With a growing number of "dead zones" in US estuaries, bays and ocean waters, regulators are gearing up to address manure waste which has previously not been strictly regulated by EPA the same way as other types of pollution such as human or industrial waste. EPA announced in late February that manure runoff is one of its six "national enforcement initiatives." New, stricter rules are already in place on the largest animal operations and a bill proposed by Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, would create a cap-and-trade system for nitrogen pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

- Read more in the Washington Post article
 

The U.S. EPA is planning to impose limits on phosphorus and nitrogen in Florida waters marking the first federal standards for nutrient pollution in the waters of a state. The proposed action, developed with state environmental officials, was released for public comment back in mid-January, meeting a court ordered deadline in a case brought by five environmental groups. The standards would set a series of numeric limits on the amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen that would be allowed in Florida's surface waters.

- Read the original story
 

Opinions expressed in a January Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun suggest that buying and selling pollution credits as a way to have regulated polluters pay unregulated farmers to install practices that reduce nutrient runoff from their farms represents and unfair tax on regulated polluters. Water-quality trading is an alternative approach to meeting regulated pollution limits by purchasing "credits" created by pollution reductions that result from the actions by other regulated entities or unregulated sources, in this case farmers. The authors suggest that the logic behind the use of trading to address pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay is factually flawed and conceptually misleading.

- Read the opinion piece

In 2006, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire rededicated efforts to make Puget Sound "fishable, diggable and swimmable" by 2020. Despite the current challenges posed by the economic climate in the state, the Governor is determined to ramp up funding for addressing storm water pollution, the major source of pollution into the Sound. She has proposed a hike in the Model Toxic Control Act tax from 0.7 to 2 percent generating a total of about $225 million annually. Initially, $150 million will go to the general fund, and the rest to storm water accounts.

- Read the full story
 

Decades after the state of Georgia imposed storm water rules (in accordance with the Clean Water Act) on local governments in metro Atlanta, it has yet to set such rules for its own highways, university campuses and other properties. State and federal agencies have also balked at paying fees to defray local costs of meeting state and federal storm water mandates, a stance that could leave private property owners footing the entire bill for keeping urban runoff out of creeks. State agencies and state lawmakers have tried once ? and are expected to try again ? to bar local governments from billing state properties for the cost of controlling their runoff.

- Read the full article
 

The Cleveland Cavaliers basketball arena ran afoul of state building code regulations when they removed all the drinking fountains from the arena, according to state officials. The announcement to reinstall the fountains came a day after The Plain Dealer ran a story about the lack of drinking fountains forcing fans to wait in concession line for free water or buy bottled water at $4/bottle. A team spokesman suggested the fountains were removed to protect fans from bacteria and viruses that cause illnesses like the H1N1 flu. State building code requires one fountain for every 1,000 occupants.

- Read the full story

- Read a blog on the issue

Metro Vancouver encouraged Olympic tourists to drink the region's tap water instead of buying bottled water, creating a potential conflict with Coca-Cola Ltd., one of the Games' biggest official sponsors. "We're supplying the water free," Metro Vancouver's water committee chairman said at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in downtown Vancouver at the launch of the tap water campaign during last month's Olympics. The hotel is the first to join the city's effort to minimize the use of bottled water. Officials from Coca-Cola suggest that bottled water does not compete with tap water and is sold in some venues where tap water is not conveniently available.

- Read the full story

A pair of bills aimed at protecting water quality in Lake Tahoe and Puget Sound was discussed at a February 24th hearing of the Environment and Public Works committee of the US Senate. Senate bill 2724 authorizes $415 million in federal funding over eight years to the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. Funding will support efforts to maintain the lake?s clarity, fuel reduction initiatives, research, fighting invasive species, trout recovery and fire reduction projects.

The Puget Sound bill, Senate bill 2739 aims to authorize $125 million in spending between 2010 and 2015 on the creation of a Puget Sound Program Office under the auspices of U.S. EPA. The new office would have its own administrator but would be co-located with the Olympia, Wash.-based Puget Sound Partnership, a state organization.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington. The Senators also intended to discuss potential legislation to protect three other nationally significant bodies of water: the Great Lakes, Long Island Sound and the Columbia River Basin.

Reported by Greenwire

Tribal members, fishermen, farmers, and government leaders came together in February to sign an historic agreement resolving years of dispute over the Klamath River. Under the pact, four hydroelectric dams will be removed, opening up stretches of river to salmon and improving water quality.

- Read the full story
 

A program that pays ranchers to use once flooded pastures as water-retention ponds could provide one-sixth of the water needed to restore the Everglades for a fraction of the cost of current treatments which is implemented by a multi-billion dollar system of reservoirs and storage wells. The pilot program run by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) involves eight ranchers in the lands surrounding the Kissimmee River north of Lake Okeechobee. The idea is to turn low-lying pastures into wetlands, using a system of pumps and ponds, enabling farmers to collect wet season rains in their fields and release the water slowly during the dry season. The payments for environmental services model is predicated on whether is can be profitable for the farmers to use the land for water storage as opposed to some other use. In 2010 the ranchers will be paid $660,000 to use 10,000 acres.

- Read the full story
- Read a summary of the story

Like many cities the world over, the water supply in Santa Fe, NM, is dependent upon forest health and protection from negative influences, such as wildfires. The city of Santa Fe's water division recently completed a 20-year watershed plan that includes among the expected water, forest and fire management plans, a financial mechanism that taps water users to help pay for the management of the forest to ensure future supplies of high quality water. The typical municipal water user pays for the services of capturing, treating and delivering water but are not charged for the ecosystem services that produce and naturally filter the water. By attaching an economic value to these ecosystem services, based on the true cost of maintaining the environments that support them, water districts can generate the revenues to cover the actual costs of the land management actions.

Motivated by research by other municipalities affected by severe wildfire that documented a dramatic spike in the sedimentation rate and reservoir dredging after a wildfire, cities such as Santa Fe realized that it costs much more to clean up after a fire that it does to manage the forest to avoid catastrophic wildfires. But how to pay for it?

Cities such as Seattle, San Francisco and New York have already adopted the PES model for the capital outlay and annual operating costs associated with the provision of clean drinking water but Santa Fe is the first city to use Payment for Ecosystem Services to fund the maintenance of forest restoration activities as an insurance policy against future threats to the water supply. The city has received a five-year watershed restoration grant from the state to begin payments for watershed treatments, ecological monitoring and public outreach about PES. During this phase, the water user billing statement will show the PES project as a credit. Beginning in 2014, a fee will be assessed to each water user amounting to roughly $6.50 per year for the average household. The City has established a collection agreement with the US Forest Service to transfer the payments, which will cover about 50% of the actual forest management costs.

For more information, contact: Dale Lyons, City of Santa Fe, Water Division, dwlyons@ci.santa-fe.nm.us.

Read an article about "Valuing Drinking Water as an Ecosystem Service," in the Winter 2010, Pinchot Letter.

The Asian Development Bank is preparing to issue water bonds to finance investments in the water sector in the countries it serves. Such an offering marks the first time the Bank is targeting a specific sector. The bonds are aiming to support water investments over the next ten years including reduced water losses, improved access and quality, better legal enforcement, improved wastewater management and better adaptation to climate change. The ADB water bonds follow in the footsteps of the "climate" bonds from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, the proceeds of which are directed towards climate change projects. ADB officials are contemplating "similar thematic bonds in core ADB areas such as water, climate change and the environment."

- Read the full story

The Pacific Institute released last week a new report featuring water conservation stories from the California agricultural sector describing, and showing in video, the way toward more efficient water management use. The report follows a major study produced in 2009 highlighting the potential for improving water-use efficiency in California agriculture. The report describes in detail seven different case studies and the eight-minute video features five California growers and water managers.

- Download the new report
- Read more about the report


For months, leaders in Washington, DC have been embroiled in the debate over appropriate strategies for addressing climate change. All the while a different sort of national security risk is growing around the global freshwater scarcity crisis, or so author Steven Solomon suggests in his new book, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization.

- Read more about the book and follow the comments by readers

Austin, TX

May 3-6

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June 23-24

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September 5-11

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Phoenix, AZ

December 6-9, 2010

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