Climate Wire www.eenews.net 5/5/08
WATER: Climate-related water concerns heat up (05/05/2008)
Christa Marshall, ClimateWire reporter
Eighteen million Southern Californians may be rationing water this summer for the first time in years. The region’s water distributor is preparing to ask customers to stop using water supplies outdoors one day a week for activities such as washing the car and running sprinklers.
Meanwhile, the impact of carbon capture and sequestration of CO2 from coal-fired power plants on water supplies soon will be studied by a leading drinking water research foundation. It wants to determine whether storing the gas in underground geological formations could unleash dangerous runoff by dissolving rock.
“We have to be careful we don’t create a problem by trying to solve a problem,” said Robert Renner, executive director of the Awwa Research Foundation, the study’s instigator and sponsor of a Friday briefing on Capitol Hill on the global impact of climate change on drinking water.
Appearing with Renner were three Australian, British and American experts who described how rising temperatures have dried up rivers and reservoirs, increased costs and raised the likelihood of pathogens and salt water creeping into drinking water sources.