Go Green

The San Francisco Chronicle had a blip this morning on cloth vs. paper napkins — which uses less water, emits less carbon and is better for the environment? Like many such comparisons, the answer isn’t easy, the paper writes:

Alas, a simple answer was elusive. A visit to AskPablo, a blog belonging to a sustainability engineer, Pablo Paster, who endeavors to analyze carbon footprints, uncovered a many-paragraph essay that concluded that a cloth napkin used 50 times as much water as and emitted more carbon dioxide (including its manufacture) than 50 paper napkins.

However, there are antique napkins that have been used many hundreds, even thousands of times …
If you are throwing a party, however, and want to use paper, look for recycled napkins - and be sure to put them in your green (composting) bin with the food scraps instead of with the landfill-bound trash or uncontaminated recycling.

The question reminds me of Sheryl Crow’s reported war on toilet paper. The singer says we can save resources and fight climate change one square at a time. Sounds tricky …

–John

(diagram above: groundwater interacts with the overall water cycle. it can be polluted and extracted. it also feeds into some rivers and streams — including spring creek, which was the subject of this recent feature story.)

By John Sutter 

Yes, there’s water underground. Not really rivers of it, but it is there, creeping through porous rocks much like oil does.

In this environment podcast, I talk with Mike Paque, executive director of the Ground Water Protection Council, a national group, which happens to be based in Oklahoma City, that is out to inform the public and the wonders and vulnerability of the water beneath our feet.

Groundwater is a precious resource, Paque argues, but it’s also one we know very little about–especially in Oklahoma. State regulators don’t have a firm grasp of how much groundwater sits under the state, or how polluted it may be.

Also, interestingly, groundwater is a property right in Oklahoma, so, if you own land, you also own rights to some of the water beneath you. That makes regulating its use tricky. In some parts of the state–particularly far western areas–more groundwater is taken out every year than rain can put back. Nationally, there’s been a 23 percent increase in the amount of water taken out of the ground since 1970, according to GWPC.

Why care? Well, if you live in western Oklahoma, you probably get your drinking water from beneath the ground. About half of all people in the U.S. get their drinking water from groundwater supplies, and groundwater makes up the vast majority of usable fresh water on earth. If you’re a farmer and you irrigate your crops, that water likely comes from down in the soil. Industry also uses groundwater to generate electricity. Thirty-nine percent of the water used in the U.S. goes toward making power.

But what do you think? How much to you know about groundwater? What else do you want to know? Do you care about this resource?  What rules should be in place to protect it? I’ll do my best to find answers or explanations for you.

Here’s a basic info sheet on groundwater from the GWPC.

Also, here’s the EPA’s explainer on the subject.

The heads of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and the Oklahoma Water Resources Board sent this letter to our editorial page. It is, in effect, a response to this front page story in The Oklahoman. The officials call statewide water pollution “troubling” and ask the state Legislature to double — to about $2 million — the money Oklahoma uses to test its waters. Most aren’t tested at all.

Let me know what you all think.

–John Sutter

Here’s the text of their letter:

A recent report submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality detailing the pollution status of our rivers, streams and lakes has received much attention. Required of all states every two years, the report includes a detailed list of “impaired” waters, or those not meeting their desired uses, as prescribed by Oklahoma’s water quality standards, maintained by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board. The report indicates that some form of pollution afflicts about three out of every four water bodies in our state. ew

Although not uncommon for most states, the level of impaired streams in Oklahoma is indeed troubling. However, the list does provide an opportunity for state water agencies to develop plans to address the impairment. All state water agencies work in concert to evaluate resulting data, determine the current status of individual waters and establish protective measures, especially related to human health and the environment.

Maybe more troubling is the fact that many rivers, streams and lakes aren’t being monitored. Therefore, insufficient data exist for agencies to comprehensively determine where all impairments are occurring and develop plans to address those impairments.

The DEQ and OWRB have entered into an important partnership to survey the surface water resources of Oklahoma. Through the statewide Beneficial Use Monitoring Program (BUMP), OWRB staff collects water samples from hundreds of stream and lake sites each year. Those samples are analyzed for a variety of parameters in the field.

Officials at the DEQ and OWRB continually strive to leverage limited funds and resources to provide the maximum benefit to taxpayers. We prioritize sampling locations and lab analyses and we stretch supplies, all while attempting to maintain the overall integrity of our program. Due to budgetary limitations, our agencies regularly sample and assess only about 25 percent of Oklahoma’s surface water bodies, and there is no state program in place to monitor the overall quality of our groundwaters.

Rising program and fuel costs coupled with no new appropriations present even more challenges. Our appropriations remain stable, but the need for water-quality data and more informed decision-making only increases. We’re at the point where it’s not a question of how much water-quality information we need, but how much we are willing to invest in. Improving Oklahoma’s water quality has become a citizen priority and it must become a state priority as well.

Clearly, a balance has to be struck between the cost of water, its treatment and delivery, and the benefits of reducing impairments to Oklahoma’s water quality. This issue will be addressed when an interim legislative committee convenes later this year to study Oklahoma’s monitoring program. The OWRB and DEQ are making BUMP funding a co-agency priority during next year’s legislative session. The ongoing update of the Oklahoma Comprehensive Water Plan provides a separate opportunity to enhance our monitoring efforts. In the meantime, we want to reassure the public that its state agencies are working diligently together to improve the quality of our waters and the programs we use to manage them.

Smith is executive director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board. Thompson is executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.

By John Sutter

Couple of interesting articles on T. Boone Pickens. He’s got more on his plate than predicting oil prices and writing fat checks to Oklahoma State.

First, from Business Week, a story about his water rights purchases in Texas:

If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.

Then, from a WSJ blog, more on wind power debates in Congress. The “choicest remarks” in the debate came from Pickens, the blog reports. Pickens owns the world’s largest wind farm, located in the Texas Panhandle:

If we take the natural gas we’re using for electrical generation and move it to transportation, we can replace 38 percent of our foreign oil imports. And that, sports fans, is a real number. (Pickens)