Markets Prevail; Hatcheries Fail
If you owned a river, how would you manage it? You could let it flow freely and naturally and feel at peace with the world. But nature has some rough edges and in times...
Category: Water Resources
Salt Water, Grey Water, or Oregon Water for Thirsty California
California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency. Political emergencies give governments additional power to regulate, coerce, and otherwise make people change behavior. California government agencies want people to use less water until the...
Bringing Death Valley to Life as a Marine Natural Resource
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. – William Blake, Auguries of Innocence...
Think Oyster Reefs For Protecting Coastlines
BigThink features a video by Mark Tercek of The Nature Conservancy, titled Green Infrastructure Outperforms Gray. I thought it might be about bicycle paths vs. roads or forests vs. gravel pits. Instead, the topic...
Manmade Reefs for Fisheries: From the Sea of Galilee to Subway Cars in Delaware and Oil Rigs off the Texas Coast
Popular Science has a recent post about a 60,000 ton ancient rock structure discovered in the Sea of Galilee. The structure of stacked basalt rocks is some 70 meters by 10 meters: The site...
Water for What: California Oysters or Chinese Beef?
In 2012, the drought-stricken Western United States will ship more than 50 billion gallons of water to China. This water will leave the country embedded in alfalfa–most of it grown in California–and is destined...
Water Wars or Water Trades?
“Dozens of different groups—from residents to corporate interests to environmental advocates—have long held divergent views on how water should be allocated and managed in the three states [Georgia, Alabama, & Florida],” Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s website says....
What if Clean Water Act Really Applied to Government Pollution?
So the headline reads: “Sewage leak closes some Westchester, N.Y. beaches.” The article I checked online didn’t say who was responsible for the sewage leak. As a general rule, a private firm caught polluting...
Rivers and Coastal Waters: Better Measurement Finds More Pollution
For past debate topics on environmental issues, I have shown students data on the steady reductions in air, water, and land pollution across the United States. Pollution discharges into America’s rivers, lakes, streams, and...
Farming the Deep Blue Sea
Interested in starting a company likely to make millions while creating jobs and providing Americans with high-quality, nutritious, and tasty meals? Step one: take your entrepreneurial energy and investment capital to another country and...