Is A River Alive Robert Macfarlane W. W. Norton & Company 2025

 Is the River Alive covers rivers on the North American and South American continents and the sub-continent of India. It begins with the evolution of a river, how they formed and the roles they played in a five page span of human history, their birth twelve thousand years ago and their struggle to survive today. Climate change, rising temperature and its threat to rivers--the Po, the Tigris, the Colorado River, the Elbe forced the author to ask the question, Is the River Alive? By asking that question, do we change our perception of rivers legally and politically; do we give thought to the contract that we have with nature; do we attempt to hear what the river is saying, the author asks? By calling them 'water bodies' we acknowledge their existence; by 'daylighting', we resurrect rivers that have been covered by asphalt or some other man-made material. In contrast, a dying river, the author defines as "one that does not reach the sea" (p. 18). A dying river is also one filled with sewage, that burns, that kills within its ecosystem, that has been disfigured, dammed. 

GIS and the future of Spatial Computing ArcGIS Spring 2024 Greg Milner pp. 40 - 42

 For this particular article, getting definitions helped clarify concepts of spatial computing and virtual space. According to Simon Greenwold, a graduate student in the 2003s at MIT who coined the term, it meant "human interaction with a machine in which the machine retains and manipulates referents to real objects and spaces" (p. 40). Greg Milner claimed in the article that the technology originated in the 1960s and developed a tangible application with GIS technology by simply allowing users to analyze and visualize map layers. Digital twins have advanced the technology to a new level, not only visualizing and analyzing, but also linking and manipulating above ground and underground digital structures. Additionally, analysts can model various scenarios for the spaces digitized to locate, for example, "electric, gas, water, telecommunication, and sewer services" (p. 42), without digging or environmental disruption. Mixed reality headsets, produced by Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, facilitate the viewing of assets. 

https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcuser/halo-trust/

Snow Headwaters, Water Education Colorado The Snow Issue Spring 2024

 Have you experienced the sound of planes overhead and then a dramatic change in the weather? One possible explanation is the occurrence of cloud seeding planes and their intention to increase moisture.  In this issue of the Headwaters Magazine, Elizabeth Miller discussed the phenomenon of cloud seeding and its application in Colorado in her article "Let It Snow". She describes the process of snow formation in clouds this way: "Every snowflake starts with water drops and ice crystals on bits of dust and pollen in the atmosphere. When enough water vapor freezes around those aerosols, gravity pulls them down as snow" (p. 29).

According to the article, Understanding Snow, also in this issue, the snow accumulated in the Colorado mountains constitutes the state's natural reservoir that generates 80% of the state's surface water.  Measuring the amount of water produced from a snow event started as a manual process, physically recording the snow the skier or snowshoer encountered taking samples to estimate water content. Now, in addition to the manual methods, automated methods using telemetry, "Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL)(p. 15)", supplements the data. 

Back to cloud seeding. Scientist discovered that the introduction of silver iodide particles into clouds could increase the amount of moisture and snow. Silver iodide gets dispensed either via a plane or with on-ground equipment. Research on the amount of water generated from cloud seeding vary. Studies done by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, conducted in 2017, documented an increase of 5% to 30% in one seeding event. An article in the New York Times, Cloud Wars, recounted the use of the process in the Middle East with less precipitation results and reported that Israel, nationally, had abandoned the technique for increasing water volume. 

Miller’s article indicated that the State of Colorado had funded eight "weather modification programs" within the state, impacting water districts and ski areas. They include: Vail/Beaver Creek, Upper Gunnison, Grand Mesa, San Juan Mountains, two in the North Platte, and the St. Vrain and Left Hand Conservancy Program.  To monitor the amount of moisture generated, each of the above programs submits reports with the data that estimates the amount of cloud seeding, and an estimate of "how much cloud seeding changed their snowpack and others offering precipitation amounts for seeded and non-seeded storms" (p. 29). 

Funding for the project, approximately $1.5 million annually, California, Arizona and Nevada--the lower basin states in the Colorado River Compact--contribute close to one-third with the hope of increasing water volumes in the Colorado River. Andrew Rickert, Colorado Water Conservation Board's Weather Modification Program manager, viewed cloud seeding as one instrument that Colorado could employ. From the reports of the program participants, he estimated an increase in precipitation of 5% to 30%. The article has an insert picture with that projection. The author quotes Rickert as saying: "At $2 per acre-foot, that's just amazing bang for the buck" (p. 29). 

At a conference that I attended, I posed this question: "If there is a fixed amount of water, does cloud seeding take moisture from one area at the detriment of other areas?". The speaker responded that the question was under investigation. This article does not address that question. Other articles in this issue explain that ski resorts, specifically Eldora, hope that precipitation can be augmented by stored water in ponds created in geographic depressions and reservoir expansion, if there are no clouds to seed.  

Rogers, P. & Leal, S. (2010). Running out of water

 Addressing primarily a United States audience, Peter Rodgers, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and City Planning at Harvard, and Susan Leal, consultant and former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, offer case studies of solutions to global water quality and quantity challenges. The authors begin the discussion with a picture of the water footprint of citizens of developed countries, which amounts to about 1,800 gallons per person per day (p. 3) when one includes food production, double the world average.  As populations increase, the pressures on water, a fixed resource, grows. Additionally, climate change threatens to reduce further water resources for areas of current shortage, such as California, a major agricultural producing region in the United States. The question arises, who manages water resources in the United States? The decentralization of water management at the local, state, and federal levels results in a lack of coordination, efficiencies, and high costs. Within the federal government, twelve federal agencies manage some aspect of water delivery or sewage treatment. To illustrate how managers at many levels and within different enterprises have found solutions, the authors present numerous case studies.

Water managers have implemented water saving measures by recycling water.  Recycled sewer water entails the process of microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light treatment. By implementing this process, Orange County increased its water resources, minimized the need to dump sewer water into the ocean, and eliminated some energy requirements for water transfers.  Singapore has adopted a similar program. In contrast, St. Petersburg, Florida in the 1960s, prior to the development of the reverse osmosis process, limited recycled water use to landscaping.

Farmers, the largest water user worldwide--more than residential, industrial, and commercial--has realized some agricultural conservation successes. Devices that measure soil moisture and distribute water more efficiently with a computerized system use a center-pivot system. "The center pivot is typically composed of one arm a quarter mile in length anchored to a rotating tower at the center of the irrigated plot, which is connected to a pump that draws the water from the well . . .sprinkling the water directly onto the crops from the moving overhead pipes" (p.52). The method conserves water and energy by not requiring  level land and the arm of the pivot moves via the hydraulic power of the water being pumped or electric motors, realizing water saving of up to 80 percent.

Water sharing and cooperation takes a number of forms. The Imperial Valley agreement (2002) between farmers in the valley and the municipal water provider, San Diego County Water Authority, has the potential to improve agricultural conservation and modernization as well as supply water to a municipality. Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin specifically, engaged in water trading. Under a water trading agreement, "farmers are allotted a certain amount of water that varies according to the sources of water and the size and location of the land . . . if a farmer needs more than his allotment, the Australian scheme allows him to buy it from another farmer" (p. 80). The authors concluded that "a 10 percent improvement in agricultural water use would free up more water" than municipal water users and industry presently consume.

Engineers who design sewer systems realize that aging sewer systems and inefficient sewer construction also cause waste. A remedy for the latter, the condominial system developed in Brazil, has gain appeal in under-developed countries because of the cost savings. Technology changes, such as the condominial system,  require an educated and engaged public to appreciate improvements and to accept innovations.

As important as the various industry applications of water, public sentiment determines the economic value of water and whether populations institute "programs that helped to bring us closer to our goal of protecting our public health, envrionment, and water supply for the future" (p. 155). The author explained the basic economic concepts that pertain to water---demand, supply, schedules, externalities, public and private goods, common-property resources, and others. Cases at the federal and municipal levels illustrate the operation of these concepts.

Industry has realized the necessity of improving their processes to reduce cost and minimize FOG, fats, oil, and grease clogging wastewater systems. Rrestaurants, companies, and municipalities realized  success by converting these materials into biofuels.

Internationally, two basic frameworks govern the laws controlling water, riparian rights and the doctrine of prior appropriation. One river as a shared resource between multiple countries mandates international treaties. The authors cite the cases of the Indus River, the Nile, and the Mekong River as examples of the complexities of these agreements.

The phenomenon of bottled water prompted the title of a chapter as, "water that lasts a thousand years"-- the time required, according to the authors, to clean up the environmental damage caused by the products' lifecycle. The authors pose the question, "what happened to the water fountain" (p. 217). In England the not-for-profit group, Drinking Fountain Association, seeks a revival. This and other grassroots, individual, and collective efforts, the authors contend, will result in adequate water for human survival. The public should demand more efficient and productive uses of water.

Rogers, P. & Leal, S. (2010). Running out of water: The looming crisis and solutions to conserve our most precious resource. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Stuchtey, M. Rethinking the Water Cycle: How moving to a circular economy can preserve our most vital resource

With Uber and AirB2B, we have all heard of the “sharing economy”, but the “circular economy” has noWith Uber and AirB2B, we have all heard of the “sharing economy”, but the “circular economy” has not gained as much popularity in public conversation. A recent article by Martin Stuchtey in McKinsey&Company’s online newsletter addressed the circular economy in reference to water. The title of the article, "Rethinking the Water Cycle: How moving to a circular economy can preserve our most vital resource," linked the two concepts, circular economy with water conservation.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines "circular economy" as constructed to produce goods "for remanufacture, . . .  for disassembly, . . . for 'decomponentization'", allowing the reuse of goods. The Foundation explains that such a system would have "the materials that sit within the global economy that currently flow off the end of the conveyer belt can go back in"  (Navigating the circular economy: A conversation with Dame Ellen MacArthur, McKinsey&Company). Stuchtey called this a "zero-waste imperative".

Stuchtey begins the article by affirming the strain on natural resources with population growth and an expanding middle class. The current economic model that supports the maintenance, growth, and expansion of production to provide goods to current and future populations, the supply chain, is linear. Therefore, Stuchtey contends that water used in these processes gets degraded as it moves through the chain. Stuchtey views the application of water rather than the political or economic organizational management of water as the primary cause for pollution.

 

Transforming the supply chain from a linear to an iterative one, evolves from three basic principles, according to Stuchtey:

"All durables, which are products with a long or infinite life span, must retain their value and be reused but never discarded or down-cycled (broken down into parts and repurposed into new products of lesser value).

All consumables, which are products with a short life span, should be used as often as possible before safely returning to the biosphere.

Natural resources may only be used to the extent that they can be regenerated."

The result of this change in how the supply chain works influences the public view of water as a product, a resource, and, in terms of water management, as a utility.

 

Viewing water as a product focuses on reuse and water quality, "something that is processed, enriched, and delivered". As Stuchtey described, water "should be kept in a closed loop under zero-liquid-discharge conditions and reused as much as possible. The major goal is . . . to manage the integrity of the closed-loop cycle". Stuchtey pointed to the Pearl Gas to Liquids water recycling plant in Qatar, the largest of its kind. To attain the water quality that a circular system aspires, requires a radical change in the use and treatment of water. Stuchtey lists the chemicals that should not contaminate water, "estrogenic hormones, toxic ink . . .or textile dyes". He does differentiate types of water and their quality levels and purpose--consumable water, freshwater, and graywater.  

 

In the water purification process of a closed-loop system, the outputs can contribute through energy extraction, nutrient extraction, and the end product--reused water. The Billund BioRefinery in Denmark "sterilizes the sludge and makes it more biodegradable". Nutrients derived from water purification include potassium hydroxide, polyhydroxyalkanoates, other polyesters, and ammonia.

 

Stuchtey's premise for water as a resource stems from the balance of supply and demand. His model conforms to the basic hydrologic cycle as a closed system. He argued for the enforcement the principle of supply and demand to rivers and aquifers, watersheds, forests, and agricultural lands. This would encourage such practices as aquifer recharge, drip-irrigation systems, and irrigation scheduling, among others.

 

Lastly, water as a utility concentrates on the primary assets of a utility, its infrastructure. Stuchtey estimated the total worth of the infrastructure at $140 billion. Stuchtey suggested ways that utilities could generate revenue from its existing right-of-ways, from its sludge that generates heat, from creating conservation credits, from infrastructure asset reuse, and from using renewable energy sources.

 

In the final section

Werbach, A. (2009). Strategy for sustainability: A business manifesto

Defining sustainability as "thriving in perpetuity" (p. 9), Werbach promoted the ecological modernization view that economic advancement and environmental viability can occur hand-in-hand. Describing the theory, Mol (2002) claimed, “The emergence of actual environmental-induced transformations of institutions and social practices in industrialized societies, are encapsulated in the ecological modernization theory” (p. 93). Werbach stated, "the corporate sector has the incentives, operational know-how, scalability, and ingenuity to respond to the global challenges we face today . . . Why? Because, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, over half of the world's hundred largest economies were corporations" (p. 3).

Werbach believed that his definition of sustainability extended beyond the current concept of being 'green'. To him, it redefined the manner in which businesses operated and had social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions. He explained the components in this manner: "social (acting as if other people matter) . . . economic (operating profitably) . . . environmental (protecting and restoring the ecosystem) . . . cultural (protecting and valuing cultural diversity)" (pp. 9-10).

The basic rules of nature should, according to Werbach, govern how companies operate. Nature thrives on diversity, its adapts, it exists as an open, social, and regenerating system. Werbach viewed nature as progressive, it would "improve with each cycle" (p. 20). From this vantage point, he developed "seven tenets of a strategy for sustainability" (p. 21). The list of tenets follow: "1. Natural resources will become increasingly scarce and expensive . . . massive democratic change is occurring . . . people are the most important renewable resource . . . cash flow matters more than quarterly earnings . . . every organization's operating environment will change as dramatically in the next three to five years as it has changed in the last five . . . a chaotic external world requires internal cohesion and flexibility . . . only the truly transparent will survive" (pp. 21-32). From these principles, Werbach created a map called STaR, which stands for the components of Social , Technological, and Resource changes. North Star goals, continued Werbach, acted as the guide for the map. The goals contained numerous attributes--constancy, action, alignment, achievable ends, organizational commitment, "optimistic and aspirational" (p. 35) rewards. Viewing STaR as linear, Werbach added a cyclical perspective to his construct, "the TEN cycle" (p. 36). He explained the TEN cycle, "these three initiatives, transparency, engagement, and networking--the TEN cycle--are so called because they work cyclically to renew the conditions under which you can prosper in the long term and achieve your North Star goals"(p. 36).

Werbach offered specific measurements for STaR. Of those for the environment, he specified "materials used by weight or volume per dollar of revenue, percentage of recycled input materials used, energy use per unit of revenue, percentage of locally customized products or service offerings, energy saved from conservation and efficiency, total water use, percentage and total volume of water recycled and reused, total direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by weight, negative effects on biodiversity, annual transportation costs" (p. 113). Obviously, tracking these holistic measurements of sustainability requires a sophisticated database of information.




Mol, A. P. J. (2000). Ecological modernization and the global economy. Global Environmental
Politics, 2(2), 92-115.

Werbach, A. (2009). Strategy for sustainability: A business manifesto. Boston: Harvard Business Press. 

Hubbard, D. W. (2007). How to measure anything: Finding the value of 'intangibles' in business

 Although the author of this book worked as a management consultant for Coopers and Lybrand, he confronted the problem faced by managers in the public and private sectors, valuing anything that appears to elude measurement, "such as the value of quality, employee morale, or the economic impact of cleaner water" (p. xi). The consequences of this inability affect the occurrence of errors, appropriation of resources, and the effectiveness of decisions.

To define his terms, Hubbard explained measurement as "'error reduction', . . . a central theme of this book" (p. 17). Hubbard further defined measurement as "a set of observations that reduce uncertainty where the result is expressed as a quantity" (p. 21). Claude Shannon, an American electrical engineer, promulgated "a mathematical definition of information as the amount of uncertainty reduction in a signal, which he discussed in terms of the 'entropy' removed by a signal" (p. 22). Therefore, the measurement process entails the reduction of uncertainty by the degrees of refinement of a quantified range of amounts. According to Hubbard, Stanley Smith Stevens described the qualitative nature of measurement by clarifying the differences between nominal and ordinal measurements.

The chapter titles in the section, "Before you measure", map the first phase of reducing uncertainty and the measurement process, "Clarifying the measurement problem; Calibrated estimates, how much do you know now; Measuring risk: Introduction to the Monte Carlo Simulation; Measuring the value of information. Section III, "Measurement Methods", specifies the objective, empirical approaches to engage in measurement. Hubbard begins by describing the decomposition of components of a problem or question into their elemental parts, a task familiar to all scientific and academic researchers. Secondary sources supply additional information of previous investigations and methods of analysis of the same or similar problems.
When engaging in measurement, Hubbard stressed the importance of matching measurement cost with information value, "we need to know the Expected Value of Information not the Expected Value of Perfect Information" (p. 93). Throughout the book he advocated "the Rule of Five" . . . There is a 93% chance that the median of a population is between the smallest and largest values in any random sample of five from that population" (pp. 23-24). Furthermore, Hubbard viewed measurement as an iterative process, testing multiple types of observation, sampling sizes, experiments, and instruments.

Hubbard illustrated his argument with numerous examples from the public and private sector, for which he consulted.


Hubbard, D. W. (2007). How to measure anything: Finding the value of "intangibles" in business. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.