Kelly Zito, [San Francisco] Chronicle Staff Writer - Wednesday, July 22, 2009
"If we want to have a healthy agriculture economy, the only real option is to figure out how to produce more food with less water," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and co-author of "Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future." Read more
By Allen GregorySports Writer / Bristol (TN) Herald Courier
The program, called Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Inc., is an ambitious effort launched in 2005 by volunteers from various Trout Unlimited and Federation of Fly Fishing Chapters. PHWFF serves disabled active duty military personnel and veterans through fly-fishing and fly-tying education and outings. Read More
By MIKE STARK - Associated Press Writer
Air quality data obtained by The Associated Press shows significant worsening trends for ammonium in several flagship parks, including Yellowstone, Mount Rainier and Utah's Canyonlands. At Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, researchers have already seen subtle shifts in the alpine tundra, where some of the park's trademark wildflowers are being replaced by grass. Read more
“I’m a little distressed there’s no quantification of needs in some basins,” said Melinda Kassen of Trout Unlimited, representing environmental interests. “Are you suggesting it won’t be done in every basin?”
CWCB staffers explained the municipal needs were only the first to be addressed and the other needs will be considered as well, as required by the statute that formed the IBCC.
Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, said the CWCB report appeared to be heavily weighted toward traditional water projects that remove water from one area to use in another. She asked if the same amount of study would be devoted to land-use and conservation issues.
By MICHELLE WILL/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Most people in the United States get their drinking water from groundwater, according to the EPA. Read more
by Daniel Terdiman CNET News
"Ground water, surface water, and soils are contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals, including copper, zinc, cadmium, and lead. Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork River contain metals from the cities of Butte to Milltown. The tailings, dispersed along the creek and river, severely limit aquatic life forms and have caused fish kills in the river. Potential health threats include direct contact with and ingestion of contaminated soil, surface water, ground water, or inhaling contaminated air." Read more
The Flume (Park County Republican and Fairplay Flume) Mandatory permit slows timeline Conifer Water LLC's plans to build a drinking water and wastewater delivery system between Bailey and Conifer have been delayed. Read More
By DAVE BUCHANAN/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Monday, July 13, 2009
These simply aren’t trout but rather Colorado River cutthroat trout, one of the state’s three existing native trout and special even beyond that.
“You figure this trout has been isolated up here for thousands of years and there’s no question it’s adapted to some unique environmental conditions, including higher water temperatures that would kill other trout,” said Corey Fisher, 30 minutes later as he quickly pulled a barbless fly from the jaw of a brightly colored 5-inch trout. “If these fish were lost, we’d lose genetics that took eons to develop.”
Which is one reason Fisher, energy field coordinator for the conservation group Trout Unlimited, and Hunt, with that group’s Sportsmen Conservation Project, talked two writers into clambering down a sage-covered cliffside into a jungle of riparian growth fed by Trapper and Northwater creeks that come together to form the East Middle Fork of Parachute Creek.
http://www.gjsentinel.com/rec/content/sports/stories/2009/07/13/070809_out_trout_www.html
Electrical engineer Annette von Jouanne is pioneering an ingenious way to generate clean, renewable electricity from the sea By Elizabeth Rusch / Smithsonian magazine, July 2009
Von Jouanne recently towed her best-performing buoy—her 11th prototype—out through Yaquina Bay and one and a half miles offshore. The buoy, which resembles a giant yellow flying saucer with a black tube sticking through the middle, was anchored in 140 feet of water. For five days it rose and fell with swells and generated around 10 kilowatts of power. In the next two to three years, Columbia Power Technologies, a renewable energy company that has supported von Jouanne's research, plans to install a buoy generating between 100 and 500 kilowatts of electricity in the test berth off the coast of Oregon. Read more
