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Nordaq Fresh is a new Swedish water filtration system that may change the way restaurants think about drinking water. We hit Napa this weekend and one of the many pleasures was an afternoon at The French Laundry (thanks for the hook up, José).

When our waiter explained our water options—locally filtered flat or sparking, on the house) we were pleasantly surprised. He went on to explain the benefits of purifying water on site at the restaurant—no need to ship, move and store heavy bottles, and more importantly the environmental impact. The restaurant recently installed a Nordaq Fresh water filtration system (one of the first in the States).

The system provides cold, freshly circulated flat or sparkling water on tap. The novelty of the system is its ability to filter out all of the things you don't want (discoloration, funky tastes, VOCs, PAH, particles and bacteria) while retaining all of the things you do want (salts and minerals). In other words, it provides the benefits of many mineral waters without the expense and hassle of shipping them half way around the world, with the additional benefit of always being fresh.

The system was created and is manufactured in Sweden, and was founded in 2003 by the owners of Acquapal. The Nordaq Fresh site is currently only in Swedish (thanks Mira for translating!) but you can request more information by clicking on the "Kontakta oss" link on the home page.

More News From the Frontline of the Water War

From the NY Times. Click here for more water wars stories.

Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River water that sustains the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, could lose water faster than previously thought and run dry within 13 years, according to a new study by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.The lake, located in Nevada and Arizona, has a 50 percent chance of becoming unusable by 2021, the scientists say, if the demand for water remains unchanged and if human-induced climate change follows climate scientists’ moderate forecasts, resulting in a reduction in average river flows.

Demand for Colorado River water already slightly exceeds the average annual supply when high levels of evaporation are taken into account, the researchers, Tim P. Barnett and David W. Pierce, point out. Despite an abundant snowfall in Colorado this year, scientists project that snowpacks and their runoffs will continue to dwindle. If they do, the system for delivering water across the Southwest would become increasingly unstable.
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More on the water wars, bitches

From Tennesean.com

In 1993, Joel J. Kyle and his wife, Juanita, moved just over the Georgia border to Tennessee — and Joel Kyle vowed never to cross it again.

Now, some Georgia lawmakers want the border to cross him, in a manner of speaking.

A resolution in Georgia's legislature proposes to move the Tennessee-Georgia boundary about a mile to the north of where it now lies, which could put Kyle right back into the state he left 15 years ago.

The proposal elicited instant ridicule from residents of the area on Thursday, as well as tongue-in-cheek saber rattling from Tennessee lawmakers.

One state senator offered to settle the issue with a football game. Another suggested floating an armada of University of Tennessee fans down the Tennessee River to defend the state's territory.

But behind the amusement is a serious issue that has bedeviled the Southeast: access to water. If the border is redrawn, the new state line would fall across Nickajack Reservoir. That would allow parched Georgians to tap into the waters of the dammed Tennessee River.

Issue draws criticism

Kyle, 69, said he has no desire to be annexed by Georgia, which he gladly departed because of its taxes, and hopes the idea is "just a pipe dream."

"If it ever came to that, I would probably move," he said. "I've got seven acres here, and we're set up pretty well, but I wouldn't ever want to be in the state of Georgia again, to be honest with you."

Georgia has been battling Florida and Alabama in federal court for about 18 years over water rights. Last summer, Lake Lanier, which supplies Atlanta's water, shriveled to historic lows.

The resolution, which has passed early hurdles but has not received final passage, claims that the boundary was erroneously surveyed in 1818 and that Georgia has never accepted it. The resolution calls for the creation of a "Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission" that would perform joint surveys and change the line to the "definite and true" boundary line: exactly following the 35th parallel.

"We're not talking about sucking it dry," said Rep. Harry Geisinger, a Republican who sponsored the resolution in the Georgia House. "We're talking about augmenting some water needs, and as you know, the Tennessee has got plenty of water in it."

Gil Rogers, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the proposal was the wrong approach to water woes. Lawmakers, he said, should concentrate on conservation and sustainable development.

"It's a matter of how we grow and planning ahead so we're not reduced to making these propositions about accessing rivers that are hundreds of miles away," he said.

State Sen. Andy Berke, a Chattanooga Democrat, took the Senate floor and jokingly proposed a winner-take-all wrestling match or football game.

Afterward, he was more circumspect, saying that there is a serious issue at hand about natural resources, planning and development, and calling the Georgia proposal an "irresponsible land-grab."

"I think it is more productive to be up front about the future of water use," he said, "rather than disguising the intentions with discussions of grabbing our state's land."

Moishe warned you once, don't sleep on water wars

From Atlanta Constitution Journal:

It would take an act of Congress to get more drinking water out of Lake Lanier for metro Atlanta, a federal appellate court ruled Tuesday.

Alabama and Florida immediately declared a major victory in the 18-year, tri-state water war, with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley calling it "one of the most important" legal decisions in his state's history.

"The ruling invalidates the massive water grab that Georgia tried to pull off," Riley said in a statement.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit comes at a critical juncture, with the three states rushing toward a Feb. 15 deadline to reach a long-term, water-sharing agreement.

Observers say it gives Alabama and Florida leverage in the negotiations and belies metro Atlanta's assumption that it can count on Lanier to continue fueling its growth. Water from Lanier, the largest federal reservoir on the Chattahoochee River, forms Georgia and Alabama's southern border and winds up in Gulf of Mexico.

Lanier is the main water source for more than three million metro Atlantans. But it also supports multiple downstream users, from a nuclear power plant near Dothan, Ala., to oystermen in Florida's Apalachicola Bay.

"The big loser here is metro Atlanta," said George William Sherk, an expert in water law at the Colorado School of Mines who once represented the city of LaGrange and Troup County in tri-state water matters. "The logical response for metro Atlanta right now is no new building permits unless the applicant can demonstrate a long-term water supply.

"But pigs will fly before Atlanta does that."

Sherk said Congress is unlikely to intervene.