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Drinking water

Shale, yeah, This is Important!

by fred on October 5, 2010

Appalachian Roadcut
Image by fred1st via Flickr

If you’re not current with the issues surrounding the drilling and “fracking” of horizontal bores into deep Appalachian shale for the purpose of methane extraction, it’s important that we become informed NOW so that public involvement can bring this industry into compliance with the Clean Air, Clean Water and Clean Drinking Water acts.

The Haliburton Loophole exempted gas fracking (or hydro-fracturing) from these important regulations. Our ground and surface water is at stake.

Serving Suggestion:

Read my short overview article I’ve uploaded to Scribd.

Then go to the Natural Resources Defense Council page where you can write your own or sign a prepared statement to your state lawmakers asking them to sign a bill that would close the Haliburton Loophole for the shale drilling industry.

You’re welcome to modify my statement if you’d like:

Dear Virginia Lawmakers,

Floyd County where I live is not located over Marcellus shale. But like mountaintop removal for coal, all of us are connected to the consequences of this new form of energy mining when we use the products in our daily lives.

I am concerned that the so-called Haliburton loophole is allowing unsafe practices that could cause very long term harm to our ground and surface water, air and human health.

Please do not let our energy supply come at the expense of our health or cause further depletion to our diminishing volume of safe water for drinking and agricultural use.

H.R. 2766/S. 1215 asks no more than that the shale oil drilling industry comply with the same standards that are incumbent on other extractive industries. Please close this loophole now for the people of the states where the drilling is already taking place, and for those of us who want to use the generated methane and its derivatives with a clean conscience.

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Creek Jots ~ 2010-05-18

by fred on May 18, 2010

Rain-drenched black vulture drying its wings

☼ This buzzard probably weighed a few extra pounds from all the rain it soaked up Saturday night. His silhouette made for an eerie sight, perched atop the dead hemlock–carrion feeder sunning from a remnant skeleton tree whose demise was the result of an alien invasion of tiny tufts of white death.

☼ This Saturday, Barnes and Noble-Christiansburg at 7:00–I’ll be reading and signing books, the topic of focus is a 40 year retrospective: first wife, first camera and a snake in a box, all from June 1970. Looking forward to seeing a few of you there. Come for the latte; stay for the lit talk.

☼ I’ve mentioned we were down to two hens. So we asked our neighbors who supplied the hens back last fall for replacements. Turns out, not a few of theirs have been mysteriously dying like our one did. Another acquaintance of theirs whose birds are also dying took their dead hens to Virginia Tech’s Animal Science labs to determine cause of death. They can’t figure it out. So we’ll hold off a while on replenishing the lost livestock. And wash our hands well when handling anything to do with the birds.

☼ Why the alarming increase in ADHD (a diagnosis unheard of in my childhood years)? A recent study “dealt with one common type of pesticide called organophosphates. Levels of six pesticide compounds were measured. For the most frequent compound detected, 20 percent of the children with above-average levels had ADHD. In children with no detectable amount in their urine, 10 percent had ADHD.” Almost 100 percent of children tested had at least some pesticide in their blood. Evidence mounts (to no one’s great surprise) that we have been too cavalier in banning or at least monitoring carefully the man-made broad-spectrum products designed to kill weeds, insects, mold and bacteria.

☼ My son recently had an episode of back pain and  I was looking for some good, illustrated back, hip and abdominal exercises to refer him to. Go to the EXERCISES tab at this page, and be sure and also read the “exercise guidelines” before starting a new program of strengthening, flexibility or endurance exercises.

☼ This creeps me out: Satellites will issue speeding tickets from space. “The system — called “SpeedSpike” — figures your average speed between two points, captures an image of your license plate and reports you if you’re going faster than the law allows. And after your third violation, a drone missile flies in your car window, extracts your license from your billfold, and takes your keys.

☼ If you’re a vegetarian for “humanitarian reasons” a solution is at hand: pigs bred to feel no pain. They don’t suffer wading around knee deep in their own waste, so you are guilt-free to eat all the meat you want, as there are no other arguments for eating lower on the food chain. Duh! Who comes up with these “solutions”? What must their ethical framework be like? It brings to mind what was once called the “corps of engineers mentality”: if it CAN be done, it SHOULD be done.  Related: Industrial environmentalism vs. holistic environmentalism

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Water Wealth: our Blue Gold

by fred on December 8, 2009

Confluence of Goose Creek and Nameless

Confluence of Goose Creek and Nameless

Will there be enough to go around in tomorrow’s world? How to have adequate water for all who need it on the global scale has become as urgent and compelling an environmental issue as how to avoid too much atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But unlike the invisible, tasteless, odorless greenhouse gas whose levels are near or past the tipping point, water touches us tangibly every day. Thirst tells when we there’s not enough of it in our bodies and drought shows us the same dependence for our crops and livestock and forests. In a matter of hours or days without it, our absolute reliance on the liquid is not in question.

Even so, it’s hard to fully comprehend the pending water crisis beyond the boundaries of our Floyd County kitchen sinks, wells and watersheds. If we’re not thirsty, if our gardens and woods are green and the creeks are full now, where’s the problem?

It lies in the fact that soon there will likely be nine billion cups held under the spigot, even as the global water use per person in the developed world continues to rise.

Add to this the fact that the volume of existing potable water for those who need it is reduced by contamination with heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and pathogens, though there are far too many who must drink whatever they can get in whatever state it’s in. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.7 billion people still lack access to clean water and 2.3 billion people suffer from water-borne diseases each year.

Fresh water melts from the snowpack of warming mountain glaciers in Nepal to rush past thirsty millions on its way to the salt seas. It becomes unreachable by excessive draw-down of sources underground to water lawns, fill swimming pools or grow biocrops to fuel our cars.

The supply diminishes, the demand increases, and waters above and under ground cross all kinds of high-tension state and national borders. The term “water wars” is more thinkable than ever.

When it comes to this essential “right” regarded over our short human history as an “all you can eat” entitlement from the commons like air, it is not easy for us to see it any other way into the future. And yet, we must.

Here are just a few issues that demand a new attitude about and relationship with water:

Bottling the Tap ~ Who owns the water under in our bedrock? Water is becoming increasingly “owned” by companies like Nestle who just lost an attempt in Michigan to mine without restrictions a community’s groundwater at 400 gallons per minute, paying less than local residents do, then selling it bottled all over the world at thousands of times the water’s value. They’re restricted now to 200 gallons. Per minute. Twenty-four/seven. For years. Search Food and Water Watch for more.

Public versus Private ~ The World Bank and other international financial institutions and governments have been promoting private control and ownership of developing countries’ water services. Costs for the thirsty poor rise, and a small group of shareholders prosper even as water-borne diseases remain a chief cause of illness and death worldwide. Consider that those who own the water, own the food; those who own the water and the food, own the people. Market forces alone can’t be the guiding principle in allocating water equitably.

Virtual Water and water footprint ~ The water I’ve required for my morning routine didn’t all come from our well. The cup of coffee I just enjoyed took 37 gallons of water from some distant place to grow, process, package and ship. The typical hamburger requires more than 500 gallons of water. In the same way there are invisible, externalized costs in fossil fuel for eating foods imported from a great distance, there is a water cost as well. Somebody somewhere pays with their water.

And When it Falls ~ Philadelphia’s 1.6 billion dollar project may serve as a national model. Instead of sending storm water and municipal waste down the same often-overwhelmed pipes, they’ll store rainfall on green rooftops, and send it to recharge aquifers beneath the city through pervious pavers and in rain gardens.

Scarcity, pollution and misallocation are problems with solutions. The time to talk our way through them is now.

Join the conversation about Floyd County’s unique water situation on December 10 at the Floyd Country Store at 3:00 and again at 6:00. The Virginia Rural Water Association will offer a brief presentation on source-water protection plans and will explain our county’s unique geology, groundwater structure and water resource storage and quality issues. More about that meeting here

This essay appeared in the Floyd Press on December 3, 2009. I strongly recommend seeing Blue Gold: World Water Wars available by disk or Instant Play on Netflix. More here.

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