Relieving the pressure on water authorities to deliver the quality and quantity of water needed for California city-dwellers, winter snows and the state of California's snowpack has allowed the CA Department of Water Resources to increase the 2010 allocation of State Water Project deliveries to 30%.

As recently as February 26, the allocation was a puny 5% reflecting a three-year drought. April snows in the Sierras are responsible for total winter snowfall far above normal. This year, the state received 132% of its normal snowfall; last year, it was only 80% of normal. As late as early April, the allocation had been set at 20%. The state reservoir system had been dangerously low, as this graphic shows (click for a larger version ). Even with the heavy snow, Lake Oroville, the key reservoir, remains at 55% of capacity.

A final snow survey will be done this week and final allocations made.

This won't lead to any short-term changes in the politics of California's water and the struggles of citizens with hard water threats to their home plumbing and appliances, but it's welcome news nonetheless.

With the record-setting snowfall in the DC area this winter, hard on the heels of the embarrassment of ClimateGate, global warming proponents have been rather defensive of late. Among the most outspoken evangelicals has been Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a lawyer associated with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A Washington Examiner story recently quoted liberally from Kennedy's global warming warnings during the 2008 presidential campaign. Kennedy wrote an op ed in the LA Times concerning his long acquaintance with weather in the nation's capital:

Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don't own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington's C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.

With more than four feet of non-fantasized snow on the ground, igloos in many yards, skaters on the Georgetown canal and myriad sleds and toboggans miraculously appearing, you'd think Kennedy would be embarrassed. Don't bet on it. This is the say guy who argued that a proposed saltworks at San Ignacio lagoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja would remove so much salt from the ocean that newborn whale calves would find insufficient buoyancy to float and would perish. Underlining the importance of educating the public about salt production, his specious appeal raised more than $100 million, some of which was used to bludgeon proposers of the new saltworks. Truthful, no. But without apology or shame.

As a member of the National Transportation Operations Coalition , yesterday I attended an FHWA-hosted meeting of NTOC members to discuss how improving highway operations can contribute to the Federal Highway Administration's goals for "sustainability" and "livability." (FHWA's other two goals are economic vitality and safety).

While some others talked about how to convince Americans to emulate the example of citizens in Malmo, Sweden who have tried to stigmatize anyone for driving on a trip of less than 5 kilometers (about two miles) as taking a "ridiculous trip," I tried to focus on the narrower topic of how changes in operations might lessen the environmental impacts of roads and contribute to the quality of our lives.

There are many things that could be mentioned; I offered four salt-related suggestions:

1. The imperative of Sensible Salting -- use of road salt in minimum amounts to deliver the required level of service and safety.
2. One particular aspect of Sensible Salting -- proper salt storage -- not only provides environmental benefits, but acts like an "insurance policy" for agencies assuring that they have enough salt to clear roads properly. Expanded salt storage also allows for early-season deliveries which can often take advantage of the energy savings inherent in moving salt, a heavy bulk commodity, by water rather than roadway.
3. The need for better real-time data on roadway conditions linked directly to road managers and the public, and
4. In support of encouraging people to walk and bike to work and shopping, communities must provide not only clear roads, but clear bike paths and sidewalks. Usually, residential sidewalks are a homeowners responsibility, often supported by (often unenforced) local ordinances. As for roads, assured, reliable access to safe bike paths and sidewalks is a priority for sustainable transportation.

Today's Chicago Tribune , coincidentally, picked up on this latter theme, reporting on a local Chicagoland activist group, the Active Transportation Alliance , and its efforts to encourage procrastinating homeowners to comply with the local law. Chicago requires sidewalks to be cleared "within three hours of the snow falling" or face a $50 citation.

The group points out the safety hazard of pedestrians forced to walk in snowy streets. Sustainable and livable communities should insist on timely clearing not only of public roads, but of sidewalks and bike paths.

An evaluation of road deicing alternatives directed by Xianming Shi and Laura Fay of the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University and conducted for the Colorado Department of Transportation examined common chloride, acetate and ag byproduct deicers and concluded:

• Corrosion-inhibited salt (NaCl) and mag chloride (MgCl2) is preferred "until better deicer alternatives are identified."
• Training, calibration and minimized application rates -- the essence of the Salt Institute's Sensible Salting program -- are key to minimizing adverse environmental impacts.
• Chlorides in the environment did not exceed the water quality standard. This is an aesthetic standard for taste, not a health standard.

The report formulated a "deicer composite index" similar to that published a few years ago as NCHRP Report 577 . The model, like that of Report 577, allows local customization. Using the current weighting for Colorado users, the method validated current CDOT user priorities ("the inhibited liquid MgCl2 deicer products present a better alternative than either the non-inhibited NaCl or the K- or Na-acetate/formate deicers").

The Wall Street Journal's on a roll on "climategate," and we recently pointed to the disturbing parallel of the parasitic relationship of government advocates and special interest groups on the global warming and salt reduction issues. Today's WSJ carries an opinion column by Daniel Henniger, "Climategate: Science Is Dying ," making another observation relevant to the salt and health debate: the use of junk science to prop up government policy goals -- whether by the Bush or Obama Administrations -- is creating, in Henniger's words, a "credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with with it."

Henniger points out the corrosive effect on science of the environmentalists'-touted "precautionary principle" whereby objective standards of evidence are replaced by subjective judgments -- "this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences."

Henniger quotes an Obama Administration spokesperson on the "precautionary principle:"

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails.

The tie to salt, we hope, is obvious. In the absence of evidence from even a single controlled trial of whether salt reduction would improve health and in the absence of any evidence that physiological salt appetite can be modified as a "behavior" by either education of policy diktat, the government errs on the side of precaution. I use "err" purposefully since the current policy is erroneous both on the science and even on the question of precaution. Low-salt diets are risky for some people and may be risky for the entire population. So even advocates of the "precautionary principle" should favor our longstanding advocacy of a controlled trial to get the evidence right. Close isn't "close enough for government work."

A commentary by Bret Stephens in today's Wall Street Journal , "Climategate: Follow the Money," raises issues, believe it or not, that pertain directly to salt. Salt? Bear with me. Stephens explains:

Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

We have no direct evidence that World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) and its salt reductionist members are engaged in such nefarious activities, but Stephens goes on to explain how "follow the money" makes sense when you take off the blinders that only money coming from corporate sources may be influencing a policy debate. "Money" is why we continue to see studies of salt and blood pressure when everyone accepts a relationship and why we're seeing more observational studies of the right question: salt and health outcomes. But the reluctance of the federal government to fund a controlled trial of salt and health outcomes may be linked to the tangled web of "money" as well.

Consider that thought when reading what Stephens says about the devotion of the universities and groups advocating on global warming:

(T)hey depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Which brings us back to the climategate scientists, the keepers of the keys to the global warming cathedral. In one of the more telling disclosures from last week, a computer programmer writes of the CRU's temperature database: "I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. . . . Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. . . . We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

This is not the sound of settled science, but of a cracking empirical foundation. And however many billion-dollar edifices may be built on it, sooner or later it is bound to crumble.

Hundreds of snowfighters gathered at the Ontario Good Roads Association’s Snow & Ice Colloquium earlier this week and celebrated the steady progress of their efforts to upgrade their salt management operations.

As the lead-off speaker, I pointed out that “Sustainable Salting” in current parlance is a direct evolutionary outgrowth of the Salt Institute’s Sensible Salting program begun in the 1960s. The real progress, however, in Canada, has taken place in the past decade with adoption and implementation of a Road Salts Code of Practice.

Oftentimes, satisfaction is achieved by adopting best management practices and basking in the glow that all that can be done is being done. Canada, however, has gone a step further: it has put in place an independent investigation of whether the recommended best practices are actually delivering environmental improvements. A half day of the two day conference heard from the scientists conducting those studies.

Dr. Michael Stone of the University of Waterloo reported a survey showing that more than 70% of Canadian snowfighting agencies have adopted written salt management plans (SMPs) governing their storage and application of salt (which represents 97% of the deicing materials used in the country). Unfortunately, surveys show that many SMPs may not be tied directly to operations; 43% haven’t been modified in the past five years. In another successful area, 63% of the agencies conduct annual operator training (though only 21% train snowfighting contractors). And more than half (51%) have identified “salt vulnerable areas” in their SMPs, areas where special salt management practices are utilized.

Overall, snowfighting technology and techniques are advancing sharply. Reports filed with Environment Canada show 1) salt usage is up sharply the past two winters, 2) 95% of the salt storage facilities are under cover and on impermeable pads, 3) 85% of snowfighting trucks use computerized ground-speed spreader controls, 4) 43% of the vehicles can do pre-wetting and 30% of the agencies employ anti-icing strategies.

Measurement not only leads to better accountability tomorrow, but helps today for us to see the need for more action in closing out antiquated, salt-wasting spreader technologies, giving better guidance for identification of vulnerable local ecosystems and training private sector snowfighters.

It is unfortunate that the recent USGS study – a straightforward assessment of chlorides in groundwater areas in 19 states - was spun in a sensational manner in the USGS press release . The press release stated that

Chloride levels above the recommended federal criteria set to protect aquatic life were found in more than 40 percent of urban streams tested. Elevated chloride can inhibit plant growth, impair reproduction, and reduce the diversity of organisms in streams.

The actual report itself is far more sober, as seen in the report summary:

Groundwater-quality data from a sampling of 1,329 wells in 19 states were analyzed. Chloride concentrations were greater than the secondary maximum contaminant level established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of 250 milligrams per liter in 2.5 percent of samples from 797 shallow monitoring wells and in 1.7 percent of samples from 532 drinking-water supply wells.

Of course, a number of newspapers didn't bother to read the report and simply quoted the press release. A careful reading of the report indicates that the 40% of urban areas that showed exceedance of the EPA limit did so only as exceptional events, not as routine discharges from these areas. For instance, the data in the report shows about 1/5th of the Minneapolis samples exceeding the EPA limit. Although regrettable, it can be understood that after particularly intense snow and ice events, the amounts of deicers added to roadways and consequently found in runoff will be greater than usual. We made this case clear to the newspapers that merely referred to the press release.

For decades, the Salt Institute has encouraged and supported a Sensible Salting program to ensure that the level of salt applied to roads is kept to the absolute minimum required to provide the public with the required level of safety and mobility during winter snow and ice events. We have actively supported programs of best practices with the specific goal of minimizing the environmental impacts of deicing and have supported the full and transparent review of these programs to ensure that they are actually working. And they are.

In keeping with our decades-long advocacy of Sensible Salting to reduce the environmental impact of salt application, the Salt Institute has been aware of the potential for intense snow and ice events to demand a large deicer application which could result in an exceptional exceedance, as has been noted in the USGS report. We remain at the forefront of mitigation technology and are currently supported the latest cutting-edge research at Guelph University specifically designed to eliminate the sort of post-event chloride spikes noted in the USGS study.

In addition, the latest science reveals that level of water hardness has a significant impact on chloride toxicity. In areas where the water is harder, chlorides have far less of an impact on the biological organisms than in soft water areas. In fact, most of the northern states have fairly hard water. That is why some of the more progressive states, like Iowa, are beginning to consider the actual chemistry of their waters in order to establish toxicity standards that more closely reflect scientific reality.

Lest this entire issue be taken out of perspective, it must be understood that we have to apply deicers to our roads in winter to ensure safety and mobility. A Marquette University study, demonstrated the unparalleled benefits of deicing with road salts by saving thousands of lives and preventing untold injuries, while allowing our economy and its distribution systems to continue operating during the winter months.

Nevertheless, we must continue to do whatever we can to ensure that the products and services that are employed to allow us to live and work under difficult winter conditions do not compromise the environment for future generations.

Scientists at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide and Cambridge University have developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification. The results could impact food production and security, since salinity affects agriculture worldwide.

Soil salinity affects large areas of cultivated land, causing significant reductions in crop yield globally. The sodium toxicity of many crop plants is correlated with over-accumulation of sodium in the shoot. It was previously suggested that the engineering of sodium exclusion from the shoot could be achieved through an alteration of plasma membrane sodium transport processes in the root, if these alterations were cell specific. Current research published in The Plant Cell confirms this. Plants with reduced shoot sodium have increased salinity tolerance. The results demonstrate that the modification of a specific sodium transport process in specific cell types can reduce shoot sodium accumulation, an important component of salinity tolerance of many higher plants.

"Salinity affects the growth of plants worldwide, particularly in irrigated land where one third of the world's food is produced. And it is a problem that is only going to get worse" said team leader Mark Tester, professor at the University of Adelaide.

Tester says his team used the technique to keep salt out of the leaves of a model plant species. The researchers modified genes specifically around the plant's water conducting tissue (xylem) so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot.

"This reduces the amount of toxic salt building up in the shoot and so increases the plant's tolerance to salinity," Tester said.

"In doing this, we've enhanced a process used naturally by plants to minimize the movement of salt to the shoot. We've used genetic modification to amplify the process, helping plants to do what they already do - but to do it much better" he added.

The team is now in the process of transferring this technology to crops such as rice, wheat and barley, said an Adelaide release.

Today, the US House of Representatives will vote on a "cap-and-trade" climate change bill embodying the mindset of Al Gore's "inconvenient truth" argument. Thus, today's Wall Street Journal editorial, a last-gasp attempt to deflect the Democrat's legislative steamroller on Capitol Hill, notes that popular skepticism on "climate change" is on the rise around the world. Notably, the argument isn't being framed that "we can't afford it" in troubled economic times; no, the argument is advanced that the science underlying the entire response is flawed: scientific doubts are growing that man-made "greenhouse gas" emissions are a threat. The WSJ attributes the rush to pass cap-and-trade and its multi-trillion-dollar cost-shifting scheme to global warming proponents' foreboding about the concept's eroding prospects.

If the science of global warming is changing, the concept has had prominent skeptics from the beginning. Doubters were overwhelmed by alarmist activists who made dire warnings a favorite media theme. Efforts to secure access to the scientific studies underlying the global warming promotion have been systematically thwarted. Proponents have labeled skeptics as "deniers," affixing them with a popular image akin to those who deny the well-documented Holocaust.

Whatever our personal views on the legitimacy of the science on global warming, there is an eerie parallel process running in the nutrition-and-health debate.

Prominent independent scientists note the absence of evidence for a health outcomes benefit among those consuming low-sodium diets. Questions remain unanswered about the efficacy of reducing and sustaining lower population sodium intakes and, in particular, about the untested hypothesis that substituting low-sodium foods will reduce an individual's sodium intake. Independent analysis of government-funded data is systematically foreclosed. Skeptics are lambasted personally for failing to toe the policy line in a broad pattern of intimidation. And the food industry has resorted to an acceptance of the sodium hypothesis and based its defense on the unfeasibility of some of the remedial policy responses (akin to complaints that cap-and-trade would export American jobs and crush economic vitality). Finally, alarmists press for urgent action with warnings of dire consequences.

The WSJ editorial concludes:

[Climate change opponents] in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science.

Those who would stand in the path of cap-and-trade have an uphill fight against a Congressional majority with vigorous White House support. Science hasn't been able to gain traction in the public debate.

The very different scientific issues at play in the salt and health controversy are headed down this same pathway unless we can, as the WSJ says, "re-engage on the science."

One other parallel: Climate, like physiology, responds to immutable laws of nature, whether we understand those principles or not and whether our policy responses anticipate the consequences of our interventions.

So, let's work for re-engagement on the science, greater data transparency and, above all, a focus on the quality of the data upon which our momentous public policy decisions are based.

Being pro-environment is good politics. And lessening man's "footprint" is a major policy objective.

Some companies are playing the angles to capitalize on environment-related business opportunities , some with subsidies, some hoping for help from highly-placed friends. Whether it's getting subsidies for ethanol or fuel efficient cars or producing "alternative" energy without generatating reviled carbon, the government seems to be, increasingly, at the nexus of picking winners in the marketplace. And that government role means that those with friends "inside" exercise more leverage.

I won't rehash the scientific controversy over global warming; it's certainly a lightning rod issue. But in the area of alternative energy, there's always been the presumption that the sun will shine, the tides will rise, the wind will blow and Earth's subterranean geo-furnace will go on forever -- even if moderate climates change. Today's New York Times carries a story about a labor union what I'd call "protection racket" regarding building new solar facilities in California.

Maybe continuation of the sun, moon, the Earth's molten core and, especially, the wind is not a safe assumption according to Eugene S. Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University, and the director of the school’s “climate science initiative.” Takle told MarketWatch.com that his research, to be published soon in the Journal of Geophysical Research , has found that U.S. wind strength has declined by 15% to 30% over the past 30 years from the mid-1970s to 2005. Land use and better instrumentation (and climate change itself) account for the decline, he believes.

Ted Kennedy may have the clout to block construction of those windmills off his Nantucket estate, but the bigger threat to his lifestyle may prove to be that his yacht may be as becalmed as the windmills.

Government advisers in the UK are making menu recommendations in order to cut out what they deem to be “high carbon” foods. The Committee on Climate Change has evaluated the methane produced by burping sheep and cows and the carbon footprint of many foods and has pronounced that citizens must change their eating habits.

“Changing our lifestyles, including our diets, is going to be one of the crucial elements in cutting carbon emissions,” said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.

The Carbon Trust, a government-funded firm, is working with food and drink companies to determine the carbon footprints of products.

I am relieved to note that chocolate has a smaller footprint than chicken. But common sense and time spent on farms leads me to question their assertion that lambs burp more than cows. Yes, believe it or not, government bureaucrats are spending money to determine whether sheep burp more than cows.

If about now you are wondering if this is satire or serious, a Saturday Night Live skit or truly a story from the Times, you may wish to read this absurdity for yourself .

It appears there is no end in sight to the quest for government control over what we eat.

In an op ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal , Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus, decries "a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets." His target: "The Climate-Industrial Complex" of companies feeding off the government's handouts to corporations investing in technologies to reduce global warming or adapt to it. He revisits Eisenhower's presidential farewell warning of the odious influence of the military-industrial complex.

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. ...

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

Will governments try to entice food companies into wheedling taxpayer dollars to pay corporate development and marketing costs for low-sodium foods based on science that is even weaker than that adduced to support measures to combat global warming? That camel's-nose-under-the tent in the banking and auto industries is shaping up as a pattern to watch.

Nor is the parallel limited to a nutrition-industrial complex, Lomborg points out the tactic being employed by the Copenhagen Climate Council, representing "green" equity investors like Al Gore and industrial interests like wind turbine manufacturers, at the forthcoming World Business Summit on Climate Change where scientific skeptics have been excluded from the program. Kinda sounds like some controversy-deniers we know in the public health nutrition community.

Salt Institute member Industria Salinera de Yucatan , headquarted in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico was honored late last month at the 2^nd International Conference on the Ecological Importance of Solar Saltworks (CEISSA 2009) in Merida, March 26-28.

ISYSA President Eduardo Roche was honored for his efforts to preserve the environment of ISYSA's Las Coloradas saltfield located inside the Ria Lagartos Biosphere. The company also recently earned the Clean Industry Certification seal from the Mexican Secretary of Environmental Protection. ISYSA’s environmental accomplishments include preservation of nearby wetlands, support for turtle banding on the Las Coloradas beaches, restoration of roads and beaches of nearby towns after hurricanes, rescuing nearby flamingo colonies after hurricanes, and promoting an annual educational program by the nongovernmental organization--Niños y Crías A.C.—where adults and children band juvenile flamingoes.

The conference was held in honor of Dr. Joseph S. Davis, Professor Emeritus of the University of Florida, for his pioneering work on the relationship of biological processes and solar salt manufacture.

Another Salt Institute member, Salins , based in Paris, France, presented on how they manage their two Mediterranean saltworks as environmentally protected areas.

ISYSA hosted the conference which was organized by Sergio Ortiz of ISYSA, Dr. Themistocles Lekkas of the University of the Aegean, and Nikos Korovessis of Hellenic Saltworks. Presentations emphasized the environmental friendliness of the solar salt-making industry, mainly through wetland preservation. The conference attracted global participation with delegates from Argentina, China, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, and the U.S.

Ultimately, every paradigm is founded on faith. Faith in the process for some. Faith in the evidence, for others. Some systems survive, sustained by their evident logic and internal consistency. Adherents adopt a near-religious protective shield to deny data inconsistent with the paradigm. Ultimately, mounting evidence becomes too strong to deny and the old world view can disappear quickly.

We often describe adherents to the “salt hypothesis” that reducing dietary salt will improve health in such terms. There may be an even better example (nah, probably not better)

Like certain questions of public health, some environmental propositions are so logical and internally-consistent that they resist new evidence. This is especially the case when the proposition is bolstered by strong special interests. In the salt arena, we saw this phenomenon several years ago when the Natural Resources Defense Council, spurred by strong fundraising appeal, argued that a proposed Pacific coast saltworks would remove so much salt from the ocean bay that wintering newborn whale calves would have insufficient buoyancy and drown. The fact that the whales thrived near the saltworks was ignored.

The same logic held that since salt was related to blood pressure and low blood pressure populations had fewer heart attacks, we should expect improved cardiovascular health by putting the entire population on a “low salt” diet. That easy assumption has been disproved by now double-digit numbers of studies measuring the health outcomes of low-salt versus normal-salt individuals. But those facts are for another story.

This time the issue is energy and the environment and the evidence in question pertains to ethanol. Ethanol is touted to replace gasoline in our cars and trucks. Its heavily-subsidized production has vastly expanded the demand for American corn. In fact, the enormous volume of grain shipments that once made the Mississippi a southbound “superhighway” (and subsidized less expensive up-river shipments of salt), has almost disappeared; corn is trucked to nearby ethanol plants in our national push to reduce carbon-based “greenhouse gases.” Since the “road to the White House” runs smack through subsidy-loving Iowa, the federal government is ethanol’s biggest booster. It’s bipartisan.

In recent years, skeptics have pointed out that it takes more BTUs to raise the corn and process it into ethanol than the ethanol yields. No matter.

Now skeptics have another argument. A recent article in Environmental Science & Technology (Web published last month; in hard copy next Wednesday) points out flaws in previous calculations of the amount of water required to grow the corn to feed the ethanol plants. While the new math may discomfort the corn growers of Iowa and Illinois, the researchers from the University of Minnesota documented huge differences in water requirements based on irrigation practices. While it may make some sense to use rainfall-nourished Iowa corn, it borders on the criminal to allow ethanol production in water-starved states like California. As policy-makers drive ethanol production higher, water used to make ethanol has increased 246% from 1.9 trillion liters to 6.1 trillion liters in just the past three years (whereas ethanol production has “only” increased half that much, 133%).

Six years ago, other researchers estimated that it took 263 liters of water to produce one liter of ethanol. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences tripled that estimate to 784 liters. This new study by Yi-Wen Chiu, Brian Walseth and Sangwon Suh says the true water cost varies from 5 liters of water for a liter of ethanol all the way up to 2,138 liters of water for each liter of ethanol; the general trend follows rainfall with the East being more water-sufficient and –efficient and the drought stricken West terribly water-inefficient. By state, Ohio can produce a liter of ethanol for 5 liters of water; Iowa, 6; Kentucky, 7; Tennessee, 10; and Illinois, 11. In contrast, Wyoming requires 1,354 liters; New Mexico, 1,427 and California a whopping 2,138.

Over the next half century, we believe that our current preoccupation with energy supplies will yield to burgeoning alarm about our dwindling water supplies. And the poster child for water conservation is California. So tell us again: why are we subsidizing ethanol production in California when it requires better than 500 times more water than in the Mississippi basin and forces draconian lifestyle controls in many California communities?

The ethanol house-of-cards is glued together with federal subsidies, so it may last even longer than federal public health nutrition policy now suffering body blows as new “health outcomes” studies fail to identify a health benefit for all the over-hyped recommendations and new evidence is emerging that consumers possess a “hard-wired” appetite for salt – just like livestock and poultry which science we’ve understood for the better part of a century.

The next question is whether “Change!” and “transparency” will allow a full discussion of these new facts of energy and nutrition recommendations and changes to those policies.