Take or pay

NTWMD sells to its members under the take-or-pay system: a city has to buy a minimum amount of water, set at its historical high, a year to ensure adequate funding for infrastructure. How does that encourage conservation?

Mr. Massey and Hal Cranor, McKinney’s public works director, said that through conservation, demand for water increases slowly. If people use less water, they said, that creates capacity within their current take-or-pay amounts to accommodate more people.
...

“We know we’ll go above our take-or-pay [minimum] as we keep growing,” Mr. Cranor said.

In largely built-out cities such as Garland, Plano and Richardson, current water use is still far below the peaks they hit years ago.

Garland, for instance, consumed about a billion gallons more this year than last, but it’s still about a billion gallons short of its contract amount. Plano is 4.5 billion gallons short but 3.2 billion gallons ahead of last year. Finance officials said the cost of the unused water is built into water rates.

Oklahoma Water Still Cheap, Illegal

Irving has reached an agreement to import 25,000 acre feet of Oklahoma's wettest water from the city of Hugo via a proposed pipeline to Cooper Lake and on to Lake Lewisville. Hugo uses only about five percent of the 30,000 acre feet annual yield of its Lake Hugo, so it still has room to grow or sell a little more. Hugo will receive about $68 per acre foot, about $1.8 million a year. The city's budget comes to about $8 million a year and is in one of the poorest counties in the state.

Hugo is also applying with the Ok Water Resources Board to increase the permitted yield of the lake by 200,000 acre feet.

Stan Stamper, publisher of the Hugo Daily News, said the local business community supports the sale. He said the nearby rivers and their watersheds produce enough water to support 30 million to 40 million people. By comparison, the population of Oklahoma is about 4 million, he said.

"We have an enormous surplus of water that has been underutilized for decades," said Stamper, a member of a committee that studied selling the water. "That is a lot of water and it is being underutilized and the Metroplex is looking for water . . . and the chances of this part of Oklahoma going dry are virtually nil."

The Tarrant Regional Water Disctrict, gaining a competitor in the import push, says Irving is being 'reckless' and 'regionally nonsupportive'. TRWD, along with the other members of the North Texas Water agency, has unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a similar deal for the past few years

Why did that deal not go through? The same big impediment to this deal: Oklahoma requires legislative approval for any out-of-state water sales. Irving has agreed to fund a court challenge to the moratorium this time around, and the TRWD has a similar lawsuit pending in at the 10th Circuit in Denver.

Reading

Proceedings of the Far West Texas Climate Change Conference, hosted by the TWDB

One Meeting Isn't Enough

The Amarillo Globe-News editorializes that officials need many more discussions on water planning like the Senate Natural Resources Committee hearing that occurred this week because water planning is complicated and the Lege will be handling lots of important water rules this session, especially in the area of property rights.

Panhandle water policy officials and state legislators need to have many more discussions such as the one that occurred this week in Amarillo.

Why? Because the next Legislature well might have to hammer out a bucketload of new rules governing the use of water.

As the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee heard for the umpteenth time this week, water planning is a complicated endeavor.

...

Austin lawyer Brian Sledge, who made the trek to Amarillo to listen to the discussion, said the issue of property rights "is coming to a head."

Sen. Bob Duncan, R-Lubbock, whose district includes the eastern Panhandle, said he believes "nobody owns the water under their property, but they have the right to drill and capture it." Then he opened the door, if only a little, to the possibility of "central control" of water.

...

Now that our water supplies are dwindling under our feet here in the Panhandle, we need to keep that discussion alive as well - and keep legislators alert to the catastrophe that awaits us if we fail to stay vigilant about water use.

Conserve, conserve, you've got the nerve

That's the new water conservation jingle that Ray Benson is singing for the Austin Water Utility.

For Want of Water

That's the title of a series the Las Vegas Sun published in June, along with a trove of stories and opinions about the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Boone Can Take Your Land

Boone Pickens's Roberts County Freshwater Supply District has the power to take land by eminent domain for its planned water lines, and use the same land to run electric lines, thanks to a Lege action last session. That public power exercised by Mr. Pickens and his employees doesn't sit well with our dry friends to the west.

But state legislators and rural landowners like Horton are balking at a project that exports water from a waning aquifer and an arrangement that seems to give a private project the public's power to take land.

"It just offends me that a farce would allow eminent domain to apply," [rancher Kenneth] Horton said.

Property owners along a 250-mile stretch between Roberts and Jack counties received letters in April alerting them of the proposed pipeline route. The letters, from the Roberts County Freshwater Supply District and Mesa Power, took the latest step in what even its detractors call an ingenious business plan.
...
An amendment that seemed to attract little notice in the last legislative session allows wind energy projects to use right of way held by a freshwater district to host transmission lines from wind energy projects. That works nicely for an enormous Pickens wind farm planned to supply up to 4,000 megawatts of power.

The Water Energy Nexus

Ever heard of it?

"It takes energy to move water, and it takes a lot of water to make energy," said Michael Webber, the associate director at the University of Texas' Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.
..

"Conserving water and conserving energy are synonymous," Webber, one of the report's authors, told a Senate panel in April.

He said renewable energies from wind turbines and solar panels require almost no water to operate. But he warned that some unconventional alternatives can make matters worse: Desalination plants produce potable water, but they require a lot of energy. Biofuels can substitute for foreign oil, but they require lots of water.

...

About a fifth of water drawn from the Colorado River is used by power plants from Austin down to Matagorda, said Suzanne Zarling, executive manager of water services at the Lower Colorado River Authority.

And power plants hoping to locate along the Colorado River's banks have put out feelers for possible water use that, taken together, would roughly equal all the water available during drought in the Highland Lakes, or about 445,000 acre-feet a year.

Of course, in-stream uses of water for power plant cooling aren't the same as shipping virtual water in the form of biofuels.

Insufficiently fundilated links

Boone Pickens is about to invest $1.5 billion in Panhandle wind turbines that will produce electricity for North Texas. His Mesa Water and Power companies plan on starting right-of-way acquisition this summer to place a water pipeline and electric lines.

Save Our Springs, which has battled developers over the Edwards Aquifer and our Barton Springs is bankrupt and having trouble getting a judge to accept their replayment plan. The group has lost some sway in Austin recently and could end up like their beat up old nemesis Gary Bradley. I linked to a new documentary on the SOS-Bradley duel here.

The Seminole water utility is piloting a wind-powered desalination plant to treat water from the Santa Rosa aquifer. It will produce 30,000 gallons a day from a 50 kilowatt turbine.

Lake Columbia

Is set for construction in 2011 or 2012

LUFKIN - Officials with the Angelina and Neches River Authority are sticking to their plan, 30 years in the making, to provide a rural water supply in Cherokee and Smith counties.

Kenneth Reneau, ANRA general manager, confirmed Wednesday that Lake Columbia is nearing construction, despite several necessary hurdles.

"We're looking somewhere in the 2011, 2012 time frame," he said. "We will be in the construction phase once we get (necessary documentation)."
...

"Lake Columbia is a necessary project for this five-county planning area," Reneau said. "The long-term future for water supply in this area is a question, and a number of participants are currently depending on wells for their water.

"As that area grows, demand for water will continue to grow also. We believe this project will take care of needs in quantity as well as quality."

...

"Conservation is certainly an element in solving the problem, but additional water sources will have to be generated."

More smart Mekong sentences

Cooperation in and of itself is not the desired end for third-world riparian governments who create transboundary governance institutions; rather cooperation is perceived as the basis for proceeding with the development of water resources encompassed by basins.

from Rethinking transboundary waters: A critical hydropolitics of the Mekong basin, by Sneddon and Fox, Political Geography 25(2006) pp 181-202

Smart Sentences

The international financial institution claim that "large revenues are essential for development risks conflating "economic growth" with "development" Philip Hirsch observes that the impacts of dam development have to be seen in terms of unequal distribution of costs and benefits.
...
Some opponents of big dams argue that international financial institution involvement in large hydropower projects is explained best not by alruism, but rather by the interst of the Banks in preserving their raison d'etre.

from Greacen and Palettu, Electricity Sector Planning and Hydropower, in Democratizing Water Governance in the Mekong Region, Lebel et al ed. at Amazon

Lake Meredith

Is going dry: it has received almost no inflows because of a drought over the past seven years, and is about to fall below the level of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority's intake points. CRMWA has decided not to ration the water taken out of the lake, and not it faces decisions on how much to pay for mobile pumps to extend its reach as the lake level flows. The Authority has invested heavily in rights to aquifer water to supplement, and eventually replace the lake, but the well fields there aren't yet at full production.

Cities will continue draining the Panhandle's drought-wracked reservoir rather than cut drinking supplies for Lubbock and other customers, regional water directors voted Wednesday.

Directors of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority voted to draw down the dwindling Lake Meredith using trailer-mounted pumps that could fetch water long after the shoreline falls out of the reach of the authority's water system.

...

The pumps are the latest investment in a costly fight against drought conditions. Directors in 2002 began tapping groundwater fields originally drilled to improve the taste of the briny lake water. They dramatically expanded the authority's rights to the aquifer under Roberts County as water levels fell, spending a projected $76 million to secure access. Lubbock has drawn two-thirds of the water spilled from customer taps so far this year from under that Panhandle ranchland.

...

Levelland director Carl Shamburger asked whether cities should simply limit the pumping from Meredith rather than spending money on new equipment.

Amarillo and Lubbock representatives said to stop pumping would simply cede the water to evaporation.

"If we could stop the evaporation and then conserve it out, that would be ideal, but we all know, as staff has reported, we cannot stop the evaporation," Lubbock Deputy City Manager Tom Adams said. "Politically, I don't think it would be acceptable to be cutting off our citizens from water knowing it's just up here evaporating."

Rio Grande: border, bridge, blight

On our attempts to concretize, that is.

The Dept of Homeland Security has approved an override of, among other
things, the applicable federal environmental laws to allow quicker
construction of a border fence through El Paso. El Paso and UT-El
Paso are concerned because the fence is planned to go right through a
city park containing wetlands that are just being restored.

Since cross-border migration has been happening for more than a few
years longer than the current Brown Menace scare, I don't really see
how building a fence more quickly solves the problem of people on both
sides of the river being culturally connected.

It's hard for me to get past my malice toward the Bush administration,
but when I do I still see a government response, of obstacles to
humans and disregard for nature, that will be overcome in ways we
can't foresee.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_8906405

"
AUSTIN -- The manager of El Paso's largest city park is concerned that
federal plans for a border fence will undo years of work to restore
natural wetlands on the Rio Grande.

And U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision last
week to circumvent environmental protection laws that could hold up
progress on the barrier have John Sproul, manager of Rio Bosque
Wetlands Park, wondering whether sensitive wildlife and habitat will
even be considered before construction begins.

"It's a landscape you just don't see in our river valley today,"
Sproul said.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to build about 57 miles of
fence on the border starting at Socorro and continuing east of the
Fabens port of entry.

The fence will be 15 to 18 feet high, though its final positioning and
design have not been decided.

About a mile of that fencing would abut the 372-acre city park, which
is managed by the University of Texas at El Paso Center for
Environmental Resource Management.

Sproul said staff and volunteers at the park have been working for 10
years to restore the wetlands, the only one of its kind in the El Paso region,
to its original condition.

Recently, he said, coyotes and beavers have returned to the area. And
UTEP is planning an exhibit to celebrate progress to restore native
plants and animals in the park.

"The opportunity for the full range of plants and animals found
historically in the river valley to eventually get established at the
park would be compromised" by the fence, Sproul said.

...

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club echoed those concerns in
comments it sent last month to the Department of Homeland Security.
The department relied on brief visits to the area to conduct its
environmental analysis, wrote Cyrus Reed, the chapter's conservation
director.

"A much more robust survey should be taken to assess the types of
species present in the construction area," Reed wrote.

...

The group, which includes U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, argues
that the waivers violate the constitutional separation of powers
between Congress and the executive branch.

...

Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@...; 512-479-6606.
"

The Trinity River Gets Makeup Love

My classmate Chuck found this

Nature center, other projects blooming in Great Trinity Forest

Trails, nature center planned for sprawling forest

11:04 PM CDT on Sunday, April 6, 2008

By ROY APPLETON / The Dallas Morning News
rappleton@dallasnews.com

Note to hikers and bikers, birders and boaters: The pace is picking up in the Great Trinity Forest.

Ten years after Dallas voters approved a far-reaching redo of the Trinity River Corridor, the waterway's woodlands are ripe with projects designed to tap and protect the sprawling resource at the city's southern door. For example:

•A nature center, to be operated by the National Audubon Society, will officially open in October.

•Construction of the first segment of a proposed 24-mile system of concrete trails is expected to begin in June, with completion by year's end.

•The concrete paving of a portion of the Buckeye Trail in Rochester Park is scheduled to begin next month, as is construction of the Moore Park Gateway in Oak Cliff, the first of at least four new trailheads into the forest.

•The first draft of a 100-year forest management plan will be released this summer.

•Design of a city-owned equestrian center will resume this summer if a nonprofit group raises enough money toward its share of the cost.

The forest projects are among the first to break ground in a $1.7 billion program for a riverfront toll road, parks, recreation, flood control and bridges.

Also Online

Map: Opening up the Great Trinity Forest

As designated by planners, the forest stretches along the Trinity from the former Santa Fe railroad near Corinth Street southeast to Interstate 20.

It covers about 6,000 acres of land lying mostly in the river's 100-year floodplain, making it among the largest urban hardwood forests in North America, said Bryan Kilburn, the city's Trinity forestry manager.

"There's so much more than just the toll road and the levees," he said of the future highway, which survived an election last year to kill it.

Hardwoods – including black willow, American and cedar elm, red oak, burr oak, green ash and pecan – cover about 87 percent of the forest, much of which is less than 50 years old, having emerged from land long cultivated for farming. The city owns about two-thirds of the forest property and plans to acquire the rest.

"We don't want you cutting on big branches overhead," trail planner Wade Peterson told a group of contractors as they walked the future route of one path.

When built this year, the 12-foot-wide concrete hike-and-bike way will extend from a trailhead near the river and Loop 12 through the Joppa Preserve park to Simpson Stuart Road. Passing small lakes, running atop levees and crossing creeks, the trail will cut through an area now scarred in stretches by litter and junk.

"There are wild hogs down in here," said Mr. Peterson, walking along. "They usually just go away."

That two-mile trail will be the first piece of a system designed to connect with others in the city and forest itself.

One of those is the Buckeye Trail, which winds through the woods of Rochester Park about four miles south of downtown.

One segment leads to a grove of Texas buckeye trees (this year's white flowery bloom is over), while another ends at a river overlook.

That latter, half-mile stretch will be paved with concrete in the months ahead, to the objection of at least one local naturalist.

"It will destroy any sense of being in a wild area," said Jim Flood, who routed the dirt path six years ago and leads public hikes there.

"Once it gets opened up like that, it's going to be a less-safe trail. You put concrete in and the next thing you know, people are going to want streetlights."

Mary Ayala, the city's Trinity recreation manager, said the goal is to provide a trail that is wheelchair accessible and durable. Crushed stone would make the trail accessible, but floods might wash it out, and replacements cost more over time than concrete, she said.

"It is a sensitive area, but you want to have opportunities for everyone," she said.

The Buckeye Trail construction and other trails planned for the Rochester Park area will increase recreation opportunities for neighboring residents.

"It's wonderful, man. It's going to be an adventure," said Marvin Richardson, who lives near the trailhead at the end of Bexar Street.

He said he lived for 27 years in the Turner Courts public housing up the street and has never walked the Buckeye Trail. He might check it and the other forest projects out because "curious minds want to know."

Local youngsters stand to benefit most of all, Mr. Richardson said. "I couldn't even start to tell you what it's going to mean to those kids," he said. "They've never had anything like this."

Dallas has never had anything like the Trinity River Audubon Center, either. Built on the site of a former landfill near the river, the almost $14 million city-owned center and grounds will offer nature education, exhibits and hiking.

"That pool was 11 feet high in debris. Now it's 8 feet deep in water," said Don Burns, the city's project manager, looking at one of 10 ponds on the property.

About two miles northwest of the nature center, the city and a nonprofit have agreed to share in building the Texas Horse Park. The 225-acre center and grounds, near Loop 12 and Pemberton Hill Road, would host equestrian competitions and provide trails for horseback riding.

The group – Texas Horse Park Inc. – would operate the center and is trying to raise its estimated $15 million share of the project. If it shows enough success and design resumes this summer, construction could begin in September 2009 with possible completion by late 2010, said Mr. Burns, manager of that project as well.

The Moore Park Gateway, near the Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail station at Eighth and Corinth streets in Oak Cliff, will be the entry point for a new trail across the river bottom.

Other trailheads are planned for Rochester Park, the Joppa community and near Interstate 20. Canoe access points will be added near I-20 and Moore Park. Planners would like to see a campsite near White Rock Creek.

The forest is no Central Park. But at roughly seven times the size of New York City's jewel, it stands to be a regional draw. Not only will it expand recreational options, but someday, Mr. Kilburn said, it could fuel economic growth and change perceptions of an area of the city that has lacked opportunities.

How and how much the public takes to the forest will be answered in time. Responsibilities and funding for its upkeep haven't been resolved.

"It's going to take a long-term commitment by the city of Dallas," Mr. Kilburn said. "Hopefully, there will be some ownership by the neighborhoods."

And volunteers will continue to play an important role.

"It's my hope people will want to be involved in this, put their money where their mouth is," Mr. Kilburn said.

"People talk about a green Dallas. Well, here's an opportunity."

New federal wetlands rules

Now emphasize wetlands banking as the preferred form of mitigation. In Ohio, which is where I'm reading the news nowadays, this is causing heartache in environmental peeps because that state has focused on increasing the quality of replacement wetlands and on making them close to the lost wetlands. As a marker of the low quality of wetland replacement work, Ohio requires 3 acres of new wetlands to mitigate the loss of 1 acre of authentic wetlands. More here from the Beacon Journal

Since 1995, the Ohio EPA has been analyzing man-made, or replacement, wetlands.

[Ohio EPA ecologist John] Mack's team is surveying 25 of an estimated 415 man-made wetlands across Ohio. Most of the randomly chosen sites are in Northeast Ohio.

Perhaps 25 percent of the sites are good, Mack said, but the majority will earn a poor-to-fair grade.

''We can build quality wetlands, but that's something we don't always do,'' Mack said. '' . . . Quite frankly, we're just not getting the quality back that we're losing.''

...

What Mack is finding in his assessment of man-made wetlands mirrors the findings in a 2006 Ohio EPA evaluation of 1,000 acres of replacement wetlands: 25 percent were simply shallow ponds without vegetation. In the 2006 report, only 18 percent of the wetland acreage was of good quality.

Mack said too many of the man-made wetlands have ''too much water . . . for far too long.''

In a natural wetland, he said, water typically rises and falls, and that results in the growth of different plants.

Great Lakes Compact

The inimitable Cuyahoga County Planning Commission blogs on the Compact

In the second part of its series on water issues, the Plain Dealer looks at the legislative debate surrounding the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, and adds an infographic and a FAQ on the Compact.

Toledo's Blade includes a look at John Austin's suggestions for improving the Great Lakes economy, and a column by Tom Henry that says that Lee Fisher "should have known better" than to suggest that Ohio might "sell Great Lakes water to thirsty parts of the country".

Office for OS X Sucks

The new Microsoft Office for OS X is terrible: it's faster than the old version, but still slow, and it drags like OpenOffice when you have a big document open in Word. The Ribbon is a flaming turd: it's not the awesome all-in-one changing menu like in Windows. It's just a cheesy set of extras like templates that nobody uses. You can turn it off in Word, but not in Excel. It's terrible, and a waste of $200.

The formatting palette in Word and Excel is minimally customizable: you can turn off crap, but you can't even resize it to show more than 4 styles at a time, so if you don't you the top 4 default headers, you constantly scroll up and down. And, of course, the palette scroll bars don't obey your mouse wheel.

In Windows, Excel kind of learns whether to move to the right or move down after you press enter, depending on the dimensions of your data range. OS X Excel makes you choose in the preferences whether to always move right or down. I thought this was just a holdover from the dark OS 9 days, but it's still here, in 2008.

And just like most OS X stuff, there aren't keyboard shortcuts for most things. Ctrl-H doesn't replace? F2 doesn't edit? No VBA, so none of my macros work?

Even the preferences dialog is different: it has the lame Windows 'okay' and 'cancel' buttons, contrary to every other OS X app ever made.

In Word, if you turn on the style area on the left of your document to see which style is applied to which section, and then scroll right on your page, the style area makes copies of itself next to each other when you scroll back left, so you end up seeing six style areas and none of your typing. You can get those copies to disappear by scrolling down your doc and scrolling back up. That's crap you see in Windows 3.1 shareware programs, not $300 worth of office suite

The frickin installer doesn't even ask what you want installed--it installs everything. That's right, zero install options. And it dumps random files in the Office folder, while every other OS x app puts its files into bundle covered by the program icon.

WTF? You suck Microsoft, like an overpaid consultant, for grossly under-delivering on substance, but garnishing with shiny vacuity.

Why did I buy a Mac just to use Zoho Sheet and TextEdit?

Christmas Mountains

Maybe they'll be going to the National Park Service after all.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has told the superintendent of Big Bend National Park he wants to help transfer the Christmas Mountains to the National Park Service while also reasserting his concern about hunting and firearms.

The National Park Service should designate the state's 9,270 acres in far West Texas as a "national preserve" so hunting can be allowed, Patterson said in a Friday letter to Park Superintendent Bill Wellman.

...

Patterson does not support the park service's suggestion that it acquire the property by using private donations to buy it from the state. Congress should come up with the money for the purchase and ongoing management, Patterson said in the letter.

Without such a commitment, "the Christmas Mountains will run the risk of being neglected due to a lack of funds needed for its care," Patterson wrote.

His plans to sell the land to the private sector fizzled after the park service expressed an interest in acquiring it.

Lake Columbia close

The Angelina and Neches River Authority is preparing to start construction of Lake Columbia, for Cherokee and Smith Counties, in the next few years. It's applying for more grant money from the TWDB and waiting on 404 approval from the Corps of Engineers

New EPA rules on wetlands banking - bad idea

The EPA has issued new rules that emphasize wetland banking as a preferred technique for developers. That's not a good idea for several reasons, one of which being that creating wetlands from scratch doesn't work well.

The Ohio EPA has been studying wetlands creation for banking for years, and finds that only about 25 percent of banked wetlands are actually passable.

SAWS makes lots of money

SAWS made $13million in net income last year, even though San Antonio got 47 inches of rain. Revenue decreased a little, and profit was down from about $50million in 2006. At least the SAWS president David Chardavoyne has asked that discussion of his annual performance eval be public.

Reading

In Amazonia, a holistic anthropological trip through the recent history of a river community.

Mr. Raffles's most interesting point concerns the scientist/ subject relationship: one gathers a few facts to take back for synthesis and a presentation about the effect of people on Amazonian hydro features, while the other lives with the river and makes subtle distinctions about the natural and human politics occurring there.

So, Raffles proceeds to tell the story of a tributary by telling the historical and personal stories of the people there, by way of explaining the human/ nature relationship. All this with a healthy dose of sociological theoretical jargon and environmental philosophy.

Lake Ralph Hall

Fannin Co Commissioners approved, 4-0, a contract with UTRWD, to proceed developing Lake Ralph Hall on the North Sulphur River. Fannin County will get about 15 percent of the water in the lake, up from and original 0 percent.

By Vicki Graves
Herald Democrat

BONHAM — Construction of Lake Ralph Hall on the North Sulphur River in Fannin County won support of the Fannin County Commissioners Court, which voted 4-0 Monday to approve a contract with Upper Trinity Regional Water District of Lewisville.
...
After the meeting Commissioner Pat Hilliard said the county will get about 15 percent of the water.

“We started out getting zero and now we’ll get a little bit more. We tried to get a little better deal for Fannin County and I had hoped for a lot more water and money. Even a nickel per gallon on 30 million gallons per day comes up to a big chunk of change.”

There was no mention during public session of when purchase of property or construction will begin but Hilliard said he believes the county judge will be calling Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in Austin soon to remove sanctions Fannin County previously submitted in opposition to the lake.

UTRWD will now begin dealing with the landowners, he added, saying that many people who live in that area really want the lake and many others really don’t want it.

Land and Water Conservation Fund

The National Park Service's Land and Water Conservation Fund provides matching grants for local govts and states to acquire parkland. The 09 Bush budget proposes drastic cuts.

Insufficiently fundilated links

Albuquerque suggests watering by the numbers

Big Bend Brewster County Groundwater Conservation District is considering exporting water from a Marathon well.

Amarillo is test drilling the Santa Rosa Aquifer, underneath the Ogallala and saltier, too.

Athens is considering reuse of their municipal wastewater to supplement Lake Athens.

More on Indian Water

I noticed that High Country News has an article about the Navajo are working out their water rights, and dealing with internal conflict as they try to cash in their heritage water.

Jeff Sachs on Developing World Water

Jeff Sachs, of Columbia Univ, has a new development book, and one of the chapters is on pressure on water supplies in the developing world. The blogger is Tyler Cowen, a moderate to conservative economist.

I haven't read the book, so I can't comment, but Cowen makes a good
point about subsidizing water for agriculture. I remember reading
recently that some of the California Imperial Valley farmers are
starting to sell their water rights because that's more profitable
than growing, and it's very profitable because they get their water
below cost in the first place, courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation
and taxpayer money.

I'm dumbfounded that there aren't tighter restrictions on what farmers using essentially public water can and can't do.

From MR

Chapter five of Common Wealth is called "Securing Our Water Needs," an
important topic but one neglected by most economists. One lesson is
that climate change will put a big stress on water supplies. So far,
so good, but the recommendations start with greater international
cooperation:


A first step, at least, would be to focus on the hardest-hit lands,
specifically the world's drylands. Fortunately, these are covered by
the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which has 191 member
governments as signatories. Unfortunately, the treaty as it now
stands is little known and has little clout and financial backing.
Rather than reinvent the treaty, however, it would be better to
reinvigorate it.

I would say it needs invigoration, not reinvigoration. It is no
accident that the Convention has little clout and little financial
backing. Many such Conventions are toothless objects, designed to
appeal to a least common denominator within the process of the
Convention itself (recall, it has 191 signatories). No one is opposed
to "international cooperation" but it is no accident that truly
international bodies have to either find a way to make profit (e.g.,
the World Bank lends to China) or they are usually very strapped for
funds. That's just not where the political rents are and that isn't
going to change.

Since Sachs calls this a "first step," his position is in some sense
invulnerable. Whatever you really think should be done can be called
the next step. Sachs writes, however, that the next step is more
finance if I understand him correctly he wants to increase funding by
more than a factor of 100). I would prefer finance from national
governments, or even from the states or provinces, than finance at the
level of international organizations. Most of the 191 signatories
just aren't that good at R&D, funds accountability, or even technology
adoption.

I might add that national governments are the ones that subsidize the
price of water to ridiculously low levels, most of all for
agriculture. My first step is to remove all these water subsidies,
allow water prices to rise, institute more water trading, and then see
which innovations the private sector decides to finance (hmm...those
are my first four steps). One role for government would be to ensure
that patent law does not hinder international transfer of worthwhile
innovations, a point which Sachs makes in other contexts. That sounds
less glamorous than a big international plan, but I think it has a
better chance of succeeding.
"

May is American Wetlands Month

Here's the scoop

Amarillo's new pipeline

Also via B+C's Texas Water News, Amarillo has started engineering on a pipeline to bring in water from a new, 40 million gallon a day well field northeast of the city.

"People don't think about it, but north of Amarillo is downhill," Atkinson said.

That means moving a 4-foot wide column of water 170 feet higher to the city, a distance of more than 18 miles.

For scale, water towers are 120 feet tall.

When both phases are complete, production will be up to 40 million gallons a day. Running at full capacity every day, the pipeline could carry 14.6 billion gallons per year. That rate would empty Lake Meredith, at its current level, in two years.

On average, each well would be capable of pumping 1 million gallons a day, or about 700 gallons per minute.

Golf Courses Less Evil with the help of Audubon Society

Via B+C's Texas Water News, several DFW courses are working on certification under the Audubon Society's Cooperative Sanctuary program, which promotes reduction in watering and water reuse, less chemical use, and wildlife management. Course managers say they've cut water usage by as much as 50 percent and don't apply fertilizer and pesticide to areas meant for animal use.

Southwest Hydrology

The new issue of Southwest Hydrology came in my mail a couple of days ago, and it's about over-saltiness

Lake Ralph Hall moving along

Thomas Taylore and UTRWD say that negotiations with Fannin County have worked out commissioners' concerns with Lake Ralph Hall's effects on the county, and that planning could advance soon.

For the past couple of years, county commissioners have opposed the construction of the lake because the plan did not meet their requirements on four specific areas: economic development, the handling of roads and infrastructure, the reduction of taxable land, and the distribution of surface water throughout the county.

Taylor says now all of those concerns have been worked out with the county.

"Challenges are to be sensitive to the environment to be sensitive to the neighborhood be sensitive to the desires of property owners so that it will be a benefit."

Outreach

The fourth annual Trinity River Run was this weekend, and runners got to see the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge under construction.

Interesting vacation spot

Cuatro Cienegas, in Coahuila. It's a valley biokingdom home to phosphorus-free mineral pools clear as a bell and the stromatolites that live in them.

Documentary of the Week, consolation prize

...goes to the TPWD docu narrated by Walter Cronkite called Texas: The State of Springs

you would think it might be free to the public, but it's not. I saw another, similar TPWD docu narrated by long, tall Ray Benson called Texas: the State of the Water , but I can't find any reference to it. It recently played on Denton public acces, the The State of Springs was playing on PBS, I think

Documentary of the week: The Unforseen

about Gary Bradley and the coalescence of Save our Springs against his development over the Edwards Aquifer in the late '80s

watch the trailer for The Unforseen

El Chamizal

I ran across this neat map of El Chamizal, an uncertainty in the bed of the Rio Grande at El Paso/ Juarez. When the river shifted, it made a sort of island with no real jurisdiction and moved a few hundred acres from Mexico to Texas. The problem was big enough to require a treaty and brought JFK to town.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/252-a-river-runs-through-it-the-cham\
izal-dispute-1895-1963/

My thoughts are echoed by the first comment: how can half a square
mile of land lead to a concrete channel, dislocation of families, and
a treaty? It the Rio Grande had water, it wouldn't endure such an insult.


FYI, this is a great blog: they publish some neat weird and alternate
history maps, among other things.

Pipelines and Desalination at the Lone Star Legislative Summit

Here's what state Rep. Mike Hamilton (from far east Orange County) says about the future of communities dependent on fossil aquifers:

State Rep. Mike Hamilton commented that since it's impossible to run pipelines across the state to the Panhandle or West Texas for water, any way to alleviate pressure in those areas is greatly needed, including possible desalination plants on the coast where those areas wouldn't have to pull water resources from other areas.

Tuffy is the chair of the House Natural Resources committee and knows a few things about the politics of water. But he's missing the bets of people like Boone Pickens that pipelines will be built, but to ship water east, not west. He's also seems to be a little lost on coastal desalination plants, that right now look prohibitively expensive and dependent on equally expensive nuclear power, and are equally far from the water-poor west as east Texas is

Indian water rights

Via Brown + Caldwell's Texas Water News, Indian tribes are starting to realize the value of the water on their reservations, granted to them in 1908 but rarely used. As they exercise their rights, they take away water used by irrigators on their borders. This USA Today story is a little oblique, but the tribes are garnering considerable payments for use of their rights, while irrigators are often asking the government to pick up the increased cost of their dependence on water.

Update: WaterWired has more interesting things to say than I do.

Another Climate Change and Water Conference

This time hosted by the Rivers System Insitute at Texas State U and called

Forecast: Climate change impacts on Texas water

Document on the Week

Via TWRI New Waves,

Research into the Characterization of Brackish Water and Disposal of Desalination Reject Water in Saline Aquifers and Depleted Oil and Gas Reservoirs

exploring the opportunities created by 2007 legislation authorizing TCEQ to permit injection well storage of desalination reject water

Water Words that Work

A good blog about rhetoric, framing, and vocab

Water Words that Work, by Eric Eckl

Mesa water is expensive, Oklahoma water isn't

From SC Gwynne in the Texas Monthly Feb 2008 issue (sub req'd):

So if Region C doesn't get its water from pipelines to East Texas, strict conservation, or reuse, where will it get its water? T. Boone Pickens thinks the answer to this question could be worth a lot of money. Never one to let an opportunity pass by, Pickens has come up with a scheme to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer and sell it to the big suppliers in Region C. The Ogallala is pumped on a massive scale, irrigating corn, cotton, wheat, and sorghum crops in the areas around Lubbock and Amarillo and accounting for about 40 percent of all the water used in the state of Texas. Of course, it is being slowly depleted and sometime in the next century will run completely dry. But in the meantime, Pickens has been buying up groundwater rights in the area. His idea is to get one or more of the Metroplex's three big suppliers to finance the building of a pipeline for about $2 billion; once the pipes are up and running, he'll sell Region C the water in them.

This may sound like a perfect, if somewhat ecologically irresponsible, match of supply and demand, but in fact Pickens's water is extremely expensive compared with the alternatives. According to a recent engineering study, his water would cost some $2.60 per thousand gallons, more than three times what it would cost to get water from the new reservoir on lower Bois d'Arc Creek (one of the four East Texas reservoirs proposed for Region C). Pickens' scheme also costs more than piping water in from Toledo Bend. According to the main suppliers, there are only two sources of water more expensive than Pickens's--a large aquifer that stretches south and east of Dallas, called the Carrizo-Wilcox, and the Gulf of Mexico (though, due to its prohibitive cost, desalinated Gulf water is not yet in the picture).

But Pickens persists. His project relies on the near absence of state regulation of groundwater. This circumstance may be short-lived--most water experts expect more-stringent state groundwater regulation in the next 25 years--but for now groundwater from either Pickens or the Carrizo-Wilcox remains on the table for all three water suppliers.

"Boone's thing is certainly feasible," says Jim Oliver, the general manager of the Texas Municipal Water District. "Water from the Carrizo-Wilcox is also feasible. But their markup is incredible, and they want a whole lot more money than what we can build other reservoirs for. Boone is revising his model. But he is just going to have to get real."

A little further in is a interesting bit of history on the North Texas Municipal Water District attempt to buy excess water (pdf) from eastern Oklahoma, land of many rains and few people. Those discussions were terminated in 2002 (pdf).

But, the Tarrant Regional Water District has started negotiations to pump Kiamichi basin water just before it reaches the salty Red River (Flash). TRWD refers to this as 'Gulf-bound' water and thinks the project might be more acceptable because it captures water leaving Oklahoma instead of actually in Oklahoma. FAQ here (also Flash).

Document of the Week

Proceedings of "Water and the Future of Rural Texas" hosted by Texas Center for Policy Studies in March 2001.

Topics included right of capture, the common interests of greenies and rancher and farmers, water marketing, and the effects of low environmental flows on wildlife.

And Susan Combs said there should be no policy that encourages transfer of water away from its origin.

Eminent Doman and Lower Bois d'Arc Reservoir

Fannin County Commissioners passed a resolution opposing eminent domain taking without proper compensation a few days ago. I don't know if this was intended as a strong anti-reservoir message or not, but it shows the tension between residents there and the proposed 22,000 acre-area Lower Bois d'Arc Reservoir sited north of Hwy 82.

Hopefully more to come...


Update March 1: Commissioner Pat Hilliard's Pct 4 includes part of the reservoir area . Mr. Hilliard was in Austin when the resolution passed, but wouldn't have signed it because he thinks the existing system of appeals for property valuations during eminent domain proceedings works well and has the benefit of a century of refinement. Mr. Hilliard believes NTMWD is going to have their way and there's no point in racking up attorney fees to string out the property valuation process. Opposition to the eminent domain process is coming from Texas Farm Bureau as it tries to protect some of the USDA-subsidized bottomland farms in the proposed lake

Great Lakes Compact now numbers 3

The inimitable Cuyahoga County Planning Commission blog on states ratifying the compact.

Haditha

Frontline: Rules of Engagement, on the Haditha massacre, is very good.

Boone files for Panhandle Groundwater board

Boone Pickens has filed for a seat on the nine-member Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District board. He's voted in Roberts County since 2003, which makes him eligible. Boone says he'll concern himself with fairness in metering and allowed production.

His challenger is Roberts County resident Steve Hale, who himself led a group of landowners in a 2003 attempt to sell production permits for 150,000 acres without a buyer.

Here's what Boone says:
"During the past decade, I have worked diligently to make dramatic improvements in the area through a variety of conservation and wildlife initiatives, and by helping increase property values throughout the county by ensuring landowners have the right to market their stranded and surplus groundwater."

Stranded and surplus fossil water, indeed.

Lubbock preparing to set Ogallala limits

The High Plains Groundwater Conservation District 1 held its first meeting on setting draw limits for the Ogallala, and on setting rules to enforce those limits. This was the first public meeting on the issue. Farmers, who represent 90 percent of the draw on the Ogallala, seem resigned to moving to dryland farming, but also hold a grudge against urban folks who use their water to do things like keep lawns green. Those laid pack daddies are starting to get tense.

To wit, this letter that artfully incorporates warning of growing Panhandle agribusiness and its water use with fears of increased illegal immigration.

Preliminary limits and rules are due to be presented to the Lege in 2009.

Earnings Conference Call Mayhem

Some dork is joining the earnings calls of big public companies, like Coca-Cola and Rubbermaid, and asking stupid questions cloaked in analyst-speak:

"Can you provide some more color as to what you are doing for your supply chain initiatives to reduce manufacturing costs per hectoliter, as you originally promised $150 million in synergy or savings to decrease working capital?"

The legitimate analysts claim the guy's questions are off the mark because they sound more like 'consultant-speak.' I didn't know there's a difference.

Like everyone who's had to suffer through more than about two of these calls for the sake of research, I thought it was funny to do the same thing, but I never went through the trouble of actually calling. That's like pointing and laughing at an AA meeting. Going foward, this won't happen again.

Nutrient trading

Farmers and other watershed polluters are looking at markets in water nutrients to protect the health of their waterways.

Rainwater can put you off the grid

A couple in San Marcos have, among other things, installed a 6,000 gallon rainwater catchment that should meet their household needs except during the most severe droughts. They've done many other, small improvements that cumulatively have earned them a five-star green rating from Austin Energy

Water Resources GIS mega-conflab tonite

The American Water Resources Association is holding their spring GIS fling in San Mateo in March

Water transfer

Water Wired has a couple of posts about large-scale water transfer
from Canada to the US
and from the Great Lakes to Las Vegas

New Waves for January is up

The New Waves newsletter for January is now available. Highlights include:

Profs. Norwine and Johntwo have a new book on the changing South Texas climate this century.
This comes with a new article in Science detailing how climate change is drying out the snowpack putting the squeeze on desert water management in the West

River Systems Institute is hosting “Forecast: Climate Change Impacts on Texas Water,”
April 28-30, 2008, at the Texas State Capitol Extension in Austin.

The Texas Agricultural Irrigation Association's South Texas Conference in Uvalde on Feb. 19 will focus on irrigation techniques and management for those in dry areas.