Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water (fwd)

[Richard Lowenberg]

I mentioned this reference to Paul Paryski this morning, but mis-stated
Maude's last name.   Here you are, Paul.   I couldn't find your personal
email address.
Richard
--------

Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on February 14, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008
<http://www.alternet.org/story/76819/>

 From Chile to the Philippines to South Africa to her home country of
Canada, Maude Barlow is one of a few people who truly understands the
scope of the world's water woes. Her newest book, Blue Covenant: The
Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water,
details her discoveries around the globe about our diminishing water
resources, the increasing privatization trend and the grassroots
groups that are fighting back against corporate theft, government
mismanagement and a changing climate.

If you want to know where the water is running low (including 36 U.S.
states), why we haven't been able to protect it and what we can do to
ensure everyone has the right to water, Barlow's book is an essential
read. It is part science, part policy and part impassioned call. And
the information in Blue Covenant couldn't come from a more reliable
source. Barlow is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians
and co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which is instrumental in
the international community in working for the right to water for all
people. She also authored Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft
of the World's Water with Tony Clarke. And she's the recipient of the
Right Livelihood Award (known as the "Alternative Nobel") for her
global water justice work.

She took a moment to talk to AlterNet in between the Canadian and U.S.
legs of a book tour for Blue Covenant. (Barlow just kicked off her
U.S. tour; for a list of tour stops and dates, click here).

Tara Lohan: This year in the U.S. there has been a whole lot press
about the drought in Atlanta and the Southeast, and I think for a lot
of people in the U.S. it is the first they are hearing about drought,
but the crisis here in North America is really pretty extreme isn't it?

Maude Barlow: It really is, and it kind of surprises me when I hear
people, for instance in Atlanta say, "We didn't know it was coming." I
don't know how that could be possible, and I do have to say that I
blame our political leaders. I don't understand how they could not
have been reading what I've been reading and what anyone who is
watching this has been reading.

I remember attending a conference in Boise, Idaho, three years ago and
hearing a lot of scientists get up and say, "Read my lips, this isn't
a drought, this is permanent drying out." We are overpumping the
Ogallala, Lake Powell and Lake Meade. The back up systems are now
being depleted. This is by no means a drought ...

The thing that I'm trying to establish with the first chapter, which
is called "Where Has All the Water Gone," is that what we learned in
grade five about the hydrologic cycle being a closed, fixed cycle that
could never be interrupted and could never go anywhere, is not true.
They weren't lying to us, but they weren't aware of the human capacity
to destroy it, and the reality is that we've interrupted the
hydrologic cycle in many parts of the world and the American Southwest
is one of them.

<snip/>

Blue Planet Project
<http://www.blueplanetproject.net/>

Water justice reports from World Water Week
<http://worldwaterweek.blogspot.com/>

Global Justice Movement
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Justice_Movement>

[Parks, Raymond]

Richard Lowenberg wrote:

> I mentioned this reference to Paul Paryski this morning, but mis-stated
> Maude's last name.   Here you are, Paul.   I couldn't find your personal
> email address.
> Richard
> --------
>
> Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water
> By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
> Posted on February 14, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008
> <http://www.alternet.org/story/76819/>
>
>  From Chile to the Philippines to South Africa to her home country of
> Canada, Maude Barlow is one of a few people who truly understands the
> scope of the world's water woes. Her newest book, Blue Covenant: The
> Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water,
> details her discoveries around the globe about our diminishing water
> resources, the increasing privatization trend and the grassroots
> groups that are fighting back against corporate theft, government
> mismanagement and a changing climate.

   This kind of thing fascinates me as an example of how poorly Sandia
gets the word out and as an example of how society accepts bad news.

   Mike Hightower and the folks in our Energy Assurance group have been
predicting water problems for at least thirteen years (that I know
about).  They've built and run computer models predicting which
countries will run out and when (including predicting the Southeast US'
water woes).  For at least the last two years, he's been presenting to
whoever would listen (including Congress) not only the shortage of water
but how that interacts with energy production and population.  Yet we
have a hard time funding this work because no-one seems to want to hear
about it.

   A non-technical progressive who started writing that water is a
scarce resource no more than eight years ago writes sensational books
and gets listened to by at least the progressive community and some of
the general public.

   It's as if the public doesn't want to hear bad news from scientists
and engineers but doesn't mind it from those already labeled radical.

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Raymond Parks wrote:
>    A non-technical progressive who started writing that water is a
> scarce resource no more than eight years ago writes sensational books
> and gets listened to by at least the progressive community and some of
> the general public.
>
> It's as if the public doesn't want to hear bad news from scientists
> and engineers but doesn't mind it from those already labeled radical.
>  

Hmm, maybe if Orange County can build a sewage purification system that
can serve 5 million people (for $480 million), perhaps could New Mexico
cover the whole state for a similar cost?  In 2005 there were 895,116
personal income tax returns
(http://www.tax.state.nm.us/pubs/TaxreseStat/2005PITStatsFinal1.pdf).
That's about $536 a person to buy the same system as OC (or several
smaller ones).  Presumably that could be spread out over a generation or
two, say $20 over 30 years?

A tax and spend liberal,

Marcus

[Parks, Raymond]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Raymond Parks wrote:
>>    A non-technical progressive who started writing that water is a
>> scarce resource no more than eight years ago writes sensational books
>> and gets listened to by at least the progressive community and some of
>> the general public.
>>
>> It's as if the public doesn't want to hear bad news from scientists
>> and engineers but doesn't mind it from those already labeled radical.
>>
>
> Hmm, maybe if Orange County can build a sewage purification system that
> can serve 5 million people (for $480 million), perhaps could New Mexico
> cover the whole state for a similar cost?  In 2005 there were 895,116
> personal income tax returns
> (http://www.tax.state.nm.us/pubs/TaxreseStat/2005PITStatsFinal1.pdf).
> That's about $536 a person to buy the same system as OC (or several
> smaller ones).  Presumably that could be spread out over a generation or
> two, say $20 over 30 years?

   Um, I'm confused by what appears to be a non sequitur.

   However, the difficulty of translating Orange County to New Mexico is
the 3 orders of magnitude of difference in size and population density.
  OC is approximately 790 square miles with 3,056,865 population (not 5
million, but that may be the planned capacity of their sewage system)
which yields a 3,869 people per square mile population density.  New
Mexico's size is 121,593 square miles with a population of about
2,016,000 which yields a population density of 16.5/square mile.  It
takes more than several smaller plants to serve that low-density population.

   Albuquerque has about 25% of New Mexico's population (about 1/3 of
New Mexico's population live in the ABQ metro area).  The latest
improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million.

   Does this help with understanding sewage treatment in New Mexico?
How did we get here?

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Ray,

Sandia is and always has been orders of magnitudes more open than LANL when
it came to disseminating information that was important for the public to
have.

Kevin "My Lips Are Moving " Roark of the LANL Public Affairs Office will
never be encouraged by LANL's new LLC to release actual data regarding LANL
contaminants leaching into the aquifer.

Not sure what the point of this thread is, but I certainly see complexity
modeling and analysis opportunities that pertain to LANL, the aquifer, the
Rio Grande, and points downstream.

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell


On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Raymond Parks <rcparks at sandia.gov> wrote:

> Richard Lowenberg wrote:
> > I mentioned this reference to Paul Paryski this morning, but mis-stated
> > Maude's last name.   Here you are, Paul.   I couldn't find your personal
> > email address.
> > Richard
> > --------
> >
> > Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water
> > By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
> > Posted on February 14, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008
> > <http://www.alternet.org/story/76819/>
> >
> >  From Chile to the Philippines to South Africa to her home country of
> > Canada, Maude Barlow is one of a few people who truly understands the
> > scope of the world's water woes. Her newest book, Blue Covenant: The
> > Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water,
> > details her discoveries around the globe about our diminishing water
> > resources, the increasing privatization trend and the grassroots
> > groups that are fighting back against corporate theft, government
> > mismanagement and a changing climate.
>
>    This kind of thing fascinates me as an example of how poorly Sandia
> gets the word out and as an example of how society accepts bad news.
>
>   Mike Hightower and the folks in our Energy Assurance group have been
> predicting water problems for at least thirteen years (that I know
> about).  They've built and run computer models predicting which
> countries will run out and when (including predicting the Southeast US'
> water woes).  For at least the last two years, he's been presenting to
> whoever would listen (including Congress) not only the shortage of water
> but how that interacts with energy production and population.  Yet we
> have a hard time funding this work because no-one seems to want to hear
> about it.
>
>   A non-technical progressive who started writing that water is a
> scarce resource no more than eight years ago writes sensational books
> and gets listened to by at least the progressive community and some of
> the general public.
>
>   It's as if the public doesn't want to hear bad news from scientists
> and engineers but doesn't mind it from those already labeled radical.
>
> --
> Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
> Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
> ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
> http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
> http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Raymond Parks wrote:
> Um, I'm confused by what appears to be a non sequitur.
>  
Are the microfiltration/reverse osmosis/UV treatment/Hydrogen Peroxide
technologies cheaper for large installations?
As far as I understand, OC purifies the sewage to quality of distilled
water (using above), and then pump it back into their aquifiers.

http://www.gwrsystem.com
> The latest improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million.
> Albuquerque has about 25% of New Mexico's population (about 1/3 of
> New Mexico's population live in the ABQ metro area).  
Ok, so ABQ is spending about $140 per person on that plant ($70 million
for 500,000 people).   OC is spending $96 per person on theirs ($480
million for 5 million people).    It seems to me that the more
sophisticated OC technology is cheaper.   Presumably there are economies
of scale, but $70 million is still a big chunk of change.

Marcus

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Raymond Parks wrote:
> The latest improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million.
Are we talking about sewage treatment, or drinking water?   Do you mean
this project?

 http://www.sjcdrinkingwater.org/water_treatment/index.htm

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Ok, so ABQ is spending about $140 per person on that plant ($70 million
> for 500,000 people).   OC is spending $96 per person on theirs ($480
> million for 5 million people).  
Apparently the OC drinking water system takes output of traditional
sewage treatment as input, so it's not toilet-to-top end to end.  ;-)

Marcus

[Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems]

You might be interested in the system dynamics modeling approach taken by
Sandia.

https://waterportal.sandia.gov/middlerio/documents/

Lou

[Douglas Roberts-2]

The article does not mention Los Alamos, nor contamination migration into
the aquifer.  Instead, it seems devoted to land use and capacity planning.

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Louis Macovsky <dynbiosys at verizon.net>
wrote:

> You might be interested in the system dynamics modeling approach taken by
> Sandia.
>
> https://waterportal.sandia.gov/middlerio/documents/
>
> Lou
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Douglas Roberts wrote:
> The article does not mention Los Alamos, nor contamination migration
> into the aquifer.  Instead, it seems devoted to land use and capacity
> planning.
Is this list losing e-mails again?  I can't find a single message
mentioning Los Alamos, except one from you about LANL PR.

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Marcus,

I never question the accuracy of material released by the LANL Public
Affairs Office.  I know it to be nearly to completely misleading -- a trend
begun in 2004 by you-know-who.

However, the thrust of my comment was that I see opportunities for
complexity modeling in the domain of contaminant migration from LANL's
numerous dump sites into the local aquifer.

There are untapped potential funding opportunities for this type of work as
well: law firms; the State of New Mexico; the State of Texas; other private
stakeholders in the drinking water resource of the Rio Grande basin.

Litigious environments can be tapped for funding opportunities.  That was
how The TRANSIMS project obtained a large chunk of funding in its early
years.   Back in 1990 or so, The EPA sued the FHWA, claiming that none of
the modeling tools then in use by FHWA planners could satisfy a provision of
the Clean Air Act of 1990.  The provision in question required that the FHWA
be able to predict the impact on air quality of any proposed changes to the
transportation infrastructure.  As a result of this odd episode of one
government agency, the EPA, suing another government agency, the FHWA, the
TRANSIMS project procured funding from both agencies, with each agency
intending to use TRANSIMS to demonstrate their own case.

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 7:21 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> Douglas Roberts wrote:
> > The article does not mention Los Alamos, nor contamination migration
> > into the aquifer.  Instead, it seems devoted to land use and capacity
> > planning.
> Is this list losing e-mails again?  I can't find a single message
> mentioning Los Alamos, except one from you about LANL PR.
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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[Parks, Raymond]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Raymond Parks wrote:
>> Um, I'm confused by what appears to be a non sequitur.
>>
> Are the microfiltration/reverse osmosis/UV treatment/Hydrogen Peroxide
> technologies cheaper for large installations?
> As far as I understand, OC purifies the sewage to quality of distilled
> water (using above), and then pump it back into their aquifiers.
>
> http://www.gwrsystem.com
>> The latest improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million.
>> Albuquerque has about 25% of New Mexico's population (about 1/3 of
>> New Mexico's population live in the ABQ metro area).
> Ok, so ABQ is spending about $140 per person on that plant ($70 million
> for 500,000 people).   OC is spending $96 per person on theirs ($480
> million for 5 million people).    It seems to me that the more
> sophisticated OC technology is cheaper.   Presumably there are economies
> of scale, but $70 million is still a big chunk of change.

   The $70 million was just for the systems to resolve nitrogen
contamination, as I understand the ABQ web-site.  I couldn't find a
single line item in the ABQ budget for wastewater treatment - it's
subsumed into the water supply system budget.  ABQ is actually under
greater constraint than OC - they don't have reservations downstream
that have very high standards of clean water.

   I don't know which techniques ABQ uses - but one of the
considerations should be the energy cost of the treatment method.

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

[Parks, Raymond]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Raymond Parks wrote:
>> The latest improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million.
> Are we talking about sewage treatment, or drinking water?   Do you mean
> this project?
>
>  http://www.sjcdrinkingwater.org/water_treatment/index.htm

   No, that's a water treatment plant, not a waste-water treatment
plant.  The $70 million was for the improvement of the Southside Water
Reclamation Plant (SWRP).

> Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>> Ok, so ABQ is spending about $140 per person on that plant ($70 million
>> for 500,000 people).   OC is spending $96 per person on theirs ($480
>> million for 5 million people).
> Apparently the OC drinking water system takes output of traditional
> sewage treatment as input, so it's not toilet-to-top end to end.  ;-)

   That sounds more like the San Juan/Chama water treatment plant that
you cited.

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288