This blog addresses issues related to the regulation and geology of national and transboundary waters. Within this context I also discuss issues such as global warming and other adverse human impacts on natural resources.
International environmental threats today are more problematic than those in the past, as a consequence of growing industrialization in the developing world. This growth has been responsible for increasing the standard of living for many of the world’s poor. However, it has also been accompanied by a concomitant swelling of population. These two factors have had many negative effects on the environment, including global warming, increased pressure on natural resources - consisting of the destruction of forests and increased waste from mining – as well as a concomitant expansion of water pollution, air pollution, water scarcity and desertification.
For example, the forests of tropical Asia are among the most threatened on earth. The relative rates of tropical deforestation have been about twice as high in Asia (0.8–0.9% per year) than in either Latin America or Africa (0.4–0.5% per year). Southeast Asia has also suffered higher rates of industrial logging than the other major tropical regions across the world. Dam building for hydropower generation, to provide electricity to those who heretofore have not had access to power, has also caused massive problems.
Due to their impact on human health and the environment these international problems today are more than ever critical issues within the legal academy, the political branches of many governments and society in general. These problems however do not stop at the borders of individual states, which of course, do not coincide with natural systems. Rather, they are a transboundary phenomena. Indeed, one expert recently observed that “[i]t is now recognized that the planet faces a diverse and growing range of environmental challenges which can only be addressed through international co-operation. Acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change, loss of biodiversity, toxic and hazardous products and wastes, pollution of rivers and depletion of fresh water resources, are some of the issues which international law is being called upon to address.”
Transboundary environmental problems pose unique difficulties for international law and international legal institutions. Some of these environmental problems include the technical and/or scientific complexity of pollution, water scarcity and allocation; lack of information regarding how natural systems work; and the impact on future generations. Moreover, the transnational environmental problematic incorporates the involvement or overtones of various and dissimilar domestic laws, political regimes, cultural features, and diverse priorities. Finally, one question that confronts national Supreme Courts and international courts and tribunals is how to be disciplined enough to develop a normative framework for adjudicating underground and surface water problems.
Here's something that both the Dems and Republicans can probably chuckle about together and possibly agree upon. Osama bin Laden is blaming the U.S. for Climate Change. Of course, the SOB leaves out India and China, as well as his family's construction company (The bin Laden Group). The latter is one of the largest builders of refineries in the world. Just, accept America, you can't do any good!
The ensuing article was published today in the Washington Post. The link is http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012901463.html
Bin Laden blasts US for Climate Change
By LEE KEATH and SALAH NASRAWI The Associated Press Saturday, January 30, 2010; 2:24 AM
CAIRO -- Osama bin Laden sought to draw a wider public into his fight against the United States in a new message Friday, dropping his usual talk of religion and holy war and focusing instead on an unexpected topic: global warming.
The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar.
"The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent," bin Laden said in the audiotape, aired on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.
The terror leader noted Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and painted the United States as in the thrall of major corporations that he said "are the true criminals against the global climate" and are to blame for the global economic crisis, driving "tens of millions into poverty and unemployment."
Bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders have mentioned global warming and struck an anti-globalization tone in previous tapes and videos. But the latest was the first message by bin Laden solely dedicated to the topic. It was also nearly entirely empty of the Islamic militant rhetoric that usually fills his declarations.
The change in rhetoric aims to give al-Qaida's message an appeal beyond hardcore Islamic militants, said Evan Kohlmann, of globalterroralert.com, a private, U.S.-based terrorism analysis group. ad_icon
"It's a bridge issue," Kohlmann said. "They are looking to appeal to people who don't necessarily love al-Qaida but who are angry at the U.S. and the West, to galvanize them against the West" and make them more receptive to "alternative solutions like adopting violence for the cause."
"If you're looking to draw people who are disenchanted or disillusioned, what better issue to use than global warming," he said. While the focus on climate may be new, the tactic itself is not, he said: Al-Qaida used issues like the abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay to reach out to Muslims who might not be drawn to al-Qaida's ideology but are angry over the injustices.
Bin Laden "looks to see the issues that are the most cogent and more likely to get popular support," Kohlmann said.
The al-Qaida leader's call for an economic boycott helps in the appeal - providing a nonviolent way to participate in opposing the United States.
"People of the world, it's not right for the burden to be left on the mujahedeen (holy warriors) in an issue that causes harm to everyone," he said. "Boycott them to save yourselves and your possessions and your children from climate change and to live proud and free."
Al-Jazeera aired excerpts of the message and posted a transcript on its Web site. The tape's authenticity could not be independently confirmed, but the voice resembled that of bin Laden on messages known to be from him. The new message comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.
Maybe the Supreme Court's decision in United Citizens v FEC, the 2010 decision that stands for the proposition that corporations have unfettered right to spend as much money as they want to "express" their free speech, and influence politics, will nopw give bin Laden the opportunity to influence U.S. politics.
In 1992 Stephen McCaffrey authored a seminal article proposing a human right to water. In the intervening years a stream of scholarship affirming the right has followed McCaffrey’s lead. Today, the existence of a human right to water is seldom challenged and it now appears to be well rooted in international human rights law. Nevertheless, to date there has been little to no scholarship about what the practical contours of the right should be.
If legal tools are to benefit the world’s poor and disenfranchised they cannot be void due to the impossibility of implementation. This is the problem with the purported human right to water. It is quixotic. International lawyers then must ferret out the means to provide those who have little or no access to potable water and proper sanitation with a suite of meaningful and workable legal options.
A. The Dilemma with the Right
There are two fundamental problems with the “right”. First it is unenforceable. Indeed, it is axiomatic that there can be no right without a remedy. Moreover, as Joseph Vining has observed, “[t]hat which evokes no sense of obligation is not law. It is only the appearance of law . . . .” Thus, the putative right is of little help or solace for those who have no access to potable water or the millions who die annually due to its privation.
Second, the rights scholars do not address how the issue of privatization of water utilities, especially the failure of corporate privatization and the comodification of water, should fall within the penumbra of the right. Indeed, these issues have yet to be addressed, leaving this area of the law unsettled and crammed with practical pitfalls.
A. The Enormity of the Problem “Safe drinking water, sanitation and good hygiene are fundamental to health, survival, growth and development.” Accordingly, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) recently observed that “[s]afe drinking water and basic sanitation are so obviously essential to health that they risk being taken for granted.” Unless people gain access to sources of drinking water that are clean, safe and reliable “[e]fforts to prevent death from diarrhea or to reduce the burden of such diseases as ascaris, dracunculiasis, hookworm, schistosomiasis and trachoma are doomed to failure . . . .” The problem is so pervasive that former South African President Thabo Mbeki recently asserted that “[w]e have a duty to fight against domestic and global apartheid in terms of access to water.” Indeed, the United Nations recently declared that “[o]vercoming the crisis in water and sanitation is one of the great human development challenges of the early 21st century. [In addition, s]uccess in addressing that challenge through a concerted national and international response would act as a catalyst for progress in public health . . . .” Unfortunately, the average person in the developing world will not realize the universal availability of faucets or water piping at home “in the short – or even medium term.” Consequently, these people will be bereft of safe water for the foreseeable future. Of course, the burdens of polluted water, lack of access to potable water, as well as basic sanitation falls on the poor. Not only are they much “less likely to have access to safe water and sanitation, but they are also less likely to have the financial and human resources to manage the impact of this deprivation.” Additionally, the poor are treated less equitably because the laws and policies of many states offer scant protection for the vulnerable. Even where these laws are on the books, they are seldom enforced. The rural poor also have little or no access to the political process, and comprise “[s]ome 80% of those who have no access to improved sources of drinking water.” Indeed, in 2002 the World Health Organization (“WHO”) estimated that more than 1.1 billion people worldwide lack clean drinking water and that “2.6 billion people have no sanitation . . . .” WHO also estimates that at least 1.8 million people die annually from diarrheal diseases (including cholera); with children below the age of five, mostly in developing countries, constituting 90% or 1.6 million of these deaths. This figure is five times the number of children who die annually from HIV/AIDS. Of the deaths caused by diarrhoeal disease, fully 88% are ascribed to unsafe water and deficient sanitation.
It is for these reasons that in 2003 WHO declared that the providing water to the peoples of the developing world was an urgent priority. Similarly, in 2000 the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals. The Goals’ aim is to halve the number of people who do not have access to water by 2015. Nevertheless, without any financial support these programs have done little.
Finally, the “[l]ack of basic sanitation indirectly inhibits the learning abilities of millions of school-aged children who are infested with intestinal worms transmitted through inadequate sanitation facilities and poor hygiene.” It also adds to a higher rate of wasteful and unproductive time due to adult illness and the need to stay home taking care of children. If the world’s poor are to climb out of their morass, their status quo must change. One option for those who seek to aid these folk is privatization. There are of course problems with privatization. These include obstacles grounded in possible litigation before the World Trade Organization and national Supreme courts, as well as suspension in or from the practice of legal regimes, which provide water via public or privatized sources. In addition, those that use tanks to distribute water may also face actions to suspend these actions by corporate entities, who may claim that there rights are being infringed upon. These corporations may seek indemnification for loss of profits.
The altered ecological regime has also caused the introduction of two extremely invasive exotic plants. They have grown so prolifically that they have clogged irrigation ditches and caused damage to canals and pumps. In addition, granivorous birds have flocked to the rice fields and consumed as much as 50 percent of the harvestable crop. The increased bird population is linked to the year-round fresh water, food supply, and the nesting and breeding grounds created by the invasive exotic plants. This situation is quite similar to the invasion by Canada Geese of numerous cities and towns from Maine to the Eastern Coast of Florida.
The problems with the rice paddies notwithstanding, another major predicament is increased salinity, caused by the inability of the soil to drain. During pre-dam times, the annual washing-off of the floodplain, and addition of new soil, did not allow for salinity buildup. Now the salt leaches into the soil where few crops can grow in it.[1] Recent rice production has been estimated at four tons per hectare, one-third of the twelve tons per hectare per year projected for these lands.[2]
Similarly, “it has been reliably shown that malnutrition often follows dam building instead of the expected bounty resulting from newly irrigated lands.”[3]The principle reason is that engineers simply do not understand the ecological benefits of the natural flooding cycle and its constructive impacts on ecosystems.[4]In many regions across the face of the globe indigenous or local peoples, over centuries, developed an intensive and varied flood-dependent agriculture, similar to the one along the Senegal River.Once dams are built and an irrigation-based agriculture follows, the centuries old reliable array of local foods is replaced by an irrigated monoculture.Sustainable and diversified agriculture developed by local peoples produces more per hectare than irrigated agriculture,[5] and is less destructive of natural resources, if for no other reason than scale.
Few formal evaluations have been made of the worldwide impact of dams.A decade ago, such a review was conducted.Its findings are discussed below.
[1]See generally, Itzchak E. Kornfeld, Groundwater Conservation: Conundrums and Solutions for the New Millennium, 15 Tul. Envtl L. J. 365, 370, text accompanying note 42 (2002)(“near Perth in Western Australia, the clearing of forests of eucalyptus trees has caused shallow layers of salt in the soils of the country’s wheat belt.”)
Before the damming of the Colorado there existed an environment that supported billions of clams and other life has disappeared, since the 1930s, because dams and irrigation projects, like the Parker[1] and Imperial[2] Dams, have reduced the flow of nutrient-laden fresh water to the tidal flats, where the river empties into the Gulf of California.[3]
Satellite images and field data indicate that at least two trillion clamshells make up the area’s beaches and islands.[4]Indeed, at any given time during the last 1,000 years before 1930, there were six billion clams living on the delta.[5]Researchers found that where there were 50 specimens per square meter in the past (about five per square foot); today there are only three per square meter (0.3 per square foot).[6]
Additionally, the inundation of large swaths of geography by Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and other mega-reservoirs drowned not only portions of the Colorado – and in other river systems – but also millions of trees, priceless gorges and canyons, like the Glen Canyon, and segments of beautiful deserts unlike any other in the world.
Moreover, human intervention in the hydrologic basin of the Colorado River eradicated water discharge and sediment supply to the River’s mouth and its delta.[7] After some 95 years of applying strong flow control policies, the delta’s previous sedimentary budget has diminished.These changes are ultimately responsible for the relocation of massive volumes of the delta’s sediment inventory, and for the serious ecological impact of habitat loss of indigenous species, such as the now endangered Totoaba,[8] a relative of the sea bass, and the critically endangered Vaquita,[9] a cetacean, resembling a porpoise.
All in all, while we may now be re-thinking the idea of dams, much of the damage is permanent – lost species cannot be replaced. Like the lost wetlands in Louisiana, the disappearing portions of the Delta cannot be reclaimed.The price has indeed been high for the Colorado River and its delta.Were it the sole geographic location so impacted one might rejoice that more has not been lost.However, much more has been lost.These stories follow.We begin with two more examples from the United States: the Hungry Horse Dam on the Flat Head River, in Montana and the Lower Monumental Lock and Dam on Snake River, in Washington State.
Streams and rivers have a natural cycle which fish and insects, among other creatures, regulate themselves to.However, when dams are built the flow of the water behind the dam is artificial and does not follow nature’s cyclical sequence.Artificially regulated flows produce a number of distinct problems. First, without high flows, silt doesn’t get flushed from streambed gravel, and the many species of fish and insects that need clean, well-oxygenated gravel for their eggs and larvae are harmed.[10]
Second, nature’s relatively constant flows often lead to relatively constant water temperatures, which influence the many species that depend on natural fluctuations in temperature.For example, due to the Hungry Horse Dam[11] “the adults of a vital species of stone fly in the Flathead River in Montana don’t emerge from their larval stage unless cued by mean daily water temperatures of 65 Fahrenheit. Late-summer discharges from Hungry Horse Dam [on the Flathead River] keep the water cooler than is natural, so whole generations of this insect never reach adulthood.”[12]Consequently, fish, which rely on these insects, are deprived of a food source and they too lose generations.
Another common problem occurs when dams release water that is significantly colder or warmer than the river water.For example, releases from the Lower Monumental Lock and Dam,[14] a concrete behemoth on the Snake River in southeastern Washington, “render the Columbia River too cold--some 20 degrees colder than is natural--for most native organisms for more than 250 miles downstream.”[15]
Not only is water flow disrupted by dams, they also practically cut-off the stream of sediment. “When the current dissipates in the reservoir, its load of suspended particles sinks to the bottom, trapped for the life of the dam. Very little slips by a large dam.”[16]Returning to the Colorado, studies there disclose that Glen Canyon Dam captures 99.5 percent of the sediment rolling down the Colorado River. The sediment penned behind the dam includes organic matter, which is vital to downriver food webs. “Sandbars where plants have grown in and alongside a river- important wildlife habitat--constantly erode; without sediment with which to rebuild, they soon vanish. The same holds for riverbanks.”[17]
The absence of new sediment also causes the riverbed to lower, destroying the riparian zone.“As the channel deepens and the elevation of the river drops, the water table beneath the riparian areas drops correspondingly.”[18] This dries up those lush, elongated oases that are such important havens for wildlife.
Cottonwoods, for example, need high groundwater levels. The demise of these riverside staples robs the stream of shade, which can lead to lethally high water temperatures; causes excessive erosion, because the stabilizing influence of the trees’ roots is gone; and deprives the fungi and bacteria at the foundation of the aquatic food web of the nutrients provided by cottonwood leaves, a crucialfood source.[19]
Dams pose an additional challenge: they significantly alter the hydrologic cycle by causing massive evaporation of water. Worldwide “[c]lose to 5000 km3 [cubic kilometers] [or 1.3 billion gallons] of water — nearly 12% of the total annual river runoff — are presently stored in large reservoirs . . . Almost 2800 km3 of water are evaporated from both irrigated fields and from reservoirs each year. . . .”[20]Evaporation of pooled water, such as that found in dam created reservoirs, is especially high in arid climates, such as that in the Southwestern U.S., Egypt’s Aswan Dam, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.If these riparians could harvest this evaporated water, they would not need to build these massive concrete battlements, as they would have more than enough water “saved” for fallow or dry times.
The damage to natural resources is not limited to the United States and other developed countries.Fifty years following the launching of the era of the mega-dam, the developing world has uncritically and unthinkingly leapt into the syndrome of dam construction.Numerous developing nations today face destruction of natural resources.However, by a cruel irony, in an attempt to improve their lot, by building of dams the peoples of the developing world have lost both their customary way of life - a way of life which has sustained them for thousands of years - and the natural resources and venue that kept them alive for millennia.This tragedy is demonstrated by two dams located along Western Africa’s Senegal River, a semi-arid locale: the next stop on our dam excursion.
The Senegal River flows through Guinea Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.[21]In March 1972 following a series of devastating floods and droughts the four riparians entered into an agreement of cooperation.Over a period of fifteen years the parties planned and built two dams. The first is the Manantali Dam and the second is the Diama Dam.The Manantali dam completed in 1987, created a mega-reservoir that holds over 11.3 billion cubic meters of water,[22] and is used for irrigation, to produce hydropower and for maintenance of a navigation channel.[23]The Diama dam, completed in 1986, is twenty-seven kilometers upstream of the Atlantic Ocean.It is used to stop saltwater intrusion flowing upstream during the dry season, in times of drought and for navigation.[24]
The two dams began operation in 1988.Within the first year after the Diama Dam became operational, the people living near the newly irrigated areas along the Senegalese portion of the river suffered a significant increase in waterborne diseases.[25] These included the grave waterborne disease intestinal schistosomiasis.[26]A host snail is required for the schistosomiasis life cycle.Due to the construction of the two dams, ubiquitous pools of fresh water formed in the riverbed and irrigation canals.Unflushed by the river, as would occur naturally, these pools produced an ideal environment for the host snails to flourish.[27]Similar infections from the same snail have been documented in populations living adjacent to Egypt’s Aswan Dam. For example, “the irrigation channels and new permanence of water have led to an epidemic of bilharzia, with infection rates approaching 100 percent in some areas.Egypt is not alone in finding that dams cause disease.”[28]
By 1994, six years after the dams on the Senegal River became operational, “villagers living along the lower reaches of the river demonstrated a 90 percent infection rate from intestinal schistosomiasis.In addition, virtually every person older than the age of five was infected with a more virulent strain.”[29]
A number of other diseases including, malaria, and cholera also increased dramatically during this same time period, all due to the newly created pools of fresh water.For example, within the first two years of operation, in 1988 and 1989, a random field study of 1,000 people in the vicinity of Diama Dam showed a 60 percent prevalence of intestinal schistosomiasis that was not present in this location before Diama Dam.[30]By 1994, 90 percent of the people living near Diama reservoir were infested.[31]Malaria was present before the dam construction, but the year-round standing water dramatically increased the mosquito breeding grounds. Cholera epidemics, which in the past occurred only during the rainy season, became quasi endemic.[32]
The increase in diseases prompted one commentator to suggest that, following construction of the two dams, the human health costs were greater than all the economic benefits of increased irrigation and navigation potential.[33]Moreover, the changes to the local ecosystem have caused an imbalance in the region’s natural resources, as well as other unintended consequences.
Proliferations of these unintended consequences include the starvation of much needed river sediments into marine environments.One well known example is the non-Senegalese Egyptian Aswan High Dam, which was constructed in 1964.Before the High Dam was built, “fifty percent of the Nile flow drained into the Mediterranean.”[34]Indeed, in the course of a typical flood, “the total discharge of nutrient salts was estimated to be approximately 5,500 tons of phosphate and 280,000 tons of silicate.The nutrient-rich floodwater, or Nile Stream, was approximately fifteen kilometers wide and had sharp boundaries. It extended along the Egyptian coast and was detected off the Israeli coast and sometimes off southern Turkey.”[35]
This stream of sediment is now trapped behind the Aswan High Dam.Starved of this much-needed detritus the Egyptian Coast is experiencing acute erosion. The dam has also had an enormous effect on the coastal waters fertility – “It is a landscape [teeming] with life.”[36]The fertilizing impact of the inflow of the nutrient-rich water throughout the flood season once resulted in extraordinarily dense blooms of phytoplankton off the Nile Delta.[37] This far-reaching impact on the transport of fertile silt and sediments not withstanding, the High Dam has been a boon to “Egyptian agriculture and has benefited industry by providing cheap electric power. . .”[38]
Returning to the Senegal River, the construction of the Diama and the Manantali dams triggered other problems. These included the infestation of livestock by waterborne parasites, which caused a regional decrease in milk and meat production from goats and death to livestock.[39]Other food sources, such as fish, the major source of protein for the local population declined precipitously because the dams closed access to spawning grounds in the estuary.[40]
Finally, the most significant and well-documented changes occurred in the agricultural cycle. For centuries prior to damming the Senegal, the local populations practiced communal recession agriculture.The annual river flood during the rainy season caused the floodplain soil to become more fertile once the waters receded, allowing for the planting of cereal crops.
Concomitantly, livestock were moved away from the floodplain to pastures and the cereal crops required little maintenance as they thrived in the wet nutrient rich soil.Thus, villagers were free to spend time herding livestock, fishing, gathering wood, and finally to harvest their crops, which allowed them to move their livestock onto the floodplain to graze on the plant stubble.
The genius of this communal system was that this low-cost production method supported a larger population of humans and animals than would normally be possible in this type of semi-arid environment.However, once the dams were built an inconsistent plan to replicate this cycle destroyed the recession farming and led to the loss of livestock because there was no stubble pasture.Wood gathering also declined, due to two factors: the first, because of the loss of the cereal crop, another crop was needed, and vast stands of acacia trees were cleared for rice fields; the second was due to lack of flood waters for the remaining acacia trees, which died due to lack of water.A sustainable lifestyle was lost.
The promise of power production which was supposed to supplement the sustainable life that these villagers had for over one thousand years, also failed to materialize until 2002.Similarly, irrigation for growing rice has yet to reach the projected goal of 375,000 hectares.[41]Moreover, the costs for rice production are significantly higher than recession agriculture and include clearing and leveling land and building extensive berms around fields to facilitate irrigation.
[1]The Parker Dam, constructed between 1934 and 1938, spans the Colorado River between Arizona and California and lies approximately 155 miles downstream of the Hoover Dam. See generally, United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Parker Dam and Powerplant (Updated Nov. 2006) at http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/brochures/parker.html.
[2]The Imperial Dam, constructed between 1935 and 1938, is located approximately 20 miles northeast of Yuma, Arizona.The dam was constructed as the point of diversion for waters pouring from the Colorado River to the All-American Canal.The latter serves the Coachella and Imperial valleys in California.See generally, The Imperial Irrigation District, IID Water, Imperial Dam (2006) at http://www.iid.com/Water_Index.php?pid=172.
[3]River Management Virtually Wipes Out Life on the Colorado River Delta,supra note 93.
[7]J.D. Carriquiry & A. Sanchez, Sedimentation in the Colorado River Delta and Upper Gulf of California After Nearly a Century of Discharge Loss, 158 Marine Geology 125 (June 1999).
[8]“The endangered fish, totoaba, a relative of the white seabass . . . can grow to over 200 pounds in weight.” Gene Kira, Unique Ensenada Fish Breeding Lab Struggles for Funding, Western Outdoor News, July 14, 2003, available at http://www.mexfish.com/mexi/mexi/af030714/af030714.htm.
[9]The vaquita is the smallest living cetacean, weighing up to 55 kg (120 lb) . . . It lives in shallow lagoons along the shoreline where there is strong tidal mixing and high productivity of the aquatic plant and animal communities.
The vaquita appears to be a non-selective feeder on small bottom-dwelling fish and squid . . . The vaquita may have formerly occurred in Mexico throughout the Gulf of California. It was considered abundant in the early 20th century. As of the early 1980s, the only recent records of its occurrence were from the northern part of the Gulf of California. Currently it has the most limited distribution of any marine cetacean. It is restricted to the northwestern corner of the Gulf of California.
[11]The Hungry Horse Dam and reservoir are located on the South Fork of the Flathead River in Montana.Construction on the 564-foot-high dam began in mid 1948, and the work was completed July 18, 1953.Bureau of Reclamation, Hungry Horse Project, at Development (undated) http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/hhorse.html#general.
[14]Lower Monumental Lock and Dam and Lake Herbert G. West, which extends 28 miles (45 km) east to the base of Little Goose Dam, is formed behind the dam is located on the Snake River, and bridges Franklin County and Walla Walla County, in the state of Washington.
Construction began in June 1961. The main structure and three generators were completed in 1969, with an additional three generators finished in 1981. Generating capacity is 810 megawatts, with an overload capacity of 932 MW. The spillway has eight gates and is 572 feet (176 m) long.
The Lower Monumental Dam is part of the Columbia River Basin system of dams.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Coastal & Hydraulics Laboratory, Lower Monumental Lock and Dam Physical Model Study(undated) http://chl.erdc.usace.army.mil/chl.aspx?p=s&a=Projects;68.
[20]Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Science Briefs, Human Impacts on the Global Water Cycle: Effects on Sea-Level and Climate (Mar. 1997) (emphasis added) athttp://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_02.
[21]The River rises in the Fouta Djallon Mountains of Guinea, flows through Mali and Mauritania and empties into the Atlantic Ocean via the Senegal delta.
[22]11.3 billion meters3 converts to the American equivalent of 9.2 billion acre-feet or 9.2 x 109 (trillion) gallons.
[23]Margaret J. Vick, The Senegal River Basin: A Retrospective and Prospective Look at the Legal Regime, 46 Nat. Resources J. 211, 216 (2006).
[26]Scientific Data for Decision Making Toward Sustainable Development, Senegal River Basin Case Study, Summary of Workshop 4 (National Academy of Sciences 2003), available at http:// fermat.nap.edu/html/srb11/index.html [hereinafter Case Study].
[27]Vick, The Senegal River Basin, supra note 113 at 217.
[28]Marq de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource 125 (2001).
[29]Vick, The Senegal River Basin, supranote 113 at 217. That strain is known as schistosomiasis mansoni infestation.Id.
[34]Sayed El-Sayed and Gert L. van Dijken, The Southeastern Mediterranean Ecosystem Revisited: Thirty Years After the Construction of the Aswan High Dam, 3 Texas A&M Quarterdeck Online, Spring 1995 http://www-ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD3.1/Elsayed/elsayed.html.
Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Legal Advisor to Sakhtan, the Israeli Bedouin Association for Human and Environmental Rights. I have worked for the USEPA as a hydrologist in the Water Branch, where I also drafted regs pursuant to RCRA; and as a Snr Geohydrologist, as part of CERCLA's Field Investigation Team, on 80 Superfund sites.
Then part of Texaco's Frontier Explorartion Team, I developed prospects across the Gulf Coast and South Carolina, discovering 3 new fields, and also worked on environmental issues.
Following law school I litigated environmental class actions and multi-party cases; insurance coverage cases and environmental cases for a number of private law firms. I then worked in international water law.
I earned a B.Sc. and an M.A. in Geology and Geochemistry, respectively; a J.D., Tulane Law School; LL.M.in International Law with Distinction, Georgetown University Law Center.
