NPR caption: Gitanjali Rao, 11, says she was appalled by the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. — so she designed a device to test for lead faster. She was named “America’s Top Young Scientist” on Tuesday at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn. Andy King/Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge
When the drinking water in Flint, Mich., became contaminated with lead, causing a major public health crisis, 11-year-old Gitanjali Rao took notice.
“I had been following the Flint, Michigan, issue for about two years,” the seventh-grader told ABC News. “I was appalled by the number of people affected by lead contamination in water.”
She saw her parents testing the water in their own home in Lone Tree, Colo., and was unimpressed by the options, which can be slow, unreliable or both.
“I went, ‘Well, this is not a reliable process and I’ve got to do something to change this,’ ” Rao toldBusiness Insider.
Rao tells ABC that while she was doing her weekly perusal of MIT’s Materials Science and Engineering website to see “if there’s anything’s new,” she read about new technologies that could detect hazardous substances and decided to see whether they could be adapted to test for lead.
She pressed local high schools and universities to give her lab time and then hunkered down in the “science room” — outfitted with a big white table — that she persuaded her engineer parents to create in their home.
And she set about devising a more efficient solution: a device that could identify lead compounds in water and was portable and relatively inexpensive.
As she explains at lightning speed in her video submission for the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, her device consists of three parts. There is a disposable cartridge containing chemically treated carbon nanotube arrays, an Arduino-based signal processor with a Bluetooth attachment, and a smartphone app that can display the results.
“Meet Gitanjali. Gitanjali hopes to reduce the time of lead detection in water by using a mobile app, to connect over Bluetooth to get status of water, almost immediately.”)
Stories like this should give you hope for our future. It’s clear that women should be encouraged to go into science and technology.
Stories like this should also get you out of your chair to yell at policy makers who cut funds for basic research, for education, and who rail against immigration. President Trump will not host the science fair that graced the White House for the past eight years. Time for you and me to stand up to demand support for science, and for women in science.
Water Cycle poster formerly available through NRCS of USDA.
Here’s a video guaranteed to tick off the anti-Agenda 21 crowd, and anyone else who hates American farmers and their work to make their farms last for centuries — what is known as “soil and water conservation” to Boy Scouts, and “sustainable practices” to agronomists.
But for the life of me, I can’t find anything offensive in it.
Protester in West Virginia: “Would we let terrorists poison our water supply, if they said it created jobs?” Photographer unidentified; so is protester.
Keep your eye on West Virginia.
Here’s why: Do you know what factories may lie upstream from your drinking water, and do you know how they are regulated? Is the regulation done well?
A chemical spill into a West Virginia river has led to a tap water ban for up to 300,000 people, shut down bars and restaurants and led to a run on bottled water in some stores as people looked to stock up.
The federal government joined West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in declaring a disaster as the West Virginia National Guard arranged to dispense bottled drinking water to emergency services agencies in the counties hit by the chemical spill into the Elk River.
Federal authorities are also opening an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the leak and what triggered it, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said Friday.
The advisory was expanded at night to nine counties and includes West Virginia American Water customers in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties.
Several thousand gallons of an industrial chemical had leaked out, into a tributary to the Kanawha River above Charleston, upstream from the city’s culinary water intake. While the company responsible for the leak, Freedom Industries, assured the governor and other authorities that the spill is not threat to human health, officials took the more cautious path.
This case illustrates troubles we have with food and water supplies, protecting public health, and the rapid proliferation and spread of modern technology and chemical innovation.
Why did the company say the spill is no threat? No research has pinned any particular health effect to the chemical involved. But you, you sneaky, suspicious person, you want to know just what chemical is involved, don’t you?
What’s the chemical involved? 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM) spilled out of a tank into the Elk River, which flows into the Kanawha River, from which Charleston gets its water. Charleston, West Virginia’s capital, is also the state’s largest city. You’re still suspicious?
What are the health effects of the stuff? Now you ask questions for which there are not great answers. The chemical, with the methylcyclohexane linked to an alcohol molecule, is new enough, and rare enough in industry, that there are not a lot of studies on what it does. It’s known to irritate skin and mucous membranes; breathing a lot of it can cause pneumonia. Only rats have been exposed to the stuff enough to know what it does, and only a few rats for only short periods of time and not massive doses. In other words, we don’t know the health effects.
But wait! If there are no known health effects, why the caution? It’s not that the stuff has been tested and found safe to humans. MCHM simply hasn’t been tested to see what the health effects are. The toxic profile for the compound at CDC’s ATDSR does not exist. NIOSH doesn’t have much more information on it. The most thorough analysis of what it might do is populated by small studies, or none at all.
What do you mean the stuff hasn’t been tested!!!???? Welcome to to Grover Norquist’s “smaller government,” to John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s “reduced regulation,” to Rick Perry’s “states’ rights” world. Way back in 1962 Rachel Carson warned about the proliferation of newly-devised chemicals being loosed into the environment, when we really had no historical knowledge of what the stuff would do to humans who ran into it, nor to other life forms, nor even inanimate things like rocks, wood and metal. A decade later, the founders of the Environmental Protection Agency entertained the idea that a federal agency would be responsible for assuring that chemical substances would be tested for safety, both old substances and new. For a couple of decades Congress supported that mission, until it became clear that there are simply too many new compounds and too great a backlog to test all, thoroughly.That world of making chemists and big companies responsible for their chemical children began to crumble in the Reagan administration, and is mostly abandoned now. Chemical juveniles may run as delinquent as they would, with EPA and all other agencies essentially powerless to do anything — unless and until tragedy. Even where EPA, and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and all branches and twigs of the Department of Homeland Security, designate something as hazardous and deserving of care in handling, a state like Texas will ignore the rules on a substance until an accident blows half of West, Texas, to Hell, Michigan, with loss of life and enormous property destruction. Afterward, victims get left bereft of aid to rebuild, and wondering who they might look to, to look out for them, to prevent such a horrible occurrence in the future.
So it goes, the nation blundering along from one tragedy, until the next.
Through most of American history, great tragedies produced great reforms. No longer. The Great Red State of West Virginia is dependent on federal largesse to get water to drink, at enormous expense and waste of time, talent and money. Meanwhile, West Virginia’s Members of Congress conspire in Washington, D.C., to strip federal agencies from any power to even worry about what may be poisoning West Virginians.
Gov. Tomblin’s speedy action may seem out of place, not because there is great danger, but because he’s acting to protect public health without a mass of dead bodies in view to justify his actions. We don’t see that much anymore (Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott didn’t cancel appointments to get to West, Texas to even offer sympathy, but instead scheduled weekend jaunts after it was clear the fire was out and there was no danger. The good people of West did not greet them with a hail of rotten tomatoes, but thanked them for their concern. Americans are nothing if not polite.)
I was struck with the news last night because I could find no report of just what was the chemical that leaked into the rivers. This morning we finally learned it was MCHM. In the depths of some of those stories, we also learn that the leak may have been going on for some time. Though thousands of gallons of the stuff are missing, the concentrations in the river suggest not much is leaking now . . . the rest leaked earlier, and is already water under the bridge south of Charleston.
What do you think state and federal authorities should do in this case? What do you think will actually happen?
Photo and caption from Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Does Lake Michigan’s record low mark beginning of new era for Great Lakes? At least 150 years of rhythmic pulses in Lake Michigan’s water levels appear to have shifted abruptly with loss of winter ice. Photo by Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Don’t get complacent, yet. Has enough water fallen in the Great Lakes drainage area in the past six months to change this situation at all? From the New York Times last June:
Water levels in the Great Lakes have been below their long-term averages during the past 14 years, and this winter the water in Lakes Michigan and Huron, the hardest-hit lakes, dropped to record lows, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Keith Kompoltowicz, the chief of watershed hydrology with the corps’s Detroit district, said that in January “the monthly mean was the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1918.”
While spring rains have helped so far this year, levels in all five Great Lakes are still low by historical standards, so getting through the shallow points in harbors and channels is a tense affair.
It’s not just storms, rising sea levels, and melting glaciers, you know.
The Great Lakes from space. The Great Lakes are the largest glacial lakes in the world. NASA photo via Wikipedia
Contrary to popular rural and redneck legend, Caddo Lake is not Texas’s only natural* lake. There’s also Big Lake, near the town of Big Lake.
Problem being, of course, that Big Lake’s water sources these days generally don’t flow. So Big Lake is often dry.
Which produces a further problem for site like Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub: If Big Lake is really a lake, why are there no photos of the lake with water in it?
A comment at AustinBassFishing.com got me thinking about this again, no photos of Big Lake as a Lake. In the previous post here, we featured a photo of Big Lake Playa, sans water. I searched the internet at the time and found no photos showing water in the lake. My authority on Big Lake, Brad Wachsmann, swore that he had recently seen water in the thing (“recent” being “in the last decade or so”).
So, sorta good news: A few photos of Big Lake, with water, plopped onto the internet since our last search. Here are a couple from Panaramio:
Water in Big Lake, near the city of Big Lake, Texas, laps at the State Highway 137 passing nearby. This photo comes from 2004, by doning.
Photo of water in Big Lake from June 2005. Photo by evansjohnc. This photo appears to be about midway along the intersection of the lake with State Highway 137.
Big Lake in its dry phase, from looking north from the southern end of State Highway 137’s transection of the lake. Photo by cwoods.
Non-historic marker for Big Lake, also along State Highway 137, looking west. Photo by cwoods. Photo taken during Big Lake’s dry humor phase.
And, Dear Reader, can you find good photos of Big Lake with, you know, water in it?
_____________
* Is Caddo Lake a natural lake? Originally, the lake seems to have been formed by an enormous blowdown of trees, probably during a hurricane, well over 400 years ago. In that sense, it was a natural lake when European explorers first found it, and during all of Texas’s “six flags” historic periods. Or, what is known as the Great Raft, a log jam, dammed up the Red River near the confluence of the Big Cypress Bayou, in about 1799. By 1800, Caddo Lake was wet all year-round, and deep enough for shallow boat navigation. In 1835, Capt. Henry Shreve blew up enough of the logjam that steamboat traffic could get past (the guy after whom Shreveport, Louisiana, is named). After the Civil War, locals tried to expand boat traffic by completely removing the logjam. Instead of making traffic easier, this removal led shrinking water levels in the lake, and it destroyed navigation farther up the Red River. Several efforts to restore higher water levels achieved some success by about 1915. When oil was discovered under the swamp, pressures came from oil companies to make drilling easier — travel in the mud was difficult. After the invention of the Hughes drill bit (by Howard Hughes‘s father, the founder of Hughes Tool Co.) to allow drilling through water and mud into oil-bearing rock, a dam was built near where the logjam had been, to raise the level of what is known today as Caddo Lake. What is seen today is a human-enhanced version of the Caddo Lake known by the Caddo Tribe. This is all preface to the current Texas water wars.
Even during the sturm und drang and donner und blitzen of a presidential election year, scientists carry on their work to understand our planet, its weather and climate, and help others understand it, too.
Good on them.
Comes this morning an e-update newsletter from the National Academy of Sciences, with news on the study of climate change.
First:
A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling
A new report from the National Research Council concludes that climate models will need to evolve substantially to deliver climate projections at the scale and level of detail desired by decision makers. As climate change has pushed climate patterns outside of historic norms, the need for detailed projections is growing across all sectors, including agriculture, insurance, and emergency preparedness planning.
Despite much recent progress in developing reliable climate models, there are still efficiencies to be gained across the large and diverse U.S. climate modeling community. Evolving to a more unified climate modeling enterprise–in particular by developing a common software infrastructure shared by all climate researchers, and holding an annual climate modeling forum–could help speed progress.
Learn more about the report at a free webinar on September 28 at 1:30 pm EST, where you’ll be able to watch live presentations by the report’s authoring committee and ask questions about the report’s findings.
Second:
New Website Provides “101” on Climate Modeling
Earth’s climate system is, in a word, complicated. It incorporates thousands of factors that interact in space and time around the globe and over many generations. For several decades, scientists have used the world’s most advanced computers to both simulate climate and predict future climate. Industries such as those mentioned above increasingly rely on information from these models to guide decision making–and with a changing climate, the information is more important than ever. Along with its new report about advancing climate modeling, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate has released Climate Modeling 101, a website designed to help the public learn more about the basics of climate modeling–how they work and why they are important. The site features short videos and animations that explain everything from the difference between climate and weather to how climate models are built and verified.
Third:
Impact of Himalayan Glaciers on Water Supply Unclear
Another report from National Research Council, released on September 12, 2012, concludes that, although scientific evidence shows that most glaciers in South Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalayan region are retreating, the consequences for the region’s water supply are unclear. The study looks at the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, where several of Asia’s great river systems meet, providing water for drinking, irrigation, and other uses for about 1.5 billion people.
Recent studies show that at lower elevations, glacial retreat is unlikely to cause significant changes in water availability over the next several decades, but other factors, including groundwater depletion and increasing human water use, could have a greater impact. Higher elevation areas could experience altered water flow in some river basins if current rates of glacial retreat continue, but shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of rain and snow due to climate change will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies.
Along with the report, the NRC has released a slideshow of stunning images and data-rich maps that explain what was learned in the report.
Map of Superfund sites in California. Red indicates sites currently on final National Priority List, yellow is proposed for the list, green means a site deleted (usually due to having been cleaned up). Data from United States Environmental Protection Agency CERCLIS database available at http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/phonefax/products.htm. Retrieved April 24, 2010 with last update reported as March 31, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s near midsummer, so the sputtering of right-wing and anti-science propaganda calls for a “return to DDT” should begin to abate, absent a serious outbreak of West Nile Virus human infections, or some fit of stupidity on the part of DDT advocates.
DDT remains a deadly poison, and you, American Taxpayer, are on the hook for millions of dollars needed to clean up legacy DDT manufacturing sites across the nation. Contrary to bizarre claims, DDT really is a poison.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) works constantly at these cleanups. Comes this press release from EPA talking about a small success, a $14.6 million settlement with past property owners or users of sites in Torrance, California, designated for cleanup under the Superfund. The money will pay for cleanup of groundwater at the sites.
Links to sources other than EPA, and illustrations are added here.
Plant will Treat a Million Gallons per Day, Prevent Spread of Contamination
LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached a $14.6 million settlement with four companies for the construction of a groundwater treatment system at the Montrose and Del Amo Superfund sites in Torrance, Calif. Construction of the treatment system is the first step in the cleanup of groundwater contaminated by chemicals used to manufacture DDT and synthetic rubber over three decades.
Once operational, the system will extract up to 700 gallons of water per minute, or a total of a million gallons each day, removing monochlorobenzene and benzene, and re-injecting the cleaned, treated water back into the aquifer. The treated water will not be served as drinking water, but will instead be re-injected to surround the contamination and prevent it from any further movement into unaffected groundwater areas. Construction of the treatment system is expected to be completed in 18 months. EPA will pursue further settlements with the four companies and other parties to ensure that additional cleanup actions are taken and the groundwater treatment system is operated and maintained until cleanup levels are met.
“One of the toxic legacies of DDT and synthetic rubber manufacturing is polluted groundwater,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “The treatment plant will be a milestone for the site, protecting the groundwater resources for the thousands of people who live or work near these former facilities.”
Montrose Chemical Corporation of California manufactured the pesticide DDT from 1947 until 1982. Monochlorobenzene was a raw material used in making DDT. The Montrose site was placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List (NPL) in 1989. The Del Amo Superfund site, located adjacent to the Montrose site, was formerly a synthetic rubber manufacturing facility that used benzene, naphthalene and ethyl benzene. The Del Amo site was placed on the NPL in September of 2002. Groundwater contamination from both sites has co-mingled and will be cleaned up by this single treatment system.
The four responsible parties for this settlement are: Montrose, Bayer CropScience Inc., News Publishing Australia Limited, and Stauffer Management Company LLC. In addition to constructing the treatment system, these parties will also pay oversight costs incurred by EPA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
To date, extensive investigations and cleanup actions have been performed at both sites. EPA’s DDT soil removal actions in the neighborhood near the Montrose site were completed in 2002. In 1999, Shell began cleaning-up the Del Amo Superfund site, constructing a multi-layer impermeable cap over the waste pits and installation of the soil-vapor extraction and treatment system. Additional soil and soil gas cleanups at the Del Amo site are slated to begin in 2013.
The proposed consent decree for the settlement, lodged with the federal district court by the U.S. Department of Justice on July 9, 2012, is subject to a 30-day comment period and final court approval. A copy of the proposed decree is available on the Justice Department website at: http://www.justice.gov/enrd/Consent_Decrees.html
Our Scout Troop readies for two summer camp excursions this summer, and Kathryn and I hope to get out somewhere not drought stricken for at least a weekend. Generally we tack on a whitewater river run on the Scout trips, if we can find a good one for reasonable price. Safety instructions always include the solid order to wear a Personal Flotation Device (PFD) at all times. We have a few adult leaders trained in Safety Afloat, and we work to have the Scouts up to “swimmer” or “lifesaver” ability for the trips.
It’s a good idea to review all the rules for safety near water in the great outdoors.
The good video crew at Yosemite National Park posted this dramatic video story — please watch, and heed the warnings. Doesn’t matter how well you swim, if you get pinned underwater by a powerful flow — and they are all powerful — you’re in trouble. This story has a happy ending with chastened hikers who learned uncharted short cuts may not be a good idea. For nearly a score of people in Yosemite NP the turnout was not wonderful, in the last ten years.
In Texas, drownings take about a hundred lives a year, averaging 81 child drownings each year: “An average of 81 children drowned each year since DFPS [Department of Family Protective Services] began tracking these deaths in 2005. DFPS identified 76 water fatalities in 2005, 70 in 2006, 63 in 2007, 82 in 2008, 113 in 2009 and 84 in 2010, and 79 in 2011 as of August 31, 2011.” [If you can find figures including adult drownings, please let us know in the comments.]
Please watch, and pass along to anyone you know who will be hiking this year.
Text from the filmmakers:
Sixteen people died in Yosemite’s rivers and creeks between 2002 and 2011. Water in Yosemite is more dangerous than it looks, and stories like Matthew’s are a common occurrence.
Go outside, have great fun, see America. Be careful when you do.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s a win-win situation for North Texas politicians, like Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings — they can take action that helps mitigate problems of global warming, but they don’t have to say they’re doing it for global warming.
Water supplies will limit future growth for cities like Dallas, if good water policies cannot be made to assure water to critical functions - Downtown Dallas in the background with the Trinity River in the foreground. Taken from the N Hampton Rd bridge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mayors of several cities announced they will push to keep watering restrictions on, to conserve water, even though their cities’ water supplies got big boosts from massive rainstorms over the past few weeks.
As lake levels dropped through the dry, hot summer and fall of 2011, emergency conservation measures were enacted throughout the region.
In some cities — Plano, for example — watering was restricted to twice a month. (That restriction was just eased to once a week.)
In others, including Dallas, a less stringent limit of twice a week has been in force.
On Wednesday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings , joined by the mayors of Fort Worth, Arlington , and Irving , will recommend that a twice-a-week limit on watering be made permanent. The mayors plan a 9:30 a.m. news conference at the offices of the North Texas Council of Governments, 616 Six Flags Drive.
“Although recent rains have improved current water supply availability, a twice weekly watering schedule provides predictable expectations to customers for landscape planning and a way for the region to continue to use water resources wisely,” says a joint statement from the four cities.
Bill Hanna of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes that says the idea of making the emergency conservation measures permanent was raised a while ago by Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who discussed “a coordinated regional approach” with Rawlings, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, and Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne.
“I think water conservation is probably the most important issue we have in the next three decades,” he quotes Rawlings as saying. “We cannot continue to grow without water, and I want to continue to grow.”
In each of the four municipalities, the City Council would have to approve a measure to implement permanent limitations on lawn watering.
It’s a good move, even if they do it for the wrong reasons. Texas lives in a world of trouble with regard to water. Too many people live in big cities with water supply systems planned and built a half-century ago, for fewer people. Massive aquifers that offered backup to surface water supplies have been mined out. In a short phrase, Texas doesn’t have enough water even in a good rain year, and needs to conserve and develop a state-wide policy on how to allocate water, and how to protect water supplies needed for farming, for industry, and for residential use. Global warming threatens each of those resources in disparate ways, all of them bad.
Conservation is a lot cheaper than building more dams and more pipelines, and more environmentally friendly. Nice to see these guys endorse conservation.
Texas should not rely on freak floods to mitigate long-term drought; growth of cities like Dallas require better water policy. Photo shows Dallas at night over the Trinity River flooding, September 2010. Photo by Ed Darrell, Creative Commons Copyright
Tip of the old scrub brush to Sara Ann Maxwell.
More information, and Zemanta-selected related articles:
We’ve had serious rain in Dallas, but most of the state still resides well in the thrall of drought. Plus, the rains in Dallas have been unseasonal, which suggests the drought is not done with Dallas yet, either.
Texas Parks & Wildlife has words of advice:
More information from TPWD:
The drought has taken a toll on everything from wildlife to water bills. To help Texans cope, Texas Parks and Wildlife is offering a Drought Survival Kit http://www.texasthestateofwater.org/
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Seven minutes on the Red River of the southern U.S., the fickle border of Texas and Oklahoma, the river of story and legend. Good for a map study, good for the fun of it — how much do you really know about the Red River?
George Washington did not cross the Red River; George Washington may not have known the river even existed. His loss.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Which is worse: To be in the depths of a drought, or to deny drought where it exists?
I ask the question because, as one cannot tear one’s eyes away from a train wreck about to occur, I watch Steve Goddard’s blog. Occasionally Steve or one of his fellow travelers says something so contrary to reality or fact that I can’t resist pointing it out.
In some discussion over there, Goddard suggested that because there is above-average snowpack around Salt Lake City and in Northern Utah, Lake Powell’s decade-long struggle with extreme drought is over. Therefore, to Goddard, global warming does not exist.
(No, I’m not really exaggerating. Seriously. Go look. No one there seems to have ever had a course in logic, nor in English composition and essay writing. If Al Gore got svelte, one suspects half the commenters there would never be able to speak again.)
It is true that this year, contrary to the past decade, snowpack is high along the Wasatch Front and in the Uinta Mountains of Utah, and in Wyoming and Colorado areas that drain into the Green and Colorado Rivers. Consequently, forecasters say that Lake Powell may gain a few feet of depth this year. Powell is down about 50 feet, however, and even a record snowpack won’t erase the effects of drought on the lake. (Yeah, I know: The Wasatch doesn’t drain into the Colorado system — it drains to the Great Salt Lake, as indeed do many of the streams that have great snowpack in Utah — so a lot of the record snowpack won’t get within 400 miles of Lake Powell. That’s geography, and it would be one more area that commenters would embarrass themselves in. Don’t ask the pig to sing if you aren’t going to spend the time to teach it; if you need the aphorism on teaching pigs to sing, look it up yourself.)
Since Lake Powell won’t lose a lot of elevation this year, the Goddardites (Goddardians? Goddards? Goddardoons?) pronounce the U.S. free of drought.
Right.
Check it out for yourself, Dear Reader. Here’s an animation from the National Drought Center, showing drought measurements in the contiguous 48 states plus Alaska and Hawaii, over the past 12 weeks:
Drought in the U.S., 12 weeks ending May 17, 2011, National Drought Mitigation Center, U of Nebraska-Lincoln - click on map for a larger version at the Drought Monitor site.
Here’s the drought outlook map from the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA:
U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook Map, released May 19, 2011, NOAA and the Climate Prediction Center - click image for a larger version at NOAA's site.
It would be wonderful were these droughts to break soon. But that is very unlikely.
So, why would anyone deny it?
Then, just to indicate the bait-and-switch logic these guys use, Goddard came back with a claim that the 1956 drought in Texas was worse, as if that means the current drought doesn’t exist. Fore reasons apparent only to those whose heads get pinched by tinfoil hats, he also notes the CO2 levels for 1956. I think I know what point he’s trying to make, but someone should tell him that apples are not oranges, and comparing apples and oranges to pomegranates doesn’t increase the supply of tennis balls.
Let’s just stick to the facts. The experts who must operate the dams and lakes and get water to Mexico on schedule say the drought along the Colorado persists. Who are we to gainsay them?
Upper Colorado snowpack map (it looks good, if you like a surplus of snow, except for the drainage area right around Lake Powell, where the drought is still strong)
The late, great Utah Gov. Scott Matheson commented on snowmelt floods that required Salt Lake City to turn major roads into rivers: “It’s a helluva way to run a desert.”
Every once in a while a factoid crosses the desk and/or mind of an otherwise badly-informed person who denies global warming is a problem, and without bothering to check the significance of the factoid, the denialist world ramps up The Crazy Rant.
Former AGW poster child Lake Powell water levels have been rising rapidly over the last few years.
Goddard’s claim is a grand example of the triumph of ignorance over experience, science, data, history and the law, in discussions of climate change.
Did Goddard read his own chart? It shows a decline in lake level from 2010.
Goddard’s own chart shows a decline in Lake Powell’s March 20 level, from 2010; did he look at the chart? Even Goddard’s source says, “Lake Powell is 89.99 feet below Full Pool (Elevation 3,700).”
“Full pool” level is 3,700 feet elevation (the height of the surface of Lake Powell above sea level). Goddard’s chart shows the lake hasn’t been at that level since 2000 (and it was declining for some time prior to that). Goddard’s chart shows four years of rise compared to seven years of decline.
In the Upper Colorado River Basin during water year 2010, the overall precipitation accumulated through September 30, 2010 was approximately 90% of average based on the 30 year average for the period from 1971 through 2000. For Water Year 2011 thus far, the estimated monthly precipitation within the Upper Colorado River Basin (above Lake Powell) as a percentage of average has been: (October – 135%, November – 95%, December – 225%, January – 50%, February – 100%, March – 90%)
The Climate Prediction Center outlook (dated March 17, 2010) for temperature over the next 3 months indicates that temperatures in the Upper Colorado River Basin are expected to be above average while precipitation over the next 3 months is projected to be near average in the northern reaches of the basin while below average in the southern reaches of the basin.
Upper Colorado River Basin Drought
The Upper Colorado River Basin continues to experience a protracted multi-year drought. Since 1999, inflow to Lake Powell has been below average in every year except water years 2005 and 2008. In the summer of 1999, Lake Powell was close to full with reservoir storage at 23.5 million acre-feet, or 97 percent of capacity. During the next 5 years (2000 through 2004) unregulated inflow to Lake Powell was well below average. This resulted in Lake Powell storage decreasing during this period to 8.0 million acre-feet (33 percent of capacity) which occurred on April 8, 2005. During 2005, 2008 and 2009, drought conditions eased somewhat with near or above average inflow conditions and net gains in storage to Lake Powell. 2011 will be another above average inflow year so drought conditions are easing somewhat in the Colorado River Basin. As of April 18, 2011 the storage in Lake Powell was approximately 12.73 million acre-feet (52.3 % of capacity) which is below desired levels. The overall reservoir storage in the Colorado River Basin as of April 18, 2011 is approximately 31.40 million acre-feet (52.8 % of capacity).
Updated: April 19, 2011
“Desert mirage,” editorial discussion of Lake Powell’s climate-change-fueled dropping levels threatening a water project for St. George, Utah, with discussion of U.S. Research Council report on future levels of Lake Powell; Salt Lake Tribune, January 6, 2010. “Lake Powell’s current water level is 59 percent of capacity. The lake level, around 20 million acre-feet in 2000, dropped to about 8 million acre-feet by 2005. Water levels rebounded a bit over the next two years, but the U.S. National Research Council predicted in 2007 that the American West could see worse droughts in the future than the one Utahns experienced from 1998 to 2005. In fact, the early 20th century, when the Colorado compact was negotiated, was an anomaly, a relatively wet period for an otherwise historically much drier area.”
BuRec says very large snow pack is enough to avert shortages in the Lower Colorado, this year — but the drought continues: “The Colorado River Basin has experienced historic drought, and while this winter’s snowpack will benefit river flows, we cannot say that the drought is over,” cautioned Commissioner Connor. “Given the potential for extended dry years, and the effects of climate change on snowpack and runoff in the Colorado Basin, we must continue to work with the states, tribes and other stakeholders in the Basin to meet the water needs in the future.”
New York Times Green Blog, “A reprieve for Western Water users”; “What if this year is an anomaly — not like the year 1983, a gusher of a rain year that was followed by four more fat years, but like the other above-normal years that came and went in the last decade without really denting the impact of the long-term drought?”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
As evidenced by this announcement of newly-proposed regulations on pesticides in water.
From the EPA, pure and unedited:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 2, 2010
EPA Proposes New Permit Requirements for Pesticide Discharges
Action would reduce amount of pesticides discharged and protect America ’s waters
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing a new permit requirement that would decrease the amount of pesticides discharged to our nation’s waters and protect human health and the environment. This action is in response to an April 9, 2009 court decision that found that pesticide discharges to U.S. waters were pollutants, thus requiring a permit.
The proposed permit, released for public comment and developed in collaboration with states, would require all operators to reduce pesticide discharges by using the lowest effective amount of pesticide, prevent leaks and spills, calibrate equipment and monitor for and report adverse incidents. Additional controls, such as integrated pest management practices, are built into the permit for operators who exceed an annual treatment area threshold.
“EPA believes this draft permit strikes a balance between using pesticides to control pests and protecting human health and water quality,” said Peter S. Silva, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water.
EPA estimates that the pesticide general permit will affect approximately 35,000 pesticide applicators nationally that perform approximately half a million pesticide applications annually. The agency’s draft permit covers the following pesticide uses: (1) mosquito and other flying insect pest control; (2) aquatic weed and algae control; (3) aquatic nuisance animal control; and (4) forest canopy pest control. It does not cover terrestrial applications to control pests on agricultural crops or forest floors. EPA is soliciting public comment on whether additional use patterns should be covered by this general permit.
The agency plans to finalize the permit in December 2010. It will take effect April 9, 2011. Once finalized, the pesticide general permit will be used in states, territories, tribal lands, and federal facilities where EPA is the authorized permitting authority. In the remaining 44 states, states will issue the pesticide general permits. EPA has been working closely with these states to concurrently develop their permits.
EPA will hold three public meetings, a public hearing and a webcast on the draft general permit to present the proposed requirements of the permit, the basis for those requirements and to answer questions. EPA will accept written comments on the draft permit for 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.
Let me repeat for emphasis, from the press release: “EPA will accept written comments on the draft permit for 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
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Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
DDT-style problems remain
June 2, 2010As evidenced by this announcement of newly-proposed regulations on pesticides in water.
From the EPA, pure and unedited:
Let me repeat for emphasis, from the press release: “EPA will accept written comments on the draft permit for 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
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