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The beautiful Teesta River of Sikkim

“Let Us, Live In Our Homeland, We Want Freedom From Hydel Project” Source: Affected Communities of Teesta (ACT)

The ‘God’s Own Garden’ is in peril! The only state in India claim to have green manifesto in its developmental path is going to be seriously dismantled by the state itself.

The Green Protection Index- Sikkim government’s initiative for environment protection- sordidly overlooks the environmental and cultural disruptions due to several hydel power initiatives on the Teesta River and its major tributaries.

The state government’s hydel spree of more than two dozens of projects on the Teesta River basin has been facing severe protest in the tiny Himalayan state. In the true sense of Gandhian non-violence, the indigenous communities of Sikkim are continuing their indefinite hunger strike for more than 165 days against the proposed construction of hydel projects since June 20, 2007. Various community organisation led by Affected Communities of Teesta (ACT), along with the Concerned Lepchas of Sikkim (CLOS) and the Sangha of Dzongu are protesting projects proposed in North Sikkim, particularly in Dzongu, the holy land and exclusive reserve of the Lepcha indigenous community.

Source: Site of Indefinite Hunger Strike, Affected Communities of Teesta (ACT)

The 30 MW Rathong Chu project in West Sikkim was abandoned as the lamas (Monks) protested against its impacts on the sacred landscape. A senior monk Sonam Paljor Denjongpa of the Chorten Gonpa, Deorali, Gangtok said that some of hydel projects will destroy the heart of the sacred land, Dzongue.

33 year old Dawa Tsering Lepcha who lives in Lingdong Village, in the Dzongu Lepcha Reserve in North Sikkim, and Secretary of ACT, says, “The proposed hydropower projects will have a drastic effect on the social, cultural and religious well-being of Lepchas, not to mention on the fragile environment of Dzongu, our ancestral and present homeland in north Sikkim.” Dzongu has been reserved for the Lepcha community and borders the Kanchenjungha Biosphere Reserve, which hosts a large number of biological curiosity. The Lepchas are one of the three ethnic communities resides in Sikkim. The 40,568 Lepchas as per the 2001 census, who call themselves the Rong-pa, are Sikkim’s earliest inhabitants and popularly classified as hunting-gathering forest-dwelling primitive groups. The culture, customs and traditions of the Lepchas are inextricably linked to the nature. However, now the Lepachas are facing serious threat of their existence. Tenzing Lepcha, 23 years from Heegyathang village which resides 70 Lepcha family in Dzongu province says, “We want development but not on our existence cost.”

Early September, under the pressure from the indigenous communities, the state government has ordered to halt all the five hydel power projects in Dzongu till a review committee submit its report within 100 days. On September 10th, the ACT responded with a Press Statement rejecting the government’s statement and continuing their struggle. Dawa Lepcha says, “The entire process of constituting the Committee, appointing its members, formulating its TOR etc is done without any consultation with ACT.”

Development of Power installations in Sikkim

Sikkim has been declared a 100 percent electrified state in 1995 as per definition of Rural Electrification Corporation of India- a federal government enterprise (http://recindia.nic.in/). However, the foundation of power was established in 1927 with the commissioning of first hydel project at Lower Sichey Busty on the bank of Ranikhola River near Gangtok with the installed capacity of 50 KW. This was distributed through 3.3KV overhead transmission line to the Royal Family and Gangtok town. Till 1954, this was managed and operated by only two persons.

The Ranikhola hydel station was further augmented in the year 1935 by adding 60KW generating set. In 1957, keeping in view of growing demand for electricity and as a standby measure, a Diesel power house was established and commissioned with a capacity of 257 KW. This was upgraded to 4 MW from the previous capacity in 1998.

Till the end of 1975, the state was having a generation capacity of only 3MW from its small hydel projects (SHP) like Jali Power House, Rimbi Micro Hydel, Rothak Micro Hydel, Manul Micro Hydel Power House and Diesel Power House at Gangtok. The 60 MW Rangit Hydel project in West Sikkim was commissioned in 1999. A 2 MW Kalez Khola hydel project in Dentam in West Sikkim and 3 MW Rabomchu power project in North Sikkim were commissioned in 1995-96 and 1998, respectively.

The state nodal agency for renewable energy has installed 1,000 solar home lighting systems and 5 solar water heating systems. Till 31st March, 2007 a total of 16 Solar Home Lighting Systems, 162 Solar Street Lighting Systems, 720 Solar Lanterns, 15 kWp aggregate capacities of solar photovoltaic plants, 5 solar water heating systems of 156 sq m collector area and 20 solar cookers have been installed in the state.

The 60 MW Rangit Power House Source: Government of Sikkim

The State government is expected to commission 22 power projects by 2012.

A total of 5148 MW capacity hydel power generation will be added by the end of 11th Five Year Plan. From these projects, the State Power & Energy Department says, the state government will get 12 percent of free power.

At present the total Installed Capacity of the state is 95.70 MW. The per capita consumption of electricity in the state is 182 KWh. However, the government estimates total hydro power potential is 5505 MW. Out of which, a total capacity 5257 MW of 27 projects have been formulated (See Table-1).

The State government’s vision document enshrines the fulfilment of this hydro potential (http://sikkim.gov.in/ASP/Visiondocument/POWER.htm). Under the Prime Minister’s 50,000 MW initiatives, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) have prepared Preliminary Feasibility Report (PFRs) of 162 schemes which are located in 16 states. Under this scheme, the Sikkim government has been allocated 10 schemes of 1469 MW of installed capacity.

TABLE: SIKKIM HYDRO POWER PROJECTS ALLOTTED TO PRIVATE & PUBLIC SECTOR

The proposed Hydel sites on the rivers in Sikkim; over 5.0 gigawatts of capacity Source: Department of Power and Energy, Government of Sikkim

Carrying Capacity of Teesta Basin

The State as well as the Federal Government wants to harness the vast hydropower potential of Teesta River as well its tributaries. Out of 104 rivers and streams in the state, the state government has taken up six stage ‘cascade’ plan to harness 3635 MW of hydropower within 175 kms of the Teesta River flows across in Sikkim (See Table -1). The perennial Teesta, fed by the snow and glaciers of Kanchenjungha and great Himalayas, is also an international river flows through the territories of India (Sikkim and West Bengal) and Bangladesh. The proposed and on-going projects are criticised for its various negligence on environmental aspects, forest clearances and public participations. The State environment department had also detected several violations of forest laws by the projects.

Ramamurthy Sreedhar, Earth Scientist and Director of Academy of Mountain Environics (http://www.environicsindia.in/) says, “The projects in Sikkim must be considered in a completely different light, as apart from the ecological implications for which comprehensive carrying capacity studies were to be made, the unique cultural situation and aspirations of the people have to be taken into account”. A study on Carrying Capacity of Teesta Basin in Sikkim has been initiated in the year 2001. The Study is sponsored by National Hydro electric Power Corporation (NHPC) and coordinated by the Centre for Inter-disciplinary Study of Mountain and Hill Environment (CISMHE), Delhi University. The objective of the study was to help in formulating guidelines for overall development of Teesta Basin. Reading through the volumes of the draft Carrying Capacity study of Teesta Basin is scary. However, the findings of the study are yet to be officially put in the public domain.

The study says that the ecology and the geology are so fragile that if any development project is undertaken, proper studies have to be done before that. The study also mentions that tunnelling will be difficult in the types of rocks present in north Sikkim. The Study also predicts more landslides and landslips, which has already increased due to construction of roads.

Souprna Lahiri, senior member of National Federation For Forest People and Forest Worker (NFFPFW) who also works with groups in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh on the issue of hydel projects, says, “One of the conditions for according environmental clearance to Teesta Stage V was that no further clearances will be given to any hydel project till the carrying capacity study of Teesta is carried out. The study is yet to be officially published but at least two projects Teesta State III and Panan has been cleared”.

The international aspect of sharing the Teesta water is yet to be resolved between India and Bangladesh. Despite the Joint River Commissions of Indo-Bangladesg (JRC) reached an agreement in 1983 for two years to utilise the quantum of water, the issue has not been resolved yet. The impeding demand on Teesta water is definitely creating bilateral skirmishes despite institutional mechanism to resolve the problem is available like Joint Committee of Experts (JCE) on sharing of waters of Teesta and a Joint Technical Group (JTG) on sharing of Teesta Waters.

Bangladesh constructed a barrage on the Teesta River in 1990 to provide irrigation water for crop production in the Teesta Barrage Project (TBP) area. India has also constructed a barrage on this river upstream. However, unilateral withdrawal of water in India upstream, limits irrigation water availability in the TBP area. Water sharing with India is crucial in achieving food security and sustainable livelihood in Bangladesh.

Teesta Phase III Source: ACT

The Government’s Argument

The Federal Agencies are taking serious notes of the development in Dzongu Province. In early January coming year, a member of Planning Commission may pay a visit to see the ground zero situation in Dzongu province. However, the State government is buying time to restart the projects. In a Public Hearing (mandatory for every project in India) initiated by the Sikkim State Pollution Control Board, in June 2006 in Dzongu, the government agencies cajoled, intimidated and persuaded the communities and people through their introductory notes for the hydel projects before disseminating information regarding the projects.

This process of public hearing has been questioned at large in all over India. During the Public Hearing, the Chairman of the State Pollution Control Board in her speech asked the people to support the hydel projects and should not carried away by the remarks of people who opposed the projects. The local legislature who is also the Health Minister of the present administration said during the Hearings as ‘there is not a single person displaced by this project’. However, Mr Lahiri rues, “In the Public Hearings there was considerable opposition to the project, in case of Panan, 100 per cent said no, in case of Teesta III it was 50 per cent. In the Teesta III PH, those who raised concern and protested against the project were termed as anti-social and anti national by the chairperson of the SPCB.”

The state officials have been arguing for the revenue generation amounting approximately two billion rupees from these projects per annum. The State Department claims that 100 percent of the jobs generated in these power projects are being given to the local people depending upon their qualifications. According to the government, the benefits from these hydel projects would contribute to the national GDP growth, revenues from free power and environment cess, clean power as CDM perspective, employment generation and local area development but, as community believes, at the cost of environment and unique culture.

MAP: SIKKIM HYDRO POWER PROJECTS ALLOTTED TO PRIVATE & PUBLIC SECTOR

The proposed Hydel sites on the rivers in Sikkim; over 5.0 gigawatts of capacity Source: Department of Power and Energy, Government of Sikkim

Conclusion:

During their last two days protest in New Delhi (December 5-6, 2007), the communities from Dzongu has met various officials, conveyed their grievances, and pledged to carry forward their peaceful protest against the upcoming hydel projects in coming days. The Constitutional provision of cultural rights which are also fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in Dzongu province if the concerns of the Lepcha community are not addressed adequately and immediately.

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About the Author: Avilash Roul, a doctoral fellow on international environmental negotiations, has been writing, advocating, researching, creating knowledge on Environment and Development in various English Daily media since 2000. Earlier, he worked with Down To Earh (fortnightly magazine published in New Delhi, India). He also contributed regularly in Sundays for a column in New India Express on environment and development. More recently, Mr. Roul worked as an Assistant South Asia Regional Coordinator for the Bank Information Center (www.bicusa.org), an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization that advocates for the protection of rights, participation, transparency, and public accountability in the governance and operations of the World Bank, regional development banks, and the International Monetary Fund. Presently, he contributes his time on researching and empowering and building capacity of various communities on environment risk management, climate change, forest, mining, water and wildlife issues in South Asia as well as advisor to Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict – a Delhi Based think tank.

In previous posts, “Fisker’s Photovoltaic Cars,” and “Photovoltaic Powered Cars,” we have reported on the potential for commuters to power their vehicles with energy collected from rooftop photovoltaics. But until now we haven’t been able to share some of our spreadsheet analysis with our readers. While it’s still not possible to include these online interactive spreadsheets in WordPress, here are two on plain .html pages that hopefully can make more clear the costs and challenges.

Cross-section of series hybrid Chevy Volt, possibly in showrooms by 2010. (Photo: GM Volt)

In the online interactive spreadsheet “Gigawatts per E-Commuters” there are only a few assumptions – the quantity of commuters using electric cars, the average round-trip commute, and the average miles per kilowatt-hour.

Based on the default assumptions on the spreadsheet – 15 million electric vehicle commuters, a 40 mile commute, and 4.0 miles per kilowatt-hour – it would take 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity to charge into such a fleet of battery-powered cars when they are plugged in every night.

Given these are off-peak hours, and given a 10 hour average recharge cycle, the electric power grid would have to deliver 15 gigawatts of additional power all night in order to recharge this quantity of cars. Input your own assumptions!

In California, for example, where during peak demand the power grid can deliver over 50 gigawatts, this is probably barely feasible. But where will the additional electricity come from? Even assuming massive grid-scale storage capacity, you only get about 1.5 gigawatt-hours per day from a one square mile solar thermal plant – you would need to build 100 of these. A nuclear power station can easily output 1.0 gigawatts, and since they run continuously, that would add 24 gigawatt-hours per day – you would need to build about six of them. But what if decentralized sources of electricity were used to power electric cars?

In another online interactive spreadsheet on this topic, “Photovoltaics per Electric Car,” we look at the cost of rooftop photovoltaics to power a car. Our default assumptions are 12 watts per square foot of PV, 7 hours of sun per day, a 40 mile daily range requirement, and 3.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. By further assuming $8.00 per watt (installed), $150 per kilowatt-hour of storage, the total system cost is under $15,000, and at a 25 year system life the cost per mile is only $.04. Using these assumptions, it is already cost-effective for personal photovoltaic systems to power electric cars. Input your own assumptions!

With series hybrid technology, you can have cars that run virtually all the time on electricity, since the normal duty cycle is 40 miles per day or less, but nonetheless are capable of driving 500+ miles on a tank of gasoline in the rare instances when that may be necessary. With current prices and technologies, it is already arguable that photovoltaics can economically power series hybrid cars.

Earlier this month we posted a feature article entitled “35 Inconvenient Truths” by Christopher Monckton. The story attracted a number of emails, but none that actually challenged the content. The reason we continue to post this side of the debate is because in our research, talking with climate scientists and doing our own fact checking, we find the skeptics are making valid points.

The idea that there is a “denial industry” doesn’t hold up to logic. Here’s how policies that adhere to conventional theories about global warming benefit most vested interests:

• Insurance companies get to charge higher premiums
• Fossil fuel companies get to keep prices (and profits) high
• Politicians get to enact new taxes
• Public sector entities get new taxes to fund their pensions
• Environmental organizations get more funds
• Left wing activists get a new basis to attack private ownership
• More public sector funded jobs are created
• Lawyers get a new basis to file lawsuits
• CPA firms begin to audit carbon accounting
• Wall street gets to trade emissions credits
• Climate researchers get more grant requests funded
• United Nations bureaucrats get a guaranteed revenue stream

Not included on this list of winners are the billions of ordinary consumers who will pay more for basic needs, millions of small businesses who will go under, and the economic aspirations of emerging nations that will be thwarted – so where is the denial industry? With virtually all powerful vested interests winning under the alarm scenario – it’s no wonder we aren’t seeing meaningful debate on this topic.

Whether or not someone is a AGW alarmist should have no bearing on the strength or purity of their environmentalist convictions.

Here then are Christopher Monckton’s inconvenient questions – he claims each of the following 35 points made in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” are false. And the discussion would be furthered if rational rebuttal were offered to Monckton’s discussion of any of these points.

The truth should not be afraid of debate:

1. Sea Level Rising Six Meters”
2. Pacific islands “drowning”
3. Thermohaline circulation “stopping”
4. CO2 “driving temperature”
5. Snows of Kilimanjaro “melting”
6. Lake Chad “drying up”
7. Hurricane Katrina “man made”
8. Polar bear “dying”
9. Coral reefs “bleaching”
10. 100 ppmv of CO2 “melting mile-thick ice”
11. Hurricane Caterina “manmade”
12. Japanese typhoons “a new record”
13. Hurricanes “getting stronger”
14. Big storm insurances losses “increasing”
15. Mumbai “flooding”
16. Severe tornadoes “more frequent”
17. The sun “heats the Arctic ocean”
18. Arctic “warming fastest”
19. Greenland ice sheet “unstable”
20. Himalayan glacial melt waters “failing”
21. Peruvian glaciers “disappearing”
22. Mountain glaciers worldwide “disappearing”
23. Sahara desert “drying”
24. West Antarctic ice sheet “unstable”
25. Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves “breaking up”
26. Larsen B Ice Shelf “broke up because of ‘global warming”
27. Mosquitoes “climbing to higher altitudes”
28. Many tropical diseases “spread through ‘global warming”
29. West Nile virus in the US “spread through ‘global warming”
30. Carbon dioxide is “pollution”
31. The European heat wave of 2003 “killed 35,000″
32. Pied flycatchers “cannot feed their young”
33. Gore’s bogus pictures and film footage
34. The Thames Barrier “closing more frequentl”
35. No fact…in dispute by anybody

A man is lost at sea. This scenario rarely ends in a casualty due to starvation or shark attack, but the lack of drinking water. It is a sad irony to die of thirst when so much water surrounds you.

With today’s desalination technology, however, the next bottle of water you guzzle down may very well have originated in the ocean. Water purification research with the use of membranes and reverse osmosis has been underway since the 60′s. Contaminated water is forced through this semi-permeable membrane which allows water to pass through but all contaminants such as salt and bacteria are left behind.

Water purification plants use this technology worldwide, but the high cost of desalination has kept it from being used as much as it could be. It can cost upwards of $1,000 to desalinate an acre-foot of seawater. This is roughly the amount of water 1-3 suburban families use per year. Compared to the $200 per acre foot it costs to filter water from other sources, desalinization does seem costly.

Fortunately, NanoH2O has developed a membrane that reduces costs and increases efficiency of the reverse osmosis filtration process. According to the NanoH2O website “NanoH2O enhances current polymer-based membranes with nanostructured material that allows additional ‘degrees of freedom’ in the control of membrane properties. The result is a wide array of advantageous membrane characteristics including improved permeability while maintaining requisite salt and contaminant rejection, both passive and active fouling resistance, as well as ‘tunable’ membrane performance to address specific water chemistries.”

Developed at UCLA, these membranes are developed at the nanoscale with tunnels a molecule thick and particles incorporated into the membrane that help the osmosis process! In an article published by UCLA, Engineering professor Eric Hoek describes the technology he helped create : “The nanoparticles are designed to attract water and are highly porous, soaking up water like a sponge, while repelling dissolved salts and other impurities,” Hoek said. “The water-loving nanoparticles embedded in our membrane also repel organics and bacteria, which tend to clog up conventional membranes over time.”

The article continues explaining that “Initial tests suggest the new membranes have up to twice the productivity — or consume 50 percent less energy — reducing the total expense of desalinated water by as much as 25 percent. ”

The entire article can be viewed at: http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Today-s-Seawater-Is-Tomorrow-s-7410.aspx?RelNum=7410

This is promising, especially since seawater is such an abundant resource that many coastal third world countries would benefit immensely from using through this technology. Who knows, the ocean might be even more refreshing than you think.

Earlier this month, in our post “Biofuel’s Potential,” we compared the best case biofuel yields today – about 10,000 barrels per square mile per year – to the best case biofuel yields in the future according to many biofuel experts – about 50,000 barrels per square mile per year. To summarize, the difference between 10,000 barrels per square mile per year and 50,000 barrels per square mile per year is the difference between a supplemental fuel of some economic value, and a scaleable, viable fuel alternative that could literally replace petroleum.

For some time we’ve been looking for a way to present quantitative cases using interactive spreadsheets, and a new company in Sweden, SpreadsheetConverter, has finally delivered something that we can work with. Unfortunately, their software won’t function in the WordPress environment, at least not yet. But if you click on “LAND FOR BIOFUEL CALCULATOR” you can do your own math. The cells highlighted in yellow are input cells – if you don’t like our assumptions, enter your own.

The interactive table we’ve constructed, “Land for Biofuel,” calculates how much land and water a typical American suburb requires, then calculates how much land and water would be required to supply that city with biofuel for 100% of the automobiles in the city. The default case is for a city with 100,000 people, using corn ethanol that requires irrigation. All of the values in the yellow highlighted cells are based on yield and consumption data we’ve checked, but the beauty of this table is you can enter your own assumptions if you don’t like ours.

To view the results, you need to click the curser on a highlighted cell, then move it away and click again. This is a workaround, but again, this is the best interactive online spreadsheet we’ve ever found.

And the results are interesting. In a city of 100,000 people, at a population density of 5,000 people per square mile (what used to be a high density suburb, but what the smart growth people now call eggregious sprawl – read “California Land Use Choices,” or “Critique of New Urbanism”), the city itself would consume 20 square miles. The land necessary to provide the inhabitants with 100% of their automotive fuel would consume an additional 190 square miles, a ratio of 9.5 to 1.0.

We have used 2,500 barrels per acre per square mile per year as our yield assumption, based on data we’ve compiled on current yields from corn ethanol (read “Is Biofuel Water Positive”). But if we were able to get the kinds of ethanol yields from corn in California that we get from sugar cane in Brazil, 10,000 barrels per square mile per year, then our sample city with a housing footprint of 20 miles would only require 48 square miles of biofuel cropland – a ratio of 2.4 to 1.0. And if the most optimistic claims of biofuel proponents are to be believed, eventually we will extract 50,000 barrels of ethanol per square mile per year from advanced biofuel crops, in which case our sample city with a housing footprint of 20 miles would only require 10 square miles of biofuel cropland – a ratio of 0.5 to 1.0. The water requirements of biofuel crops are also an issue, of course, and in semi-arid places like California this is not an afterthought – our calculator indicates it would take 5 times as much water to irrigate corn ethanol crops than to supply the households who would be consuming that ethanol.

Clearly if biofuel yields reach their claimed potential, biofuel can replace petroleum. But will they? And no discussion of biofuel from here should end without this cautionary refrain – carbon offset funds from Europe have subsidized biodiesel, creating a land rush to grow oil palms and other biodiesel crops, unleashing what is well on the way to being the most devastating rounds of tropical deforestation in the history of the world. Anyone who cares about wildlife, wilderness, or climate health, should be paying attention. Read “Reforesting vs. Biofuel.”

Back in October 2007, in our post “Ze-Gen’s Waste to Energy” we reported on a Massachusetts-based company, Ze-Gen, who appeared to be “possibly the furthest along in the race to develop technology to turn waste into fuel – eliminating the need for landfills in the bargain.” That was then. There are other contenders in this race…

Plasco’s Ottawa Waste-to-Energy Plant. (Photo: Plasco Energy Group

Just one day after we posted this report, Plasco Energy Group, based in Ottawa, Canada, announced in a press release “Plasco Energy delivers power to Ottawa grid,” that they have completed a waste-to-energy plant and are beginning the commissioning process.

Plasco’s technology, as described in the “how it works” page on their website, begins with municipal solid waste (presumably pre-shredded) being fed into a primary chamber, where most of the waste is converted into gas.

The gas is then further cleaned in a secondary chamber and is then used to power internal combustion engines which turn a generator. The residual solid waste is transferred to a different chamber where it is melted and converted into ingots. Here is what Plasco claims their plant can do with one ton of municipal solid waste:

One Ton of Municipal Solid Waste Equals:
1.4 megawatt-hours of electricity
300 liters of potable quality water
7-15 kilograms of metal
5-10 kilograms of commercial salt
150 kilograms of construction aggregate
5 kilograms of agricultural fertilizer

It will be interesting to see how soon Plasco completes the commissioning process for this first plant and brings the facility into its full rated capacity of 85 tons (metric) of municipal solid waste per day. Given that on December 3rd, 2007, Plasco Energy Group closed an equity financing of C$54 million led by First Reserve Corporation of Greenwich, Connecticut, there is reason to believe they are breaking in their new plant according to plan.

There are interesting contrasts between the Plasco claims and those from Ze-Gen. Most significantly, Plasco has apparently solved the challenge of processing municipal solid waste, a feedstock that is more problematic to convert (mostly due to higher and less predictable water content) than construction debris. The energy recovery per ton (normalized to short tons) differs greatly when comparing municipal solid waste (1.4 megawatt-hours per ton according to Plasco) and construction debris (4.2 megawatt-hours per ton according to Ze-Gen. Presumably the composition of typical construction debris – 90% scrap lumber – accounts for the energy density claimed for construction debris being literally triple that of municipal solid waste.

Finally, should an energy density of 1.4 megawatt-hours per ton in the case of municipal solid waste be applied when calculating the energy production potential of the 100 million tons of construction debris and 220 million tons of municipal solid waste produced in the USA each year, then the percentage of total energy production in the USA that could be offset by converting 100% of these waste streams into energy (as we calculated in our report on Ze-Gen) is not 4.0%, but 2.5%. Still a worthy proposition.

Most people hate nothing more than being stuck in traffic. Migraines aren’t popular either, but since many head aches are traffic induced, there doesn’t seem to be anything worse in a daily commuter’s life.

The main cause for traffic is obvious with the average household owning 2-3 cars. Distance traveled to work has doubled over the years and with millions of cars on the road during rush hour, congestion is inevitable.

The Department of Transportation indicates that “over the last 20 years or so, nearly twice as many miles are driven today on a road system that has increased in size by only 5 percent. Such heavy demand, coupled with temporary reductions in capacity resulting from causes such as crashes and work zones, are making traveling increasingly costly and frustrating.”

So what is the solution? 3/4 of traffic accidents are caused by driver error. Same thing goes for congestion. With this in mind, ‘smart-cars’ and vehicle-to-vehicle communication seem like the next step: Honda has already developed a system where the car is nudged automatically once in a while to stay in the center of the lane. Cameras tell you how close you are to a curb or car behind you. Even though technical advancements in this field are constantly made, cars that chauffer their owners around through smooth flowing traffic are not going to exist for a while.

With the constant rise in gas prices and environmental awareness, hybrid vehicles and no-pollution cars are attractive options. But this still does not help the traffic issue.

The main solution right now seems to be the carpool. In attempts to organize carpools at work I am often met with raised eyebrows. I hate traffic so much that I gave my 2 weeks notice right after enduring my first 3 hour commute at a job. Unfortunately, carpooling has not proven popular enough to seriously reduce traffic on the roads. In a blog published by the ‘Daily Kos’, a computer organized carpooling program is described in detail: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/22/225134/764

Not only does carpooling save all participants money, but it reduces traffic and pollution. Companies benefit as well by reducing the number of parking spaces needed. In fact, many carpoolers receive rewards from their company or county for carpooling.

The U.S Department of Transportation states that then an average 40-hour work week per year is spent in congestion! This accounts for a tremendous amount of stress, wasted gas and environmental pollution, not to mention wasted time.

This decentralized wastewater treatment plant has the capacity to serve 150 households.

With a capacity of roughly 200,000 gallons per day, these off-grid plants can be constructed at a cost of well under $2,000 per home.

One of the biggest challenges to implementing comprehensive land use plans is how to accommodate new development in locally designated growth areas that do not have public sewers. Many rural and suburbanized towns in the US face this question.

They want to direct growth to the most suitable areas of town – near existing services, such as fire stations and schools, for example – but have no prospect of gaining access to public sewer lines. New development must rely on soils, usually on a lot by lot basis, to handle wastewater. The conventional wisdom says that means low densities of development, negating the effectiveness of a growth area. However, towns and counties without public sewer systems have options that they may not realize.

Additionally, watersheds in the United States reflect tremendous diversity of climatic conditions, geology, soils, and other factors that influence water flow, flora and fauna. There is equally great variation in historical experience, cultural expression, institutional arrangements, laws, policies and attitudes. With regards to wastewater issues, it would be a mistake to impose a standard model from the federal level to address the needs on a local level. Correspondingly, centralized sewer systems are aging, frequently under funded with respect to replacement costs and expensive to maintain. In addition centralized sewer strategies are increasingly challenged by environmental and social considerations such as inter-basin transfer issues, aquifer depletion, nutrient loading and urban sprawl.

Decentralized wastewater management has the potential to be the catalyst for the re-creation of our institutions, to support a new agenda, and for rapidly building a flexible infrastructure to sustain the integrity of the natural systems that are essential to a healthy economy. The new emerging civic agenda of smart growth, community preservation, open space planning, ecologically sound economic development, resource conservation, and watershed management demands that we re-think what constitutes assets and liabilities. These are economic, environmental and quality of life issues and they do not lend themselves to single purpose solutions. They require local community based consideration within the context of flexible multi-purpose planning.

Diagram of sewage treatment process using a trickling filter over a clarifier. This technology is used on smaller residential projects.

Statistics have shown us that within the U.S., 25% of existing residential real estate and 47% of new construction are served by onsite treatment systems. Many of these systems are acknowledged to be inadequate with respect to soil absorption, nutrient removal, resource protection and public health. Ironically, despite these demographics and EPA policy changes, most regulatory codes as well as most municipal and commercial planning continue to consider onsite systems to be temporary solutions awaiting a conventional sewer hookup.

Looking beyond the traditional assumption that wastewater is simply a matter of safe disposal and the public health, the real contemporary wastewater issues are the economic and environmental issues in which the public has a primary interest:

1 – Drinking water quality

2 – Deterioration of recreational water resources and other natural systems services

3 – Property Values

4 – Economic development in small and rural communities

5 – Urban sprawl

Decentralized wastewater management is not just about the disposal of wastewater and the public health. It has the potential to contribute to the formation of an infrastructure to sustain watershed integrity. Decentralized wastewater treatment is about the “watershed agenda” and the principles of “community preservation” and “sustainable development”. When approaches to the real wastewater issues are successfully accomplished everyone benefits.

1 - Local communities win open space zoning, water quality and supply protection, increased development capacity and an expanding tax base.

2 – Natural systems are sustained through prudent zoning and reduction of non-point pollution.

3 – Developers win additional lots for development and higher margins typically associated with conservation subdivision design and municipal infrastructure.

4 – Regulation wins because it gains partners in compliance management such as the municipality and perhaps a watershed authority.

5 – Citizens and homeowners win because property values are enhanced with municipal infrastructure, water quality and supply management is improved, and economic development and quality of life issues are not restricted by infrastructure limitations.

This golf course in New Zealand is being irrigated by reclaimed wastewater through drip irrigation.

There are no major obstacles to a decentralized infrastructure for wastewater treatment.

New technologies in a properly managed context, provide the opportunity for a land based watershed initiative that could significantly reduce small flow point source discharges such as those associated with onsite treatment systems. A decentralized wastewater management infrastructure should include:

1 – Clustered, performance-based, decentralized wastewater management systems

2 – Industrial & commercial pretreatment prior to discharge to existing sewage treatment systems

3 – Wastewater reuse systems

Estimates suggest that this infrastructure is achievable with technologies that require 50% to 70% less space with corresponding reductions in cost of 40% to 50%. For citizens in small and rural communities these reductions represent opportunities to preserve water quality, to stimulate economic development and job formation and to restore property values. Essentially, we are shifting from large sewage collection systems and centralized treatment plants to small and decentralized management systems. Keep in mind also that this is not an alternative to centralized sewer. Rather, it is a complimentary adjunct to the existing infrastructure.

Moreover, the decentralized solution is coming from local community and watershed needs. It is not coming from the bureaucracy. It is essentially good old bottoms up American pragmatism. It is important, therefore, that community people remain committed to the decentralized approach. We must find a suitable mechanism to accelerate the progress to support watershed management. If we can not find such a mechanism, we run the risk of letting the limited existing strategies (centralized and onsite) dominate the next 20 to 30 year cycle.

Tom Bartlett is the CEO of Aqua Tech Systems, specializing in the decentralized approach to wastewater systems and management. Serving a wide range of private and public clients, Aquatech utilizes a collaborative approach with equipment companies, land planners, engineers, private consultants, utility providers, lending institutions and contractors to develop tailored solutions for infrastructure design. Founded in 1999, Aqua Tech Systems and its affiliates are professionals dedicated to providing wastewater solutions for the growing needs of today’s communities, providing the necessary resources to allow their clients to make decisions that are economically sound, environmentally responsible and socially equitable. Based in Arkansas and servicing clients all over North America, Aquatech can be reached at 479-527-9880 and Tom Bartlett can be reached directly at 479-530-7922 or emailed at tom@aquatechsys.com

Can California get “all electric utilities to produce 50 percent of their electricity from clean energy sources” by 2025? That should be easy if government mandates the transition and funds the right new infrastructure, and gets out of the way everywhere else. California’s economy already has a fantastic import/export balance. Imagine if California cut her dependance on energy imports in half? A compelling case, though easily assailed. Will this initiative, the “California Solar and Clean Energy Act of 2008″ be approved by voters and passed into law?

The magnificant California Condor, resurrected by environmentalists. No honest critique of environmentalism can deny their contributions.

At least they’re thinking big. With utility scale next generation biofuel refineries, miles of fields of solar thermal collectors – power towers, troughs and parabolics, enhanced geothermal systems, alongside myriad decentralized – and deregulated – solutions, it really ought to be easy to accomplish a goal like this. Grow it here. Collect it here. Energy from plant sugars and oils, cellulose, sunlight and waste streams, nothing more, and cradle to cradle clean. Just add water. Make California energy positive. Of course it can be done.

This week the Federal Government did something even bigger, at the least in terms of how it will affect our pocketbooks, passing into law the Energy Bill 2007. The 35 mile per gallon automobile mileage standard should be fine, as long as electron-powered miles are factored into the mileage calculation based on projected duty cycles. Auto safety and size will not necessarily be compromised when one considers the impact of high-density batteries on the mileage achieved by larger hybrid vehicles. Series hybrid mini-vans, for example, will become ubiquitous.

The Energy Bill 2007 also spends a lot on biofuel. Hopefully the rapidly growing biofuel industry will figure out how to economically extract ethanol from Miscanthus and other cellulosic feedstocks soon, or at least improve agronomy so the plant rotation actually improves the soil. And where is the discussion of biofuel certification, so we can restore tropical rainforests? Without these things we risk biofuel fulfilling the lower end of its potential in terms of yield, and losing ground in the war to save and repair ecosystems to unsustainable excesses.

According to the Bush White House, the Energy Bill will “reform and clarify the onshore and gas permitting process,” and “reduce conflicts with other laws and regulations.” The Energy Bill funds research into clean coal. It strengthens the electric power grid. It continues to pour money into hydrogen research. It facilitates investment in new nuclear power plants. It extends existing tax credits for investment in renewable energy production, as well as for installation of residential solar energy systems. This bill has money for pretty much anything and everything having to do with energy production.

Becoming energy positive can really help an economy, whether it’s California’s or the USA’s, or any other place. Green jobs at home. Billions and trillions of green green domestic dollars.

The sun supports almost all life on earth. Plants have harnessed the sun’s rays for millions of years. Reptiles need to ‘charge up’ in the sun before they have enough energy to do anything. It is about time we really started taking more advantage of the sun ourselves.

Bright Source’s “Power Tower” pilot plant. (Photo: Bright Source Energy)

Solar technology has come a long way since 1830 when British Astronomer, John Frederick William Herschel, designed a solar thermal box to heat his food in the African wilderness.

Arnold Goldman, founder and chairman of Bright Source Energy, Inc. (also the founder of Luz International) was one of the first to prove that solar power has the potential to power huge areas affordably. With the Luz International team, Goldman built nine Solar Electricity Generating Stations (SEGS) in the California desert which still deliver to the grid over 300 megawatts of electricity during full sun. These stations are designed to convert sunlight into heat. This sounds logical enough; Solar fields made of reflecting mirrors bounce sunlight to a power tower filled with oil. The hot oil travels to the generator, where the heat causes the water to turn into steam. This hot air is then used to drive a turbine to produce electricity. BrightSource calls this technology Distributed Power Tower, or DPT.

As the technology continues to advance, the potential of these Distributed Power Towers is immense. Even in the past 20 years the DPT technology has evolved to where the new plants heat the steam to a temperature of 550 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the older versions which only heat up to 375 degrees.

Weather isn’t always perfect and many wonder if these generators are a good idea in areas outside of the sunny California desert. Fortunately, distributed power towers have backup units that allow us all to continue watching TV or doing our laundry at night and on those sunless cloudy days. In fact, one of the leaders in solar technology use is Germany. This is definitely not a country known for its sunny beaches or hot weather.

BrightSource explains: “Unlike the photovoltaic systems typically installed on rooftops, CSP plants produce their electricity by first producing steam then using that steam to generate electricity. Thus, CSP plants can be fitted with gas-fired boilers to produce steam when the sun is not shining, enabling the plants to produce electricity at any time. This provides valuable back-up generation capacity to utility companies for use when wind power is not available, or demand is unusually high. Another method is to install thermal storage to store heat during the daylight hours and release that heat during the night to make electricity. At this time, such storage systems are not economical, but it is anticipated that the cost will come down and make the use of solar power viable around-the-clock.”

Solar Power seems like an obvious choice in the future, especially with the unfavorable fluctuations in fossil-fuel prices. Since CSP plants don’t use fuel, the energy costs associated with this technology remain relatively constant.

Another convincing fact is that the new 400 megawatt Solar Power Complex being built by BrightSource in California’s Mojave Desert will power 250,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 500,000 tons per year! Imagine what the next plant will accomplish.

You won’t have to worry so much about accidentally leaving the lights on.

If you want to read up on more facts visit www.brightsourceenergy.com