Greenversations

Did you know that water covers more than 70% of the Earth’s surface? With that much water, it may be hard to imagine that water could ever be in short supply. However, out of that total amount of water, only 2.5% is fresh water. And, more than half of that is locked up in the polar ice-caps, leaving just a tiny percentage of the Earth’s water available for our use. Ironically, this relatively small amount of fresh water is all there is to serve more than the 6.7 billion people that live on this Earth,

We need water to satisfy our thirst, bathe ourselves, wash our dishes, water our crops, and take care of our pets. For some of us, it is a fortune to be able to use water for these purposes with no fear of ever running short. However, for some 600 million people, satisfying their own thirst is an impossible task. Less than 50% of people in Africa have access to safe drinking water. 20% of people living in the giant continent of Asia lack access to safe water. In several villages in Vietnam where I come from, people have to use water in the same pond for bathing, cooking, and drinking. The government has not passed legislation like the US’s Clean Water Act to protect its citizens. There is no fund or expertise to upgrade the water treatment system. Therefore, many people are or will become susceptible to disease vectors, pathogens, or contaminants. Around the world, the number of deaths associated with unclean water has mounted to 2.2 million.

If you are the person with great heart and want to share your beautiful world with others, then it is time for you to start taking action. There are faucets in your home that need to be checked and fixed as soon as possible because one leaking faucet can waste up to 2,750 gallons of water per year. Likewise, if you are brushing your teeth, then turning off that running faucet in front of you is necessary because one stuck faucet can waste more than 2,500 gallons of water every day. Remember, there is no need to join an organization to start changing the world or to save someone’s life because you can do all these things yourself!

About the author: Thanh Pham is an undergraduate student at George Mason University. She is interning with EPA this summer.

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.

The state of the nation’s environment is changing. Sometimes the changes are obvious and sometimes they are subtle. When does it matter and why should we care?

One of the more visible and memorable events of the early environmental movement was when the Cuyahoga River, which runs through the heart of my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire in 1969. Some say that it was this event that prompted President Nixon to sign the Clean Water Act into law and create the Environmental Protection Agency.

The River that once burned now runs through a lively and bustling downtown area to Lake Erie. This is not to say that the water quality in the river and lake are now pristine, but that the improvements over time are so profound that it’s noticeable to the naked eye.

Even here in Washington, D.C., there are ways to observe environmental progress. I am lucky enough to garden in the city—a rare treat in the concrete jungle. Over the years I’ve observed changes in the insects and birds that visit our garden. Last spring my bachelor buttons were swarming with bees. This year, however, there weren’t as many.

What should I make of these changes in nature’s pollinators and natural pest management? What should our garden, city, and country do? Are the changes even relevant and is it appropriate for me to draw any conclusions? After all, I’ve only observed these changes while in pursuit of some other goal, such as watering my tomatoes, or driving through downtown Cleveland to catch a ball game.

If you find yourself wondering about the changing state of the nation’s environment and what it all means, there is one place you can go to find objective, scientifically sound information: EPA’s Report on the Environment.

EPA released its Report on the Environment (ROE) in May 2008 and has been updating it online ever since. It’s here that you can find information on the nation’s bird populations, stream water quality, air quality, and much more.

The ROE uses environmental indicators to present the status (i.e. condition) of and trends in (i.e., are things improving or not) for 85 different measurable areas of our nation’s environment in land, water, air, human health and ecosystems.

Check out the interactive Web site to see for yourself and tell us what you want to know about the nation’s changing environment.

About the author: Madalene Stevens joined EPA in 2001 and works on EPA’s Report on the Environment.

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.

About the author: Dr. Mark Bagley is a research biologist and acting branch chief in EPA’s Office of Research and Development in Cincinnati, OH. Since joining the EPA in 1999, his work has involved application of molecular and population genetic methods to ecological questions.

The Clean Water Act charges EPA with protecting and restoring “biological integrity” to aquatic ecosystems. I’ve been wondering lately what we mean by that. The Agency generally uses a definition that refers to the structural and functional similarity to an undisturbed ecosystem—how those factors compare to what we would expect to find in some ideal system.

But who is to say there is just one path to biological integrity? And can we really ever say we have achieved it?
 
In practice, we evaluate biological integrity by surveying the complexity of an ecosystem, typically taking into account differences among species in their sensitivity to different disturbances. We then compare the species we find to those in ecosystems that have been judged to be minimally impacted.

This approach works reasonably well but reinforces a somewhat static view of biological integrity, since comparisons are based on historical notions of what an optimal structure should look like. There are efforts within EPA to more fully understand and evaluate ecosystem functions. At present, there is a strong emphasis on assessing the value that these functions bring to people in the form of ecosystem services (water quality, fisheries, etc).

I think biological integrity requires maintenance of important biological processes, regardless of their value to human well-being and the make-up of the biological community that provides them. In the natural world, species within communities can change without hugely affecting the overall functioning of the ecosystem.

At longer time scales, as environments change, some turnover of species probably has to occur in order for the system to continue to function at an optimal level. And that makes me think that what we’re really talking about is the capacity of the community of organisms within an ecosystem to continue to evolve so that it can find the best solution to sustainable transformation of solar energy and nutrients into biological matter.

Isn’t it this optimization process that really describes biological integrity? It’s an odd question coming from someone whose training is in evolutionary biology. In my work and that of my colleagues, we almost never talk about evolution or the need to preserve evolutionary processes because it seems well beyond the mandate of the EPA. But I’m not so sure anymore.

Maybe in this, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, it is time to acknowledge that lasting environmental protection isn’t possible without evolution protection.

What do you think real biological integrity is?

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.

About the author: Tracy Hadden-Loh is completing her Ph.D. at the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is looking forward to a career that will provide communities with more and better tools to plan for the future. Her work is funded by an EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Graduate Research Fellowship.

Many of America’s streams, rivers, and lakes are not clean enough for swimming or fishing. In the past, much of the nation’s water quality problems were caused by industrial and municipal dumping. Thanks to the Clean Water Act, however, many of these sources of pollution have been greatly reduced.

So why are America’s urban rivers still not swimmable and fishable?

The answer is that every time it rains, the streets and rooftops of developed areas are washed clean by the downpour. All that water has to go somewhere. Stormwater runoff carrying loads of various contaminants has been the top water quality problem in the U.S. since 1994.

One strategy for dealing with polluted stormwater runoff has been to keep it from flowing too far—using devices such as rain barrels, retention ponds, green roofs to catch, slow down, and treat it. While these engineering devices help a great deal, they apply to small, distinct points across watersheds that are spread out over large regions.

That’s where my work comes in.

I am building a computer simulation of urban development and hydrology in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (the home of the city of Charlotte) in order to explore how different regional urban forms of development could impact future water quality.

Rapid urban growth and its environmental consequences are a big concern in many American communities. I hope my work will help local decision-makers understand the tradeoffs involved with different policy directions.

About the author: Karen Reshkin manages the Web site in EPA’s Chicago office. She’s been there since 1991, and can still remember life before the Internet.

A few weeks ago, I declared that I’d try to diminish my ignorance about some of the things EPA does. Turns out it’s hard to write about things you don’t know! I hope you’ll bear with me if some of this seems a bit elementary. I want to understand better how enforcement works at EPA, so I’ll start with laws and regulations.

EPA is charged with implementing federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Statutes like these are passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. They may get amended, as happened with the Clean Water Act in 1972, 1977, 1981…

Those laws look quite, um, legal to me. Why would you need regulations on top of that? Turns out the statutes usually don’t contain the details you’d need to actually enforce them (e.g. allowable concentrations of particular substances in water). EPA is a regulatory agency, which means Congress has authorized it to write regulations that explain how to implement a statute. There’s a whole process for doing that, and it generally includes an opportunity for the public to comment on a proposed rule (regulation).

The Web provides an excellent way for people to get involved in rulemaking. You can view the proposed rule online and provide comments online as well. (More traditional methods like paper mail still work, too.) The collection of documents related to a rulemaking is called a docket and it includes public comments, background reports, Federal Register notices, and other supporting documents. Dockets are accessible to the public and Regulations.gov serves as EPA’s electronic public docket and online comment system.

This didn’t really bring us to enforcement yet, but I’m getting there.