“Water, Water everyone, nor any drop to drink”
-Rime of the ancient mariner by Coleridge

We’ve all heard or read that “water is the new oil”, often as a pundit’s shorthand for some market prediction. Drinking water, we are told by analysts and environmentalists, is a rare, limited resource which the world is rapidly running out of. It’s just like oil.

Well, it’s not.

Water, water everywhere

1. Oil gets used up, but water is inherently reusable.
We burn oil to make our cars go, or we make it into plastics, which will never change back into oil. Water, on the other hand, spends just a few hours in our bodies before we return it, unchanged molecularly, to the environment. In most cases, agricultural or industrial use, which are far greater than personal comsumption, return water similarly. . Water is inherently reusable; it’s up to us, as a species, to ensure we don’t return it in such a polluted state, that reusing the water becomes impractical.

2. Unlike oil, our planet has a huge stock of water, at mostly known locations.
Most of our planet’s surface is covered in water. Deep sea drilling and exploration are not required for water. True, most of that is seawater, but current desalination technology can already convert that to drinkable water at a commercially reasonable price (several times less than what many consumers already pay for their drinking water).

3. Even fresh water, almost ready to drink, is quite abundant.
Freshwater resources account for just one or two percent of Earth’s water (depending on what you count as a potential resource), but that’s still a huge amount, many times greater than what mankind consumes yearly. The best indicator of how much fresh water we can sustainably use is the rate at which freshwater resources are replenished by precipitation (any freshwater sources, like lakes, rivers, or aquifers, are just buffers we can draw from, but are ultimately refilled from precipitation, or channels passing precipitation water back to the ocean). That figure is around 4 times mankind’s current water use. That’s not so big as to make human consumption “a drop in the ocean”, but it does mean any water stress we have is not because “there isn’t enough to go around”.

4. No substitution
There’s no “renewable energy” analog in the water market. You can use water more efficiently, but you can’t really phase it out in favour of some alternative. Our bodies, our food crops, and often our industrial uses, just can’t go without water. On the plus side, water does not pollute the environment, and is returned to it in the same molecular form (although we frequently discharge it with a whole lot of pollutants inside).

5. Water is a local market
Like energy, water is consumed everywhere. But whereas energy sources, such as oil, can profitably be traded across the world, from oil-rich nations to oil-poor nations, water is just too bulky (or, equivalently, too cheap per volume) to be transported cost-effectively, and thus be a truly global commodity. In some water-stressed areas, transboundary water trade is emerging and makes sense, but this is nothing like global trade on the intercontinental scale seen in oil markets. Water technology and methodology still can (and should) be global, but water markets will remain local.

Nor any drop to drink

So, is water scarcity not a problem? Of course it is. In much of the developing world, access to safe drinking water is one of life’s great difficulties; this will soon threaten most of the world’s population. Even in many European and US cities, water resources are stressed, and depletion of aquifers and other “buffer” sources indicates an expected shortage within a couple of decades. But to say that we are “running out of water” is a dangerous oversimplification, and the oil analogy makes it sound like we now need to go prospecting for new (and expensive) sources of water.

The real reasons much of the world is now or is in danger of becoming water-stressed are more subtle. Many water sources are difficult to access, tap, and transport water from. Water withdrawal is multiplied many times by wasteful consumption, inefficient transport and distribution (water loss in distribution systems, e.g. through leaky and burst pipes, is estimated at 25% worldwide to 50% or more in the developing world), poor reuse/recharging strategies, and indiscriminate pollution of water sources.

Every drop counts

So, what can we do? We need to keep the total water withdrawal rate down. More often than not, the answers are simple, but require smart solutions to implement.

1. Use less water.
The US consumes twice as much water per capita as Europe does, for a similar standard of living. Consumers in the US and some other countries are typically charged an unrealistically low price marginal price for their excess water use (often far below the total cost to procure more water sustainably), so there is no disincentive to such waste. The issue of raising those prices is often a political minefield, and the local nature of the water market means that tenfold differences in water prices between countries are neither surprising, nor a transient condition, although the best-practice cost to supply that water may be identical. The AWE is fighting hard to promote efficient water use in the US, and other, more efficient countries could still do much better. If we used half as much water, it would be as good (or better!) as doubling our water resources.

2. Reuse water.
By polluting less water, treating, and recycling it, the same water can be reused several times along the water cycle, either directly, or indirectly by being recharged into groundwater or river water, from where it is eventually pumped out and used. This is like multiplying the water available from precipitation. Reuse can often require little or no water treatment, e.g. when greywater is used for irrigation. The vast majority of water is used for agriculture and industry, which can often use lower quality water. If we reused every litre of water even once, that would be like doubling our water resources.

3. Tap more sources.
OK, that’s the obvious one. The important thing, perhaps, is to add the adjective “responsibly”. Pumping water from lakes and aquifers faster than they are naturally replenished may at best be considered a loan from the environment. Sustained withdrawal from such sources can lower water levels, causing dangerous pollution, and of course can only be a time-limited solution until the stored water buffer is depleted. Freshwater sources must also supply sufficient water for existing ecosystems, after net human consumption.

4. Transport and distribute water more efficiently.
Leaky pipes lose tens of percent of the total water withdrawn globally. Just cutting down that lost water would save us – among other things – a significant fraction of total water demand, which today is simply lost and returned to the environment. In much of the developing world, this could more than halve the demand on freshwater resources.

5. Desalinate.
Earth’s water cycle imposes a hard limit on the fresh water we can sustainably abstract from the environment. As mentioned, mankind already appropriates a sizeable fraction of that. With the actions listed above, we may improve that ratio five- or tenfold. But with the combination of population growth, and the need to close today’s water gap in much of the developing world, not to mention the unequal geographical distribution of easily accessible freshwater sources, that hard limit will remain too close for comfort for anyone taking the longer view. 100% efficient closed-loop water recycling is still a long way off, and may never be economically viable. Cheap desalination (as Israel has realized, for instance) is the only way to increase our total water sources, and seems like an eventual necessity.

Oil and water

It’s not so much access to water sources or ownership of those sources that will prove crucial (and make big business, the way ownership of oil has), but the technology and methods we use to ensure adequate water supply. We can move away from oil and oil technology – and we’ll have to, quite soon – but water is here to stay. For all the wrong reasons, water stress is felt or is beginning to be felt throughout the world. “New oil” or not, we should be giving it our very best effort.

Article by Haggai Scolnicov, appearing courtesy TaKaDu

photo: fox_kiyo

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In its 2009 annual report, Cabot Oil and Gas named a field in Texas and another in Dimock, Pa., as its two largest fields of production. But yesterday the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ordered Cabot to plug at least three of its gas wells in Dimock and pay hefty fines after contaminating local drinking water.

More than 15 months after natural gas drilling contaminated drinking water in Dimock, Pa., state officials are ordering the company responsible — Houston-based Cabot Oil and Gas — to permanently shut down some of its wells, pay nearly a quarter million dollars in fines, and permanently provide drinking water to 14 affected families.

The order is among the most punitive in Pennsylvania’s history and reflects officials’ frustrations over a string of drilling-related accidents. The record of spills, leaks and water contamination in Pennsylvania — several of which are tied to Cabot — has spotlighted the environmental risks of drilling for natural gas across the country, jeopardized development of the massive Marcellus Shale resource deposit, and contributed significantly to actions by both Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to bolster federal oversight of drilling.

“The events at Dimock have been the black eye for the industry and have also been a black eye for Pennsylvania,” the state’s chief environment official, John Hanger, told ProPublica. “It’s been an enormous headache. If Cabot doesn’t get this message, the company has got an amazing hearing problem.”

ProPublica was among the first to report about the water contamination problems in Dimock — and about more than 50 other similar cases that have emerged as drilling development has spread across the state — in an article published last April that was part of a series about drilling concerns across the country. Since then the state Department of Environmental Protection has more than doubled its enforcement staff, and legislation has been introduced to revise Pennsylvania’s rules for drilling and strengthen protections for groundwater.

Cabot did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement Thursday, Cabot Oil and Gas said that it agreed to the DEP’s measures and that the state’s order represents “a continuing joint effort by Cabot and the PADEP to ensure the safety of people, water resources and the environment of Susquehanna County.”

DEP officials determined last fall that methane gas and drilling waste had leaked through cracked underground casing on Cabot’s gas wells and seeped into drinking water in the Dimock area. They fined the company, which is also being sued by a group of area residents, $120,000 at the time. In its most recent order, which is an update of that 2009 action, the Department of Environmental Protection expressed frustration with Cabot’s failure to address the contamination and said it found gas bubbling up in well water as recently as March, even though the company had submitted a plan to fix it last November.

On Thursday, the DEP gave Cabot — which Hanger described as one of “the worst” oil and gas operators he has seen — 40 days to plug the three wells it believes are responsible, and threatened that Cabot would have to plug more if the problems didn’t subside. It gave the company a month to install permanent water treatment systems in 14 homes where water was found to contain high levels of methane, iron and other metals, and where residents have complained of headaches, skin rashes and sick animals. In addition, it ordered Cabot to pay a $240,000 fine, plus $30,000 for each month in which it fails to fix the problems.

The DEP is also suspending its review of Cabot’s pending applications for new drilling permits across the state and won’t allow the company to drill any new wells at all in the Dimock area — even those already permitted — for 12 months. It said it will continue to investigate 10 more Cabot wells near Dimock and could order some of them plugged as well.

The Dimock gas wells are among the most important for Cabot Oil and Gas, a $4.2 billion publicly traded corporation. According to Cabot’s 2009 annual report, the Dimock field accounts for 15 percent of the corporation’s gas assets and is its second largest development area, after a region in Texas. At current prices the Dimock wells produced $55 million worth of natural gas last year. Much of the company’s growth is tied to its plans for expansion in Pennsylvania’s part of the Marcellus Shale. It planned to drill 100 new wells in the Dimock area in 2010.

Cabot CEO Dan Dinges, however, promised the enforcement action would “not impact the number of wells scheduled to be drilled under Cabot’s 2010 drilling effort, nor will it impact our production guidance,” according to the company’s statement.

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten appearing courtesy ProPublica

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A federal study of hydraulic fracturing set to begin this spring is expected to provide the most expansive look yet at how the natural gas drilling process can affect drinking water supplies, according to interviews with EPA officials and a set of documents outlining the scope of the project. The research will take a substantial step beyond previous studies and focus on how a broad range of ancillary activity – not just the act of injecting fluids under pressure – may affect drinking water quality.

The oil and gas industry strongly opposes this new approach. The agency’s intended research “goes well beyond relationships between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water,” said Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America in comments (PDF) he submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The “lifecycle” approach will allow the agency to take into account hundreds of reports of water contamination in gas drilling fields across the country. Although the agency hasn’t settled on the exact details, researchers could examine both underground and surface water supplies, gas well construction errors, liquid waste disposal issues and chemical storage plans as part of its assessment.

The EPA begins public hearings today in Washington to nail down the scope of the study.

Plans for the study have attracted international attention and have been the focus of intense debate among lawmakers and the oil and gas industry. The findings could affect Congress’ decision whether to repeal an exemption that shields the fracturing process from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The EPA is undertaking the study in response to a wave of reports of water contamination in drilling areas across the country and a Congressional mandate issued in an appropriations bill last fall. The agency had previously examined hydraulic fracturing in a 2004 study that was limited in scope and was widely criticized.

“When we did the 2004 study we were looking particularly for potential for impacts from hydraulic fracturing fluid underground to underground sources of drinking water,” said Cynthia Dougherty, the EPA’s director of the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water. “So it was a much narrower focus.”

For the latest study, the EPA sent its scoping document to its Science Advisory Board asking for the group’s input in designing the fracturing study. In the document, the EPA explained that information gained from looking at the impact from the start to the end of the process, called a lifecycle assessment “can help policymakers understand and make decisions about the breadth of issues related to hydraulic fracturing, including cross-media risks and the relationship to the entire natural gas production cycle.”

In past interviews with ProPublica, Fuller has explained that, in his view, hydraulic fracturing shouldn’t be blamed for any contamination unless the process of injecting fracturing fluids underground under pressure was “the sole” cause of contamination. If contamination seeped through cracks in a gas well’s protective casing under pressure of the fracturing process, for example, he wouldn’t attribute it to fracturing because the cracks may have existed before the fracturing process began and would be a well construction problem, not a fracturing problem.

Fuller’s definition of fracturing-related contamination helps explain the oil and gas industry’s steadfast claim that that there is not a single case in which hydraulic fracturing has been proven to have contaminated drinking water supplies.

An 18-month investigation by ProPublica, however, has shown more than 1,000 cases in which various aspects of the fracturing lifecycle have affected water supplies, including spills of fracturing fluid waste, cracking of underground cement and well casings meant to enclose the fracturing process, and methane gas traveling large distances underground through faults and fractures.

In planning its study, the EPA has made clear that for its purposes fracturing may play a role in many aspects of the drilling process and in many different environmental risks. The study could examine how well-construction activities have the potential to impact water, what specific materials or design practices would make a well suitable for fracturing, and what are the most effective methods for measuring well integrity.

The EPA hopes to complete its research by late 2012, the end of President Obama’s first term in office. Scientists say that may not be enough time to include substantial field monitoring and water analysis; policymakers say that is too long to wait for a decision from Congress.

The agency’s conclusions could have wide-ranging effects. Last month President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia said he would curtail natural gas production by the state company Gazprom until the study is completed. In part that’s because Medvedev isn’t sure there will be a viable market for Russian gas if the U.S. develops its domestic reserves, and because he believes that the regulations that could result from the EPA study could determine whether the U.S. drills its own gas, or imports it from overseas.

If the comments already submitted to the EPA by stakeholders are any indication, the research process will be contentious.

In Fuller’s comments (PDF) to the EPA, he said that the study shouldn’t focus on the harm fracturing could inflict on water supplies, but rather on whether current environmental regulations “effectively manage the environmental risks of the fracturing process.”

“If these risks are well managed, the other questions are meaningless,” he wrote. “The Scoping Materials Document fails to reflect this reality.”

In another letter (PDF), Ben Wallace, chief operating officer of Penneco Oil Co., wrote: “The clear historical record shows that hydraulic fracturing has been employed for decades successfully without incident. We are concerned that bureaucratic machinations have caused the EPA to hypothesize a problem and that EPA is now seeking research to justify a solution to a nonexistent problem.”

Environmental officials from New York City, who are concerned about how plans to drill for gas in the state’s Marcellus Shale will affect the city’s water supply, also submitted comments (PDF) to the EPA, urging the agency to follow through with its ambitious plans.

“The City concluded that horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing using the current technologies pose an unacceptable threat to the water supply of nine million New Yorkers, and cannot be safely permitted in the watershed,” wrote Caswell Holloway, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection. The city encouraged the Science Advisory Board and the EPA “to take a hard look at this activity and to recognize that the absence of contamination does not necessarily imply an activity is safe, but may actually reflect extensive gaps in monitoring information.”

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten appearing courtesy ProPublica

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Responding to reports of environmental contamination in gas drilling areas across the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will conduct a nationwide scientific study to determine if the problems are caused by the practice of injecting chemicals and water underground to fracture the gas-bearing rock.

The study, announced Thursday but hinted at for months, will revisit research the agency published in 2004, which concluded that the process of hydraulic fracturing did not pose a threat to drinking water. The 2004 report has been widely criticized, in part because the agency didn’t conduct any water tests in reaching that conclusion.

“The use of hydraulic fracturing has significantly increased well beyond the scope of the 2004 study,” EPA spokesperson Enesta Jones wrote in response to questions from ProPublica. The old study, she said, did not address drilling in shale, which is common today. It also didn’t take into account the relatively new practice of drilling and hydraulically fracturing horizontally for up to a mile underground, which requires about five times more chemical-laden fluids than vertical drilling. “This study is the Agency’s response to public concern about this practice and Congressional request.”

The 2004 report was used by the Bush Administration and Congress to justify legislation exempting hydraulic fracturing from oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption came to be known in some quarters as the “Halliburton loophole” and has inhibited federal regulators ever since.

The fracturing technology, in which a mixture of chemicals and water is injected underground with sand at high pressure to crack the earth and release natural gas, made it possible for energy companies to open vast domestic energy reserves across the country and fueled a nationwide boom in drilling activity.

“EPA needs to finish what is started,” said Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a Colorado-based advocacy group that represents landowners with contaminated water. “We need comprehensive studies of the entire exploration and production process, but this is an important place to start.”

The American Petroleum Institute released a statement saying it expects the study “to confirm what 60 years of experience and investigation have already demonstrated: that hydraulic fracturing is a safe and well understood technology for producing oil and natural gas.”

Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said hydraulic fracturing is one of the industry’s “crowning achievements.”

“Adding another study to the impressive list of those that have already been conducted and completed is a welcome exercise,” he said.

A series of investigations by ProPublica found that fracturing is the common thread in more than 1,000 cases of water contamination across seven states. In some cases fracturing may have caused dozens of well failures where the cement or steel meant to protect aquifers from the gas and drilling fluids cracked under high pressure, allowing contaminants to seep into the water. In hundreds of other cases the waste and chemicals generated by hydraulic fracturing have been spilled or seeped into surface and groundwater supplies.

Fuller said that Congress’ efforts to allow the EPA to regulate the process “should come to a standstill until this study is completed.”

More than 50 members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored the Frack Act, a bill that would reverse the drilling industry’s exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act and allow the EPA to regulate fracturing if it chose to do so. The Frack Act also would require companies to disclose the chemicals pumped underground in the process — information that is usually protected as trade secrets. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also conducting a separate investigation of hydraulic fracturing’s impact on water resources.

The EPA has yet to say exactly how the new study will be conducted or when it will begin, but sources within the agency told ProPublica that it will likely involve a number of EPA regional offices in Colorado, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and could build off two related investigations the EPA is undertaking in Wyoming gas fields.

In its announcement Thursday, the agency said it will spend nearly $2 million on the research this year and is asking for more money for next year. It promised a transparent, peer-reviewed process that includes stakeholder input. The EPA is seeking input from its Science Advisory Board on exactly how the study should proceed.

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten appearing courtesy ProPublica

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“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Often attributed to Mark Twain, whoever said that seemed to have quite a bit of foresight, something the mainstream cleantech community is only recently warming up to.

The fights over water use facing utility scale solar thermal projects in the desert Southwest may have a lot to do with opening the eyes of the clean-tech community, but the sector’s challenges and opportunities are much broader than that, as scores of Californians, Middle Easterners, and Australians will attest.  So why, with the problems so immediate and demand remaining strong in the $58 billion annual market for water technologies, has water investment as a percentage of venture investment declined since 2005?

To be fair, said Michael Hanemann at last Friday’s BERC Energy Symposium at UC Berkeley, the private sector has been scratching its head about how to take advantage of business opportunities in water for years, but the opportunities are just not that easy to monetize.  He noted that nearly 90 percent of Americans receive their drinking water from public water systems.

While about half of drinking water utilities in the U.S. are privately owned, these companies provide water to just one tenth of Americans served by public water systems, and only 3 percent of Americans get wastewater services from private utilities (National Association of Water Companies).  There are some giants in the water industry – GE, Siemens and Halliburton are heavily involved, but many may have never even heard of the world’s largest water company, France-based Veolia Environnement.

But despite the lack of hype about the water industry over the last decade, there seems to be an awakening as of late as academics, nonprofits, investors, and entrepreneurs align to take a shot at breaking through the barriers to innovation in the water sector.

For those interested in catching up on the space, the Cleantech Group featured quite an interesting corps of water leaders at its February San Francisco Cleantech Forum, and UC Berkeley’s BERC Energy Symposium had an excellent panel of water experts including Steve Weismann of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Matthew Heberger of the Pacific Institute, Laurie Park of Navigant Consulting, and Noah Goldstein of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in addition to world-renown professor Hanemann.

Numerous prizes have also recently been announced for water sector startups in an effort to jumpstart investor interest in the sector, and it will be interesting to track the winners’ progress.  The Cleantech Group and The Guardian’s Global Cleantech 100 included 12 water and wastewater companies, and the nonprofit Artemis Project’s annual competition highlights its top 50 water technologies.  Imagine H2O announced French-American vineyard water efficiency startup Fruition Sciences as the winner of its Water Innovators Prize just this past week.

The Water Innovators Prize was particularly focused on water efficiency, an area that has led to a massive decline in industrial water use over the past fifteen years but has had little impact on residential water use.  Let’s all hope that some of these incubators are able to nudge water technologies into the marketplace to make more of a dent in this space and others.  If they succeed, it will be an exciting year for an often-overlooked industry.

Water event tonight:
Imagine H2O is hosting a showcase on water innovations tonight. Learn about exciting new businesses that have risen to the surface. Meet the winning teams and other finalists from Imagine H2O’s recent Water Innovation Prize, the elite water experts who selected them, and Imagine H2O’s ecosystem of water leaders, including John Bohn, Chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission. Learn more…

photo: laszlo-photo

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In the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, about 1 million poor people pay up to 30 times more for water of dubious quality brought to them in old tanker trucks than middle-class citizens pay for clean and safe water provided by the local public water utility via standard household connections.

Some may be shocked by these disturbing disparities in the developing world, but a lack of access to safe, affordable and clean water is also an issue in California, particularly in the Central Valley and along the Central Coast. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is sucked from contaminated groundwater sources. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their bill.

While the arid West – including California – has always suffered from more severe water challenges than the rest of the country, experts claim 36 states will experience local or regional water shortages over the next five years. Spain is also facing an extreme water crisis, with some wondering whether the Sahara Desert will cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. And droughts seem to have become a permanent way of life in Australia.

Society appears to face a global crisis in water supply as one in six people – more than 1 billion humans – do not have adequate potable water to meet their most basic survival needs. These facts have spurred efforts to enshrine the human right to water at the United Nations and in the national constitutions of countries such as South Africa and Ecuador.

Interestingly enough, the prime opponent of guaranteeing a human right to water on the international stage at the United Nations has been the United States, which, by the way, is also opposed to a human right to housing and food. It is this political dynamic of our federal government opposing human rights to water that makes Assembly Bill 1242 by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos, so interesting. The bill is moving through the California Legislature and a key vote is scheduled Monday.

International debate rages

“The language included in AB 1242 is typical of that used by organizations and campaigns around the world declaring a legal human right to water,” said Jeff Conant, international research and communications coordinator for Food and Water Watch, one of the sponsors of the legislation. He went on to say that it would be up to state and local agencies to figure out how to “operationalize” this concept.

On the international stage, much of the discussion about a human right to water is wrapped up in the legal mechanics of treaties and policies at the United Nations. Patricia Jones, program manager for the environmental justice program of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, favors the concept of an “International Bill of Human Rights” that would be comprised of direct obligations and treaties that would make the human right to water both explicit and implicit. World Health Organization activists have been working on similar ideas but focused more on trying to stop the spread of endemic diseases, requiring regional governments to commit to the human right to water to receive funding for water projects.

“From a legal point of view, there most definitely is a human right to water, which is part of the right to an adequate standard of living,”

argues Thorsten Keifer, a human rights expert with Bread for the World, a 50-year-old German nonprofit organization. “The question of how such a right to water can finally be recognized is a very good one as there is nothing like an agreed-upon check list for recognition of implied or new human rights in international law.”

From his vantage point, the right to water is not at all at odds with goals of efficiency, reduced water use and effective pricing. “The right to water does not mean that water should per se be for free, but that it should be affordable for all people,” he said.

“That the human right to water means that everyone should have access to water free of charge is a common misconception – propagated by a handful of activists – that has really interfered with discussions on the issue for far too long. Everyone who can pay should pay!”

So how does a corporation fulfill the human right to water? Coca-Cola has developed a “rights-based approach” because water is so fundamental to its business, and has such large impacts on ecosystems and people. This policy applies to existing and new production, and bottling plants.

“In essence, what this approach means is that our use of water should not infringe on the ability of humans to access water or impact the groundwater or the general population. Our presence as an economic entity should not raise the price of water and make water less affordable to the local community,” said Greg Koch, global director, water stewardship, for the Coca-Cola Co.

Harry Ott, a retired Coca-Cola executive and a senior fellow with Future 500, a San Francisco-based organization, added this: “What I’ve learned is that one must meet with the local community on a regular basis, ideally, before you begin building or operating. One not only needs a government license, but a social license.”

He noted that Coca-Cola’s employees benefit from better water management. “If our employees have poor water quality at their homes, then they get sick and cannot work.”

The California context

Californians will likely face escalating water bills to pay for facilities to treat contamination and to upgrade aging infrastructure. Many supporters of AB 1242 are concerned about the cost implications for disenfranchised citizens, particularly low- income Central Valley residents.

Some environmental organizations, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, argue that we do not charge enough for water, and that’s why so much is wasted.

“We need to decouple revenue from sales,” argued Ronnie Cohen, water policy director for NRDC, referencing pricing strategies employed in the electricity sector in California. “The city of Los Angeles has such an adjustment mechanism to account for (water) conservative programs, but most water agencies lose money if people conserve too much. These water agencies need to sell water to collect revenue to run their programs.”

California part of the conversation

AB 1242 does not delve into any of these specifics of water pricing or water management, but it is viewed as the first step in addressing water issues most pressing in the Central Valley akin to safety and cost issues more commonly witnessed in the developing world. California does not have a universal statewide lifeline water rate or allocation – one similar to our lifeline rates for energy and phone service – so when costs become excessive, families cannot pay their bills and risk losing water service entirely.

The issues facing the Central Valley are much more common in the developing world and China, where, oddly enough, multinationals often are better at cleaning up their acts than are local governments.

AB 1242’s general affirmation of the human right to water is intended to address a specific challenge regarding groundwater contamination and access to affordable water in Central California. But it is also part of a much larger conversation.

Declaring a human right to water is one thing. Figuring out how to guarantee access to this elixir of life is a Rubik’s cube. Yet we certainly must begin somewhere, and soon.

Author Peter Asmus is an environmental writer based in Stinson Beach and author of the new book “Introduction to Energy in California,” published by the University of California Press.

Article appearing courtesy of The Sacramento Bee

[photo credit: ONE DROP Foundation]

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In 2005 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management offered up thousands of acres of federal land in Colorado to drilling. Because the land was in the heart of an area that supplies drinking water to 55,000 people in the western part of the state, the plan drew strong opposition from local communities.

The concerns they raised — that the disruption and chemicals used in drilling might ruin their water — foreshadowed similar concerns that have since rippled across the country as drilling operations expand from Wyoming to New York. And their solution may be a lesson that ripples to those communities as well.

The communities — the city of Grand Junction and the neighboring town of Palisades — began by making their concerns clear: drilling is important, but protecting the water supply is paramount.

“Our feeling all along was that you shouldn’t drill in our watershed. It’s the last resort,” said Tim Sarmo, the town manager for Palisade, who, together with the city of Grand Junction, fought the development. “Shouldn’t someone say these are areas of higher priority, greater vulnerability?”

Their concerns focused on the chemicals pumped underground by drillers in hydraulic fracturing and then disposed of in the area’s dozens of open waste pits — fears echoed in upstate New York, where the Marcellus Shale underlies the watershed supplying New York City’s nine million residents, and in other parts of the country where gas is being drilled.

At first, Grand Junction and Palisades tried to buy the mineral rights themselves. In early 2006 they bid more than $300 an acre at auction — eight times what gas companies were typically paying for mineral leases in that part of the state at the time — but were outbid by Genesis Gas and Oil.

Then they tried a different tack: If drilling had to go forward, they wanted to define the terms, making sure the safest techniques would be used to protect the quality of their water. In this case, they wanted measures more stringent than what state regulations required.

With BLM officials arbitrating — the agency made a goodwill agreement a condition of the leasing and permitting process — the municipalities and Genesis Gas and Oil spent the next two years negotiating a compromise that could now stand as a model for towns across the country.

The result is a 60-page Watershed Plan (PDF) that dictates that Genesis will only use “green” hydraulic fracturing fluids, will reveal the chemical makeup of those fluids and will inject a tracer along with those fluids so any alleged contamination in the area can be quickly linked to its source.

Though the agreement has yet to be tested — Genesis has not yet applied for permits to drill in the area — local representatives found that there was more opportunity for them to steer oversight of drilling, and reach beyond what state regulations require, than they had thought.

Genesis Oil and Gas did not respond to requests for comment.

“There wasn’t a lot of resistance,” said Greg Trainor, the Grand Junction utilities director who sought the concessions from Genesis and says they put him at ease with the drilling. “It may not be a legally binding agreement, but it’s a political agreement. It’s a very good template.”

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten, appearing courtesy of ProPublica

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The New York Times’ latest story in its series on water contamination might make you think twice before filling up your glass from the tap. Although the law probably deems your water safe, it could still be — legally — teeming with chemicals that cause health problems “from upset stomachs to cancer and birth defects.”

The Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates tap water, is dangerously out of date, according to the Times. The list of chemicals it regulates stalled at 91 in 2000 — even though water pollution has picked up since then and hundreds of chemicals have been associated with a risk of cancer when found in drinking water. Efforts to tighten water standards have been thwarted by industry lobbyists, according to the Times.

The paper unearthed disquieting findings like this:

[T]he drinking water standard for arsenic, a naturally occurring chemical used in semiconductor manufacturing and treated wood, is at a level where a community could drink perfectly legal water, and roughly one in every 600 residents would likely develop bladder cancer over their lifetimes, according to studies commissioned by the E.P.A.

The EPA, which has ultimate responsibility for the Safe Drinking Water Act, said that a better law was needed to “assure the public that any unacceptable risks have been eliminated.” Administrator Lisa Jackson has, according to the Times, “asked Congress to amend laws governing how the E.P.A. assesses chemicals, and has issued policies to insulate the agency’s scientific reviews from outside pressures.”

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed an act in May that would authorize $14.7 billion in loans to help states improve their water systems. In the meantime, however, millions of Americans get sick each year from drinking contaminated water, according to independent scientific studies.

Article by Alexandra Andrews, appearing courtesy of ProPublica

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As environmental concerns threaten to derail natural gas drilling projects across the country, the energy industry has developed innovative ways to make it easier to exploit the nation’s reserves without polluting air and drinking water.

Energy companies have figured out how to drill wells with fewer toxic chemicals, enclose wastewater so it can’t contaminate streams and groundwater, and sharply curb emissions from everything from truck traffic to leaky gas well valves. Some of their techniques also make good business sense because they boost productivity and ultimately save the industry money — $10,000 per well in some cases.

Yet these environmental safeguards are used only intermittently in the 32 states where natural gas is drilled. The energy industry is exempted from many federal environmental laws, so regulation of this growing industry is left almost entirely to the states, which often recommend, but seldom mandate the use of these techniques. In one Wyoming gas field, for instance, drillers have taken steps to curb emissions, while 100 miles away in the same state, they have not.

The debate over the safety of natural gas drilling has intensified in the past year, even as the nation increasingly turns to cleaner-burning natural gas as an alternative to oil and coal. In Congress, one group of politicians is writing a climate bill that would encourage the use of more natural gas, while another group is pushing a bill that would put a key part of the process under federal regulation and force the disclosure of chemicals used in the drilling process. Neither bill addresses the question of how to encourage energy companies to use existing techniques that lower the risks of environmental damage.

Interviews with state officials and industry executives in states across the country show the industry tends to use these environmental safeguards only when political, regulatory, cost or social pressures force it to do so.

When states have tried to toughen regulations aimed at protecting the environment or institutionalizing these practices, energy companies have fought hard to defend the status quo. They argue that current laws are sufficient, that mandating practices imposes specific solutions on regions where they may not work best, and that the cost of complying with additional laws and safeguards would bankrupt them.

“Sometimes environmental considerations aren’t the same as the public considerations, and many times the economic considerations don’t fit,” said David Burnett, an associate research scientist at Texas A&M University’s Global Petroleum Research Institute and a founder of Environmentally Friendly Drilling, a government and industry-funded program that identifies best practices and encourages their use. “There could be better management practices used. We have to find a balance.”

Michael Freeman, an attorney at the environmental group Earthjustice, says there is no escaping some damage from drilling. But if the best available precautions were routinely followed, environmental harm could be minimized and the industry may face less resistance from the public as it taps the vast new gas deposits that have been discovered in recent years.

“It would certainly address a lot of peoples’ concerns,” Freeman said. “But the government agencies that regulate the oil and gas industry need to be aggressive about making them clean up their act.”

Good Chemistry

Few notions have sparked more hope among environmentalists than the possibility of replacing toxic chemicals used in drilling with what are being called “green” or non-toxic drilling fluids.

A review of scientific documents and interviews with drilling companies and the chemists who supply them shows that the transition is more than theoretical. It’s starting to happen.

EnCana, a Canadian company that operates on both sides of the border, recently said it stopped using 2-Butoxyethanol, a solvent that has caused reproductive problems in animals. BJ Services, one of the largest fracturing service providers in the world, has discontinued the use of fluorocarbons, a family of compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants.

Neither company would say what it is using to replace these chemicals. But a presentation made by Denver-based Antero Resources and obtained by ProPublica says that plant-based oils are occasionally replacing mineral oil and that soy can replace some toxic polymers. David Holcomb, director of research for the Texas-based drilling chemistry company Frac Tech, offered more specifics: He uses orange citrus to replace some solvents, and palm oil in place of a common slicking agent that has been prohibited in Europe but is still allowed in the United States.

The “single biggest move” the industry has made to reduce the toxicity of its fluids, according to David Dunlap, chief operating officer for BJ Services, is phasing out diesel fuel, a solvent that contains the potent carcinogen benzene.

Diesel was once a common solvent used in hydraulic fracturing, the process where water, sand and chemical additives are pumped underground at high pressure to break apart rock and release gas. In some fracturing jobs — like those in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York — more than 40,000 gallons of fracturing chemicals can be used at a single well.

Today, many companies have replaced diesel with mineral oil, a less toxic hydrocarbon solvent, in most of their fracturing solutions. The shift began in 2003, after the EPA pressed the nation’s dominant fracturing companies to voluntarily eliminate diesel from some of their fluids.

“It sounds like a simple thing, but it’s the largest single volume other than water that is used in a frack job,” said Dunlap, whose company is being acquired by Baker Hughes, the international drilling company. BJ no longer uses diesel in its fracturing fluids, Dunlap said, though it may still be used in other applications.

Despite these improvements, it is still difficult to say how safe the drilling and fracturing fluids are for people, and for the environment. The EPA says “green” chemistry should not be dangerously toxic and should not build up in plants or organisms. But because there are no laws that dictate what chemicals can be used for drilling on U.S. soil — and because most companies still keep the exact makeup of their fluids a secret from state and federal regulators — the definition of “green” remains subjective. “Green” is often shades of gray.

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation raised the “green” issue in its new environmental review for drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The report said that while non-toxic fracturing fluids would be preferable, “it may not be feasible to require the use of ‘green’ chemicals because presently there is no metric or chemicals approvals process in place in the U.S.”

Actually, such standards do exist, but only for the fracturing fluids used in offshore drilling. Both European law and the regulations of the U.S. Minerals and Management Services dictate that chemicals used in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico must be safe enough that they won’t kill fish and other organisms if they are dumped overboard.

“You can always do it,” said BJ Services’ Dunlap, whose company has been a leader in innovating sustainable materials. But, Dunlap said, the chemistry costs more, and is justifiable to his shareholders only because the regulations for offshore drilling left no choice.

“There are places around the world where the type of adherence is not required,” he said, “and where the cost of using those chemicals is something operators are not required to pay for.”

A Breath of Air

The natural gas industry has also found ways to reduce the greenhouses gases and volatile organic compounds it contributes to ozone pollution and climate change.

Although natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, the drilling and production of oil and gas is responsible for some 18 percent of the world’s human-caused emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More methane is produced in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world except Russia.

Under the guidance of an EPA program, EnCana, the Canadian oil and gas giant, is curbing those methane emissions — and might save money doing it. Using infrared cameras, the company finds and seals methane leaks on wells and pipelines that would otherwise be invisible, sharply curtailing levels of some the most dangerous heat-trapping atmospheric gases. According to Richard Haut, project director for the Houston Advanced Research Center, a partner on the Environmentally Friendly Drilling Project, such programs could pay for themselves within two years, and then turn a profit as the extra gas captured goes to market.

The industry has also found ways to reduce another set of dangerous emissions that has been blamed for air quality problems in Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado, among other places: CO2 from trucks and processing plants and the ozone-causing volatile organic compounds. Last winter, when tests showed that high ozone levels had put sparsely-populated Sublette County, Wyo., out of compliance with federal air quality laws normally applied to the nation’s big cities, the industry took a number of straightforward steps to curb the pollution.

Questar Exploration and Production, a prominent Rocky Mountain drilling company, eliminated 62,000 truck delivery trips and the diesel exhaust that came with them by building a network of pipes to transport its fluids.

EnCana began using natural gas instead of diesel fuel to power its 150-foot-tall drilling rigs, a seemingly small change that resulted in 85 percent less volatile organic compounds being spewed into the air. EnCana also installed other, less polluting new equipment, including refinery-grade combustors.

Doug Hock, a spokesman for EnCana, said the company has spent some $25 million on such efforts since 2005.

“Technology is the key driver in all of this,” Hock said. “It is important for policymakers to first understand the technology being used and secondly, allow operators the flexibility for further innovation to occur. This, rather than blanket mandates, will ensure continued reductions in impacts.”

But the industry’s efforts in Sublette County were triggered by an aggressive push by the federal government.

Before the U.S. Bureau of Land Management allowed more drilling in the Jonah Field, one of the gas development areas on public land in Sublette County, the companies had to agree to reduce their emissions there. Companies understood that if they did not agree to the BLM’s conditions in the Jonah Field they might not get more permits to drill in other parts of Sublette County. “There is kind of a big hammer hanging over their heads,” said Chuck Otto, the BLM field manager there.

Dirty Water

One of the most challenging environmental problems associated with drilling is disposing of its wastewater, which is typically laced with heavy metals, chemicals and hydrocarbons. Usually the waste is collected in open, dirt-brimmed waste pits where it sits until it’s hauled off to treatment facilities or injection wells. In the meantime, the fluids can evaporate or seep into the earth, or overflow if rain or snow overfills the pit.

A 1992 congressional report found that one of “the greatest opportunities” to prevent this type of pollution is something called a closed loop system, a series of pipes that gathers the waste as it comes out of a gas well, separates some of the water for reuse, and confines the concentrated leftovers in a steel tank. According to EPA findings quoted in the report, closed loop systems can reduce the volume of drilling fluids — and the chemicals used — by more than 90 percent. Because the waste is enclosed, chemicals can’t evaporate, fluids are less likely to spill and permanent pits aren’t needed.

Closed loop systems are rarely required in state regulations, but they are increasingly used, in part because they can save money for the companies that use them.

A 2001 case study by the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates gas drilling in Texas, focused on a small gas producer that tested such a system. Building the pipes and tanks cost the company more initially, according to the report, but the company — which it did not name — didn’t have to construct a waste pit, remediate the land when it finished drilling, haul its toxic materials to a disposal site or pay the slew of environmental fees levied by the state. According to the Railroad Commission, the company saved at least $10,000 for each gas well that was connected to the closed loop system. At that rate, the savings from the use of such a system on all the roughly 4,500 wells in Sublette County could tally $45 million.

Yet the industry continues to fight laws that would lead to increased use of closed loop systems.

In 2008 New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration passed some of the nation’s strongest rules prohibiting the use of unlined waste pits and thereby encouraging the use of a closed-loop system as an alternative. The regulation was inspired by a study that found that leaks or seepage from waste pits had contaminated water supplies in some 400 cases.

The industry mounted a public relations, lobbying, and legal war to stop the law, claiming that it would weigh down business with excessive costs that would ultimately result in lost jobs. In early 2009, Richardson relented and directed his administration to relax several of the rule’s requirements and timelines.

What Spurs Change?

When change does happen, it is usually foisted on the industry by excessive costs, fear of catastrophe, or regulations.

Chesapeake Energy began a pilot program to recycle wastewater from its Texas wells after drought and aquifer depletion threatened the industry’s water supply there. The pressure to reuse rather than dispose of wastewater also may have been increased by a series of earthquakes this year near Dallas. Researchers said the earthquakes may have been caused by the company’s normal disposal process: injecting wastewater underground.

Drillers in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania speeded up their search for new water recycling technologies last year, after Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection sharply limited treatment plants from accepting large quantities of drilling waste. Range Resources now recycles much of the wastewater from its Pennsylvania wells. “In the long term the biggest problem is going to be wastewater treatment,” said spokesman Matt Pitzarella. “And we have to figure out how to deal with it.”

Asked why his company pursued “green” drilling and fracturing fluid innovations for drilling in the North Sea — products that it now sometimes uses onshore too — BJ Services’ Dunlap was unequivocal: The law made him do it.

“It’s because of local regulations,” Dunlap said. “That’s typically what drives us to develop and bring to market these environmentally friendly products.”

But given the choice, energy companies prefer that they, rather than government regulators, decide when, where or whether to use the environmentally friendly technologies they’ve developed. They oppose state-wide or regional mandates, arguing that a best practice may be less effective — or less affordable — in one place more than another. They also say that formal regulations can institutionalize technologies that may later be proved ineffective, or could be improved on.

“No matter what we do we are capitalists here in the U.S.,” said Richard Haut, the Houston Advanced Research Center project director. “We do have to look for a balance between environmental issues and development.”

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten, appearing courtesy of ProPublica

[photo credit: EnergyTomorrow]

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Pennsylvania residents whose streams and fields have been damaged by toxic spills and whose drinking water has allegedly been contaminated by drilling for natural gas are suing the Houston-based energy company that drilled the wells. A worker at the company is among the 15 families bringing suit.

The civil case, filed Thursday in U.S District Court in Scranton, Pa., seeks to stop future drilling in the Marcellus Shale by Cabot Oil and Gas near the town of Dimock. It also seeks to set up a trust fund to cover medical treatment for residents who say they have been sickened by pollutants. Health problems listed in the complaint include neurological and gastrointestinal illnesses; the complaint also alleges that at least one person’s blood tests show toxic levels of the same metals found in the contaminated water.

The suit alleges that Cabot allowed methane and metals to seep into drinking water wells, failed to uphold terms of its contracts with landowners, and acted fraudulently when it said that the drilling process, including the chemicals used in the underground manipulation process called hydraulic fracturing, could not contaminate groundwater and posed no harm to the people who live there.

“We’ve been lied to, we’ve been pushed around, and enough is enough,” said Julie Sautner, whose drinking water began showing high levels of methane, iron and aluminum in February and who is receiving fresh water deliveries from Cabot. “We need to push back.”

A Cabot spokesman, Ken Komoroski, did not return calls for comment.

Among the 15 families bringing the case to court is Nolan Scott Ely, a Cabot employee who could lend an inside perspective to the case on how the company operates and how it has approached the myriad problems the company has had in Dimock. Nolan Ely did not return calls for comment.

Ely’s relatives, who have lived in Dimock for generations, own several properties where Cabot has wells. In January a well at the home of Michael Ely, one of Nolan Ely’s relatives who is also part of the lawsuit, caught fire after methane leaked underground into the water supply. At the top of the hill near Michael Ely’s home is Cabot’s Ely 6H well, which is among the most productive horizontal wells drilled in the Marcellus Shale. Cabot has touted Ely 6H as being one of the company’s most profitable.

Cabot’s problems in Dimock go back to January, when a drinking water well belonging to Norma Fiorentino — who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit — exploded after a methane buildup. Since then methane and metals have been found in numerous drinking water wells in the region. In the last year Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has determined that Cabot was responsible for several spills of diesel fuel and drilling mud and for an 8,000-gallon leak of hydraulic fracturing fluids being prepared by a contractor, Halliburton, that seeped into a fresh water stream in September.

The DEP concluded early on that faulty well construction allowed contaminants to leak from Cabot’s wells into water supplies. In September, following the fracturing fluid spill, the state temporarily banned Cabot from hydraulically fracturing any more wells near Dimock, but that prohibition was lifted several weeks later.

On Nov. 4 the DEP issued a document listing more than a dozen infractions (PDF), including fracturing fluid spills, diesel spills and well-construction problems that allowed methane gas to seep underground into private drinking water wells. The document lists 13 families whose drinking water is affected by the contamination, many of whom are being supplied fresh drinking water by Cabot.

The lawsuit, filed by the New York City-based law firm Jacob D. Fuchsberg and two other firms based in Philadelphia, Pa., and Buffalo, N.Y., did not specify what monetary damages would be sought from Cabot. Dimock residents tell ProPublica that they would be entitled to two thirds of the net judgment after expenses if they win.

Lawyers handling the case did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to the cost of health care and health monitoring, the suit seeks compensation for the loss of property values in the rural area — something that would allow affected residents there, if nothing else, to leave.

“I don’t think we’ve asked for the moon here,” said Victoria Switzer, a Dimock resident who is party to the suit. “I mean, Norma just wanted water, for goodness’ sake. The compensation, if it were enough to know that we could go away, that’s all I want.”

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten and Sabrina Shankman appearing courtesy of ProPublica

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