But what about Delhi's non-industrial users of Tehri Dam's water? UPDATED 2X

Tehri Dam, India: Engineering Marvel   

"The Tehri Dam and the Tehri Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Power Plant are part of the Tehri Hydropower Complex which also includes the 400 MW Koteshwar Dam.^[1] Power is distributed to Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The complex will afford irrigation to an area of 270,000 hectares (670,000 acres), irrigation stabilization to an area of 600,000 hectares (1,500,000 acres), and a supply of 270 million imperial gallons (1.2×10⁶ m³) of drinking water per day to the industrialized areas of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand."  (Wikipedia)

This post isn't to pick on the Tehri Dam, one of the tallest and most controversial dams in the world -- although it's probably a little less controversial since its starring role in 2013 in preventing the destruction of Rishikesh and Haridwar. 
****
UPDATE: This wouldn't preclude the possibility that the Tehri Dam or diversion of rivers for other other dams elsewhere in India somehow caused the unprecedented flooding that almost wiped out those two very significant hill towns. But as the public record stands now the Tehri Dam was the saving grace.        
****
The dam is truly a man-made wonder, as it's been called.  But dams weren't conceived to deal with the ways of humans, who quite naturally will take advantage of improvements in water supply and electricity that dams provide.  This leads to consequences that today are all too painfully evident.

The following report, published on the Future World Project website, doesn't have a byline and is undated but so little information is published in the mainstream press (at least in English) about the situation it addresses I'm not going to complain. My guess is that it was written no earlier than 2011.  In any case the issues it addresses are ongoing -- and by no means limited in India to the city of Delhi.  They're not limited to India, either.

All over the world -- even here in Washington, DC -- the same basic pattern has been in effect for many years; in fact, it's one of the characteristics of the modern era.  Large numbers of people seeking employment and a better life to converge on a city that wasn't constructed to deal with the influx, and which to one degree or another doesn't have the water resources to keep supporting continuing spikes in the population.

Thus evolves a complex political game that's sort of a cross between Musical Chairs and Robbing Peter to Pay Paul.  This game launches all kinds of very expensive schemes for bringing more water to the city.  But as the water situation improves from the construction of a new dam or the diversion of a river, etc., even more people -- and industry -- converge on the city, putting great stress on the new water delivery system, and so it goes.

Meanwhile, the water table in the region keeps falling.

Of course the key difference between, say, Washington, DC and Delhi is that the climate on the mid-Atlantic seaboard can, for the foreseeable future, keep the game going in the District, whereas Delhi is always just a few droughts away from disaster.

A reasonable person might ask why governments in the most water stressed regions of the world don't try to limit the massive migrations.  It's the question of the hour, the year, and indeed it will shape much of our era going forward.  The biggest development banks, international aid organizations, and various United Nations agencies already get it; they realize the game can't continue.

As you saw from the Inter Press Service report I published on Brazil's water crisis, the Brazilian government has at least one initiative to encourage residents of the nation's largest city to return to their home regions. However comma this is a way of life, and a way of governing, under discussion.

The megacities have taken on vast power that is not so easy to challenge, let alone dismantle. And while it sounds good on paper to return people to their home regions in say, India, many Indians can't go home because they were bought or tricked out of their land or forcibly displaced by industries and government officials that the industries work with.  The same for peoples in many countries.

So, Arvind Kejriwal's "Swaraj," which is about restoring real governing power at the village level in India, is beginning to look not only practical but also necessary.  And Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadej's New Theory, the forerunner of his "Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy," which 40 years ago seemed completely out of tune with the modern era, could well become part of the vanguard of best practices for protecting the poorest in the world's rural areas from the worst economic dislocations of modernity.  

The basic ideas of both King Bhumibol and Arvind Kejriwal can be adapted for urban environments but there must initiatives to encourage rural peoples to stay in place and again,  this is already understood at the largest economic development institutions.  Change is in the air -- or at least the realization is in the air that major adjustments must happen, but it's not here yet in any appreciable measure.  Here is what is here now:      

Delhi's water shortages
by Future World Project

"I am very tired of telling poor people to save water, when it is mainly the rich that should."

Outside one of the most luxurious residences in Delhi's embassy district, an elderly man waters the dusty driveway. A short rickshaw journey and people are fighting to get enough drinking water. It is 45 degrees Celsius.

Every day, water has to be delivered to the people living in the outer parts of Delhi. Millions living in these slums don't have access to water and sanitation services as the groundwater table is depleted.

"These areas have been populated 20-25 years. There has never been enough water here, but the water shortage is a growing problem," says Kamal Gupta who works for the local organisation FORCE, supported by Water Aid.

Every year around 350,000 people arrive in Delhi from other parts of India in hope for a better future, some forced from there land as crops fail.

Fast pace population growth, combined with a warmer climate and severe drought has led to widespread water shortages in India’s capital. "They blame it on us, we are already starving," says Rajesh Kumar, who came to Delhi from the impoverished neighbouring state Uttar Pradesh 20 years ago. If they counted water per head it would be fairer." 

He shows us around his home district, the Dalit Ekta Camp located in south Delhi. Outside Rajesh Kumar's house stand several empty jerry cans.

"We are totally dependent on the water trucks. For the last five years the well has been empty. Previously there was water for two months of the year from rainfall at least," he says. 

Outside one of the tattered houses we meet another resident. Sonia Devi. She lives here with her husband and four children in a ten square metre room with no toilet.

"The biggest problem is sanitation and hygiene; there is not enough water to keep ourselves clean. We have to walk kilometres just to go to the bathroom sometimes. It is like being mentally harassed," she says.

30 percent of Delhi's population lives in slums. Technically many of these settlements are illegal, therefore there is no investment into facilities. Self appointed Cluster leaders take advantage of their illegal status by dominating the water supply and making profit from other peoples plight. We leave Sonia Devi and Rajesh Kumar and take a rickshaw to Israel Camp, another rural cluster in south Delhi. 

Here the cluster ‘big boss’ man known as Pradhan has made water shortage a source of income for himself. "We are forced to pay 150 rupees (about 2,6 euros) to fill water for 20 minutes. People are afraid to speak up as the land is owned by the Forest department who are friends with Pradhan," adds a woman unwilling to say her surname for fear of repercussions. 

The organisation FORCE works with water related issues in Delhi and has problems helping the people in Israel Camp due to this absurd situation. "We recently put up 40 restrooms just outside the area to improve the sanitation situation, but there are many cases like Pradhan" says Krishna Kumar Tiwari who works for FORCE.

We head north to the slums on the other side of the city. A gruelling hour-long rickshaw journey in 45 degrees Celsius keeps water on the mind. "See these children's faces," says Jasvinder Kaur as she grabs a small child. The girl's face is full of black reddening bumps that look like her face is bubbling with a severe black acne. "They have been playing with the contaminated water from the taps in the street."

Jasvinder Kaur works for FORCE in Delhi and travels to different slum areas each day. We meet her in Shiva Nand cluster where every person is allowed 20 litres of water per day. "It is not enough, so many pump up severely polluted water from the river.”

Since FORCE placed water silos in the area the chaos around water supplies has calmed a little.

"Earlier there was often panic because they were afraid they wouldn't get enough," says Jasvinder. Shiva Nand is one of the better examples of dealing with a worsening situation in Delhi.

Recently FORCE and the local community installed a water collection system in the grounds of a nearby school.

"Wealthier people waste water. They have swimming pools, air coolers and flush their toilets. Water is essential to all human survival. I am very tired of telling poor people to save water, when it is mainly the rich that should," says Jasvinder Kaur.

[END REPORT]

********

Latest on Brazil's water shortage drama has lessons on managing drought response anywhere

I've omitted several passages from the following March 10 report by Inter Press Service (Brazil – from the Droughts of the Northeast to São Paulo’s Thirst) so I'd suggest reading the article in its entirety.  I wanted to focus on a few situations brought out by the report that I think represent important lessons for other drought-stricken regions in the world.  

First lesson;  Don't manipulate water statistics and use other sneaky tactics in the effort to downplay the extent of a water shortage because these fool no one and only increase the public contempt for governing authorities.  

Second lesson:  Officials in a major city shouldn't wait until a drought intensifies before encouraging residents to return to their home regions if at all possible. 

Third lesson: Don't depend on governments to take the lead in water conservation measures for individual households.  The conservation initiative discussed in the report (Movimento Cisterna Já)  is citizen-led.   (The organization's website is in Spanish but is translated into English reasonably well by Google.)  Note the simplicity of the tactics, which were adapted from rural populations with a long history of surviving droughts. 

If you read the entire report you'll learn that Brazil's government poured a lot of effort and money into developing a northeastern region in the country that suffers from perennial water stress. The development made it feasible for a number of São Paulo residents originally from the region to return there when drought struck the megacity. 

Two questions not addressed by the report: 

1. Whether the reverse migration is happening in large enough numbers to take measurable pressure off the city's terribly strained water sources and,

2. Whether the return of large numbers of city residents to the northeast would quickly overwhelm the rural region's still fragile resources.  

But I suppose it's too early for Inter Press to gather such data.        

Brazil – from the Droughts of the Northeast to São Paulo’s Thirst

By Mario Osava 
Tierramérica

SÃO PAULO , Mar 10 2015 (IPS) - Six million people in Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, may at some point find themselves without water. The February rains did not ward off the risk and could even aggravate it by postponing rationing measures which hydrologists have been demanding for the last six months.

The threat is especially frightening for millions of people who have flocked here from Brazil’s poorest region, the semi-arid Northeast, many of whom fled the droughts that are so frequent there.

The Nordestinos did not imagine that they would face a scarcity of water in this land of abundance, where most of them have prospered. The most famous of them, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, became a trade union leader and eventually president of the country from 2003 to 2011.

“Our water tank holds 4,500 litres, which lasts us two days,” Luciano de Almeida, the owner of the restaurant Nación Nordestina, which serves 8,000 customers a month, told Tierramérica. “I’m looking for a place to put another tank so I’ll have 10,000 litres, negotiating with neighbours, since my roof might not support the weight.”

Many people in this city of 22 million people share his concern about storing more water, especially in the Zona Norte or northern zone of Greater São Paulo, which will be the first area affected by rationing if the state government decides to take measures aimed at guaranteeing water supplies year-round.

The Zona Norte is supplied by the Cantareira system of interconnecting reservoirs which, on the verge of collapse, is still providing water for six million people. It supplied nine million people up to mid-2014, when one-third of the demand was transferred to the other eight systems that provide water in the city.

[...]

But, he complained, the state government and its water company, Sabesp, prefer “to generate confusion” by reporting that on Feb. 23 the water level in the Cantareira system reached 10.5 percent, double the late January level – while failing to clarify that they were referring to the “dead” or inactive storage water in the Cantareira system below the intake point, the water that cannot be drained from a reservoir by gravity and can only be pumped out.

The company has been using this storage water since July 2014.

Using the intake point as the reference, the level is minus 18.5 percent – far below the 12.3 percent of April 2014.

The water crisis is the result of two years of drought in southeast Brazil. Exceptional rainfall would be needed in the rest of March in order to store up water for the six-month dry season. But because that is unlikely, experts in hydrology are calling for immediate rationing to avoid a total collapse.

Sabesp has imposed undeclared rationing by reducing the water pressure in the pipes, which leads to an interruption in supply in many areas during certain parts of the day. The company also fines those who increase consumption and offers discounts to those who reduce it.
[...]
In its attempt to avoid the political costs of rationing, the state government decided to use water from the Billings reservoir to meet demand. According to [Delcio Rodrigues of the Water Alliance], this is “appalling” because that water is heavily polluted, with mercury, for example, which poses a serious health risk.

But because of the crisis, reforestation has been stepped up in the water basins. That is necessary for the Cantareira system, where only 20 percent of the original vegetation still survives, Whately said. Forests improve water production and retention and curb erosion, but it is a long-term solution, and cannot resolve the current emergency, she added.

[...]
And the rural population, the hardest-hit by drought, has learned to live with the semi-arid climate in the Northeast, collecting rainwater in tanks, for drinking, household use and irrigation of their small-scale crops. This social technology has now been adapted by the Movimento Cisterna Já, a São Paulo organisation, to help people weather the water crisis here.
[...]
Meanwhile, the Alliance for Water, a network of 46 social and environmental organisations from the state of São Paulo, is lobbying the state government and mobilising society with the aim of “building water security” in the city.

The February rains, which were heavier than average, helped the Cantareira system’s reservoirs recover some of their capacity. But the situation is still “extremely serious,” Marussia Whately, the head of the Alliance, told Tierramérica.

“This requires an all-out effort, especially to relieve the suffering of the poor outlying neighbourhoods, which do not have water tanks and can’t store up water for the hours or days without supply,” said Delcio Rodrigues, an activist with the group and the vice president of the Vitae Civilis Institute, which focuses on climate change.
[...]

This article was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

[END REPORT]

********

Boom and Bust cycle of drought and floods, or what Pakistan and Brazil have in common

"Clearing forests raises temperatures locally and dries out the edges, making them more likely to burn."

"Dams built to generate electricity in the Amazon also can increase flooding."

Quirky Winds Fuel Brazil's Devastating Drought, Amazon's Flooding
Boom-and-bust water phenomenon could become a new normal in South America, scientists say.
By Barbara Fraser for National Geographic
PUBLISHED February 27, 2015

In São Paulo, Brazil, which is suffering its worst drought in almost a century, Maria de Fátima dos Santos has lived for days at a time with no water, relying on what she had carefully hoarded in bottles.

But in the Bolivian Amazon, about 1,800 miles (2,897 kilometers) away, Nicolás Cartagena recalls the day almost a year ago when floodwaters rose to the thatched rooftops of Indian communities, destroying crops and washing away homes.

The drought in South America's biggest city and the flooding in the Amazon are being triggered by the same wind-driven weather phenomenon that scientists say is probably a harbinger for more extreme water shortages and flooding across the continent.

No one fully understands this boom-and-bust cycle, but meteorologist José Marengo says it has been triggered by a sprawling high-pressure system that settled stubbornly over southeastern Brazil. That region is usually at the end of a long loop of moisture-bearing trade winds. Last year, however, this system went awry.

[see the National Geographic website for a graphic of the trade winds system]

The loop starts in the Atlantic Ocean, where the winds carry moisture westward over the Amazon. Some falls as rain, but as the air passes, it also absorbs moisture from trees. When these "flying rivers" hit the Andes, they swing south, showering rain over crops and cities in eastern Bolivia and southeastern Brazil.

Beginning a year ago, however, a phenomenon called "atmospheric blocking" transformed that wind pattern. Marengo, a senior scientist at the Brazilian National Center for Early Warning and Monitoring of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), likens this to a giant bubble that deflected the moisture-laden air, which instead dumped about twice the usual amount of rain over the state of Acre, in western Brazil, and the Bolivian Amazon, where Cartagena lives.

At the same time, cold fronts from the south, which cause precipitation over São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, were shunted aside, and as the system lingered, the drought took hold, Marengo said in an interview.

Such prolonged events may be unusual, but they are not unheard of. A similar phenomenon five years ago led to devastating floods in Pakistan that killed at least 1,700 people and a scorching heat wave and wildfires in Russia that killed an estimated 15,000.

More recently, California's drought was triggered by a similar high-pressure system that developed in 2011 and has persisted, with help from weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists aren't sure what caused the atmospheric blocking to linger over southeastern Brazil. Although this episode of flooding and drought is attributed to an isolated weather pattern, rather than climate change, "it could be a sign of what lies ahead if temperatures continue to rise as projected," Marengo said.

Constant Boom and Bust

People living along the Amazon and its tributaries have adapted to a constant aquatic boom and bust, with water rising as much as 30 or 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) to lap at the floorboards of their stilt-raised houses early in a typical year, and then receding every May or June until the rains begin again toward the end of the year.

That cycle becomes more dramatic when various natural forces—such as El Niño and altered sea-surface temperatures—combine to trigger severe drought and flooding.

Scientists in the Amazon say human activities, such as large-scale deforestation, could be exacerbating these wild swings in moisture, making them more frequent and extreme.

"To the extent that humans are altering the landscape and making droughts worse, it can affect the whole region," said Michael Coe, a senior scientist and leader of the Amazon program at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, who studies land-use change and water cycles in Brazil.

Clearing forests raises temperatures locally and dries out the edges, making them more likely to burn. With heavy rains, runoff from deforested areas increases the hazard of flash flooding or landslides that destroy roads and bury homes. Runoff can also choke a river with sediment, narrowing the channel and making it more prone to flooding.

Dams built to generate electricity in the Amazon also can increase flooding. Last year's heavy rains in western Brazil inundated a section of a highway, cutting Rio Branco off from the rest of the country. That flooding was aggravated by dams on the Madeira River, said Philip Fearnside, research professor at Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus.

In Bolivia, the Beni River rose suddenly, swamping houses and cassava crops inTacana Indian communities. More than 50 people died along Bolivia's Amazonian waterways and more than 150,000 people lost homes, animals, and other property.

"We went hungry, because we couldn't work and families had no money," Cartagena recalls.

Brazil's Biggest City Dries Up

Meanwhile, in São Paulo, the drought has nearly depleted the biggest reservoir in this city, the bustling economic center of Brazil.

The water shortages have been building for a year, and critics say the government was slow to respond.

[...]

********

My apology to readers whose comments from weeks ago are just being published

Technical difficulties.  Thanks to all for the comments and good wishes.

Best regards,
Pundita

********

Flying Rivers and Forest Fires

If I recall it was the Guardian that broke the news worldwide about flying rivers, a topic previously known to a relative handful of climate scientists and governments that had been listening with half an ear -- until the flying rivers of the Amazon failed to make an appearance last year as drought closed in on Brazil's largest city.  Here is the entire report. The emphasisi throughout is mine.  

Drought bites as Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ dry up
By Jan Rocha
The Guardian Climate Change Network
Monday, September 15, 2014 at 7:52 EDT

The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil.

Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of rain that has dried up rivers and reservoirs in central and southeast Brazil is not just a quirk of nature, but a change brought about by a combination of the continuing deforestation of the Amazon and global warming.

This combination, they say, is reducing the role of the Amazon rainforest as a giant “water pump”, releasing billions of litres of humidity from the trees into the air in the form of vapour.

Meteorologist Jose Marengo, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, first coined the phrase “flying rivers” to describe these massive volumes of vapour that rise from the rainforest, travel west, and then − blocked by the Andes − turn south.

Satellite images from the Centre for Weather Forecasts and Climate Research of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) clearly show that, during January and February this year, the flying rivers failed to arrive, unlike the previous five years.

Deforestation all over Brazil has reached alarming proportions: 22% of the Amazon rainforest (an area larger than Portugal, Italy and Germany combined), 47% of the Cerrado in central Brazil, and 91.5% of the Atlantic forest that used to cover the entire length of the coastal area.

Latest figures from Deter, the real time deforestation detection system based on high frequency satellite images used by INPE, show that, after falling for two years, Amazon deforestation rose again by 10% between August 2013 and July 2014. The forest is being cleared for logging and farming.

Tocantins, Pará and Mato Grosso, three states in the Greater Amazon region that have suffered massive deforestation, are all registering higher average temperatures.

As long ago as 2009, Antonio Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading climate scientists, warned that, without the “flying rivers”, the area that produces 70% of South America’s GNP would be desert.

In an interview with the journal Valor Economica, he said: “Destroying the Amazon to advance the agricultural frontier is like shooting yourself in the foot. The Amazon is a gigantic hydrological pump that brings the humidity of the Atlantic Ocean into the continent and guarantees the irrigation of the region.”

“Of course, we need agriculture,” he said. “But without trees there would be no water, and without water there is no food.

“A tonne of soy takes several tonnes of water to produce. When we export soy we are exporting fresh water to countries that don’t have this rain and can’t produce. It is the same with cotton, with ethanol. Water is the main agricultural input. If it weren’t, the Sahara would be green, because it has extremely fertile soil.”

Like other climate scientists, Nobre thinks the role of the Amazon rainforest in producing rain has been underestimated. In a single day, the Amazon region evaporates 20bn tonnes of vapour − more than the 17m tonnes of water that the Amazon river discharges each day into the Atlantic.

“A big tree with a crown 20 metres across evaporates up to 300 litres a day, whereas one square metre of ocean evaporates exactly one square metre,” he said. “One square metre of forest can contain eight or 10 metres of leaves, so it evaporates eight or 10 times more than the ocean. This flying river, which rises into the atmosphere in the form of vapour, is bigger than the biggest river on the Earth.”

The fear is that if the Amazon rainforest continues to be depleted at the present rate, events like the unprecedented drought of 2010 will occur more often. The fires set by farmers to clear areas for planting or for cattle-raising make it more vulnerable.

Nobre explained: “The smoke from forest fires introduces too many particles into the atmosphere, dries the clouds, and they don’t rain. During the dry period, of the fires, the forest always maintained a little rain that left it humid and non-flammable, but now two months go by without rain, the forest gets very dry, and the fire gets into it. Amazon trees, unlike those of the Cerrado, have no resistance to fire.”

Nobre’s warning in 2009 was that if deforestation did not stop, there would be a catastrophe in five or six years time. Five years on, his words are now proving to be prophetic as São Paulo and all Brazil’s centre and southeast suffer their worst ever drought, with devastating effects on agriculture, energy and domestic water supplies.
[END REPORT]

It's possible the Amazon's flying rivers will return in another year or so, and from a National Geographic article later in 2014, or maybe this year, the Amazon forest isn't the only one that generates giant water vapor trails; it's just that the Amazon ones seem to be the largest although don't quote me on this; I still haven't read the entire NatGeo report and I've temporarily misplaced the link.

I do recall the report noting that now that scientists are learning more about these rivers in the sky they're trying to see how human populations can take best advantage of them when they put in an appearance overhead.

But as soon as the Guardian report was published, worry worts asked whether California's extraordinary drought, at least in parts of the state, might be connected with the absence of the Amazon's flying rivers. I don't know what became of that worry. I do know that flying rivers were the superstar of a big international conference some months back in Latin America. So the issue has stayed in the news enough to make a deep impression on government officials the world over.

********

The time Tony Cartalucci caught the State Dept. with its hands in the cookie jar

Speaking of Tony Cartalucci, as I did in the previous post, this is a funny story -- well, there's nothing in the actual situation to laugh at but Tony's dogged attempt to talk sense into the world's idealistic youth does have a humorous aspect. By the way I don't agree with every "geopolitical" analysis Tony has published; I don't agree with any analyst all the time.  Moving along, back in February 2011, Tony pointed out in print that the Establishment had palmed an ace on the world's youthful poker players.

This happened in 2008 when an American nonprofit organization called the Alliance of Youth Movements was launched.  It was billed as a place where the world's 'youth movement' organizers could meet and greet and exchange ideas on how to up-end or at least reform the Establishment. The organizers included those with Egypt's April 6 Movement, which eventually organized the Tahrir Square protests against Hosni Mubarak.

Tony warned that any organization's inaugural conference that was attended by "State Department staff, Council on Foreign Relations members, former National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and representatives from American corporations and mass media organizations including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV" was probably not the best place for the world's youth to air their grievances against the Establishment.

 
For some unknown reason the Alliance of Youth Movements was quietly folded into another nonprofit not long after Tony sounded the alarm. However, this came too late for the April 6 organizers, who had to learn the hard way that they'd been useful idiots in a ploy by Egyptian army brass to get control of the Muslim Brotherhood.  

As to the youthful participants in the seemingly spontaneous Occupy Wall Street Movement -- the ones who'd staunchly supported Egypt's April 6 Movement and the Tahrir Square protests led by the April 6ers:  either they refused to heed Tony's warning or never got the memo.  Either way they ended up, probably for the rest of their lives, on U.S. government lists of possible terrorists and insurrectionists.  

Eventually, after it was too late, word surfaced on the Internet that the ad put out by the people who first called for the occupation of Wall Street had cost big bucks, and that the bucks had been provided by George Soros.

For another unknown reason George is characterized by the American media as a Leftist.  That's no Leftist. That's a Demolition Man -- one of several the U.S. Department State and various other U.S. agencies have called on since the Cold War days whenever they're trying to balkanize a country, bring down a government, or take down a foreign currency by several pegs.   

That's why I think the LaRouche PAC's old claim that George's hedge fund has laundered money for narco-traffickers is twaddle.  If the fund has ever laundered money for that purpose, I'd assume it would be for a Washington-sanctioned destabilization initiative.

All right; that's enough of a stroll down memory lane.  Back to the water crisis. Groan. C'mon, Pundita. Be here now. 

5:15 PM Update
Now that I've mentioned Tony Cartalucci twice in one day and plan to mention him soon again, I should warn readers who aren't familiar with his writings that in 2011 someone stole his identity on the internet. This was clearly done with the express purpose of using his name to promote a false view of the situation in Thailand. Tony had to threaten to sue the person to get him to back off, and he alerted the website administrator who'd been caught napping.  Here are the details.  

Tony's muckraking reports have been a lightning rod for controversy and he's been targeted by what I'd consider to be disinformation campaigns.  All's fair when it comes to geopolitical analysis that gets picked up by anti-American press outlets.  But he's much more than a muckraker in my view, and he's not anti-American.  More later.     

********

    

Washington, keep your paws off indigenous pro-democracy initiatives

I knew there was something hinky about the "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong.  I'd gotten to the point during the past 15 years where I'm like a veteran vice squad cop who watches out for pickpocket gangs at airports. After a while I'd developed a sixth sense.   

So I took one look at those protests in Hong Kong and said, "I'll bet the farm the usual suspects are involved," but as there was nothing to be done if I was right I let it go. Then this morning I stumbled across one of Tony Cartalucci's muckraking reports and sure enough, the same cast of characters that crapped up democracy initiatives in Burma, Iran, and Egypt and was pussyfooting around in Thailand had been busy at work in Hong Kong.

I'm so ticked off at this moment  it's interfering with my schedule. All I can do is fume.  Did I not warn?  Did I not warn on the very first day of this blog that Washington had to stop fielding phony democracy movements?  That it had to retire the Cold War tactics used to install U.S. puppet governments under the guise of the People's Will in action?  

Did I not explain all the way back in 2004 that whatever utility the tactics had at one time was by then counterproductive?  Did I not elaborate on this point repeatedly over the years on this blog?  Did I not explain that by this era every authoritarian government in the world had memorized all the tactics and could spot them from a mile off?  

So I have a question for the great American promoters of democracy in China:  Are you happy now that you've completely messed up Hong Kong's bid for greater autonomy?  

According to Tony, at least from my reading of the HK report and his reports last year about Thailand, it's not so much the defense crowd anymore that's now running these phony democracy initiatives as the rent-seeking crowd.  If so, then it would be extremely hard for official Washington -- Congress, White House Administration, and defense community  -- to put a lid on the machinations.  

There's also the fact that rent-seekers are now out of control the world over, as I think I mentioned recently. 

What could be done is shut down phony ngos -- the gongos -- orchestrated by the U.S. Congress and State Department, and which are infamous for meddling in homegrown pro-democracy initiatives. 

And the White House could at least try to talk reason to London and Brussels about the wisdom of continuing financial support to European and British versions of the meddling U.S. gongos.

All these players, and especially their military brass, need to recognize that in Egypt the chickens finally came home to roost. The Egyptian military not only ordered the arrest of some of these American meddlers but also threw the American gongos out of the country, at least until they got control over them. 

That's not an anomaly. That's a trend. Egypt was just the most spectacular example of the trend to date.

Then the American public wonders why so many people in other countries have turned against the USA.     

[flipping a pen in the air]  

All right, Pundita, this isn't making you feel any better. Back to the water crisis.  Idiots. Do you realize that because I live in Washington it means I live surrounded by idiots? How you would you like it if you had to live that way?. All right, enough. Enough.  Have some chocolate and shut up.

********

Electricity's Giant Water Footprint and other fun factoids about the Era of Water Scarcity

A nonprofit organization with the cheery name "FEW Resorces" pulled together a big listing of water facts on its website --  more facts than you want to know if you're trying to enjoy your day -- and several good sources about water usage.  The good news is that the information is well organized and accompanied by all kinds of maps, charts, etc.  

Might as well bone up so you can say you already know when someone asks, 'My God, did you know -- ?'

Here, to get the ball rolling, three passages from FEW's Water Scarcity Issues: We're Running Out of Water :  

The use of fertilizers and pesticides that has been largely responsible for the massive increase in yield per acre since WWII, but it requires far more water per acre than traditional forms of agriculture.[...] "One recent study suggests that in some places energy production may be overtaking agriculture as the primary user of water. Burning Our Rivers: The Water Footprint of Electricity, a 2012 report by River Network attempts to summarize what is known about the water footprint of various modes of electrical power production. 

Here are some of their findings in the US setting. One striking conclusion is that in the US "electricity production by coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants is the fastest-growing use of freshwater in the U.S., accounting for more than about ½ of all fresh, surface water withdrawals from rivers and lakes. This is more than any other economic sector, including agriculture."[...]One of the more frequently cited statistics in discussions of water availability is the fact that only around 2.5% of the Earth's water is freshwater. The overwhelming amount of water is saline or salt water, mostly found in the oceans. 

Of the 2.5% of freshwater available for the support of human life, agriculture, and most forms of non-ocean life, 30.1% is groundwater. Groundwater is the water stored deep beneath the Earth's surface in underground aquifers. Another 68.6% of all freshwater is stored in glaciers and polar caps. That leaves only 1.3% of the total freshwater on Earth in surface water sources such as lakes, rivers, and streams. But it is surface water humans and other species rely upon for their biological needs. 

Even the bulk of surface water on Earth is found in snow and ice - approximately 73.1%. Surface water found in lakes, rivers and streams accounts for just over another 20%.[...]

********

Brazil Drought: Fighting over puddles, drilling for water in basements

2015: Financial Times, March 3:  Sao Paulo residents drill under  homes as drought cripples city 

2014: "The standoff in a nation with more water resources than any other country in the world portends further conflicts ..."

Water War Amid Brazil Drought Leads to Fight Over Puddles 

by David Biller and Vanessa Dezem Baida

Bloomberg BusinessNovember 25, 2014

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Jaguari reservoir has fallen to its lowest level ever, laying bare measurement posts that jut from exposed earth like a line of dominoes. The nation’s two biggest cities are fighting for what little water is left.

Sao Paulo state leaders want to tap Jaguari, which feeds Rio de Janeiro’s main source. Rio state officials say they shouldn’t suffer for others’ mismanagement. Supreme Court judges have summoned the parties to Brasilia for a mediation session this week.

The standoff in a nation with more water resources than any other country in the world portends further conflicts as the planet grows increasingly urban. One in three of the world’s 100 biggest cities is under water stress, according to The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

“It’s unusual in that it’s two very large cities facing what could be a new, permanent conflict over the allocation of water,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a research organization in Oakland, California. “It’s a wake-up call that even places we think of as water-rich have to learn to do a better job of managing what’s ultimately a scarce resource. Nature doesn’t always cooperate with us.”

While Rio has so far remained mostly unaffected by the country’s worst drought in eight decades, that’s not the case for its neighbor to the south. More than half the Paulistas in a Datafolha poll last month said they had been without water at least once in the previous 30 days.

Resisting Restrictions

Even so, Sao Paulo has resisted restrictions that states like California have enforced, including prohibiting restaurants from serving water except when asked and allowing homeowners to water lawns only on specified days.

Walk around Sao Paulo’s main financial district and it’s common to see shop owners hosing sidewalks and vehicles waiting at car washes. In other parts of the city and state served by different reservoirs that are all but used up, water has already been cut off for days at a time.

[...]
[END Bloomberg report]

Northeast Colombia Drought 2014

After riots, a severely drought-stricken region in Columbia got food and water aid, government promises and, of course, two new wells for a "popular Caribbean tourist city long affected by drought and lack of potable water." For many years it was a major commercial marijuana growing area and major transhipment point for marjiuana smuggled into the USA. It's just that nobodyexplained to the Indians growing the crop that large scale marijuana cultivation on a peninsula is slow suicide. Now the Indians know.  

http://colombiareports.co/colombia-unveils-two-new-wells-drought-striken-north/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28754687

http://colombiareports.co/relief-comes-525-starving-children-drought-stricken-northeast-colombia/

********

Prolonged Severe Drought Across Central America Created Food Crisis Last Year

Bad droughts have struck the region before but as the decades roll along the population, both human and livestock, grow by leaps and bounds while the water supply shrinks faster and faster and industry and agriculture make bigger and bigger demands on water. Same story of course all over the world, but we're seeing a convergence of water shortage-fueled disasters.....

2014: "While In El Salvador crops have been lost in two-thirds of the country"

Dought Hits Food Supplies Across Central America
Associated Press via ABC News
August 21, 2014

Central America is having one of its worst droughts in decades, and experts warned Thursday that major farm losses and the deaths of hundreds of cattle in the region could leave hundreds of thousands of families without food.

The agricultural losses are largely in corn and beans, basic staples of the region's diet, the United Nations' World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint statement.

"The impact of the prolonged heat wave is having on nutrition and food security in parts of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua is very worrisome," the agencies said.

The food agencies said the situation needs to be addressed immediately or what is already a food crisis could worsen in the coming months.

In Guatemala, about 170,000 families lost almost all of their crops, while in El Salvador crops have completely been lost in two-thirds of the country.

In Nicaragua, where the drought has killed more than 2,500 cattle and left 600,000 people in a state of malnutrition, the government is asking international food agencies to help it feed 100,000 families in parched areas.

Nicaragua's Institute of Territorial Studies says it is the worst drought since 1976. Prices for corn and beans have quadrupled since May In the country of 5.9 million people.

"There are communities that have no water to drink because of the drought, much less to grow food. We're letting poor people die of hunger. There isn't (food) production or assistance," said the Rev. Elias Barrera, director in Nicaragua for the Roman Catholic charity organization Caritas.
[END REPORT]
*********

India's Worsening Water Crisis. Can the Andhra model be extended with success?

"The 2030 Water Resources Group, made up of private companies, argues that the “water gap” (between insufficient supply and excess demand) in Asia will only close once countries limit the water-intensity of their economies."

India's Worsening Water Crisis

By Ram Mashhru

for The Diplomat
April 19, 2014

In northern India, groundwater supplies are being depleted faster than natural processes can replenish them. According to The World Bank, India is the largest user of ground water in the world, after China. If something is not done soon, an estimated 114 million Indians will soon face desperate domestic, agricultural and industrial shortages.

What is causing this? “Human activities”: primarily wasteful water use (mainly agricultural over-exploitation), a lack of sustainable water-management policies and insufficient public investment. These failings have each been exacerbated by rapid population growth, increasing population density and climate change.

South Asia is a desperately water-insecure region, and India’s shortages are part of a wider continental crisis. According to a recent report authored by UN climate scientists, coastal areas in Asia will be among the worst affected by climate change. Hundreds of millions of people across East, Southeast and South Asia, the report concluded, will be affected by flooding, droughts, famine, increases in the costs of food and energy, and rising sea levels.

Groundwater serves as a vital buffer against the volatility of monsoon rains, and India’s falling water table therefore threatens catastrophe. 60 percent of north India’s irrigated agriculture is dependent on ground water, as is 85 percent of the region’s drinking water. The World Bank predicts that India only has 20 years before its aquifers will reach “critical condition” – when demand for water will outstrip supply – an eventuality that will devastate the region’s food security, economic growth and livelihoods.

Analysts fear that growing competition for rapidly dwindling natural resources will trigger inter-state or intra-state conflict. China and India continue to draw on water sources that supply the wider region, and a particularly concerning flashpoint is the Indus River Valley basin that spans India and Pakistan. The river’s waters are vital to the economies of areas on both sides of the border and a long-standing treaty, agreed by Pakistan and India in 1960, governs rights of access. But during the “dry season,” between October and March, water levels fall to less than half of those seen during the remainder of the year. The fear is that cooperation over access to the Indus River will fray as shortages become more desperate.

Public health is also seriously at risk. The demand for safe drinking water in India is already high, and the situation will only grow more acute as levels drop further. The World Health Organization reports that 97 million Indians lack access to safe drinking water, while 21 percent of the country’s communicable diseases are transferred by the use of unclean water.

In their 2013 Outlook Report, the Asian Development Bank calculated India’s water security based on household, economic, urban and environmental needs, and concluded that India’s water prospects are “hazardous.” According to the report, a comprehensive and immediate program of investment, regulation, and law enforcement is necessary. Private-sector groups agree.

The 2030 Water Resources Group, made up of private companies, argues that the “water gap” (between insufficient supply and excess demand) in Asia will only close once countries limit the water-intensity of their economies. In Indian industry, dam construction for hydropower plants and large agribusiness landholdings account for the majority of the country’s water demands. 

Parts of India have pioneered successful solutions. The southwestern state of Andhra Pradesh has introduced a highly effective program of self-regulatory water use. Community water-management schemes and awareness campaigns among farmers have seen levels of water consumption fall significantly.

The “Andhra model” provides a set of easily replicated and implemented programs for the consideration of other state governments in India. Self-regulation is a vital short-term solution. For India to be water secure, it would need to ensure long-term access that is affordable, equitable, efficient and sustainable. Major industrial, agricultural and domestic water reform is therefore necessary.

[END REPORT]

********

Desalination Mirage

The following passages are from John Vidal's slambang razzledazzle February 19, 2011 report for the Guardian, What does the Arab world do when its water runs out? The report, still as fresh and important as when Vidal gathered data for it, is worth reading in its entirety, although here I'll focus on just those passages relating to desalination. 

Before launching, howevrer, I do want to mention that Vidal was covering so much ground that he couldn't drill down, if you'll pardon the expression, into every situation he outlined without making the report book length. But this means he completely omitted all the bad news related to the following practice he mentioned:

The more drastic response to the [water] crisis is to shift farming elsewhere and to build reserves. Saudi Arabia said in 2008 it would cut domestic wheat output by 12.5% a year to save its water supplies. It is now subsidising traders to buy land in Africa. 

The Saudi government sure as hell is buying up African farming land through proxies. It's called "villagization," which takes a prize for Orwellian language.  Villagization is exactly the opposite of what it sounds like; it's displacing African farmers from their villages to make way for foreign-owned agribusiness.

Saudis aren't the only ones doing this; Indian agribusiness is also engaged in villagization in Africa. This isn't even talking about China's agribusiness scooping up huge chunks of Ukrainian farmland or the Saudis having turned fertile regions in Pakistan into their plantation-- while many Pakistanis go hungry and thirsty.

Villagization is a kind of pussyfooting plantation colonialism made possible by hardscrabble governments corrupt as the day is long being bought up by the foreigners.

But it could be the scandals that started bringing villagization to public attention happened before John Vidal researched for his report.  In a later post I'll look at one of the scandals, which got so stinky it couldn't be covered up any longer. For now, and for readers who think desalination was a viable answer for chronic water shortages:

Meanwhile, says the UN, farm land is becoming unusable as irrigation schemes and intensive farming lead to waterlogging and desalination.

Some oil-rich Arab countries are belatedly beginning to address the problem. Having drained underground aquifers to grow inappropriate crops for many years, they have turned en masse to desalination. More than 1,500 massive plants now line the Gulf and the Mediterranean and provide much of north Africa and the Middle East's drinking water – and two-thirds of the world's desalinated water.

The plants take salty or brackish water, and either warm it, vaporise it and separate off the salts and impurities, or pass it through filters. According to the WWF, it's an "expensive, energy intensive and greenhouse gas-emitting way to get fresh water", but costs are falling and the industry is booming.

 Solar-powered plants are being built for small communities but no way has been found to avoid the concentrated salt stream that the plants produce. The impurities extracted from the water mostly end up back in the sea or in aquifers and kill marine life.

Only now are countries starting to see the downsides of desalination. Salt levels in the Arabian Gulf are eight times higher in some places than they should be, as power-hungry water plants return salt to an already saline sea. The higher salinity of the seawater intake reduces the plant's efficiency and, in some areas, marine life is suffering badly, affecting coral and fishing catches.

Desalination has allowed dictators and elites to continue to waste water on a massive scale. Nearly 20% of all Saudi oil money in the 1970s and 80s was used to provide clean water to grow wheat and other crops in regions that would not naturally be able to do so.

Parks, golf courses, roadside verges and household gardens are all still watered with expensively produced clean drinking water. The energy – and therefore water – needed to keep barely insulated buildings super-cold in Gulf states is astonishing.
[...]

Actually desalination has allowed everyone who uses it, not just dictators and elites, to waste water on a massive scale.  It's just that elites created a big mirage in the desert out of desalination.

********

USAID and Monsanto in India

The debate over the safety and utility of genetically modified seeds is only one part of the issue.  This article suggests that rent-seeking behavior is now completely out of control on a global scale.

Criminalising Dissent in India against GMOs and Monsanto

by Colin Todhunter

Global Research

June 20, 2014

Before being voted out of office this year, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration sanctioned open-field trials of 200 GM food crops in India. Monsanto’s shares rocketed as a result (1). This decision prompted Rajesh Krishnan of the Coalition for a GM Free India to state that government was against the interest of citizens, farmers and the welfare of the nation. Instead, it has decided to work hand in glove with the multinational GM seed industry that stands to gain immensely from the numerous open field trails of GM crops.

Filmmaker Mahesh Batt called Minister Moily, who sanctioned the decision, a “corporate mole” and the Coalition for a GM Free India and Greenpeace condemned Moily’s action as “unscientific, anti-people and reeking of vested interests.”

Moily’s decision was set against the backdrop of the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM organism approvals till scientifically robust protocols, independent and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory system were developed. It recommended an indefinite stoppage of all open field trials of GM crops. The Committee insisted that the government bring in independence, scientific expertise, transparency, rigour and participative democracy into GMO regulation and policy.

Environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues points out the risks and drawbacks of GMOs by stating that there is increasing evidence of the health and environment risks from these crops; GM yields are significantly lower than yields from non-GM crops; and pesticide use, the great ‘industry’ claim on these GM crops, instead of coming down, has gone up exponentially. Rodrigues argues that in India, notwithstanding the hype of the industry, the regulators and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Bt cotton yield is levelling off to levels barely higher than they were before the introduction of Bt (2).

Rodrigues wants to know where is the advantage and why are we experimenting given all the attendant risks. We have hard evidence from every UN study and particularly the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report, which India signed in 2008. She adds:

“The IAASTD was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed. The report states we must look to small-holder, traditional farming (not GMOs) to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable. Governments must invest in these systems. This is the clear evidence.”  [...]

Plenty more -- plenty -- in the report.  

********

A look back at the Snowden Effect

Snowden effect: young people now care about privacy

CyberTruth 
Byron Acohido, USA TODAY 

November 13, 2013

Results of a Harris Poll released this morning show four out of five people have changed the privacy settings of their social media accounts, and most have made changes in the last six months.

What's more, the poll, commissioned by anti-malware vendor ESET, reveals clear evidence that, contrary to what some believe, young people actually do care about the privacy of their online personas.

The ESET poll is that latest proof point of what could, at the end of the day, take hold as a tectonic societal shift: the return of privacy as a social norm. Call it the Edward Snowden effect.

[...]

********

Stop bad water management! Drive a Prius!

I'm discovering it's hard to find a news report or editorial on water shortages in the Middle East that doesn't veer into a discussion about climate change.  If the hot air merely contributed to global warming I'd be philosophical. But governments and international organizations that have bought into initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint have taken up a straw man argument that goes like this:

A. There's a water shortage.

B. Drought caused the shortage.

C. Climate change caused the drought.

D. Therefore, we must address climate change.

E.  Thusly, we must reduce the use of fossil fuels.

  

What does that very dangerous chain of reasoning have to do with people in say, Syria, knowing so little about water management that the water table falls below the reach of their well-digging drills?  What does it have to do with not including the evaporation rate in discussions about rainfall statistics? 

I could list hundreds more examples but why bother?  Climate changers look at every plea for sane water management as stealing thunder from the important issues. 

Meanwhile even the most simple tactics for conserving water go ignored.  Which is to say climate changers are helping set billions of people and their livestock on a course to die horrible deaths for no good reason. 

But look on the bright side: billions fewer, right there is a reduction in the carbon footprint.

********