Water Resources

From the American Journal of Public Health: The Drinking Water Disparities Framework: On the Origins and Persistence of Inequities in Exposure Carolina L. Balazs, PhD, and Isha Ray, PhDAt the time of research, both authors were with Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley. Contributors

The state Department of Environmental Protection is facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over its refusal to provide a public interest law firm with a slice of agency data that shows recent water pollution levels at coal-mining operations across West Virginia. Lawyers from Appalachian Mountain Advocates sued DEP in Kanawha Circuit Court after the agency turned down their request for “discharge monitoring report,” or DMR, data that mine operators are required to file with the agency to disclose pollution levels under state and federal clean water laws.

I have been working in the area of water resource policy and management for two decades and specifically on reducing the impacts of stormwater pollution for the last eleven years. At ASWM, among my many other projects, I am currently working to identify states where stormwater management considerations are being integrated into the management of wetlands and, conversely, where the protection and restoration of natural wetlands are effectively being integrated into stormwater management planning.

Even though renewables (not counting small hydro) averaged 12 percent of the in-state power mix between 2001 and 2012, compared to hydropower that generation did not vary unpredictably from year to year. That predictability is very valuable to your electric utility, which needs to plan ahead and unfortunately can’t forecast the water year. Read more

Evan Hansen of Downstream Strategies said the bills matches up to the way West Virginia’s Senate Bill 373 started the legislative process. That bill, which was signed into law earlier this week, changed, however, as it worked its way through both houses of the legislature. “The West Virginia bill is much more comprehensive,” he said Thursday. “They overlap in terms of having new regulations on aboveground storage tanks, but the West Virginia bill includes a lot more.”