A while back I wrote a post here where I pointed out my disappointment at how many authors and publishing peeps don’t know the history of their profession - eg what novels were groundbreaking and how were they received at the time, etc. Of course, the same is true for any profession, and life, for history surely teaches us to move forwards and not make the same mistake twice. Surely… At least I like to think so, but unfortunately we continue to repeat mistakes of the past - which means we don’t progress as we should.
A geopolitical example of this is in the global reaction to the Kargil War of 1999, where Pakistan invaded India and then vehemently denied it to the global media, just as Russia did with their incursion into Georgia in 2008. It’s disappointing the world does not have leaders who stand up to such blatant bullshit but hey, local economic security comes before foreign rape and murder in most politician’s constituencies.
I’m reminded of all this as we continue to see states in the US quarrel over access to fresh water. For the history lesson, here’s a little excerpt from my latest novel LIQUID GOLD:
… “Harry Truman once said that when Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel
over water in the Arkansas River they don’t call out the National
Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a case
before the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by
the decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why it can’t be
done internationally. And the key to access is control – who has
their hand on the tap.” …
And here is a New York Times piece from this week:
August 16, 2009
River Basin Fight Pits Atlanta Against Neighbors
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATLANTA — The residents of the economic engine of the South, as they like to call this comparatively gleaming and rapidly expanding state capital, have always suspected that they are the objects of resentment from their more rural neighbors.
Now they are certain of it.
A recent court defeat has left Atlanta howling that its enemies, including Alabama and Florida, are trying to choke off the city’s prosperity, if not out of sheer spite then at least the misguided notion that jobs and money would flow to them instead. The conflict is the timeworn rural-versus-urban enmity writ large, a battle over water that has pitted Atlanta against its neighbors in and out of Georgia.
“The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”
Ostensibly, the war among the three states is about a river basin that supplies the taps of 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta before it flows down the Alabama-Georgia state line and into the Florida Panhandle. Each state says the others are demanding too much water. But many experts say there is no actual scarcity — the system, managed properly, could meet the needs of users along the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, including power companies, farmers and oystermen.
Still, the three states have spent nearly 20 years battling over the allocation of the water. And now, no matter their motive, Alabama and Florida have the law squarely on their side. On July 17, Judge Paul A. Magnuson of Federal District Court agreed with their argument that supplying water to Atlanta was not an authorized use of Lake Sidney Lanier, the federal reservoir northeast of the city at the headwaters of the river basin.
For decades, Judge Magnuson ruled, the Army Corps of Engineers had illegally managed the Buford Dam, which created the lake beginning in 1956, to provide the Atlanta region with drinking water. He said Congress built the dam only for navigation, flood control and hydropower. The 97-page ruling largely faults the corps for overstepping its authority but also suggests that Georgia knew for decades that Congressional approval was needed.
Govs. Charlie Crist of Florida and Bob Riley of Alabama, both Republicans, hailed the decision.
“Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less,” Mr. Riley said.
After the court’s ruling, he added, “this massive illegal water grab will be coming to an end.”
Alabama officials say that they are not trying to prevent Atlanta from growing but that they want the city to pay for the infrastructure that growth requires. In 1948, the mayor of Atlanta declined to contribute money to the construction of the Lake Lanier dam, arguing that the city would not need the water.
Atlanta has responded with a major public relations offensive, painting the city as a good steward that has carried out a water plan, treats its sewage until it is drinkable and, during the recent drought, put conservation measures in place when downstream users did not. (Environmentalists concede these points but say that they are half-hearted at best and that the metropolitan area could save millions of gallons through more aggressive conservation.)
Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, a Republican who is not normally an Atlanta ally in intrastate battles over rural and urban priorities, has recently begun to defend its water use. Mr. Perdue cites figures showing that the city’s net water use is less than 1 percent of the river basin’s water flow when it reaches the Florida-Georgia border. At that point in the basin, the minimum water flow maintained by the corps is 5,000 cubic feet per second, compared with 750 in Atlanta.
Mr. Perdue argues that the real goal of Florida, in suing for more water under the Endangered Species Act, is to protect the fishing industry in the Apalachicola Bay. And he says that while Alabama has argued for better navigation, it really wants water to cool power plants. Neither goal is an authorized use of Lake Lanier, and neither, Atlantans say, is as crucial as their own needs.
“What happens in metro Atlanta and Georgia doesn’t hurt either of those states,” said Pat Stevens, chief of the environmental planning division for the Atlanta Regional Council, blaming Georgia’s opponents for the many failed efforts at negotiations over the years. “But if their goal is to hurt metro Atlanta and Georgia, they could achieve that. I always just thought they never had a reason to come to an agreement.”
If that is true, they have less reason now.
Judge Magnuson did not order the spigots shut off immediately, nor did he say that the system could never be used for drinking water. Instead, he said he would allow three years for the corps to receive approval from Congress to use the lake for that purpose.
Several members of Congress have said they will not act unless the three states make a deal. But Georgia’s hand is now far weaker than it was before the ruling.
“Why didn’t they go to Congress for approval 20 years ago?” asked Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental organization. “It was obvious that this was a gamble to say well, the corps gave it to us so we get to keep all this water. There’s no insurance policy in that.”
Instead of taking a conciliatory approach, though, Mr. Perdue has vowed to “fight to the death,” accused his opponents of hypocrisy and pointedly brought up a 150-year-old Supreme Court decision declaring the Chattahoochee River to be on Georgia’s side of the state line. Mr. Perdue is hoping to find allies among other states where reservoirs built for other purposes are used for drinking water.
The governor has also talked about building reservoirs and is planning to appeal the decision, although even his allies say a successful appeal is unlikely.
Mr. Riley has engaged in theatrics of his own. When Mr. Perdue appointed Mike Garrett, the chief executive officer of Georgia Power, to work with Congress on the water issue, Mr. Riley warned the power company’s parent, Southern Company, to stay neutral. He did not mention that Alabama Power, another subsidiary of Southern Company, has been a party to the lawsuit for years.
Seeking Congressional authorization would be a tricky matter for Georgia, whose delegation is outflanked by Alabama and Florida combined, both in size and influence, though all three states are led by Republicans and lack firepower in the Democratic leadership that controls Congress.
Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Atlanta and the senior member of the Georgia delegation, said members of Congress would become more involved in negotiations among the states. “It would be our hope,” Mr. Lewis said, “that the three states and the members of Congress from the three states would work it out, and if not we will take it up at the Congressional level.”
One of Mr. Perdue’s goals, meanwhile, is to go back to the negotiating table. To show his enthusiasm, on July 30 he sent a letter, which he made public, to Governors Crist and Riley, listing 40 possible dates for a meeting.
They are both still reviewing their schedules.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16water.html?_r=1&ref=earth&pagewanted=print
Heard this the other day:
ELIZABETH JACKSON: There’s been speculation for some time that future wars will be fought over water.
Now a study published in the journal Nature has raised concern that the issue of water resources could make India’s already-fraught relationship with Pakistan even worse.
The NASA study shows that aquifers in north-western India, bordering Pakistan, are being depleted at a much greater rate than they’re being replenished.
Carly Laird reports.
CARLY LAIRD: India’s north-western region is known as the country’s breadbasket. And if the rate of groundwater depletion there is anything to go by, there’s a lot of food production happening.
Matt Rodell is a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the United States. He and his colleagues have been using satellites to determine how much water is being depleted from below the Earth’s surface.
MATT RODELL: One of the places that stands out is north-western India, where there’s sort of a bullseye of red, where red is like a decrease in water storage.
And so we knew that north-western India has had issue with using too much groundwater and peoples’ wells going dry and people needing to find clean sources of water.
We also knew that that was one of the most heavily irrigated areas of the world for cropland irrigation, so our hypothesis was that the groundwater’s being depleted due to pumping for irrigation and so we decided to take a little closer look.
CARLY LAIRD: They found that between 2002 and 2008, the north-western region of India had lost over 100 cubic kilometres of groundwater. That’s double the capacity of India’s surface water reservoir.
MATT RODELL: And we know that the really heavy irrigation of the land began in the 1960s when they had what they called a green revolution, where they tried to increase agricultural output by using Western agricultural practices such as irrigation and synthetic fertilisers.
CARLY LAIRD: And he sees this as a potential problem for India’s north-western neighbour.
MATT RODELL: Potentially if India’s using a lot of water and drawing down the water table and it affects Pakistan, that could irritate the tensions that are already there.
CARLY LAIRD: Water is something that’s already been a source of conflict between the two countries. Dr Sandy Gordon is a Professor at the ANU’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security.
SANDY GORDON: India has built an enormous hydro dam on the Chennai River. Now Pakistan claims that this has drastically reduced the flow of the river and Pakistani farmers are saying that this also depleted the surrounding groundwater.
So this has become a serious cause for concern between India and Pakistan.
CARLY LAIRD: And he thinks the problem could escalate.
SANDY GORDON: As water is depleted in recent years I think it’s going to come much more to the fore in terms of its sources of tension between the two.
CARLY LAIRD: But hydrologist and NASA scientist, Matt Rodell, argues the Indian Government should actively try to prevent conflict from arising by encouraging farmers to change their practices.
MATT RODELL: Rice is one of the major crops in this region and rice requires a huge amount of water to grow. They could also try to implement more efficient irrigation techniques.
And hopefully the Indian Government will create incentives for them to do that sort of thing.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Matt Rodell, a hydrologist at NASA, ending that report from Carly Laird.
FROM: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2656906.htm
Nature article is at: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090812/full/460789a.html
Interesting post by Shekhar: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2009/08/why_are_we_hidi.htm#more
Indian Farmers, Coca-Cola Vie for Scarce Water Supply
In the Indian state of Rajasthsan, farmers have accused Coca-Cola factories of drawing too heavily on the area’s water supplies and contributing to pollution. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports for PBS on the controversy and the claims of both the company and its critics.
GWEN IFILL: Next, the battle between Coca-Cola and farmers over the shrinking supply of available water in India. NewsHour special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro has our report from the state of Rajasthan.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO, NewsHour Correspondent: This is one of 49 factories that make Coca-Cola drinks across India. The company has invested over $1 billion dollars building a market for its products in this country, but Coca-Cola’s welcome has been less than effervescent, particularly around this factory in Kala Dera, in the arid and recently drought-stricken state of Rajasthan.
The plant used about 900,000 liters of water last year, about a third of it for the soft drinks, the rest to clean bottles and machinery. It is drawn from wells at the plant but also from aquifers Coca-Cola shares with neighboring farmers. The water is virtually free to all users.
These farmers say their problems began after the Coca-Cola factory arrived in 1999.
RAMESHWAR PRASAD, Farmer (through translator): Before, the water level was descending by about one foot per year. Now it’s 10 feet every year. We have a 3.5-horsepower motor. We cannot cope. They have a 50-horsepower pump.
RAM SAPAT, Farmer (through translator): Every day, a thousand vehicles come out of that factory taking away our water. What is left for our kids?
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: To irrigate their fields of barley, millet and peanuts, these growers complain they must now drill deeper and use heftier pumps to water their fields.
MANGAL CHAND YADAV, Farmer (through translator): I’ve had to drill three times. It’s down to 260 feet. Five years ago, it was 180 feet.
HARI MICHAN YOGI, Farmer (through translator): It’s because everyone has a submersible pump now, the Coca-Cola factory. There’s not enough rain. These are the reasons.
Environmentalists’ claims
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Their cause was picked up by activists, like Rajendra Singh. He has worked across the region helping villagers conserve and collect rainwater through traditional methods.
RAJENDRA SINGH, Water Activist (through translator): Exploitation, pollution, encroachment, Coca-Cola is doing all three. That’s why I say that no company has the right to steal the common water resource. No company has the right to pollute water that is our life. No company has the right to encroach on our land that is our livelihood. Coca-Cola is doing all three.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The farmers also got the attention of international activists, according to Siddharth Varadarajan, an editor with the newspaper The Hindu.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN, Newspaper Editor: Activist groups have been quite effective and have managed to tap into anti-globalization and environmental and green groups across the world and have, you know, therefore, I think, managed to put Coke on the defensive internationally, to a much greater extent than has happened within India.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In 2005, when the University of Michigan banned Coke products, the company responded, and the ban was then lifted.
Coca-Cola agreed to an independent third-party assessment of some of its operations in India. That report determined that this plant in Rajasthan is contributing to a worsening water situation. It recommended that the company bring water in from outside the area or shut the factory down. Coca-Cola rejected that recommendation.
Already in 2004, Coca-Cola shut down one factory in south India amid a similar controversy. Its response now doesn’t surprise Varadarajan.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: Clearly, if Coke were to give in one factory, as other communities essentially look at the experience of Rajasthan, it’s quite likely that there would be a cascading effect. So I suspect Coke will dig its heels in.
The company’s viewpoint
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For his part, Coca-Cola’s India head, Atul Singh, says it would be irresponsible to leave.
ATUL SINGH, President, Coca-Cola India: You know, walking away is the easiest thing we can do. That’s not going to help that community build sustainability.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So Coca-Cola, while insisting its impact on the water supply was minimal, said it would stay and help.
The company has agreed to subsidize one-third of the cost of water-efficient drip irrigation systems for 15 neighboring farmers. The government pays most of the rest; growers themselves must chip in 10 percent.
Coca-Cola has also set up concrete collection systems for rainwater. Typically about 70 percent of rainfall evaporates before it can seep into the ground. Water collected from rooftops is piped into shafts up to 150 feet deep. Despite drought conditions, the system has been a success, according to company spokesman Kalyan Ranjan.
KALYAN RANJAN, Coca-Cola Spokesman: We have still managed to recharge banks than what we withdraw, so what we see ourselves is we are part of a problem-solving mechanism rather than a problem in ourselves.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Are you saying you’re putting back more water than you’re taking?
KALYAN RANJAN: In Kala Dera, yes. In Kala Dera, yes.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The scientist who conducted the independent study of Coca-Cola’s operations is not ready to accept that claim. Dr. Leena Srivastava is with the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute.
LEENA SRIVASTAVA, Scientist: We haven’t been able to prove that. And it’s too short a timeframe to start talking about whether groundwater aquifers have been recharged in six months. I think we really have to wait and watch and see what the impact is.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And farmers and activists, like Rajendra Singh, remain skeptical.
RAJENDRA SINGH (through translator): They have an arrogance that says, “We have money; we can buy what we want.”
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They also are critical of the government locally for attracting Coca-Cola to a water-scarce region and nationally for ignoring water policy in a rush to attract industry and foreign investment. Editor Varadarajan says they have a point.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: India has a completely irrational groundwater management policy, where, if you have the means and the resources, you can extract as much groundwater as you like and you can use this water which you essentially pump up for free — it’s unmetered — to manufacture products which you can sell for a high price, whether it’s bottled water, whether it’s a beverage, whether it’s industry.
And, you know, this is something which the Indian policymakers have simply not bothered to formulate a cohesive strategy to deal with.
Food, water scarcity
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: At stake is the nation’s food supply, says scientist Leena Srivastava.
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: We are heading very rapidly towards the situation of absolute scarcity. Without even adding on the problems that might come up because of climate change issues, we just don’t have enough. And food security in the future can become a major problem for the country.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Food security?
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: Food security, yes.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Based on the water scarcity?
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: Based on water scarcity.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In June, India’s prime minister proposed a series of measures to address broader climate change issues, including water. As for Coca-Cola, CEO Singh says, by the end of 2009, the company will become, quote, “water-neutral,” returning at least as much groundwater as it withdraws in India overall, though not necessarily at individual plants like Kala Dera.
He says it’s part of an emerging sense of corporate social responsibility.
ATUL SINGH: You know, I think the world has changed. If you’d asked me this question 10, 15, 20 years ago, I would give you a different answer.
Today, what I have seen — and this is globally, as well as in India — corporates have moved from philanthropy — you know, cutting a check for the art, you know, some art museum or some religious temple or, you know, helping a particular foundation — into real sustainability.
Are we building sustainable communities? And if we are not, consumers will choose products and services from companies who do behave in that manner.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says Coca-Cola plans to invest several hundred million more dollars in the years ahead in what may soon become its largest market.
FROM: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec08/waterwars_11-17.html
Shekhar Kapur is working on a water-crisis film. Titled Paani, it is set in the not to distant futre of India. Here is a little bit of what he has written on the subject, and be sure to visit the sites below to register your support and raise awareness:
Every year, over 500,000 children in India never reach the age of 5 because of water-related diseases like diarrhea, gastroenteritis, hepatitis. Over 300 million Indians have no access to toilets. Already, 224 million Indians live in water stress. About 70% of irrigation needs and 80% of municipal water supplies come from groundwater sources. However, depleted aquifers and lowered groundwater tables mean that this is no longer sustainable. It has been estimated that by as early as 2020, India’s demand for water will exceed ALL sources of supply.
Can we make a difference? One individual thinks so. And one organization is supporting him in his mission for the cause of water. On April 26th 2008, Sharada Prasad will start a 19,000 km Motorcycle Ride across India. The objective of Sharada’s ride is to discover what water means to people across the country. The problems faced by people with respect to water are different in different parts of the country. Support him by going to;
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/k2k/
FROM: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/my_films/paani/
