Flood Report 3/22/17 - World Water Day, Coal, Siberian Permafrost, Rivers with Personhood, and Drumpf's Statements Being Used Against Him in Court

1. VOX informs us, "The global coal boom finally seems to be winding down." This is not really news to anyone paying attention to climate-change related news in recent months. Reviving coal was central to Drumpf's campaign and thus it's been observed frequently that it just is not going to happen.

2. The Rainforest Action Network posts a little primer on how agriculture impacts water and what they are doing about it. Agriculture accounts for 70% of all world water consumption, and contributes to water pollution when not done properly.

3. Three major world rivers have been given legal personhood. This is good news that may allow for waterways to be better preserved, if it continues.

4. It's been discovered that around 7,000 permafrost bubbles exist in Siberia and are set to burst. This is a major problem as it would release massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.

5. On World Water Day, the UN is here to remind us that we all waste water, and we should take steps to reduce this waste. There is an interesting discussion of the massive potential of wastewater to actually be reused in productive ways. Millions of hectares of land per year could be irrigated using wastewater that presently is not reused.

“In just one day, a city of 10 million flushes enough nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to fertilize about 500,000 hectares of agricultural land. In poor rural areas resource recovery could be a lifeline for small farmers.”

6. Speaking of water on World Water Day, and reuse, the pipes that bring water to your tap create pressure, and a company is using the pressure from those pipes to also generate electricity.

Unlike most hydropower, the system does not pose risks to wildlife or its habitat. And unlike solar and wind … [t]his technology works 24/7. If the water is flowing, we’re making electricity. It’s not dependent on day and night. It’s not dependent on the weather.

7. Bloomberg reports that Drumpf's words could come back to haunt him as he attempts to rollback environmental regulations:

Environmentalists are scrutinizing Trump’s tweets and the phrasing of presidential orders, looking for evidence that an action is driven by politics or that a review of regulations is being carried out with a specific outcome in mind. That could be used in a lawsuit to argue that the process is a sham and violates federal law governing rule making. 

"If there’s anything that suggests that it’s a politically motivated decision instead of a rationally based decision, that’s always something we put before the court," said Abigail Dillen, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice. "Explosive statements" in a White House order "can and will be used against them," she said. 

As recent rulings on Trump’s travel order illustrate, intent matters. A federal judge in Hawaii halted Trump’s latest restrictions after concluding past comments by the president and associates showed the policy was designed to disfavor Muslims. While courts shouldn’t examine the "secret motives" of government decision makers, the judge wrote, the clear facts in that case "require no such impermissible inquiry."