Renewable Energy Blog

We are by far the highest carbon emitter per capita in Africa, in fact companies like SASOL are the most polluting operation to be found in the world, but paradoxically it is these companies (ESKOM) that are subsidising the implementation of Green Tech, like the solar geyser rebate system.

The installation of flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) technology at the Medupi coal-fired power station, the construction of which will be part funded by a $3,75-billion loan from the World Bank, has been confirmed as a loan-package condition.

The technology, which will reduce sulphur-dioxide emissions, would have to be retrofitted, owing to the fact that it had not been included in the plant’s original design. This would add to the project’s capital cost, and its water consumption.

The bank published its ‘Project Appraisal’ document for the controversial loan on Tuesday, which shows that Eskom will need to develop, adopt and thereafter implement a FGD programme across each of the plant’s six power generation units by no later than June 30, 2013.

It is also stipulated that FGD equipment for the first generation unit must commence on the later of either the sixth anniversary of the commissioning date, or by March 31, 2018. The FGD equipment for all six generation units would need to be installed and be fully operational by no later than December 31, 2021.

The FGD installation between 2018 and 2021 will be aligned to the scheduled operational maintenance programme of the Medupi units, which would be taken off-line for routine maintenance after six years of operation.

The bank notes that the sulphur content of the coal to be used at Medupi, which is calculated at 1,4% by weight, together with the large scale of the plant, some 4 800 MW, meant that sulphur-dioxide emissions could have a “significant adverse environmental impact”.

Therefore, sulphur-dioxide emissions would have to be removed using a “wet FGD” solution, or a gypsum process, using limestone located at Kraalhoek and Dwaalboom, some 180 km from the Lephalale site.

The process would increase the plant’s water consumption and the World Bank has, thus, flagged for possible concern the fact that sufficient water might not be available in time for the commissioning of the last three units or the FGD equipment.

“Progress on the project to supply the required amount of water is on schedule. Nevertheless, the Bank has requested evidence from the Department of Water Affairs to Eskom, committing to timely water supply,” the document states.

The water allocation is dependent on the availability of water from the Mokolo and Crocodile Water Augmentation project, which is not expected to become available until 2014 at the earliest.

The FGD system is expected to add at least $150/kW to the final capital cost, while yearly water consumption, including FGD, will rise to 12-million m³.

The total cost of Medupi is estimated at about $12,1-billion.

With headlines proclaiming “water is the new oil,” the race to make desalination a viable solution to worldwide water shortages is on.

In recent years, a number of big-name companies have gotten into the desalination game, including Dow and General Electric, both of which have worked on advanced material membranes for desalination. Today, IBM joined the group with its announcement of a pilot desalination project in Saudi Arabia.

Conducted in partnership with a team of researchers from the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, the IBM pilot will test two new technologies from IBM’s research team: a nanomaterial membrane that will help to chemically separate water from salt and other elements found in ocean or brackish water, and a concentrated solar system with an innovative cooling mechanism that will allow it to take better advantage of the desert heat and fuel the desalination process with renewable energy.

As is the case with most projects that grow out of Big Blue’s research team, these technologies will be tested by IBM but commercialized by someone else.

“We are not about to get into the solar business or the membrane business, we’re in IT,” explains Sharon Nunes, vice president of IBM’s Big Green Innovations.

The project gets at one of the primary reasons many environmentalists have long opposed desalination: It’s energy intensive.

Shifting to Solar

The vast majority of desalination plants in the world employ a process called reverse osmosis. Either ocean water or brackish water is pushed through a series of membranes at very high pressure, effectively separating water from other elements.

Most companies looking to get into the desalination space, which is all but guaranteed to grow over the next several years, concentrate on the membrane, researching advanced materials that can help to chemically strip water from other elements and thus reduce the pressure requirements for the water coming through the membranes, which in turn reduces the energy requirements of the process.

According to the Encyclopedia of Desalination and Water Resources, the theoretical minimum amount of energy required to desalinate a cubic meter of water is .86 kWh, but the actual energy required in plants throughout the world is five to 26 times that. The theoretical minimum calculates only the energy required to separate water from other elements, not the power required to keep a plant running in general.

That’s where the solar power comes in.

Desalination plants and solar energy are a natural fit: More often than not, areas with water shortages also tend to be areas where there’s quite a bit of sun. At the IBM/KAST Saudi Arabia plant, a solar concentrator system will capture energy equivalent to 1,500 suns, according to IBM, powering a plant that will produce 30,000 cubic meters per day of fresh water for a city of 100,000 people.

So why haven’t solar-powered desal plants been popping up all over the world?

“Solar is still not at grid parity, and if you’re going to build a solar system into a desalination plant, you also need a back-up system in case of cloudy days or dust storms, and all of that is a large additional cost to building a plant,” explains Nunes.

Part of what reduces the cost of solar in this case, according to Nunes, is a proprietary cooling technology that cuts down on system outages and maintenance issues. The liquid metal interface of the system, a technology that grew out of IBM’s experience with mainframe computers and chip manufacturing, enables very high cooling rates, according to Nunes, and thus more intense energy capture.

“Usually, the more energy capture, the hotter your solar cell gets, and we’re talking about really extreme temperatures, which means you end up with unreliable chips or you burn out your chips entirely, so cooling these systems is very important,” she said.

High-Tech Membranes Increase Efficiency

According to Nunes, the membranes employed at the Saudi desalination plant will help reduce the plant’s energy requirements.

The membrane includes fluorine, which is naturally hydrophobic, but at an adjusted pH that makes it hydrophilic. In layman’s terms, through the magic of chemistry, a material that usually repels water now attracts it, which makes it a very effective membrane with which to desalinate water. The material also is resistant to chlorine, which is often used to pre-treat water in purification systems but typically degrades membranes.

The membrane is also more resistant to fouling than other membranes on the market, according to Nunes. The sand, shells, weeds and small sea creatures that can get stuck on membranes means they need to be cleaned fairly often, and when the membranes are at their dirtiest, more energy is required to push water through them at a higher pressure.

Which gets to the other aspects of desalination that environmentalists don’t particularly like, aspects that IBM’s technology isn’t yet focused on: loss of biodiversity in some marine areas and the effect of the briny effluent produced by the desalination process, which is generally dumped back into the original water source.

Concerns for Biodiversity

The brine (a highly salty water that’s 10 times saltier than average ocean water) produced by desalination plants has been tested in labs and shown to have little effect on marine life, but the argument from some marine biologists is that in a lab test, fish and other sea life can’t get away; while the brine may not kill them, in a real-world scenario they may opt to just leave an area that is suddenly 10 times saltier than it used to be.

The loss of biodiversity is an issue that has largely been pooh-poohed by desalination proponents. There are currently more than 12,000 desalination plants in the world, and as that number grows, it could have a drastic effect on marine ecosystems as the smallest organisms are routinely sucked into a pump and crushed against membranes.

The current focus on improving energy and water efficiency in desalination plants is a positive one, and replacing coal-powered desalination with solar-powered desalination is imperative, otherwise the “solution” to the water problem is helping to exacerbate one of the causes: climate change.

But the idea of efficiency needs to be more broadly applied to the water problem as a whole. One of the reasons that fresh water is at a premium is that much of it has been polluted. In some cases, that renders the water completely undrinkable; in others, in order to drink it, the fresh water needs to be purified in much the same way that saltwater needs to be desalinated, and that process is also energy intensive.

Purification processes need to become more efficient, fresh water stores need to be better protected and technologies that help people use less water and use it more efficiently are still desperately needed. As is the case with energy, solutions to the water shortage need to look at efficiency first and then filling in with “new” water where nothing more can be done on the efficiency front.

As a researcher at the Pacific Institute studying the pros and cons of desalination once put it to me, if you’ve got a leaky bucket, what’s the more logical solution, to just add more water or to plug the holes?

Rising demand for irrigation and drinking water is draining the aquifer faster than it can recharge, and a scheme to channel more water from the Andean highlands, which receive seasonal rainfall, is pitting big agribusinesses on the coast against Quechua-speaking llama herders in the mountains.

Experts say the conflict is just one sign of rising tensions over water use as supplies of the vital resource dwindle and shift with changes in climate.

“Water belongs to the people who need it most, and we need it most,” says Gino Gotuzzo, of the Farmers Association of Ica, who grows asparagus and some other crops on about 60 acres of desert. Up the mountain, however, Quechua-speaking farmers say plans to channel runoff to coastal farms will dry up the spongy high-mountain wetlands where they pasture llamas and alpacas, ruining their livelihood.

Peruvian officials brush aside the specter of “water refugees.” As supplies dwindle, they say, they can channel water from the highlands, where rain falls between October and April, or divert rivers that flow east to Amazonia, which receives more precipitation than its sparse population uses.

Nevertheless, droughts associated with El Niño events in the 1980s and 1990s spurred increased migration from rural areas to cities in Peru, and the exodus from Brazil’s chronically drought-stricken northeast is one factor in that country’s Amazonian deforestation.

With cities growing and agriculture expanding throughout South America, experts predict that climate change will exacerbate water scarcity, increasing conflicts between competing users, pitting city dwellers against rural residents, people in dry lands against those in areas with abundant rainfall, Andean mining companies against neighboring farm communities, and eucalyptus plantation operators on the Argentinean and Uruguayan plains against farmers who say the trees are sucking the water table dry.

In Peru, officials say the problem is not water scarcity, but Nature’s poor distribution. More than two-thirds of the country’s 29 million people live on the dry western side of the Andes, where less than 2 percent of the country’s water flows, while only one-fourth live in Amazonia, which can get more than 80 inches of rain a year.

But plans to redistribute water by rerouting rivers or drilling through the Andes raise questions for which neither politicians nor scientists have easy answers. How much water can be piped from reservoirs in the Andean highlands or Amazonian cloud forest without damaging those ecosystems? Who has priority: thirsty cities or food producers? Subsistence farmers or export agribusinesses? Poor rural communities or revenue-generating mines? Agriculture or hydroelectricity?

On Peru’s coast, virtually every city has its eye on an uphill neighbor’s water supply. In neighboring Bolivia, street protests in 2000 and 2004 known as the “water wars” forced two private companies, Bechtel and Suez, to give up water management concessions. City planners in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, are looking to the Amazon to replace water supplied by dwindling glaciers. And Brazil plans to meet its growing energy needs by damming rivers throughout the Amazon, which critics say could further disrupt the region’s hydrology.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that by 2020 upwards of 1.5 billion people worldwide will be facing water stress, including anywhere from 7 million to 77 million in Latin America.

“Inherent in these projections,” said IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, “is the potential for conflicts and the disruption of peace.”

With nearly 9 million people, Lima, Peru’s capital, is the second-largest desert city in the world, after Cairo. It grew up beside a river that slices down from the Andean highlands to the Pacific Ocean. Many such coastal valleys contain vestiges of pre-Hispanic canals and irrigation systems, a sign that water management has been a challenge for several millennia.

“Lima is a thirsty city,” says Guillermo León, president of the board of directors of the state-run water and sanitation company, SEDAPAL. In shantytowns lacking water hookups, residents must buy water from tank trucks. They use less than one-third the amount of water used by residents of wealthier districts, but pay four or five times as much for the water.

Water stress is also serious on the Bolivian Altiplano, the two-mile-high plain near Lake Titicaca, an area that is home to more than 3 million people. That region’s rivers provide an average of 132,000 gallons of water per person per year – scarcely enough for household use, even if Bolivians are thriftier than US families, who can use up to 400 gallons a day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Often, the scant water available is polluted. Three-quarters of wastewater in Peru is dumped untreated into rivers, lakes and the Pacific Ocean, and the Health Ministry has identified dozens of rivers polluted with lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and other metals from mining operations.

In the Andes, these problems are exacerbated by demand for water for irrigation. About 80 percent of Peru’s water goes to agriculture, and only 8 percent of farm land uses water-conserving systems like drip irrigation, according to Abelardo de la Torre, head of the new National Water Authority, which is overseeing the design of watershed management plans throughout the country.

The need for efficient irrigation will become critical within the next few decades, as ice caps disappear from the Andes, where most of the world’s tropical glaciers are located, and where small farmers depend on meltwater during the dry season.

Outside La Paz, Bolivia, the Chacaltaya glacier, once billed as the world’s highest ski resort, is nearly gone. And Ecuador plans to pipe water from the eastern side of the Andes to supplement the dwindling supply from two receding glaciers that provide Quito’s drinking water.

In 1991, tropical Andean glaciers covered some 1,065 square miles, with 70 percent in Peru, 20 percent in Bolivia, and the rest in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Since then, glaciers have disappeared from Venezuela and are shrinking in the other countries. Calculations show a loss of nearly 10 percent per decade.

Ironically, the increased melting means a water bonanza now, but César Portocarrero, an engineer who helps small farmers install drip irrigation systems in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, named for its snow-capped peaks, said he has seen an increase in conflicts between neighbors and communities, which may be an early sign of water stress.

It is not clear how much the loss of glacial runoff will affect drinking water supplies downstream. Experts say much of the decrease can be offset by expanding reservoirs to catch water during the rainy season.

But potable water will not be the only casualty. A World Bank study indicates that glacial melt it is likely to raise generating costs at hydroelectric dams on rivers fed by melt water.

Nevertheless, a hydroelectricity revival is underway in South America, especially in water-rich Amazonia. Not only will that add to the competition for water, but environmentalists also worry that dams like the controversial project on the Madeira River in western Brazil will block the flow of nutrient-bearing sediments and fish migration routes.

Dams may also change the hydrological cycle in Amazonia, which affects precipitation in the Andes. Climate models and scientists do not agree on exactly what changes will occur in Amazonia. Some will depend on whether El Niño cycles are more frequent or intense. Researchers are handicapped by a lack of historical data from Amazonian countries.

“We know more now than we did 20 years ago, but we still don’t know half of what we need to know,” said José Marengo of Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research in Sao Paulo. “There are few studies and little meteorological data. There are huge data gaps in all the countries. In hydrological data, there are series of 20 or 30 years, when we would need 100 years or more to see if there is a cycle of flooding and drought.”

Small farmers in the Andes, however, say there is already sufficient cause for alarm. Concerns over water shortages and salinization of pasture and crop land have spurred protests against large mines in Piura, in northern Peru, and near Oruro, in southern Bolivia, by farmers who say there is not enough water to go around.

Meanwhile, the tension continues between export agribusinesses on Peru’s southern coast and the small farmers upstream. Large-scale farmers on the coast have more efficient irrigation systems, but the profusion of wells is pumping water out of the aquifer nearly twice as fast as it can recharge, according to Javier Chiong of the Ministry of Agriculture in Ica.

Large farmers downstream are calling for a major infrastructure project to channel water from the highlands, dispersing some of it through canals in the desert to recharge the aquifer. Small farmers and llama herders upstream say the scheme could dry the Andean bogs, an ecosystem about which little hydrological data exist.

“There’s a lack of planning,” said Gotuzzo of the Farmers Association of Ica. “And it’s the poor people who will suffer the most. The rich will be able to solve their problems.”

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“South Africa is currently experiencing a threat with regards to polluted water sources, poor management of dams, sewerage works and treatment plants.

“These problems are paving the way for a major water crisis,” said Durban University of Technology (DUT) water researcher Professor Faizal Bux.

He was speaking ahead of World Water Day on March 22.

“A number of provinces within South Africa are currently looking into ways of averting this,” he said.

“Water authorities and government need to address this issue urgently. Adequate clean water supply is a backbone of a successful economy and therefore should be regarded as a priority area of funding by government.”

Penalties

Bux commended the Ethekwini municipality for imposing strong penalties on industrial companies that discharged effluent into the natural water resources.

“This has proved to be an effective measure as companies are battling to curb expenses due to the current financial meltdown. Companies are now seeking alternative treatment measures to avoid such penalties,” said Bux.

He also noted the South Africa lost huge amounts of water due to poor maintenance of pipes and delivery systems.

“Although our average annual rainfall in South Africa is lower than the global average, our primary problem lies with sustaining good water quality rather than a limitation at the source.”

It was also unfortunate, said Bux, that some poor communities still relied on rivers as a water source as this gave rise to water-borne diseases.

Bux, who was from the DUT’s centre for water and wastewater technology, was assisting some companies with developing and optimising cost-effective and environmentally-friendly on-site treatment technologies.

Source: News24

Keep it Green 

Greencon 

We at Greencon encourage water saving devices on a daily basis, as part of a holistic solution. From an energy saving point of view, every litre of water saved has a massive knock on effect. Go to our Greencon Energy Calculator to see how massive water saving can be as a total energy solution, not to mention the fact we are running out of the life saving resource.

Here is an impostant article by Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Grove

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Government ministers from 120 countries, scientists and campaigners meet in Istanbul this week to discuss how to avert a global water crisis and ease tensions between states fighting over rivers, lakes and glaciers.

Nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage by 2030, the United Nations warned last week, and an estimated 1 billion people remain without access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

The world’s population of 6.6 billion is forecast to rise by 2.5 billion by 2050. Most of the growth will be in developing countries, much of it in regions where water is already scarce.

As populations and living standards rise, a global water crisis looms unless countries take urgent action, the international body said.

“Water is not enough of a political issue,” said Daniel Zimmer, associate general of the World Water Council, one of the organizations behind the World Water Forum.

“One of the targets is to make politicians understand that water should be higher up on their domestic agenda and care that it is a necessity for the welfare, stability and health of their populations.”

Because of the lack of political attention, hundreds of millions of people remain trapped in poverty and ill health and exposed to the risk of water-related disasters, the U.N. warns.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said water scarcity is a “potent fuel for wars and conflict.”

Water shortages have been named as a major underlying cause of the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan. Water is also a major issue between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the states of Central Asia, one of the world’s driest places, where thirsty crops such as cotton and grain remain the main source of livelihood.

Tajikistan has asked World Water Forum organizers to mediate in its dispute with Kyrgyzstan over water during the conference, World Water Forum Vice Secretary Ahmet Mete Saatci told Reuters.

Other subjects on the agenda for the talks from March 16-22 will be how to avert catastrophic floods and droughts as climate patterns change, and how the global financial crisis threatens to hit large-scale water infrastructure projects within the next several years.

The heads of state, environment and development ministers, scientists and development organizations hope to draw up a list of recommendations to help safeguard water resources and to share experiences where projects have been successful.

Among the heads of states attending the conference is Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani.

Keep it Green 

Greencon 

As Eco “:Greenies” we at Greencon originally became interested in the environment through growing concerns with water security and safety in South Africa. Being one of the driest places on earth coupled with the impact of global warming, the very serious disappearance of our most precious resource was for us a great motivator to help provide water purifying and recycling products. Read the following article from the Business Day;

“THE controversial suspension of researcher Anthony Turton from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) over his damning report on the quality of our drinking water has brought the subject of water safety to the fore of public debate again.

Turton — a political scientist and researcher in the field of water resource management — was suspended from the CSIR last week after being prevented from presenting a paper in which he concludes that “we are heading for a significant crisis in the water sector”.

That crisis was likely to fan social instability and constrain future economic development, he said.

His alarm on the looming water crisis follows similar warnings earlier this year by other water resource management experts, which drew vehement denials in Parliament from Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks.

The experts said then that SA’s strained water supply system was putting the health of millions at risk, and warned that a crisis similar to that in electricity supply would develop if no immediate steps were taken to preserve water quality.

One of the central arguments in Turton’s planned presentation to a CSIR conference last week was that SA faced a water crisis both because of declining water infrastructure and because of a lack of skilled personnel.

In his paper, circulated internally at the CSIR weeks before the conference, Turton says the government must either accept that the development targets of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA are unattainable, or must launch a radical rethink of how to mobilise SA’s science, engineering and technological capacity.

“After all, the Uhuru Decade came to an end with the electricity crisis in early 2008. This Uhuru Decade has been manifest all across Africa when a liberation movement has inherited infrastructure that works for about 10 years before starting to break down through lack of investment in operation, maintenance and skilled human capacity,” Turton says.

“In SA’s case that infrastructure was particularly robust, so it has lasted a decade and a half, but it is now clearly under pressure and if left alone will collapse piece by piece, in the mid-term future.”

The trend in infrastructure investment for water at the national level shows this prognosis to be probable in a startling way, he says.

To illustrate this point, Turton says a significant proportion of SA’s municipalities have no civil engineering professional support, with rural areas affected the most.

“It is precisely these rural areas that are most likely to be affected by the deteriorating water quality arising from eutrophication in rivers and dams. It is also these local authorities that are the least capable of adapting water treatment processes and plant to remove microcystins, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and antiretroviral medication (ARVs) that are likely to arise from a population with a heavy burden of AIDS-related diseases,” he says.

Turton says SA has failed to mobilise what previous scholars have described as “social ingenuity” — a necessary precondition for “technical ingenuity” — the capacity of a nation to develop solutions to problems driven by external change.

He reiterates the widely held view that SA is failing to produce enough engineers to plug the skills gap and says that lack of investment in water research since 1985 means SA is now “flying blind as a nation”.

There was also an urgent need for a study of people living near mines to determine the effect of chronic exposure to heavy metals, he says. “This will be complex and costly, but we need such a study as a matter of national emergency.”

Turton’s comments about the supply and safety of SA’s drinking water echo concerns that have been raised in recent years.

These worries have been heightened by recent outbreaks of disease that have left thousands sick and scores dead after drinking contaminated water.

These deaths, especially those of 83 babies in the Eastern Cape earlier this year, are directly attributed to the shortage of skilled personnel to manage the water supply.

The dire shortage of technical skills in municipalities, which are critical to the delivery of healthy water to millions of consumers, especially in poorer areas, has also been acknowledged by the water affairs and forestry department.

Engineers and technicians are instrumental in the construction, maintenance and repair of water infrastructure, as well as the treatment of water.

According to the CSIR, Dr Turton has 19 years’ experience of strategic planning and risk assessment in areas of contestation, including negotiations that ended complex and protracted periods of conflict.

Included in this were the negotiations that led to the South African withdrawal from Angola; the implementation of UN Resolution 435 and the independence of Namibia; the secret negotiations that led to the release of political prisoners and the Codesa constitutional talks; and the secret diplomatic negotiations that ended Mozambique’s civil war.

Turton has a PhD in the hydropolitics of SA, has written extensively on water resource management and has a specialist interest in governance.

He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Water Resources Development and is an invited speaker to major international events.”

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Greencon

With the continuous threats posed by Global warming, we South Africans must be very careful of the future effects that this upward movement in temperature is going to have on our scarce fresh water resources.

I picked this off the net, about how other countries are facing water shortage issues. Pretty scary stuff:

“Yesterday, after I vented a bit on the lack of rain barrel options at Big Box stores, a reader tipped us off to a very interesting issue in her state of Colorado. Rain barrels there, you see, are outlawed. Colorado state law mandates that any water falling from the air is not yours. In fact, according to their site, its already been “legally allocated” — so, you don’t actually have any rights when it comes to using precipitation that falls on your property. Here’s the exact wording:

Colorado Water Law requires that precipitation fall to the ground, run off and into the river of the watershed where it fell. Because rights to water are legally allocated in this state, an individual may not capture and use water to which he/she does not have a right. We must remember also that rain barrels don’t help much in a drought because a drought by its very nature supplies little in the way of snow or rain.

Additionally, any and all water that comes from tap may only be used once. “Denver water customers are not permitted to take their bath or laundry water (commonly referred to as gray water) and dump it on their outdoor plants or garden.” Even if that said water is ecologically-friendly?

We’re not alone in thinking this is a stupid law. Last summer, The Colorado Springs Gazette said the following:

“The rain barrel is the bong of the Colorado garden. It’s legal to sell one. It’s legal to own one. It’s just not legal to use it for its intended purpose. Meanwhile, when rain does fall, the torrential flood caused by water running off a few thousand acres of roofs, roads and parking lots erodes downstream ranches, undercuts city sewer pipes and really makes Pueblo mad.

It’s gotten so bad that the city is taxing us all — excuse me, feeing us all — to pay for $295 million in stormwater projects. So wouldn’t it make sense to save a little rain when it falls, keep it from barreling down Fountain Creek, and use it when needed? Of course it would.”

So, to the people of Colorado, I’m sorry you have to deal with such inane laws. Not having any rights in the first place to something that freely falls over your head just seems bizarre.

Anyone out there actively breaking this law because it’s lame? Anyone ever seen it enforced?”

Make provisions to harvest your water, store it and re-use Gray Water.

Keep it Green

Greencon

Here are a few suggestions:

• Check your sinks, indoor and outdoor faucets, pipes, toilets, even your meter for leaks.
• Run your high-efficiency (Energy Star) washing machine or dishwasher for full loads only.
• Purchase a front-loading washing machine—it uses significantly less water than a top-loading machine—and purchase a dryer with a moisture sensor.
• Install a dual-flush toilet (which uses less water for liquid waste) or a low-flow unit as well as a gray-water recycling system.
• Use and capture bathwater to water plants. And take shorter showers.
• Water your lawn in the early morning or at night to avoid losses from evaporation and use mulch to trap moisture.
• Consider installing a rain barrel for capturing storm water and using it to water the garden.
• Wash fruits and vegetables in a bowl of water rather than under a running faucet.
• Start a compost pile rather than using an in-sink garbage disposal unit.
• Use the refrigerator or microwave rather than hot water to thaw frozen food.
• Instead of washing your car by hand, go to a professional car wash.

Water is a crisis on the horizon, make sure you have made provision not only for saving but also for storing and re-use.

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Greencon.

Many of us use water thoughtlessly; it seems as abundant as the air we breathe and a free swig is available almost anywhere. But fresh, potable water is already a precious commodity in many drier parts of the world, and as it grows rarer—and thus, dearer—in developed countries, the true value of H2O is beginning to seep in.

Until water shortages impact more of us directly it is likely that this liquid resource will continue to be poorly managed. Whether it’s the inefficient flooding of farm fields or hosing down our cars every weekend, people find many ways to waste water.

The recent story of a profligate user who changed his ways could perhaps serve as an example for us all: Saving water often comes down to paying attention. Although Atlanta recently suffered its worst drought in a century, the local estate of wealthy investor Chris G. Carlos consumed 440,000 gallons (1.67 million liters) in September 2007 alone. After a public outcry, Carlos dramatically reduced his monthly usage to just 12,000 (45,400 liters)—about what an average U.S. family of four expends during the same time period.

Although that’s an extreme case, it shows that there’s often little reason why we can’t save more water in our day-to-day lives. Here’s a list of some of the more egregious ways in which we squander it; some are easily avoidable, whereas others will require big changes in agricultural and industrial practices.

1. Doing the Dishes: By Hand or Dishwasher?
A lot depends on your dishwashing style: A typical session that includes turning the water on and off will go through about 20 gallons (75 liters) or so. But if you leave the water running while scraping at those last grisly bits on your fine china, you may use more than twice that amount. Modern electric dishwashers, in contrast, need less than 10 gallons (38 liters) per average load, says a survey by the American Water Works Association.

2. Washing the Car (and the Driveway)
Wear that bathing suit at the pool or the beach, but not for posing in the driveway while sluicing the suds off your auto with hose water. According to Kaady Car Washes, a west coast chain, a home car wash can go through 80 to 140 gallons (300 to 530 liters) of water, whereas a wash at one of its garages will take about 30 to 45 gallons (115 to 170 liters). Professional car washes also utilize methods that recycle water: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandates that wastewater be channeled to treatment plants to avoid polluting the environment; contaminated water from your home car cleansing just flows into street drains or leaches into the soil.

3. Slipping Through the (Pool) Cracks
Cannonballs aside, a swimming pool naturally loses about 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters) a month to evaporation, according to the Maui County, Hawaii, Department of Water Supply, although the local climate and the pool’s overall surface area determines the amount that’s actually lost. A bigger problem arises from the leaks that pools often develop during their lifetimes from cracks in their foundations, liner tears and pipe damage. Estimates vary wildly, depending on everything from a region’s temperature fluctuations to seismic activity. National Leak Detection (pdf), a company based in Mesa, Ariz., puts the figure at a whopping 30 percent. Three hundred miles (480 kilometers) west in Palm Springs, Calif., American Leak Detection, Inc., puts the pool leak rate at a more conservative one in 20. Either way, because most pools have automatic refillers, owners often fail to notice the loss until their next water bill arrives.

4. Lawn Sprinklers: Fountains of Backyard Verdure or Pernicious Aquifer Guzzlers?
The water sprinklers that keep the turf lush and the flowers blooming can consume 265 gallons (1,000 liters) an hour, says Waterwise, a U.K. water-conservation group. This amount rivals or exceeds estimates of what an average U.S. household uses daily. A good tip: deploy the sprinkler either in the early morning hours or at dusk; less water will evaporate in the cooler temperatures and more will actually get to the plant roots. But be mindful about leaving it on; besides potentially drowning your petunias, you may also be breaking the law. A new drought-busting measure in the City of Los Angeles will permit automated sprinklers to run only 15 minutes a day this summer.

5. Well-Watered Desert Resorts
The term “desert resort” is synonymous with the City of Las Vegas. The Venetian canals of the Bellagio, as well as the Mirage’s water-and-fire volcano, make conspicuous water consumption in Sin City iconic. Appearances can be deceiving, though. In fact, the Las Vegas Strip accounts for just three percent of local water use, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Fully 70 percent of the city’s water supply goes toward irrigating the 60-plus golf courses and the many residential lawns in the area. The municipal government has, however, taken steps to scale back on the city’s greenery, for example, by cutting the maximum size of a domestic lawn to just a backyard patch. Nevertheless, keeping grass verdant in the middle of the desert is arguably folly in the first place.

6. Biofuels’ Hidden Downside
Biofuels typically burn cleaner than fossil fuels and therefore emit less carbon dioxide into the air. But plant-power sucks up ridiculously large quantities of water compared with oil and natural gas production. A study (pdf) presented at an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference in 2007 offers some alarming estimates: Producing a gallon (3.79 liters) of corn ethanol, for example, consumes 170 gallons (644 liters) of water in total, from irrigation to final processing. Soybean biodiesel manufacture needs some 900 gallons of water (3,400 liters) per gallon of fuel. On the other hand, the water requirement to make a gallon of regular gasoline is just five gallons (19 liters).

7. Agriculture in the Arid Southwest
Much of the U.S. Southwest is a desert—at least it was at one time in the past. But about 90 percent of the Colorado River’s water is today diverted into these parched lands for agricultural irrigation. Perhaps half of this regional resource does not even reach the intended crops because it is lost to evaporation and seepage during pumping and transport, according to a 1997 Cornell University study that appeared in the journal BioScience. Many farmers rely on flood irrigation, which, though inexpensive, is a highly inefficient means of delivering water to thirsty plants. The Colorado’s dwindling water flow threatens the supplies of seven states and has spawned a plethora of lawsuits regarding water rights. As our featured article on water points out, shaving irrigation water by 10 percent would save more than is used by all other water consumers put together. A prime example of this ill-advised approach is growing alfalfa in the desert.

8. Alfalfa Farming Woes
Many think of alfalfa mainly in terms of the sprouts that end up on sandwiches, but the vast majority of the nation’s alfalfa output feeds livestock. The relatively low-value crop uses up about a quarter of California’s irrigation water but contributes only 4 percent to the state’s total farm revenue, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. It’s not that alfalfa itself consumes more water than other farm plants, says Mark Grismer, a professor of agricultural engineering at the University of California, Davis; farmers grow alfalfa year-round in what is essentially a desert climate in the southwestern U.S.

9. The Ruin of the Aral Sea
The Aral Sea in central Asia was once the fourth largest body of freshwater on the planet. But by siphoning off waters from the massive lake for irrigation, local farmers and governments in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have drained the Aral Sea to 10 percent of its former size. (Satellite images show the sea’s shrinkage over several decades.) The Aral has split into three parts, two of which are so salty that all the fish in them died. Lake Victoria in eastern Africa is another victim of overuse. Its water level is half of what it once was.

10. Wasting Water by Getting “Wasted”
As refreshing and cooling as that beer may taste, it’s likely to leave you less hydrated than you were before you started. Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it increases the frequency of urination (but you knew that already). Alcohol suppresses an antidiuretic hormone called vasopressin that tells our kidneys to reabsorb and conserve water. The more you drink, the more the hormone level falls, and thus the more water you lose. Severe dehydration is a big reason why after a hard night out, you end up with a hangover the next day.

How do you try to limit your water use?

Keep it Green

Greencon.