The News Review:

- Report n Water Quality Withheld
- Calif farmers idle crops veggie prices may rise
- Short Takes: City laying groundwork for water rationing
- Region Waits for Water Cuts
- Drinking water deal fails to lift impasse
- Tampa Bay Water likely to overdraw from aquifer

Report n Water Quality Withheld
Washington Post United States 
The data suggest that sediment control systems used by builders and required by the county are not working well enough. The impact of the findings could extend beyond Montgomery’s borders. The four designated special protection areas — Clarksburg Upper Paint Branch Piney Branch and Upper Rock Creek — include streams and creeks that flow into the Potomac River and become part of the region’s drinking-water supply. A decline in their condition could affect a wide swath of the metropolitan area where officials have said that runoff from soil disturbance in new developments is a major cause of declining water quality in the Potomac.

Calif farmers idle crops veggie prices may rise
The Associated Press 
(AP) — Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores across the country now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought. California’s sweeping Central Valley grows most of the country’s fruits and vegetables in normal years but this winter thousands of acres are turning to dust as the state hurtles into the worst drought in nearly two decades. Federal officials’ recent announcement that the water supply they pump through the nation’s largest farm state would drop further was enough to move John “Dusty” Giacone to forego growing vegetables so he can save his share to drip-irrigate 1000 acres of almond trees. “Taking water from a farmer is like taking a pipe from a plumber” said Giacone a fourth-generation farmer in the tiny community of Mendota. “How do you conduct business?”The giants of California agribusiness are the biggest economic engine in the valley which produces every cantaloupe on store shelves in summer months and the bulk of the nation’s lettuce crop each spring and fall. This year officials in Fresno County predict farmers will only grow about 6000 acres of lettuce roughly half the acreage devoted to greens in 2005. That alone could cause a slight bump in consumer prices unless lettuce companies can make up for the shortage by growing in areas with an abundant water supply or the cost of cooling packaging and shipping the crop suddenly goes down experts say.

Short Takes: City laying groundwork for water rationing
San Diego Union Tribune CA 
January 27 2009 SAN DIEG: Mayor Jerry Sanders is taking steps toward mandated water rationing for San Diego city customers in the face of drought and what his office yesterday called ?mounting certainty of cutbacks in wholesale water supplies. ? A news release said the city has begun developing ?a methodology for cutting water allocations to City water customers. ? It’s a process Sanders has been warning about for months and spoke of in his State of the City address this month. The release said Sanders ?wants to ensure that all San Diegans are given the chance to understand and help develop the allocation model? and to that end the mayor has scheduled a series of workshops to gather public comment on how water rationing would occur. Presumably the dates for these meetings will be announced at a news conference at 12:30 p.
Related from Spamblockermonster: Roaring Penguin & GroundWork Deliver Solution Providers Easier …

Region Waits for Water Cuts
Voice of San Diego CA 
25 2009 | San Diego water managers have long been concerned that 2009 would bring the first water-supply cuts since the early 1990s. The year has dawned and the cuts haven’t.

Drinking water deal fails to lift impasse
Albany Times Union NY 
vidgraphic {margin: 0px;padding: 0px;height: 70px;width: 55px;border-top: 1px solid #666666;border-left: 1px solid #666666;border-bottom: 1px solid #666666;vertical-align:top;}. apthumb {margin: 0px;padding: 0px;height: 70px;width: 105px;vertical-align:top;border: 1px solid #666666;overflow:hidden;}–> Drinking water deal fails to lift impasse Waterford and Stillwater spared some expenses but safety concerns linger By. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that GE will pay $7 million toward a new $8. 2 million water line current being built to connect Waterford and Halfmoon to Troy drinking water.

Tampa Bay Water likely to overdraw from aquifer
Tampabay.com FL 
"We have no other realistic alternative. " Although the utility has imposed watering limits Seeber said demand has increased from people who still want to water their lawns — even as the economy has cut back on the number of new customers hooking up to the system. The utility has spent a decade building expensive new water supply projects such as the 15 billion-gallon reservoir and the 25 million-gallon desalination plant to avoid pumping so much water from the aquifer. In 1998 the utility pumped 147 million gallons a day from underground damaging area lakes rivers and wetlands. The Southwest Florida Water Management District ordered Tampa Bay Water to cut its pumping to below 90 million gallons per day by December 2008. But the agency commonly called Swiftmud put up more than $85 million to pay for alternative water supply sources such as taking millions of gallons from the Alafia and Hillsborough rivers and the Tampa Bypass Canal. Thanks to those new sources by last month the amount being pumped from area well fields had dropped to about 87 million gallons a day Seeber told a joint meeting of his utility board and the Swiftmud board at the Brooker Creek Preserve.