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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (22743)	8/17/2010 6:07:23 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Levels Plummet in Crucial Reservoir Water levels in Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir, fell sharply again this summer and are nearing an elevation that would set off the first-ever official water shortage on the river, The Arizona Republic reported last week. The reservoir, which supplies roughly 30 million users in the West, dropped to 1,087 feet above sea level, or about 40 percent of capacity. Were the lake to hit 1,075 feet, allocations on the river would be cut by more than 100 billion gallons under the terms of a 2007 agreement struck by seven Western states and Mexico. Las Vegas, which draws about 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead, is particularly vulnerable to dropping lake levels. Were levels to fall to 1,050 feet, or 26 percent capacity, one of the city’s two water intake pipes on the lake would cease functioning. In anticipation of such an event, water managers have developed a highly controversial plan to tap groundwater in northeast Nevada and transport it to the city via a multibillion-dollar pipeline. A few wet years would do much to diminish the threat of imminent shortages, but the outlook for the river and the states that depend on it remains poor, with the arrival of La Niña in the equatorial Pacific expected to further dry out the arid West over the next two years. In Los Angeles, which has long drawn upon surplus water from the Colorado River, falling levels in Lake Mead have already brought water restrictions and penalties for everything from watering lawns on non-designated days to serving water to customers in restaurants unless it is requested first. Some believe that drastic steps beyond the allocation cuts spelled out in current water treaties will need to be taken to prevent catastrophic disruptions of water supplies in the region in the future. One 2008 study by researchers Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography estimated that if current consumption patterns are not altered, Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021. Water managers in the West were skeptical, as was The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which blasted the study in an editorial. “Predictions such as these virtually never come true,” the paper declared. “From Thomas Malthus in 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.” It continued, “We’d love to buy some action on the odds provided by Mr. Barnett and Mr. Pierce.” As it turned out, 2008 was a relatively wet year, with just over 100 percent of the average precipitation in the upper Colorado river basin, and Lake Mead rebounded somewhat. But each year since, the river has fallen short and water levels have continued to drop. “This is what basically the models are telling us should be happening and, by golly, there it is, right there in front of you,” Tim Barnett, one of the Scripps researchers, told Greenwire in an interview. “The thing that’s astounding to me is the head-in-the-sand attitude of the bureaucrats that we’ve talked to.” green.blogs.nytimes.com

To: TimF who wrote (22743)	8/18/2010 9:23:41 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

There is a deliberately created under-supply of taxis. No there isn't in any market I've known. Ask a cab driver. Since you don't have enough legal cabs allowed you get a black market, with "gypsy cabs"... So you would have them all gypsy cabs. BTW... what would we do without the EPA! Your tax dollars at work. Ohio's Bedbug Battle Escalates with EPA Crisis Meeting By NINA BURLEIGH Nina Burleigh 2 hrs 36 mins ago For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets. Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments, warning in particular of the dangers of using outdoor pesticides in homes. The Ohio Department of Agriculture has mounted a more unusual response to the crisis: it petitioned the EPA for an exemption to allow in-home use of propoxur, a pesticide and neurotoxin banned in the 1990s out of concern for its effects on children. (See the top 10 weird insect mating rituals.) Although the EPA rejected Ohio's propoxur plea in June, the agency has scheduled an Aug. 18 meeting with state and municipal leaders to try to formulate an abatement strategy everyone can live with. Among the meeting's participants: representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, no joke, the Department of Defense. "We are hopeful that the outcome of this meeting provides a solution," says Ohio agriculture secretary Robert Boggs. "Quite frankly, something needs to happen, and it needs to happen quickly." Bedbugs don't transmit disease, but they can be harmful to mental health, as many Ohioans can attest. Nearly eradicated for the past half-century in the industrialized world, Cimex lectularis (the second word stems from the Latin for small bed) is presenting a 21st century environmental challenge. In the Mad Men days of pest control, "you could go down to the local drugstore, buy a DDT bug bomb, and everybody could slay their own bedbugs," says Michael F. Potter, a University of Kentucky entomologist who spends hours pouring poisons on bedbugs in his lab, seeking the elusive potion that kills them without harming humans or pets. (See pictures of bug cuisine.) The bugs developed a resistance to DDT decades ago, but propoxur can still kill adult bedbugs within 24 hours and keeps killing newborns as they hatch. The EPA banned it for in-home use in the 1990s on the basis of animal tests and ill effects on adult workers who were exposed to it. "We believe the window between a safe dose and a dangerous dose for a toddler is very small," says EPA pesticide chief Steven Bradbury. But before we join Ohioans and hit the streets with "Spray, baby, spray" placards, it's worth noting that scientists don't agree on whether a silver-bullet pesticide exists. "Propoxur might work for a few years, but then we would select for the genetically resistant bedbugs, and they would be right back," says Dini Miller, an entomologist at Virginia Tech and the state's urban-pest-management specialist. (See the fascinating and frightening world of insects.) That leaves behavioral lines of defense as the most durable strategies. Dogs have been trained to sniff out bedbugs, and specialized pest companies can haul in machines that heat entire rooms to well north of 113°F (45°C), at which point the bugs die. Heat treatments cost thousands of dollars per room, but the lower-cost alternative of simply throwing out your infested mattress or furniture likely won't solve the problem - and may spread it to your salvaging neighbor. For home infestations, the EPA recommends reducing clutter, sealing cracks and crevices, vacuuming often, drying infested clothes at high heat and using a special mattress cover so you can sleep tight without letting the bedbugs bite. Travelers should inspect hotel mattresses, box springs and headboards for the pests and the inklike streaks of their droppings. In other words, a dose of vigilance - if not outright paranoia - is the best preventive. "We are looking at what we did a hundred years ago," says entomologist Miller. "We need to develop an individual consciousness, like we had then. You should think twice about leaving your purse on a seat in the movie theater and storing your kids' college furniture in the basement when they come home. We need to be conscious that anybody from a group-living situation may come back with bedbugs."