A LINEAR ANALYSIS OF AN URBAN WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM1

The use of linear programming as a planning tool for determining the optimal long-range development of an urban water supply system was explored. A stochastic trace of water demand was synthesized and used as an input to the model. This permitted evaluating the feasibility of imposing demand restrictions as an effective cost reduction mechanism. The City of Lincoln, Nebraska, was used as the urban model. The fundamental problem was to allocate limited water supplies from several sources to an urban load center to minimize costs and comply with system constraints. The study period covered twenty years, and findings indicate the planning direction for stage development during this period. Sensitivity analyses were performed on cost coefficients and demands. Thirteen sources were included in the initial computations. Conclusions were that linear programming and generated demand traces are useful tools for both short- and long-term urban water supply planning. Lowering peak demands results in long-range development of fewer sources of supply and more economic and efficient use of the supplies developed.     

The potential supply of energy minerals in Australia

Australia is a sparsely populated country that is well endowed with energy resources, and the size of coal, natural gas, and uranium reserves relative to domestic demand has given Australia the opportunity to become a major exporter of these fuels. This paper assesses Australian supply potential of these three fuels, together with crude oil, through to the early years of the next century. With the exception of crude oil, supply potential appears adequate to meet projected domestic and export demand. However, crude oil supplies are unlikely to meet domestic requirements, and to the shortfall may be considerable.     

Norway's offshore petroleum industry

During the past decade, Norway has become an important oil and gas producer. Annual production is six times national consumption. Development policies of the national government have been cautious, and future policies will probably follow a similar pattern. The government recently opened offshore areas poleward of 62°N latitude, a decision likely to have a significant impact on Norway's future as an oil producer. Norway maintains a tight reign on foreign oil company participation, domestic downstream processing of crude, oil company taxation and oil revenue investment within the national economy. Norway's large inflow of oil-related capital investments and production revenues have contributed to significant inflation and to changes in local labour supplies. Norway has always used its petroleum industry to further the country's overall development goals, a policy that will continue in the years ahead.     

Coal Receiving Terminals in Relation to Electricity Generation in Developing Countries

With the rapid increase in the price of oil in the 1970s, many developing countries are beginning to look to steam coal as an energy source. Much of this coal will have to be transported from coal-producing countries to coal-consuming countries by sea and coal-receiving terminals will have to be built especially in those countries which have not been coal importers in the past. The international market in steam coal is examined and predictions are made as to the amount of coal that developing countries are likely to import from electric power generation. The operation of a coal-receiving terminal is discussed and estimates are provided as to the size and cost of coal terminals required to meet the coal import needs of developing countries.     

Are Life Patents Ethical? Conflict between Catholic Social Teaching and Agricultural Biotechnology's Patent Regime

Patents for genetic material in theindustrialized North have expandedsignificantly over the past twenty years,playing a crucial role in the currentconfiguration of the agricultural biotechnologyindustries, and raising significant ethicalissues. Patents have been claimed for genes,gene sequences, engineered crop species, andthe technical processes to engineer them. Mostcritics have addressed the human and ecosystemhealth implications of genetically engineeredcrops, but these broad patents raise economicissues as well. The Catholic social teachingtradition offers guidelines for critiquing theeconomic implications of this new patentregime. The Catholic principle of the universaldestination of goods implies that genes, genesequences, and engineered crop varieties areineligible for patent protection, although theprocesses to engineer these should be eligible.Religious leaders are likely to make a moresubstantive contribution to debates aboutagricultural biotechnology by addressing theselife patents than by speculating that geneticengineering is ``playing God.'     

International coal prices

The place coal will occupy among the world's energy supplies depends on many factors, including its price trends. This paper reviews recent price trends and supports the thesis that future coal prices are independent of oil prices, and that they will fluctuate between two limits which are based on production and transport costs in the USA and Australia.     

固定化藻类去除氮、磷的研究进展

综述了近20年来固定化藻类去除氮、磷的主要研究,归纳分析了相关的研究数据和结果,分别从固定化技术、藻类的生理特征、去除机理、影响因素、生物反应器等方面做了具体介绍.     

Renewable energy: Biomass power and biofuels as alternative sustainable energy sources

This article describes biomass fuels as renewable and sustainable energy resources in Minnesota as well as across the United States. This country has long benefited from surplus supplies of diverse energy resources, while our dependency on foreign petroleum supplies and domestic coal reserves has only recently prompted Congress to recognize the importance of renewable and alternative fuels such as biomass energy. Our further utilization of biomass power and biofuels can be an important step in altering our dependency on both coal and petroleum while simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide emissions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The material resources for the iron and steel industries

The future supplies of iron ore, coking coal and ferrous scrap are discussed. There is no likelihood of the resources of iron ore being exhausted until well into the twenty-first century. Coking coal, on the other hand, is in shorter supply but it is being eked out by blending with non-coking coal and by making blast furnaces more efficient. Briquettes made completely from non-coking coal will play a part in iron making in the future. To ensure greater flexibility in steel making, hydrocarbons are being considered as possible substitutes for coal. Scrap has always played an important part in steel making and the amount recycled is increasing every year. But more effort is needed, for example, to ensure that the steel in car scrap is fully utilised and that refuse is efficiently recycled. Steel making increasingly demands the scrap to have few impurities and to be in uniform sized pieces. A cryogenic method of preparing such scrap is described. A futuristic way of extracting iron, non-ferrous metals and other saleeable by-products from refuse, by using redundant blast furnaces, is also discussed.     

US energy policy in historical perspective

Energy ‘policy’ is not a recent invention. What is new is that instead of a variety of policies rooted for the most part in notions other than adequacy of reasonably priced and readily available energy supplies, the past fifteen years or so have witnessed the emergence of a set of policies that are more pointedly directed at energy targets as such. These include, above all, such cross cutting issues as efficiency in use, security against supply disruptions, incentives to oil and gas producers, opportunities for the development of alternative energy sources and concern for the equitable sharing of costs associated with any of these policies. If there is one overriding issue that permeates the policy fabric it is the delineation of the governmental role versus market forces. Debate and controversy on that topic is bound to continue.     

土-气界面汞交换特征研究进展

本文综述了20多年来汞在土壤-大气界面间交换的研究现状,包括汞在大气和土壤中的存在形态、大气汞的干湿沉降、土壤汞释放及影响因素的研究,分析其存在的问题,并提出了未来的研究重点。     

Is risk associated with drinking water in Australia of significant concern to justify mandatory regulation?

Presently in Australia there are no mandatory drinking water standards. Here we argue that the risk associated with drinking water in Australia is of a dimension discernible to warrant mandatory regulations. The catchments that supply the major metropolitan areas of Sydney and Adelaide, and the groundwater for the city of Perth have been seriously compromised by the encroachment of development and activities. Melbourne in the past has generally relied on a closed catchment reservoir system; however, population growth in the near future will sequester the full online operation of additional reservoirs, which have multiple land use catchments. In addition to the current landscape circumstances, the management of a water system in itself proposes significant issues of risk. Two critical assumptions that are unique to a mass medium substance like water and dramatically alter the appraisal of risk are: (1) very large numbers of people are potentially exposed, and (2) small changes in contaminant levels may have adverse population outcomes. It is also known that water reticulation systems frequently suffer from contamination problems caused solely by the distribution system, and optimal management of these facilities would best be served by statutory protected transparency and dedicated water quality programs. In 1979, an Australian parliamentary committee stated that an “uncontaminated water supply is” a “basic requirement for the obtainment of good health”; however, recent surveys of Australian water systems show many are not meeting basic water quality criteria, and many communities are not receiving regular monitoring or testing as required by government authorized Australian drinking water guidelines. Exacerbating this situation is the lack of reporting and statutory endorsed standardized procedures to ensure information is properly and promptly recorded and that data are centralized for maximum benefit. The evaluation of risk associated with drinking water in Australia is often hampered by inadequate or incomplete data. Lastly, regional and rural water supplies face a vast array of contemporary problems and experiences that include widespread usage of pesticides and agricultural chemicals. In recent years, the Darling River has experienced the worst algal bloom known to man, and this river system not only supplies a number of regional and rural towns with water, but eventually connects with the River Murray, which supplies the State of South Australia with approximately 50% of its water requirements.     

New mercantilism: A perspective on how politics is shaping world metal supply

The major countries consuming metals tended historically to be also the major countries producing them. It was in their interest to promote mine development to provide low cost raw materials. Over the past fifty years, the share of global production accounted for by consuming countries has declined and producers and consumers of metals have been slowly moving into separate camps having distinct and differing interests. As a consequence of this, governments of producing countries have become more focused on how to maximise the benefit of metal extraction to their economies rather than on how to supply cheap raw materials; a tendency which has found expression in resource nationalism. Governments of consuming countries have in response become increasingly concerned about the implications of this tendency to their economic development and some countries, most notably China, have adopted robust policies to secure their supplies. Through their actions to influence capital flows within the mining industry and to force metals trade into channels which better serve their national interests (a process characterised here as ‘new mercantilism’), metal producing and metal consuming countries are reshaping global supply.     

DECLINING INTENSITY OF ACID MINE DRAINAGE IN THE NORTHERN APPALACHIAN BITUMINOUS COAL FIELDS: MAJOR ALLEGHENY RIVER TRIBUTARIES1

ABSTRACT: For more than 30 years, a program of continuous monitoring of pH, acidity, alkalinity, and other parameters has been maintained on a network of large streams degraded by acid mine drainage in the northern Appalachian high sulfur coal region. Continuous records since 1952 are available at a number of stations, and at several stations, acidity records date back to 1930. Comparable analysis techniques were maintained over the period of record, assuring the long term continuity of the database. This monitoring program has captured integrated long term trends within large and complex watersheds with numerous and varied types of mine discharges. The focus of this paper is a historical trend analysis of lightly to severely acid degraded major tributaries of the Allegheny River. Over the past three decades, all of the Allegheny River drainage basin stations have demonstrated steady and substantial declines in acidity and associated increases in pH and alkalinity. The average recorded decline in total acidity at four stations monitored since the 1950s was 94 percent. Since the 1970s, acidity declined by an average of 63 percent at 10 stations. Oxidative exhaustion of pyritic minerals exposed by mining is proposed as a major factor influencing these trends.     

Global competition for strategic mineral supplies

The USA's dependence on imported sources of strategic minerals has grown substantially since the second world war, while its ability to protect the sealanes critical to foreign supplies has deteriorated. Domestic production has been severely hampered by a lack of access to mining on public lands, and by excessive environmental regulations. No major purchases have been made for the strategic stockpile in 20 years. Concern has been growing in Western Europe and in Japan about secure supplies of strategic minerals. Being even more dependent on foreign sources of supply than the USA, some of these countries have recently initiated their own strategic stockpilling programmes. The USSR, long an important exporter of metals, appears to have changed its mineral trade policy, and has sharply reduced exports while entering the market as an importer of a number of key metals. These developments foreshadow growing competition for world supplies of strategic minerals.     

The Mortgaged Future: Energy Strategy and Public Policy

In this article, the first of a series of viewpoint pieces in Natural Resources Forum , the president of a major transnational energy corporation analyses the pivotal role of the United States in determining world energy trends and argues that development of nuclear energy and coal will be necessary to meet demand as world oil supplies dwindle in the 1990's. In the United States, the lack of a clear-cut government policy coupled with opposition to nuclear energy hampers the development of alternate energy sources for the future. This situation is mirrored in other parts of the world. Unless assessments of the long lead times for solar and nuclear fusion as sources of energy are accepted soon as realistic and unless efforts to develop nuclear and coal are accelerated, the United States may face grave energy shortfalls in the medium term.     

A Long View of Southern California Water Supply: Perfect Droughts Revisited

The impact of drought on water resources in arid and semiarid regions can be buffered by water supplies from different source regions. Simultaneous drought in all major source regions — or perfect drought — poses the most serious challenge to water management. We examine perfect droughts relevant to Southern California (SoCal) water resources with instrumental records and tree‐ring reconstructions for the Sacramento and Colorado Rivers, and SoCal. Perfect droughts have occurred five times since 1906, lasting two to three years, except for the most recent event, 2012–2015. This number and duration of perfect droughts is not unusual in the context of the past six centuries. The modern period stands out for the relatively even distribution of perfect droughts and lacks the clusters of perfect drought documented in prior centuries. In comparison, perfect droughts of the 12th Century were both longer (up to nine years) and more widespread. Perfect droughts of the 20th and 21st Centuries have occurred under different oceanic/atmospheric patterns, zonal and meridional flow, and ENSO or non‐ENSO conditions. Multidecadal coherence across the three regions exists, but it has varied over the past six centuries, resulting in irregular intervals of perfect drought. Although the causes of perfect droughts are not clear, given the long‐term natural variability along with projected changes in climate, it is reasonable to expect more frequent and longer perfect droughts in the future.     

APPROACHES TO WATER RESOURCE POLICY AND PLANNING IN TEXAS1

ABSTRACT: Texas is one of the states in which limitations in water supplies could severely constrain economic growth in certain areas. The traditional planning approach for addressing this problem has involved devising schemes for large water development projects, which for many years included the importation of water from other states. Now the attitude towards water resource management is changing, and it is generally agreed that better management of existing supplies is the preferred approach. In this paper we review some of the changes that have recently occurred in Texas, including attempts to streamline the water institutions in such a way that they might be more responsive to the need for more comprehensive management of water resources statewide, with greater emphasis on social and environmental concerns.     

中国能源生态足迹的时空动态特征及效应分析

运用生态足迹方法计算出1990—2007年中国能源消费的生态足迹。在此基础上,分析了能源足迹强度(EFI)、能源足迹生态压力(EPIEF)的时空动态变化特征。结果表明,近20年来我国能源足迹波动上升,能源消费结构有所改善,但煤炭足迹仍占主导,近几年又有回升趋势;能源足迹强度呈幂指数衰减,能源利用效率不断提高;EPIEF呈上升趋势,说明能源利用对自然生态系统的压力逐渐增大。在空间分布上,各省区能源足迹差异显著,能源足迹强度由西向东逐渐降低,而EPIEF则由西向东呈增大趋势。依据EPIEF指数将中国30个省区划分为能源足迹生态盈余区(EPIEF1)、生态轻度亏损区(1EPIEF5)和生态严重亏损区(EPIEF5)3种类型。