A Fountain on Every Corner

A Fountain on Every Corner

The New York Times

Friday 23 May 2008

WATER fountain season is here. New York City workers have turned on bubblers in the parks, and the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has begun to erect four enormous waterfalls in the harbor, each 90 to 120 feet high, that are scheduled to flow from July to October. The shimmering cascades will cost the city nothing (the $15 million cost is being paid by private donations to the Public Art Fund), but here’s a better idea for a civic-minded organization or person interested in celebrating water: sidewalk fountains in places outside the parks.

Convenience is said to be one of bottled water’s greatest allures: we’re a grab-and-go society, consuming roughly 50 billion bottles of water a year. But as awareness of the product’s economic and environmental impact has escalated, mayors across the nation (although not Michael Bloomberg of New York) have canceled city contracts with bottled water purveyors, citing the expense of hauling away empties (less than 20 percent make it into recycling systems); the vast amounts of oil used in producing, transporting and refrigerating the bottles; and the hypocrisy of spending taxpayer dollars on private water while touting the virtues of public supplies. Last summer, New York City spent $700,000 on a campaign reminding New Yorkers that their tap water is tasty and affordable.

Delivered by gravity, tap water generates virtually no waste. All that, and it contains no calories, caffeine or colorants either. (Yes, New York’s water — like that of other cities — contains trace amounts of drugs, but we lack proof, so far, that exposure at these low levels is a human health risk.)

Bottled water’s main virtue, it seems, is convenience, especially for people at large in the city. As the editor of Beverage Digest told The Times, “It’s not so easy, walking down Third Avenue on a hot day, to get a glass of tap water.”

But it needn’t be so. Paris has its ornate cast-iron Wallace fountains (donated in the late 19th century by a wealthy philanthropist hoping to steer the homeless from alcohol toward a healthier beverage); Rome its ever-running street spigots; Portland, Ore., its delightful four-bowl Benson Bubblers.

In the 1880s, several American cities had “temperance fountains,” paid for by the philanthropist (and dentist) Henry D. Cogswell of San Francisco. New York City had six of these, placed at busy corners: “In the brief space of 10 minutes one morning 40 persons were recently observed to stop for a refreshing drink,” observed an officer of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, which helped place the fountains.

Such fountains have largely disappeared (although the temperance fountain in Tompkins Square Park still stands). Today, we’ve got plenty of bubblers in parks, but Midtown is a Sahara for parched pedestrians, who don’t even think of looking for public sources of tap water.

An entire generation of Americans has grown up thinking public faucets equal filth, and the only water fit to drink comes in plastic, factory sealed. It’s time to change that perception with public fountains in the city’s busiest quadrants, pristine bubblers that celebrate the virtues of our public water supply, remind us of our connection to upstate watersheds and reinforce our commitment to clean water for all.

On a more practical note: let’s make them easy to maintain, with water pressure adequate to fill our reusable bottles. And germophobes, relax: city water is chlorinated, and experts report that pathogens impolitely left on spigots by the lips of preceding drinkers don’t creep down into pipes. In other words, the bubbling water is clean, so get over it.

Minneapolis recently committed to spending $500,000 on 10 artist-designed fountains that will be placed in areas of high foot and bike traffic. Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, archenemy of bottled water, is pursuing a similar plan. New York and other cities should swiftly follow suit, if not with fancy fountains then with several dozen off-the-shelf models. Wheelchair-accessible, and vandal- and frost-resistant, they can be had for less than $2,000 apiece (plumbing not included). It’s a small price to pay to quench thirst, reduce bottle litter, slash our collective carbon footprint and reaffirm our connection with the city’s most valuable resource: its public water supply.

Elizabeth Royte is the author of “Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash” and “Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/opinion/23royte.html?sq=carbon&st=nyt&scp=3&pagewanted=print

Bodman rejects releasing government oil

Yahoo

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Thursday rejected a call by some members of Congress to release oil from the government's emergency stockpile, saying oil is needed to respond to future supply emergencies and not to influence prices.

Bodman also told a House hearing that he does not believe that rampant market speculation is causing extraordinary high oil prices that reached a record $135 a barrel. He said it's a matter of supply and demand that can be traced to essentially flat global production over the last three years.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said he did not understand why President Bush is not releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to force down prices. "We have 700 million barrels ... that are ready to be deployed," said Markey.

Bush recently stopped putting oil into the reserve after Congress passed legislation to halt deliveries.

But Bodman said he would not recommend oil being released from the reserve.

The stockpile, now 701 million barrels, "is meant to deal with ... the physical interruption of the flow of oil to our country. We don't have that issue today," he told the House Committee on Global Warming.

Markey said the release of government oil is justified because "we're in an economic crisis" as high oil costs are driving gasoline to $4 a gallon and increasing other costs.

"The American people are being tipped upside down and having money shaken out of their pockets," he told Bodman.

Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, three underground salt domes in Texas and Louisiana, has been used twice to respond to supply disruptions or the threat of such interruptions: Just before and during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s and in response to the loss of Gulf of Mexico oil after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Bill Clinton in 2000 made emergency oil available to relieve prices and Markey said prices then dropped 18 percent.

Meanwhile, the top executives of the country's five largest oil companies made a repeat appearance on Capitol Hill.

After being pummeled by senators over high oil and gasoline prices at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, they were summoned before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

In prepared testimony, the oil executives reiterated much of what they had told the senators: The primary cause for high oil prices is tight supplies and growing demand, and that their profits — $36 billion during the first three months of the year — are not excessive given the size of their companies and the need for reinvestment to find more oil.

Bodman made a similar assessment, appearing at a separate hearing, down the hall from the oilmen.

Asked if he believed there was "rampant" speculation driving up oil prices, Bodman replied: "No. I don't."

The biggest problem, he said, is flat oil production and growing demand. Up to 2004, he said the world's producers pumped about 1 million barrels more oil each year, then production increased and so did demand. Demand continued to grow, but beginning in 2005 "there has been no change in global production" and "demand has outstripped supply."

"We have sopped up all the available spare (oil production) capacity in the system," said Bodman.

The world uses about 87 million barrels of oil a day, about a quarter of it in the United States.

Energy experts have acknowledged that most producers have little ability to pump more oil. The exception is Saudi Arabia, which is producing about 9.4 million barrels a day and has the ability to increase that by about 2 million barrels a day but have declined to do so.

Last week, the Saudis said they were boosting production by 300,000 barrels a day in June, but that was only to make up a decline in production by other OPEC countries.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080522/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bodman_oil_prices&printer=1;_ylt=AnC26smsXPPcfaP9LdZR3hKWwvIE

Wildlife refuges fall prey to drug labs, illicit sex
Lack of funding, staff let criminals take advantage of land, group says
The Associated Press

MSNBC

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - America's wildlife refuges are so short of money that one-third have no staff, boardwalks and buildings are in disrepair, and drug dealers are using them to grow marijuana and make methamphetamine, a group pushing for more funding says.

"Without adequate funding, we are jeopardizing some of the world's most spectacular wildlife and wild lands," said Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and chairman of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement.

The cooperative said in a report released Thursday to Congress that the nation's 548 refuges and the 100 million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System — about the size of California — is underfunded by 43 percent. The refuge system needs at least $765 million a year but is receiving only $434 million, the report says.

A decrease in law enforcement has left the refuges vulnerable to criminal activity, including prostitution, torched cars and illegal immigrant camps along the Potomac River in suburban Washington, D.C.; gay sex hookups in South Carolina and Alabama; methamphetamine labs in Nevada; and pot growing operations in Washington state.

"The refuge system has been underfunded for years but it has really mushroomed in the past several," Hirsche said.

The cooperative is recommending Congress increase funding for fiscal year 2009 to $514 million and that full funding be reached by 2013. The House and Senate are expected to take up the issue in coming weeks.

The report says the refuge system has cut 300 staff positions. Without more funding, a plan to reduce staffing by 20 percent will continue. The system needs 845 law enforcement officers but has 180.

"In some cases, we find that drug operations have set up shop in refuges," Hirsche said.

Staff cuts, maintenance backlog
Alaska has 76 million acres of refuge lands and accounts for 83 percent of land in the refuge system. Managing those lands can be particularly daunting given the sheer size and remoteness of many of the state's 16 refuges, said Todd Logan, regional chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System in Alaska.

It's even harder when money is tight, he said. For example, the visitor center at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge is inadequate, the exhibits should be updated and the carpet needs cleaning, he said. The boardwalk suffered ice and water damage this winter.

"We have a pretty significant maintenance backlog," Logan said.

The report says the nation's refuges receive 40 million visitors a year and contribute an estimated $1.7 billion to the economy. They provide more than 27,000 jobs.

This Memorial Day weekend, hundreds of thousands of Americans will visit one of the nation's wildlife refuges, only to find at many there is no one to greet them, Hirsche said.

The nation's refuge system was created in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt after a trip to tiny Pelican Island in South Florida. There, giant shotguns were being used to kill hundreds of birds to satisfy the market for fashionable feathers. Roosevelt went on to create 50 more refuges, stretching from Florida to Alaska.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24788485/

By David A. Fahrenthold

Rising sea levels could swamp sections of the Eastern Shore, eat away islands in the Chesapeake Bay and submerge long stretches of Atlantic Ocean beaches by 2100, according to a report released yesterday by the National Wildlife Federation.

The report says a computer model was used to simulate the effect of a 27.2-inch rise in sea levels triggered by global climate change. It says that kind of a rise was at the upper end of forecasts by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a conference of scientists from around the world.

Using this model, the report presents a more detailed picture of a problem that others have already sketched. The Chesapeake region, rimmed with marshes and other low-lying land, would be one of the hardest-hit areas in the country if warmer temperatures drive water levels up, the report says.

"If you want to find a poster child for climate change, there are only a handful of places . . . that stand out," said Patty Glick, a wildlife federation scientist who worked on the report, "and the Chesapeake Bay is definitely one of them."

The region is unusually vulnerable to rising seas, scientists have said, because the land is already sinking, in part because of geological changes that date to the last ice age. The report estimates that in some parts of the region, water levels rose a foot in the past century and that about half of that change was attributable to natural subsidence.

In the next century, the report says, waters could be pushed upward as polar ice sheets melt and as warmer temperatures cause oceans to expand. Around the bay, more than 167,000 acres of dry land and 161,000 acres of brackish marsh could disappear, replaced in many cases by open water, the report says. The total area lost would be larger than Fairfax County.

The worst consequences, the report says, would fall on the bay's islands and the Eastern Shore. Washington, Baltimore and Richmond are on the western side of the bay.

At Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, a vast area of swamps on the lower Eastern Shore, 90 percent of some marshes could turn to open water by 2100, the report says. In the lower Chesapeake, large parts of Smith Island, Tangier Island and Deal Island might wash away.

On Virginia's Eastern Shore, the report says, 80 percent of beaches on the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean could vanish. In the Hampton Roads cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, the report says, 79 percent of the beaches could be lost if steps are not taken to add more sand.

Glick said the foundation was particularly concerned about the effect on wildlife, including fish, frogs and marsh birds. Some animals are highly adapted to one ecosystem, she said, and might not be able to adjust if their habitat is inundated. "We're throwing changes at them . . . in a blink of an eye" in evolutionary terms, Glick said. "So I think there's very, very legitimate concerns."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052201666_pf.html

The Washington Post

Friday, May 23, 2008

FRIDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Low doses of carbon monoxide (CO) -- the potentially lethal gas in car exhaust fumes -- may help protect the lungs of patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery, German researchers say.

The team gave low doses of CO to pigs that underwent beating-heart CPB.

"Our findings support that inhaled CO provides anti-inflammatory effects in the lungs and decreases the instance of cell death during CPB," study author Dr. Torsten Loop, of the anesthesiology department at the University Medical Centre Freiburg, said in a prepared statement.

"Additionally, and of greater importance, these effects occurred when CO was administered as a pre-treatment -- with the advantage of short exposure time, which limits how avidly CO can bind to hemoglobin," Loop said.

This is important, because the poisonous effects of CO occur when it's allowed to freely bind to hemoglobin within red blood cells.

The study was published in the May issue ofAnesthesiology.

"Cardiac surgery is one of the most extreme situations a patient can face," Loop noted. "Although a heart-lung machine ensures that organs are supplied with blood, and therefore oxygen, the nature of heart surgery means that normal operation of the lungs is impaired -- potentially resulting in lung injury."

Only about 2 percent of cardiac surgery patients suffer life-threatening lung injuries, but death rates for these patients can exceed 60 percent. This finding suggests CO could prove useful in reducing lung inflammation and cell death during CPB.

"A fascinating aspect of this study is that pre-treatment with CO before CPB was effective in protecting the lungs. These findings may support evidence that CO can trigger the body into a state that helps to protect it against the sometimes damaging effects of CPB," Dr. John G. Laffey, of the Clinical Sciences Institute at the National University of Ireland, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

The study results lend support to the feasibility of conducting human studies to examine the potential protective effects of CO on a number of organs.

"The demonstration that CO may reduce pulmonary inflammation and injury following CPB is an important and novel finding. Relative ease of administration, probable safety when given at low doses for short periods, and likely protective effects for multiple organs make this a fascinating agent with clear therapeutic promise," Laffey noted.

The MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia has more about heart bypass surgery.

SOURCE: American Society of Anesthesiologists, news release, May 23, 2008

© 2008 Scout News LLC. All rights reserved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052301014_pf.html