Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. — In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.

Ed Goedhart, a farmer and Nevada legislator, said farmers would grow less of alfafa if they decide to sell their water rights.

But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water.

Now Solar Millennium finds itself in the midst of a new-age version of a Western water war. The public is divided, pitting some people who hope to make money selling water rights to the company against others concerned about the project’s impact on the community and the environment.

“I’m worried about my well and the wells of my neighbors,” George Tucker, a retired chemical engineer, said on a blazing afternoon.

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.

Read the Full Article at the NY TIMES

This is a good reason to not set up farms and towns in the middle of the desert.

Abortion Takes a Hit in the US

Support for abortion rights has fallen sharply in the past year, with Americans now split roughly 50-50 between those who back legal access to abortion and those who oppose it, according to a new survey.

The findings mark a dramatic shift in public opinion, supporters of abortion rights have outnumbered opponents for many years, with one brief exception, studies have shown.

But only 47 percent of Americans now feel abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a drop from 54 percent a year ago, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 45 percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases. That’s up from 41 percent a year ago.

Read the rest of the Article at CNN

President Obama to dance with IOC

COPENHAGEN — Barely a year after his election, he was campaigning not for himself but for his adopted hometown. Yet as President Obama pitched Chicago’s bid to host the Summer Games of 2016 on Friday, he put his own credibility on the line as well.

Arriving here after an all-night flight, Mr. Obama swept into a convention hall in the Danish capital, took the lectern and appealed to the International Olympic Committee to choose “that most American of American cities,” the same place that put him on the path to becoming the world’s preeminent leader.

Read More at the NY Times

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