Portal:Water

The Water Portal

This article is part of the Water portal on SourceWatch.

The SourceWatch water portal includes articles on issues related to water and climate change, water and energy, the growing tensions between corporations selling water and water services and communities needing clean water, and industry associations and front groups seeking to influence water policy.

Becoming a citizen journalist on water issues

If you would like to help document water issues and the groups influencing water policy, this is the place for you. We rely on citizen journalists like you to expand, update and create articles.

You can view the existing articles on water issues here. The SourceWatch portals on climate change and coal issues also contain information relevant to water issues.

If this is your first experience with a wiki website, don't worry! To learn how you can edit any article right now, visit SourceWatch:About, SourceWatch:Welcome, newcomers, our Help page, Frequently Asked Questions, or experiment in the sandbox. Other helpful pages are SourceWatch:References and Help:How to add an articles and resources section. If you have questions, feel free to post a note on SourceWatch editor Bob Burton's talk page, or email editor AT prwatch.org (using "@" instead of "AT").

Selected article

Marcellus Shale is our featured article this week, which includes a discussion of the Halliburton loophole and the environmental hazards of hydrofracking. Efforts to extract the natural gas associated with the Marcellus Formation in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and neighboring states pose significant health hazards including both wasting fresh water and contaminating drinking water, according to the article and related sources. The article notes that the dangers of hydrofracking were expunged from the Dick Cheney energy task force report in 2001 and were downplayed in a 2004 report by the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency, which led in part to exempting hydrofracking from regulation under the Clean Water Drinking Act, as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act that passed as one of the major legislative initiatives of President Bush's second term.

The deadline for commenting on the environmental impact of the extraction effort in New York state is November 30, 2009, and the form for submitting comments electronically is available at http://www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/SGEISComments/. You can also help by adding more information to SourceWatch pages about the Halliburton loophole, hydrofracking, and natural gas extraction wells in your neighborhood.

World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, recently closed with a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December. "Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt," the statement stresses. Yet some criticize World Water Week for increased corporate influence, as PR Watch reported.

Industry groups

The Water Policy Institute is a think tank project of the major U.S. law firm Hunton & Williams. In the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, Hunton lawyers argued that the EPA can not regulate carbon dioxide, under the Clean Air Act. WPI's corporate members include BP, Central Arizona Project and GE Water.

Water events

The fifth session of the Meeting of the Parties to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Water Convention will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from November 10 to 12, 2009. The UNECE Water Convention addresses the management of water resources that cross national boundaries. More details are available on the UNECE website.

Water news

• September 30, 2009: "The Obama administration, attempting to show it's helping California with its water crisis, has summoned state officials and interest groups to a conference on how to deal with a shortage that's causing high unemployment and economic distress in the state's farm belt," reports Associated Press. Conservatives are criticizing the federal government, saying water restrictions to protect endangered species are "prioritizing animals above people." Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger remarked, "We have federal judges now protecting the salmon, protecting the smelt, we have the federal judges protecting all the species, and I say to myself, 'Where are the federal judges protecting all the farmers?'"

Water and climate change

According to a June 2008 technical paper for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is "very high confidence" that "adverse effects of climate change on freshwater systems [will] aggravate the impacts of other stresses, such as population growth, changing economic activity, land-use change and urbanisation."

Quotes

• "Water will be more important than oil this century," remarked former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali in 2003.

Did you know...

Water use has been growing at more than the rate twice of population increase in the last century, according to the United Nations agency UN Water.

Things you can do

• Expand the SourceWatch articles on World Water Week and the Stockholm International Water Institute
• Begin a profile of the United Nations agency UN Water
• Search SourceWatch for water-related articles, and add "{{#badges: WaterEnergy}}" (without the quotes) to those not currently included in the water portal.

Portals: Climate Change · Coal Issues · Front Groups · Global Corporations · Nuclear Issues · Real Economy Project · Tobacco · Water · See All