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WATER AND WASTEWATER NEWS
News Courtesy of U.S. Water News Online
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| Massive reservoir size of Manhattan intended to help Everglades
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Out here, where turtles lumber across two-lane highways, sugar is king and alligators own the swamp, the silence is broken by the sound of rumbling trucks and earthen explosions.
Construction crews are blowing up rocks and gouging out an area bigger than Manhattan as they work to build the world's largest aboveground manmade reservoir — 25 square miles. It will eventually hold 62 billion gallons of water and is a key component to restoring the River of Grass.
Nearly a century's worth of dikes and dams for flood control have left the Everglades distressed, parched and precariously close to collapse. Once spread across more than 6,250 square miles, the ecosystem has shrunk in half, replaced with homes and farms and a crisscrossing grid of about 2,000 miles of canals to divert water.
For the intentions of the time, it was considered a job well done.
“They built this thing beautifully,” said Terrence “Rock” Salt of the U.S. Interior Department. “But as we look back at it through the lens of our current 21st-century values and understanding, you get a different take on it which leads to our restoration efforts now.”
Today, one of Florida's most pressing needs is storage of water, which once flowed freely south all the way into Florida Bay. When a hard rain falls, gravity now pushes the overflow out into the ocean to keep from inundating some 5 million people who now live in the region.
That's where the massive reservoir just south of Lake Okeechobee comes in. Its intent is to help restore some of that natural flow by keeping water from heading out to sea.
No one disagrees that water storage is key to restoration, but the entire Everglades effort has for years pitted environmentalists against the government, each side wary of the other's intentions.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued over the reservoir, claiming the state has not legally committed itself to using the water primarily for Everglades restoration. While the state says 80 percent of the water will be for environmental purposes, the group fears that without a legally binding commitment, development and agriculture pressures could mean the water may go elsewhere.
“The Everglades and everyone deserves better than that,” said council attorney Brad Sewell.
The entire Everglades system has lost 90 percent of its wading bird population, and 68 threatened or endangered species face extreme peril.
But it's no easy task to fix. The channelizing of South Florida allows engineers to move water at will. The result has been devastating to the ecosystem. The only way forward is to re-engineer nature to work more naturally, engineers say.
“We're certainly never going to return it to the way it was 150 years ago,” said Stuart Appelbaum of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is partnered with the South Florida Water Management District to do the work. “But we can do our best.”
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| Health care chain drops bottled water
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A St. Louis-based health care organization is turning to the tap, eliminating bottled water at its hospitals as part of an effort to be more environment-friendly.
The bottle ban began recently at SSM Health Care's 20 hospitals in four states. Bottled water will be eliminated from vending machines, won't be sold in cafeterias, won't be brought in for meetings. Patients and guests can get water in cafeterias using recycled paper cups. Employees will be encouraged to use reusable bottles or cups.
The company cites the environmental impact of making, transporting and disposing of bottles.
"This effort means that more than half a million bottles of water will be eliminated at SSM's facilities each year," Sister Mary Jean Ryan, president and chief executive officer, said.
She said one of the biggest concerns is that it takes fossil fuels to both produce and transport the bottles. "Eliminating bottled water is a contribution we can make as a system to protect our fragile environment," Ryan said.
SSM is one of the largest Catholic health systems in the U.S., operating in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. SSM employs more than 24,000 people. It claims to be among the first health care organizations in the nation to eliminate bottled water.
Bottled water sales continue to rise — up 8 percent in the U.S. last year. Industry figures indicate that the average Americans consumed about 29 gallons of bottled water in 2007.
Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, wondered why water — an alternative to soda and other drinks still available at SSM facilities — is being singled out.
"Consumers drink bottled water because they want to eliminate or reduce the calories and additives in their beverages, "Doss said. "In our view it is not in the public's best interest or health interest to take actions that will discourage consumers from drinking a healthy beverage.''
Boston-based Corporate Accountability International is spearheading a national "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign. Director Gigi Kellett praised SSM's decision, and said other hospital organizations have also been in contact with the campaign and are considering a move away from bottled water.
"We're starting to see people really looking at our public tap water as a better solution," she said.
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| Sonoma County Water Agency seeking water conservation plan |
People from Windsor to San Rafael may be asked to cut back on their water usage this summer.
Because of low water levels in Lake Mendocino, officials with the Sonoma County Water Agency are asking the districts they provide water for to come up a conservation plan.
The agency serves districts that provide water for about 600,000 residents from Windsor to San Rafael.
Officials say with the water level down, they're concerned about not having enough water in the lake for the fall salmon run.
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| Nebraska appeals ruling against Republican River taxes |
Residents of the Republican River basin may have to write checks for property taxes that a judge ruled are unconstitutional.
Part of a ruling last week that barred the collection and levying of taxes meant to help Nebraska get into compliance with the Republican River compact is now on hold because of an appeal filed by the state, natural resources districts and other defendants.
Recently, they came out on the losing end of a lawsuit attacking the property taxes authorized by state lawmakers to help pay for water to send to Kansas.
"They're probably going to be upset, but I think it can be reasonably explained that we still have to pay taxes until it's decided," said Dan Smith, manager of the Curtis-based Middle Republican Natural Resources District.
Under Nebraska law, judgments against the state are put on hold when appeals are filed and until final rulings are made by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
After the Legislature passed a law last year authorizing the property taxes, natural resources districts in the river basin passed levies expected to generate more than $2 million in 2008. The deadline for paying roughly half of those tax bills has passed, and the second half will be due late this summer.
Smith said property taxes paid over the next several months will probably be refunded if the state, NRDs and the other defendants lose their appeal.
But, he said, whether the taxes collected before the court decision could be refunded is unclear. The NRDs may ask the state Supreme Court to clarify what should be done with the money when it rules on the appeal, he said.
Lincoln attorney Rod Confer, who represents the nine residents who filed the lawsuit, has said that those who paid property taxes under protest would receive refunds.
Complicating the situation is that the collected taxes were to be used to repay bonds taken out to compensate irrigators for sending water to Kansas. But the bonds were never issued because of the lawsuit. Instead, the state loaned the NRDs $9 million.
Kansas contends Nebraska used about 80,000 acre feet, or roughly 26 billion gallons, more than it was allowed in 2005 and 2006. It has demanded more than $72 million for the overuse in addition to a shutdown of wells that irrigate nearly half of the 1.2 million acres in Nebraska's portion of the river basin.
Nebraska has said those figures are too high and that it has a solid plan to get in compliance with the three-state compact that also includes Colorado.
Kansas and Nebraska have failed to resolve the dispute on their own, and the issue is likely headed to arbitration. If that fails, Kansas officials have said they would take it back to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a decree in 2003 that governs use of Republican River water.
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| Amish refuse to abide by outhouse rules, face sanctions |
Swartzentruber and Yoder represented themselves last month in court, where Yoder also said he would not pay the fine or appeal, county officials said. Because the Amish do not have phones in their homes, Yoder could not be reached for comment.
The men are members of the Swartzentruber Amish, one of the Christian sect's most conservative groups. Their only Pennsylvania settlement is the one here, about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Home to 30 families, the Swartzentrubers relocated from Ohio about a decade ago, a relatively recent community compared with the much larger and more well-known Amish population in south-central Pennsylvania.
The Swartzentrubers number only about 8,000, or fewer than 5 percent of the roughly 220,000 Amish in the United States, according to Donald Kraybill, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College. More than half of their settlements are in Ohio.
While all Amish shun the modern world, the Swartzentrubers are known for their more austere restrictions on technology, more severe limits to interaction with the outside world and more rigid notions of the separation of church and state, Kraybill said.
Yoder and five other Amish men laid out their beliefs in a handwritten letter to the sewage enforcement agency in January.
"We feel this sewage plan enforcement along with its standards is against our religious (beliefs), "they wrote. "Our forefathers and the church are conscientiously opposed to install the sewage method accordingly to the world's standards.''
Other than the sewage issue, local officials say relations with the Swartzentrubers have generally gone well, other than the occasional citation for not having warning markers, like orange triangles, on their horse-drawn buggies.
Permit disputes with the Amish are most common in areas where they are relative newcomers, but usually get resolved, said Herman Bontrager, an insurance company executive from Lancaster County who is a member of the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom.
"The position of not wanting to abide by code and cooperate with legal authority, that's a pretty rare position," he said. "Most Amish find ways to do that.''
Among the Amish, church guidelines can be interpreted differently from congregation to congregation — and how disputes are resolved can also differ greatly from community to community, Kraybill said.
"There's a lot of different outcomes — sometimes accommodations on both sides, sometimes someone goes to prison," he said.
Kraybill said he was unaware of any similar dispute over sewage disposal in Ohio. In Morristown, N.Y., the Swartzentrubers are involved in a court fight over state building codes.
Andy Swartzentruber's troubles began in October 2006 when residents complained anonymously that the schoolhouse and outhouses were erected on his property without permits. Residents said they worried about potential water contamination.
An insp
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| Nevada officials rally against Yucca Mountain repository |
Nevada officials rallied against plans for licensing a national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, while Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain said in Colorado the repository might not be necessary.
"I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a speech on international nuclear security at the University of Denver.
"It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain," McCain said. He referred to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the Energy Department wants to store 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and other highly radioactive waste.
At an anti-Yucca rally at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., dismissed McCain's remarks. Reid said McCain's voting record showed he favors the Yucca Mountain repository.
"John McCain is on the wrong side of that issue," said Reid, the Senate majority leader.
The rally against the Yucca repository drew officials including Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., former Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, other state and Clark County officials, and environmentalists.
Organizers said they intend to circulate a petition asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject an Energy Department application to build and operate the planned repository.
Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said she was prepared to make legal challenges as soon as the Energy Department submits its application next month. Cortez Masto said she believes the document will be incomplete, and will fail to protect the public and the environment from deadly radioactive materials.
Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman, said the Energy Department will submit a complete application for "very thorough and rigorous review" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"We look forward to participating in the NRC process," Benson said.
In a call with reporters, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, said the idea of an international repository is only practical in Siberia.
"So when Senator McCain indicates a willingness to support the idea of an international repository and because the United States controls in effect the destination of some 75 or 80 percent of the spent fuel in the world ... an international repository will not happen without U.S. support and will not happen without a place to go," Scheunemann said.
Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., have said they oppose building a Yucca Mountain repository.
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News Courtesy of U.S. Water News Online
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