, according to policymakers, non-governmental agencies and activists attending the World Water Forum here this week.

AquaFed's Gerard Payen (Courtesy U.N.)

It was one of the few things all parties seem to agree on; who is responsible for that mismanagement and what should be done about it is where the attendees part ways.

A United Nations report, Water in a Changing World, released here today, spreads the blame around, chiding "water sector leaders," including government ministers, private businesses and civil society groups, for failing to take action.

"Management of the world's water resources requires reliable information about the state of the resource and how it is changing in response to external drivers such as climate change and water and land use," the report states. "There is little sharing of hydrologic data, due largely to limited physical access to data, policy and security issues; lack of agreed protocols for sharing; and commercial considerations. This hampers regional and global projects that have to build on shared datasets for scientific and applications-oriented purposes."

The result for the world's freshwater supply is "bleak," the report concludes.

In Africa, poverty reduction efforts are rarely coordinated with water policy or take into account wise management of water resources, says the UN report, despite findings of a strong correlation between investment in water infrastructure and economic growth. In many developing countries, public utilities do not do well because of low motivation, poor management, inadequate cost recovery and political interference," states the report.

Gérard Payen, president of AquaFed, an international federation of private water companies, and an adviser on water issues to the U.N Secretary General, shifts much of the blame on governments. "There is plenty of water on the planet," says Payen. "Where increasing uses or climate change create scarcity, strong political will and commitment are needed to allocate and manage water satisfactorily."

Three billion people -- nearly one-half of the world's population -- have no access to tap water in their home or in their village. That means they must carry water every day or pay high prices for delivery. One of the reasons for that, says Payen, is governments' poor allocation of water between agriculture, industry and domestic uses.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based group of 30 relatively prosperous nations, has taken a similar line, saying that integrated water-resources management is needed to better allocate water between agriculture, other uses and environmental needs.

Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians national chairperson and senior adviser on water to the president of the U.N. General Assembly, agrees that mismanagement is to blame. But Barlow, who led activists here protesting the commoditization of water, blames private businesses and governments.

Water management has also been given short shrift by economic stimulus packages launched by the United States, China and Korea and other countries, says Angel Gurría, secretary general of the OECD. "The green is being stressed but not the blue," he says. "Particularly for water-saving, shovel-ready projects" to repair aged and damaged water pipelines. The United Nations says the total cost of replacing aging water supply and sanitation infrastructure in industrial countries could be as high as $200 billion per year.

Up to 20 percent of water in the developed world is lost due to leakage; in the developing world, it is as high as 70 percent, he says.

Likewise, Jamal Saghir, director of energy, transport and water at the World Bank, says there are insignificant funds earmarked for water investment in the stimulus packages of the United States and other countries responding to the economic crisis.

The World Water Forum concludes on Sunday.

Ferguson is a freelance journalist based in Arlington, Mass.

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INSTANBUL -- The World Water Forum -- the largest gathering of water-sector public policy makers, private-sector vendors and non-profit organizations -- got underway this morning in Istanbul with a dash of glitz and a glut of gloom.

"Everyday, thousands of children die as a result of complications due to consumption of unclean water," Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in opening remarks. "There is significant discrepancy and injustice between different regions and countries around the world in terms of daily water compensation."

A throng 28,000 strong is attending the triennial event, including three princes, three presidents, five prime ministers or heads of state, 90 ministers, hundreds of non-governmental organizations and private-sector representatives -- and a coterie of about 100 demonstrators who gathered today to protest the privatization of public water and wastewater systems and were forcibly removed by Turkish police.

Few, if any, of the attendees question whether climate change is having an impact on water supplies. Evidence, from withering vineyards in California to inoperable nuclear reactors in France to a rise in water-borne diseases and infant mortality, is inescapable. Indeed, climate change's impact on fresh water supplies is in many ways easier to spot than other climate trends.

"The rainy season used to start in late September, but over the past five years, we've been witnessing delays," Samer Talozi, professor of Water Resources & Irrigation Engineering at the Jordan University of Science & Technology, tells Grist. "This year it only started in mid-January.

This has affected farmers and farming communities the most. The delay in the rainy season is shortening the growing season; reducing the amount of water available in the summer for irrigated agriculture; and limiting the options of rain fed agriculture during the rainy season."

Likewise, manufacturing can be seriously hurt by climate change. Eleven of the world's 14 largest semiconductor manufacturers -- which require ultra clean water for manufacturing silicon chips -- are in the Asia-Pacific region, where water scarcity is a growing problem. A water-related shutdown at a fabrication plant could result in a $100 million to $200 million in missed revenue in a quarter, according to a report released this month by Pacific Institute, Oakland, Calif., and Ceres in Boston.

The stakes for human health are particularly high. According to the World Health Organization, climate change will likely:

For instance, changes in precipitation patterns are likely to increase flooding, and as a result mobilize more pathogens and contaminants. It is estimated that by 2030 the risk of diarrhea will be up to 10 percent higher in some countries due to climate change. Diarrhea kills 2.2 million children every year, the vast majority of them under the age of five and living in Ethiopia, India and other developing countries.

Access to sanitation has improved only marginally in recent years, according to Dave Trouba, communications director for the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) in Geneva, which operates under the auspices of the WHO. The number of those without basic sanitation has declined to 2.5 billion from 2.6 billion in the past few years.

"We're on track to reach the U.N. Millennium Development Goals for access to clean water, but we're way off track the Millennium Development Goals for sanitation," says Trouba. "Sanitation isn't rocket science. It's hard work."

The U.N. goal is, by 2015, to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. More than 800 million people worldwide lack access to clean water.

The World Water Forum continues through March 22.

Ferguson is a freelance journalist based in Arlington, Mass.

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PARIS—Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste are placing the world’s water supplies at threat, a landmark U.N. report said on Thursday.

  Compiled by 24 U.N. agencies, the 348-page document gave a grim assessment of the state of the planet’s freshwater, especially in developing countries, and described the outlook for coming generations as deeply worrying.

  Water is part of the complex web of factors that determine prosperity and stability, it said.

  Lack of access to water helps drive poverty and deprivation and breeds the potential for unrest and conflict, it warned.

  “Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” the third World Water Development Report said.

  “Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity at various levels.”

  The report pointed to a double squeeze on fresh water.

  On one side was human impact. There were six billion humans in 2000, a tally that has already risen to 6.5 billion and could scale nine billion by 2050.

  Population growth, especially in cities in poor countries, is driving explosive demand for water, prompting rivers in thirsty countries to be tapped for nearly every drop and driving governments to pump out so-called fossil water, the report said.

  These are aquifers that are hundreds of thousands of years old and whose extraction is not being replenished by rainfall. Mining them for water today means depriving future generations of liquid treasure.

  Fuelling this is misuse or abuse of water, through pollution, unbridled irrigation, pipe leakage and growing of water-craving crops in deserts.

  Applying pressure from the other side is climate change, said the report.

  Shifts to weather systems, unleashed by man-made global warming, will alter rainfall patterns and reduce snow melt, scientists say.

  The water report was first issued in 2003 and is updated every three years.

The latest issue, entitled “Water in a Changing World,” is published ahead of the fifth World Water Forum, taking place in Istanbul from March 16 to 22.

  The mammoth document made these points:

  —DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH is boosting water stress in developing countries, where hydrological resources are often meager. The global population is growing by 80 million people a year, 90 percent of it in poorer countries. Demand for water is growing by 64 billion cubic metres (2.2 trillion cubic feet) per year, roughly equivalent to Egypt’s annual water demand today.

  —In the past 50 years, EXTRACTION from rivers, lakes and aquifers has tripled to help meet population growth and demands for water-intensive food such as rice, cotton, dairy and meat products. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the withdrawals, a figure that reaches more than 90 percent in some developing countries.

  —ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION from water pollution and excessive extraction now costs many billions of dollars. Damage in the Middle East and North Africa, the world’s most water-stressed region, amounts to some $9 billion a year, or between 2.1-7.4 percent of GDP.

  —The outlook is mixed for key UN MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, which in 2000 set the deadline of 2015 for halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The target on drinking water is on track but the tally of people without improved sanitation will have decreased only slightly by 2015, from 2.5 billion to 2.4 billion.

  —Water stress, amplified by climate change, will pose a mounting SECURITY CHALLENGE. The struggle for water could threaten fragile states and drive regional rivalry.

  “Conflicts about water can occur at all scales,” the report warned, adding: “Hydrologic shocks that may occur through climate change increase the risk of major national and international security threats, especially in unstable areas.”

  —Between $92.4 billion and $148 billion are needed annually in INVESTMENT to build and maintain water supply systems, sanitation and irrigation. China and developed countries in Asia alone face financial needs of $38.2-51.4 billion each year.

  —CONSERVATION and reuse of water, including recycled sewage, are the watchwords of the future. The report also stressed sustainable water management, with realistic PRICING to curb waste. It gave the example of India where free or almost-free water had led to huge waste in irrigation, causing soils to be waterlogged and salt-ridden.

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Starbucks wastes some 6.2 million gallons of water each day through a health policy that requires a constantly running tap at each store, says a breathless indictment in British tabloid The Sun. A Starbucks spokesperson confirms the use of a dipper well, which uses "a stream of continuous cold fresh-running water to rinse away food residue, help keep utensils clean, and prevent bacterial growth." Dipper wells are common at coffee and ice-cream shops, but the gigantuousness of Starbucks' global operations is such that, according to the The Sun, the amount of wasted water could sate the thirst of "the entire 2 million-strong population of drought-hit Namibia ... or fill an Olympic pool every 83 minutes." Starbucks says it is looking into alternatives, which water-efficiency experts say do exist. "Leaving taps running all day is a shocking waste of precious water," says Peter Robinson of U.K. green group Waste Watch. "And to claim you are doing it for health and safety reasons is bonkers." Damn, "Starbonkers" would have been a better headline.

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London Mayor Boris Johnson unveiled a draft plan Friday to help the city mitigate and adapt to climate change. Johnson put special attention to water conservation, calling for mandatory metering, increased efficiency, improved drainage, and rainwater harvesting. He also envisions more trees and green space. Environmentalists said the adaptation strategy was a good step, but said measures to cut carbon emissions were missing from the equation. "It is essential that the capital prepares for the impacts of climate change," says one Friends of the Earth campaigner. "But Boris Johnson is also committed to cutting London's carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2025 in order to prevent dangerous climate change, and has so far failed to explain how he will achieve this." Some 15 percent of London is estimated to be at high risk of flooding from rising seas -- an area housing 1.25 million people, 480,000 buildings, 441 schools, 75 transit stations, 10 hospitals, and an airport.

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Colleges around the country are ditching cafeteria trays to lower water and energy use and to prevent wasted food. "If a college is looking to go 'green,' they need to start looking in the dining facility," said Sodexo spokeswoman Monica Zimmer; the food-service company expects 230 of the 600 colleges it serves to stop using trays. Skeptics worry about broken dishes, and some students worry about balancing their plates in bustling cafeterias, but it's hard to argue with the savings. The 18,000-student Georgia Tech went trayless in response to last year's drought, saving an estimated 3,000 gallons of water each day. A 25-university study by Aramark Higher Education Food Services found that students waste 25 to 30 percent less food when trays aren't available, and cafeterias save a third- to a half-gallon of water for each tray they don't have to wash. Some advocates also believe that getting rid of trays will help reduce obesity.

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The world grows more than enough food to sustain the global population, but half of that food is wasted -- and thus half of the water used in food production is wasted as well, says a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, International Water Management Institute, and Stockholm Water Management Institute. In developing countries, food spoils or is damaged by insects; in developed countries, it's more often just tossed out. The United States and other industrialized countries throw out some 30 percent of their food each year, says the report: "That corresponds to [10.6 trillion gallons] of irrigation water, enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people." The organizations call for a 50 percent reduction in global food waste by 2025, pointing out that 1 billion people already live with insufficient water. "Unless we change our practices," says the FAO's Pasquale Steduto, "water will be a key constraint to food production in the future."

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Longstanding drought has wreaked havoc across Australia, drying up lakes into shallow, acidic puddles and threatening drinking-water supplies. Unable to coax rain from the sky, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has fast-tracked a plan to buy back water entitlements from the heaviest irrigators in the Murray-Darling basin, an agricultural stronghold which produces all of the country's rice, nearly all of its oranges, most of its pigs, half of its wheat and apples, and much of its cotton. The region covers 14 percent of the Australian continent but consumes 52 percent of its water. Environmentalists applaud Rudd's plan on paper, though point out that there is, in fact, little water to buy back. "I don't want to say that there's some magic solution here," admits Rudd. "I am trying to turn around a situation which has evolved over many years ... and we are dealing with the real consequences of climate change."

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On top of Iraq's myriad other problems, drought has hit the country hard recently, impacting crops and water supplies in many regions. Rainfall this winter was about 40 percent lower than usual in Iraq and Turkey, and as a result, the Tigris River near Baghdad is at its lowest level since 2001. In the country's main grain-growing area, Diyala province, some irrigation canals have dried up completely. In many areas, patchy access to electricity -- from American bombing of the country's infrastructure in the first stage of the invasion, bouts of civil war, the ongoing occupation, and other problems -- means that even farmers in areas where canals and wells haven't dried up can't reliably pump water to their fields. Increased dust storms are also more likely now due to the drought conditions, as are water-borne diseases from stagnant and contaminated water supplies. As a temporary fix, some Iraqis are calling for increased water imports from other countries in exchange for below-market rates on oil.

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Friday is July 4, otherwise known in the U.S. as the Fourth of July. Independence-celebrating Americans are accustomed to gazing upon red-glaring rockets, air-bursting bombs, and other shows of pyrotechnic pomp -- but this year, many fireworks shows may lose their sparkle. Because of drought conditions, many shows across the country have been canceled, and several places will impose fines on backyard detonations as well. In California, where lightning-sparked wildfires are raging, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told residents this week, "Don't buy the fireworks, don't go out and play with fireworks, because it's just too dry and too dangerous to do those things." Other municipalities, struggling with the tight economy, are canceling shows simply because of cost -- a February explosion that engulfed 20 Chinese fireworks warehouses has severely curtailed supply, driving up prices by nearly 20 percent.

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