“This is a case about evaporated water.” Thus began U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion for the Court in Texas v. New Mexico, decided on December 14, 2020. Wait a minute! The Supreme Court is a very busy Court with complicated, serious legal problems to resolve, yet they heard one about something that no longer exists? The Pecos River starts in New Mexico and flows into Texas. In 2014, as a tropical storm threatened to flood the Texas portion of the Basin, the State of Texas asked New Mexico to store Pecos River water in a reservoir in New…
Category: Commentaries
Interstate water wars are heating up along with the climate
Interstate water disputes are as American as apple pie. States often think a neighboring state is using more than its fair share from a river, lake or aquifer that crosses borders. Currently the U.S. Supreme Court has on its docket a case between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado and another one between Mississippi and Tennessee. The court has already ruled this term on cases pitting Texas against New Mexico and Florida against Georgia. Climate stresses are raising the stakes. Rising temperatures require farmers to use more water to grow the same amount of crops. Prolonged and severe droughts decrease available supplies. Wildfires are burning hotter and lasting…
Is Romaine Safe to Eat?
Introduction We were delighted as our 12-year-old grandson ordered a Caesar salad when we were having dinner at a pizza place. Vegetables! However, the dinner was December 22, 2019, shortly after CDC and FDA issued yet another warning against eating romaine from Salinas, California. I asked the server where the romaine came from. He didn’t know but went in the back to inquire. He returned and said, “Salinas.” Since 2017, seven outbreaks involving romaine lettuce have sickened hundreds and killed five. Those are the reported numbers. No one knows how many other people got sick. In six outbreaks the lettuce came…
Testing sewage can give school districts, campuses and businesses a heads-up on the spread of COVID-19
November has brought encouraging news about several COVID-19 vaccines. But members of the general public will probably not be vaccinated before the spring or summer of 2021 at the earliest. Americans will be living with this pandemic for some time to come. We are a microbiologist and a water policy specialist, and believe that wastewater-based epidemiology, which tests raw sewage, has an important role to play. Studies have shown that testing wastewater offers an early warning signal that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is present in a community. Although this approach is less targeted than testing individuals, we believe…
Looser standards for showerheads could send a lot of water and money down the drain
For more than 25 years, Congress has directed U.S. government agencies to set energy and water efficiency standards for many new products. These measures conserve resources and save consumers a lot of money. Until recently, they had bipartisan support. But President Trump has turned efficiency standards into symbols of intrusive government. His administration has opposed many of these rules, including standards for light bulbs, commercial boilers, portable air conditioners and low-flow toilets. His latest target: showerheads. The Energy Policy Act of 1992, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, set the maximum flow rate for showers at 2.5 gallons per minute. President Trump is proposing…
Why I Am Optimistic About Water
I recently received an email from a retired hydrologist, asking my thoughts about the future of water management. Here’s his note and my reply. “I read your newly-published Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters in 2002 and used it in a seminar that I had long offered. The following year, having tired of fighting the political forces that intervened in our attempts to implement good scientific principles, I retired. All these years I have basically remained silent, watching what seems to be little heed given your warnings. I am wondering - is there better news, that perhaps…
Water and COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of life in the United States. It has significant implications for water and wastewater systems. Consider these examples. Drinking Water There is mostly good news about drinking water. We know that infected individuals can shed the virus in fecal matter, which then enters the sewer system. But wastewater treatment technology regularly removes viruses and pathogens, so there is little risk that COVID-19 would end up in drinking water. It could get into the environment through cracks in sewer pipes or after heavy storms, when treatment plants are overwhelmed with combined storm and sewer…
Great Lakes’ biggest worries much closer to home than arid Southwest
Thirsty businesses and unsustainable groundwater use by agriculture pose the biggest threats to the Midwest's water supply. A few years ago, a Michigan billboard—reading "Back off suckers: Water diversion . . . the last straw"—showed caricatures of Southwestern states with giant straws going into the Great Lakes. Is this the Midwest's future? Whenever I come to the Midwest for a talk, I usually display a slide of the billboard and then scold the audience: It's preposterous to think that we in the Southwest want to divert all the water in the Great Lakes. We'd settle for just one of the…
Water harvesting as a solution for island communities
As Maine’s island communities and coastal residents address water supply problems created by rising sea levels (see "Monhegan's water supply threatened," December/January issue, they may want to borrow a tool developed in the arid West. Water harvesting involves capturing precipitation, whether rain, snow or sleet. Saltwater intrusion into coastal groundwater aquifers has bedeviled Maine homeowners as well as others on the East, Gulf and West coasts. When water gets pumped from wells, the pumping creates a hydraulic vacuum that moves water, fresh or salt, laterally until the pressure subsides. Gravity relentlessly moves water to its lowest level. As ocean water warms, it…
Local Opinion: Drought contingency plans embrace water marketing
At Hoover Dam on May 20th, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation hosted the seven Colorado River Basin states at a ceremony to celebrate the signing of the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plans. The jubilant mood of the dignitaries masked a grim reality facing the Basin states: legal rights to Colorado River water exceed the amount of water in the river, which supplies water to 40 million people and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland. The act authorizing the plans, which Congress enacted in a rare display of bipartisanship, is only a few paragraphs long. It simply instructs the secretary of…