By Alan Caruba at Warning Signs

For sixty years I lived on a little street called Brookside Road. The name came from a real brook, a Depression-era project lined with smooth rocks that was serene and beautiful, bounded by trees on both sides.

Some in the federal government want to exert control over that brook and over every drop of water in America. It is an attack on private property and it is emblematic of the real agenda of environmentalists. It is Communism.

The American Land Rights Association recently issued a notice. “Having been slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court’s two recent decisions that the words ‘navigable waters’ in the Clean Water Act limited federal agencies to regulation of navigable waters only, Democrats and liberal Republicans in Congress are striking back.”

I wrote a recent commentary on the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to circumvent the wording of the Clean Air Act in order to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas upon which all vegetation relies in the same way humans and other creatures require oxygen. Now the EPA in conjunction with the Corps of Engineers wants to control all waters nationwide.

It is a naked grab for power that the Founding Fathers feared. John Adams wrote that “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

Private property is so essential to freedom that the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution specifically says “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” There would be no just compensation if the EPA acquires the power to decide how Americans can use water and where.

Just as we have already seen examples of how U.S. agriculture is being sabotaged by the Endangered Species Act, denying water to farms in Oregon and California, there are countless other examples of how these “environmental” laws are used to keep new plants to generate electrical energy from being built and the thwarting of all manner of other development.

Environmentalism used to mean conservation, but now it is just Communism, first, last and always.

The proposed language to change the Clean Water Act would replace “navigable waters”, i.e., rivers, lakes, and bays, on which a ship, barge or boat could travel, with the all-encompassing phrase “waters of the United States.”

Here’s their definition:

“The term ‘waters of the United States’ means all waters subject to ebb and flow of the tides, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes [a flat dried up area, especially. a desert basis] natural ponds and all impoundment of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.”

Deserts? Sandflats? Wet meadows? Prairie potholes?

But the Constitution expressly forbids the taking of private property and that includes countless lakes, ponds, desert and forested holdings. If the EPA is empowered to tell property owners what they can and cannot do with their own property as the result of a puddle, a pool or ordinary rain runoff that is, for all intents and purposes, a “taking” by the U.S. government.

In my home State of New Jersey, a vast area in the northwestern region was designated a water reserve and the people who owned homes and other properties there lost the value of those properties along with the right to undertake any change or addition to them. It was a clear “taking” by the State, but was upheld by its liberal courts.

Now liberals in Congress want to literally “take” every square mile and inch of America by ceding to the EPA and the Corps of Engineers powers forbidden by the Constitution and feared by the nation’s founders.

Just how important is water to life? America has spent billions to search for it on the Moon and Mars!

Here again, Americans must call upon their Representatives and Senators in Congress to determine if they support this vile legislation or to find out what steps they will take to stop it. The proposed bill in the House has no number as of this writing, but the one in the Senate is S-787.

Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike are locked into a battle with Congress and the White House to protect the Constitution and to protest policies that are totalitarian in nature and a threat to our most fundamental beliefs.

Nearly a million made their voices heard on September 12 in Washington, D.C. and continue to organize Tea Parties.

There are forces at work in our nation’s capital that are seeking to destroy the nation through the devaluation of the dollar, the takeover of major industries and other aspects of our economy, and the imposition on huge taxes in the midst of a crippling Recession.

Fight them! Fight them! Fight them!

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

The public meeting called by the Gawler Branch of the National Trust and GEHA has raised many questions about the 30 year plan for Greater Adelaide.

Among the issues raised were concerns about the lack of public consultation, the short period of time to get submissions in, the loss of arable land, threats to biodiversity and water security issues.

Graham Brookman raised some interesting points that the underlying philosophies of the plan were not actually matched by its components – his presentation is summarised here under 30 year plan

Some submissions have been posted by Blogawler.

Global Challenges: The Perfect Storm – The Future of Food, Energy and Water Security

A Public Lecture by Prof John Beddington, UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor

1000h – 1130h 30 September, 2009
NSTDA Auditorium, Thailand Science Park
Pahonyothin Rd, Tambon Klong Nung, Amphoe Klong Luang, Pathumthani

ศาสตราจารย์ เบดดิงตัน คาดการณ์ว่า ในปี ค.ศ. ๒๐๓๐ ความต้องการอาหารและพลังงานจะเพิ่มจากปัจจุบันราวๆ ๕๐% และความต้องการน้ำสะอาดจะเพิ่มขึ้น ๓๐% ในช่วงนั้น ประชากรโลก จะเพิ่มขึ้นเป็น ๘,๓๐๐ ล้านคน ท่านกังวลว่าการขาดแคลนอาหาร พลังงานและน้ำ จะนำไปสู่สงคราม การจลาจล และการอพยพของประชาชน เราอาจจะก้าวไปสู่ภาวะ Perfect Storm ที่ความแย่ทุกชนิดจะเกิดขึ้นพร้อมๆกัน ดังนั้น การเตรียมการทางเทคโนโลยี เพื่อสร้างพลังงานทางเลือกใหม่ๆ เพื่อเพิ่มผลผลิตทางการเกษตร และวิธีการใช้น้ำที่ดีกว่าเดิม เพื่อเลี่ยงภาวะ Perfect Storm นี้จึงเป็นเรื่องที่จำเป็นสุดๆ ท่านที่สนใจ เชิญมาฟัง และเสวนาเรื่องบทบาทของวิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยีกับศาสตราจารย์เบดดิงตัน ในการเผชิญหน้ากับวิกฤตที่กำลังคืบคลานมา…

Growing populations, falling energy sources and food shortages will create the “perfect storm” by 2030 argues Prof John Beddington, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. He predicts the demand for food and energy will jump 50 per cent by 2030 and for fresh water by 30 per cent, as the global population tops 8.3 billion which will create a global resource crisis.

In this lecture Prof Beddington will elaborate on this looming crisis and discuss the role of science and technology in meeting these challenges.

Prof Beddington was Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College until his appointment as the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor. He has acted as a senior adviser to several government and international bodies, including the Australian, New Zealand and US Governments, the European Commission, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In June 1997 he was awarded the Heidelberg Award for Environmental Excellence and in 2001 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2004 he was awarded the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George by the Queen for services to fisheries science and management.

ฟังการเสวนาฟรี ที่ห้อง Auditorium อาคารส่วนงานกลาง สวทช. อุทยานวิทยาศาสตร์ประเทศไทย วันที่ ๓๐ กันยายน ๒๕๕๒ เวลา ๑๐.๐๐-๑๑.๓๐ น. จองที่นั่งตามหมายเลขโทรศัพท์ ข้างล่างนี้

Admission Free. Seats are limited, to reserve your seat, please call the NSTDA International Cooperation Division Tel: 02 5647000 ext 1532-34. email: ic(at)nstda.or.th

Organised and supported by the National Science and Technology Development Agency and the British High Commission Singapore

The clock is ticking for South Africa’s stretched water supply, and in another five years demand will have caught up with supply, according to a top official. Jones Mnisi, acting chief operating officer at Johannesburg Water, the public utility overseeing supply in the country’s economic hub, told a recent conference on water security that the tipping point where demand outstripped supply may not be far away.

South Africa is chronically water-stressed. Although growth has slowed, an expanding economy, a growing population, and increased evaporation caused by climate change are conspiring to put additional pressures on water resources. Yet leading experts at the conference said the situation could be addressed if the country curbed demand and improved water quality to facilitate reuse.

[...] Although the next phase of the [multi-dam Lesotho Highlands Water Project], expected to be in place in 2019, could relieve some of the pressure on South Africa’s water supply, it was likely to be too late, said Chris Herold, chairman of the water division of the South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE).

Quantity and quality

Experts said the quality and quantity of the water supply should be better managed, and called for more investment in infrastructure. “The national water resource strategy has assumed that water demand management will happen,” said Herold, “On the implementation side, some of the local authorities have not come to the party.”

Anthony Turton, a former researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, who now works as a water management consultant, predicted that South Africa would soon have to start reusing effluent, which would entail revamping infrastructure, with waste treatment plants a priority.

[...] He and others have also begun to conclude that if water could be stored in underground man-made aquifers, he said, it could save a vast quantity of water from evaporation annually.

[...] Water and sanitation remain contentious issues, and government has assured South Africans that it will commit more funds to improve water infrastructure, deploy personnel to local government to oversee operations, build capacity, and ensure proper financial management. A recent progress report card on the UN Millennium Development Goals said the country was on track for achieving access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.

“Water service provision is critical, and it is a sensitive issue,” Turton said. “We have to give people everything that the struggle was about, like dignity. If we don’t, we’re going to have a lot of angry people.”

SAICE’s Herold said government should crack down on hundreds of farmers who used water illegally from the Vaal River, 100km south of Johannesburg, which supplies the city. The department of water affairs has established a unit, known as the “Blue Scorpions”, to police illegal bulk water use.

Source: IRIN, 22 May 2009

We are usually very fortunate in the water department. We have a spring source that is gravity fed to all of the houses on our main street. The tank hold 10,000 gallons which is enough to get us through a short term power outage and there is a generator to run the pump after that. But this week the pump broke down and, while we were never out of water, we did have to conserve until the pump could be repaired and the tank refilled. The amount of water a household uses really becomes apparent when you are focusing on it.

I fill a couple of 3 gallon water jugs twice a day just to water the greenhouse plants and the newly planted sets. Several times a week, I fill those jugs another 4 or 5 times to water the new fruit trees and berry bushes. We run the soaker hose a couple of times a week for a fer house to give the new raspberry and blackberry canes a good drink. The pigs require a good deal of water and surprisingly enough, the bees use quite a bit too. Bruce mixes up their supplemental feed 4 days a week. Now I haven’t even thought about the house yet.

With 4 adults and 1 child, there are showers and laundry and toilet flushings, dishes and cooking and general washing up. We must wash our hands 10 times a day because of all the dirty work we do. We handle cow poop, pig slobber and have our hands down in the earth.

In the midst of trying to conserve, I put up 7 pints of rhubarb and the canner uses a lot of water. All of this leads me to ask-Where are you in terms of water security? I was able to haul water from our stream for flushing, animals and plants. We just didn’t shower for a day and we let the laundry pile up. I had enough water stored for drinking and cooking so my only use was for the canner. I guess I could have used stream water for that as well as it never comes in contact with food and is boiled in any case. I used my tap water just for washing hands and teeth brushing.

I hope this is something you think about. Check out your neighborhood for sources of clean, or not so clean, water. Invest in a water filter if you can afford it and get the directions for building one if you can’t. The Internet is full of good instructions. I think that Ole Remus at The WoodPile Report had some good ones and so does Rawles at Survivalblog.

If you are ever thinking of relocating, I would put availablity of water at the top of mulist of got to haves. Bruce is actually thinking of finding our old well head and getting it back in working order. We havea dowser friend who could find it in minutes. With a hand pump we would be in business even if the power fails and pump breaks.

“China should pay farmers to halt irrigation in the environmentally degraded far west despite long-standing concerns about food security, a senior government adviser has told the Guardian. After more than 50 years of converting desert to farmland, the expert says the water problems in Xinjiang are so acute that the vast region – bigger than two-thirds of the world’s nations – cannot develop further unless it pulls people off the fields and into cities.”

Climate change poses the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century but its full impact is not being grasped by the healthcare community or policymakers, a medical report concludes.

The report, compiled by a commission of academics from University College London and published in The Lancet, warns that climate change risks huge death tolls caused by disease, food and water shortages and poor sanitation.

The authors said that the NHS [UK National Health Service] would face serious incremental pressures from heat and hygiene-related illnesses because of increasingly hot summers, greater pathogen spread with warmer temperatures, and the heightened risk of flooding.

Professor Anthony Costello, a paediatrician and director of UCL Institute for Global Health, said that he had not realised the full ramifications of climate change on health until 18 months ago.

[...] The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation,” Professor Costello, the commission leader, said. “The impacts will be felt not just in the UK, but all around the world — and not just in some distant future but in our lifetimes and those of our children.”

The UCL Lancet Commission focused on six areas for their report, Managing the health effects of climate change: patterns of disease and mortality, food security, water and sanitation, shelter and human settlements, extreme events, and population migration.

The commission considered a number of ways that climate change could affect health. Changing patterns of disease and mortality would emerge in a greater rate of transmission and geographic spread of traditionally tropical endemic diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

Heat will also have a serious effect on mortality, as will food and water security, with scientists predicting that crop yields could drop by 17 per cent with a 1C change in temperature.

Source: Sam Lister, The Times, 14 May 2009

A World Bank report blames Palestinian mismanagement and Israeli restrictions for severe water shortages in Palestinian areas. Palestinians get only a quarter of the water Israelis have access to. The existing problems effect not just daily supply but the development of water resources, water uses and wastewater management. ”Water related humanitarian crises are in fact chronic in Gaza and parts of the West Bank,” says the report.

For their water Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are completely dependant on scarce resources controlled by Israel. This has led to “systematic and severe constraints on Palestinian development of water resources”, says the report, despite the joint governance rules and water allocations established under the 1995 Oslo interim agreement.  

But the Palestinian Authority (PA) too gets part of the blame. It is struggling to establish even a basic water infrastructure and management, concludes the report.

[...]  Israeli officials said the report was “grossly misleading” as Israel has a much more developed industrial sector which could skew the assessment. But in Gaza 150,000 Palestinians have no access to tap water at all, a report in the Palestine Telegraph says.

According to the local utility provider, several wells have been destroyed during the Israeli offensive earlier this year. Since then only three out of 80 trucks with spare parts and pipes for the water system have been allowed to enter Gaza. As a result the severe damages to two wastewater treatment plants could not be repaired and continue to affect water quality.

Read the full World Bank report “West Bank and Gaza : assessment of restrictions on Palestinian water sector development : sector note“, April 2009. 154 p.

Source: BBC news, 20 Apr 2009 ; World Bank, 20 Apr 2009

Organised by: African Information Institute Ltd.

Advancing the effective and sustainable management of water resources and infrastructure.

The water industry has never been under more pressure – concerns about water quality, over-allocated water, climate change and ageing infrastructure all impact on the water security of our water. Water industry leaders and government representatives will give presentations on sustainable solutions to tackle these challenges.

Includes a workshop on the South African Dept. of Water Affairs and Forestry’s (DWAF) proposed Blue & Green Drop Certification.

To register and for more info go to the conference web site.

THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.

Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”

Thus begins a most interesting article in The Economist on how water is used. We tend to take for granted in NZ that we have surplus water, but it may well be that in some respects we do not. In addition are we effcient or wasteful users of water. Are we over burdening our water resource by increasing dairying when other uses might be better, for example less water intensive sheep farming.

The article is well worth reading and thinking about.

Angela Logomasini.

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

This will be the next big thing after the Climate Change debate has gained enough traction to be set in stone.

Cheers to Bill Nemitz for his very insightful piece “Enough Water: Let’s Figure it Out” in the Portland Press Herald. He showed that the amount of water that Poland Spring would have purchased for $900,000 from the Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells Water Districts represents 0.14 percent of the water that falls in the region each year. He rightly criticizes the activist group that prevented that sale for their claims that operation would threaten such resources in the future.

Nemitz’s point applies to a much larger debate. Activist groups are around the nation offer silly arguments about water resources being “finite” and in danger of depletion. But properly constructed bottling operations do not deplete community water supplies. Aquifers, springs and other natural sources replenish via precipitation, a process called “recharging.” Many have been operating sustainably for hundreds of years. A study produced by Keith N. Eshleman, Ph.D. at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science reports that “withdrawals for bottled water production represent only 0.019% of the total fresh ground water withdrawals in the U.S.,” which is far less than what Mother Nature recharges. The fact that communities and consumers can “profit” by enjoying these renewable resources is a good thing!

Water shortages can be a problem in certain areas. But problems usually result from government ownership and mismanagement, including from subsidies mostly to large, politically organized users-particularly agriculture. We need market-based systems to these manage resources. There is no reason to stop using them altogether, particularly where they are plentiful.

Angela Logomasini contributes at OpenMarket.org and she is Director of Risk and Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Read more Great Articles at cei.org

Jordan’s Prime Minister Nader Al Dahabi was in Paris [in July 2008] for the inaugural Mediterranean Union summit, where he [...] highlight[ed] the problem of water supply in the Middle East. In an address given on behalf of the King, Dahabi told delegates, “the region’s demand for water is rising rapidly in tandem with a growing population and an increasingly dangerous water scarcity”.

At a meeting held by the Water and Irrigation Ministry (MWRI) shortly before he left for Paris, Prime Minister Dahabi announced that water security was now the government’s priority.

[...]

A [new] report by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government-funded programme designed to aid development in emerging markets [...] concluded that water scarcity placed Jordan’s continued economic growth at risk, and that progress on canalisation and conservation was urgently required.

Jordan is among the 10 most water-scarce nations on earth, due to both a lack of natural resources and continued human pressure on the basin of the river Jordan.

[...]

In 2005 an agreement was signed between Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian National Authority to assess the possibility of building a canal to link the Red and Dead seas. A World Bank feasibility study is currently being conducted to determine both the financial and environmental factors involved in constructing such a canal. The cost of the project has been estimated at $2.4bn, with a build time of anything up to 25 years. However, regional tensions have exacerbated efforts to speed up the process, and the RDS (Red Sea/Dead Sea) donor committee, at its recent May meeting faced a $3.5m shortfall to fund the feasibility study.

The canal is expected to eventually provide up to a billion cubic metres of water to the Dead Sea annually, plus 850 million cubic meters of potable water through desalination powered by hydroelectricity generated by the 400m gradient. With no guarantee that it will ever come to light however, in the short term Jordan must find some way of meeting its current water shortfall [such as wastewater reuse].

Source: Oxford Business Group / ANIMA, 30 Jul 2008

Water availability in Yemen has been worsening by the year and the government has no clear strategy on how to deal with the problem, experts have said.

They say water shortages, which affect about 80 percent of the country’s 21 million people, are exacerbated by the high fertility rate, rapid urbanisation, the cultivation of `qat’ (a mild narcotic), a lack of public awareness, and the arbitrary digging of wells.

The experts made the remarks at a symposium on 12 August in Sanaa city organised by the Sheba Centre for Strategic Studies (SCSS), a local think-tank. Entitled Water Security in Yemen: Challenges and Solutions, the symposium brought together dozens of local officials and experts on water.

Read more: IRIN, 14 Aug 2008 ; SCSS, 12 Aug 2008

Next week, the Standards Institution of Israel (SII) is hosting an international conference with the relatively innocuous and convoluted title of “Crisis Management of Water Utilities – ISO/TC 224 WG 7.”

ISO stands for International Standards Organization, TC stands for Technical Committee number 224, and WG 7 is Working Group seven. In simpler terms, what is happening at the SII next week is of such critical importance worldwide that it took months of wrangling over the wording of the title of the conference, with some participating nations wanting to stay away from a more alarmist, yet more accurate, conference title such as “Security of Water Utilities in the New Era of International Terrorism and the Increase in Frequency of Natural Disasters.”

When it comes to the vital resource of water, and the complex issues surrounding it, Israel has long been a world expert. Situated in arid land and surrounded by enemies, the Jewish state has had to devise tools and methods to make the best possible use of the water available to it, as well as defend its water resources from sabotage and attack. Both peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have included water agreements. Potential peace agreements with the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Lebanon, if and when they come, will detail water arrangements.

Several experts, including officials at the SII and the Israel Institute of Energy and the Environment, a private energy policy think-tank in Tel Aviv, do not discount the possibility that someday in the future, the price of water may equal or surpass the price of crude oil. Several Gulf States have already started investing massively in desalination and water resources security.

“The next wars will be over water, not oil, and nobody is threatened by water war like Israel is,” says Jacobo Sack, a veteran official at Israel’s national water carrier, Mekorot, and now a water and wastewater quality consultant.

According to Israel NewTech, the national program promoting the Israeli water technology sector, safety of water systems is increasingly becoming a worldwide concern due to greater awareness to possible terrorism attempts since the September 11, 2001 attacks (terrorist plots to poison water sources in America and Italy were thwarted in 2001), as well as to the growing frequency and intensity of natural disasters as a result of global warming (the recent earthquake in China made up to 40 percent of the water in affected regions undrinkable) and to the higher risk of technical mishaps as systems become more complex (four tons of ammonia were mistakenly released into Israel’s water carrier in 2001).

NewTech says the potential threat that exists from contamination of water sources can quickly affect an entire region and large population. As water contamination can rapidly spread, it can endanger millions of people, create mass hysteria and have a devastating economic impact.

“While there are gaps in the system, the relevant people are doing what needs to be done to protect Israel’s water,” Sack says, refusing to talk about concrete threats and scenarios, as well as equipment and countermeasures deployed for water security.

Next week’s conference at the SII will bring together water security experts from 10 countries hoping to learn from their Israeli counterparts and hash out the first-ever guideline document on water security for adoption by the ISO. If and when it is adopted, the document will be heavily influenced by the Israeli experience and will include information on a range of equipment. The SII, by formulating standards in this field, is hoping to develop new Israeli technology in water reuse, security and irrigation (already three areas in which Israel leads globally) and encourage their export.

The last time Israel proposed guidelines to the ISO – on water reuse technologies and management – the proposal was so widely applauded that it breezed through the ISO’s formidable bureaucracy in about nine months. It was the first time any country had proposed such guidelines, and its speedy adoption is still a source of pride at the SII.

This time, however, is going to be different. The issue of water security is touchy among so many nations where differences of opinion are manifest regarding what constitutes threats. Several nations are uncomfortable with advancing technologies and methods that may cause unease among their populations as well as controversy on the political level. Officials at the SII say that even if a working paper on water security standards is produced at the conference, it will take at least three years before its recommendations are implemented.

To illustrate how difficult creating a water security standard is, seven years after the September 11 attacks, America still does not have a water security standard. After the attacks in 2001, the federal government made it mandatory for water utilities to assess their vulnerability and report that to the government. But only in December 2006 did a document, drawn up jointly by experts at the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Water Works Association, make its way through to the ASCE standards committee, which accepted it. The standards document still has not passed the American National Standards Institute.

C. Wesley Strickland, a member of the US Natural Resources and Water and Public Lands groups and who was on the committee that drafted the standards document, says a standard is needed to provide comprehensive information that is helpful to improving water security.

There is increased awareness across the globe to the needs of water security, says Strickland, who spoke to The Jerusalem Post by phone from his office in Santa Barbara.

“There is always someone who will try and get around the physical security measures in place. The idea is to increase the effort of that person to a point where it becomes not worth their while,” Strickland says, adding that his committee analyzed the full range of threats to water utilities, from vandals to sophisticated terror activities.

In the meantime, Israel is implementing cutting-edge water security measures and private Israeli companies working in the field are looking abroad for new markets.

But defensive technologies such as security guards, electronic warning alarms, permanent computerized water quality testing and police surveillance are not enough to secure water resources and carriers against sabotage and natural disaster, says Yaron Ben Ari, water technology program manager at the SII. Ben-Ari’s department is responsible for framing the guidelines that inform the work of various bodies tasked with securing the nation’s water, including the Israel Water Authority, IDF, Health Ministry, Interior Ministry, Israel Police, Mekorot and others in the water industry. As new threats arise, new thinking is needed, Ben Ari says.

“Every crisis, whether it is terrorist act, natural disaster or human error, needs models of response and crisis management,” he says.

Water reuse and water security are linked in the sense that the improper implementation of reuse technologies is likely to cause health hazards. Israel “recycles” about 80% of its water – a huge amount by international standards, with Spain coming in a distant second at 12%.

A number of past posts on Food Issues have noted the potential for future problems over water resource.

In the process of assembling some information for future posts, Adam came across this interesting resource page at the Pulitzer Center site on Crisis Reporting on the topic of Water Wars: Ehiopia and Kenya.

Water scarcity in East Africa is fueling conflict and thwarting development while growing in step with local populations and rising global temperatures.

Though the actions of industrialized nations are primarily responsible for global warming, its effects are being felt most heavily in less developed regions of the world such as East Africa, where climate change can be tied to detrimental environmental issues such as droughts and melting snowcaps.

Colonial era treaties granting rights to water from Nile tributaries to Egypt are leaving Ethiopian farms without access to irrigation. As dry seasons grow longer in the arid plains of Eastern Kenya and Ethiopia, tribal conflict over access to watering holes is on the rise, exacerbated by the proliferation of arms from neighboring Somalia. With clean water access increasingly scarce, the burden of securing a daily water supply has become a daunting task for women and young children who often spend hours a day carrying water for their families from remote locations. Many Western aid organizations have focused their efforts on improving water access, with mixed successes.

Take a look, it is disturbing.

A new Wireless Remote Controlled Water Security System will be introduced at The National Hardware Show at The Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth 38311,May 6 – 8, 2008.