Zheng presenting “Will China Run Out of Water?”

The Auburn University Water Resources Center has announced that Professor Chunmiao Zheng will be visiting the Auburn campus Thursday, Jan. 8, as part of the Geological Society of America’s 2009 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecture Series. Zheng will give his lecture, “Will China Run Out of Water?” at 3 p.m. in the conference room in Duncan Hall. Faculty, staff and students are invited. For more information, contact Mike Kensler at 844-5021 or mdk0003@auburn.edu.

ABSTRACT

Will China Run Out of Water?

The American agricultural expert and environmentalist Lester Brown published a provocative book in 1995 called “Who Will Feed China: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.” Today, however, of a greater concern may be the question of whether the unprecedented economic growth in China over the past two decades can be sustained as environmental pollution and water shortages continue to worsen. Some people have asked, “Will China run out of water?” This question is not merely academic: China has to nourish a fifth of the global population with about seven percent of the planet’s water resources. In fact, China’s State Council, or Cabinet, warned in a drought-fighting directive issued in December 2007 that even after taking into full account water-saving measures, China’s water use will reach or approach the total volume of exploitable water resources by 2030. Ample evidence suggests that China faces a daunting water resource crisis. The country has been battling water shortages in its northern and western provinces for more than a decade. But burgeoning economic growth and widespread environmental pollution have aggravated the water storage problem. Is China really running out of water? What does all this mean? What can be done? This presentation will take a close look at the current water situation in China and discuss the options available to deal with the worsening water shortage problem. The presentation draws on the presenter’s recent research work in the North China Plain and the Ordos Basin in western China.

 

Biosketch of Professor Zheng

Chunmiao Zheng of the University of Alabama has been selected the 2009 Birdsall-Dreiss

Distinguished Lecturer. The lecture series is sponsored by the GSA Hydrogeology Division.

 

Zheng received his B.S. degree in geology from Chengdu University of Technology (China) in 1983, and a Ph.D. degree in hydrogeology with a minor in civil & environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. From 1988 to 1993, he was a hydrogeologist at the environmental consulting firm S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc. Since 1993, he has been a professor of hydrogeology in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama. He is also a visiting professor and founding director of the Center for Water Research at Peking University (China). The primary areas of his research are contaminant transport, ground water management, and hydrologic modeling. Zheng is developer of the widely used MT3D/MT3DMS series of contaminant transport models, and co-author of the textbook Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling, Second Edition. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Hydrologic Science and president-elect of the International Commission on Groundwater of the IAHS.

For additional information about Dr. Zheng, visit his  website at http://hydro.geo.ua.edu.

For additional information about the AU Water Resources Center, visit our website at: www.nrmdi.auburn.edu/water or contact Mike Kensler at (334) 844-5021.

Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century

Auburn University’s College of Agriculture has recently released a promotional/information video titled: “I Want to Make a Difference: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century”

The video includes a profile of AU Water Resource Committee member, Bill Deutsch, and his work both with Alabama Water Watch and Global Water Watch. Toward the conclusion of the video, there is also a reference to the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproduct’s Mobile Biomass Gasification Unit.

To view the video, click here, and/or take the following link: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/adm/comm/challenges/

To visit the Natural Resources Management & Development Institute Website, click here, or take the following link:  www.nrmdi.auburn.edu

The Grand Challenge

A Competition to Promote Forward-Thinking and Leadership in Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture and Forestry, and Other Institutions of Higher Learning

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in cooperation with the 25x’25 Alliance, has recently announced The Grand Challenge, a competition intended to support academic institutions as they assume leadership in achieving solutions to issues associated with energy supply and consumption. The competition provides an opportunity for agricultural and forestry colleges and other institutions of higher learning to share their vision for how they will contribute to achieving the goal of the 25x’25 Alliance:

“By the year 2025, America’s farms, ranches and forests will provide 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, while continuing to produce safe, abundant and affordable food, feed and fiber.”

Institutions are presenting their vision of U.S. agriculture and/or forestry’s contribution to the energy economy in 2017, the roles they intend to create for themselves in that environment, and how those roles will contribute to meeting the 25x’25 goal through achievements in four areas:

• Increasing the production of renewable energy and alternative fuels;
• Delivering that energy to consumers;
• Meeting consumer demand; and
• Enhancing sustainability, conservation and energy efficiency

Grand Challenge Sponsors are: The Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the 25x’25 Alliance, a broad alliance of agricultural, energy, environmental, business and labor groups.

Fifteen winners will be invited to present their visions during the REE Bio Energy Awareness Days II in Washington, DC, on June 19 – 22, 2008. Specifically, the winners will have the opportunity to exhibit at the Whitten Building site for BEAD II, June 19 and 20, with a reception honoring them from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on June 20, 2008. These fifteen will include up to two winners from each of the four USDA geographic regions, two winners from the 1890 land-grant colleges, and five ‘at-large’ winners that can be from any eligible college or university. Participants will be judged on the basis of a paper, not to exceed 10 pages, outlining their vision. A team of judges from REE and the 25×25 Alliance will judge these papers.

Together with Alabama A&M University and Tuskeegee University, Auburn University submitted an entry for the Grand Challenge titled, Partnerships: The Pathway to a Vibrant Bioeconomy for Alabama. 

Following is the executive summary:

 

Partnerships: The Pathway to a Vibrant Bioeconomy for Alabama

Executive Summary

Alabama and its alliance of land grant institutions and other research partners are positioned to be national leaders inbioenergy and bioproducts education, research, extension and outreach. Each of the three land-grant universities in Alabama—Auburn University, Alabama A&M University, and Tuskegee University—has a rich past and an exciting future forconducting programs that are directed at utilizing our natural resources for energy and value-added products. This document outlines a comprehensive plan for education, research and development, extension and implementation activities conducted by an alliance composed of these universities with external partners that will lead to the creation of bioenergy and bioproducts that will help Alabama and the nation reach the energy goals outlined by the President and the 25x’25 initiative. The multidisciplinary programs at each of the three land-grant institutions are working in concert in the following major areas: Auburn University emphasizes utilization of biomass resources for conversion to liquid fuels, electrical power, heat, and other higher-value products; Alabama A&M University emphasizes oilseed crop production; and Tuskegee University emphasizes starch crop production. Moreover, two major federal government research units: the USDA ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory and the USDA Forest Service Forest Operations Research Unit of the Southern Research Station; and the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries and its Center for Alternative Fuels, also are integral research partners in the alliance in the areas of agricultural and forest production systems. This comprehensive plan outlines a vision, guiding principles, program activities, and necessary steps to create a bioeconomy in Alabama that will help meet and exceed the President’s goals for 2017 as well as the goals set out in the 25x’25 initiative by producing as much as 2.5 billion gallons per year of liquid fuels, offsetting as much as 35% of the state’s electrical power needs, reducing net greenhouse gas emissions, and creating thousands of jobs for Alabama citizens.

To read Partnerships: The Pathway to a Vibrant Bioeconomy for Alabama in its entirety, click here for full text.

 

Fultondale, Ala: An Auburn Energy Partner

 

 

In the months to come, the City of Fultondale, Alabama will join other municipalities in partnering with the Center of for Bioenergy and Bioproducts at Auburn University to create energy from renewable sources.

Using Auburn University’s Mobile Biomass Gasification Unit, pictured below, the City of Fultondale will work with researchers from AU to turn municipal green waste into energy.  Limbs and branches, normally bound for a local landfill will be used as feedstock for creating a synthesis gas.  That gas will then be used to power a generator that produces electrical energy.

Working together, the City of Fultondale and the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts will:

• Conduct an analysis of the city’s feedstock (municipal green waste)
• Determine the amount and type of energy that could be produced
• Test the feedstock in AU’s Mobile Biomass Gasification Unit
• Demonstrate the method for converting feedstock to synthesis gas
• Convert the synthesis gas to electricity

This analysis, testing, and demonstration are the first steps in developing an economically viable means to create clean, green energy from renewable resources and in reducing the amount of space needed for city landfills.

 

 

Biomass Gasification: Technology for Renewable Energy

Gasification:

• A thermochemical process where heat and oxygen break down biomass into a synthesis gas
• Synthesis gas consists of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, etc.

Synthesis gas is used for:

• Powering internal combustion engines
• Powering boilers, furnaces, driers, or chillers
• Powering gas turbines or fuel cells
• Producing liquid fuels  (diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel)

Don’t Give Up on Energy Independence

By ROBERT MCFARLANE

May 7, 2008

This week in Congress, efforts are underway to roll back goals enacted just last year to encourage the development of biofuels. This could damage – perhaps irretrievably – the substantial progress we’ve made toward relieving the threat posed by our reliance on foreign oil.

 

Our country is in the midst of a vigorous, healthy argument over whether the apparent appeal of biofuels as a means of reducing our reliance on foreign oil hasn’t had the unintended effect of driving an increase in food prices throughout the world. We must base this debate on established facts, and emerge with renewed commitment to measures to relieve a historic threat to our national security.

 

Let’s focus first on what is true in the food-versus-fuel argument.

 

Three factors have driven the increase in the price of food. The first is greater foreign demand. China and India are importing record amounts of coarse grains to feed growing populations and livestock. In the U.S., however, even after accounting for corn devoted to ethanol production, we produced 17% more corn food product and exported 23% more food product in 2007 than 2006.

 

The second factor is reduced supply. Serious drought conditions among traditional suppliers – especially Australia – have reduced supplies in the global marketplace and stimulated speculation in futures markets.

 

The third factor is energy costs. By far the greatest contributor to higher food prices has been the run-up in the price of oil, which impacts every stage of food production.

 

The same sustained growth in China’s and India’s economies that is contributing to the rise of food prices is matched by a corresponding increased demand for oil, which promises to keep oil prices high for the foreseeable future. Given the tightness of supply – with very little excess production capacity anywhere in the world – if oil flows from the Persian Gulf were disrupted (as al Qaeda has promised, and which could easily happen), we would see oil at more than $200 per barrel overnight. And it would stay at that level until the damage is repaired – a period of up to a year – during which time the global economy would likely fall into deep depression.

 

Fortunately, we have the means to relieve this strategic vulnerability. There are four policy measures to alleviate this threat and in the process lower the global price of oil and dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases:

 

- Accelerate the introduction of second-generation biofuels (e.g. cellulosic ethanol and methanol) which don’t rely on any food crop as feedstock, and should not require any government subsidy.

 

- Establish an Open Fuel Standard. That is, require that any automobile sold in the U.S. be a flexible fuel vehicle capable of burning gasoline, methanol, ethanol or any combination of the three – a feature that costs just $100 per vehicle.

 

- Accelerate the production of plug-in hybrid-electric cars and trucks.

 

- Introduce the use of lighter, stronger carbon composite materials, as Boeing is doing in the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft, into the production of cars and trucks. A Pentagon study a few years ago concluded that this step alone could reduce our oil imports by 48%.

 

The most important of these measures is the enactment of an Open Fuel Standard, so that the consumer has a choice at the fuel pump. Unfortunately, without a predictable market, such as would be provided by mandatory flexible-fuel cars and trucks, there is a strong disincentive among investors to risk the capital needed for second-generation alternative fuels like cellulosic ethanol to take off. But without such a mandate, we are keeping ourselves tied exclusively to oil, with all the risks that involves.

 

Some say that these mandates are contrary to free-market principles. But one could say the same thing about seat belts, air-bags and even the FM radios mandated during the Cold War to assure the government’s ability to broadcast nuclear alerts.

 

No one argues seriously that these things have not been in our interest. And just imagine how valuable it would be to reduce the $460 billion we will spend on foreign oil this year, or the threat to our economy that its disruption would represent.

 

We must not let this national debate be distorted by charges that one is either pro- or anti- oil. I believe strongly that Western oil companies ought to be supported in the production of as much oil as they can, for as long as they can. Reducing our reliance on foreign oil is, however, an urgent national security priority.

 

Mr. McFarlane served as President Reagan’s national security adviser.

 

 

 

Economists Discuss Food and Fuel Prices

posted by Cindy Zimmerman of Domestic Fuels, April 16 2008

Rising food prices continue to make headlines and all too often the blame is placed on the use of corn for ethanol.

In this DomesticFuel Cast, we hear from two economists who have spent their entire careers studying farm and food prices – Jim Duffield with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and John Urbanchuk with the global economic analysis firm of LECG LLC. They talk about the multiple causes of rising food prices, the dramatic impact of energy costs, and what they expect prices for raw commodities to do in the near term.

Their reflections on alternatives to corn as a feedstock are of particular interest given Auburn’s work with forest biomass, switchgrass, agricultural and municipal wastes.

Check out their podcast by clicking here or visiting the Domestic Fuels website at:

http://domesticfuel.com/2008/04/16/economists-discuss-food-and-fuel-prices/

 

Water War Deadline Looming

As the February 15th deadline for reaching a long-term water sharing agreement approaches, officials from Alabama, Georgia and Florida still have issues to resolve.

Check out these stories from this week’s Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Water War Deadline Looming

ATLANTA (AP) – Officials from Alabama, Florida and Georgia say
they are hopeful they will be able to meet a deadline this month to
come up with a plan to settle an 18-year battle over sharing water.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Sarah
Williams tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that officials hope
to have a plan by February 15th.

A spokesman for Alabama Governor Bob Riley says he expects at
least “something of a compromise” even if all the issues aren’t
resolved by then.

A spokesman for Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue says the deadline
is still doable. Georgia Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch
would say only that staffers from the three states and federal
representatives have met twice in January.

The issue has been how much water to send downstream to Florida
from Georgia’s Lake Lanier at a time when metro Atlanta and north
Georgia are experiencing a record-setting drought. Georgia’s main
objective is to keep as much water in Lanier as possible.

Florida’s primary concern is getting enough water from Georgia’s
Chattahoochee and Flint rivers to flow into its Apalachicola River
to protect threatened and endangered species and maintain the
seafood and recreational fishing industries in Apalachicola Bay.

Alabama shares the Chattahoochee with Georgia on part of its
eastern border. It is much more interested in how much water is
flowing down the Coosa River. The Coosa basin provides water to
much of Alabama for hydropower and recreational lakes, to float
barges, and for drinking water and farm irrigation.

Lawmaker Seeks to Redraw Tenn. border to access water

Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) filed legislation Wednesday to change Georgia’s northwest border to force Tennessee to share its river with Atlanta. Shafer told his fellow senators that the federal government has repeatedly acknowledged that a flawed 1818 survey erroneously marked the boundary a mile south of its actual location.“The 35th parallel hasn’t changed. It is where it always is,” he said.

The resolution would push the border north of the southernmost bank of the 652-mile Tennessee river, currently managed by the federal Tennessee Valley Authority. The resolution creates two commissions made up of six Georgia lawmakers who would meet with counterparts from Tennessee and North Carolina to resurvey the border. Alabama also wants enough water flowing down the Chattahoochee
to run a nuclear power plant near Dothan.

Georgia loses major ruling on rights to Lanier water

It would take an act of Congress to get more drinking water out of Lake Lanier for metro Atlanta, a federal appellate court ruled Tuesday. Alabama and Florida immediately declared a major victory in the 18-year, tri-state water war, with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley calling it “one of the most important” legal decisions in his state’s history.The ruling invalidates the massive water grab that Georgia tried to pull off,” Riley said in a statement.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit comes at a critical juncture, with the three states rushing toward a Feb. 15 deadline to reach a long-term, water-sharing agreement.

Observers say it gives Alabama and Florida leverage in the negotiations and belies metro Atlanta’s assumption that it can count on Lanier to continue fueling its growth. Water from Lanier, the largest federal reservoir on the Chattahoochee River, forms Georgia and Alabama’s southern border and winds up in Gulf of Mexico.

Lanier is the main water source for more than three million metro Atlantans. But it also supports multiple downstream users, from a nuclear power plant near Dothan, Ala., to oystermen in Florida’s Apalachicola Bay.

“The big loser here is metro Atlanta,” said George William Sherk, an expert in water law at the Colorado School of Mines who once represented the city of LaGrange and Troup County in tri-state water matters. “The logical response for metro Atlanta right now is no new building permits unless the applicant can demonstrate a long-term water supply.But pigs will fly before Atlanta does that.”

Sherk said Congress is unlikely to intervene.

Patricia Barmeyer, a partner at King & Spalding who represents metro Atlanta governments in the tri-state litigation, said the state and region has three legal options now: ask the three judge appeals panel to reconsider its decision; request a hearing from the entire D.C. appellate court; or take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The three-judge panel overturned a lower court’s decision. The appeals court nullified the 2003 agreement among Georgia, metro Atlanta, hydropower customers and the Corps of Engineers for rights to Lanier’s water. The corps manages the lake.

The agreement would have guaranteed the metro region about 65 percent more water out of Lanier for up to 20 years, or the equivalent of nearly one-quarter of the lake’s storage capacity.

Metro Atlanta now uses about 14 percent of the lake’s storage capacity.

In exchange, the cities and counties that depend on Lanier and the Chattahoochee just downstream would have paid $2.5 million a year to offset the costs of maintaining Buford Dam, relieving some of the costs now largely paid by hydropower customers.

Of the communities asked to pay more for their water, including Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties, Gwinnett County would have paid the lion’s share because it pulls the most water directly from Lanier, averaging more than 100 million gallons a day in the summer.

Frank Stephens with the Gwinnett County Department of Public Utilities said the decision will have little short term impact on the area’s water supply.

“From a city or county perspective, I don’t think this makes much of a difference but it does deny the U.S. government some revenues,” he said.

Georgia and metro Atlanta argued the corps was acting within its legal rights to reallocate Lanier’s water from hydropower generation to water supply.

Alabama and Florida disagreed, saying the change would constitute a major operational change, which requires Congressional approval under the Water Supply Act. The two states also argued that keeping water in Lanier for metro Atlanta’s use — and the region’s withdrawals — would reduce the water flowing down the Chattahoochee River.

In siding with Alabama and Florida, the court said “The Agreement does potentially reduce the amount of water flowing downstream. . . and the [Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river] basin would thereby be affected by changes to the quantity of water in the Chattahoochee River for as long as twenty years.”

The corps, during oral arguments in November, conceded that changing the amount Lanier’s stored water earmarked for drinking supplies from 47.6 billon gallons to 78.5 billion gallons would have been its largest reallocation of water without Congressional approval.

Gov. Sonny Perdue’s spokesman, Bert Brantley, said the ruling does not change the state’s long-term goal to reach a water-sharing agreement with Alabama and Florida, possibly by Feb. 15.

“We’ve always said our preference was to reach an agreement at the negotiating table as opposed to arguing it in the court room,” Brantley said.

He said the question of whether the corps can allocate more water for metro Atlanta will be resolved as part of the “bigger picture of how the basin is operated and managed.”

Barmeyer, the attorney representing metro governments, said the decision finally makes clear that a fundamental question will have to be litigated: whether providing drinking water to metro Atlanta was one of Lanier’s original purposes. The three states are currently locked in court action in the U.S. District Court in Middle District of Florida over longer-term allocations of water.

Georgia has spent nearly $5 million since 1998 on legal costs on the water war and metro Atlanta governments have spent about $2.4 million since 2001.

If the states are unable to come to terms by Feb. 15 — despite prodding from the White House — continued litigation is the most likely course.

That’s because Congress is unlikely to act on its own without a ready-made deal from the three states, said Sherk, the water law expert.

“Congress is not going to get into the internecine fight between Florida, Alabama and Georgia,” Sherk said. And if it does, Georgia could be in trouble.

“You only need eight states to win the presidency. Florida’s one of them. Georgia isn’t. Florida’s political clout dwarfs Georgia’s,” he said.

Alabama views Tuesday’s decision as a win as well for its most important river basin, the one it shares with Georgia’s Allatoona and Carters lakes, called the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa basin. Allatoona provides drinking water to about 800,000 metro Atlantans.

In his statement, Gov. Riley said “The ruling will have far reaching consequences. It establishes that the decades-old practice of Atlanta taking more and more water from the federal reservoirs in the Coosa and Chattahoochee Rivers without any legal authority to do so will not stand.”

The ruling may also help downstream users in Georgia.

Joe Maltese, assistant to the LaGrange city manager and chairman of the Middle Chattahoochee Water Coalition that includes groups in Alabama and Georgia, said the ruling should bolster his group’s contention that the federally authorized purposes of all area lakes should be treated equitably, including recreation at West Point Lake near LaGrange.

“We don’t want to see Atlanta hurt,” Maltese said. “By the same token we don’t want to see the corps take away the resources that were promised to us to utilize the water for other purposes that Congress did not approve.”

THE STORY SO FAR:

The pressing issue: In 2003, Georgia and Metro Atlanta struck a deal with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which operates Lake Lanier, that would have given metro Atlanta 23 percent of the water in the federal reservoir. Alabama and Florida challenged the agreement in court. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the agreement.

The history: The three states have squabbled since Alabama and Florida sued the corps in 1990 to stop metro Atlanta from taking more water out of Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River.

The stakes: Water got a lot more precious in the last year, as a record-breaking drought choked water supplies in north Georgia and much of the Southeast. Lake Lanier provides water to more than three million metro Atlantans and is essential to the area’s growth. Alabama needs water via the Chattahoochee for paper mills, a nuclear power plant and small communities, while Florida wants to protect its marine and wetlands ecosystems and oyster industry. Releases from Lanier also provides water needed by the federally endangered Gulf sturgeon fish and two species of federally protected mussels in the Apalachicola River, formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and the Flint rivers.

The new development: Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the lower court’s decision, nullifying the 2003 agreement, which never became effective. The ruling says metro Atlanta and Georgia need Congressional authorization to take more water from the lake.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: The three states are negotiating a new division of water from Lake Lanier. Georgia, Alabama and Florida officials say they expect to meet a Feb. 15 deadline for an agreement. Georgia could decide to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Or Congress could step in.