Earth Blog

“Lives can be saved by improving the knowledge and skills of recreational boaters,” said Virgil Chambers the executive director of National Safe Boating Council (NBSC) in a joint statement with NOAA.  “Boaters can have fun and stay safe by wearing a life jacket, having the proper equipment onboard, knowing what the weather conditions will be, and abstaining from alcohol while boating.”

NOAA noted that in 2011 the U.S. Coast Guard reported more than 4,000 boating accidents including 758 deaths. Seventy percent of the deaths were due to drowning and in that statistic eighty-four percent were not wearing a life jacket.

The traditional pairing of white wine with a fish dinner has another relationship aside from your plate and palate.

Biologists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that fish and viticulturists in wine country may be unknowingly competing for one of the state’s most limited resources: water. Take a guess as to who is losing the struggle? There is a fifty/fifty chance you guess correctly. If you guessed the fish and are clutching a bottle of wine you are correct and win that bottle you are holding.

Asteroids were a popular subject this month as Planetary Resources, Inc announced at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington their intentions to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and water. The company has enlisted the help of big names like movie director James Cameron in an advisory role and Google co-founder Larry Page as a financial backer.

Planetary Resources isn’t quite ready to begin mining and they are likely following NASA’s recent asteroid news which could make their goals easier to reach.

Today the EPA released their “report card” for the Charles River in Boston. Since 1995 they have been grading the water quality and measuring the effectiveness of cleanup efforts against the basic goals of the Clean Water Act: making sure the waterways are clean for fishing and swimming.

The Tower of Pisa is not the only famous piece of Italy that is sinking and leaning. New research has found that the city of Venice is still slowly, but naturally, settling down and tilting east when it was previously thought that the city might have stabilized. This study is one of those “if ‘x’ continues at the rate it is currently being observed than the result will be whatever the worst case scenario is in this situation.” How bad is it?

"Venice appears to be continuing to subside, at a rate of about 2 millimeters (.07 inches) a year," said Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, "It's a small effect, but it's important," he added.

Stop for a minute and think of all the ways you used water today: cooking, cleaning and for hygiene. Now think of all the ways you use water at work. Depending on your place of employment those ways could vary, so think of how much water a farmer uses or a chef in a restaurant. Now go one step further and think of all the food and non-food products that contain water. Water is even used in the manufacturing of a car (not to mention maintenance) and estimates put a car’s waterfootprint at about 39,000 gallons.

Though water may sometimes fall from the sky in buckets, it doesn’t always and it is not a renewable resource unless we can control our usage.

Just in time for Spring Break a new federal regulation will prevent certain boats from discharging sewage -whether or not it’s treated- into California’s marine waters.  The sewage ban will create the largest “No Discharge Zone” (NDZ) in the country stretching from Mexico to Oregon and includes waters around major islands. The ban will stop an estimated 22 million gallons or more of treated sewage from being dumped into the oceans, bays, and estuaries each year along 1,624 miles of coast. Under the Clean Water Act the state of California was able to ask the EPA to approve the NDZ to help restore water quality.

“This is an important step to protect California's coastline. I want to commend the shipping industry, environmental groups and U.S. EPA for working with California to craft a common sense approach to keeping our coastal waters clean," said California’s Governor Jerry Brown.

How would you like to buy a bottle of wine and know that a portion of the proceeds were going to a good a cause? A cause more fantastic than simply supporting your favorite winery so more wine could be made. Now by purchasing wine you can provide clean water for Ethiopian citizens or citizens of several other emerging countries faced with drought and little or no access to clean water through the non-profit organization Wine to Water (WTW).

Do you know how much water is used in the manufacturing of a single car? According to Ford Motor Company they used 9.5 cubic meters in 2000 and one cubic meter is equal to 264.2 gallons of water. That means Ford used approximately 2,509 gallons of water per vehicle in 2000. That same year the company began their Global Water Management Initiative and the program, over a ten year span, has reduced Ford’s total “global water use by 62 percent, or 10.5 billion gallons. That's the equivalent of how much water 105,000 average American residences use annually, based on figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” 

Previously here on the Earth Blog we’ve talked about the importance of clean water to sustaining life and how the issue affects us all globally. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will provide $1.8 to $3.8 million in grant money for projects to restore American waterways as part of the Urban Waters program. The ultimate goal of the grants is to fund research, studies, training, and projects that will help improve and restore water quality through activities that are also community oriented.

Water, one of the most important substances needed to sustain life, covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface. The average human body is made of 50-60% water and the human heart and brain are both made of 75% water. No wonder we constantly have water on the brain! We are obsessed with finding, conserving, and drinking water.  We’ve used it’s energy to grind flour in mills and to mine for gold. There is nothing better than water for washing, swimming, and making plants grow. Since there is nothing better than water we must find new ways to use it efficiently.