CLEAN WATER • DRINKING WATER • STRONG COMMUNITIES WATERKEEPER WATERKEEPER® 100% PCR Paper 5, Number Volume 1 DRINKDRINK DRINK Summer Summer 2008 Summer 2008 $5.95 Cerrella Loaded with trashy features like post-consumer recycled PET canvas upper and recycled rubber outsoles. Look good, feel good, in Curbside. ©2008 TEVA TEVA.COM WATERKEEPER Volume 5 Number 1, Summer 2008 41 44 16 in every issue Cover Feature 6 Letter from the Chairman: 28 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Protect the Source Despite treatment to clean water before it reaches your home, what 22 The Movement happens in your waterway impacts what makes it into your glass. Featuring Russian Waterkeepers 30 Contamination in the Coalfields 34 The Long Road to Protecting our Water Supply 64 On the Water 38 Nitrate Contamination in California 66 All Hands on Deck: 39 Threat to Birmingham Water Supply Take Action! 40 Source Water Protection, Not Filtration 41 Upper Neuse Basin Clean Water Initiative 43 Clean Drinking Water from the Hackensack River 44 Silent Spring of the 21st Century? Pharmaceuticals in Our Water 47 Water, Water, Everywhere... 51 Orange County Toasts Domestic over Imports 53 Safe Drinking Water for All 57 The Way Forward: Blue Covenant 58 Water for Life, Water for All 60 Call to Action: Every Drop Counts 66 news and entertainment 12 Splashback 14 Ripples 20 VICTORY: Ecological Marvel Protected 22 62 Ganymede: The Waterkeeper 4 Waterkeeper Magazine Summer 2008 www.waterkeeper.org We all need clean water to survive. Be brave. Join me, my father and all our John Paul Mitchell Systems family to help protect our world, our waterways, our people and every living creature. - J.A. DeJoria, Age 10, with non poisonous bull snake Peace, love and happiness, John Paul DeJoria, CEO, and the entire John Paul Mitchell Systems family, supporters of Waterkeeper Alliance www.paulmitchell.com. Only in salons and Paul Mitchell schools. We know that nations that “decarbonize” their economies Letter from the Chairman reap immediate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. rewards. The Next President’s First Task — A Manifesto ast November, Lord (David) Putt- prestige, endangered our national security, wind; indeed, North Dakota, Kansas, and nam debated before Parliament and damaged our health and land scapes. Texas alone produce enough harnessable Lan important bill to tackle global It is subverting everything we value. wind to meet all of the nation’s electricity warming. Addressing industry and gov- We know that nations that “decarbon- de mand. As for solar, according to a study ernment warnings that we must proceed ize” their economies reap immediate re- in Scientific American, photo-voltaic and slowly to avoid economic ruin, Lord Putt- wards. Sweden announced in 2006 the solar-thermal installations across just 19 nam recalled that precisely 200 years ago phase out of all fossil fuels (and nuclear en- percent of the most barren desert land in Parliament heard identical caveats dur- ergy) by 2020. In 1991 the Swedes enacted a the Southwest could supply nearly all of ing the debate over abolition of the slave carbon tax—now up to $150 a ton—closed our nation’s electricity needs without any trade. At that time slave commerce rep- two nuclear reactors, and still dropped rooftop installation, even as suming every resented one-fourth of Britain’s G.D.P. greenhouse emissions to 5 tons per per- American owned a plug-in hybrid. This and provided its primary source of son, compared to the U.S. per-capita rate is, incidentally, a much smaller footprint cheap, abundant energy. Vested interests of 20 tons. Thousands of entrepreneurs than would be required by the equivalent warned that financial apocalypse would rushed to develop new ways of generating power from coal. succeed its prohibition. energy from wind, the sun, and the tides, In America, several obstacles impede That debate lasted roughly a year, and and from woodchips, agricultural waste, the kind of entrepreneurial revolutions Parliament, in the end, made the moral and garbage. Growth rates climbed to up- that brought prosperity to Sweden and choice, abolishing the trade outright. In- wards of three times those of the U.S. The Iceland. First, that trillion dollars in an- stead of collapsing, as slavery’s propo- heavily taxed Swedish economy is now the nual coal-and-oil subsidies gives the car- nents had predicted, Britain’s economy ac- world’s eighth richest by G.D.P. bon indus try a decisive market advantage celerated. Slavery’s abolition exposed the Iceland was 80 percent dependent on and creates a formidable barrier to re- debilitating inefficiencies associated with imported coal and oil in the 1970s and was newables. Second, an overstressed and zero-cost labor; slavery had been a ball among the poorest economies in Europe. inefficient national electrical grid can’t and chain not only for the slaves but also Today, Iceland is 100 percent energy- accommodate new kinds of power. Third, for the British economy, hobbling produc- independent, with 90 percent of the na- a byzantine array of local rules impede tivity and sti fling growth. Now creativity tion’s homes heated by geothermal and its access by innovators to national markets. and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs remaining electrical needs met by hydro. And fourth, state and federal governments seeking new sources of energy launched The International Monetary Fund now have failed to develop ef­fi ciency standards the Industrial Revolution and inaugurated ranks Iceland the fourth most affluent na- and long-promised market incentives for the greatest era of wealth production in tion on earth. Geothermal and hydro pro- green buildings and machines. human history. duce so much cheap power that Iceland There are four things the new president Today, we don’t need to abolish car- has become one of the world’s top energy should immediately do to hasten the ap- bon as an energy source in or der to see exporters. (Iceland exports its surplus en- proaching boom in energy innovation. A its inefficiencies starkly, or to understand ergy in the form of smelted aluminum.) carbon cap-and-trade system designed to that this addiction is the principal drag The country, which previously had to beg put downward pressure on carbon emis- on American capitalism. The evidence is for corporate investment, now has compa- sions is quite simply a no-brainer. Already before our eyes. The practice of borrow- nies lined up to relo cate there to take ad- endorsed by Sena tors McCain, Clinton, ing a billion dollars each day to buy for- vantage of its low-cost clean energy. and Obama, such a system would measure eign oil has caused the American dollar It should come as no surprise that Cali- national carbon emissions and create a to implode. More than a trillion dollars in fornia, America’s most energy-efficient market to auction emissions credits. The annual subsidies to coal and oil producers state, also possesses its strongest economy. supply of credits is then reduced each year has beg gared a nation that four decades The United States has far greater do- to meet pre-determined carbon-reduction ago owned half the globe’s wealth. Carbon mestic energy resources than Iceland or targets. As supply tightens, credit value in- dependence has eroded our economic Sweden does. We sit atop the second-larg- creases, providing rich monetary rewards power, destroyed our moral authority, di- est geothermal resources in the world. The for innovators who reduce carbon. Since minished our international influence and American Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of it is precisely targeted, cap-and-trade is 6 Waterkeeper Magazine Summer 2008 www.waterkeeper.org more ef ective than a carbon tax. It is also years. For roughly a third of the projected “We have the ability to make clean more palatable to politicians, who despise cost of the Iraq war we could wean the energy both abundant and cheap,” says taxes and love markets. Industry likes the country from carbon. And the good news Dolezalek. Accessible markets will give ev- system’s clear goals. This market-based is that the government doesn’t actually ery Ameri can the opportunity to become approach has a proven track record. have to pay for all of this. If the president an energy entrepreneur. Homes and busi- The next president must push to re- works with governors to lift constraints nesses will become power plants as indi- vamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage and encourage investment, utilities and viduals cash in by install ing solar panels power-transmission system so that it can private entrepreneurs will quickly step in and wind turbines on their buildings, and deliver solar, wind, geothermal, and other to revitalize the grid and recover their in- selling the stored energy in their plug-in renewable energy across the country. vestment through royalties collected for hybrids back to the grid at peak hours. “As Right now, a Texas wind-farm manager transporting green electrons. One inves- capital and entrepreneurs rush into this who wants to get his electrons to market tor anx ious to fill this breach is Stephan space, the pace of change will accelerate faces two huge impediments. First, our Dolezalek, a managing director of Van- exponentially. As energy production goes regional power grids are overstressed and tagePoint Venture Partners, one of the up, you could see the price per unit drop misaligned. The biggest renewable-energy world’s largest green-tech venture-capital to practically nothing.” opportunities—for instance, Southwest firms. Dolezalek scofs at claims that a The president’s final priority must be solar and Midwest wind—are outside the carbon-free economy is still decades away. to connect a much smarter power grid grids’ reach.