Several Tewkesbury schools closed due to lack of water

UPDATE: At 10.39am Severn Trent Water tweeted that additional supplies of bottled water are on their way to Morrisons – four lorries with 100,000 litres are due to arrive within the hour.
They are also looking at setting up another site.
Follow their updates here.
Several schools are closed today due to a lack of water or very low pressure in the Tewkesbury area.
Severn Trent Water have apologised, saying their teams are working to "get things back to normal".
We’re using drones to find where the burst is and we now even have a helicopter out.
We know how difficult it is to have no water, and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience this will be causing.
Bottled water is being supplied to customers for collection from the Morrisons on Barton Lane, Tewkesbury GL20 8AB until 10pm.
The water supplier say they are also taking water into the area using their "fleet of tankers" and will work to deliver bottled water to vulnerable customers.
Their 24-hour emergency contact line is: 0800 783 4444 The list of schools that are shut can be viewed here.

Majority of Ardee householders have water restored

ARDEE Water Treatment Plant is operating at full production levels since 10am yesterday and the main reservoir located at Sliabh Breagh is refilling slowly, according to Irish Water.
Most areas in Ardee had normal water supply restored from yesterday afternoon with the exception of those areas served by the Blakestown reservoir in Blakestown, Kilpatrick, Cluide, Rathgory, Mullameelan, Mulladrillen, Stabannan, Dromin and surrounding areas.
The water supply was expected to be restored to these areas later in the evening.
Currently, limited supply is been pumped to Blakestown Reservoir.
To supplement this, two tankers brought water to the reservoir and this continued throughout the night until the water level refilled.
It was expected that water supply levels would return to normal overnight.
Irish Water was also back feeding water to Ardee from Collon to increase the level of available water for customers.
This is primarily due to the configuration of the network and water pressure variations in the area.
"We apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused as a result of the outage and thank them for their patience will we work to restore a water supply to all customers, said an Irish Water spokesperson.
Customers can contact the Irish Water customer care helpline 24/7 on 1850 278 278 or visit www.water.ie or on Twitter @IWCare for updates or with any queries.

Water contamination fears at Preston sheltered housing complex

Residents at a sheltered housing complex in Preston have have been told to avoid drinking their tap water over fears it could be contaminated, says United Utilities.
Engineers attended the property on the same day and an inspection was carried out at the 43 flat complex,which is run by Your Housing Group.
Residents have been given bottled water to use while the investigations are carried out.
Resident Tom Beatty, 81, said: "I first noticed the problem when there was a foul smell when I put the tap on.
"One of the lads here phoned the water board to get them to come and take a look.
“In conjunction with Public Health England (PHE), we issued a precautionary ‘Do No Drink Notice’ and offered bottled water to all residents.
"We are monitoring the situation alongside PHE, and continue to offer advice to the Your Housing Group.” A spokesperson for Your Housing Group, the company responsible for running the accommodation, said: “The safety of our residents is of utmost importance to us, so we are advising residents not to drink water from the tap as a precaution until United Utilities confirms it is safe to drink.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.
We are continuing to work with United Utilities to resolve the issue as soon as possible.” A spokesman for Preston City Council confirmed that their Environmental Health and Safety Team have been made aware that United Utilities have issued a precautionary ‘do not drink advice’ at New Brook House.
The cause of the problem is still under investigation

More complaints emerge on conditions at water bottling plant

More complaints have been made about activities at a Christchurch water bottling plant where migrant workers are alleged to be routinely involved in unsafe work practices.
A range of agencies are now involved, looking at issues ranging from trespassing, waste disposal, immigration, and the building’s safety.
The plant was supposed to begin operating on Monday, but it had yet to receive its consent to bottle water.
Local contractors have reported wide-ranging issues at the site, revealed in photos that Stuff obtained.
* Neighbouring suburban Christchurch water bottling plants can tap billions of litres * Foreign firm allowed to bottle millions of litres of water a day from Christchurch aquifers * For sale: 40 billion litres of Canterbury’s purest water * From national park to overseas: Plan to export billions of litres of West Coast water * The bottled water giants who are taking our water Worksafe has issued notices to the company, and Christchurch City Council had investigated whether workers were sleeping on site.
Images seen by Stuff, however, appear to show a worker sleeping while ensconced in boxes, with a mattress visible nearby.
He said few of the people on the site, including supervisors, spoke English, a detail corroborated by another contractor.
The water take was of particular concern given the current dry spell and the larger water bottling plant planned for next door, he said.
Residents had also been concerned about health and safety practices.
The plant is one of at least 70 water bottling operations known to be consented in New Zealand.

Tewkesbury homes without water after Severn Trent pipe bursts

Severn Trent has said water supply issues are affecting Tewkesbury because of a burst pipe.
The loss of water has hit the provider’s customers in the GL19 and GL20 areas of Tewkesbury.
A Severn Trent spokesperson said: "We believe this is being caused by a burst pipe and we’re working as quickly as we can to locate the problem so that we can get it fixed and return everything to normal.
"We know how difficult it is to have no water, especially at this time of day when you’re trying to get ready for work and school, and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience this will be causing.
"We’d like to reassure our customers that we’re doing everything we can to get the water supplies back on as soon as we can."
The supplier added that water is being moved around its network of pipes and also brought into the area using a fleet of tankers.
It is also working to deliver bottled water to the most vulnerable customers in the affected areas.
In October thousands of homes across Cheltenham were left without Severn Trent’s water supply because of a burst pipe.

Landowners seek answers to troubling GenX issue

HOPE MILLS — First came the presentations, then the questions — and the heat.
At a forum Thursday evening in a packed Gray’s Creek High School auditorium, representatives of three state regulatory agencies presented updated information on private well results and additional sampling plans regarding the chemical compound GenX.
Members of an audience of more than 350 people were angry, frustrated and came seeking answers.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality and its Department of Health and Human Services hosted the public information session.
If my well tests positive at any level, I’m not accepting that.” According to DEQ, 115 private well owners living near the Chemours plant are receiving bottled water because of GenX detections above the provisional state health goal of 140 parts per trillion.
Samples from an overall 349 wells have been collected and verified, the state agency said, with 144 of those indicating a detection of GenX below the health goal and 30 wells showing no detections of the chemical.
The wells the state are sampling … we’re paying for that out of our budget — the state department of water quality.” “That’s good.
Isaac Thorp, a Raleigh lawyer representing some concerned landowners, asked if those living near the Chemours plant off N.C. 87 are being poisoned by cancer-causing chemicals.
Would the state cover the costs of medical diagnostic testing of those residing in the vicinity of the plant: “Is it in everybody today?” he asked rhetorically.
“The state is doing the best it can right now.

GenX community forum tonight at Gray’s Creek High

The state is hosting a community forum Thursday night at Gray’s Creek High School to discuss the chemical compound GenX that has been found in private wells near the Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.
[File photo/The Fayetteville Observer] Staff writer @RodgerMullen State officials have ordered Chemours to provide bottled water to 30 more well owners near the company’s Fayetteville Works facility after unacceptable levels of the chemical GenX showed up in tests, the state Department of Environmental Quality said Wednesday.
The testing results will be discussed at a community forum Thursday in the Gray’s Creek High School auditorium.
“We will ensure that Chemours is providing bottled water to those homeowners with elevated concentrations of GenX, and work with Bladen and Cumberland counties to develop long-terms solutions for clean water.” At the department’s direction, Chemours has expanded its sampling to 450 parcels one mile from the facility’s property boundary.
In all, there are 115 private well owners living near Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility who are receiving bottled water because of GenX detections above the provisional state health goal of 140 parts per trillion, the department said.
So far, samples from 349 wells have been collected and verified from both the initial sampling by DEQ and Chemours, and the recent expanded sampling.
The spill came to light one month after it occurred when department officials questioned Chemours about state water quality results indicating elevated concentrations of GenX at Chemours’ primary wastewater discharge outfall.
In conjunction with moving to revoke Chemours’ wastewater permit, DEQ officials also notified Chemours the state would suspend its permit to discharge process wastewater from its manufacturing area including the areas where GenX and other fluorinated compounds are produced effective Nov. 30.
On Thursday, state environmental and health officials will be on hand at an information session to answer questions about the private well results and plans for continued sampling.
They also will discuss results from the initial and expanded rounds of sampling, plans to continue testing of drinking water wells, and the status of alternative water solutions.

A month without water in Questa

It didn’t bother him that it was late at night and early in the morning when he had to schlep outside of his home, meet up with a couple other volunteers and go read water meters or walk stretches of the distribution lines.
Those were the only hours the village of Questa was still enough to do his work.
During the last weeks of December and the first weeks of January, Garcia helped Questa’s officials and employees troubleshoot the deceptively complex problems that led to the water crisis, an outage that left most of the village’s residents without running water for over a month during last year’s Christmas season.
"It’s better," Garcia said.
But the issues with the village’s water system go much further back than that.
When Danny Garcia was the utilities superintendent for the village in the 1980s, "we knew there were some problems even back then," he said.
And there were a lot of problems.
But after they fixed that issue and got water in the major distribution lines going to the schools and some residents, pressure built and in a couple of places popped the lines like an over-inflated bicycle tire, Garcia said.
Volunteers had to walk the water lines in order to find the leaks caused by too much pressure.
The village has to absorb the cost of the new well, about $300,000, because it is an infrastructure upgrade.

Water problems continue for householders in County Limerick estate

TWENTY households in an estate in County Limerick are continuing to rely on a water tanker and a supply of bottled water because of hydrocarbons in the piped supply to their homes.
But, almost four months after sampling of the water began, no explanation has yet been found for the higher than expected presence of hydrocarbons detected in the water supply to O’Connor Park in Ardagh.
Since September, the residents of the estate have been advised not to drink the water or to use it for cooking, ice-making or brushing teeth.
However, Irish Water told residents, unless any petrol-type odour is noticed, this water can be used for toilet flushing, bathing, showering, laundry and dishwashing.
This advice is on a precautionary basis, Irish Water has stressed repeatedly.
“While the level of hydrocarbons detected is above expected background levels, it does not breach the Drinking Water Regulations,” a spokesman for the company said.
“This appears to be a localised issue related to the pipe network supplying the estate,” he continued.
“However, some hydrocarbons, at low levels, have previously been detected in the network in Ardagh village.
It is thought that this may have been coming from O’Connor Park, so a non-return valve has been fitted on the pipe into the park and regular monitoring is carried out on the Ardagh supply.” Irish Water has been working closely with Limerick City and County Council in a bid to identify and resolve the source of the problem, the spokesman said.
The spokesman apologised for any inconvenience caused to residents and thanked them for their patience.

Fluoride in the Water: Too Much of a Good Thing?

On top of that, millions of Americans rely on water supplies with what federal agencies consider more than the optimal level of the chemical.
The more severe forms of skeletal fluorosis typically are associated with long-term exposure to particularly high levels of fluoride.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its parent agency, Health and Human Services, consider fluoride concentrations in water of 0.7 parts per million, or ppm, the sweet spot – a level high enough to prevent tooth decay but low enough to avoid mild dental fluorosis or more serious problems.
CDC officials estimate that nearly 900,000 Americans receive drinking water with fluoride above 2 ppm, which they say is high enough to erode tooth enamel.
A critical National Research Council report in 2006 called for reducing that limit, saying it raises the risk of problems such as bone fractures.
“Unfortunately, it’s a very politicized issue.” For its part, the American Dental Association downplays the consequences of high fluoride concentrations in some drinking water systems.
Even so, some utilities continue to fluoridate water to above the 0.7 ppm level.
What’s more, Trader says her teeth are very fragile.
The 2006 report by the National Research Council found that 10 percent of children drinking water fluoridated to around 4 ppm suffer severe dental fluorosis.
Bottled water isn’t necessarily any better than public water supplies.