Below are some of the current water issues as of March, 2002

Below these legislative updates, ( click here for the National Resources Defense Council's full and current report http://www.nrdc.org/legislation/legwatch.asp ), are some startling facts you need to know about the actual cost of meat and dairy in terms of water usage!!

Clean Water

On 3/20, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee considered H.R. 3930, the Water Quality Financing Act of 2002, sponsored by Rep. Duncan (R-TN). This bill would increase the level of funding available to states for clean water projects under the Clean Water Act by $1 billion per year, up to a total of $6 billion in 2007. Environmental groups are seeking to ensure that the bill provides incentives for states and cities to fund water quality projects that are good for the environment, such as stream buffers, wetlands protection, stormwater controls, and smart growth that prevents sprawling development. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has held hearings on the companion bill (S. 1961), introduced on 2/15 by Sens. Graham (D-FL), Jeffords (I-VT), Smith (R-NH), Warner (R-VA), and Crapo (R-ID). This bill, the Water Investment Act of 2002, would also authorize significant increases in funding for cleaner water. The White House, however, objects to the cost of these bills, claiming that it needs the money to fund the war on terrorism.

On 2/15, Sens. Graham (D-FL), Jeffords (I-VT), Smith (R-NH), Warner (R-VA), and Crapo (R-ID) introduced the bipartisan Water Investment Act of 2002 (S. 1961). This is a five-year, $35 billion legislative package that would modify the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, authorizing significant increases in funding for cleaner water. The full Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on the bill on 2/26, and the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water held a hearing on 2/28. Sen. Jeffords plans to have the bill ready for floor debate before the July 4th recess. Environmental groups are working to ensure that the final bill will include more funding to meet the nation's water quality needs, including updating aging sewer plants and collection systems, controlling contaminated stormwater, minimizing polluted runoff, and remedying decaying and out-of-date drinking water infrastructure. Environmentalists would also like to see additional incentives for states to fund water quality projects that are good for the environment, such as stream buffers, wetlands protection, stormwater controls, and smart growth that prevents sprawling development.

On 2/7, the House Fisheries Conservation Subcommittee approved H.R. 3577, Rep. Gilchrest's (R-MD) bill to reauthorize a popular coastal management grant program created by the Coastal Zone Management Act. The bill includes funding for reducing polluted runoff in coastal areas.

On 12/5, Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill (S. 1768) to reauthorize CALFED, an important federal and state partnership in California that provides water for urban and agricultural users, as well as for wildlife and habitat restoration. The bill avoids many of the problems in the House version (H.R. 3208), approved by the House Resources Committee on 11/7. Environmentalists oppose H.R. 3208, which soon may be taken up on the House floor, because it would allow the construction of new dams in California without appropriate review, and could give agricultural water users priority over the environment.

Important thoughts from the World Game Institute

Eliminating Unhealthy Water
Providing Clean Water for All

Preferred State:
Abundant supplies of clean water for 100% of humanity

Problem State:
1.75 billion people are without adequate drinking water

Clean Water Infrastructure
Increased population and insufficient investment in infrastructure over the past several decades have left almost one-third of the world's people without access to clean water. 60% of rural families and 25% of urban homes lack safe water.(70) Water supplies in much of the developing world are either contaminated with sewage due to the lack of sanitation systems or are inaccessible to large numbers of people. Water-borne diseases such as cholera, crytosporidium, guinea worm and schistosomiasis affect over 300 million people. These diseases, when not resulting in fatalities, are debilitating and leave many of their victims unable to work at all or at their full potential. Water-borne diseases are a widespread hazard in the developing world, and people frequently must travel long distances to obtain household water.

A comprehensive clean water program would help solve these problems-and others. Programs that provide tools and education for tapping into subterranean water tables have proven to be highly effective in rural areas. A joint program of the Indian government, UNICEF and local non-governmental organizations are supplying water to over 550 million Indians with 2.2 million hand pumps and at an annual cost of $4.00 per person. India's rural access to potable water rose from 30% in 1980 to 80% in 1992 as a result of this program.

Providing the needed training, materials and organizational infrastructure for the needed wells, water and sewage pipes, sanitation facilities and water purifying systems would provide a particularly large boost to employment levels throughout the developing nations, providing many people with useful skills and long-term jobs building and maintaining the new systems. Supplying water from protected springs, shallow wells, tube wells with hand pumps, deep-dug wells, gravity systems, powered pumped systems or a combination of all these, the water systems would be locally staffed, built and controlled thereby insuring their continuing functionality and the building of local capacity. If the water systems created were built by the populations being served, they would also build the capacity of the local community to deal with other problems such as road construction, market centers and schools for the community.(71)

Most urban areas throughout the world are losing 30 to 50% of their water supply to leakage. An investment in repairing leaks, purchasing new pipes and maintaining existing and new pipe structures would pay for itself in conserved water in a few years. Mexico City's water system loses 1.9 billion cubic meters of water every year due to leakage. Jerusalem reduced its annual consumption of water by 14% from 1989 to 1991 simply by instituting a leak detection and repair system.

Cost/Benefits
Water systems, depending on the level of involvement of the people being served, vary greatly in cost. The more involvement of the local community, the lower the short-term and long-term sustainability costs-and the greater the benefits to the community in the building of community capacity to deal with other local problems. Installation costs range from less than $5.00 per person served to close to $100.(72) The lower cost figure would result in a total needed expenditure of less than $10 billion to meet the needs of all the people in the world who currently do not have access to clean water while the higher figure would result in $175 billion. Using $50 per person as the benchmark, an investment in water and sanitation materials, training and programs of $10 billion per year for ten years would insure that all of the world's people were provided with enough water to meet their personal needs.(73) This is about 1.2% of the world's total annual military expenditures, or about 1% of what is being spent on illegal drugs in the world each year. It is also about 15% of what the US spends per year on alcohol and tobacco.(74)

With adequate water supplies, productivity would rise on farms, where frequent time-consuming trips for water are eliminated, and generally, as debilitating water-borne diseases are reduced and eliminated as a major danger to health. Assuming the provision of clean water resulted in the saving of one million lives per year, the total savings to the world would be $990 billion per year. The pay-back on investment time would be less than 4 days. Putting a value on human life at one-half of what the US government does would result in a pay-back time of less than 8 days, and a monetary value of $10,000 would pay back the investment in one year.