The past year and a half has seen more progress by the Government of Ontario on water policy than over the previous nine years of Wellington Water Watchers’ existence. Because of new provincial guidelines for bottling permits, etc., one might think that our water is protected.
However, on Monday — the first anniversary of a government announcement that it planned a two-year moratorium on new and expanded water bottling permits — it is still business as usual: the abuse of our aquifers continues, and Ontario’s water is not yet protected long term.
Yes, the moratorium announced by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change was a welcome response to public demands across Ontario to protect groundwater. Temporarily halting expansion of corporate-controlled removal of precious Ontario groundwater for resale, it was designed to allow time to look at priorities for groundwater use.
A provincial election is set for June 2018, making the coming months a crucial time to protect Wellington County groundwater.
Wellington Water Watchers, along with thousands of people all over Ontario, is asking Premier Kathleen Wynne not to wait for the moratorium to expire. She should (1) say "no" to existing applications to take additional water in Wellington County and (2) before the provincial election, commit to phasing out water bottling permits within 10 years.
Denying new bottling permits before the moratorium expires is a simple but necessary action to renew our relationship with water.
The solution flows cleanly from our taps; it does not lie inside a plastic vessel.

Karnataka released 91.52 tmcft of water to Tamil Nadu till the first half of October this year, bringing relief to the farmers who are dependent on Mettur reservoir.
Though the Biligundalu gauging station recorded 37 tmcft of water flowing to Tamil Nadu in September and 26.85 tmcft till October 16, the inflow into Mettur was higher. More than 10 tmcft water flowed into the Mettur reservoir from M M Hills, Palar river and Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary beyond Biligundalu gauging station where the flow of water is recorded.
Karnataka’s Cauvery basin reservoirs – Hemavathi, KRS, Kabini and Harangi – have 74 tmcft water as against the combined capacity of 114 tmcft.
No drinking water scarcity is expected in the region till June–July next year with many tanks in Mysuru, Chamarajnagar, Mandya, Hassan and parts of Tumkuru districts being full.
The irrigation department has filled tanks falling in the Cauvery command area and reduced the outflow to less than 2,000 cusecs from KRS and Kabini in the wake of copious rain.
Farmers of KRS and Kabini command areas have pressed for release of water for summer crops.
Cauvery Niravari Nigam managing director Shivashankar said that the recent rain brought great relief to state as it could reduce the outflow to Tamil Nadu. He said the priority is drinking water needs and release of water for irrigation would be decided based on the storages in reservoirs.

(MENAFN – Investors Ideas) October 12, 2017 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A new White Paper, published by Global Water Intelligence (GWI) and the Global Water Leaders Group (GWLG) calls for further water and wastewater tariff increases across the USA, amid rate hikes driven by concerns for ageing infrastructure and water scarcity.
The survey found for the first time, that urban residents in the US pay more on average for their combined water and wastewater services than city-dwellers in Western Europe.
Cities like Pittsburgh, Denver, Los Angeles and Indianapolis for example, experienced increases in their combined tariffs by 21%, 11%, 18% and 13% respectively in 2017, to fund the repairs and replacement for ageing infrastructure.
The most noticeable increases were in El Paso and San Antonio, which saw combined water and wastewater rate increases of 8.28% and 3.84% respectively.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) also has plans to increase water conservation through rate hikes.
The Global Value of Water and the Global Water Tariff Survey are available to all GWI Magazine subscribers who can download it from www.globalwaterintel.com.
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Arguably there could be perhaps two ways to reduce or eliminate poverty: One is to make everybody or every nation rich; though it is not possible politically and logistically, it would still not solve the problem of poverty due to the limited global resources and their geographical distribution and constraints.
Critical to achieving sustainability and eradicating poverty is to have sustainable energy and water supplies that have little or no geographical or climatic condition constraints.
Additionally they have negative impact on the environment, which has resulted in the challenge of Climate Change.
Renewable energy sources, on the other hand, whether solar, wind, tidal, hydropower, etc., though have less negative impacts on the environment; they are not free from geographical and climatic constraints regardless of their development status.
The most populated parts of the world suffer from water shortages.
Tapping into seawater was considered as an option solution for freshwater supply, but as mentioned before desalination is energy intensive technology and has high installation cost, which limits its use to wealthy and oil rich countries.
The world needs water and food as well among other key requirements. Hence having secure, adequate, sustainable and low cost energy source provides sustainable and affordable water.
For example, in the case of energy, scientists and engineers for a long time, probably since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, have associated energy transformation and power production to fuel consumption; e.g. burning wood, coal, oil and gas including the nuclear reaction.
Given that accessible, affordable, secure and low cost energy is central to achieving sustainable development, energy therefore must have the highest global priority.

October 12, 2017 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A new White Paper, published by Global Water Intelligence (GWI) and the Global Water Leaders Group (GWLG) calls for further water and wastewater tariff increases across the USA, amid rate hikes driven by concerns for ageing infrastructure and water scarcity.
Cities like Pittsburgh, Denver, Los Angeles and Indianapolis for example, experienced increases in their combined tariffs by 21%, 11%, 18% and 13% respectively in 2017, to fund the repairs and replacement for ageing infrastructure.
The most noticeable increases were in El Paso and San Antonio, which saw combined water and wastewater rate increases of 8.28% and 3.84% respectively.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) also has plans to increase water conservation through rate hikes. The city’s tariff structure was changed in 2016 from two blocks to four blocks, with high water customers being charged more.
The Global Value of Water and the Global Water Tariff Survey are available to all GWI Magazine subscribers who can download it from www.globalwaterintel.com.
Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers.

The coalition is a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which includes more than 300 shareholders internationally and uses that leverage to work with companies on social, environmental and governance issues. Most of its members are congregations of women religious.
Sisters are using the U.N.’s "Human Right to Water," which says water should be accessible, safe and affordable to all, as a standard for what they expect from companies.
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility was the only stakeholder to ask Campbell to take a stance on the human right to water, said Dave Stangis, vice president of corporate responsibility at Campbell.
Shareholders must hold more than $2,000 worth of stock for at least a year before they can file a resolution voted on at the company’s annual meeting.
Tyson has not yet adopted a water stewardship policy that the group has put forth, but Mary Beth Gallagher, executive director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment (also a member of the interfaith coalition), said more investors sign on to the resolution every year.
Through the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Sisters of Mercy also use their power as investors to hold mining companies accountable — namely Freeport-McMoRan and Newmont — as mining affects both contamination of and accessibility to water.
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility also plans to address leather tannery issues in Bangladesh.
"Sometimes the immediate reaction is to pull out and not use them as suppliers, but that doesn’t help the people in Bangladesh who need jobs," Byron said.
McGrath said the speakers reminded her "to do my best to see what we could do as the Congregation of Notre Dame, becoming part of Blue Community."

LAHORE – Speakers at a WWF session have urged the need to promote water efficiency in Pakistan, one of the world’s most water stressed countries.
The project aims to implement international labour and environmental standards in Pakistan in order to improve the capacity of the public sector to implement Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and national environmental laws and standards in Pakistan.
The project involves building capacity of the textile and leather sector to adopt Smart Environmental Management Practices (SEMPs) in order to efficiently use water and energy resources and reduce the use of hazardous chemicals by 15 to 20 per cent.
Further the project aims to contribute to improvement in industry based laws so that Pakistan’s export market can compete with international labour and environmental standards.
He also said that the implementation of laws pertaining to industrial effluents generated from the textile and leather industries are very weak.
He also said that a large population of major cities in Pakistan does not have access to safe drinking water as freshwater resources are being contaminated due to multiple reasons.
He was of the view that safe drinking water should be made available to the population and industries need to ensure proper disposal of solid and liquid waste.
Arjmand informed that WWF-Pakistan will initiate a study on the situation analysis of water resources in Karachi and will establish a case for a citywide partnership for responsible use of the resource.

India’s per capita use of water will increase from 99 litres per day now to 167 litres per day by 2050.
The per capita consumption of water in the United States, on the contrary, will reduce from 587 litres to 484 litres per day in 2050.
Developing countries in Asia and Africa use 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the available water for agriculture and between five per cent and 12 per cent of it for industrial use, which is inefficient use of water in agriculture.
The rains in India, even when they are torrential the way they were recently, are not tapped efficiently, partly for lack of infrastructure like reservoirs and partly because of a lack of awareness of rain harvesting techniques. India has 182 million hectares of cultivable land, but crops only grow across 140 million hectares of it, of which a mere 62 million hectares comprise irrigated land. Irrigation can be extended to the rest of the rain-fed areas too, by tapping surface water across 76 million hectares of land and ground water for the remaining 64 million hectares.
Effectively though, only 76 million hectares are likely to get irrigation by then, of which as much as 60 million hectares will be tapping into ground water. Ground water is expected to be a source of irrigation for another 10 million hectares of agricultural land by 2050.

Maharashtra, reeling under a drought, cut off water supply to many manufacturing units and power plants, driving them to financial losses from the disruption in production schedules.
Experts say that the economic cost of water is likely to be high. According to a World Bank report published last year, “water scarcity will cost India six per cent of its GDP, if it continues to mismanage water resources by 2050 by affecting business, agriculture, income and property”.
“Drought in ten states of India is estimated to impact the economy by at least Rs 6,50,000 crore as about 33 crore people across 256 districts are facing the grave situation,” states a study by the Columbia Water Centre and Ficci, titled, ‘India’s Deepening Water Crisis, Water Risks for Indian Industries’.
Since ground water is the source of 70 per cent of the country’s water for irrigation, 80 per cent of the water for domestic use and 55 per cent of the water for industrial use, the struggle for this scarce resource will only intensify.
Industry, which is now responsible for six per cent of the country’s total water consumption, will soon be using up 11 per cent of it.
During drought months, the state’s water allocation policies give priority to drinking and agricultural use.
India’s thermal power plants, which consume 22 billion cubic meters of water a year, lost out on roughly 30.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) of thermal electricity generation since 2013 owing to the water scarcity, according to a study by World Resource Institute.

In Lauter’s program, the smart local women they find become known as "water women," trained to handle and share a portable water filter in their communities.
Global Sisters Report took a closer look at a couple of collaborative projects among women religious, both of which empower local leaders to clean up the water in their region, giving them the proper tools to be self-reliant.
The money was used to provide those women with access to clean spring water by installing public faucets, but the sisters were just getting started.
Where OK Clean Water has worked — whether introducing, expanding or renovating existing water systems — cases of waterborne diseases have been eliminated, Molloy said.
The village must locate an accessible source of spring water within a certain distance.
"It’s now a local project in local hands."
Otherwise, it’s part of the whole African story about people coming in and doing," she said.
The project became Water With Blessings, an international network equipping women with water filters for sharing — a process facilitated by on-the-ground women religious from various congregations.
"They were totally dependent on water that was bottled and gifted to them by organizations or foundations, and the bottled water became more trash to accumulate.
It becomes a ministry for the water women, said Massoni, one of four sisters who coordinate 11 groups of water women in Peru.