Like Local 3 News on Facebook: WASHINGTON—Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05), Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Senator Todd Young (R-IN)Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to protect families living in assisted housing from lead found in drinking water.
The Get the Lead Out of Assisted Housing Act of 2018 would help protect families from lead exposure by requiring the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to inspect for lead service lines, create a grant program to address lead contamination and allow a cross-check for lead in water when remediating a home for lead found in paint.
“My hometown of Flint knows all too well the consequences of lead in drinking water,” said Kildee.
This bipartisan bill would expand the way our country protects families from lead poisoning by requiring water testing for the first time in assisted housing.
Clean drinking water is not a partisan issue and I’m proud to work with Senator Duckworth and Senator Young on this important legislation.” “It’s unacceptable that families who are trying to get ahead can get sick by drinking water in their own homes because the requirements to check for lead in water aren’t in place to protect them,” Duckworth said.
I will keep working to ensure every family in America – no matter where they live – has access to clean and safe drinking water.” “No one should have to worry about the safety of their drinking water, but families are facing the threat of lead contamination in their homes and communities,” Young said.
“Our bipartisan legislation requires HUD to identify and address lead contamination at the source.
Activities under this grant program include creating a lead service line inventory, testing for lead in the drinking water at child care centers and schools, testing for lead at public facilities like public water fountains and remediation.
Including testing, notification, and controlling for lead in drinking water when providing grants for the lead-based paint hazard reduction program.
This will ensure that when a home that contains lead-based paint is being remediated, that lead in the drinking water can also be addressed if a threat exists in the same home.

A research team at Wayne State University recently received a four-year, $1.57 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for its project, "Water and Health Infrastructure Resilience and Learning."
The project — which includes examining drinking water and public health systems — will provide new insights as to how these systems interact, with a focus on crisis events.
The team will also explore how these systems learn about and adapt to changes and how the public engages with these systems.
Shawn McElmurry, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering, and Matthew Seeger, Ph.D., professor of communications and dean of the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, will lead the multi-institutional team.
"This project builds on previous work conducted in Wayne County and Flint, Michigan," said Seeger.
This grant will allow us to extend that understanding."
The project also aims to understand how tightly coupled interdependent systems such as water and public health can help enhance resilience.
It will also include a national survey to understand how well water and public health infrastructures can adapt to future challenges.
"Our multidisciplinary team gives us the ability to study these systems from multiple perspectives," said McElmurry.
"We learned the value of this in Flint, where changes in water quality impacted more than just the water distribution system.

(PETS/DOGS) We all know about the importance of drinking water.
Here’s why you should be focused on ensuring that your dog gets enough cool, clean water to drink.
Joint Pain & Health Water doesn’t only serve vital organ function–it also helps lubricate and cushion joints.
This can be particularly important for an elderly dog who may have joint or movement issues.
Water also helps organs secrete the enzymes and acid necessary to complete the digestive process fully.
Eliminates Waste & Toxins After your dog has digested his/her food, they need to get rid of the waste in their body.
A Sign of Health & Vitality A dog who drinks the right amount of water is typically healthy.
Notice if your dog starts drinking an excessive amount of water, or if, alternatively, he/she stops drinking water altogether.
Making sure your dog drinks water can help ensure proper hydration, which provides a slew of health benefits.
While you drink your proper eight 8-ounce glasses a day, you can ensure your dog drinks enough as well–and both your doctor and vet will be very proud!

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Halal Food Authority has said that the students of 300 religious seminaries out of 400 in the province have no access to clean drinking water.
According to a statement issued here on Tuesday, the authority checked water supply system in the seminaries across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after a report about food poisoning to a student in Kohat due to contaminated water.
It stated that most of the water tanks were open that could result in any food poisoning incident.
It said that more than 200 seminaries were served with improvement notices along with the directions to install water filtration plants.
The statement said that the survey was carried out in all the divisions of the province.
Attaullah Khan, a spokesman for the food authority, said that three-day crackdown was completed wherein 400 seminaries across the province were checked.
He added that the kitchens and water tanks of the seminaries were checked and found rusty, unclean and against the food safety standards.
“The mixture of food collected in the localities was major cause of food poisoning.
Different food items react when get mixed with each other,” he added.
Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2018

(Reuters Health) – Drinking water violations may be more common in U.S. counties with greater numbers of minorities, low-income families, and uninsured households, a new report suggests.
More efforts are needed to ensure everyone in the U.S. has access to safe drinking water, the authors say.
“The Flint Water Crisis demonstrated that while the United States has one of the safest drinking water supplies in the world, there are problems.
McDonald is with the Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Jones is with the University of Missouri in Columbia.
They also analyzed demographic data from the American Community Survey.
McDonald and Jones say they excluded Indian reservations and U.S. territories because in those communities, the historical injustices that have contributed to water quality, access, and administrative challenges are outside the scope of this study.
The violations were especially problematic in water systems that serve large populations (i.e., 50,000 people or more), McDonald and Jones reported in the American Journal of Public Health.
We should be proactive versus reactive.
On its website, the EPA explains, "The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is the federal law that protects public drinking water supplies throughout the nation.
(bit.ly/2IcOe0R) “We need to think globally, act locally about drinking water supplies,” McDonald and Jones said.

There are 580 communities in Armenia where residents don’t have access to clean drinking water.
The village’s 63 households, 280 residents in all, get their drinking water from the local river.
75-year-old Liana Davoyan has lived in the village since 1960 and has never consumed clean water.
Davoyan is particularly concerned that the river water is bad for young people in the village.
“We drink river water.
It’s dirty.
And when it rains, the water is murky.
“The pipes are old and rotten.
Like others, Hounanyan collects the water in pails, letting it sit for hours before ladling water from the top to drink.
Residents have their fingers crossed that they’ll no longer have to deal with dead insects and sand in their drinking water by the new year.

DETROIT (September 24, 2018) – A research team at Wayne State University recently received a four-year, $1.57 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for its project, "Water and Health Infrastructure Resilience and Learning."
The project — which includes examining drinking water and public health systems — will provide new insights as to how these systems interact, with a focus on crisis events.
The team will also explore how these systems learn about and adapt to changes and how the public engages with these systems.
The project also includes researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina.
"This project builds on previous work conducted in Wayne County and Flint, Michigan," said Seeger.
The project also aims to understand how tightly coupled interdependent systems such as water and public health can help enhance resilience.
It will also include a national survey to understand how well water and public health infrastructures can adapt to future challenges.
Our team includes political scientists, sociologists, disaster researchers, epidemiologists and water engineers, giving us many tools for examining the complexities of water and health systems."
For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

But that 2015 success now seems under threat after the Salvadoran national assembly recently took steps activists believe will lead to the privatisation of the country’s water supplies.
Water everywhere for profit in Nejapa, but few drops for local people to drink | Claire Provost and Matt Kennard Read more “They are fragile ordinances, so the companies [are] looking for a way to avoid the local councils having stronger ones,” said Santiago Rodríguez, a pastor with the Salvadoran Lutheran church who works in Nejapa and the surrounding areas.
“The danger is that the local ordinances are weakened even more.” El Salvador is one of the most water-stressed countries in Latin America; according to the environment ministry, 95% of the country’s surface water is contaminated.
Water scarcity has caused conflicts, pitting residents against companies like Coca-Cola, multinational mining company OceanaGold, and large-scale sugar cane producers.
About 42% of rural El Salvador has access to suitable drinking water, and many still have to travel hours to reach it.
For more than a decade, environmental activists there have been fighting for legislation to protect water sources and ensure residents’ rights to clean water.
Water scarcity always affects the poorest people most Andreu Oliva, university rector “What we are going to have is a country that has less and less drinking water and that has a higher percentage of contaminated water,” said Andreu Oliva, the rector of Central American University José Simeón Cañas.
“Water is going to be scarce for everyone.
It’s protected and defended.” Luis González of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit said the alliance had become one of the country’s largest protest movements in recent years.
They say other laws and reforms proposed by right-wing representatives – including one which would give the private sector more control over the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (Anda) – will also lead to privatisation.

Mostly, these people have to depend on water bodies located far away from where they live even for drinking purposes.
takes a look at an initiative – ‘New World Programme’ – which is being induced to resolve the issue of water in the villages of the mountainous regions; such as Gilgit-Baltistan…
Village Gole Tassu in district Skardu, with a population of around 2800, is one such area where people are getting water for drinking, washing and agriculture purposes, close to their houses; something they never thought possible.
They would travel long distances to wash clothes which would consume a lot of their time and keep them away from their houses.
But today they have water storage tanks in their village and they have ample time at their disposal to focus on their families and household chores.
It carries out environmental protection work in the high mountain ranges of the country as well integrated rural development programmes.
"Our organisation selected this village for the project because we aim to help disadvantaged communities through empowerment and provision of basic needs and services.
The solution that worked here was provision of drinking water supply through underground Dadex pipes laid all the way from the village to the nearest spring.
Siksa village located 150 in the Ghanche District of Gilgit-Baltistan is another beneficiary of the ‘New World Programme’.
Besides, 17 water points have been constructed for provision of safe drinking water.

A reservoir that supplies thousands of Eastern Kentuckians with drinking water has fallen to a critically low level over the past month, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency and raising fear among residents that their faucets will run dry.
For more than a week, the district continued to take water out of the reservoir without replenishing it, causing the reservoir to drop to a critically low level.
Now, the district is renting two pumps — one to replenish the reservoir, and the other to transfer water from the reservoir to the treatment plant — at a cost of about $18,000 a month, plunging the cash-strapped district deeper into debt.
While Kerr said officials are not concerned about another water outage, the board passed a resolution last week declaring a state of emergency.
“Without reliable raw water pumps, the District will not be able to supply adequate water to the reservoir and treatment plant, ultimately requiring restrictions of water use and risking significant water outages in Martin County,” the resolution declares.
The district is currently pursuing a rate increase of about 18 percent to cope with mounting debt and a long list of overdue operational repairs, including leaking service lines that cause the district to lose a majority of the water it treats before it reaches customers.
PSC officials have been highly critical of the district for its past and current management practices, which officials say caused the district’s current crisis.
“They need to hire a professional general manager,” Cromer said.
“Now they’ve announced they aren’t going to do that until after the rate increase.” In addition to the rate increase, the district is waiting on two grants that could help alleviate its current crisis.
BarbiAnn Maynard, a district customer and vocal member of the Martin County Concerned Citizens group, described the district’s attempts to correct the ongoing problems as “putting Band-aids on a severed artery.” Some residents have long complained about the district’s water quality, posting pictures and videos online that show dirty water flowing from their taps.