* Quake, wall of water kill at least 44
    * Now Pacific islands at threat from tsunami
    * Houses, ships, cars tossed around like toys
   
    By Chisa Fujioka and Elaine Lies
    TOKYO, March 11 (Reuters) - The biggest earthquake to hit
Japan on record struck the northeast coast on Friday, triggering
a 10-metre tsunami that swept away everything in its path,
including houses, ships, cars and farm buildings on fire.
    The Red Cross in Geneva said the wall of water was higher
than some Pacific islands and a tsunami warning was issued for
almost the entire Pacific basin.
    At least 44 people had been killed in the quake and tsunami
in Japan, broadcaster NHK said, adding that many were missing.
The extent of the destruction along a lengthy stretch of Japan's
coastline suggested the death toll could rise significantly.
    The 8.9 magnitude quake, the most powerful since Japan
started keeping records 140 years ago, caused many injuries and
sparked fires while the tsunami prompted warnings to people to
move to higher ground in coastal areas.
    "The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in
northern Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters.
    Some nuclear power plants and oil refineries were shut down
and a refinery was ablaze.
             


    Around 4.4 million homes were without power in northern
Japan, media said. A hotel collapsed in the city of Sendai and
people were feared buried in the rubble.
    A ship carrying 100 people had been swept away by the
tsunami, Kyodo news agency added.
    Electronics giant Sony Corp , one of the country's
biggest exporters, shut six factories, as air force jets raced
toward the northeast coast to determine the extent of the
damage. 
    The Bank of Japan, which has been struggling to boost the
anaemic economy, said it would do its utmost to ensure financial
market stability as the yen and Japanese shares fell.
    "I was terrified and I'm still frightened," said Hidekatsu
Hata, 36, manager of a Chinese noodle restaurant in Tokyo, where
buildings shook violently. "I've never experienced such a big
quake before."
    The Philippine and Indonesia issued tsunami alerts, reviving
memories of the giant tsunami which struck Asia in 2004. The
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued alerts for countries to
the west and across the Pacific as far away as Colombia and
Peru.
    The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world
in the past century.
    There were several strong aftershocks. In Tokyo, there was
widespread panic. An oil refinery near the city was on fire,
with dozens of storage tanks under threat.
    "People are flooding the streets. It's incredible. Everyone
is trying to get home but I didn't see any taxis in Ginza, where
there are usually plenty," said Koji Goto, a 43-year-old Tokyo
resident.
    TV footage showed a muddy wall of water carrying debris
across a large swathe of coastal farmland near the city of
Sendai, which has a population of one million. Ships in once
coastal area were lifted from the sea into a harbour where they
lay helplessly on their side.
    Sendai is 300 km (180 miles) northeast of Tokyo and the
epicentre at sea was not far away.
    NHK television showed flames and black smoke billowing from
a building in Odaiba, a Tokyo suburb, and bullet trains to the
north of the country were halted.    Thick smoke was also
pouring out of an industrial area in Yokohama's Isogo area. TV
showed residents of the city running out of shaking buildings,
shielding their heads with their hands from falling masonry.
    TV footage showed boats, cars and trucks tossed around like
toys in the water after a small tsunami hit the town of Kamaichi
in northern Japan. An overpass, location unknown, appeared to
have collapsed and cars were turning around and speeding away. 
Kyodo said there were reports of fires in Sendai where waves
carried cars across the runway at the airport.
    "The building shook for what seemed a long time and many
people in the newsroom grabbed their helmets and some got under
their desks," Reuters correspondent Linda Sieg said in Tokyo.
"It was probably the worst I have felt since I came to Japan
more than 20 years ago."
    The U.S. navy said its ships had been unaffected by the
tsunami and were ready to provide disaster relief if needed.
China offered to provide earthquake relief.
    The quake struck just before the Tokyo stock market closed,
pushing the Nikkei down to end at a five-week low. Nikkei
futures trading in Osaka tumbled as much as 4.7 percent in
reaction to the news.
    The disaster also weighed on markets elsewhere.
   
    GREAT KANTO QUAKE    The quake was the biggest since records
began 140 years ago, according to the Japan Meteorological
Agency. It surpasses the Great Kanto quake of Sept. 1, 1923,
which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people
in the Tokyo area.
    The 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage and was
the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage
from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10
billion.
    Passengers on a subway line in Tokyo screamed and grabbed
other passengers' hands during the quake. The shaking was so bad
it was hard to stand, said Reuters reporter Mariko Katsumura.
    Hundreds of office workers and shoppers spilled into
Hitotsugi street, a shopping street in Akasaka in downtown
Tokyo.
    Household goods ranging from toilet paper to clingfilm were
flung into the street from outdoor shelves in front of a
drugstore.
    Crowds gathered in front of televisions in a shop next to
the drugstore for details. After the shaking from the first
quake subsided, crowds watched and pointed to construction
cranes on an office building up the street with voices saying,
"They're still shaking!", "Are they going to fall?"
    Asagi Machida, 27, a web designer in Tokyo, sprinted from a
coffee shop when the quake hit.
    "The images from the New Zealand earthquake are still fresh
in my mind so I was really scared. I couldn't believe such a big
earthquake was happening in Tokyo."
    The U.S. Geological Survey earlier verified a magnitude of
7.9 at a depth of 15.1 miles and located the quake 81 miles east
of Sendai, on the main island of Honshu. It later upgraded it to
8.9.
    Japan's northeast Pacific coast, called Sanriku, has
suffered from quakes and tsunamis in the past and a 7.2 quake
struck on Wednesday. In 1933, a magnitude 8.1 quake in the area
killed more than 3,000 people.
    Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's mostismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20
percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
(Writing by John Chalmers and Miral Fahmy; Tokyo bureau and Asia
Desk, Editing by Dean Yates; Singapore +65 6870 3815)

Mexican clean-up urged to help Caribbean tourism, Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reported by Reuters:

* Traces of pesticides, cocaine, in Caribbean aquifers
* U.N.-backed study urges cleanup as population grows
* Pollution could jeopardise future growth of tourism


By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Pollutants ranging from pesticides to illicit drugs have been found in fresh water aquifers beneath a Caribbean resort in Mexico and could damage future tourism unless the region cleans up, a U.N.-backed study said on Sunday.
It said that samples taken from a labyrinth of water-filled caves beneath the "Riviera Maya" south of the city of Cancun showed contamination mainly from sewage, as well as from highways or even golf courses.

The amounts of pollution, including tiny traces of cocaine excreted in sewage, were not considered a health threat today but tighter controls were needed since the region's population was projected to surge tenfold by 2030, it said.

"The region has to pay more attention to sustainable development practices and minimise pollution," said lead author Chris Metcalfe, of Canada's Trent University and the U.N. University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
"If they let things go, they will kill the goose that lays the golden egg -- tourism," he told Reuters of an area with attractions including palm-fringed beaches, scuba-diving and Mayan ruins at Tulum.

The study, in the journal Environmental Pollution, did not estimate the cost of limiting pollution in the area
.
Traces of shampoo, toothpaste, perfumes, caffeine and nicotine were also found in the water, as well as pesticides -- apparently from golf courses in a region which has little agriculture -- and pollution from cars and trucks.

CAVES
The polluted water seeps into the system of caves beneath the Riviera Maya that flows into the Caribbean Sea.
The pollution may have contributed, along with over-fishing disease and climate change to a loss of about 50 percent of reefs off the coast since 1990, the study said.
The region was suffering problems similar to those of parts of Florida decades ago that had been successfully contained. Mexico had about 22 million foreign tourists in 2009, making it the 10th most visited country, according to U.N. data.
"It is essential to develop and maintain adequate wastewater treatment infrastructure," the study said. Only 32 percent of the population in the state of Quintana Roo have municipal wastewater treatment systems.
It urged a halt to a practice of pumping sewage into a layer of salty water under the aquifers. And it recommended laying impermeable liners beneath golf courses, as done in Florida, to prevent the run-off of pesticides. Other recommendations were to preserve remaining mangroves to protect the coasts.
For Reuters latest environment blogs, click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

Flood of money needed to fix China's water woes, Posted by Meosha Eaton

By Lucy Hornby and Jane Lanhee Lee

    BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Feb 16 (Reuters) - China is now the

world's second largest economy, but hundreds of millions of its people still rely on fouled water that will cost billions of dollars to clean.

    Growing cities, overuse of fertilisers, and factories that heedlessly dump wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted.

    China needs to spend up to $20 billion a year to bring its urban water supplies up to standard, according to the World Bank. 

    Larger and wealthier cities have already started investing in the sector, but water supplies in smaller cities and the countryside still fall short, leaving about 800 million people without clean drinking water.

    Water infrastructure was given unusual pride of place this year in the government's first policy document of 2011, with 4 trillion yuan ($606.4 billion) allocated to water clean-up and rural water infrastructure over the next decade.

    "China is facing a grave challenge of water pollution," said Ma Jun, whose Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs names and shames water polluters.

    "If you travel along the coastal regions, which are the most populated areas in China, you can hardly find much clean

water... In the northern part of China you will find many rivers have either dried up or have turned into open sewers."

    While central planners worry that intense pollution could

choke crop production and poison the food chain, a prosperous

urban population wants clear tap water and clean showers.

    Foreign firms ploughed $1.7 billion into China's water

sector from 2004-2009, investing over $500 million in 2009

alone. The projects include wastewater treatment, municipal

water supply, industrial water supply and direct investment in Chinese water companies. 

         

    But undermining those ambitious plans is the stark fact that low Chinese water tariffs offer citizens and companies little incentive to save water.

    "It's still cheaper to just dump wastewater. The people

whose behavior will change if tariffs rise are residential

users, more than companies," said Michael Komesaroff, principal of Australia-based consultancy Urandaline Investments, who has studied Chinese industrial water use.

    "The industrial user knows he can probably talk his way out of any higher fees from the local government."

    China's water tariffs remain strikingly low among major

economies, despite the doubling in average water tariffs in

recent years to 39 U.S. cents a cubic metre, according to Global Water Intelligence.

    Of 19 major economies, only India charges less.

    

    CITY WATER

    Years of investment have already begun to pay off. Tap water in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities is now drinkable,

although few Chinese are willing to do so without boiling.

    But even in the cities, tariffs remain an issue.

    French water giants Suez Environnement and Veolia

 are major players in the Chinese municipal water

market, with over 17 contracts apiece. 

    They face rising competition for contacts from China's

home-grown water treatment firms like Beijing Capital Co

 , many of which have evolved from city water bureaus

or water equipment suppliers.

    But low residential water tariffs -- and the city water

authorities' inability to raise them -- means thin profits are pushing Suez and Veolia to target industrial water contracts instead. 

    At 14 million people served, China accounts for 20 percent of Suez' water consumers but only 7 percent of its revenues. 

    "I think [foreign water companies] find it difficult to make money in the Chinese environment," said Paul Kriss, sector coordinator for Urban Development at the World Bank in Beijing. 

    "Prices are capped, so you need to be sure you are going to be paid. It's not a high-margin business. It's not iPads."

    

    PRICE POINTS

    Where water is expensive, companies are already moving to

reduce consumption.

    "Water intensive industries tend to save water when it is in their benefit," said the World Bank's Kriss.

    Coca-Cola , whose bottlers use 2 litres of water for

every litre of Coke sold, has reduced water use at its China

plants by 35 percent since 2004, employing more efficient

techniques.

    "Certainly if there is any rise in water price that will

impact our cost of production," said Brenda Lee, Coca-Cola's

vice president for public affairs and communications for Greater China.

    "What we can try to do is try to mitigate the water rates

impact by being a more efficient water user. That is one of the drivers for us to be more water efficient."

    Coke draws on municipal water for most of its plants, but a 90-kilometre benzene slick that polluted the Songhua river in 2005 convinced it to source some of its supply directly from groundwater.

    Many of the worst polluters have little incentive to change.

    Fines for polluting are still generally lower than the costs of retrofitting a plant, and many of the biggest industrial users control their own water supply, making higher tariffs irrelevant.

    Even wastewater treatment creates its own demons, in the

form of 30 million tonnes of toxic sludge buried or dumped each year into rivers and the sea.

    China's plans for water include limiting annual consumption to 670 billion cubic metres, although it is not clear what mechanism would be used.

    Even if the cap is as crudely applied as current efforts to rein in energy usage, the end result could be greater

efficiencies, Komesaroff said.

    Massive investments meant to upgrade state-owned energy and metals plants and reduce their fuel usage has had a knock-on effect in raising water efficiency.

    "The big, fixed asset investment we've seen has resulted in new plants that are state-of-the-art in efficiency," Komesaroff said.

    "Shutting old or outdated plants saves water as well as

fuel, because inefficient fuel burners need more water for

cooling.

    ($1=6.596 Yuan)

    (Editing by Daniel Magnowski)