Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Texas, Tom and Jerry, and a Thirsty Planet

May 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
GRACE satellites, artist view

Every now and then, Byron Tapley steps outside with a pair of binoculars and trains them toward the late afternoon sky, hoping to catch a glint of sunlight reflecting from a pair of minivan-sized satellites he has nicknamed Tom and Jerry. Tapley has good reason to be proprietary: he leads the team of scientists who launched the twin satellites in 2002. Working in tandem, the satellites orbit the earth from pole to pole every 90 minutes, recording tiny variations in the earth’s gravitational field caused by the movement of vast amounts of water. The two spacecraft have provided compelling ... Read More

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San Francisco Bay Model Is Flush With Life

December 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
San Francisco Bay Model

Earlier this month, Janice Sinclaire reviewed the history of the San Francisco Bay Model, a mammoth physical representation of the estuary at California’s Golden Gate in which water sloshed around emulating the 24-hour tidal flow. While still open to tourists, it was dried out in 2009, but this week, we learned the model is up and running once again. The U.S. Corps of Engineers built the hydraulic model in the 1950s to test out a proposal to rebuild San Francisco Bay to better serve commerce and national security, a plan of almost Stalinist hubris that the finished model in part shot ... Read More

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The Fitness of Physical Models

December 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The Fitness of Physical Models

Ranger Thomas Downs leads a group of visitors to a point above San Pablo Bay in Sausalito, California. Gesturing toward the Pacific Ocean, he clearly enjoys himself as he exclaims, “There's the Golden Gate Bridge!” The kids in the group grin at a California gray whale breaching in the distance. The four main bays that make up the San Francisco Bay estuary can all be seen from here: San Pablo, Suisun, Central and South Bay. The entire San Francisco Bay, including its famous bridges, is visible, and the whale is spectacular. This view is possible from only one vantage point on Earth: ... Read More

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Charles Harvey: Water Detective

August 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Data-Logging Electronics

When a new U.S. president takes office, the first official announcements often undo policies set under the previous administration. In 2001, for example, President George W. Bush notoriously suspended a new standard for arsenic in drinking water that had been announced late in the Clinton administration. The new rule cut the allowed level of arsenic from 0.05 micrograms per liter of water to 0.01, bringing the U.S. in line with the European Union and the World Health Organization. Arsenic was known to cause cancer, but the earlier limit had been considered safe for decades. Under Clinton, ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Profile, Science, September-October 2010
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Before the Flood

October 26, 2009 • By • 4 Comments

Mike Kline ambles across the highway atop the Park Street Bridge, toward the guardrail overlooking the Roaring Branch River. It's early summer, long after Vermont's mountain snow has melted, so the sometimes-mighty waterway is now just a stream piddling between tree-lined banks and stony riprap. Though I can barely hear the river above the buzzing motorcycles, Kline tells me locals dubbed it the Roaring Branch for a reason: During storms, huge boulders barrel down the river, slamming against each other to produce a thunderous sound. The boulders and sediment move with so much force, they ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Magazine Feature Story, November-December 2009, Science & Environment
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Finding Water from Outer Space

October 19, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Angola_map_ForWeb

The Land Cruiser rattles and bumps down a stripe of rutted dirt carving through the brush in this remote corner of southern Angola. Half a mile to the west, the tranquil blue Atlantic glimmers in the African sun. To the east, miles of spiky desert grass fade away to a range of sere mountains. The last village lies miles behind us, the next miles ahead. In the front seat, Alain Gachet, a plump, boyish 58-year-old, his thick crest of silver hair crammed under a leather Indiana Jones hat, is focused intently on the laptop balanced on his knees. The computer is plugged into a tiny GPS unit set ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, Environment, Magazine Feature Story, November-December 2009, Science, Science & Environment
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The Man Who Bridges Troubled Waters

December 29, 2008 • By • 2 Comments

In 1991, as Aaron Wolf was finishing his doctoral dissertation, the Madrid Middle East peace process was just getting under way. The two sides decided to tackle five sets of regional issues, including the equitable division of water resources. As a budding expert on the subject — his research focused on the Jordan River and its dual role as "a flashpoint and a vehicle for dialogue" — Wolf agreed to advise the U.S. team designing the talks. Fifteen years later, one remnant of that failed attempt at Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking remains: the water negotiations. "They still go on," Wolf ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2009, Politics, Profile
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The Next Market Crunch: Water

July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s common practice to use business or banking metaphors when discussing the human use of water; in both cases, the central idea is to exert control, to manage. In its natural state, after all, water tends to be as unpredictable as booms and busts. It arrives as rain or snow, melts, runs into streams or seeps into the ground, floods, evaporates. Through enormous effort and expense, people have been able to corral that irregularity into something that can be relied on, mostly. You assume that your kitchen faucet will run whether or not it has rained recently, just as you expect you can tap ... Read More

More like this: August 2008, Business & Economics, Magazine Feature Story
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I’ll Have a Glass of What You Had Yesterday

April 25, 2008 • By • 1 Comment

Water is used over and over again. Karl Linden, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado, would like the public to understand how trace elements of the more than 3 billion prescriptions Americans fill every year can be found in the nation's drinking water. "The water in the Mississippi is used, reused, treated and served as drinking water many times before it reaches the delta at New Orleans," Linden said. Water from wastewater treatment facilities is poured back into rivers; effluent from agricultural operations feeds streams; manure used to fertilize fields may find ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science & Environment
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