EcoNotes
Universities to study drinking water safety
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded funds to six universities for the study of drinking water safety and techniques to reduce risks to America’s public water system. The grants are funded through U.S. EPA’s program for research in environmental science and engineering, Science to Achieve Results. Reports earlier this year highlighted the vulnerability of the public water system to potential terrorist attack. The results of the Drinking Water Safety research will lead to a more secure public water system. Three projects investigate microbial risk in drinking water while the others focus on public health effects of chemical contaminants in drinking water. More detailed information on the projects can be found at http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipients.display/rfa_id/273 and http://cfpub.epa. gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipients.display/rfa _id/275.

Study to determine trends in frequency of flooding
The $5 million Inland Flood Forecasting and Warning System Act co-sponsored by Houston-area U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Kevin Brady, may answer a question on the minds of many Houstonians after the most recent flooding and last year’s Tropical Storm Allison: Is flooding in Harris County increasing?

Jackson Lee amended the bill, signed into law by President George W. Bush this month, to add a three-year, $300,000 study to access the long-term trends in frequency and severity of inland flooding and to determine how shifts in climate and other factors might make certain regions vulnerable to escalating flood damage in the future.

Overall, the bill provides $1.15 million per year for five years to improve the accuracy of inland flooding forecasts, but Jackson Lee’s amendment may also help answer whether climate shifts are increasing the frequency of flooding in our region.
– Houston Chronicle

Follow their lead
Communities around the country are using innovative approaches to address water pollution, flooding and conservation issues.

By converting an open ditch stormwater drain into a roadside swale garden, Seattle reduced rainwater runoff at the 2.3 acre site by 97 percent. City planners decreased the width of the adjacent street and planted native vegetation and stimulating native soils. Opportunities exist in Houston, where some stormwater systems are either not fully developed or scheduled for redevelopment, to implement these sorts of infiltration projects to reduce the volume of polluted runoff and improve groundwater recharge.

Meanwhile, the Portland, Oregon City Council authorized funds to replace toilets at 5,000 apartment complexes with low flow models. The pilot project has the potential to save more than 30 million gallons of water and hundreds of thousand dollars in water and sewer bills each year.

EPA touts success of acid rain program
The Environmental Protection Agency announced in November their Acid Rain Program reduced emissions through market trading of pollution credits. The latest data available in the report confirm major reductions nationwide in emissions of two acid rain causing pollutants, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The Acid Rain Program, based on a market-based cap and trade approach to achieving emissions reductions from the electric power industry, uses emission rate requirements to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, and has set a permanent cap requiring a 50 percent reduction from 1980 emission levels of sulfur dioxide by 2010. The Acid Rain Program, created as part of the 1990 reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, set a goal of reducing annual SO2 emissions by 10 million tons below 1980 levels.

The EPA’s “Acid Rain Program 2001 Progress Report” is available online at: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/cmprpt/arp01/index.html

Permit would reserve water for Guadalupe
After more than two years, state regulators are moving on a request that a million acre-feet of water in the Guadalupe River be left alone each year for the fish, shrimp, crabs, oysters and other life in the river and its coastal estuaries. A draft permit prepared by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is the first step of what is certain to become a long and contentious process. The permit would also aid communities whose economies rely on the fishing, tourism, hunting and bird watching, the river foundation argued. The San Marcos River Foundation submitted its request in July 2000 for the water right. The permit, if approved, would be the first ever issued in Texas that calls for water to be left in a river.
– Associated Press

Commission warns oceans threatened
Halfway through an 18-month study, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy announced that the world’s oceans are in big trouble, citing nothing short of a complete overhaul of marine policy to reverse the trend. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Ocean Planet program, runoff, including farm wastes, oil changes, industrial wastes and soil erosion, is the single biggest pollution problem. Ocean Planet says three-fourths of all ocean pollution comes from land. This problem is will be exacerbated as more and more people choose to live along coasts, putting pressure on coastal ecosystems. Loss of coastal wetlands, overfishing and climate change are also serious problems, the commission found. Nationally, nearly 15,000 acres of coastal wetlands disappeared in the last decade, mostly at the hands of developers. Many of the world’s commercially important fish species are fished to capacity or depleted. Oceans are crucial in shaping climate because they store and move heat around the planet and they are a major source and storehouse for gases, such as carbon dioxide, that affect climate; it’s not fully understood how much carbon dioxide the oceans can absorb and store. The findings of the completed report are expected to be released next summer.