The growth story and h2o

Water Scarcity Threatens China's Future - Environment - New York Times

I guess this is true of many Indian cities too. Huge suburbs in Bangalore have no water connections - they either sink their own borewells or get the water from suppliers who do that - all of this leading to rapid depletion of groundwater.

Whats the solution ? Official water supply agencies can handle only so much growth, and are hard pressed to generate enough water for current demand levels itself.

Recharge ? Its a solution that may have no immediate benefit for those doing the spending - but would lead to sustainable groundwater if done by every house, every apartment. Tough ask - who's to implement and monitor this ?

Hurtling down a cliff....

Indian rivers heading for disaster- Hindustan Times

The "cost" of not being able to treat all the sewage has to be higher than treating it. No rivers is a very scary scenario to imagine.

CO2 -> flooding. New variable

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate flooding risk 'misjudged'

Apparently, leaves reduce the stomata size with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere - and hence release less water into the air. Lesser groundwater gets pumped into the air this way, and with a severe rain - this can cause more flooding since the ground's closer to saturation already.

But is this an isolated cause-effect relationship ? Aren't there so many more factors in play ?

• there just are fewer trees
• groundwater's getting pumped out pretty fast on most of the planet
  
• the rains themselves are more severe (and if the trees releasing less water is a major enough amount, won't the rains reduce too?)
• This is likely to be a localized cause-effect, depending on soil composition, tree cover. Is this significant enough relative to the concreting/paving of large urban spaces ?
  

Of course, this may have an impact, but one gets the sense that this may be a little bit of barking up the wrong tree :)

Think before you dump

Daily Dump - Compost at Home

Am not clear what happens to the compost yet - but sounds like a plan. If the garbage output of the city reduced by even 50%, it would solve a huge problem! Also, as a byproduct very rich topsoil might really improve yield. How does it get to those who need great topsoil, without being infinitely expensive ? No clue. Or is it sold in "retail size" packets ? Lotsa questions....

Recycled by BWSSB!

Deccan Herald - Thirsty Bangalore to get recycled water

This is both very encouraging, as well as a little scary. After all, BWSSB does only a just-about-ok job of treating relatively cleaner river water. Recycling is a great idea - especially at only 5% wastage - but running it efficiently is way more critical now, and way bigger a challenge for a governmental org.

Thinking outside the bottle

Kick The Bottled-Water HabitIt’s Not Just Daft, It’s Decadent. And Tap is Often Better. - CommonDreams.org

Wow. Of course, the comparison doesn't really hold in a place like India, where tap water is by and large unpotable. Of course, the ready availability of bottled/canned water may be a reason there's not enough of an outcry for improving tapwater quality.

Greener computing

techlogg.com - Five simple ways to save electricity with your computer

Greener = less unGreen, in this case.