FAIRFIELD - General Electric Co. continued its expansion into the water treatment technology business Wednesday, announcing a $1.1 billion acquisition of a Massachusetts company.

GE is buying Ionics Inc. of Watertown for $44 a share, in an all-cash transaction. Ionics will be added to GE's Wilton-based GE Infrastructure unit after shareholder and regulatory approvals, which GE expects sometime in 2005.

Jeffrey DeMarrais, a spokesman for GE Infrastructure, said Ionics' desalination technology was one of the company's biggest attractions, because the world's supply of potable drinking water is being stretched thin.

Desalination turns saltwater and other types of fouled water into drinking water. DeMarrais said GE expects the need for this type of technology to grow dramatically in China, India, Africa and the western part of the United States, where a lack of water is becoming a bigger problem.

GE has acquired three water technology companies during the last several years in anticipation of higher demand for water purification systems, he said.

It's too early to tell if the acquisition will cost the Massachusetts firm any jobs as it is bought up, DeMarrais said. But it definitely will not affect employment in Wilton, an administrative facility.  The Ionics acquisition was the company's second billiondollar-plus deal this week...

OTHER G.E. news:
GE announced on Monday the $4.4 billion purchase of CitiGroup's transportation financial services division.  Shares of GE dropped 17 cents to $35.64 in New York Stock Exchange trading Wednesday.

The University of Connecticut Department of Marine Sciences Web site, MYSound, displays water-quality information from seven sensors around
the state. One sensor is in 18 inches of water on the end of the aquarium's boat dock just north of the Stroffolino Bridge.  The aquarium staffer called John Frank, chairman of the city's Shellfish Commission.

Days before the call was made, millions of oyster larvae died unexpectedly in an indoor South Norwalk hatchery. The facility grows fledgling oysters in tanks of water pumped from the river about a quarter-mile downstream from the aquarium, close to Long Island Sound.  Frank has since called state and city agencies to figure out how to stabilize oxygen levels.

"We have found some strange spikes downward that do not make sense. They do not follow the normal biological process," Frank said.  Last month, oxygen content in the river dropped below 2 milligrams per liter seven times, he said. The drops in oxygen levels have lasted for about 15 minutes.
When oxygen levels drop below 1.5 milligrams per liter, fish can die, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Long Island Sound office. When oxygen levels drop below 3 milligrams per liter for four or so days, fish also can suffer.

Oxygen levels are normally higher in the spring than in the height of summer, when levels naturally decline because of water temperature and pollution.  Dick Harris, a director for Westport-based HarborWatch/RiverWatch, which does routine water quality sampling in the Sound, said oxygen levels usually decrease to about 7 or 8 milligrams per liter this time of year.

Archived material from the University of Connecticut's Web site show 19 of the first 21 days of April recorded levels below 6 milligrams of oxygen per liter.  "If its true, a lot of juvenile fish will not make it this spring," said Harris, adding that he doesn't believe the situation is a disaster.  In the next few days, Harris said he will use another oxygen meter to test the water.

Dissolved oxygen levels fluctuate normally throughout the day.  When the sun comes out, microscopic aquatic plants called phytoplankton release oxygen elevating levels of oxygen in water. At night, a reversal occurs as phytoplankton feed on oxygen, lowering its amount.  But recent oxygen levels show wild variations occurring sometimes twice during the night.

At Sargeant's Cove oyster hatchery in the Tallmadge Bros. building on Water Street, the lack of oxygen may have claimed its first victims.  Dave Hopp, an oyster boat skipper who runs the hatchery, said millions of oyster larvae died in four tanks a day after one of the most severe oxygen depletion episodes was recorded April 21.  According to the university graph, at midnight April 20 the oxygen level dipped below 1 milligram per liter. The next day, Hopp pumped river water into four tanks containing the larvae.

A day after that when the free-swimming oysters were examined, 5 million larvae were dead. The usual mortality rate for that size batch is 125,000, Hopp said.  "We don't know if it was due to that," he said. "It just happened to be at the same time. We have lost larvae before -- they are a fragile animal. It just happens sometimes. It could have been food or temperature."  But just in case oxygen could be the culprit, Hopp is purchasing an oxygen meter and will begin testing water pumped into the barrels used to grow oysters.

Frank said he first suspected that the city's wastewater treatment plant was to blame.  But Department of Public Works Director Harold Alvord said the plant is operating well and has not been releasing oxygen-depleted water into the river.  Alvord said he believes the problem is manmade and may be originating from one of the 210 drainpipes that end at the river within the city.

In the past week, Operations Management International, the private company that runs the sewage plant, has begun testing its discharge on an hourly basis.  Levels of oxygen have not dipped below 6 milligrams per liter, said Tom Closter, Health Department chief environmental officer.         Although he has not seen April's figures, Closter said the plant's daily average readings dating from March show the oxygen levels did not go below 6.1 milligrams per liter.

A health department employee was sent out a week ago to test for bacteria, which also can cause oxygen levels to drop.  No elevated readings were recorded, Closter said, adding that the plant is rapidly being ruled out as the cause of the low-oxygen conditions.  But William Ziegler III, who joined with the family of the late Hillard Bloom to create Sargeant's Cove hatchery, said he remains concerned about the sewage plant.

"It's a darn shame that we can't make better use of the facility (treatment plant) to keep the oxygen levels high and the nitrogen levels low. It is a major source of nitrogen," Ziegler said.  But Alvord said nitrogen levels, which lead to the growth of algae which lowers oxygen levels, are very low at the plant.  Closter, Frank and Alvord believe that the low oxygen levels may be the result of someone dumping chemicals in the river. Additional oxygen meters could be placed upstream to better locate the origins of the problem, Closter said.

Frank said city and state are cooperating in the effort to discover the source of the problem.  He said the situation could pose a danger, not only to fish but the oyster and clam business.  "We think of that upper part of the harbor as a natural nursery. A lot of oysters and clams spawn up there and they produce clams and oysters that end up settling or digging into the ground a good deal further downstream. Even though nobody goes clamming up there, we see that as an important part of the shellfish system," Frank said.

Explanation
The bill specifies requirements and restrictions on the abandonment of certain watershed lands and results in state and municipal impact. Passage of this bill will not result in a fiscal impact for the Departments of Public Health or Public Utility Control, as its provisions will not materially alter the agencies' regulatory responsibilities.

Section 1 of the bill may restrict future development activities on certain watershed lands, and correspondingly impact the tax base of any municipality in which such land is located. Passage of this section of the bill would result in potential revenue loss that is not known at this time.

Section 2 of the bill requires entities acquiring certain water companies to grant the state a permanent conservation easement (1) on the lands involved as a condition of the approval of the transfer. It provides that the easement be imposed once the abandonment of the watershed lands being transferred has been approved. To the extent that such an easement is considered a taking of that land, the state would have to compensate the owner for the loss in value of the land. The average bargain sale price for such lands is $5,800 per acre. Fair market value for the same lands is $12,500 per acre, which represents an increase of more than 50%. Passage of this section of the bill would result in potential significant cost to the state. (2)

Section 3 of the bill requires that all economic benefits from such transfers be allocated to ratepayers. Current law requires that these benefits be equally allocated between ratepayers and shareholders.

(1) A permanent conservation easement allows for the preservation and protection of public water supplies and natural resources,
predominantly as natural, scenic or open space lands.

(2) This analysis assumes that the Department of Environmental Protection would be initiating the purchase of any such lands.

Colorado will spend as much as $2 million in the next two years to build a legal war chest shoring up its rights to the drought-plagued Colorado River.  The new initiative comes as Lake Powell and Lake Mead - the river's giant storage ponds - have reached historic lows, triggering anxiety over future supplies from Los Angeles to Denver.

"About a year ago the people at the Colorado Water Conservation Board began sounding the alarm, saying we need to move to protect ourselves, and I agreed," said Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Division of Natural Resources. "Essentially we're building the best legal case that Colorado can have so that we presumably prevail when it comes down to making decisions.

"I think we have a couple of years (before the river's supplies could drop low enough to trigger a demand for more water for Nevada, Arizona and California). But we can't waste time."

The money is being spent on new computer models detailing how the river's supplies will be affected by ongoing drought and on creating a computerized historic archive documenting Colorado's use of the river under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. It also will pay for new legal research to help guide the state in the unlikely event that the lingering drought prompts new claims to Colorado's share of the river's supplies, George said.

In all, seven states have rights to its waters. How much each state gets is outlined in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, a hard-fought document that envisioned plenty for all.

Next week at the annual meeting of all the river's users in Las Vegas, Colorado plans to push to open new talks over long-standing problems on the river surfacing because of the drought and the West's population boom.

"The last 20 years have been a positive period for coming up with imaginative solutions on the river," said Jim Lochhead, a water attorney who advises Colorado cities on river compact issues and a former executive director of the Colorado Division of Natural Resources. "The next 20 years, though, may produce more difficult challenges if we continue to be in a dry cycle and the system continues to go down."

Millions depend on river

Colorado's destiny is intimately tied to the river whose birthplace lies high in the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. It supplies roughly half the drinking water 3.6 million Front Range residents use annually, provides water for snowmaking from Winter Park to Vail and irrigates the peach and apple orchards that dot the Western Slope.

All told, roughly 25 million people in the West depend on its liquid bounty.  Nearly a century ago, before computer models could track snowmelt and streamflows, most believed the river's largesse was boundless.

The compact assumed, for instance, the river generated about 20 million acre-feet of water annually. Compact writers divided up 16 million acre-feet of its supplies among the seven states, saying they could argue over the rest later, according to Lochhead.  Experts now believe that surplus never existed and that the river generates 13 million to 13.5 million acre-feet (maf), on average. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, enough to serve up to two urban families for one year.

The seven basin states rely on excess water generated in exceptionally wet years to make up the difference between the 13.5 maf and the 16 maf, with Lake Powell and Lake Mead acting as liquid bank accounts.  But the past five years have been harsh and dry, robbing Powell and Mead of their surpluses, threatening critical electric generating stations, endangering fish and drinking supplies.

How to deal with shortages has never been detailed before, George said. He and others believe all the basin states must move deliberately and calmly to decide how the water will be shared should the drought and the population boom continue.

"Ultimately the goal is to have an understanding among the seven states that everybody is cutting back and not wasting water so that we don't have to get to a true shortage that forces us back into our corners. That's never occurred, but we think it would get really ugly," he said.

3 issues to be resolved

In Colorado that means Front Range cities and Western Slope ski towns must begin planning now for potential cutbacks in their share of the river's supplies, George said.  The state's new water models are designed to help them determine what would happen under a number of different cutback scenarios, with spring snowmelt being the wild card.

For utilities with large storage reservoirs, such as Denver Water and the Northern Colorado Conservancy District, it will likely mean pushing hard to refill their own drought-stressed systems and to safeguard supplies until it's clear that Powell and Mead are beginning to refill, several water officials said.

"Maybe we have three years to accumulate a reserve," said Eric Wilkinson, manager of the Northern Colorado District. The district serves several Front Range cities including Fort Collins, Boulder and Broomfield. "That means we'll want to build an absolutely full (storage system) in case there is a call (for water from the Lower Basin states.)"

In the meantime, Colorado wants three key issues resolved:

• Under the 1922 compact, Mexico is entitled to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, to be delivered from surplus supplies. The Upper Basin was to contribute only in times of shortage. But since 1970, 750,000 acre-feet has been delivered from Lake Powell annually. That means, in Colorado's view, that the Upper Basin has delivered too much water. "That's a fundamental issue that has to be resolved," Lochhead said.

• Colorado also has asked U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton to reduce the historic outflow from Lake Powell, in light of the drought. Reducing the flows from Powell would mean the Upper Basin states could maintain a stronger buffer against a possible demand for extra water from Nevada, Arizona and California.

• And Colorado also wants Arizona to stop storing river water it doesn't need in aquifers, further draining the two giant storage ponds. "We're very concerned about that. We would like to see it fixed right away," George said.

Even if snows come through this winter, most experts believe it will take Powell and Mead years to recover, leaving Colorado and other Upper Basin states vulnerable to demands for more water, particularly if a state of chronic, low-grade drought develops.

John Keys, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, hopes his agency can forestall those demands by carefully evaluating the river's supplies and asking each state to figure out ways to live with less.

"Our biggest fear," Keys said, "is that when this drought breaks, we'll still be short of water."

The issue these days is land, but American Indian claims in Connecticut and elsewhere in the East could eventually involve water as well, creating a legal or regulatory quagmire for ill-prepared officials, according to legal experts.

Though frequent in the arid West, American Indian water claims are almost unheard of in states east of Missouri, experts said. Eastern states such as Connecticut also have a different doctrine of law governing water rights and it's unclear how American Indian claims would fit in it.

"What happens in many Eastern states is that water is abundant," said Judith Royster, professor of law and co-director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. "And what happens if water is abundant is that nobody is going to worry about allocating water among the various groups."

But droughts and increasing demands are hurting the East's water supply, and Royster said that could make tribes look at their water rights more closely to sustain federally recognized reservations.  Last week, spokesmen for American Indian tribes in Connecticut said they are not preparing water claims. Several said they had not even discussed the topic until asked about it by The Advocate.

"First time it's ever come up in all the years we've been doing it," said Chief Richard Velky of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, which has 400 acres in Kent, part of which borders the Housatonic River. "We don't see it as a potential problem at all, and I hope it wouldn't be."

Last month, the Bureau of Indian Affairs denied the Schaghticoke (Eastern CT) tribe's federal recognition in a preliminary decision. Scholars say federal recognition, and federally recognized reservations, are central to obtaining tribal water rights.  Charles Bunnell, deputy chief of staff for the Mohegan tribe, said the tribe has no intention of making water rights claims. "Not who they are as a people," he said.

The Mohegans are a federally recognized tribe, with a reservation on the western bank of the Thames River in Montville. Bunnell said the tribe is allowed to claim up to 700 acres to be part of the reservation but must acquire it from willing sellers. The Golden Hill Paugussetts plan to lay claim to 720,000 acres of the state from Waterbury to Greenwich, said Bill McBride, chief marketing officer for the tribe. McBride would not rule out a possible water claim but said it is not being considered.  The tribe received preliminary rejection of their federal recognition bid last week, but it has vowed to press ahead with land claims.

"That's possible," McBride said about a water claim. "Right now, we are really strategizing as to how we are going to proceed with the land claims."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said water claims have not been raised by American Indian tribes and the state would defeat them if they were. It would take federal statute, treaty, agreement or executive order to override sovereign state's rights to water, and Blumenthal called those things very unlikely.

"I don't think people should have any fear that the Connecticut River, the Quinnipiac River or our other major waterways are going to be seized by an Indian tribe," Blumenthal said. "Or that they will begin paying their water bill to the Golden Hill Paugussetts."

The lack of claims or litigation has not stopped academic debate on the subject.  The discussion revolves around the different kinds of water regulation in the East and West.  Connecticut and other Eastern states have regulated riparianism, which requires water users to obtain permits for their water consumption. Western states have an appropriative system, which gives the first users to claim the water priority.

In the event of an American Indian water claim in the East, the question would be what system should apply, or i