Nation Urged to Take Action to Head off Looming Freshwater Crisis

/PRNewswire/ -- Citing a looming freshwater crisis that could affect the nation's economy, the livability of our communities and the health of our ecosystems, a diverse coalition of businesses, farmers, environmental not-for-profits and government agencies today issued a landmark call to action aimed at heading off a national crisis in water quality and supply.

"Charting New Waters: A Call to Action to Address U.S. Freshwater Challenges," is the culmination of an intensive two-year collaboration exploring solutions to U.S. freshwater challenges. It was presented to the Obama Administration at a meeting of federal agencies convened by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and released to the public during a noon forum at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

"There was broad consensus among participants that our current path will, unless changed, lead us to a national freshwater crisis in the foreseeable future," the Call to Action reports. "This reality encompasses a wide array of challenges ... that collectively amount to a tenuous trajectory for the future of the nation's freshwater resources."

The report identifies serious challenges to the quality and supply of freshwater, such as pollution and scarcity; competing urban, rural and ecosystem water needs; climate change; environmental and public health impacts; and a variety of economic implications. The document offers actions to confront these threats and a plan to ensure that our freshwater resources are secure for the 21st century.

While a great deal of progress has been made since landmark freshwater legislation in the 1970s, many freshwater challenges persist, the report says. It sees some as acute and obvious, such as severe droughts and broken water mains. Others are characterized as more subtle and chronic, building quietly over the years - such as endocrine disrupting chemicals in rivers and drinking water and the slow but steady depletion of aquifers and declining snowpack in parts of the country.

The document is believed to be the first such comprehensive, cross-sector examination of U.S. freshwater challenges and solutions. It represents consensus recommendations of diverse interests convened by The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin.

Reliable freshwater supplies are an essential underpinning of U.S. economic security, with energy generation, manufacturing, food production and many activities of daily life dependent on access to freshwater, the report says. It notes that an estimated 41 percent of U.S. freshwater withdrawals are for thermoelectric power generation, primarily coal, nuclear and natural gas; 37 percent go toward irrigated agriculture.

"For too long, our society has treated water as a cheap, non-strategic and infinitely available resource. Not anymore. Threats to water quality and access are putting our businesses, communities and way of life in jeopardy. The time to act is now," said S. Curtis Johnson, chairman of Diversey Inc., a leading global provider of cleaning and hygiene solutions to the institutional marketplace and co-signer of the Call to Action.

The document proposes a series of shared actions across sectors to ensure sustainable and resilient freshwater resources so that we have the ability to absorb changes, sudden or otherwise, through flexible water management strategies.

The Call to Action's recommendations include a range of freshwater management strategies to head off a potential crisis, such as streamlining and better coordinating fragmented governance among federal, state and local jurisdictions. Another key need identified in the report is modernizing our freshwater regulatory framework, developed in the 1970s to deal with the acute environmental issues of that era.

"For decades, U.S. water strategy has been cobbled together from diverse, incomplete, and sometimes conflicting policies. We can no longer afford to manage our water that way. The good news is that smart, effective, and innovative solutions to the nation's water problems exist and can be implemented. That's what this report recommends," said Dr. Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute, one of the nation's leading water scientists and a co-signer of the Call to Action.

The report also calls for better accounting of the full cost of services delivered by municipal water and wastewater utilities and sharing this information with consumers. Revised pricing structures that more accurately reflect the full cost of services could be one step toward financing badly needed upgrades to U.S. water and wastewater systems.

"Freshwater is our most precious resource and the lifeblood of our economy - industry, agriculture and energy generation all depend heavily on adequate supplies of freshwater. Water quality in our natural and municipal freshwater systems is vital to the health and livability of our communities," said Helen Johnson-Leipold, chairman of The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread. "The Foundation and its many partners in this collaboration offer the Call to Action as a means of bringing overdue attention to our nation's freshwater challenges and sparking action to address them."

A leading representative of the agriculture community commended the process that led to today's announcement.

"It's enabled a range of participants who seldom engage each other to arrive at some potentially significant and effective recommendations, such as those regarding water quality and the Farm Bill, guidelines for the work and composition of the proposed Freshwater Commission, and emphasis on the importance of local and state leadership in developing co- beneficial solutions based on sound data in local watersheds," said Ray Gaesser, past president of the Iowa Soybean Association and co-signer of the Call to Action.

In addition to signing onto the Call to Action, the parties in this groundbreaking initiative also made commitments as individual organizations to take actions to address freshwater challenges. For additional information about these commitments and the Call to Action, or to learn more about The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, please visit www.johnsonfdn.org.

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Georgia Farms Will Need More Water in the Future

A recent University of Georgia report shows that Georgia farmers will need 20 percent more water to grow their crops in the next four decades. They'll need it to meet increased food demand and to compete globally.

“Without irrigation, in many places, there is no farming,” said Jim Hook, a professor with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “And for many regions of the state, agriculture is still the best economic bet for growth.”

The Georgia Environmental Protection Division commissioned the report, which was produced by a team of UGA crop and weather experts. Its purpose is to provide information to the state's regional water councils meeting throughout the state this month, said Hook, who is the team's leader.

The councils will consider the report as they develop water plans for their regions, which will then be added to the overall state water plan. The state plan will also include forecasts for population and economy, energy use, land use and water and wastewater demands.

The forecast predicts the water farmers will need to irrigate pecans and major row crops like cotton, peanuts, corn and soybeans, which account for 85 percent of the current irrigation needs. Vegetables, orchards, blueberries, sod farms and nurseries were also included. It specifies whether the water will come from groundwater (underground water) or surface water (water from ponds, rivers or streams).

It includes how much water farmers will need in a dry, average or wet year. In Georgia, Mother Nature can be a bit mischievous in when and where rainfall hits.

“In Western states, it's easier to know how much water you have each year. It's either collected in reservoirs or stored as mountain icecaps,” Hook said. “That's not the case in Georgia, where recharge is less predictable.”

For example, if 2011 is a dry year from spring through fall, farmers will need 800 million gallons of water per day from underground sources and 300 million gallons per day from surface sources, according to the forecast. If 2050 is a dry year, they will need 1 billion gallons per day from underground sources and 400 million gallons per day from surface water.

“Georgia's agriculture sector will continue to be a major water user in the state,” he said.
The forecast is broken down by water planning regions, counties, river basins and sub-basins. The county data includes monthly water demands, crop projections and current irrigated fields.
Existing computer models were used to make the forecast, he said, which took 9 months to complete.

Economic models from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were used to predict farmers' crop choices over the next decade, focusing particularly on farmers in the Southeast. Crop models developed by CAES researchers were used to foretell crop water needs and climate data.
Geographical Information System, or GIS, images were used to locate the 23,000 fields in Georgia that have irrigation systems, including more than 15,000 center pivots, or large systems that rotate in a field.

Future irrigation use will happen in places where the practice is already established, particularly in southwest Georgia, the state's row-crop and vegetable production hub. The area's water needs are fueled by one of the largest water supplies in the country: the Floridan aquifer. It starts near the state's fall line and runs east into extreme southern South Carolina and south through Florida.

“The Floridan is a massive water supply,” Hook said.

The aquifer is recharged by water that falls in south Georgia, he said. Its levels are not connected to any rainfall or use in north Georgia, where water comes from surface water supplies that don't make it into the aquifer.

Irrigation use exploded in 1970s and ‘80s in Georgia, when irrigated acres jumped from 200,000 acres to 1 million acres, he said. Since then, it has been a steady increase to the 1.5 million irrigated acres today.

It is estimated that farmers have invested almost $3 billion in today's dollars in irrigation equipment and infrastructure in the state over the past four decades, he said, an investment that is responsible for much of the $3 billion to $4 billion in annual crop sales in Georgia.
To view the entire forecast, visit
www.nespal.org/sirp/waterinfo/state/awd/agwaterdemand.htm.

By Brad Haire
University of Georgia
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Drinking Water Infrastructure Investment Could Create 400,000 Jobs

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Water Works Association (AWWA), the authoritative resource on safe water, is urging Congress to include funding for drinking water infrastructure projects in the stimulus legislation now being considered.

Today, more than $10 billion in drinking water infrastructure projects around the nation are shovel-ready and can be underway as soon as funds are committed. These projects would put more than 400,000 Americans to work on aging water mains, leaking pipes, treatment plants, pump stations, storage reservoirs, elevated tanks, security safeguards and other needs.

"As Congress again considers legislation to stimulate the economy, the nation's drinking water utilities stand ready to create immediate jobs and lasting economic benefits through investment in water infrastructure," said Tom Curtis, AWWA's Washington D.C.-based deputy executive director.

While other forms of economic stimulus such as taxpayer refunds or stimulus checks may provide a quick infusion of money into the economy, their effects can be short-lived. By comparison, infrastructure projects benefit the economy over a more sustained period of time by creating quality jobs across all tax brackets, creating demand for the services and products that businesses and industry bring to market, and by providing long-lasting benefits to society as a whole, such as health protection and fire protection.

Local water systems across the country deliver water for all our society's needs - from first responders to all aspects of our businesses and personal lives. But much of our water infrastructure was constructed between 80 and 100 years ago, and is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.

"Our water systems are critical to our public health and safety today and in the future, and there's no better way to put Americans to work," Curtis said.

A 2001 study by AWWA estimated the cost of replacing existing pipes over the next two decades will top $250 billion.

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