Download or read book A Twenty First Century U S Water Policy written by Juliet Christian-Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-02 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is zero hour for a new US water policy! At a time when many countries are adopting new national approaches to water management, the United States still has no cohesive federal policy, and water-related authorities are dispersed across more than 30 agencies. Here, at last, is a vision for what we as a nation need to do to manage our most vital resource. In this book, leading thinkers at world-class water research institution the Pacific Institute present clear and readable analysis and recommendations for a new federal water policy to confront our national and global challenges at a critical time. What exactly is at stake? In the 21st century, pressures on water resources in the United States are growing and conflicts among water users are worsening. Communities continue to struggle to meet water quality standards and to ensure that safe drinking water is available for all. And new challenges are arising as climate change and extreme events worsen, new water quality threats materialize, and financial constraints grow. Yet the United States has not stepped up with adequate leadership to address these problems. The inability of national policymakers to safeguard our water makes the United States increasingly vulnerable to serious disruptions of something most of us take for granted: affordable, reliable, and safe water. This book provides an independent assessment of water issues and water management in the United States, addressing emerging and persistent water challenges from the perspectives of science, public policy, environmental justice, economics, and law. With fascinating case studies and first-person accounts of what helps and hinders good water management, this is a clear-eyed look at what we need for a 21st century U.S. water policy.
Download or read book Unquenchable written by Robert Jerome Glennon and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out. Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry. The looming catastrophe remains hidden as government diverts supplies from one area to another to keep water flowing from the tap. But sooner rather than later, the shell game has to end. And when it does, shortages will threaten not only the environment, but every aspect of American life: we face shuttered power plants and jobless workers, decimated fi sheries and contaminated drinking water. We can’t engineer our way out of the problem, either with traditional fixes or zany schemes to tow icebergs from Alaska. In fact, new demands for water, particularly the enormous supply needed for ethanol and energy production, will only worsen the crisis. America must make hard choices—and Glennon’s answers are fittingly provocative. He proposes market-based solutions that value water as both a commodity and a fundamental human right. One truth runs throughout Unquenchable: only when we recognize water’s worth will we begin to conserve it.
Download or read book Water Follies written by Robert Jerome Glennon and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. The cottonwood and willow trees that once lined its banks have died, and the profusion of birds and wildlife recorded by early settlers are nowhere to be seen. The river is dead. What happened? Where did the water go. As Robert Glennon explains in Water Follies, what killed the Santa Cruz River -- and could devastate other surface waters across the United States -- was groundwater pumping. From 1940 to 2000, the volume of water drawn annually from underground aquifers in Tucson jumped more than six-fold, from 50,000 to 330,000 acre-feet per year. And Tucson is hardly an exception -- similar increases in groundwater pumping have occurred across the country and around the world. In a striking collection of stories that bring to life the human and natural consequences of our growing national thirst, Robert Glennon provides an occasionally wry and always fascinating account of groundwater pumping and the environmental problems it causes. Robert Glennon sketches the culture of water use in the United States, explaining how and why we are growing increasingly reliant on groundwater. He uses the examples of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in Arizona to illustrate the science of hydrology and the legal aspects of water use and conflicts. Following that, he offers a dozen stories -- ranging from Down East Maine to San Antonio's River Walk to Atlanta's burgeoning suburbs -- that clearly illustrate the array of problems caused by groundwater pumping. Each episode poses a conflict of values that reveals the complexity of how and why we use water. These poignant and sometimes perverse tales tell of human foibles including greed, stubbornness, and, especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality. As Robert Glennon explores the folly of our actions and the laws governing them, he suggests common-sense legal and policy reforms that could help avert potentially catastrophic future effects. Water Follies, the first book to focus on the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, brings this widespread but underappreciated problem to the attention of citizens and communities across America.
Download or read book Not a Drop to Drink written by Ken Midkiff and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water. We can’t live without it. Not a Drop to Drink sounds the alarm, detailing the current state of emergency facing the U.S. water supply. From the parched High Plains to corporate boardrooms, Ken Midkiff explores water wars, privatization, American agriculture, and global warming. And what we can do to get a glass of water.
Download or read book Clean Water Action Plan written by Carol Browner and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Clean Water Action Plan, issued by the EPA & the Ag. Dept., provides a blueprint for restoring & protecting the nation's precious water resources. A key element in the Plan is a new cooperative approach to watershed protection in which state, tribal, Fed., & local governments, & the public first identify the watersheds with the most critical water quality problems & then work together to focus resources & implement effective strategies to solve those problems. Includes new initiatives to reduce public health threats, improve the stewardship of natural resources, strengthen polluted runoff controls, & make water quality information more accessible.
Download or read book Water Conservation Reuse and Recycling written by Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2002, a group of specialists on water resources from the United States and Iran met in Tunis, Tunisia, for an interacademy workshop on water resources management, conservation, and recycling. This was the fourth interacademy workshop on a variety of topics held in 2002, the first year of such workshops. Tunis was selected as the location for the workshop because the Tunisian experience in addressing water conservation issues was of interest to the participants from both the United States and Iran. This report includes the agenda for the workshop, all of the papers that were presented, and the list of site visits.
Download or read book Aqua Shock Revised and Updated written by Susan J. Marks and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An objective look at America's rapidly shrinking water supply Once believed to be a problem limited to America's southwest, water shortages are now an issue coast to coast, from New England to California. In Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis in America, author Susan J. Marks provides a comprehensive analysis of the current conflicts being waged over dwindling water supplies. She presents the findings of university studies, think tanks, and research groups, as well as the opinions of water experts, including Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. The book Explains where our water comes from and who controls it, as well as the cost of water on cash, commodities, and capitalism Describes the risks of running out of water Details how we can preserve and protect our most precious, yet most undervalued natural resource Right now, battles over water supplies rage across the country. Aqua Shock is an objective look at how we arrived at this crisis point and what we can do-and should be doing-to solve the water crisis in America.
Download or read book Contaminated Water Supplies at Camp Lejeune written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-09-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1980s, two water-supply systems on the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina were found to be contaminated with the industrial solvents trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE). The water systems were supplied by the Tarawa Terrace and Hadnot Point watertreatment plants, which served enlisted-family housing, barracks for unmarried service personnel, base administrative offices, schools, and recreational areas. The Hadnot Point water system also served the base hospital and an industrial area and supplied water to housing on the Holcomb Boulevard water system (full-time until 1972 and periodically thereafter). This book examines what is known about the contamination of the water supplies at Camp Lejeune and whether the contamination can be linked to any adverse health outcomes in former residents and workers at the base.
Download or read book Superman s Not Coming written by Erin Brockovich and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the environmental activist, consumer advocate, and renowned crusader comes a riveting book that is "part memoir, part non-fiction report, and part call-to-action—a plea to readers to engage with the water crisis in America because no one else is going to do the work for you" (InStyle Magazine). Clean water is as basic to life on planet Earth as hydrogen or oxygen. In her long-awaited book—her first to reckon with the condition of water on our planet—Erin Brockovich shows us what’s at stake. She writes powerfully of the fraudulent science disguising our national water crisis: Cancer clusters are not being reported. People in Detroit and the state of New Jersey don’t have clean water. The drinking water for more than six million Americans contains unsafe levels of industrial chemicals linked to cancer and other health issues. The saga of PG&E continues to this day. Yet communities and people around the country are fighting to make an impact, and Brockovich tells us their stories. In Poughkeepsie, New York, a water operator responded to his customers’ concerns and changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country. Local moms in Hannibal, Missouri, became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water. Like them, we can each protect our right to clean water by fighting for better enforcement of laws, new legislation, and stronger regulations.
Download or read book Clean Water Action Plan written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a blueprint for restoring & protecting the nation's precious water resources. This Action Plan builds on the Clinton Administration's accomplishments over the past five years & proposes aggressive new actions to strengthen the program. The key element is a new cooperative approach to watershed protection in which state, tribal, federal & local governments, & the public first identify the watersheds and the most critical water quality problems & then work together to focus resources & implement effective strategies to solve those problems. The Action Plan also includes new initiatives to reduce public health threats, improve the stewardship of natural resources, strenghten polluted runoff controls, & make water quality information more accessible to public.
Download or read book Water for the Americas written by Alberto Garrido and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this volume are peer reviewed editions of the papers presented at the 7th meeting of the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy which was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 15-17, 2010. The theme for Forum VII was Water for the Americas: Challenges and Opportunities. This Forum was unique in examining the water problems of the Americas and identifying water management experience gleaned in other parts of the world that might be useful in addressing the problems of the Americas. The sessions illustrated how the water problems of the Americas are common problems, differing only in degree from basin to basin. There was unanimity among the participants about the need for all inhabitants of the Americas to work together to ensure that everyone has access to adequate quantities of healthy water supplies and to appropriate sanitation services. This volume’s approach is to identify different responses and policies that address common issues and learn from contrasts and experiences. The value and potential that this approach affords is that it provides critical judgments about what has worked well and what needs to be done to gain a better future for the Americas’ water resources and society. Some issues covered in the volume are so pressing and urgent, chief among them is serving the unserved, that any delays putting out new facilities in many a rural areas of Central America may cost lives and reduce the outlook for children. Additionally, the volume makes clear that the outlook for the poorest and the future of hundreds of growing cities are threatened by climate change. This book looks into the future by analyzing present and relevant data and gains insight from the different developmental stages of the hemisphere.
Download or read book America s Water written by Peter Rogers and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were water considered an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States, surely the most capital-intensive, and the most closely regulated by Congress. Yet as Peter Rogers argues in this readable, pragmatic, and scientifically grounded assessment of national water issues, it would also be one of the most fragmented and least coherent areas of public policy. Rogers brings together all aspects of water (and water use) to look at policy formation from technical, economic, and political points of view. He shows why these separate perspectives must be considered simultaneously if intelligent policies are to be developed to protect this indispensable resource for present and future generations.Although water use has declined since 1980, the U.S. still consumes more than twice as much water per capita as any other country in the world. Weighing current resources against future demand, Rogers covers a host of complex water issues facing a thirsty, affluent nation. He explains why the federal role needs to be developed and clarified in a number of areas - from changing the unrealistic expectations of the American public for clean water at any cost to financing the rebuilding of infrastructure that is nearly a century old, from reforming intergovernmental relations and the committee structure in Congress to preserving and restoring wetlands and developing a national drought management policy.Of the two basic approaches to policy formation - spelling out desirable norms and attempting to achieve them, or building pragmatically on what has been feasible in the past - Rogers advocates the feasibility approach. The challenge, he asserts, is to develop a federal policy that will reform the historical patchwork of state-state and state-federal agreements and allow them to work together without abrupt dislocations.Peter Rogers is Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and Professor of City Planning at Harvard University.
Download or read book Water Security and U S Foreign Policy written by David Reed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prosperity and national security of the United States depend directly on the prosperity and stability of both partner and competing countries around the world. Today, U.S. interests are under rising pressure from water scarcity, extreme weather events and water-driven ecological change in key geographies of strategic interest to the U.S. Those water-driven stresses are undermining economic productivity, weakening governance systems and fraying social cohesion in scores of countries and, in the process, undermining the vitality of rural livelihoods, fostering local and ethnic conflicts, driving broad migratory movements and contributing to the growth of insurgencies and terrorist networks. While the U.S. intelligence community has steadily expanded natural resource concerns in their global threat analyses, our overseas development assistance remains locked into provision of water and hygienic services rather than responding to the full sweep of global water challenges including governance and policy failures, growing conflicts over water and the need for promoting sustainable transboundary water arrangements in partner countries. A fundamental departure from the past is urgently needed. Based on 18 case studies, Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy provides an analytical framework to help policy makers, scholars and researchers studying the intersection of U.S. foreign policy with the environment and sustainability issues, interpret the impacts of water-driven social disruptions on the stability of partner governments and U.S. interests abroad. The book also delivers specific recommendations to reorient U.S. development and diplomatic engagements that can forestall and prevent social disruptions and ensuing threats to U.S. prosperity and national security.
Download or read book White Man s Water written by Erica Prussing and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, efforts to recognize and accommodate cultural diversity have gained some traction in the politics of US health care. But to date, anthropological perspectives have figured unevenly in efforts to define and address mental health problems. Particularly challenging are examinations of Native peoples’ experiences with alcohol. Erica Prussing provides the first in-depth assessment of the politics of Native sobriety by focusing on the Northern Cheyenne community in southeastern Montana, where for many decades the federally funded health care system has relied on the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. White Man’s Water provides a thoughtful and careful analysis of Cheyenne views of sobriety and the politics that surround the selective appeal of Twelve Step approaches despite wide-ranging local critiques. Narratives from participants in these programs debunk long-standing stereotypes about ”Indian drinking” and offer insight into the diversity of experiences with alcohol that actually occur among Native North Americans. This critical ethnography employs vivid accounts of the Northern Cheyenne people to depict how problems with alcohol are culturally constructed, showing how differences in age, gender, and other social features can affect involvement with both drinking and sobriety. These testimonies reveal the key role that gender plays in how Twelve Step program participants engage in a selective and creative process of appropriation at Northern Cheyenne, adapting the program to accommodate local cultural priorities and spiritual resources. The testimonies also illuminate community reactions to these adaptations, inspiring deeper inquiry into how federally funded health services are provided on the reservation. This book will appeal to readers with an interest in Native studies, ethnography, women’s studies, and medical anthropology. With its critical consideration of how cultural context shapes drinking and sobriety, White Man’s Water offers a multivocal perspective on alcohol’s impact on health and the cultural complexities of sobriety.
Download or read book Bottlemania written by Elizabeth Royte and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we're drinking. In this intelligent, accomplished work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Michael Pollan did for food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from distant aquifers to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? How much should we drink? Should we have to pay for it? Is tap safe water safe to drink? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What happens to all those plastic bottles we carry around as predictably as cell phones? And of course, what's better: tap water or bottled?
Download or read book The Future of Conservation in America written by Gary E. Machlis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this turbulent time for American's natural and cultural heritage, we need a clear and compelling guide for the future of conservation in America: a declaration to inspire the next generation of conservation leaders. This is that guide- what the authors describe as "a chart for rough water." Written by the first scientist appointed as science advisor to the director of the National Park Service, this is a candid, passionate, and ultimately hopeful book. The authors describe a unified vision of conservation that binds nature protection, historical preservation, sustainability, public health, civil rights and social justice, and science into a common cause- and offer real-world strategies for progress."--Book cover.
Download or read book America s Water and Wastewater Crisis written by Lewis D. Solomon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of private firms in the American water and wastewater industry. As more water infrastructure shifts from public- to private-sector control, vendors, consultants, and facilities are taking on more importance. Lewis D. Solomon presents an historical overview of water supply and treatment needs and the role of the government, including how water policy has been crafted. He argues that water scarcity is becoming a problem due to groundwater depletion, contamination, and patterns of consumption. He examines the impact of climate change on water availability and quality considering voluntary conservation programs and mandatory restrictions for water use. Solomon points to how for-profit firms can use technology to increase water supply. He describes what privatization would look like in practice and reviews evidence from two case studies. Solomon proposes privatization as a viable response to America's water crisis that can address both scarcity and capital problems. America's Water and Wastewater Crisis presents a careful examination of how the water industry has operated in the United States in the past and how it may work as we move into the future. This book is invaluable to environmental specialists, businessmen, and government officials.
