Water

The deal ends preliminary probes into the use of wells without authorization and fraud for filtering its mineral waters, a practice that is illegal in France where mineral waters are supposed to be natural.

But the project comes shrouded in uncertainty, including its main purpose—whether for shipping or irrigation—who will fund it, and how it will affect the flow of the Mekong—one of the world's longest rivers.

Conservationists have long warned that the river, which supports up to a quarter of the world's freshwater fish catch and half of Vietnam's rice production, is at risk from infrastructure projects, pollution, sand mining, and climate change.

Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand are signatories to the 1995 Mekong River Agreement, which governs the distribution of the river's resources.

While Cambodia is a close ally of Beijing, Hun Sen has denied the canal will be part of China's Belt and Road infrastructure plan.

[ not exactly about water but about what to do when there‘s no water. It‘s Punk, but not stellar ]

The system driving this operation is called district cooling, and its technology long predates this summer’s Olympics. The first system of its kind was built in 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut, and has since grown to be one of the largest in the world. The city’s gas company at the time had connected to all the interstate pipelines, bringing a surplus of gas to the city, which went unused in the summer. So a district energy system was created through which gas could be used to chill water and cool buildings in the summer, and steam for heat in the winter.

Created in 1991, Paris’ district cooling network is already Europe’s largest, currently serving more than 2,000 buildings in the south of the city

Key Ideas

• The Tsimané, Mosetén and Tacana Indigenous ethnic groups in the Bolivian Amazon feared the worst for early 2024. They believed that the cycle of floods would bring misfortune and affect their communities
• However, the water management projects they have implemented have provided favorable results and helped the communities avoid disasters. This is an example of a communitywide effort to commemorate World Water Day 2024, which was March 22.
• Members of these Indigenous communities collect water from several watersheds and transport it through kilometers of pipes so that it reaches their homes, a complex engineering project that also has allowed them to adapt to the more intense droughts and floods caused by climate change.

One of the key demands of the movement to de-privatize water in Chile is that water should be recognized as a human right, which requires infrastructure that ensures clean water and access to it. In addition, we are organizing for the rights of nature and working toward the defense and restoration of hydrological systems not only for human consumption but also so water can flow freely.

It is from this perspective that networks such as the Movement for Water and Territories (MAT), of which I am a part and which links approximately one hundred social and territorial organizations in the territory called Chile, have sought to de-privatize water and decolonize our understanding of nature. We are pushing for an ecological transition that embraces social, climate and water justice and that includes the defense of rivers, lakes, lagoons, wetlands, salt flats, glaciers and other bodies of water.

Chile’s Political Constitution was adopted in the 1980s, and it establishes water in all of its forms as a national good for public use, while also allowing private ownership of it. This was enshrined in the 1981 Water Code, adopted during the civil-military-business dictatorship. Chile’s Water Code created a water market and made water a tradable commodity that can be bought, sold, leased and even mortgaged.

Private ownership of water is made possible through the sale of usage rights. The government grants these rights free of charge and in perpetuity to private parties linked to extractivist industries, such as mining, agribusiness and the forestry industry. Today there are landowners who lack water and others who monopolize water rights without owning land.

The disclaimer says the video was "Paid and presented by Cosecha de lluvia, Mexico City Government".

[link with Audio and Full Transcript]

The United States is one step closer to withholding millions in aid dollars from Mexico as that country continues to flout a binational water sharing treaty that’s critical to the Rio Grande Valley’s water supply.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee approved an effort by a bipartisan, bicameral group of Rio Grande Valley lawmakers to withhold funding from Mexico until it makes good on a 1944 water sharing treaty with the United States.

The treaty obligates Mexico to deliver some 1.75 million acre-feet of water every five years from six Mexican tributaries that feed the Rio Grande. However, four years into the current cycle, Mexico has delivered only about a year’s worth of water, even as the two international reservoirs that supply the Valley and the northern Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon with water have fallen to historically low levels.

The scarcity of water led to the demise of the Valley’s sugarcane industry, which in February announced it was permanently ceasing operations after a 51-year legacy here.

And already, another iconic facet of Valley agriculture — the citrus industry — is also on the brink of failure as farmers uproot dozens of dead and dying trees from their orchards.

The worsening crisis has long prompted earnest entreaties from local leaders that something be done.

Earlier this year, a coalition of federal lawmakers took up the cause, calling for a first-of-its-kind financial sanction against Mexico for its continued non-compliance.

That effort was led by Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans, as well as all three of the Valley’s House representatives, and several more who represent other parts of the state.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, announced that their combined efforts had achieved their first legislative success.

The proposal to withhold funding from the fiscal year 2025 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, or SFOPS, appropriations bill, had successfully passed the House Appropriations Committee, Cuellar, a senior committee member, said in a news release on Wednesday.

“Water is life, and water deliveries from Mexico are essential for South Texas communities to operate and grow,” Cuellar stated in the news release.

“As a member of Congress, it is my job to ensure communities on the border have an adequate, reliable water supply,” he further stated.

The Valley’s freshman lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, also celebrated the language’s inclusion in the House appropriations bill, which will be voted on by the full House later this year.

“This bill sends a clear message: if the Mexican government thinks it can starve us of our water and put our farmers out of business, they are sorely mistaken,” De La Cruz stated in a news release Wednesday.

“Withholding funding will highlight to everyday Mexicans their government’s failure to adhere to binding international agreements,” she further stated.

The legislative measure calls for withholding up to 15% of SFOPs funding from Mexico, though monies used to combat fentanyl trafficking are specifically excluded.

That equates to about $7.6 million, according to what U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Brownsville, told The Monitor earlier this year.

However Cornyn, Texas’ senior senator, said that amount may turn out to be higher.

Mexico is one of the top receivers of American foreign aid, according to the Office of Foreign Assistance.

In 2022, the country received more than $231 million in aid, and another $149 million in 2023.

As of June, the combined American storage of water held at Amistad and Falcon international reservoirs stood at just 18.76%, according to data published by the International Boundary and Water Commission.

The IBWC is the federal agency responsible for maintaining data on the reservoirs, and enforcing the water sharing treaty with Mexico.

The 18.76% shown in the June 1 water ownership report represents the lowest volume of water since recordkeeping began. /End of article

Note: Not great that the author Dina Arévalo does not have any info on the Mexican perspective.

Every major English water company has reported data suggesting they’ve discharged raw sewage when the weather is dry – a practice which is potentially illegal.

BBC News has analysed spills data from nine firms, which suggests sewage may have been discharged nearly 6,000 times when it had not been raining in 2022 - including during the country’s record heatwave. ...

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Sao Paulo’s state government unveiled more details of its plan to privatize Latin America’s largest water utility, aiming to complete the equity offering in the third quarter.

...

Additionally, the government said the strategic shareholder will be responsible for compensating the state if the price of the winning book is below what was offered per share in the anchor-investor selection phase of the sale.

Sao Paulo announced the general outline of two-stage offer in April. How the book-building process would be carried out was a big question for investors, as the government had signaled it was studying a model in which investors could have to follow the same price as the strategic shareholder in the broad offer.

The reference shareholder will have 15% of the shares and the government intends to reduce its stake to about 20% from its current 50.3% once the privatization is finalized.

... Anyone here think this is a reason to be cheerful?

Article text cont.

February 8, 2024, by Justin Franz, in reasonstobecheerful.world

The Yellowstone Club, the elite resort near Big Sky that in the past has counted Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel as members, has become the first ski area in Montana to turn wastewater into snow. And while skiing on what was once sewage might seem odd at first blush, resort officials and local conservation groups said it’s both safe and beneficial to the environment, especially during dry winters like this one, which has left some ski areas in the state shuttered.

In fact, Richard Chandler, vice president of environmental operations for the Yellowstone Club, said recently that the new program to turn wastewater into snow is helping the resort open more runs than it otherwise might be able to this winter.

“Without [snowmaking], we’d be skiing on a lot less terrain,” Chandler said.

The new effort to use recycled water to increase the base layer of snow on Eglise Mountain follows a decade of collaboration between the resort and local environmental groups, plus a multi-year review by state regulators. It isn’t the first time the Yellowstone Club has found a new use for wastewater: For several years, it has been using recycled water to irrigate its golf course.

In 2011, the Gallatin River Task Force, Yellowstone Club and DEQ studied whether wastewater could be used to make artificial snow to ski on. The idea was that as climate change made the region’s snowpack more unpredictable, they could serve skiers and the watershed by making snow from treated water that is traditionally just put into rivers and other bodies of water. That winter they successfully turned a half-million gallons of wastewater into two acres of snow about 18 inches deep.

According to the Yellowstone Club, 12 ski areas in eight states, plus some in Canada, Switzerland and Australia, have used wastewater to make snow in the past. However, the practice hasn’t been without controversy. About a decade ago, a ski area near Flagstaff, Arizona, was sued by a local tribe over environmental concerns about turning wastewater into snow. The Hopi Tribe also alleged that the practice would desecrate a mountain it considered sacred. The tribe eventually lost in court, but during the dispute some environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, raised concerns about the impact the recycled snow might have on aquatic life in the area.

But Chandler said that using recycled water to make snow treats the wastewater even more than it normally would be before being released into a river. By shooting it through the snowmaking equipment (it’s essentially misted onto the slopes as snow) the wastewater is treated again. Then, as it . Chandler estimates that the man-made snow will increase summer runoff in area creeks by about 19 days.

“The benefits of this project are actually an enhancement to the watershed function,” said Pat Byorth, Montana water director for Trout Unlimited, in a press release. “It’s an enhancement to water supply, to water quality in the basin. So everybody from skiers to anglers will benefit from this, and downstream agriculture benefits at a time where water supply is uncertain.”

In 2020, the Yellowstone Club applied for a permit from DEQ to expand that 2011 pilot program into a permanent snowmaking operation on Eglise Mountain. The following year, the state issued a permit allowing the Yellowstone Club to turn 25 million gallons of wastewater into snow annually. Two years and $12 million later, the new system began making snow last November. Under the current plan, 80 percent of the recycled water is coming from the community of Big Sky and 20 percent is coming from the Yellowstone Club. As part of its permit, the Yellowstone Club is required to erect signage warning visitors not to consume the snow.

As winters get drier in the American West, Chandler said that turning wastewater into snow could be the key for ski areas across the region in the future. He said he hopes the club can set an example.

“We hope that we can show other ski areas in the state what is possible,” he said. “We might be the first, but I hope we aren’t the last.”