are persistent, “reducing dioxin intake only during the course of a pregnancy will have no effect on the mother’s body burden and, in turn, the infant’s exposure to the compounds,” Taylor says. As a result, the committee believes efforts should be made to reduce dioxin exposure in girls early in life, he says. Specifically, the committee recommends that the government increase the availability of low-fat milk in the National School Lunch Program and encourage foods low in animal fat in government-sponsored food programs. Environmental groups are disappointed with the committee’s recommendations, saying that they fall short of protecting the public. The approach is “woefully deficient,” says Linda Greer, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense
Council. “Girls will eat less than 10 percent of their meals at school in their first 25 years of life, so providing low-fat food in school lunch programs would not do much to protect them or their babies,” she says. Industry groups, however, are pleased with the findings. “The report confirms the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world,” says C. T. “Kip” Howlett, Jr., executive director of the Chlorine Chemistry Council. “We support reducing animal forage and feed contamination and establishing a nationwide data collection effort on the levels of dioxin-like compounds in these substances,” he adds, suggesting that cracking down on the illegal disposal of hazardous waste that contains dioxins would be a significant step in the right direction. —BRITT E. ERICKSON
As many states across the American West endure their worst period of extended drought in more than 100 years, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) has proposed a plan it touts as a roadmap for preventing water crises through the next 25 years. The Water 2025 initiative doesn’t require any new actions and offers limited federal funding, at least initially, for the states. Instead, the proposal seeks to stimulate a vigorous public debate over water issues by calling together state, tribal, and regional officials, as well as other stakeholders, to hammer out solutions for sharing limited water resources. It also encourages states to develop long-term drought plans in chronically dry areas, particularly those that have seen explosive population growth in recent years. “Crisis management is not an effective solution,” said DOI Secretary Gale Norton on introducing the initiative in May. Water 2025 was motivated by Oregon’s Klamath River basin conflict in 2001, which pitted farmers seeking water for crops against endangered sucker fish. A similar conflict is now simmering in the Middle Rio Grande basin in New
DIGITAL VISION
Managing western water shortages
News Briefs Green engineering principles codified In July, a multidisciplinary group of 65 engineers published a report defining principles intended to help their peers take environmental impact into account when they design new products and processes. The guidelines are an outgrowth of a May meeting sponsored by Engineering Conferences International, an umbrella organization serving all engineering disciplines. The nine principles agreed upon by the group build on the set of principles first outlined in ES&T (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 94A–101A), and they encourage engineers to consider how their designs will impact the biosphere. The principles set “the stage for substantial progress in taking better care of our environment,” says William Saunders III, deputy assistant administrator of the U.S. EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides & Toxic Substances. For more information, go to www.enviro.utoledo.edu.
Carbon banking helps poor
Federal plan encourages western states to share water and plan for droughts.
Mexico over the endangered silvery minnow. Elsewhere across the West, water utilities are imposing tough water restrictions and charging steep conservation surcharges, as well as fines, in an attempt to persuade customers to change their water use behavior. State officials say the initiative is a step in the right direction. But water policy experts such as Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, a nonprofit research institute, give the roadmap mixed reviews, saying that the plan doesn’t address how climate change is likely to impact western water supplies. Local water utilities
Rich investors now have more incentive to help the world’s poorest countries implement greenhousegas-reducing technologies, according to the World Bank. In July, the bank’s Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF) officially opened with the aid of contributions from the governments of Canada, Italy, and The Netherlands, as well as from a number of large Japanese, German, and Spanish companies. The CDCF is an outgrowth of the World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2000, 34, 456A–457A). The organization serves as a matchmaker for poor nations and rich donors seeking carbon emissions reductions credits. For more information, including details about potential projects, go to http://communitycarbonfund.org.
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Environmental▼News Groundwater recharge could affect quality A number of municipalities, particularly in California and Florida, are looking at groundwater recharge projects as a way to store water during wet years to compensate for water shortages in the inevitable dry periods that follow. A recent study of an aquifer in southern California, however, shows that contaminants can accumulate following repeated injection, storage, and recovery cycles, potentially altering long-term groundwater quality. The study, a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, found that when treated surface water was used to recharge an aquifer in Antelope Valley near Lancaster, byproducts of the water disinfection process accumulated in the aquifer. These include trihalomethanes (THMs), which the U.S. EPA lists as carcinogens.
are already grappling with how to ensure a steady water supply as regions experience more extreme weather events and less stable weather patterns, says Steve Via, a regulatory engineer with the American Water Works Association. DOI’s plan also doesn’t suggest any reforms directed at reducing the agricultural sector’s use of water, Gleick adds, leaving that issue up to water users and planners. The vast majority of western water goes to agriculture, and water use efficiency in this industry must be improved if future water needs are to be met, Gleick says. Things like lining irrigation canals, as proposed by DOI, “are all very important, but they’re not enough.” Gleick suggests rethinking what crops are grown and where. Such a step would require a change in the way water is priced for agriculture, a politically difficult decision, he admits. Likewise, participants at a regional drought summit held by Northern Arizona University in May concluded that any discussions of water supply issues must address riparian and ecological needs as well. DOI’s initiative does list ecological benefits as a key goal. At the same time, however,
Some of the THMs were formed during the time the water traveled from the water treatment plant to the wellhead at the injection site. Others formed in the aquifer as the residual chlorine present in the injected water continued to react with organic carbon, says Miranda Fram, a USGS research chemist and lead author of the study. In laboratory experiments, she and her colleagues found that bacteria in the aquifer did not consume significant amounts of THMs under aerobic conditions, but THM concentrations in water extracted from the aquifer did decrease over time because of mixing that occurred between the injected water and water naturally present in the aquifer. All THM levels were below EPA’s current limit of 80 micrograms per liter, Fram notes, but the mixing made it impossible to recover all the water
agency officials announced in May that due to funding shortages, DOI would halt critical habitat designations for endangered species. One of the proposal’s major features is a hot spots map identifying watersheds that face the greatest risk of water supply crises by 2025. In developing the map, DOI analyzed population trends, rainfall records, water storage capacity, and endangered species habitats collected from a range of federal and state sources. The map focuses attention on the explosive population growth occurring across the West, where water shortages already exist, even under nondrought conditions. DOI proposes that states employ a range of tools for increasing water supplies in potential crisis areas. These include conservation measures, water banks and transfers, and use of better technologies such as drip irrigation and desalinization. A key component of the plan is a shift from federal to locally and state-driven solutions that remain within existing water rights frameworks, many of which were established decades ago. States also will have to rely largely on their own financial resources to carry out the
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containing THMs. In fact, extracted water still contained measurable THM concentrations long after continuous pumping had removed a greater volume of water than had been injected. “So, although the water’s perfectly fine now, 20 years from now when [THM] regulations are [likely to be] more stringent, you could be pulling out water with THM levels that are too high.” Possible remedies include dechlorinating the water before it’s injected or altering extraction methods, according to Fram and her colleagues. For instance, this study found that THMs and injected water are poorly extracted from the aquifer’s surface areas. So, putting in more shallow wells would increase extraction from these zones, thereby reducing THM accumulation, Fram notes, cautioning that every groundwater system will be different. For more information, go to http:// water.usgs.gov/pubs/wri/wri034062. —KRIS CHRISTEN plan, which DOI officials say is a consequence of current federal spending priorities. The administration has requested an initial investment of $11 million in its fiscal year 2004 budget proposal for the plan. The Western Governors’ Association (WGA), for its part, welcomes DOI’s initiative. “To raise awareness and even try to identify hot spots is very positive, but it’s going to take an act of Congress, with federal appropriations and authorizations to meet all the different programs responsible for drought,” says Shaun McGrath, WGA’s water policy program manager. WGA has been calling for national legislation that recognizes droughts in the same way as traumatic storm events such as hurricanes and floods, where federal disaster relief kicks in quickly. In June, DOI held the first of nine regional meetings in Denver, Colo., to bring various stakeholders together to address water supply challenges. Meanwhile, DOI and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have established an interagency task force to respond more quickly to emerging western water supply shortages. For more information, go to www.doi. gov/water2025. —KRIS CHRISTEN
