The News Review:

- Senate leader tells business lobby to back off water bond
- Angola: Water Supply Firm to Build 467 Fountains Until 2008
- Zimbabwe: Byo a Victim of Dangerous Political Games – Tsvangirai

Senate leader tells business lobby to back off water bond
San Francisco Chronicle – Dec 13, 2007
If Democrats don’t have a comprehensive plan that includes both dams and a new system to channel water in the delta, “then we need to rally around the chamber’s initiative to give voters that chance,” he said in a statement. Lawmakers have tangled over new dams for decades. Republicans favor them as a way to increase water supplies and improve flood control, while Democrats and environmental groups support spending money on conservation, groundwater cleanup, water recycling and reclamation. The impasse has left the state without clear direction on how to respond to a federal judge’s ruling this September that will curtail its water exports next year. The court found that pumping by state and federal water agencies has killed the threatened delta smelt and should be limited in the winter and spring. Reduced pumping in the delta could mean a third less water makes it to some 25 million Californians and thousands of acres of farmland next year, officials have said. Cities are also worried that water supplies could be short if the state has another dry year…
The court found that pumping by state and federal water agencies has killed the threatened delta smelt and should be limited in the winter and spring. Reduced pumping in the delta could mean a third less water makes it to some 25 million Californians and thousands of acres of farmland next year, officials have said. Cities are also worried that water supplies could be short if the state has another dry year. Schwarzenegger and legislative Republicans have said the state should build two new reservoirs and expand a third, as well as restore the delta’s ecosystem and promote conservation. Schwarzenegger also has endorsed building a new system to funnel water to Los Angeles, but he has not provided funding for it. Perata has offered his own $6. 8 billion bond initiative, which would fund water recycling, groundwater aquifers, conservation programs and delta restoration.

Angola: Water Supply Firm to Build 467 Fountains Until 2008
AllAfrica.com – Dec 13, 2007
Under the works, 135 fountains were already built since 2006, in the ambit of the five projects that have been implemented to improve and increase water distribution in Luanda. GA_googleFillSlot(“AllAfrica_Story_Inset”); Luanda province has nine district and about four million inhabitants.

Zimbabwe: Byo a Victim of Dangerous Political Games – Tsvangirai
AllAfrica.com – Dec 13, 2007
While this was happening vandalism and theft of equipment and pipelines have rendered the majority of the wells on the aquifer unusable. Only a few wells are running and the system is delivering a mere 2 000 cubic metres a day. The total water supply to the city has declined to such low levels, which are grossly insufficient to meet even the most basic of needs. I saw the dams at the weekend; they have been reduced to little puddles. I was with the people at water collection points. Widows and mothers told me harrowing tales of blocked sewer systems, of diarhorrea outbreaks, of struggling maternity hospitals, boarding schools and hotels and of desperate factories. I shall be in Bulawayo again to mobilise people against this continuing nonsense.