August, Circle of Blue, Using the Global Terrorism Database, a team of researchers from Florida International University discovered that water-related terrorism has risen by 263 percent from 1970 to 2016. The researchers identified 675 water-related incidents in 71 countries, and found that water infrastructure was the most common target of water-related terrorism. New Security Beat

June 2018, By Heather Clancy for Green Biz.

It’s impossible and fiscally irresponsible to have discussions about future investments in grid infrastructure without considering their implications for regional resilience: the capability to withstand catastrophic weather or natural disasters without prolonged electricity outages.

That adage applies equally to both remote islands heavily reliant on offshore sources of fuel, such as Hawaii or Puerto Rico, and towns and cities on the mainland vulnerable to sea level rises or destructive winds, particularly coastal communities.

“Our existing system is highly vulnerable,” acknowledged Hawaii Public Utility Commissioner Jay Griffin during a VERGE Hawaii session last week about the benefits of “electrifying everything,” including transportation services and the heating and cooling loads of buildings.

The notion that solar plus storage technology plus intelligent local distribution services could short-circuit lengthy blackouts is appealing to many across the Hawaiian island archipelago, currently grappling with the system strain caused by unprecedented floods on Kauai and volcanic activity on the Big Island.

“The ability to fuel ourselves with electricity produced here — not just to have electricity but to fuel our transportation — that seems to me a much more resilient than the one we have today,” Griffin said. Currently, renewable energy accounts for about one-quarter of Hawaii’s electricity generation. The island imports millions of gallons of oil annually, to fuel its power plants, despite its mandate to transition to 100 percent renewables by 2045.

The good news is that the trend toward commercial investments in distributed generating resources — including wind, solar, biomass and energy storage systems — aligns closely with that goal. The trick is to ensure that all the stakeholders across a region — including local utilities, government agencies, businesses and private citizens — are considered in the strategic plan, according to many experts speaking last week at VERGE Hawaii.

Today, many relevant conversations about resilience happen in a vacuum, they noted. That is, they are confined to a single government agency or business. “We are planning specifically,” said Kyle Datta, general partner of investment firm Ulupono Initiative.

Here’s why sharing information matters

Cross-agency and cross-sector conversations are important for identifying scenarios that might affect response times or the locations chosen for investments in microgrids and generating resources.

For example, in Honolulu, there are about 20 water pumps used to manage the freshwater supply, but there currently is backup power in place for only seven. If some portion of the grid can’t be restored promptly, there could be a full-blown health crisis, Datta noted. Similarly, many electric utilities don’t spend enough time understanding the impact on telecommunications, he said. “What is the value of having an extra day of recovery?”

for the rest of this excellent report click here…

April 2018: University of Hawaii.

Groundwater that seeps into the coastal zone beneath the ocean’s surface–termed submarine groundwater discharge (SGD)–is an important source of fresh water and nutrients to nearshore coral reefs throughout the globe. Although submarine groundwater is natural, it can act as a conduit for highly polluted water to shorelines. A recently published study, led by researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), sheds light on the ways SGD affects coral reef growth.

“SGD is common on nearshore coral reefs, especially in Hawai’i, so we set out to test how SGD affects coral reef growth in Maunalua Bay, O’ahu.” said Megan Donahue, associate researcher at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in SOEST and senior author of the study.

Two processes contribute to the overall growth of coral reefs: coral growth and bioerosion, the natural breakdown of coral reefs by reef organisms. To determine how SGD affects these processes, the research team outplanted small pieces of lobe coral on the reef flat in areas with a range of SGD and measured the changes in size over a six-month period. They also put out blocks of dead coral skeleton across the same SGD gradients for one year to measure bioerosion rates. The blocks were scanned before and after the deployment with a micro-CT scanner, similar to a hospital CT scanner, to determine the amount of coral skeleton removed by bioeroding organisms in three dimensions.

In areas with high levels of SGD, it was a double whammy for coral reefs. Corals that were right next to SGD seeps performed poorly, likely due to the stress of too much fresh water.

See the rest of this report here

April 2018: LAHAINA, MAUI (HawaiiNewsNow) –

Maui County could is gearing up for a legal battle over wastewater.

County officials say they will appeal its Lahaina wastewater case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That’s after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Friday rejected the County’s petition to reconsider it’s February ruling that said the county violated the Clean Water Act.

Since the early 80s, Maui injected untreated sewage into wells that leaked into the ocean, causing environmental damage.

See the rest of the story here

March 2018: University of Hawaii, Tsu Chuan Lee, Clark Liu.

Summary: The reduction of the biodiversity of a mesotrophic lake can be used in water quality management as a warning sign of an imminent algal bloom.

Algal bloom in a freshwater lake is a rapid increase of aquatic plants, which disrupts the ecological balance and its potential for beneficial uses. This problem has been managed by relating the trophic levels of a lake with nutrient loading. This traditional management approach is less than satisfactory as it neglects considering the intricate relationship between nutrient loading and the algal community. As a result, it often fails to detect an imminent algal bloom and fails to formulate and implement timely remedial measures. The advancement of modern molecular biosciences has provided an opportunity to improve this traditional approach. In this study, field and laboratory experiments on lake bioproductivity and biodiversity were conducted in Lake Wilson on central Oahu, Hawaii. Bioproductivity or algal productivity was evaluated in terms of the rate of chlorophyll growth in the lake water, and the biodiversity or genetic biodiversity was evaluated by using the method of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of the algae species and the Shannon index. Research results indicated that eukaryote communities in Lake Wilson were more diverse under the mesotrophic state of algal productivity than those under the oligotrophic and eutrophic states. Therefore, the reduction of the biodiversity of a mesotrophic lake can be used in water quality management as a warning sign of an imminent algal bloom