Water Supply

Asian carp are the next great threat to the Great Lakes, but how exactly did this happen?

Did someone with a personal vendetta against sports fishermen plant them in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal? Did they swim across the ocean and all the way up the mighty Mississippi just to make headlines?

The real answer starts with the aquatic equivalent to factory farms. Instead of braving the ocean blue to make their catches, the seafood industry now simply grows fish in big ponds.

To make a long story short, the rains came down and the floods came up and the Asian carp made it into the watershed. From their, they’ve found their way up the Mississippi River and are now a few short miles from Lake Michigan.

Most recently, scientists found Asian carp’s DNA on the wrong side of a multi-million dollar electric barrier created to keep invasive species out of the lakes.

Most everyone has used a toilet at some point in their life, and habitual behaviors on a mass scale drive overall consumption patterns. That’s why the EPA is focused on marketing green toilets and urinals through its badge of approval: WaterSense.

In 2008 WaterSense saved 9.3 billion gallons of water through its certified network of brands building and selling products that meet the program’s specifications. High efficiency, or green toilets are a key part of that savings - especially considering toilets account for about 30% of residential indoor water consumption.

An average consumer will flush the toilet 140,000 times in their lifetime and a WaterSense labeled product can reduce the water consumed by that activity by saving about 4,000 gallons per year according to the EPA. Brands participating vary widely and include American Standard, Crane, Kohler and others.

A wave of California lawmakers flushed out an $11 billion fix to the state’s massive water conundrum. The problem? While the majority of people live in the deserts of Southern California, most of the water comes from the north.

To solve it, Gov. Terminator is proposing new dams so the Golden State can save up water for dry times. The measure will be up for a vote next November.

But as water expert Peter Gleick pointed out to the Environment Report, the idea fails to make water users accountable for their long showers and untamed irrigation.

“We will never ultimately, sustainably manage our water resources if we don’t know who is using how much water to do what,” he said. “And we don’t, with any degree of accuracy. And that’s still not addressed in this bill.”

The movement to eradicate injustice caused when wealthy white communities use poor black ones as dumping grounds is starting to gain some traction.

This week, members of the movement even sat down with Environmental Protection Agency leaders in Georgia.

Although the EPA didn’t provide much in the way of answers at the meeting, it’s a positive step toward more people to take notice of this issue. The injustice is well documented by Robert Bullard of Clark Atlanta University, who has researched the U.S. government failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina.

Bullard told EPA officials toxins are more likely to be dumped in black, low-income communities. In one study, he found as much as 56 percent of residents living near hazardous waste facilities are minorities.

The reality is that coal power plants create toxic waste. And with so many people focused on cleaning up the air we breathe, roiling black smoke is pretty unpopular. So what are coal companies doing to ‘clean up’? They’re installing scrubbers to clean emissions before they enter the atmosphere. That sounds good so far, but there’s a cost.

For the scrubbers to operate effectively they require an ongoing supply of chemicals which allow them to capture emissions. The byproducts created after those chemicals are used has to go somewhere and usually nearby waterways are the target. That’s convenient for the coal power company, but not so convenient for residents using those waterways for drinking water.

As a basic living organism with singularly instinctual intelligence, algae will grow and multiply any way it can, in any compatible environment. Recently the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched a new system for tracking and predicting HABs.

While not typically fatal to humans, HABs present a series of nuisances to local wildlife and they contaminate human water supplies like the great lakes. That’s why scientists have a keen interest in understanding where HABs are forming and predicting their drift  patterns.

When HABs are spotted in Lake Erie for example, the new system will broadcast location and forecasting information to local scientists who will then be able to disseminate that information to their communities.

Scientists are still discovering the dangerous consequences of DDT, the pesticide that was finally restricted in the 1970s after years of worldwide use.

The latest findings show an association between diabetes and DDE. DDE is produced in some fish that eat DDT.

A 15-year study conducted by public health officials found people who regularly eat Great Lakes sports fish are more likely to have problems with diabetes. All of us have low levels of DDE in our systems because it’s found in so much food, but only high levels are thought to be dangerous.

The study focused on fishing boat captains and their spouses. While the use of DDT is no longer allowed in the U.S., it’s still used in some countries to combat malaria.

When it’s used, however, it doesn’t just affect a small area, according to Bruce Fowler of the Centers for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

This is a classic result of the unintended consequences of human innovation.

The Asian carp came to the U.S. for placement in southern catfish farms. The carp feed off plankton, which helps keep underwater factory farms clean and production high.

But fish farms don’t have fences, and when floods hit the south, the Asian carp landed in nearby rivers and streams. Now they’re thriving in the mighty Mississippi River, and have been detected just five miles away from Lake Michigan in recent days.

In what reeks of a desperate measure without adequate research, some scientists have proposed dumping 20 tons of iron sulfate into the Southern Ocean. The theory? Levels of iron in the ocean are trending lower, and reversing that trend would supposedly stimulate a burst in the plankton population.

That plankton would require carbon dioxide to survive and would likely pull it down out of the atmosphere. It sounds wonderful in theory, and could potentially delay shifting climate patterns. But on such a large scale, the side effects could be devastating.