- Poseidon’s desalination plant in Carlsbad (San Diego county) is almost ready to begin construction. It took 12 years (instead of 4) to get this far, but they’re almost there! Also read (via DW) this critical — and thorough — look at the politics and economics of Poseidon’s plants. This one is even worse: a local politician who let Poseidon write letters “from him” supporting them.
- via Aquadoc: “Seven experts debate the past and present existence of water wars, consider the difficulty of owning a fluid resource, and examine the hot spots for future conflict.”
- “The scrubby jatropha tree has been touted as a wonder biofuel with unlimited potential. But questions are now emerging as to whether widespread jatropha cultivation is really feasible or whether it will simply displace badly-needed food crops in the developing world.” Even worse, politicians are resisting EPA attempts to scale back “bad” biofuels. Hail King Corn!
- The endless debate continues: “Yale Environment 360 asked eight experts to discuss the merits of a cap-and-trade system versus a carbon tax.”
Addendum: Here’s a high-end overview [PDF] by Robert Metcalf (Tufts) recently published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
- “Imagine H2O has launched “its first innovation challenge, with $50,000 in prizes for business plans promising the greatest breakthroughs in the efficient use of water…The competition’s inaugural prize will focus on water efficiency in agriculture, commercial, industrial or residential applications, such as water demand reduction, improved water use, water recycling and/or reuse. Entries will be accepted from anyone in the world beginning in September, and winners will be announced at a showcase event in early 2010. Future years’ competitions will have different prize topics addressing other critical water problems.” Disclosure: I may work with these guys…
- A new development: “A live streaming web camera installed last year to broadcast Old Faithful Geyser was instrumental in the arrest of six vandals last week…This may be the first instance in which a webcam has been used in this fashion to protect park natural resources.”
- “This paper explores some lessons [on sustainability] from Aboriginal Australia which have resonance in the modern world and shows that countries which have learned those lessons are in fact more sustainable than those which have not”
- Grist has an excellent series on sludge (aka “biosolids” or “shit n stuff”): “Despite pretreatment programs that prevent some of the most noxious stuff from entering the public sewers, sludge can include so many toxins that the Clean Water Act lists it as a “pollutant.” So it’s a little surprising where it ends up: Today more than half of America’s sewage sludge is spread on land as fertilizer. [snip]
Today, 16 years after the official federal sludge rules came into effect in 1993, EPA still doesn’t have a system in place to monitor or investigate sludge-related health complaints. But in 2002, a team of researchers produced the first peer-reviewed article (whose findings were recently backed up in a separate study) to both document health complaints from people who’d been exposed to sludge and explain how this exposure might have made them sick.” Very informative! Very scary!
