Why start cleaning the Chesapeake Bay?

• Discovery of significant excess nutrient pollution

  • Excess nutrients led to large algae blooms and depleted oxygen levels

    • Depleted oxygen levels are called hypoxia and create “dead-zones”

  • Causes decline in aquatic life and overall health of the bay

  • Eutrophication: When a body of water acquires a high concentration of nutrients promoting excessive algae growth

  • Excess nutrients come from many sources

    • Runoff from agriculture

    • Rainwater runoff in urban areas

    • Soil erosion

    • Animal waste

    • Sewage

    • etc.

• There were decades of using common water resources as sewers, such as the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

• The concept of limiting resources suggests that among all aspects of an organism’s habitat, there is one resource needed for growth that is most important because it is most limited

  • Nitrogen and Phosphorus are possible limiting resources

  • When not in short supply, we get algae blooms

• Interactions between the Lithosphere and the Hydrosphere

  • Average of 10x as much soil erodes from American agriculture as is replaced.

  • Primary losses are surface soils, which contain most of the bio-available nutrients and minerals needed to sustain plant life

  • Subsoils less productive, less permeable, lower water-holding capacity (More prone to runoff)

• Sediment

  • The shallowing of water bodies from sedimentation is a natural process

  • When it happens too quickly, water temperatures dramatically increase

  • Higher temps grow more algae

  • Sediments can also carry nutrients

Chesapeake Bay Agreement (1983)

• Now called the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement

• Multistate agreement with the EPA

• Does many things

  • Establishment of Chesapeake Bay Executive Council

  • Chesapeake Bay Program

  • EPA Liasion

  • Revised with current updates many times

• Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act

  • First state to sign agreement and to enact state laws

  • Goals

    • Reduce nutrients

    • Protect areas with intrinsic water quality value

    • Require localities to establish local programs related to protection and improvement of the Chesapeake Bay

• Preservation Areas

  • Regulations followed in 1990, establishing the guidelines for stormwater management on development sites

  • Defined important resources (“intrinsic water quality value”) as Resource Protection Areas (RPA) and Resource Management Areas (RMA)

    • Tidal wetlands; Non-tidal wetlands connected by surface flow and contiguous to tidal wetlands or water bodies with perennial flow; Tidal shores

    • A buffer area not less than 100 feet in width located adjacent to and landward of the components listed above, and along both sides of any water body with perennial flow.

• Best Management Practices (BMPs)

  • For several decades, retention ponds have been the solution to stormwater

    • Blowout can occur from too much water and will cause tons of nutrients and sediment to be re-released into the system.

  • Adding 100ft buffer to perennial streams is a possible solution as well

    • Surface runoff

    • More water = faster water

    • Soil erosion

• There has not been much of a change in nutrient inputs

Chesapeake Bay Executive Order 13508

• Obama asked for more funding and goals into Chesapeake Bay programs

  • Established “Watershed Implementation Plans” and “Total Maximum Daily Loads”

• New types of BMPs - Softer engineering solutions for stormwater management

  • Regenerative step pool conveyance

  • Living shorelines

  • Low impact development

  • Grass-lined infiltration basin

• Clean up seems to be beginning to be more successful

In a watershed Water runs downhill and takes nutrients and solids through erosion

Water Pollution

• Water pollution: Contamination of water by human activities

  • About 80% of all industrial and domestic wastewater on a global level is released into water resources without prior treatment

  • Causes

    • Agriculture: Uses up to 70% of the world’s surface water

    • Industrial Waste: Makes water unfit for drinking, domestic use, and animal use

    • Chemical Runoff: Occurs when there is more water than land can absorb

    • Plastic Waste: Major contributor to global water crisis

    • Oil Spills: Oil spills from ships and tankers pollute the seawater and create a thick sludge

    • Deforestation: Exhaust water resources and create a breeding ground for bacteria

  • Bioaccumulation: Increase in concentration of a pollutant in an organism

  • Biomagnification: Increase in concentration of a pollutant in a food chain

    • Mercury increases up the food chain

  • Contaminants have occurred in the reproductive organs of some orcas

• EPA study from 2015 found no negative effects of fracking on drinking water

• Red tides: Excessive algae blooms that negatively impact other organisms

• Ocean Acidification

• Depletion of aquifers

Water Scarcity

• Global distribution of available water is very heterogeneous

• ⅓ of land surface is “dry lands”

• Adapting to this uneven distribution

  • Underground water supplies

  • Divert water

  • Impound surface water (dams)

• Problems causing water scarcity

  • Overuse

    • High water withdrawals in USA, China, India

    • USA has very high freshwater use per capita

    • USA does not have a very high renewable freshwater resources per capita

  • Pollution

    • Many of our water sources have excess nutrients caused by fertilzers and agricultural runoff

  • Access

    • The richest 20% almost always has very good access to water, while the bottom 20% does 

  • The US exports a lot of resources that have water in them or involved a lot of water use

Water Law and Water Wars in the American West

• Water like soil and other natural resources in the West has historically been developed under a distinctive legal regime that defies natural limitations on growth and conservation concerns

• Because of scarcity, water rights in the West are hotly contested among many compelling user groups, but compromise is possible

• Water conflicts often map on to social and cultural divisions that are expressed in arguments about which group is the most legitimate beneficiary of the resource

• Gifford Pinchot - “Conservation is the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time.”

John Powell traveled and explored the “Arid Regions of the United States” and wrote a report.

• Said that residents should be “grouped to the greatest extent possible”

• “The right to use water should inhere in the land to be irrigated, and water rights should go with land titles”

• Powell said that states should be bounded to create watersheds rather than creating square states.

Western Water Law

• The gold rush not only involved claiming gold, but also claiming water to get to the gold

Riparian Water Law

• Requires sharing of water by all landowners along a water course

• No landowner can substantially diminish the flow of water to other users

• Exporting water from the stream is prohibited or strongly discouraged

Prior Appropriation

• “First in time, first in right” (first user gets guaranteed supply in times of shortage

• No requirement to share water or conserve any stream - first claimant could even potentially use it all

• Users may divert and transport water far from source - even into a different watershed

• Upheld by California Supreme Court in Irwin vs. Phillips (1855)

• Soon adopted by other western states, sometimes in combination with riparian law to make a hybrid law system that recognizes riparian rights to “reasonable use” of some water by landowners

• Expanded and refined by subsequent laws and court decisions

  • Diversion necessary to obtain rights

  • Water must be put to a beneficial use (commercial and extractive, not in-stream uses)

  • States govern water rights

US v Winters (1908)

• “It was the policy of the government, it was the desire of the Indians, to change [their nomadic and uncivilized] habits and to become a pastoral and civilized people…”

• Tribal rights established as of the date that the federal government created a given reservation. Tribes almost always possess seniority rights to those of most other current users

• Tribal rights cannot be forfeited by non-use, unlike rights held under state law according to the principle of “prior appropriation”

• Although the scope of these rights is sometimes quantified as the amount of water necessary to support the practically irrigable acreage on a reservation, once quantified, tribal water can be used for non-agricultural purposes

• Tribal rights involve future needs, not just present reservation needs

Reclamation of the Deserts

• Improvement of Nature

• The National Reclamation (Newlands) Act of 1902 authorized the Secretary of the Interior to designate irrigation sites and to establish a reclamation fund from the sale of public lands to finance irrigation projects

• Construction/maintenance costs were to be repaid through land sales and water charges to farmers on these projects. There is now an indefinite time that the farmers have to repay the costs. Many farmers have not paid it back because they just don’t have the steady income to do so.

• By the 1920s, Reclamation Act had brought 9.2 million acres of land under cultivation in 17 western states

• According to one study done in the 1980s, about 86% of the costs for construction and maintenance had not been repaid

• In the American West, agriculture still uses around 86% of fresh water in the desert

Cities in the Desert

• By 1904, Los Angeles had a population of around 200,000 and needed a larger water supply to continue growing

• In 1905, William Mulholland and Los Angeles Mayor Fred Eaton began purchasing land and water rights in the Owens Valley, initially by leading sellers to believe that they were cattle ranchers or agents of the Bureau of Reclamation

• Los Angeles grew from this with Mulholland as a hero for replacing a failed agricultural region with a growing, successful city

Colorado River Compact (1922)

• Divided Colorado River into upper basin (CO, NM, UT, WY) and lower basin (AZ, CA, NV)

• Article III apportioned waters between Upper and Lower basins as follows

  • Both basins have perpetual right to “exclusive beneficial consumptive use” of 7.5 million acre-feet annually (15 million a-f total)

  • Lower Basin (with larger population) gets additional 1 million acre feet

  • Upper Basin cannot cause the river’s flow to fall below 75 million acre feet for any period of ten consecutive years

  • Upper basin states will not withhold water, and Lower Basin states will not demand water that cannot reasonably be applied to domestic and agricultural uses

  • Mexico would receive water pursuant to treaty, but only from surplus allocated to states; if surplus is insufficient, then Upper and Lower basins will share the burden of supplying Mexico’s apportionment (now 1.5 million a-f)

• EC LaRue’s Water Supply Paper 395 (1916) estimated the Colorado’s average annual flow from 1895 to 1915 to be 16.2 million acre-feet

• In 1934, the federal government began the Parker Dam construction project to divert Colorado River water to southern California. Arizona responded by mobilizing its National Guard and deploying the “Arizona Navy” (two ferry boats) to patrol the river.

• Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes was only able to resume construction after promising Arizona a federal irrigation project of its own

Water Pollution Policy

Pollution is a collective action problem

Top US water polluters are mostly chemical companies

Negative Externality

Cost incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost

Costs of Pollution

• Social costs to human health, environment

• Pollution is the largest environmental threat to human health

• Largest greenhouse gas polluters are large corporations

• Point sources of water pollution

  • Factories

  • Wastewater treatment plant

• Non-point sources of water pollution

  • Urban streets

  • Suburban development

  • Rural homes

  • Cropland

  • Animal feedlot

Clean Water Act (1972)

• Employs various regulatory and non-regulatory tools to sharply reduce direct pollutant discharges into waterways, establish ambient water quality standards, finance municipal wastewater treatment facilities.

• Regulates the discharge of pollutants into waters of the US

• Point Source: CWA made it illegal to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waterways without a permit

• Non-point source: CWA addressed pollutants from a non-point source through non regulatory means

• Total maximum daily load to keep a water body meeting quality standards

  • TMDL = Sum of wasteload allocations (point sources) + sum of load allocations (nonpoint sources) + margin of safety

Waters of the United States

• Traditionally navigable waterways

• Interstate waters

• Territorial seas

• Impoundments of water

• Tributary waters

• Adjacent waters

• Waters within the 100 year flood plain of traditional waterways, interstate waters, and territorial seas

• Waters within 4000 feet of high tide line or ordinary high water mark of traditional waterways, interstate waters, or territorial seas

• Redefined to “only those relatively permanent, standing, or continuously flowing”

Safe Drinking Water Act

• Established minimum standards to protect tap water and requires all owners of public water systems to comply with these primary standards

Solving Water Pollution Problems

• Precautionary Principle: if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that is not 

• Internalize costs 

Water is Life: Indigenous Opposition to Pipelines and Pumped Storage Projects

• Indigenous opposition to water/energy development projects must be understood in the broader context of Native American History and federal Indian policy - as sovereignty disputes and cultural issues as well as environmental problems. Climate change is a major concern but not the only concern.

• Historically, indigenous nations have disproportionately absorbed many of the negative externalities created by American economic and energy development

• Indigenous peoples can form, and have formed, coalitions with environmental groups and other local opponents of water/energy projects, but their interests are not necessarily identical. These coalitions are often fractious and ephemeral

• Green energy development and sustainability should be measured by cultural and social metrics as well as economic and environmental metrics. Environmental justice is an important measure of whether a project is truly green

• Water is power

Dakota Access Pipeline

• The Dakota Access Pipeline was planned to go through Indigenous lands.

• Many Indigenous people fought back in an attempt to prevent the pipeline from successfully being installed

• They were worried about oil leaks getting into their waterways.

Lakota Indigenous People

• Treaty of Fort Laramie established the Great Sioux Reservation encompassing the western half of South Dakota including black hills

• Discovery of gold in the Black Hills caused pressure to cede additional lands in 1876 treaty

• Land cessions in 1889 splintered reservation even farther

• Lakotas fought against the US, lost

Pick Sloan Plan - built dams on Reservations for…

• Flood Control

• Navigation

• Irrigation

• Power Supply

• Water Supply

• Water Quality

• Recreation

• Fish and Wildlife

Oahe Dam

• Flooded more than 160000 acres of tribal land and destroyed 90% of timberland on the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux reservations, as well as the best rangeland, most cultivated areas, and the wild plant and game habitat

• Aggravated poverty on reservations

• DAPL went under Lake Oahe, so permit from Army Corps of Engineers necessary

Standing Rock

• Protests against pipeline

• Police brutality as a result of the protests

Sacred Foods of the Waasat Religion

• Water, Salmon, Berries, Roots, Deer

• Longhouse feasts begin and end with an invocation of Chuush followed by a sip of water because water is life

Many dams flooded Indigenous fisheries and village sites in the Columbia-Snake Basin and blocked upriver fish passage entirely

Pumped storage projects allow the banking of electricity generated by dams, windmills, and solar farms to supplement the grid when renewables cannot meet demand. Basically they are large batteries

Pushpum: Sacred site for Yakama Nation Ceremonies, Legends, and gathering of traditional roots and medicines

FERC…

1. Failed to consult with Yakama Nation

2. Failed to protect sensitive cultural information

3. Failed to assess alternatives (ie. locations)

4. Ignored the development’s large consumption of Columbia River water and impacts to fish, wildlife, streams, and wetlands

Look for the positives and recognize, celebrate, and build on incremental progress and accomplishments

• We must value, protect, and manage what we have while also committing to resolve the problems

• The rivers no longer burn

• 76% of wastewater received some level of treatment (42% of population)

• 60% of total wastewater safely treated (12% of population)

• Reporting on Industrial Wastewater

  • Only 38% was treated

  • Only 27% was safely treated

• Reporting on Household Wastewater

  • 42% not safely treated before discharge

  • We now treat water in newer treatment systems instead of leaving it untreated in outhouses

  • Legal requirements, technological developments, incentives

• Flint Water Crisis

  • Many people worked for a resolution

  • Government eventually stepped in to help

Access to water

• We can recharge aquifers by understanding how water filters through soils

• We can recharge aquifers also by using injection wells that add water back to the groundwater when not needed and pulling it out when needed.

• Desalinization techniques allow access to ocean water as freshwater

• Klamath River Dam

  • Used solely for power generation, not agriculture

  • Removal does not affect water rights

  • Provided electricity to 70000 households when active

  • Removal allows fish, allowing water quality

  • Original reservoirs provided recreation and tax revenue