Solar arrays can provide energy to pump water to watering troughs for cows, improving water quality on remote pastures and saving money too. Farmers can more sustainably manage their pastures if cows are not all clustered around small creeks, eroding the banks.

One example of a worst case scenario is Dick Lester’s Spring Valley Ranch in Cherokee County, Iowa. He had one tiny creek that his cattle were trampling to death, reducing their own water supply.
He needed to pump water 150 feet up the hill to three separate watering troughs so the cows would spread out and not trample the creek’s stream banks, fouling their own drinking water supply and reducing the flow by eroding the stream banks.

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Last year when the sub prime investment market was first collapsing, the BBC posed a novel question that is worth thinking about again, because we are about to embark on a post-Copenhagen investment in preventing deforestation in developing countries, like the Amazon.

The question that Nature’s Capital posed was  “Why should we invest in preserving the Amazon? What’s in it for me?”
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Each year the Amazon provides about $50 billion worth of utility service. It cleans air. It provides air conditioning. It creates water for agriculture. The water it creates makes possible energy production from everything from bio-fuels to… well, even to tar sands.
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With over two million miles of aging water mains to maintain, the U.S. is on the brink of a water supply precipice.  A modest project seeded with just a few thousand dollars could go a long way to resolving the crisis, by developing robotic water main repair devices that can work much faster than human crews.

The real kicker is the ability of small robotic devices to reach inside small pipes as well as the larger human-sized water mains.  Water supply robots are already in use for inspection purposes.  It’s a more sustainable approach that would practically eliminate the need to excavate thousands of miles of water mains for repair or replacement.  In turn, that would make a significant dent in carbon emissions from earth-moving machines and other utility streetwork.
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