PORTLAND — Town officials from Portland and East Hampton are scheduled to sit down Friday with state officials and water company representatives to discuss extending water service through Portland into East Hampton and perhaps beyond.
Portland hopes to extend an existing water line east along the Route 66 corridor, while East Hampton is in desperate need of a reliable water supply.
In a Nov. 21 letter to DPH commissioner Dr. Paul Pino requesting the meeting, Portland First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield acknowledged East Hampton has “significant water quality and quantity issues.” Portland has been asked to allow the Metropolitan District Commission “to utilize portions of our system to expand their services to supply water” to East Hampton, she said.
During a conversation in her Town Hall office Wednesday, Bransfield said expanding water service to East Hampton opens the door to a similar expansion to communities further to the east.
Looming above all these issues is the question of funding a waterline expansion.
In a report to the Town Council earlier this month, East Hampton Town Manager Michael Maniscalco said it could cost plus/minus $80 million to bring a reliable water system into the center of town.
Council Chairwoman Melissa H. Engel agreed.
Maniscalco said he welcomes the opportunity to sit down with Bransfield, DPH officials as well as representatives from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Hebron Town Manager Andy Tierney and Marlborough First Selectwoman Amy Traversa.
Also scheduled to take part in the meeting are Chatham Health District Executive Director Don Mitchell, and representatives of the Lower River Council of Governments, the MDC and the CT Water Co. Maniscalco has been in discussion with both CT Water and the Aquarion Water Co. as well as MDC.
Maniscalco said he is “very hopeful that we will get some kind of direction for moving forward” during Friday’s meeting.

The loan, approved at Monday’s City Commission meeting, will cover the cost to install a perfluorinated chemical treatment system at the city’s Water Treatment Facility.
Water tested in 2015 showed high levels of dangerous PFOS and PFOA, chemicals once used to make nonstick pans, fire-extinguishing foam and water- and stain-resistant fabrics, said city spokesman Ben Hogarth.
In 2016, the city closed and replaced three of its 24 wells that were contaminating the water supply.
Records show they were along 10th Street east of Palm Beach Road.
Since 2016, the city’s water PFC contamination has remained below federal guidelines of 70 parts per trillion, Hogarth said.
The new treatment system would remove even more PFC contaminants, ahead of any future federal or state mandate to do so.
Firefighting foam The water, which is pumped to 19,000 customers, tested positive for PFOS and PFOA in 2014 and 2015, the first years the EPA tested for them.
But to be safe, Hogarth said, city personnel no longer train with it.
"They knew it was a contaminant and they knew it was harmful and they also knew they could manufacture it without the use of it.” The city is seeking money damages arising from the groundwater contamination and to supply wells, including the $2 million PFC treatment system and related costs.
Maximum safe levels until 2016 PFOS: 200 parts per trillion PFOA: 400 parts per trillion Current maximum safe level: 70 parts per trillion for either chemical or a combination 1 part per trillion: Comparable to 1 square inch in 250 square miles Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, city of Stuart

(WSAW) — New efforts in the state legislature are looking to help people facing contaminated groundwater throughout Wisconsin.
A local group is hoping to push those efforts even further, ensuring state leaders know it is a life-threatening problem in the central sands area.
More and more people with private wells are learning they have to rely on bottled water to cook, brush their teeth with, and, of course, drink because their only source of water is contaminated by nitrates.
It is becoming a crisis in several areas around the state, but people in Portage, Wood, Juneau, and Adams counties are working to ensure lawmakers know it is chronic for them.
At that time, he along with all Assembly republicans wrote a letter to Gov.
One of those places was clean water.
"That’s kind of what set me off," said Bill Leichtnam, a member of the group Protect Wood County.
The farm group is currently being sued after research about contaminated private wells in Juneau and Wood counties pointed blame to its other large farms.
"I think it will help us have a serious conversation in the legislature about protecting access to clean water for everyone in the future and preventing well contamination, but we also need to give immediate relief to people in rural Wisconsin and homeowners with private contaminated wells," she said.
Expanded testing is already scheduled to happen in what’s being called the "Ag Corridor" in Wood and Juneau counties, an expanded area where additional contamination could have occurred that has not already been tested.

A sewage leak that occurred last November on Donaldbin Close in Edgartown has the water department giving some homes free access to town water.
Several distraught residents of the small Edgartown neighborhood voiced their concerns at a joint meeting Monday between selectmen, the water department, and the wastewater department.
The pipe that broke was installed in 2008, raising fears among abutting homeowners that the leak could have been going on for a long time.
David Thompson, facilities manager at the town’s wastewater department, told selectmen while the leak was small and sewage tends to come to the surface quickly, the amount of fill that was removed from the site was cause for concern.
The water department will waive the usage charge for the first 49,999 gallons of water used.
The project to hook up homeowners within 100 feet of the leak to town water will cost the water department upwards of $30,000.
The town is not required to hook up homeowners to town water, because testing on wells has come back negative, but Hagerty said he understands homeowners being concerned about their water.
In other business, selectmen asked Hagerty to advertise positions for a Community Preservation Act (CPA) evaluation committee.
Hagerty said certain voters on the floor at town meeting had concerns about the value of the CPA and wanted more oversight with the use of funds.
“Those funds have built a lot of tremendous things in the town, but we do owe it to [voters] to have a study group for various stakeholders.

ADRIAN — Although officials maintain Adrian’s tap water is safe to drink, residents still have many concerns about taste and odor problems — as well as results from two rounds of in-home testing in December that showed trace amounts of a harmful, blue-green algae in some of the city’s finished tap water.
Complaints go back to last summer, said Brittney Dulbs, an Adrian resident who sought help for testing from Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, a grassroots environmental group that has been fighting concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, for years.
They are in the vicinity of Wolf Creek, which flows into Lake Adrian — one of the city’s raw water sources, she said.
It is typically produced by one of two forms of cyanobacteria: microcystis and plantothrix.
She said her group plans to have more samples drawn and laboratory tests done, but would not elaborate or provide specifics.
The second batch of sample results, released by the group on Dec. 31, found indications of fecal contamination coming from the tap water of two homes that were tested, and the indication of cyanobacteria in one.
Cyanobacteria also was found in the tap water of one home during the first round of sampling.
“Nobody knows what triggers the bacteria into producing the toxin,” she said.
“We test weekly for microcystins — the indicator organism for blue-green algae that was a concern for Toledo several years ago.
We have not detected any microcystins in our raw water.

Before November 2017, when DEQ suspended Chemours’ discharge privilege, the plant sent process wastewater into the Cape Fear River for less than $10 a day in permit fees.
And we have developed new technology to do some things that we’ve never been able to do before to address this issue.” The six tanks are part of a $100 million project to reduce Chemours’ fluorochemical pollution to no more than 1 percent of what it was in 2017.
That agreement passed to Chemours in 2015, when DuPont formed the company from business units that included the manufacture of GenX at the Fayetteville Works.
“We’ve announced corporate responsibility goals to reduce emissions of fluorinated organic compounds by 99 percent,” Long said.
“No other producer in the world has announced that goal.” Less stringent than June proposal A number of concerns have been raised about the proposed agreement since DEQ made it public the evening before Thanksgiving.
Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which serves about 200,000 people in New Hanover County, filed a motion in late December to intervene in the lawsuit filed by DEQ that the proposed consent order would settle.
It also questioned why state regulators did not consult with CFPUA or address the costs it and its ratepayers have and will incur to deal with contamination the utility believes will continue from sources such as groundwater seepage or tainted river sediment.
In a “fact sheet” meant to address concerns such as those CFPUA expressed, DEQ pointed to regulatory actions since June 2017 it said reduced GenX in drinking water distributed by CFPUA “from over 1,000 parts per trillion in 2017 to less than 10 ppt in recent sampling.” “The order stops PFAS from contaminating the Cape Fear River, which stops PFAS from entering the drinking water of downstream users,” DEQ wrote.
However, combined levels of certain PFAS still remain above the stated levels in the proposed consent order.” In early December, DEQ staff conducted a community meeting in Bladen County to discuss GenX-related issues, including the proposed agreement.
Carolina Public Press’ in-depth, investigative journalism takes a lot of money, persistence and hard work to produce.

…as water rationing looms ZwNews Chief Correspondent Harare residents should brace up for water shortages, as the local authority, City of Harare (CoH) is planning to introduce water rationing scheme next week to manage the current water crisis.
Currently, CoH is running under 528 megalitres water production deficit daily, against an estimated demand of 800 megalitres.
Of the 272 megalitres produced daily, more than 50 per cent is being lost along the way through leaks, and other loses, and resultantly, Greater Harare’s estimated 4,5 million residents are forced to share the average of 135 megalitres a day.
Harare’s water production has been dwindling as a result of destruction of wetlands and the rampant water pollution, with the local authority itself also being fingered as the chief culprit for failing to effectively manage wastes, as well as discharging raw sewer into water bodies, such as Mukuvisi and Marimba Rivers; the rivers that one way or the other feed into Lake Chivero, Harare’s main source of water.
The CoH’s poor waste management has impacted negatively on its ability to supply clean water to the residents and that means that the local authority now needs more chemicals to purify the heavily polluted water, than before, most of which require foreign currency to be procured from outside the country.
Over the years, the local authority has been under fire from residents’ associations and environmentalists for failing to protect the city’s wetlands as required by the laws of the land.
In some instance the CoH had been dragged to the courts over the issues.
Responding to the looming water rationing, Community Water Alliance (CWA) chairperson Hildaberta Rwambiwa says her organisation warned the local authority long back over its poor water management planning, and for destroying the city’s wetlands, by parcelling them out for infrastructural development, in direct contravention of the country’s environmental laws.
Rwambiwa also took a swipe on the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) for failing to discharge its constitutional mandate well; the preservation of wetlands, and bringing polluters of water bodies to book.
The CWA chairperson also called on the Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube to revise his 2.7 per cent budget allocation to water and sanitation interventions and urged EMA to address the issue of water pollution in the city, as well as the Parliament of Zimbabwe to play its oversight role on funds for rehabilitation of sewer treatment plants and tender processes on water treatment chemicals.

Facing multimillion dollar costs for new pollution controls, nine Nassau County water suppliers have sued chemical manufacturers for 1,4-dioxane contamination, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists as a likely carcinogen.
The separate lawsuits filed in Eastern District of U.S. District Court in Central Islip contend Dow Chemical Co., Ferro Corp. and Vulcan Materials Co. knew or should have known the compound commonly used in a manufacturing solvent from the 1960s to 1990s would pollute groundwater, including instructing commercial users to dispose of waste solvents by pouring them onto the ground or in trenches for evaporation or burning.
The state has said the cost of cleanup would be more than $300 million.
"The public shouldn’t have to bear the cost of removing 1,4-dioxane from their drinking water.
That case is being heard in federal court.
"Rather than go after the companies on Long Island directly responsible for the contamination, the water suppliers brought this suit against Dow even though Dow did not conduct any operations on Long Island that are a source of contamination," Ashley E. Mendoza wrote in a statement.
Get the Breaking News newsletter!
While there’s no federal drinking water standard, New York State is expected later this year to finalize a first-in-the-nation drinking water standard for 1,4-dioxane, which the EPA said has been associated with liver and kidney damage, as well as increased cancer risk.
In 2017, Hicksville Water District filed a lawsuit against owners of Philips Electronics, a light manufacturer, that operated from the 1950s until 1989.
That water district’s representatives and attorneys were not available to comment Thursday.

A day after researchers reported that 42 percent of tested wells in southwest Wisconsin were contaminated, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he would create a task force to study state water quality.
Vos’ announcement Thursday was prompted by formal requests from lawmakers in areas plagued by drinking water that is tainted by pollutants from agriculture and faulty septic systems that can cause illness or death.
Conservationists have complained that Vos, Gov.
Scott Walker and their fellow Republicans who have controlled the Legislature since 2011 have failed to answer pleas from residents around the state whose well water is contaminated by hazardous pathogens and toxic nitrate.
The Wisconsin State Journal first reported Wednesday on initial findings of a study that found the pollutants in 301 randomly selected residential wells in Grant, Iowa and Lafayette counties.
Laeser said the state’s water problems were an urgent public health issue that demands science-based collaboration among state officials and all who have a stake in cleaning up Wisconsin’s water.
Nitrate in drinking water usually comes from fertilizer.
But state geologist Ken Bradbury said the rate wasn’t surprising.
It’s no secret that southwest Wisconsin has areas of thin topsoil and porous bedrock that allow surface pollutants to reach groundwater relatively easily.
And data have long been available showing high rates of contamination in southwest Wisconsin well tests obtained independently by homeowners over the last 25 years.

When’s the last time you washed your water bottle?
Might want to make that right now: a new study from Brazil suggests reusable shaker bottles (and water bottles) might be more gross than you thought.
In the study, researchers asked 30 gym members to hand over their shaker bottles for testing, and compared the results to that of 30, unused (contaminant-free) ones.
They discovered bacteria contamination in 83 percent of the used plastic bottles.
For one, staph bacteria is present in the noses of about 30 percent of people, and generally does not cause harm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
So how likely is it that your bottle bugs can make make you sick?
The bacteria likely comes from contamination during handling, said Tierno.
Since people are handling their bottles to make their recovery drink or just fill it up, bacteria can be transmitted through indirect contact.
To avoid spreading harmful bacteria to your shaker bottle or water bottle, Tierno suggests making sure that you properly wash your hands before fixing your gym drink to get rid of any residual organisms on your hands, remembering to pay extra-close attention to your nail bed, where germs can hide.
“Run your hands like a claw in the center of the opposite palm to get suds into nail bed, and sing the song ‘Happy Birthday’ twice to wash hands adequately.” To help keep bacteria from growing, Tierno suggests using steel, metal, or glass bottles when possible, as bacteria can more easily adhere to plastics and other surfaces that are rougher.