Groundwater protection on Long Island,New York: a study in management capacity

Through their powers to regulate land use and their responsibilities for public water supply, local governments are critical players in groundwater protection. Unfortunately, the demands of groundwater protection are high, and many local governments do not have the ability or capacity to develop and implement appropriate management strategies. This paper analyzes groundwater protection experiences on Long Island, New York, a place where groundwater dependence is high, and threats to groundwater are serious. Long Island's experiences highlight the need to approach capacity building for groundwater protection broadly, concentrating on factors such as political commitment and citizen support; enhancement of local technical competency through linkages and support from state and federal governments; and strengthening of institutional arrangements at all levels.     

Environmental impact assessment in flanders,belgium: An evaluation of the administrative procedure

Two years of experience with EIA in Flanders (northern Belgium) was evaluated in order to gain perspective on the effectiveness of the administrative procedure. The four essential characteristics of the EIA procedure that were evaluated are: completeness, open and public character, objectivity, and verifiability. Representatives of all parties involved in the EIA procedure were interviewed. The result of the evaluation is a list of major problems with EIA. Recommendations for a more efficient procedure are suggested at a time when a proposal for a new, comprehensive, and permanent EIA decree is being discussed. The evaluation of the administrative procedure for EIA in Flanders shows that several vital characteristics of the EIA procedure are lacking. This reduces the obligatory and open nature of the process, resulting in insufficient guarantees that the environment receives the altention it deserves during the decision-making process.     

Not just a matter of knowledge. The Katrina debacle

The paper deals with hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf coast of the US at the end of August 2005, with disastrous consequences. The paper sketches the chronicle of the main events and deals with preparation and response in New Orleans, exploring the connection between knowledge and disaster management policies, in particular communication policy. The main failures in applying and sharing available information for preventing and limiting damage are attributed to lack of coordination between elected officials, authorities and agencies at all levels. The critical role of the media in shaping the perception of the event and the immediate response to it is also highlighted.     

Integrity and Cynicism: Possibilities and Constraints of Moral Communication

Paying thorough attention to cynical action and integrity could result in a less naive approach to ethics and moral communication. This article discusses the issues of integrity and cynicism on a theoretical and on a more practical level. The first part confronts Habermas’s approach of communicative action with Sloterdijk’s concept of cynical reason. In the second part, the focus will be on the constraints and possibilities of moral communication within a business context. Discussing the corporate integrity approach of Kaptein and Wempe will provide this focus. Their approach can be considered as a valuable contribution to the question of how to deal with (dilemmas of) conflicting interests, open discussion, fairness, and strategic decision-making in the context of stakeholder dialog. However, it is concluded that Kaptein and Wempe seem to overstretch the concept of corporate integrity by their inclination to make it an all-purpose remedy for corporate dilemmas.     

Estimating the Relative Efficiency of Brazilian Publicly and Privately Owned Water Utilities: A Stochastic Cost Frontier Approach1

Abstract: This paper assesses cost efficiencies of Brazilian public and private companies of water supply. To measure the efficiency, we used a stochastic frontier model derived from the translog family – a specification similar to a Cobb‐Douglas including a quadratic term in log output. The model parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood using Brazilian data for the year 2002. Statistical inference leads to the conclusion that there is no evidence that private firms and public firms are significantly different in terms of efficiency measurements.     

Modelling the multiple nutrient limitation of algal growth

The way in which simultaneously limiting nutrients are supposed to act upon the algal growth rate is an important aspect of aquatic ecosystem modelling and research. Three different relations between the multiple nutrient limitation and two single nutrient limitations are developed from different biochemical models: a “multiplicative” relation, used in most dynamic ecosystem models, a new “sequential” relation and a “threshold” relation, sensu Liebig. The characteristics and practical consequences of these relations are investigated. By means of three experiments, derived from the literature, it is shown that the multiplicative relation yields the statistically significant worst growth rate predictions.     

Performance level of an autonomous system of continuous monitoring of radioactivity in seawater

Following the recognition of their usefulness by the authorities and the scientific community, automatic water monitoring networks were developed again to be able to measure seawater. For that purpose, they had to be fully autonomous, with low power consumption (solar panel power supply), wireless communicating (satellite, GSM, radio) and very sensitive (a few Bq/m3).