WATER RIGHTS,EMINENT DOMAIN,AND THE PUBLIC TRUST1

ABSTRACT: Faced with the necessity of meeting growing municipal water requirements in areas where available supplies are completely allocated, numerous cities throughout the West are turning to their eminent domain powers to affect a reallocation of water from less preferred uses to municipal uses, thus bringing about a sharp conflict with agricultural interests. As a basis for discussing these eminent domain powers, this paper begins with a brief review of the development of property rights. The existence of both private and public (social) rights in the “bundle of rights” is noted. In recent years the Public Trust Doctrine has been used to limit private rights in property, and to protect and strengthen social rights. A case study which focuses on a conflict between individual and social interests in water rights is discussed. This case involves the City of Thorton, Colorado which initiated municipal condemnation proceedings to acquire the water rights and structures of two nearby irrigation companies. The case represents an attempt to incorporate the spirit of the Public Trust Doctrine into legislation which sets forth procedures for resolution of similar water rights conflicts that will inevitably become more numerous throughout the West in the future.     

FEASIBILITY OF INTERBASIN WATER TRANSFER1

ABSTRACT: Interbasin water transfer is one of the most controversial water-resources-planning topics. Local communities, particularly those from which the water is to be taken (donor regions), generate enough opposition to doom many projects to failure. The opposition often arises because planners have traditionally considered excess water a free commodity rather than a marketable resource. To make transfer schemes mutually acceptable to donor and recipient regions, visible benefits must be offered. Agreement must be made on an acceptable purchase price and/or on other benefits such as a substantial amount of low flow augmentation or possibly some degree of flood control on the donor source stream. The hydrologic and economic feasibility of water transfer from the East Susquehanna River basin to the Delaware Reservoir System for supplemental supply to the New York City area was investigated. Nine alternative schemes for diversions up to 400 cfs and compensations in the form of low flow augmentation and/or flood control were considered resulting in unit costs to the recipient region between $90 and $380/mg. If only the minimum state-mandated flow is released to the Susquehanna River, the savings to the water recipients would be sufficient to pay a purchase price of about $21/mg, which would be equivalent to a total amount of $420,000/year for an average export of 100 cfs.     

PARTIAL AREA HYDROLOGY AND ITS APPLICATION TO WATER RESOURCES1

ABSTRACT: According to a concept known as partial area hydrology, watershed areas are separated into hydrologically active and passive subareas. The literature relating to the development of the partial area concept is reviewed briefly and the relationship of partial area hydrology to geology, soils, and micrometeorology is illustrated. The potential application of partial area hydrology is discussed with respect to present hydrologic techniques, future hydrologic models, urban hydrology, water quality, and water management. Suggestions for identifying and delineating the contributing areas are discussed.     

TOPSIS法在大气环境质量评价中的应用

应用多目标决策中的TOPSIS法(即逼近于理想解的排序方法)对湖南长沙等十城市的大气环境质量进行评价,并与欧几里德贴近度法和上海指数法相比较,认为该评价方法对比较多个城市(或多个监测点,下同)的大气环境质量的优劣,比欧几里德贴近度法和上海指数法均优越.     

陕西关中渭北地区村镇建筑防火现状调查与分析

根据相关统计，农村地区建筑面临与城市地区同样的火灾风险。为了农村地区人民生命财产安全，预防火灾，从村镇规划及布局、消防设施及人员消防意识、户舍基本情况调查入手，对陕西关中渭北地区村镇建筑防火现状进行调查与分析。根据调查结果，发现该地区村镇建筑防火条件薄弱，与相关规范差距很大，人员消防意识淡薄，缺乏相关立法规范村镇消防责任制，相关防火规范不完善，应该引起各方对农村防火的高度重视。     

Biopotentiality as an index of environmental compensation for composting plants

The Biopotentiality Index is a landscape ecology indicator, which can be used to estimate the latent energy of a given land and to assess the environmental impacts due to the loss of naturalness on a landscape scale. This indicator has been applied to estimate the effectiveness of the measures put in place to provide an environmental compensation for the revamping of a composting plant. These compensation measures are represented by a green belt with a minimum width of 25 m all around the plant, representing both a windbreak and a buffer zone, and by two wide wooded zones acting as core natural areas.This case-study shows that the compensation index could be used as a key tool in order to negotiate the acceptance of waste treatment plant with the population.     

Fate of Mutagenicity Produced During Anaerobic Biodegradation of the Herbicide Chlornitrofen (CNP)

The mutagenicity of chlornitrofen (CNP)-containing solutions has been reported to increase during anaerobic biodegradation. In the present study, the fate of this increased mutagenicity under subsequent aerobic and anaerobic incubation conditions was investigated using two Salmonella tester strains, YG1024 (a frameshift-detecting strain) and YG1029 (a base-pair-substitution-detecting strain). Mutagenicity for both YG1024 and YG1029 strains increased during nine-day anaerobic biodegradation. During subsequent anaerobic incubation, the increased mutagenicity decreased gradually for YG1029 but did not change significantly for YG1024. By contrast, the increased mutagenicity decreased rapidly after the conversion to aerobic incubation for both YG1024 and YG1029 strains. The rapid decrease in mutagenicity during aerobic incubation was due to decreases, not only in an identified mutagenic metabolite (CNP-amino) but also in unidentified mutagenic metabolites.     

隧道排污量估算与治污效果预测

通过隧道排污量和排污效果的简单分析，指出了其排污治理过程中应注意的有关事项，如进 行人口控制，改善居民的生活方式，提高环境保护意识和治理技术等，所述分析方法可供其它类似 工程参考。     

Policy coherence in climate governance in Caribbean Small Island Developing States

Climate governance in Small Island developing States (SIDS) is a pressing priority to preserve livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystems for the next generations. Understanding the dynamics of climate change policy integration is becoming more crucial as we try to measure the success of environmental governance efforts and chart new goals for sustainable development. At the international level, climate change policy has evolved from single issue to integrated approaches towards achieving sustainable development. New actors, new mechanisms and institutions of governance with greater fragmentation in governance across sectors and levels (Biermann and Pattberg, 2008) make integration of policy in the area of climate change governance even more of a challenge today. What is the Caribbean reality regarding policy coherence in climate change governance? Are the same climate change policy coherence frameworks useful or indeed applicable for environmental governance in developing states more generally and for SIDS in particular? What are the best triggers to achieve successful climate change policy integration in environmental governance—especially as the complex interconnectivity of new actors, institutions and mechanisms make the process of integration even more challenging? What facilitates and what hampers climate policy integration in the regional Caribbean context? This article reviews the debates around policy coherence for climate change governance, creates a framework to test or measure policy coherence and examines how relevant this has been to regional climate change governance processes in Commonwealth Caribbean States. The study found that though at the regional level, there is substantial recognition of the importance of and mechanics involved in climate policy coherence, this has not translated to policy coherence at the regional and national levels. There is a large degree of fragmentation in the application of climate policy in each Caribbean Island with no mechanism to breach the gap. Silos in public environmental governance architectures, unwillingness to share data, insufficient political will; unsustainable project-based funding and lack of accountability among actors are the main challenges to climate policy coherence. The findings fill a gap in the literature on the elements of climate policy coherence from a SIDS perspective.     

Examining the determinants of public environmental concern: Evidence from national public surveys

Early research showed that citizens’ environmental concern in the United States was linked to three individual-level factors: socio-demographic variables, political orientations, and personal beliefs or worldviews about human-nature relations. Given many changes in the American society over the last several decades, one important, yet unanswered question is whether these factors still drive public environmental concern in the United States today, and if so, to what extent. This study, drawing from extant theoretical and empirical studies, aims to reinvestigate the determinants of citizens’ environmental concern by employing three national public surveys conducted in 2004, 2007, and 2013. Our data analyses confirm and expand the findings of previous research on the significance and importance of political ideology, fundamental beliefs about human-nature relations, and certain socioeconomic factors such as gender and race in explaining citizens’ environmental concern. More specifically, political liberals, people with higher New Ecological Paradigm values, females, and Non-Whites tend to be more concerned about environmental problems than their counterparts are. Our data analyses also reveal some interesting findings when compared to many previous studies: first, our data indicate a positive relationship between age and environmental concern, suggesting that older people in the United States are more concerned about the environment than younger adults; second, unlike most past research showing a positive Education-Environmental Concern relationship, our study suggests that education level seems to have little effect in explaining citizens’ environmental concern measured in this study. Key implications for environmental policymaking and recommendations for future research are discussed in the conclusion.