We have heard about China’s air quality and pollution woes recently in the media , especially as the start of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games approaches. A new report released last week adds yet another dimension to China’s environmental concerns.

According to a report entitled Beijing’s Water Crisis: 1949—2008 Olympics, published by Probe International, China’s policy of transferring water from draught-ridden neighborhoods to the nation’s capital in order to meet water needs for the upcoming Olympics is harming China’s environment and local farming economies.

Moreover, the abuse of water supplies contradicts the games’ “green” theme and supposed commitment to sustainability.

Beijing’s planning committee has promoted the concept of a “Green Olympics” by touting its support for planting trees, capturing rainwater to water indoor plants, banning plastic shopping bags and promoting the Olympic Village’s green buildings.

Still, to provide drinkable tap water in the Olympic Village, Beijing has been pumping water from four recently built reservoirs in the nearby rural province of Hebein, an already water-deprived area where water takings has meant less water for its citizens and farmers. Some farmers there have had to altogether halt the cultivation of certain crops. Those water transfers are likened to “quenching thirst by drinking poison,” as stated in a press release, because they have created more problems than done good.

Government officials claim that the transfers are necessary due to the combination of below-average rainfall, contamination in Beijing’s waterways and the rapid rate of development and population growth in the city. Officials even predict that more water will have to be diverted from other sources, such as the Yangtze River, by 2010 to support the needs of the growing city’s 17 million inhabitants.

Rather than continue to take water from nearby provinces and farming communities, the Probe International report recommends “better governance of water resources and the water industry, including restrictions on urban development and water-guzzling industries, enforcement of anti-pollution laws, tradable water rights, and UK-style regulation of water utilities.”

Probe International is a Canadian public interest research group that monitors the economic and environmental effects of foreign aid and export credit and has also published oral histories on Beijing’s water and the Three Gorges dam.

Photo: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Expo 2008, the international exposition on water and sustainable development, opened its doors to the world on Saturday in the Spanish city of Zaragoza.

Situated along Spain’s largest River, the Ebro, the 62-acre expo aims to inform people on global water issues and serve as a discussion forum for advocates and international policy makers. A goal of the expo is to produce a “Zaragoza Charter” which will detail recommendations to address such issues as access to clean water, water scarcity, water wars, and water conservation.

The exhibit represents 105 countries and features Europe’s biggest fresh water aquarium, a 250-ft water tower and 140 pavilions themed around the world’s different climate zones.

Throughout the exposition’s three-month run, it will include 5,000 musical and theatrical shows, art displays, films and games, as well as 2,00 expert speakers.

Speakers at the expo include Mikhail Gorbachov, Rigoberta Menchú, Marina Da Silva, Pedro Arrojo, and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai.

Some environmentalists, including Greenpeace, denounce the Expo for the thousands of square meters of roads, buildings and bridges built supposedly in defense of nature. They claim that such urban development goes against the ethos of conservation.

One cab driver was quoted, “Zaragoza was stuck, dead, and this will be fantastic for infrastructure and tourism.”

Hopefully the Expo will influence people to enact water conservation measures, just as much as it is planned to benefit the city’s tourism budget.

Photo: Expo Zaragoza 2008 logo

As a writer on global writer issues, I wasn’t quite sure what to do when my writing colleagues at EcoWorldly suggested that we all contribute to a series on bicycling.

Bikes and water: could the two really be related? To my pleasant surprise, they are indeed!

I learned about several organizations dedicated to providing people in developing nations with the means to get clean water through the use of bicycles.

One group from the Engineering for Developing Communities (EDC) program at the University of Colorado at Boulder developed a prototype of a human powered bicycle for pumping water in communities where electricity is unavailable. Their model was able to pump at a maximum of 18 feet below ground, at 2.5 gallons per minute. The specifics of their project is detailed here.

Another great organization I found online is the Working Bikes Cooperative, a Chicago-based nonprofit that takes old bikes and repairs them to donate to charities in Chicago, the Gulf Coast, Cuba, Guatemala, Ecuador, and other places of need. The primary purpose of the donated bikes are to provide affordable and healthy transportation to people from underdeveloped nations, but other bicycles are used to create water filtration systems in communities plagued with unsanitary water.

I also found a company called McEdwards Manufacturing and Distribution, Inc. that sells a “Third World Water Pump” setup, which supposedly can pump clean water from wells with depths of 200 feet or more.

And here’s a quite informative and inspiring video on a pedal-powered water transportation and filtration vehicle created by a San Bruno, California team which won Google’s “Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Challenge” this year:

Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle YouTube Clip (1:59 min)

The neat-looking bike filters the water as you bike from point A to point B.

What a concept! I’d love to get my hands, and legs, on one of those!

Other Articles in Ecoworldly’s Bicycling Series

• Forget Sky-high Gas Prices, Biking Beats Them All! by Sam Aola Ooko
• UK: Bike Week 2008 by Pem Charnley
• Bicycle powered water pumps and filtration systems by Nayelli Gonzalez
• Italy’s Two-Wheeled Cities Speed Up Your Life Quality by Eva Pratesi
• In Chiang Mai, Social Attitudes Crush Bicycling Prospects by Masimba Biriwasha
• Google’s Sexy Bicycle Giveaways and Africa’s Versatile Bike Trucks by Sam Aola Ooko
• South Korean Bicycle Ninjas Do Battle Against Asthma by Gavin Hudson
• Of Course Cycling in Australia is Healthy, But What To Do With the Cars? by Ross Kendall
• Cheer up! Bicycling in Italy is a Daily Adventure by Eva Pratesi
• If You Want a Blissful Sex Life, Don’t Ride a Bike! by Sam Aola Ooko
• Bicycling in Peru: An Art of Adaptation by Levi Novey

Photo: Working Bikes Cooperative

The governor also issued an Executive Order meant to address related problems caused by the water shortages, such as extreme fire danger due to dry conditions, economic harm to urban and rural communities, loss of crops and the potential to degrade water quality in some regions.”

For the areas in Northern California that supply most of our water, this March, April and May have been the driest ever in our recorded history,” Governor Schwarzenegger said during a press conference. “As a result, some local governments are rationing water, developments can’t proceed and agricultural fields are sitting idle. We must recognize the severity of the crisis we face.”

His order directs the Department of Water Resources and other entities to promote state and local conservation programs to reduce water consumption locally and regionally for the remainder of 2008 and prepare for potential worsening water conditions in 2009. The order also directs DWR to accelerate water transfers to shortage areas, pursue federal assistance and improve coordination between government agencies, identify risks to water supply and help farmers suffering losses.

Last month DWR released a final snow survey for the year that indicated snowpack water content was only at 67 percent the normal amount, and runoff was forecast at only 55 percent of the norm compared to previous years.”This drought is an urgent reminder of the immediate need to upgrade California’s water infrastructure,” the governor added. “There is no more time to waste because nothing is more vital to protect our economy, our environment and our quality-of-life. We must work together to ensure that California will have safe, reliable and clean water not only today but 20, 30 and 40 years from now.”

Photo: Office of the Governor

Thames Water Utilities will now be allowed to continue building a plant on the north bank of the Thames River in the London Borough of Newham and begin construction of another plant in Beckton, East London.

“Today’s news is a victory for common sense,” stated Thames Water CEO David Owens in a press release. “The desalination plant is a vital part of our response to this situation, and we are committed to getting it built as quickly as possible, so it is available to provide more safe, clean drinking water to Londoners by 2010.”

The plants are expected to provide additional clean drinking water supplies to London’s rapidly growing population, which has reached 8 million and is predicted to grow by 800,000 people by 2016.

Construction of the initial £300 million ($622 million) plant started in 2001, but environmentalists and former London mayor Ken Livingstone opposed the plan due to the high-energy-consuming nature of desalination plants. Livingstone went as far as to direct the London Borough of Newham to reject Thames Water’s application for construction, a decision which Thames Water consequently appealed and won.

Livingstone’s response to Newham’s decision was to file a law suit, which was due to reach the High Court this month but has now been thrown out with Mayor Johnson’s announcement.

To reconcile desalination plants’ large energy demands with environmental standards, Thames Water has promised to only run the plants when necessary, and to operate the plants with 100 percent renewable energy, most likely bio-diesel.

London’s waste water service is completely provided by Thames Water, which supplies about 2.7 billion liters of water each day, making it the largest water supplier in the world.

Thames Water has three regulators: the Environment Agency, the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), and The Water Services Regulation Authority (OFWAT).

Photo: Thames Water

In 2005 the world was aghast by the images seen on television and newspapers of the mass destruction caused to human life and the city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

A recent report reveals that State authorities are bolstering levees around Sacramento to prevent it from experiencing Katrina-like effects during a flood. They also hope that severe storms don’t hit the capital city before the completion of projects planned to end by 2012.

With the right combination of bad weather conditions, officials from the Department of Water Resources predict that the American River’s 18,000-square-mile watershed, along with the Sacramento River’s 23,000 square miles in Northern California, could flood the capital city under 20 feet of water, cause $25 billion worth of damage, and devastate homes in Sacramento-area communities.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, flooding from the rivers would also leave “500 dead, 102 square miles flooded, and 300,000 people uprooted, an international airport and state agencies under water, and years of recovery.”

So what is the State doing to prevent Sacramento from becoming another New Orleans?

The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency has been designated to work with state and federal agencies to double Sacramento’s flood protection by using pre-approved $5 billion dollars in state bond money.

Stein Buer, the agency’s executive director, is working with The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the federal Bureau of Reclamation to reinforce the Central Valley’s 1,600 miles of levees, build a spillway channel for the Folsom Dam, and buttress Natomas Basin levees.

Besides infrastructure maintenance, other signs that people are preparing for the worst are building moratoriums near flood-prone areas and higher flood insurance prices.

Environmentalists are concerned about the environmental impacts of more levee construction, homeowners are upset at another high expense, and builders are dismayed at the inability to build, but state officials assure that their plans are in the name of safety.

Because, after all, how horrible would it be if Sacramento became another Katrina? Nobody wants that.

Photo: Wikipedia

A California State Assembly committee last week declined to entertain a controversial bill set to build a canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and shelved it until next year.

Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has worked on gaining approval from various parties for Senate Bill 27 for two years. Ultimately, farmers, environmentalists and Delta locals opposed the proposed legislation and may have convinced the assembly committee to reject the bill as is.

Often viewed as a new permutation of the 1980 “Peripheral Canal” bill, which proposed the construction of a Delta water-transfer facility and was viewed by many as threat to the local environment, SB 27 has been controversial from its inception.

Environmentalists have decried the building of a “conveyance” system around the delta because of its potential to harm the endangered delta smelt, a fish that was legally protected from huge water pumping by a California federal judge last August.

Simitian plans to rework the bill and introduce a new one next year after learning the findings of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, which has been appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to “identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California.”

Photo: Delta Vision

Spurred by shrinking freshwater supplies, U.S. states could begin “water wars” in the next years to claim rights to Great Lakes water, warned American and Canadian scientists at a water conference in Toronto last week.

Nations around the world, such as India and Australia, are already experiencing drought and its effects on access to clean water and increases in food prices–and states in the American South and West are bracing themselves for a time in the near future when water resources will be more scarce.

Scientist Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was quoted as saying at the conference, “We will in fact get into major water wars. You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form.”

To prevent states from fighting over–or selling–water, the Great Lakes Compact was created in 2001 among the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario and Quebec.

Ontario and Quebec have signed the agreement, which bans long-distance water diversions to states not bordering the Great Lakes. Minnesota, New York, Indiana and Illinois have also signed the agreement, and Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania have not.

As one of the world’s largest reservoirs of drinking water, the five Great Lakes contain 18 percent of all fresh surface water on the planet. Conservationists continue to lobby to protect the lakes’ waters from mismanagement and environmental degradation.

Photo: NASA

Speakers at a water conference in San Francisco today discussed the relationship between development and water supplies. Or, more to the point, the lack of water and continued urban sprawl in much of California and other western states.

The talk given by Roger Moore and David Boyer entitled, “The Water Supply and Land Use Interface: Lessons from a Decade of Litigation under the UWMPA, CEQA, and SB 610/221″ was part of the 2008 California Water Law & Policy Conference organized by Argent Communications Group.

Moore and Boyer, both environmental lawyers, shared their perspectives on California’s Urban Water Management Planning Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, and Senate Bills 610 and 221–often called the “show me the water” laws.

Those two bills are referred to by that phrase because they require builders to prove to city and county decision-makers that there is indeed enough water available to sustain human, animal, and plant life within a proposed area before the approval of any large-scale development project.

In the past, Moore explained, development projects have been approved based on “paper water”–or, water availability proved in reports–and not on actual water availability.

In a handout given at the conference, Moore writes, “The problem of paper water–in its simplest terms, of development decisions grounded in expectations of water exceeding what can actually be delivered–predictably arose from a long disconnect between water planning and land use decision-making. The relationship between water and land development is such an indelible theme in California that one of its leading water historians, William Kahrl, described “the history of California in the twentieth century” as “the story of a state inventing itself with water.”

As an opinion piece printed in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month put it: No water, no development.

Photo: FreePhotosBank.com

In a report presented in Budapest on Thursday, scientists from the IPCC reported that the decline in the quantity and quality of water would affect health and agriculture in arid areas around the world.

The Western United States, Mediterranean Sea basin, and parts of Southern Africa and northeastern Brazil were singled out as places where drought could lead to less water for farming, and hence food shortages.

The UN World Food Program also reported yesterday that drought in Australia has slowed down the nation’s grain harvest, which has raised wheat prices and has diminished the amount of this food source for the WFP. The WFP has traditionally used Australian wheat to feed 80 million of the world’s hungry.

According to the WFP, the shortage in food caused by draught has also led to a rise in social unrest in Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Another study by the World Bank released Thursday alerted countries in the Middle East and North Africa of actions to take to avert water and food crises.

Repairing water networks and building new infrastructure, such as desalination plants, and using more efficient irrigation systems, as well as educating people to limit water waste were several actions that were suggested.

The World Bank reported that most of North Africa currently depends on grain imports because of the decline in farm yields in the region due to drought and population growth.

Photo: Freephotosbank.com