The News Review:

- Sanction for water supply schemes
- Invasive mussels could threaten California water supply pipelines
- Kane officials seek state OK for future water management.
- Howard’s water crisis plan

Sanction for water supply schemes
Hindu – Jan 26, 2007
185-crore irrigation schemes for Palakkad PALAKKAD: Minister for Water Resources N. Premachandran has said that administrative sanction has been given for comprehensive irrigation and water supply schemes to be implemented in the district at Rs.

Invasive mussels could threaten California water supply pipelines
San Diego Union Tribune – Jan 26, 2007
January 26, 2007LOS ANGELES – Lake divers have found no more quagga mussels, but state officials say they will continue to hunt for the invasive, pipe-clogging mollusks they fear could wreak havoc with water lines supplying Southern California. Quagga mussels were found earlier this month at Lake Mead in Nevada and Lake Havasu, near the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Whitsitt intake facility. The discoveries launched a wider search for infested reservoirs and pipelines in California that are connected to the Colorado Aqueduct, which supplies water to an estimated 18 million people. So far, no additional mussels have been spotted. “Although it shows adult mussels are not currently in the area of the reservoirs that we’re checking, it doesn’t mean the quaggas are not in the lake because of the larvae,” said MWD spokesman Bob Muir…
”The mussels can choke pipelines and threaten native species of fish by competing for their food. “I suppose when people ask what level of concern we have, it’s high and what level of effort we’re putting in, it’s considerable,” said Mic Stewart, the MWD’s manager of water quality. Officials will shut down the entire aqueduct, which provides water to Los Angeles and San Diego, for three weeks in March to dry out the canals and will use chlorine to kill the mussels. Even so, because the freshwater mollusks multiply rapidly – with a single female laying as many as 1 million eggs – it is unlikely that action will completely rid the state of the hardy mollusks. “They’re extremely difficult to eradicate,” Muir said. “It’s more a matter of trying to control them. ”The invasive mussels likely hitched a ride on a private boat from Michigan’s Great Lakes to Lake Mead and Lake Havasu.

Kane officials seek state OK for future water management.
Free with registration – Chicago Tribune – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jan 26, 2007
| Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) (January, 2007). 26–Kane County will soon need a state statute to provide regional oversight of future water supplies for its growing population, county leaders told legislators this.

Howard’s water crisis plan
Green Left Weekly – Jan 26, 2007
6; font-size: 105%; } EDITORIALHoward’s water crisis plan26 January 2007Prime Minister John Howardâs January 25 announcement of plans to deal with the water crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin contains some measures that are small steps in the right direction, such as the replacement of open irrigation channels with covered pipes to reduce evaporation. However, other measures, such as the creation of a task force to âinvestigateâ the expansion of irrigation-based agriculture in northern Australia foreshadows larger steps in the wrong direction. Furthermore, behind the plan lurks the spectre of increased privatisation of water resources. The four Murray-Darling Basin state Labor governments â NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland â have offered cautious approval of the plan. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has said his support for the plan would be conditional on the Murray-Darling Basin system not being placed in private hands in the future. Mainstream media discussion of the plan has centred on the proposed ceding of control of the Murray-Darling Basin from the states to the federal government. Viewed abstractly there is a case for the national administration of a river system that flows through four states…
So what will?Writing in the January 13 Melbourne Age, Canadian conservationist Maude Barlow outlines a number of ways in which direct or indirect privatisation of water causes the crisis. The privatisation of utilities is one. In Sydney and Adelaide, water-supply utilities have been sold to companies with a global track record of social and environmental destruction. Another form of water privatisation is selling it cheaply to beverage companies to put in bottles and sell back to consumers at vastly inflated prices. The November 4 Age revealed that Melbourne bottled water producer Sunkoshi Ltd was paying $2. 40 per megalitre for groundwater in contrast to the $960 per megalitre charged to household consumers. But perhaps the most glaring case of government policy exacerbating the water crisis can be seen in irrigation-based agriculture being prioritised over environmental flow.