WASHINGTON -- Floods and water shortages in the next 30 years will make it hard for many countries to keep up with growing demand for fresh water, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. intelligence community reported Thursday.

Water problems in the next decade will add to instability in countries that are important to U.S. national security, the report said. Floods and shortages also will make it hard for some countries to grow enough food or produce enough energy, creating risk for global food markets and slowing economic growth.

"I think it's fair to say the intelligence community's findings are sobering," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who requested the report last year. "These threats are real and they do raise serious security concerns."

Clinton, speaking at an event to mark World Water Day, announced a new U.S. Water Partnership, made up of private companies, philanthropy and advocacy groups, academics and government. The group will coordinate efforts to solve water problems and make U.S. expertise more accessible.

"We believe this will help map out our route to a more water-secure world," Clinton said.

The intelligence assessment, drafted by the Defense Intelligence Agency with contributions from the CIA and other agencies, was aimed at answering how water problems will affect U.S. national security interests. The classified version, finished in October, named specific countries expected to have water problems, but they weren't identified in the unclassified version. The public version said only that analysts focused on "strategically important countries" along major rivers in the Middle East, Central and South Asia and North Africa.

Some findings:

-Agriculture, which takes 68 percent of the water used by humans, is one of the biggest areas where countries need to find solutions to water problems. Desalination may be economical for household and industrial use, but it isn't currently economical for agriculture.

-Wars over water are unlikely in the next decade. Still, as water shortages worsen, countries that share water basins may struggle to protect their water rights. And terrorists "almost certainly" will target water infrastructure.

-Industrial demand for water will remain high, because water is needed to generate power, run industry and extract oil, gas and other resources. This means that water shortages and pollution likely will harm the economies of "important trading partners" of the United States.

The report covers the period to 2040. In that span, population growth and economic development will be the key reasons for growing water demand, while water supplies will decline in many places.

Climate change, meanwhile, will bring a higher risk of droughts and floods. Water stored in glaciers and snow will decline. Sea-level rise will mean that coastal storms will cause more damage.

"At times water flows will be severe enough to overwhelm the water-control infrastructures of even developed countries, including the United States," the report noted.

The least-prepared areas the intelligence analysts studied were the basins of the Amu Darya and Brahmaputra rivers. The Amu Darya basin in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) is expected to have poorer food security throughout the next 30 years. The Brahmaputra basin (Tibet, India and Bangladesh) is expected to have tensions over water-development projects, reduced potential for hydropower after 2020 and reduced food security, especially for fisheries, the report said.

Clinton said that in northern India, too much use of ground water could leave millions of people without enough food and water.

If the state approves the $47 million plan, it means the aquifer would be depleted a little more slowly. But it also means people in the tri-county area could be drinking treated wastewater every time they turn on the tap.

The concept of recharging the aquifer with treated sewage isn't new, but the city's project is different, said Rick Nevulis, a water reuse coordinator with the South Florida Water Management District. Pembroke Pines will inject the water directly into the ground. West Palm Beach, Sunrise, Tindall Hammock, Pahokee, Wellington and Homestead pump their purified sewage into wetlands, lakes or fields, where it percolates into the aquifer over a period of months or years.

Those six utilities now pump a combined 6.5 million gallons of purified sewage into the water supply each day. Pembroke Pines' plan would double that.

This is a long time coming, Nevulis said. The rest of the state already pumps much of its sewage back into its water supplies, and South Florida is behind.

Only about 71 million gallons of the approximately 640 million gallons of sewage the tri-county area produces each day gets reused in any way, and almost all of that goes toward irrigation.

The plan does have an "ick" factor, admitted City Manager Charles Dodge. But he guarantees the water will be pure and drinkable.

"The water will be very, very well treated," he said. "It's not as if you would know it went through this process."

Pembroke Pines' 7 million gallons a day may go into the ground in the city, but there's no way of telling where it will come out, said Harold Wanless, professor and chair of geological sciences at the University of Miami.

"Aquifers flow," Wanless said. "It's difficult to tell where any particular water will move to. We don't have the large conduits inside the aquifer well mapped."

The plan is necessary to regain the city's water use permit from the South Florida Water Management District. The aquifer — a 4,000 square mile system of underground limestone caves filled with water — is running low and the district has ordered that utilities come up with additional sources of water.

By NATHAN KOPPEL

AUSTIN, Texas—The state's persistent drought has claimed its latest victims: rice farmers.

Because of low water levels in several lakes that serve as reservoirs here, officials said Friday that they wouldn't release irrigation water to farmers in three counties downstream that produce much of the rice in the state.

Associated Press

Ronald Gertson stands beside one of his John Deere tractors last month at his rice farm in Lissie, Texas.

The rice industry contributes about $394 million annually to the economy of the state, which produces about 5% of the nation's rice. The three counties—Colorado, Wharton and Matagorda—lie west of humid Houston and usually get enough rain to make rice farming practicable.

This is the first time in its 78-year history that the Lower Colorado River Authority, which is based here, has cut off water to farmers. The agency waited until the last possible moment—a minute before midnight on Thursday—to make its decision, hoping that water levels would rise enough to avert a cutoff.

The irrigation ban is not expected to affect the shelf price of rice, but it has forced some farmers to lay off employees and consider diversifying into other crops.

"This is my livelihood at stake," said Ronald Gertson, a Texas rice farmer who projected he would produce only about 40% of his typical rice crop this year.

"It sticks in the craw" of farmers, Mr. Gertson said, that the authority will continue to release water to golf courses and other recreational customers that pay higher rates for a guaranteed water supply.

In a statement, the agency said that farmers "pay considerably less for water than cities and industry. And therefore, their water is considered 'interruptible' during a severe drought."

Texans in the rice business said they could probably stay afloat this year, thanks in part to crop insurance, but they worried about another year of interrupted irrigation water.

"If this happens again, we'll be in much more trouble," said Dick Ottis, the president of the Rice Belt Warehouse in El Campo, Texas, which stores and dries rice. The warehouse plans to store more corn, wheat and other commodities this year, he said, but those crops do not produce the profit margins rice does.

"I have already let go about 20% of our employees, because I knew this day was coming about," Mr. Ottis said, adding that his family had been involved in rice farming for almost 100 years and had lived through droughts, but none this bad.

It always seemed like the good Lord would bless us with more rain," he said.

But there appears to be little relief in sight from the drought that still afflicts 85% of Texas. Temperatures are expected to be above normal this summer, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist.

Rainfall levels are harder to predict, he said, but "we are in a dry stretch now, which will be worrisome if it continues. It reminds me of last year."

The water agency said it plans to find new supplies of water to avoid a repeat of this year's problems.

Farmers agree. "The development of new reservoirs is imperative," said Daniel Berglund, a 49-year-old rice farmer in Markham, Texas, who said he woke up at 1:15 a.m. Friday and checked to see whether the lakes, against all odds, had risen high enough to allow irrigation water to be released.

"Consumers only see grocery shelves stacked with food, floor to ceiling," he said. "This is an example of the risks we take as farmers. When you lose irrigation water, it stops everything," he said.

Write to Nathan Koppel at nathan.koppel@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared Mar. 3, 2012, on page A3 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Texas Rice Farmers Lose Their Water.

01/05/2012

 

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignited a controversy in 2009 when it agreed to adopt numeric nutrient criteria for Florida waterways. EPA said the specific limits were needed to replace Florida's narrative standards that environmental groups said have failed to prevent algal blooms they say are choking waterways. However, utilities along with industry and agriculture groups generated a firestorm of opposition, saying the rules will be difficult and expensive to meet.

In December, the state Environmental Regulation Commission OK'd its own water quality rules that are intended to replace federal standards. The next stop for the state rules is the Legislature, which in 2010 passed a bill requiring any state rules costing more than $1 million to receive legislative ratification. If it OKs the new water rules, they will be sent to the EPA to consider.

Age, decay and human error are behind a string of water and sewer failures.

On Christmas Eve, utility workers try to fix a water main break in Oakland Park that left that city, Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors without running water. R.C. White / For The Miami Herald

 

By Michael Vasquez and Carli Teproff

mrvasquez@MiamiHerald.com

The hectic nature of Christmas Eve — last-minute presents to buy, family to entertain, meals to cook — can be a mountain of stress. Now try keeping it together after all the faucets stop running.

That was the challenge presented to more than 200,000 Broward County homes and businesses this holiday season, after a ruptured water line left families high and, quite literally, dry. On Christmas Day, though the water was again flowing, it had to be boiled before families could be assured it was safe.

The long-suffering Everglades may get a louder voice in the Legislature thanks to the launch this week of a new coalition of South Florida lawmakers.

State Rep. Steve Perman, D-Boca Raton, started the Everglades Legislative Caucus, which pledges to push for more money for Everglades restoration during a time of deep state spending cuts.

The bipartisan group contends that investing in protecting what remains of the Florida’s famed River of Grass is more than an environmental cause: It’s also about protecting South Florida’s drinking water supply and a tourism industry tied to the water.

“The Everglades is a rare, natural jewel,” Perman said from a farmers market beside the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, at the northern reaches of the Everglades in Palm Beach County. “No one is happy at the pace at which the Everglades is being restored.”

Restoring the $300 million a year the state once set aside for land purchases aimed at Everglades-preservation efforts is a priority for the new group, said state Sen. Thad Altman R-Viera, co-chairman of the Everglades Caucus.

Acquiring more land among the vast swaths of sugar cane and other farmland south of Lake Okeechobee is needed for water storage and treatment areas that hold onto and clean up stormwater that can replenish the Everglades, according to Altman.

The group also plans to call on Congress to start picking up more of the tab for Everglades restoration.

“We have a long way to go,” Altman said. “We need to find longer-term funding sources.”

The Everglades Caucus offers a forum to push for restoration issues that affect the water supply and tourism, said Dawn Shirreffs, Everglades Coalition co-chair.

“Florida has a compelling reason to do Everglades restoration,” Shirreffs said. “The ecosystem has continued to decline in the face of delay.”

The Everglades suffers from decades of draining land to make way for agriculture and sprawling South Florida communities. Stormwater loaded with phosphorus that washes off agricultural land also pollutes the Everglades.

Florida and the federal government in 2000 announced a long-term plan to share the costs of Everglades restoration, but none of the more than 60 projects to store, clean and redirect stormwater has been completed.

Gov. Rick Scott in October unveiled am Everglades plan that calls for cutting restoration costs by avoiding buying more land to build reservoirs and treatment areas.

Lawmakers who joined Altman and Perman on Monday in announcing the new caucus included Rep. Lori Berman, D-Delray Beach; Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart; and Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach. They said their numbers would grow during the legislative session that will begin in January.

During recent budget-cutting amid the struggling economy, the needs of Everglades restoration too often faded into the background, according to the caucus.

Florida needs to “get back in the business of restoration,” Altman said, “get back on track.”