Water News Roundup – August 26, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune:

State explores private management of state parks – The chairman of a board looking at the potential for privatizing state government functions would like to see Utah privatize a handful of state parks to see if they can be run more efficiently than they are now.

Lake Powell slobs foment revolt – Each summer I do penance at Lake Powell for the environmental sins of its visitors. This summer was no exception as I volunteered to work on a houseboat called the Trash Tracker. Our job: picking up debris in 108-degree heat along 100 miles or so of the 1,900-mile shoreline.

Ogden Standard Examiner:  Artificial catfish nests being placed in Bountiful lake – As a pelican swoops overhead and the cattail sways along the shore, Eric Stephenson lowers a love nest into the water.

Times Free Press:  Hot river forces costly cutback for TVA – The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot.

Water News Roundup – August 24, 2010

Deseret News: Lake Powell ruled mussel free zone – The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has officially ruled Lake Powell mussel-free three years after a false positive detection.

Salt Lake Tribune: West can lead the new energy economy – The West, with its wealth of wind, solar, geothermal and other clean, renewable energy resources, is poised to lead the nation toward a new energy future.

The Hill: EPA unveils strategy to modernize clean water programs – The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday floated a draft strategy to improve water quality nationwide, one that bluntly recognizes that today’s pollution sources are often difficult to target with traditional Clean Water Act controls.

New York Times – Science: Levels plummet in crucial reservoir – Water levels in Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir, fell sharply again this summer and are nearing an elevation that would set off the first-ever official water shortage on the river, The Arizona Republic reported last week.

Indian Point nuclear plant’s toll on river stirs debate – Just beneath the wind-stippled surface of the Hudson River here, huge pipes suck enough water into the Indian Point nuclear plant every second to fill three Olympic swimming pools.

Water News Roundup – August 17, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune:  Mexico, US talking about Colorado River water – A powerful Easter Sunday earthquake along the Mexico border has had ripple effects in Nevada, spurring international talks about future use of the Colorado River and the water level in Lake Mead.

Salt Lake Tribune – Editorial: Shrinking Mead – Some marinas at Lake Mead are high and dry; new roads now meander on dry ground that used to be far under water. The huge reservoir is shrinking.

New York Times:  Lake Mead’s water level plunges as 11-year drought lingers – Lake Mead, the enormous reservoir of Colorado River water that hydrates Arizona, Nevada, California and northern Mexico, is receding to a level not seen since it was first being filled in the 1930s, stoking existential fears about water supply in the parched Southwest.

City Brights w/ Peter Gleick: Water and energy: obey the law on cooling systems – The connections between energy and water are significant and complex. We use vast amounts of energy to collect, move, treat, use, and clean water. And we use vast amounts of water to produce energy, including for mining, drilling, and processing fossil and nuclear fuels, and especially for cooling power plants.

Water News Roundup – July 14, 2010

Provo Daily Herald: Canal project coming quickly – A major construction project will soon be having a big impact on north county cities.  The Interstate 15 rebuild? No, the other big effort getting under way in the region is the Provo Reservoir Canal Enclosure Project. Enclosing the waterway — a.k.a. the Murdock Canal — is a $15 million project that has been years in the making and involved a host of government agencies, including the U.S. Congress.

KSL: Public meetings kick off Murdock Canal project – A major construction project is about to get underway to enclose the Murdock Canal, the open waterway that carries water from Provo Canyon to the Point of the Mountain.  (Steve Cain, Facilities and Lands Manager for PRWUA, gets some serious facetime on KSL.  Usually they let you speak for about five seconds and then clip the take.  Steve manages to get in almost 30 seconds… go Steve!)

Ogden Standard Examiner: New reservoir ready to service two cities – A $3.2 million secondary water reservoir that becomes fully operational on Wednesday will save culinary water costs for two expanding north Davis cities.

KCPW: Lingering concerns dominate town hall meeting on oil spill – The second town hall meeting convened on the Red Butte Creek oil pipeline spill lasted more than three hours last night at Clayton Middle School in Salt Lake City.

Wall Street Journal: Water policy for NY power plants draws reliability concerns – Authorities in charge of the reliability of New York State’s power supply warn a policy to protect aquatic life could threaten the dependability of electricity supplies and increase air pollution.

Water News Roundup – July 6, 2010

I’m back from what could possibly be described as the most awesome Fourth of July EVER!  Ahhhh…. welcome back to the water news work week.

Salt Lake Tribune has a bunch of stories that will be posted as soon as they manage to get their website up and running (doh!)

KSL: Insider details state’s issue with energy study – Utah officials spent $200,000 in federal and state funds to have the study done. But when it was finished a few months ago, they sidetracked it and refused to vouch for it — after it ran into a wall of opposition from industry.  The study blames Utah power plants for 202 premature deaths each year and for health and water costs up to $2 billion annually.

An interesting study of how irrigation method possibly contributes to or limits groundwater E. coli contamination…

Science: Keeping feces on the farm – Think dairy farm, and your mind may wander to images of cows grazing dewy green pastures, as glistening silos and red-walled farmhouses slumber in the distance. But something sinister is lurking in the grass: cow feces crawling with disease-causing Escherichia coli bacteria. A new study, however, reveals that these bacteria are much less likely to enter  groundwater and cause illness if farmers spray their fields with water rather than flooding them, as is traditional.