Lead found in DPS drinking water.
DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) – One school in Decatur found lead levels higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) action limit.
The Decatur Public School District began testing all of their school buildings to check for lead in drinking water as a proactive approach.
The district hired an environmental consulting firm to check samples to make sure they are in accordance with above the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) action limit – 15 parts per billion (ppb) according to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Muffley school was found with lead levels over 15 ppb.
Two other schools tested with levels above 5 ppb.
Affected water fixtures will be repaired and/or replaced, according to DPS.
At no time will building occupants have access to water sources identified in excess of the action level of 5 ppb.
Parents are being notified if their school had levels higher 5ppb.
Below is a list of results released at this time: Elementary schools Harris: 11 Portable Water Sources 22 Water Samples Collected 0 Result Greater Than 5ppb 0 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) Muffley: 11 Portable Water Sources 22 Water Samples Collected 3 Result Greater Than 5ppb 3 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) Stevenson: 9 Portable Water Sources 18 Water Samples Collected 1 Result Greater Than 5ppb 0 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) K-8 Schools Johns Hill Magnet School: 11 Portable Water Sources 22 Water Samples Collected 1 Result Greater Than 5ppb 0 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) Other Educational Buildings Pershing: 32 Portable Water Sources 64 Water Samples Collected 0 Result Greater Than 5ppb 0 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) Southeast: 8 Portable Water Sources 16 Water Samples Collected 0 Result Greater Than 5ppb 0 Result Greater Than 15ppb (USEPA action limit) The remaining results are expected to be released in the coming days Results can be found by clicking here.

Six months into battle for Mosul, water and trauma care are key UN and partner priorities.
26 April 2017 – Safe drinking water is a major concern in Mosul, where a battle has been underway for the past six months to retake the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the United Nations humanitarian arm has said.
Some 450,000 people are currently displaced and the number continues “to increase rapidly,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Iraq said.
Humanitarian partners are trucking water to eastern Mosul at a rate of 2.3 million litres every day.
Nearly 28 neighbourhoods now have access to clean drinking water in the east.
However, “in newly retaken areas of western Mosul city, water trucking has already begun on a small scale, but significant increase in scale is required,” OCHA said.
The UN is also working with partners to re-establish a functioning city-wide water network.
Since mid-October, more than 8,100 people have been referred to hospitals in Mosul and surrounding areas.
In addition, the UN and its partners are working to house families and provide protection, particularly to women and children.
The 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan for Iraq requesting $985 million is currently 17 per cent funded, according to OCHA.

‘Global water resources need cleaning’ say millenials.
Global governments need to prioritise sanitising and managing water resources.
That’s according to a new poll from the World Water Council (WWC), which shows more than three-quarters of millennials think governments need to step up efforts to make global access to safe water a reality.
More than two-thirds of the same group aren’t convinced enough is being done to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring water and sanitation for all by 2030.
According to the WWC, around 91% of the global population now have access to an improved drinking water source, which is one that is likely to be protected from contamination.
This is up from 76% in 1990, with the largest improvements seen in China, Latin America and the Caribbean.
However in Sub-Saharan Africa, approximately a third of the population is still without improved access to drinking water sources.
There are also significant water resource disparities between rural and urban areas.
World Water Council President Benedito Braga said: “For every $1 (£0.78) invested in water and sanitation, there is an estimated $4.3 (£3.35) return in the form of reduced health care costs for individuals and society worldwide.” He added for every $1 billion (£780m) invested in water management, an estimated 28,500 jobs will be created.
A car manufacturer and water services company have partnered to turn wastewater into sustainable biofuel.

10 Million Bottles of Life-Saving Water Delivered to Communities in Need by Nestlé Waters North America and Americares.
The cost of natural disasters worldwide could reach $314 billion annually by 2030, up from around $250 billion now, according to a 2016 report by the World Bank, which cites rising climate change as a key threat to cities around the globe.
Natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes, and wild fires can quickly cut off access to basic, everyday needs.
Damage to infrastructure, as well as flooding, can contaminate drinking water supplies, not only inhibiting people’s ability to hydrate, but can also lead to sanitation issues and the spread of waterborne diseases.
Nestlé Waters North America has proudly partnered with the global non-profit for more than a decade to deliver nearly 10 million bottles of water– to communities in crisis.
Our work with Americares allows us to deliver clean water to communities most in need,” said Nelson Switzer, Chief Sustainability Officer at Nestlé Waters North America, based in Stamford, CT. “We are incredibly proud of the people who work at Americares and the disaster relief support they provide to those in need.” This partnership began in the wake of the devastation brought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when Nestlé Waters donated 10 truckloads of water — as part of a larger 1.5 million-bottle donation to all responding disaster agencies — to help Americares bring vital relief to survivors in affected areas.
As Americares’ main partner for providing bottled water in the United States, Nestlé Waters has been able to make more than 300 shipments of bottled water to communities in need since 2004.
“Direct deliveries from Nestlé Waters’ warehouses save critical time during emergencies, ensuring families can quickly access one of the most urgently needed relief items,” said Randy Weiss, Corporate Relations Director for Americares, which is also based in Stamford.
About 100,000 families in Flint were affected by the crisis, including many low-income families whose access to a steady supply of bottled water could be financially out of reach.
Together, the organizations will continue to deliver much-needed bottled water to U.S. families and communities in need.

Project designed for future mandates CELINA – City officials are planning a half-million-dollar expansion of the water treatment plant to improve quality and to prepare for any future treatment standards.
Plant superintendent Mike Sudman said the new process would treat for "remaining disinfection byproducts prior to the chlorine being added, any kind of minute pharmaceuticals that could be remaining, algal toxins that could get through the carbon."
The additional process should be operational by September, when lake algae begins to die, releasing toxins into the water.
Officials see the additional treatment process "as one more step" to improving the city’s drinking water, as well as getting "ahead of the curve," mayor Jeff Hazel said.
"Pharmaceuticals are not tested for in water and unfortunately we think that ‘well, yeah, there’s safety drop-off sites where people can take down used medicines,’ but there’s also the toilet bowl and so there’s a lot of things that go down for wastewater-wise and that gets into all bodies of water," Hazel continued.
Councilman Mike Sovinski asked how the process will impact operational costs.
Disinfection byproducts will continue to drop due to this, but no, operationally, you’re going to see an increase in electric use because that’s what it runs off, as well as maintenance (costs)," Sudman replied.
Sovinski asked if the plant had any problems last year.
Sudman replied that city officials had included the process in the design for the nearly $7 million granular activated carbon filtration system added in 2008 to eliminate trihalomethanes produced when organic material in the lake water is treated with chlorine.
An OEPA officials has informed city officials that adding advanced oxidation falls under the allowable uses of the grant dollars, Sudman said.

Talking toilets: Bill Gates uses 360 video to show how India is winning in its clean sanitation battle.
In India, a huge chunk of the population doesn’t have access to such clean toilets, instead using unsanitary ones or just doing their business out in the open.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aiming to change that with the Clean India campaign, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Bill Gates highlighted the program in his most recent Gates Notes blog post, complete with 360-degree video.
“What I love most about Clean India is that it identified a big problem, got everyone working on it, and is using measurement to show where things need to be done differently,” Gates wrote in the post.
“As the old saying goes, ‘What gets measured gets done.’ If you don’t set ambitious targets and chart your progress, you end up settling for business as usual — and in this case, business as usual would mean poor sanitation keeps killing more than half a million Indians every year.” The Clean India project is a good example of how massive public health initiatives can succeed.
Gates also writes that the project has a detailed plan to get that number to 100 percent by 2019, which would drastically improve public health across the country and perhaps even turn those unsafe toilets into places to make clean fertilizer.
Gates writes that making sanitary toilets widely available would drastically improve public health, make access to education easier for young girls and could even save the country almost $106 billion a year.
Now that’s a bold goal.
The billionaire Microsoft co-founder is no stranger to tackling the taboo subject of sanitation.
And in 2015, he sipped on a glass of drinking water made from human waste to prove a point about finding solutions.

A look at the conflict in Yemen as donors pledge $1B in aid.
SANAA, Yemen – For more than two years, Yemen has been in the grip of a conflict between a Saudi-led military coalition and Shiite rebels that has driven the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine.
Doctors Without Borders, known by the French acronym MSF, says it has treated 66,000 people.
Here is a look at the crisis and the pledged response.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says around 17 million people in Yemen are food insecure, "making this the world’s largest hunger crisis."
The United Nations says some 18.8 million people — more than half of Yemen’s total population of 27 million — need humanitarian or protection assistance.
Nearly 14 million lack access to drinking water.
Of the 12 million children in the country, 80 percent suffer daily from acute humanitarian needs.
Fewer than 45 percent of health facilities are now fully functioning, and the flow of "essential medicines" has fallen by nearly 70 percent, it said.
The United States, which supports the Saudi-led coalition, said it was committing nearly $94 million in additional humanitarian assistance, bringing its total to $526 million since the 2016 fiscal year.

Failing Gaza: undrinkable water, no access to toilets and little hope on the horizon.
Palestinians in Gaza remember a time when almost everyone could drink clean water from the tap.
Now less than four percent of fresh water is drinkable and the surrounding sea is polluted by sewage.
Her home is not connected to a sewage system so the family relies on open, uncovered pits to collect sewage, which they empty themselves.
Gaza’s water and sanitation crisis is escalating dangerously, with clean water increasingly scarce and almost a third of households not connected to a sanitation system.
Less than 16% of items needed to construct vital water infrastructure are reaching Gaza Israel’s blockade of Gaza severely limits materials from entering, making it incredibly difficult to develop water and sanitation infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population.
A project which could see the Amir family and other homes nearby connected to a sanitation system has been delayed due to essential equipment, such as water pipes and pumps, being until recently blocked from entering Gaza.
In the wake of the devastation in Gaza in 2014, the UN brokered an agreement – the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM) – between the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel, so construction materials could enter Gaza more easily.
Lack of funding and limited coordination have fatal consequences for families in Gaza: the international community must act Confronted with Israeli-imposed restrictions, even major donors are failing to facilitate the necessary equipment at the scale or speed needed to repair and develop Gaza’s deficient infrastructure.
The international community, including governments such as the UK, Germany and the Netherlands who fund the mechanism, must ensure that the security concerns of Israel do not violate the rights of civilians under occupation and therefore must immediately increase efforts to pressure Israel to allow the entry of materials.

Toward water and sanitation for all: featuring Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org.
Last week, on April 20, Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org, addressed ministers of finance, water and sanitation from across the world at the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Finance Ministers’ High Level Meeting at the 2017 World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings.
Mr. Damon urged ministers to consider the full breadth of financing options to achieve the goal of providing safe, affordable and sustainable water and sanitation for all.
Damon also introduced WaterCredit, a successful innovation by Water.org, and outlined how this has worked to reach over five million people to date.
“WaterCredit has enabled households living at the base of the economic pyramid to take out 1.2 million small loans for a toilet or tap.” he said.
“The loans have almost no defaults, with a global repayment rate of 99%.” Damon encouraged the ministers to consider how access to water and sanitation can be income enabling, and recommended that access to safe water can prevent poor people from getting hit by high healthcare costs due to the consumption of unsafe water.
In his closing remarks, Damon proposed that this issue cannot be tackled alone.
“We need our partners, the other civil society organizations, your ministries, and private finance to join together to increase efficiency in operations, set appropriate tariffs and make finance affordable and accessible to those living at the base of the economic pyramid,” he said.
Together we can solve the water and sanitation crisis by 2030.
Matt Damon’s remarks were livestreamed at World Bank Live and you can watch the replay here: http://live.worldbank.org/water-and-sanitation

Xylem Watermark & Project 24 : Guaduas Puerto Bogotá, Colombia.
Xylem Watermark supported Planet Water Foundation and Project 24 which will bring clean water to thousands of people across five countries including Cambodia, Colombia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines in 24 hours Xylem Watermark sponsored 6 projects as part of Planet Water Foundation’s Project 24, an ambitious undertaking on World Water Day, to build 24 clean water filtration systems (AquaTowers) in 24 communities across five countries; Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Colombia – in just 24 hours.
These projects reached a total of 6,000 people including the 2,739 children who attend the participating schools.
27 Xylem volunteers assisted in the construction of the community-based water systems, which will bring clean water to the world’s most disadvantaged communities.
Project 24: Guaduas Puerto Bogotá, Colombia Puerto Bogotá Village, located near the regions of Cundinamarca and Tolima, is home to nearly 4,000 people who earn a living through trade, raising livestock, and fishing.
The Magdalena River, which is the principal river of Colombia, is used by the local community for fishing, and sometimes, for consumption.
The main access to water for the local community and the school comes from a deep well that supplies water to an elevated water tank, but the water is not treated and is currently unsafe to drink.
People believe that because the village is so close to the Magdalena River, Puerto Bogota has good quality of water.
Every day he also has mothers and elderly women asking him to sell them water on credit so that they can prepare food with clean water.
As a result of the Project 24 AquaTower, this village now has access to clean drinking water for the first time.