The News Review:
- Election eve water crisis
- No potable water for three days
- Shanghai looks to Yangtze for water
- A warmer world – Framingham, MA – The MetroWest Daily News
- MI5 agents check water reservoirs
Election eve water crisis
NEWS.com.au – Dec 12, 2006
article-tools –> By Simon Benson and Peter Trute December 12, 2006 12:00am PREMIER Morris Iemma may be forced to give the green light to the politically explosive $1. 2 billion desalination plant only two days before he fights the March state election. That’s the day, based on current trends in the decline of our water supplies, that Sydney dams will fall below the critical 30 per cent level. As Mr Iemma admitted for the first time yesterday that Sydney faced running out of water, a report from the University of NSW found a long-neglected aquifer under central Sydney could be a vital addition to our water supply, providing 40 million litres a day. However, in a clear indication he intends to reverse his February decision to shelve the desalination plant, Mr Iemma yesterday said he could not risk Sydney’s water supply. "A failure to be ready to build a desalination plant at about 30 per cent storage levels could mean Sydney runs out of water," Mr Iemma said. Dam levels have fallen from 44 per cent to 37.
No potable water for three days
Pakistan Dawn – Dec 12, 2006
Mr Sheraz claimed that these localities had already been without potable water for four days when the same pipeline had developed leakage some three months ago. When contacted, tehsil nazim Mian Javed Iqbal said that a small portion of pipeline had broken owing to some `technical mistake of TMA employees and it had nothing to do with the defective construction. Denying that the water supply had been suspended to various localities, he said that alternate arrangements had immediately been made. KILLED: Two persons were killed while 13 others sustained injuries, four of them serious, in an accident near Nawan Lahore on Monday. Reports said that a speeding bus, coming to Faisalabad from Jhang, collided head-on with a wagon on Faisalabad-Jhang Road at Adda Chiraghabad, some 45 kilometers from here. As a result, Muhammad Ali of Faisalabad and Rashid of Bhakkar died instantly while another 13 passengers suffered injuries. They were shifted to Allied Hospital, Faisalabad, where the condition of four of them was critical.
Shanghai looks to Yangtze for water
People's Daily Online – Dec 12, 2006
The Shanghai water authority would like water from the Yangtze to eventually account for 60 per cent of the city’s water supply. It currently accounts for about 30 per cent, said Chen Guoguang, vice-director of the Shanghai Water Supply and Water Quality Monitoring Centre. Chen said work is also underway to adjust the city’s water supply system. By 2010, four major waterworks in the city centre and a further eight in the suburbs will take over the work of the city’s 160 existing small waterworks, which will be closed. The low quality of the city’s drinking water is the source of constant complaints by Shanghai residents. The biggest complaint is the strong chlorine taste of the city’s water. Chen said the water authority put chlorine into the processed tap water to kill germs and bacteria.
A warmer world – Framingham, MA – The MetroWest Daily News
MetroWest Daily News – Dec 12, 2006
-based Water Resources and Energy Management International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the lake’s normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with “severe consequences for the lake and its ability to meet the region’s water resources needs. ”A further dramatic drop in Victoria’s water levels might even turn off this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others. “People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro,” said Aris P. Georgakakos, the study’s chief author, speaking of that African mountain’s melting glaciers. “We have something much bigger to worry about, and that’s Lake Victoria…
“If it goes like this another five years, the lake will be empty of fish. ”For 30 million people living in its basin, Lake Victoria is a vital source — of livelihoods and food, of water, of transportation, of electric power. Almost 200 miles across the lake from here, Tanzanian authorities have reduced water supplies to the city of Mwanza because an intake pipe was left high and dry. The same is happening in Uganda, where German engineer Erhard Schulte is pushing work crews to finish refitting Entebbe’s city water plant, extending its intake pipe 1,000 feet farther out into the lake. “The old Britisher who designed the original plant never expected the lake would drop this way,” Schulte told a visitor. Perhaps the worst impact is on power supplies. Tanzanian factories have shut down because the rivers powering hydroelectric dams, and replenishing Lake Victoria, are running dry.
MI5 agents check water reservoirs
BBC News – Dec 12, 2006
The visit was to see if supplies could be poisoned, but was not in response to a specific threat. SWW said government agencies visited periodically over security issues. The party from London stayed for two days while water company security consultants showed them around several locations, including water treatment works and reservoirs. The officers were looking at what measures could be taken to guard against possible attacks. Annual exercisesTerrorism issues expert Bill Tupman from the University of Exeter said of the security visit: “You’ve obviously got to have a plan in place for what to do if something goes wrong; and from time to time you need to test that plan. “Although it’s difficult to reduce risk to absolute zero, you can take a number of simple measures to reduce the risk of attack by a significant amount. BBC South West Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Hall said the visit was being used as an example to the rest of the water industry to see what precautions were being taken.