Tag Archive for 'tap water'

Google Brings Water Data to Life

Published on 01/30/2012 in contaminated water, drought, peak water, tap water and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Photo retrieved from: circleofblue.org

“Fusion Tables, which was developed by Google engineers using sample research data about the global fresh water crisis provided by the Pacific Institute and Circle of Blue, is specifically designed to unlock a treasure trove of facts, trends, and scientific findings that until now have been sequestered in databases and spreadsheets not easily shared.

“Users can also display their data through a variety of visualizations: as a timeline, a graph or a map. The “fusion” of the data sets can link dissimilar information from the far corners of the Web to reveal patterns and trends that might be impossible to spot otherwise. This makes Fusion Tables a central hub for data collaboration, as anyone can publish and access files, which were formerly locked away in Excel spreadsheets, PDF reports, and hard-cover textbooks.

“There is an enormous amount of water data out there, but data by itself doesn’t tell the story; data are only numbers,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. “If we can find innovative ways to convert data into action, then data is important.”

“Fusion Tables created a scatter plot that revealed a noticeable and predictable correlation of death by water-related illness, wealth and safe drinking water availability. As the gross domestic product per capita increased, the percentage of a country’s population connected to tap water increased, and child deaths related to diarrhea decreased.

“As Circle of Blue does with front-line reporting of water issues, we hope to provide new ways of looking at problems, collecting vast amounts of information and making it widely relevant, visual and accessible,” Halevy said.”

Read more: circle of blue

Sami Oueida

Hangzhou acid spill sparks panic water buying

Published on 06/07/2011 in bottled water, contaminated water, dams and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Retrieved from: shanghai daily

“A round of panic buying of mineral water swept the city of Hangzhou on Monday after a highway accident saw 20 tons of a toxic chemical flood a nearby river, affecting the drinking water supply of hundreds of thousands of residents.

“The accident happened at 11 pm Saturday when a truck carrying 31 tons of carbolic acid was hit by another heavy lorry. The crash punctured a large hole in its tank, causing the chemical to leak out and be washed into the river by heavy rains. 

“The Xin’an River, a tributary of the Fuchun and Qiantang rivers, is the main source of drinking water for several cities in Zhejiang, including Hangzhou, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

“Lao Xinxiang, a spokesman of the Hangzhou Environment Protection Bureau, told reporters on Monday that five water utility companies in the city had been ordered to stop drawing water from the Xin’an, affecting 552,200 residents.

“The acid has been greatly diluted in the water, and the current level will cause little harm to people,” Hao said, referring to the increased discharge at the Xin’an River dam that is trying to rapidly dilute the spill.”

Read more: Global Times

sammykayed

Where Does Our Water Come From?

Published on 04/22/2011 in tap water and water conservation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

“In observance of Earth Day, Patch offers this two-part series on the sources of our local water supply and the conservation efforts that are underway to use each drop wisely.

“Did you know that more than 60 percent of the water used in the Beach Cities and the Palos Verdes Peninsula is imported from faraway places?

“The West Basin Municipal Water District, which serves the South Bay and other nearby communities, gets the majority of its supply from two sources: the State Water Project’s system of reservoirs and aqueducts delivers water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California and from runoff of melting snow in the Eastern Sierra Nevada; the Colorado River Aqueduct brings water from the Lake Havasu reservoir on the California-Arizona border.

“The remainder comes from a combination of groundwater and recycled water and other local sources, such as water that was originally imported but remains unused as “conserved water.”"

Read more: Patch

jenna cavelle

California water wars focus on Salton Sea, Colorado River pact

Published on 01/17/2011 in agriculture, desertification, drought, groundwater, tap water and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

“The evaporating Salton Sea is the flashpoint for the latest dispute in California’s water wars, testing an uneasy alliance of farmers and city dwellers to wean the state from reliance on Colorado River water.

“California officials agreed in 2003 to stop taking more than its share from the Colorado, ensuring that Arizona and Nevada don’t get shortchanged. The plan’s centerpiece called for shifting enough water from the agricultural Imperial Valley to serve nearly 600,000 San Diego area homes.

“The huge farm-to-city water transfer threatened California’s largest lake . More than 200 feet below sea level, the Salton Sea survives on water that seeps through the soil of Imperial Valley farms.

“For seven years, the solution has been to pump enough water into the Salton Sea to offset what was lost to San Diego. The 350-square-mile lake is evaporating at a rate of roughly 450 million gallons a year, but the thinking was to prevent the San Diego transfer from hastening its demise.”

Read more: The Las Vegas Review-Journal

jenna cavelle

Fluoride in drinking water: Will the EPA get tougher?

Published on 01/10/2011 in contaminated water and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , .

fluoride
“Environmental health groups are now looking to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose tougher standards on fluoride in drinking water, building on a decision Friday by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to lower the recommended level for the first time in nearly 50 years.

“The HHS move came in the wake of a government study showing that about 2 out of 5 adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of excessive fluoride. In extreme cases, teeth can become pitted.

“The dangers may go beyond cosmetic issues. The EPA released two new reviews of research on fluoride Friday. One study found that prolonged, high intake of fluoride can increase the risk of brittle bones, fractures and crippling bone abnormalities.”

Read more: Los Angeles Times

jenna cavelle

Tap water kills dozens of fish in Duncanville creek

Published on 05/30/2010 in contaminated water, rivers and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , .

“City workers spent hours Friday afternoon trying to clean up a massive fish kill on Ten Mile Creek in Duncanville.

“Crews with the cities of Duncanville and Cedar Hill walked along the shore picking up dozens of dead fish.

“Neighbors noticed the creek’s water changing color earlier in the week, but started smelling the problem Friday morning.

“When I came out this morning, I smelled something really strong,” said D.J. McCasland, who has lived on the creek for 15 years. “I walked down here, looked over to the creek, and there were hundreds of fish piled up on the ledge — dead!”

“Although homes in Duncanville noticed the problem, city leaders blame a water main break upstream in neighboring Cedar Hill. On Thursday morning, crews discovered a 16-inch water main break.

“Officials fixed the leak within hours, but they aren’t sure how long the main was spewing chlorinated tap water into the creek.

“Tap water is extremely toxic to fish.”

read more: WFAA

chrismorrow

Virginia Tech professor uncovered truth about lead in D.C. water

Published on 05/22/2010 in contaminated water and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

“Sometimes Don Quixote beats the windmill.”

“It happened for Marc Edwards, a lean, intense Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor. Drawing on what he called his own “world-class stubbornness,” he mounted a six-year campaign that succeeded last week in forcing the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to admit that it had misled the public about the risk of lead in the District’s drinking water.”

“The CDC, which is the nation’s principal public health agency, made the confession in a “Notice to Readers” published in an official weekly bulletin Friday. It came a day after a scathing House subcommittee report said the agency knowingly used flawed and incomplete data when it assured D.C. residents in 2004 that their health hadn’t been hurt by spikes in lead in the drinking water.”

Read more: Washington Post

jenna cavelle

Mayor: Boston schools open despite huge main break

Published on 05/02/2010 in contaminated water, rivers and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

A worker inspects the water main, Sunday, May ...

“The head of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority also didn’t shy from stating the magnitude of the problem created when a 10-foot-wide steel pipe burst at a seam Saturday morning. Over the next eight hours, an estimated 65 million gallons spilled into the Charles River and forced officials to tap a reservoir filled with untreated water, potentially contaminating the supply to 750,000 households.

“For the people in the water industry, it is everyone’s worst nightmare: to lose your main transmission linecoming into a metropolitan area,” said MWRA Executive Director Frederick Laskey.”

read more: Associated Press

chrismorrow

Bottled and Sold: What’s really in our bottled water

Published on 04/18/2010 in contaminated water and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

See full size image

“Water Number: More than 100. After months of requests and two Freedom of Information Act requests to the US Food and Drug Administration (which regulates some bottled waters), I got a list of recalls of bottled waters in the U.S. Combined with other research, I ultimately compiled a list of more than 100 bottled water recalls, affecting millions of bottles of water.

“This list (which I will soon post online) includes a remarkable list of contaminants. In addition to the benzene found in Perrier, bottled water has been found to contain mold, sodium hydroxide, kerosene, styrene, algae, yeast, tetrahydrofuran, sand, fecal coliforms and other forms of bacteria, elevated chlorine, “filth,” glass particles, sanitizer, and in my very favorite example, crickets.”

Read more: SF Gate

chrismorrow

Growing concern in the water: Alarmed by latest research, the Obama administration is conducting a broad review of toxic weed killer atrazine that could lead to tighter restrictions

Published on 04/17/2010 in groundwater, policy and tap water. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Atrazine spraying

“Despite growing health concerns about atrazine, an agricultural weed killer sprayed on farm fields across the Midwest, most drinking water is tested for the chemical only four times a year — so rarely that worrisome spikes of the chemical often go undetected.

“Atrazine has been banned in Europe because it contaminates groundwater, but it remains widely used in the U.S., where the EPA endorsed its continued use as recently as 2003. Federal records show the review was heavily influenced by industry and relied on studies financed by Syngenta, a Swiss-based company that manufactures most of the atrazine sprayed in the U.S.”

read more: Chicago Tribune

chrismorrow