water quality

Shifting authority from DENR to Agriculture on water quality issues:

AN ACT to transfer the division of soil and water conservation and the Soil and water conservation commission of the department of environment and natural resources to the department of agriculture and consumer services and to make conforming changes.

A recent study quantified the benefits of public land acquisition:

In today's dollars, the 289,000 acres of land acquired by these trust funds from 1998 to 2010 is worth $825 million. But that same land from 1998 to the year 2020 will generate $3.67 billion in natural goods and services, according to the study.

You can expect to see some sort of legislation by NC Republicans to derail this process in the near future. Government purchasing land as a set-aside is anathema to Free Market fundies who just can't comprehend the idea of a "public good", or that developers just might work against that good.

Changing behavior is costly but necessary:

Authorities in Wake County pressured the legislature for the lake's cleanup, because the lake provides drinking water for 450,000 Wake residents. But the pollutants reach the lake from streams running through Durham, Granville, Person and Orange counties, whose taxpayers would bear the greatest financial burden for cleaning up Raleigh's reservoir.

It will probably do little good to repeat this, but it needs to be said: Techniques for ameliorating the negative effects of stormwater runoff have been available to county/city governments for decades, and they (for the most part) chose to ignore them. During that time, land development in the Triangle/Triad regions propagated like rabbits, and the combination of those two factors produced an inevitable result. A result that must be dealt with, now.

Just received this via e-mail:

Falls Lake, a water supply for over 400,000 people and a popular lake for fishing and boating, suffers from extreme nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. A few parts of the lake are relatively healthy, but sections of the upper lake violate water quality standards as much as 80% of the time.

The Environmental Management Commission (EMC) is accepting public input (through this week) on proposed rules to clean up the lake. Environmental groups generally support the rules, but are also proposing some improvements to them.

Go here to send your own message to the Commission.

It doesn't take much imagination to connect the dots between America's chronic health risks and our collective consumption of poisons and contaminants from the water we drink.

An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer.

In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004.

We had a nice rain today. I have the windows open and the cross breeze gently passing me as I type is really wonderful. Reminds me of home. But I can't keep from wondering why the farm ponds around here still have not recovered.

I pass a good half dozen of them, ponds that is, between my home in downtown Clayton and my work on Aviation Blvd. These are just open field farm ponds. It doesn't look like any of them are spring fed, but still, not one of them is "full."