ENN Week In Review Dec 14 - 21

This week's top stories, from the editors of ENN:

Japan to meet Kyoto goal with extra measures: panel

By Risa Maeda and Chisa Fujioka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will be able to cut as much greenhouse gas emissions as it promised under the Kyoto Protocol if additional measures, mainly extra voluntary agreements with industries and more energy conservation by households, are carried out, a top government panel said.

A joint panel on climate change under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Environment finalized additional measures on Friday to cut emissions as the Kyoto period starts next year.

The measures are aimed at enhancing current government plans in place since April 2005, which the panel's review in September showed were not enough to meet Japan's commitments to cut emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.

Given the panel's proposal, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and his cabinet are set to revise the current plans by the end of March. Progress by Japan is critical to the success of the protocol as U.N.-led talks on a post-Kyoto pact have just begun. Despite a rift on some points among panel members, such as whether to introduce a cap-and-trade system of emissions, it is time to move on, said panel head Yoichi Kaya.

"There's a time limit. We should hand it in now," Kaya, director general of the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, said at the end of the panel's meeting.

Friday's list of measures would help Japan cut roughly 35 to 36 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent a year, said Yutaka Fujiwara, a METI official responsible for issues concerning the environment and the economy.

The September review of existing measures showed that in the fiscal year beginning in April 2010 Japan would have to cut an additional 20-34 million tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases in order to meet the commitments.

PUBLIC MOVE

The estimated shortage was mainly because of a sharp increase in emissions from 1990 levels by service companies and households and a slower than planned usage of renewable energy sources.

Japan is already among the world's most energy efficient countries so major industries, such as steel makers and electric power firms, oppose mandatory measures to cut emissions.

The existing measures include the electric power industry's agreement with the government to cut CO2 output per kilowatt hour of electricity by 20 percent from current levels.

Also on the existing list are more efficient use of energy by the manufacturing, transport and household sectors and promotion of renewable energy.

Friday's measures rely on additional voluntary agreements by a total 21 industries, such as chemicals, cement and paper, with an estimated reduction totaling some 18 million tons of CO2 equivalent a year.

While some service companies, such as consumer electronics retailers, have come up with new voluntary agreements, schools and hospitals are expected to follow suit.

The measures also rely on the public to reduce emissions by up to 10.5 million metric tons of CO2 a year.

"We could impose more aggressive measures. But it's not ripe yet because our situations are not that bad yet if we carry out the additional measures," said panel member Naohito Asano, law professor at Fukuoka University in southern Japan.

"We're calling for national action now," he said.

The government launched a project called "Team Minus Six Percent" in 2005 in which ordinary citizens pledge to take action to fight global warming.

Members now number nearly 2 million individuals and 16,800 groups.

Japan removes humpback whales from Antarctic hunt

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's whaling fleet in the Antarctic will avoid killing humpback whales for now, but will press on with plans to catch about 1,000 other whales by early in the new year, a government official said on Friday.

The move follows an announcement by Australia on Wednesday that it would send a fisheries patrol ship to gather evidence for a possible international court challenge to halt Japan's yearly slaughter.

"Japan has decided not to catch humpback whales for one year or two," government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told reporters.

"Japan's relations with Australia could improve, but it depends on how it will see our decision," Machimura said.

Bird Extinctions Likely to Rise with Climate Change

As warming temperatures push organisms to seek cooler climates at ever-higher altitudes, habitat areas are shrinking, putting many species of plants and animals at risk. This trend could have particularly dire consequences for the world’s bird populations, according to a new report in the journal Conservation Biology. “It’s like an escalator to extinction,”� says lead author Cagan Sekercioglu, a senior research scientist with the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. “As a species is forced upwards and its elevational range narrows, the species moves closer to extinction.”�

“Vegetational shift is the key issue here,”� Sekercioglu says, noting that, “Birds will follow the shift in habitat.”� As plants move upslope, the surface area of a bird’s habitat may diminish—and if the top of the mountain is still too warm, the species can die out. Problems also arise if there is too little moisture at higher altitudes to support vegetation or if changes in soil composition are incompatible with the vegetation creeping upward. Diseases from lower elevations may be more likely to infect highland bird species, and species already present at higher altitudes may clash with encroaching birds, the study notes.

The research team modeled changes to the elevational ranges of some 8,400 species of land birds (the vast majority of all bird species) using 60 scenarios that incorporate habitat loss estimates from the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as well as the latest climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With a “worst-case scenario”� warming of 6.4 degree Celsius, up to 30 percent of land-bird species could go extinct by 2100. With an “intermediate”� level of warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius, 400 to 550 land-bird extinctions are expected. “Of the land-bird species predicted to go extinct, 79 percent of them are not currently considered threatened with extinction, but many will be if we cannot stop climate change,”� Sekercioglu warns.

Because of the remoteness of many mountain ranges and a lack of funding for ornithological studies in most tropical countries, there is little data on avian responses to climate change. While amateur bird-tracking databases like the new site Geobirds are growing on the Internet, remote sensing data are becoming less available as image distribution moves to the private sector. “To effectively monitor their rate of change as warming progresses, especially in the species-rich topics, we need a lot more data on birds’ distributions and on the speed and extent of birds’ elevational shifts in response to climate change,”� says Sekercioglu.

This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund. View the complete archive of Eye on Earth stories, or contact Staff Writer Alana Herro at aherro [AT] worldwatch [DOT] org with your questions, comments, and story ideas.

Songbird killings in Cyprus rise: conservation group

NICOSIA (Reuters) - Up to half a million migrating songbirds, mainly warblers and robins, were killed in Cyprus this year to end up pickled or fried as an illegal restaurant delicacy, a conservation group said on Thursday.

Wildlife groups have long campaigned against trapping of the tiny birds on the east Mediterranean island. The practice is banned but conservation group BirdLife Cyprus estimates some 500,000 birds were trapped this year.

Warblers and robins are the main targets, and the birds end up as a dish called "ampelopoulia." They are served pickled or fried in restaurants usually for three Cyprus pounds ($7.3) each, the group said.

Trappers use fine mist nets in thickets of vegetation along the island's southeast coast to snare birds.

(Writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Michael Kahn)

House unanimously endorses toy safety crackdown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress moved closer on Wednesday to slashing lead content in toys and devoting more government resources to product safety regulation, but final action was not expected until next year.

After a surge of recalls of lead-tainted toys, many of them made in China, the House of Representatives voted 407-0 for a bill that would nearly eliminate lead in toys and boost funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

"This legislation represents a quantum leap forward in strengthening the Consumer Product Safety Commission's watchdog role on behalf of American consumers," said Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, a key backer of the House legislation.

A similar bill is moving through the Senate, but congressional aides said negotiations over language were still under way and a floor vote would not come until next year.

In the interim, Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said that a 2008 budget bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday included a nearly 30-percent CPSC budget increase, the largest increase in more than 30 years.

With bipartisan support for broader reform and future funding increases, however, lawmakers said they were confident that a House-Senate compromise could be reached soon and a final bill sent to President George W. Bush for consideration.

"Something very close to this bill will be on the president's desk. We will have a bill-signing ceremony in the Rose Garden sometime later in this Congress," said Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton in House floor remarks.

"This bill has the toughest lead standards in the world for children's products," Barton said.

Consumer product safety grabbed the public spotlight and Congress' attention earlier this year amid scores of recalls of products by Mattel Inc, RC2 Corp and other companies due to excessive lead content and other hazards.

The ensuing uproar led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a few other lawmakers to call for the ouster of CPSC Acting Chairman Nancy Nord. But she refused to quit, while Congress stepped up efforts to reform the agency and tackle the lead problem.

Nord thanked the House for passing its bill and urged the Senate to "follow the House's lead in passing bipartisan and sensible product safety legislation."

The House's bill would require a gradual reduction of lead content in children's products, with the limit going down to 100 parts per million effective four years after enactment.

It would also require manufacturers to include tracking labels on products to speed recalls of toys for children aged 12 and younger, while mandating independent safety testing of toys by labs accredited by the CPSC.

The National Association of Manufacturers, an industry group, called the House bill "strong, bipartisan legislation to give the CPSC resources it needs to carry out its duties."

The CPSC back in the 1980s had a staff of 1,000. Today, it has 420 people and only a tiny toy-testing office.

The bill would steadily increase the CPSC's budget to $100 million by fiscal 2011. Plus, it would raise penalties for failing to cooperate with the CPSC to $10 million from the current $1.25 million, while giving the beleaguered agency $20 million to modernize its toy-testing laboratory.

Nord is one of only two commissioners now serving on the CPSC, which was created in the 1970s to regulate hazards in about 15,000 different consumer products. The House bill would restore the CPSC to its full complement of five commissioners.

Consumers Union and other public interest activist groups praised the House vote.

"The issue now moves to the Senate," they said in a statement. "We hope to work with both the House and the Senate to get a strong final CPSC reform bill to the president as soon next year as possible."

(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh)

A $15.8 Billion Organic Electronics Materials Market by 2015

GLEN ALLEN, Va. - The market for organic electronics materials will be worth $4.9 billion in 2012 surging to $15.8 billion in 2015, according to a new report from NanoMarkets, an industry analyst firm based here. The report, "Organic Harvest: Opportunities in Organic Electronic Materials" is the next in a series that analyzes the market for the semiconductors, conductors, dielectrics and substrates that will be used in the growing organic electronics industry. Details about the report can be found at www.nanomarkets.net. The firm has also released a blog entry that provides additional commentaries from the report at www.nanotopblog.com. Report summaries are available for members of the press upon request.

From the Report:

-- By 2015, NanoMarkets estimates that 80 percent of organic electronics materials will be sold into three applications: RFID, display backplanes and OLED lighting and displays. By then RFID will be the largest application accounting for $6.9 billion in materials sales, with today's dominant application -- OLEDs accounting for $5.6 billion. NanoMarkets expect RFID to overtake OLEDs as the largest consumer of organic electronics materials by 2012.

-- Today's organic semiconductor materials are inadequate for the opportunity that lies ahead. Besides their limits on performance, many of them are only available in small quantities. However, NanoMarkets believes that new kinds of organic semiconductor materials such as rubrene and hybrid materials including formulations with carbon nanotubes are going to enable the market to achieve $4.9 billion in revenues by 2015 as needed improvements in electron mobilities,
switching speeds and environmental stability are attained.

-- To be successful, organic electronics will have to emulate the traditional semiconductor industry and invent an organic version of CMOS with its own stable materials sets. To make this happen materials companies must offer commercial quantities of n-type semiconductors and organic dielectrics.

-- The substrate business will grow to $6.9 billion in sales by 2015 with the majority of these substrates of the flexible type and specially prepared for organic electronics through novel forms of barrier coatings and reduced surface roughness.

-- As the organic electronics industry starts to ship devices in quantity, material suppliers will have to adjust their formulations for their offerings to work in large-scale manufacturing plants. These plants now seem more likely to use versions of traditional evaporation, coating and flexo printing, rather than the much touted ink-jet approaches. Suppliers will have to meet the specialized requirements for viscosity, volatility, etc., that the emerging organic electronics industry will require.

About the Report:

NanoMarkets' new report, "Organic Harvest: Opportunities in Organic Electronic Materials" provides a complete analysis of the new opportunities to sell materials to the organic electronics industry. It discusses and quantifies the markets for semiconductors, conductors, dielectrics and (glass, plastic and paper) substrates that will be used by the industry over the next eight years in various applications including display backplanes, organic photovoltaics, OLEDs, sensors, smartcards, and games and toys. The report includes detailed eight-year forecasts of organic electrics markets broken out by applications and device type as well as strategic profiles of 20 leading firms active in this market.

About NanoMarkets:

NanoMarkets tracks and analyzes emerging market opportunities in electronics created by developments in advanced materials. The firm has published numerous reports related to organic, thin film and printable electronics materials and applications. The firm also publishes a blog found at www.nanotopblog.com. NanoMarkets research database is the industry's most extensive source of information on TOP electronics. Visit www.nanomarkets.net for a full listing of NanoMarkets' coverage.

Biggest U.S. solar panel farms open in Nevada, Colo

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The biggest photovoltaic solar panel array in the United States opened this week at a U.S. Air force base in Nevada and the biggest array that sells power to an electric utility began operation in Colorado, companies involved said.

A 14-megawatt solar farm covering 140 acres opened at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada on Monday. It will generate 30,000 megawatt hours a year and will supply about a quarter of the electricity used at the air base. About 12,000 people live and work on the base.

Nellis Base Commander Col. Michael Bartley said the solar array may be just one of many such projects by the U.S. military.

"The project also provides a future test bed for the Department of Defense to assess the benefits of similar arrangements on installations across the United States," said Bartley.

Also opening on Monday was an 8.22-megawatt photovoltaic array covering 80 acres in Alamoso, Colorado. Its developer and operator, SunEdison LLC, signed a 20-year deal to sell the power to Colorado's largest utility, Xcel's wholly owned Public Service of Colorado.

Financial arrangements were not disclosed.

There are bigger solar farms in the United States, but they are concentrated solar thermal projects that use mirrors to heat water rather than to use panels to convert sunlight to electricity.

The Alamoso solar project in the southern part of central Colorado, near the border with New Mexico, will generate about 17,000 megawatt hours each year, enough no-emissions power to serve about 1,500 homes.

The Nellis project that also opened on Monday is a joint project of the U.S. Air Force, SunPower Corp, Municipal Mortgage & Equity LLC subsidiary MMA Renewable Ventures and Nevada Power Co.

The Nellis array is comprised of 72,000 solar panels using a single-axis tracking system developed by SunPower that allows the panels to track the sun, giving 30 percent more energy than fixed-tilt ground systems.

MMA Renewable Ventures financed the building of the Nellis array, and will operate the plant and sell power to the air base at a fixed price for 20 years.

Mark Culpepper, SunEdison vice president of strategic marketing, said SunEdison now has 28 megawatts of installed solar panel arrays that it manages in the United States.

SunEdison will maintain and operate the Alamoso project and deliver power, as well as sell renewable energy credits to Xcel. SunEdison is based in Beltsville, Maryland.

Renewable energy credits from the Nellis project will be sold to Nevada Power, a subsidiary of Sierra Pacific Resources.

SunEdison is developing a rooftop solar energy system for 63 of Kohl's 80 California department stores, which will total about 25 megawatts of photovoltaic power, said Culpepper. Once completed, the Kohl's panels will make more than 35,000 megawatts of power a year, enough to power almost 3,100 California homes.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

New Biochip Could Replace Animal Testing

BERKELEY -- With the cosmetics industry facing a Europe an ban on animal testing in 2009, a newly developed biochip could provide the rapid analysis needed to insure that the chemicals in cosmetics are nontoxic to humans.

The biochip, announced this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a suspension of more than a thousand human cell cultures in a three-dimensional gel on a standard microscope slide. Each cell culture is capable of assessing the toxicity of a different chemical. According to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Solidus Biosciences, Inc. of Troy, N.Y., cultures of skin cells in this so-called DataChip could be used to rapidly screen new chemicals for skin toxicity or irritability.

By adding other types of cells, such as lung or heart cells, and combining the DataChip with another biochip - the MetaChip - that the researchers created several years ago, cosmetics or chemical companies could also test whether chemicals are toxic to other organs, not just skin.

"The DataChip expands the capabilities of the MetaChip and enables it to test for toxic effects of chemicals and their metabolites throughout the body," said co-lead author Douglas S. Clark, UC Berkeley professor of chemical engineering and co-founder of Solidus Biosciences, the company that is working to commercialize the chips. "It is one step closer to a replacement for animals in evaluating product safety, as well as to a personalized system that can predict the toxicity of drugs in individual patients."

The MetaChip that was reported two years ago contains liver enzymes immobilized on a microscope slide. Liver enzymes can sometimes alter seemingly safe chemicals and make them toxic. The MetaChip mimicks this process, quickly metabolizing a chemical to produce compounds the liver itself would produce. The DataChip provides an equally fast way to determine the effect of these metabolites on cells.

For drug companies, the combination of the MetaChip and the DataChip offers a rapid way to predict whether a drug candidate or its metabolite is toxic. The chips will also enable chemical companies to comply with new legislation stipulating that chemicals undergo toxicity analysis.

"We looked at the issues facing companies and realized that we needed to develop something that was low-cost, high-throughput, easily automatable and did not involve animals" said co-lead author and Solidus Biosciences co-founder Jonathan S. Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann '42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer. "We developed the MetaChip and DataChip to deal with the two most important issues that need to be assessed when examining the toxicity of a compound - the effect on different cells in our body and how toxicity is altered when the compound is metabolized in our bodies."

The collaborative team sees the combined chips as an efficient, more accurate way to test drug compounds for toxicity earlier in the discovery process, before a lot of money has been invested in a drug candidate. However, according to Clark, pharmaceutical companies are only one potential user, and not necessarily the first.

"Obviously cosmetics need to be safe, and ensuring the safety of new compounds without testing them on animals presents a new challenge to the industry, especially as the number of compounds increases," said Clark. "These chips can meet this challenge by providing comprehensive toxicity data very quickly and cheaply."

Within the next 5 to 10 years, assuming the cost of sequencing all of a person's genes becomes generally affordable, people will be able to mine their personal genomes for information on the types and levels of liver enzymes that determine how they react to specific drugs and then reproduce this profile on a MetaChip to prescreen all drugs before they're administered to determine safe and effective doses.

The DataChip currently contains 1,080 human cell cultures arranged within a gel made of collagen or algae extract, approximating how cells are arranged in organs of the human body. For now, the DataChip establishes a drug's toxicity by whether it kills cells or inhibits their growth. Through fundamental research, however, Clark and Dordick hope to adapt this methodology to test for other biological responses, not just cell death.

"We have the fundamental platform and concept, and there is the potential to expand considerably beyond that to test for many different biological responses, such as allergic responses or binding of a chemical to a receptor to trigger a reaction," Clark said. "For personalized medicine, that is exactly what you'd want to do."

Dordick and Clark were joined in the research by Moo-Yeal Lee and Michael G. Hogg of Solidus Biosciences; R. Anand Kumar of UC Berkeley; and Sumitra M. Sukumaran of Rensselaer.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the New York State Office of Science and Technology (NYSTAR).

EU eyes phasing in CO2 fines for carmakers: source

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is considering phasing in fees it charges to carmakers who fail to meet ambitious targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2012, a European Union source said on Monday.

Amid fierce lobbying, the EU executive is due to announce on Wednesday how it will share out cuts in the main gas blamed for global warming between makers of light and heavy cars.

Germany has led resistance to sharp constraints on its makers of luxury heavy cars, rejecting the Commission's key goal of forcing carmakers to reduce CO2 emissions to 130 grams/km through engine technology by 2012.

France and Italy make smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and have managed to cut their emissions.

In an attempt to soften the blow, the source said penalties for exceeding the limits would be phased in over three years.

"The polluter will pay -- but later," the source said.

Two days before the decision, senior Commission officials were not shown the figures on how the cuts would be divided between makers of big and small cars, nor the proposed level of fines, several sources said.

Those details will be decided only at a meeting of the 27-member Commission on Wednesday morning, they said.

The rules would require average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new cars across the European fleet to come in at 120 grams per kilometer by 2012.

Use of biofuels and other measures to promote more fuel-efficient driving should help achieve the additional cut beyond what is required from engine technology.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Paul Taylor; editing by Myra MacDonald)

Falsifying Records, Obstruction of Justice, Shipping Company Fined $4.9 Million By US

WASHINGTON - Repeat offender, Ionia Management, a Greek company that manages a fleet of tanker vessels, was sentenced today for its role in falsifying records to conceal the overboard dumping of waste oil from the M/T Kriton into international waters and its efforts to impede the investigation of the U.S. Coast Guard, announced Ronald J. Tenpas, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, Kevin J. O'Connor, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and Rear Admiral Tim Sullivan, Commander of the First Coast Guard District, U.S. Coast Guard.

U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton for the District of Connecticut fined Ionia Management $4.9 million and appointed a Special Master to oversee the company's record keeping. As part of the sentence, the Special Master will hold hearings every 6 months to review the company's records. Also as part of the sentence, no ships owned by Ionia Management will be permitted into U.S. ports without first installing special monitoring equipment.

Ionia Management was convicted on Sept. 6, 2007, in New Haven, Conn., on 13 counts of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, three counts of falsifying records in a federal investigation, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of conspiracy.

The M/T Kriton was equipped with an oil water separator and an incinerator, equipment designed to prevent oil-contaminated wastes from polluting the sea by treating and disposing of the wastes within the ship. Typically, oil-contaminated wastes are produced when other equipment on the ship is operated, repaired, and cleaned. The waste oil from these processes collects in the bottom of the ship where it mixes with seawater. Heavier oily sludge wastes are captured and stored on tanks aboard the ship.

From at least Jan. 1, 2006, to March 20, 2007, crew members aboard M/T Kriton, operated by Ionia Management, made false entries in the ship's oil record book indicating that they had regularly used the ship's oil pollution prevention equipment. Evidence at trial proved that the equipment was rarely, if ever, used and, instead, crew members pumped the ship's oil-contaminated wastes and sludge directly from the ship into the ocean using a rubber hose. At least 968 tons of oil-contaminated waste was unaccounted for in the Kriton's oil record books. In addition to falsifying oil record books, Ionia Management submitted false statements in environmental compliance checklists that it was required to submit to the U.S. Coast Guard as part of its probation from the 2004 conviction in the Eastern District of New York. After the Coast Guard investigation of the Kriton began in March 2007, the ship's Chief Engineer and Second Engineer destroyed the rubber hose used to pump waste to the ocean.

Chief Engineer Petros Renieris pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Dec. 3, 2007. Second Engineer Edgardo Mercurio pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Oct. 12, 2007.

The counts were consolidated for trial from indictments returned in the District of Connecticut, Southern District of Florida, Eastern District of New York, and District of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The maximum possible fine on each count was $500,000, for a total maximum fine of $9 million. The company had a prior conviction in the Eastern District of New York in 2004 for false statements involving the oil record book on another ship and was still on probation for that crime when the latest violations occurred.

"Ionia Management engaged in serious criminal conduct, concealing their deliberate acts of large-scale pollution, even while they were on probation," said Assistant Attorney General Tenpas. "This company has a history of ignoring environmental laws and obstructing subsequent Coast Guard investigations. Today's sentence should make clear to them that such actions will be punished."

"We hope and expect that this prosecution and the stiff sentence imposed sends a clear message to all who intend to pollute the world's waters that such conduct will not be tolerated," said U.S. Attorney O'Connor.

"The jury's verdict in this case, and the sentence imposed by the court today, should mark a clear shot across the bow to all ship operators. Those who deliberately and illegally use our oceans as their own dumping grounds and attempt to obstruct our investigations into their illegal activities will be held accountable by juries and judges in the United States," said Rear Admiral Tim Sullivan, Commander of the First Coast Guard District. "All companies particularly repeat offenders such as Ionia Management S.A., must take note, accept responsibility, and change their behavior. Until that happens and compliance is achieved, we will continue to work with our trusted partners in the U.S. Attorneys offices, the Department of Justice, and our international counterparts to further escalate these enforcement actions."

The investigation was conducted by the Coast Guard Investigative Service, the Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound, and the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigative Division. Assistance was also provided by the Netherlands Royal Military Police, Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management, and Coast Guard. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Environmental Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Report Examines Impact of Climate Change on Drinking Water Supplies

WASHINGTON - Warming of the earth's atmosphere will continue to put mounting pressure on America's drinking water sources, leading to diminishing supplies in some regions and flooding in others, according to an analysis released today by the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA), a nonprofit organization of the largest publicly owned drinking water systems in the United States.

AMWA's report, Implications of Climate Change for Urban Water Utilities, forecasts the likely impacts of climate change on water supplies in different regions of the U.S., such as an accelerated hydrologic cycle of evaporation and precipitation, water contamination, rising sea levels and pressure on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The report is available for viewing and download at AMWA's new climate change webpage, www.amwa.net/cs/climatechange.

The national debate on climate change has so far been limited to the effects of greenhouse gases," said AMWA Executive Director Diane VanDe Hei. "For community drinking water systems, climate change has broader implications. The question we ask is: 'To what extent will our water supplies be affected?'"

This report shows that climate change may pose great challenges to delivering limited amounts of clean and safe water to a rapidly growing population," added VanDe Hei.

Among the actions that the report suggests water systems take to prepare for the impacts of climate change are vulnerability assessments to identify short-term adaptation needs; cooperative planning and modeling efforts among utilities to devise strategies addressing likely regional water resource issues; and efforts by utilities to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

"The ramifications identified in the report point to at least two key needs," said VanDe Hei. "Scientific research is needed to better understand the impacts of climate change on existing fresh water resources and to help develop and assess the affordability of alternative water sources -- such as reuse, recycling, conservation and desalination."

"In addition, an increased federal investment in water infrastructure is needed to help offset the costs of new supply development and capital projects to ensure that all Americans continue to have access to safe and affordable drinking water," she said.

In conjunction with the release of the report, AMWA's new climate change webpage will serve as a resource for water utility managers and policy makers seeking the latest information on the impacts of climate change on drinking water supplies. The page includes fact sheets and presentations on local impacts of climate change, and can be viewed at www.amwa.net/cs/climatechange.

Source: Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies