About this time each year we are urged to brazenly ring out the old and bring in the new. One venerable ringing-out tradition is the publication of the "Top News Stories of the Year." In the spirit of the times, we present a few recent news stories that have to do with water. They don't qualify as top news stories of the year, but they are timely, for they provide food for thought as we reflect on the future and what may become of us.

Mutant Cow Dung Threat

Some residents of Craig County, Virginia are worried that genetically altered cows will produce genetically altered manure that will pollute their groundwater. Pharming Healthcare Inc wants to establish a herd of 200 cows in the area capable of producing human proteins in milk. Those opposed to the farm say proteins in cows milk could also end up in the cows' urine and manure, potentially endangering area groundwater. Pharming President Otto Postma says the cows are genetically designed to excrete the proteins only in milk.

Spreading Desertification

Water cops face tough customers in Las Vegas, at least according to a Washington Post article. The Post carried a story of a water district investigator confronting a resident about his water-wasting sprinkler. The man angrily retorted., "Man, with all these new rules, you people are trying to turn this place into a desert!"

Survival of the Least Fit

A single genetically modified fish could wipe out local populations of the original species if released into the wild, biologists warn in the December 4 issue of New Scientist. William Muir and Richard Howard of Purdue University included hGH, the human growth hormone gene that increases growth rate and final size, in embryos of Japanese medaka, a common aquarium fish. They found that modified individuals matured faster than normal fish and produced more eggs, rapidly spreading the new gene throughout the population. But only two thirds of modified medaka survived to reproductive age, which led the population to dwindle. The researchers plugged their results into a computer model to find out what would happen if 60 transgenic individuals joined a wild population of 60,000 fish. The population became extinct within just 40 generations. Even a single transgenic animal could have the same effect, they found, although extinction would take longer. "You have the very strange situation where the least fit individual in the population is getting all the matings — this is the reverse of Darwin's model," says Muir.

"Unspoiled" Nature Beckons

In his book Glen Canyon Dammed, author Jared Farmer describes the time when Lake Powell was filling and boaters were sufficiently few in number to feel they had the lake to themselves. He records impressions of these early boaters as they confronted the grandeur of altered nature. "Most observers of the new reservoir mentioned both the geographic isolation and the personal solitude — days spent without seeing another soul. Here you could really escape the world. Several went so far as to describe the man-made waterway as ‘unspoiled,' ‘untrammeled,' or ‘unexploited.'" (See page 8 for review of Farmer's book.)

Modern Engineering Does/Undoes the Job

The decommissioning of Edwards Dam in Maine has been named one of the best developments of 1999 by Popular Science, the world's largest science and technology magazine. The dam's removal was completed in October after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined that the environmental benefits of dam removal outweighed the economic benefits of relicensing the dam. "What's new and exciting about removing Edwards Dam is the use of modern engineering tools to unleash the natural power of rivers." said Laura Rose Day of the Kennebec Coalition and the Natural Resources Council of Maine. "This award demonstrates that removing a dam at the end of the 20th Century can be as exciting and important for society as building a dam was 100 years ago."

Air Pollution Protects the Earth

Italian researchers have found that air pollution may have one unexpected benefit — offsetting global warming. Organic compounds from some air pollutants can cause more water droplets to form in clouds. The clouds then become brighter and reflect more sunlight which in turn keeps the earth cooler. One percent more sunlight than normal would be reflected, enough to lower local and regional temperatures. The results of the study were published in the journal "Nature."

Arizona Water Resource, November-December 1999, Volume 8, No. 3