Monthly Archive for June, 2010

Page 2 of 7

Chlorine’s importance in water treatment set to grow

Published on 06/24/2010 in contaminated water, products and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: chlorine and water treatment, ion exchange water filtration, membrane water filtration, water treatment.

Image courtesy of: icis.com

“AS THE world becomes more populous, water is becoming more scarce. There is strong growth potential for all types of water treatment technologies, but some could do better as countries bid to quench their thirst in a cheap and environmentally friendly way.

“The UN’s estimates (see map below, which shows projected global water withdrawal as a percentage of total water available) are based on its medium-population projections made in 1998. According to these, more than 2.8bn people in 48 countries will face water stress, or scarce conditions, by 2025. Of these, 40 are in West Asia (also known as the Middle East), North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa.

“Over the next two decades, population increases and growing demands are projected to push all the West Asian countries into water scarcity conditions.

“By 2050, the number of countries facing water stress or scarcity could rise to 54, with a combined population of 4bn – about 40% of the projected global population of 9.4bn. It is striking to note that even some developed nations, such as the US and many European countries will see more serious water scarcity by 2025. This could be one reason that some are already calling water the “new oil.”

“In order to arrive at the different qualities of water required for its various applications, and for the world to meet its goals, it must be treated. There are several different ways to do this, which are either combined or taken in isolation, according to each instance. Essentially, the aim is to remove, or in some cases reduce, the contaminants present in the water to bring it to an acceptable level for its required end use.”

Sorry, Ritz-Carlton, Plant Based Bottles For Water Are Not Green

Published on 06/24/2010 in bottled water and products. 0 Comments Tags: biodegradable plastic, bioplastics water bottles, bottled water, corn plastics.

“Most biodegradable cups are made from PLA (polylactic acid) plastic. PLA is a polymer made from high levels of polylactic acid molecules. For PLA to biodegrade, you must break up the polymer by adding water to it (a process known as hydrolyzing). Heat and moisture are required for hydrolyzing to occur. So if you throw that PLA cup or fork in the trash, where it will not be exposed to the heat and moisture required to trigger biodegradation, it will sit there for decades or centuries, much like an ordinary plastic cup or fork….If the composting infrastructure is not in place to recover the bio-material from that corn-based cup, it’s really no better than the ubiquitous red plastic keg cup.

Prima water is locally sourced in the U.S., from approved municipal water sources that are regulated under the guidelines of the FDA (which spring waters do not have to follow). Independent of the source, the water is carefully processed under the guidance of Primo Water Company.

“They actually have the nerve to say that filling a bottle with tap water isbetter than spring water because tap water is regulated. They really have no shame.”

In Fracking Debate,’ Disclosure’ Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Published on 06/23/2010 in groundwater and policy. 0 Comments Tags: fracking and water pollution, halliburton, hydraulic fracturing and groundwater, marcellus shale drilling.

Map of Devonian and Marcellus shales. Retrieved from: schema-root.org

“Fracturing — vital to extracting gas from shale formations — involves injecting tanker-loads of water and sand into a gas well to blow apart the rock and release the gas. A small fraction of that concoction is a mixture of chemicals as mundane as ice cream thickener and as toxic as benzene.

“Worried that those chemicals could contaminate groundwater, environmentalists, community groups and some Democratic lawmakers are demanding detailed, well-by-well information about the type of chemicals that drillers inject. And they want it put on the Internet for all to see.

“Disclosure would shine a light and encourage companies to use less toxic chemicals,” said Amy Mall, an analyst who works on fracturing issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It gives individuals the ability to know what’s being used.”

“Companies say they, too, are for full disclosure of the ingredients, but only to state regulators and medical personnel willing to sign confidentiality agreements. Making public detailed lists of chemical constituents, they say, gives away valuable trade secrets. And they see the drive for disclosure as a stalking horse for harsh new restrictions on drilling that would bog down gas production in the United States.”

The Burmese villagers who face a flood of discontent and displacement

Published on 06/22/2010 in dams. 0 Comments Tags: chinese dam displacing burmese people, chinese theft of Burma water, Myitkyina, Myitsone Dam.

Harsh lessons: children at Tang Hpre, the centre for the Roman Catholic mission to the isolated Kachin tribes. The village is scheduled to be flooded by a Chinese-built dam. Families are gradually being moved to a new purpose-built settlement. Retrieved from: irishtimes.com

“In northern Burma up to 15,000 subsistence farmers and fishermen will be displaced from their homes when the Myitsone Dam, being built by China to provide electricity to China, is flooded. A special correspondent reports from a village that is to be wiped out

“IN A REMOTE part of Kachin state in northern Burma, or Myanmar, lies the village of Tang Hpre, one of a series of villages that will be underwater in a few years’ time. Nestled between the mountainous Chinese border and the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy River, it is home to

“Fr Jing Paw and his congregation of ethnic Kachin hill people. His redbrick church, built by Irish missionaries in 1952, towers above the shallow banks of the Irrawaddy, a stone monument in a jungle of the wicker-walled thatched houses that radiate from the church compound.

“The nearest big town, Myitkyina, is 45km away, almost two hours via dust roads with sharp bends cut into thick jungle.

“As Fr Jing Paw watches the heavy rain clouds of the wet season gather over hills across the river, he describes the Kachin people’s history, disturbed only by the distant laughter of children. Tang Hpre is a unique village, as the centre for the Roman Catholic mission to the isolated Kachin tribes, and also lying beside the confluence of the N’Mai and Mali – the “brother” and “sister” rivers that are the birthplace of the Irrawaddy. But Tang Hpre is disappearing. Families are being moved to a new settlement that has been built downstream, and in a few years the church, its boarding houses, school and village will be flooded in the name of progress.

“Life is becoming more difficult, in little ways, Fr Jing Paw confides. Do they plant crops for the coming season? Do they build that new school? There is a lot of confusion here, about relocation plans, and also information, compensation and rights. There is fear, too: fear of resisting, of trucks coming in the middle of the night, of labour camps, of speaking out, of the future, of how will they survive in the resettlements, of where they will find food, of how they will earn money. “Our people have been here for years,” explains the elderly Kachin priest. “These are our farms, our mountains. Here we know how to survive, but what will we do in a new place?”

Santa Cruz County proposes 20 percent cut in water use

Published on 06/22/2010 in groundwater and policy. 0 Comments Tags: groundwater in pajaro, groundwater in santa cruz, overdraft in pajaro valley, pajaro valley water consumption, watsonville water cutbacks, watsonville water restrictions, watsonville water use.

2006 Pajaro Valley groundwater monitoring. Retrieved from: PVWMA.dst.ca.us

“The Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau has proposed setting a goal of reducing water consumption in the Pajaro Valley by 20 percent.

“Such a reduction would go a long way toward solving a decades-old groundwater deficit but could involve sacrifices, such as fallowing land and crop conversions for agriculture and higher costs for urban consumers.

“It’s a goal that might be realistic over time,” said John E. Eiskamp, Farm Bureau president. “Obviously, it’s not going to happen overnight. But you have to have some kind of goal. You can’t just say conserve.”

“Preliminary figures on a new groundwater model being developed by the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency show a 14,000-acre-foot annual overdraft — the amount of water pumped but not replenished by annual rainfall. A 20 percent cut in water use would save about 11,000 acre-feet.”

Afghanistan’s Kabul Basin Faces Dry and Thirsty Future

Published on 06/22/2010 in climate change, contaminated water, drought, rivers and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: afghanistan water supply, groundwater in afghanistan, kabul river water.

Refuse fouls the Kabul River as it flows through Afghanistan's capital city. (Photo by Stefan in Kabul) Retrieved from: ENS.com

“In Afghanistan’s Kabul Basin, at least half the shallow drinking water wells supplied by groundwater are likely to become dry or inoperative within 50 years as a result of climate change, according to new research by U.S. and Afghan scientists.

“A combination of higher temperatures due to global warming and the increasing demands of a larger population is predicted to stress the basin’s water.

“These are the findings of a new study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey in collaboration with the Afghanistan Geological Survey, a division of the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines, and the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water.

“Training with USGS scientists has helped our engineers to modernize their skills and improve their capabilities,” said Afghanistan Geological Survey Director Mohammed Omar. “Our engineers are using these improvements as they monitor groundwater levels and water quality in the Kabul Basin.”

China flood chaos persists

Published on 06/22/2010 in floods and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: china floods, landslides in china.

“Torrential rains that hit southern China more than a week ago have triggered destructive floods and landslides that have killed at least 175 people.

“An estimated 10 million people have been affected by the disaster that has devastated the region and forced the evacuation of more than a million residents.

“Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett reports from the southern Chinese province of Fujian on how people are struggling to get basic aid and relief after rains destroyed key roads and bridges.”

retrieved from: Al Jazeera

chrismorrow

How to Read Your Water Quality Report

Published on 06/21/2010 in tap water. 0 Comments Tags: drinking water quality, tap water quality report, water quality, water quality report.

“From coast to coast, the news has been awash with reports of consumers kicking the bottled water habit and taking back the tap. People are catching on to the industry‚ marketing con job. They now know that bottled water is an overpriced rip-off that‚ no more pure or healthful than tap water. Furthermore, its production and transportation gobbles energy and spews pollution and climate-changing gases into our atmosphere.

“If youre among the growing mass of people making the move to tap water, perhaps you have questions about the quality of your city or town‚ water supply. Although most municipal water beats the stuff in the bottle, learning more about it makes sense.

“We all have the right to know what‚ in our drinking water. Congress codified this principle in 1996 with amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act. The changes greatly improve public access to information about drinking water quality.

“The Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1976, authorized EPA to set drinking water standards for all public water systems. Water utilities monitor and treat drinking water to abide by these federal standards. The 1996 amendments added a requirement for utilities to notify the public about any detected regulated contaminant and any water quality violation.

“The centerpiece of these right-to-know provisions is the annual water quality report. Although these reports are intended to help consumers make informed choices about their drinking water, they can be confusing and full of jargon. This guide is intended to help you understand what your water quality report is and how to interpret what it tells you.”

Impact of natural gas drilling environmental woes could linger

Published on 06/21/2010 in contaminated water and groundwater. 0 Comments Tags: gas drilling and groundwater, hydraulic fracturing and groundwater, oil and groundwater pollution, oil drilling and groundwater.

Photo: N/A, License: N/A, Created: 2010:05:17 12:45:09 “Much of the attention about the environmental risks of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale has focused on the potential for hydraulic fracturing to contaminate drinking water aquifers.

“According to the industry and both state and federal regulators, there has never been a confirmed case of contamination being caused by the fracturing – a process of injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemical additives underground at high pressure to break apart the rock.

“The industry takes a narrow view of what such contamination would mean, limiting it to what they say would be an impossible instance of the toxic mixture migrating through the new cracks caused by the fracturing operation, up a mile of rock, and into a drinking water aquifer.

“But legislators and federal regulators are increasingly looking at hydraulic fracturing as more than the isolated act of breaking apart the gas-bearing rock; they see it as part of an interconnected series of often hazardous steps, from trucking and storing toxic chemicals on a well site to disposing of the fluid laced with salt, metals and radiation that comes back out of the wells.”

Baltimore County wants a say in water issues, Council would establish a water management authority

Published on 06/20/2010 in privatization. 0 Comments

Retrieved from: sierraclub.typepad.com

“The Baltimore County Council is calling for the creation of a regional water authority to oversee management of the city-owned system and to address critical and costly infrastructure needs.

“The authority would represent the city and the surrounding counties that rely on municipal resources for the drinking water the city supplies daily to nearly 2 million customers. The County Council unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution earlier this month that asks the state and other jurisdictions to “investigate the feasibility of creating an independent water and sewer management authority to handle the region’s needs.”

“The staggering cost of maintaining, rehabilitating and replacing the system is better served by regional management, not one solely operated by the city,” said Councilman Kevin Kamenetz, who sponsored the resolution.”