BALTIMORE (WBFF) – The annual Water Quality Report for Baltimore City was released on Monday. Each year the report describes how the city’s water is treated, where it comes from, and whether it meets federal standards for tap water. According to the 2016 Water Quality Report, the city’s drinking water meets or exceeds federal standards. “The data represents the most recent testing done in accordance with the requirements of EPA’s Water Testing Regulations,” the Baltimore City Department of Public Works (DPW) stated in a release on Monday. Over the course of 2016 approximately 150,000 water quality analyses were conducted, testing for more than 90 different drinking water contaminants, DPW…

Poor air quality and factors of the built environment — such as the presence of major highways and the availability of public transit and housing – – were the most strongly associated with high cancer rates, while water quality and land pollution had no measurable effect.
"Most research has focused on single environmental factors like air pollution or toxins in water," said Jyotsna Jagai, research assistant professor of environmental and occupational health in the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the study.
Counties with poor environmental quality had higher incidence of cancer–on average, 39 more cases per 100,000 people–than counties with high environmental quality.
The researchers found that high levels of air pollution, poor quality in the built environment and high levels of sociodemographic risk factors were most strongly associated with increased cancer rates in men and women.
The strongest associations were seen in urban areas, especially for the air and built environment domains.
"Some of the counties we looked at were very large, with both urban and rural areas in a single county, so to tease apart the interplay between the measures of quality in our five domains and how they impact urban and rural areas," Jagai said, "we will need to look at geographic areas smaller than counties."
This research was funded in part by contracts EP09D000003 and EP12D000264 from the EPA Office of Research and Development and by an appointment to the Internship/Research Participation Program Office of Research and Development (National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory) of the EPA, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the EPA and the Department of Energy.
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Jason Carter, executive director of the Virginia Cattlemen’s Association and Virginia Beef Industry Council, said things look far different for the state’s beef farmers now than back in October.
From a federal perspective, Carter said the administration of President Donald Trump should wind up being a good one for agricultural interests in large part because of his viewpoint on federal regulation.
“He’s willing to force federal agencies to review some rules before implementing them,” he said.
“The rule would eliminate value-added management and make everything a commodity,” he said.
But Trump is also presenting challenges for agriculture.
The cuts come about 18 months before a new Farm Bill that will guide agriculture programs and spending for five years.
The major concern is funding for the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, and the Conservation Reserve Program, programs that are popular with farmers.
The likely loss of federal cost-share dollars for environmental efforts comes at a time when Virginia greatly reduced its funding for such programs.
With less money to go around, Carter said he thinks the state needs to better prioritize the funding it doles out for cost-share programs.
One of the report’s recommendations was that Virginia require all cattle to be fenced out of streams, with the state and livestock industry reimbursing farmers for doing so.

SSO Solution Reduces Force Main Pressure.
One possible option was to completely revamp and upgrade a number of pump stations with new pumps, piping and the necessary control equipment to address increased flow and pressures.
Another option considered was to install a pressure reducing station (PRS) along the sewer force main system to reduce system pressures and thus increase capacity.
The Godwin DBS offered pumping equipment to provide additional capacity to handle wet weather flows and pressures and to minimize issues with SSOs during these events.
The HRSD design engineer provided design specifications to the Xylem team, and Xylem recommended two Godwin diesel-driven, critically silenced CD500M pumps with Final Tier 4 low-emission engines.
Given the historic sensitivities of neighboring Colonial Williamsburg, the pumps and fuel cubes were also customized to a specific color (Weathered Bark) to comply with county requirements.
A Customized Solution Xylem engineers customized the Godwin Advanced PrimeGuard Controller to tie into the HRSD supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, to activate and control the pumps via local pressure readings.
The Xylem team engineered a solution for HRSD that allowed the Godwin DBS pump to automatically maintain a specific designed suction pressure setting by ramping the diesel engine up and down based on measured suction pressure levels.
Given the possibility for cold weather in its Virginia locale, HRSD required the system to be weatherized.
Long-Term Care Xylem customized the Godwin Advanced PrimeGuard Controller to address multiple HRSD requirements, including a tie-in to the HRSD network SCADA system.

EPA’s Pruitt recuses himself from environmental lawsuits.
“A spokesperson for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said the administrator is considering replacing the five scientists with representatives of industries whose pollution the EPA polices”.
Pruitt, who had sued the environmental agency more than a dozen times when he was the oil- and gas-producing state’s top legal officer, had pledged during his senate confirmation that he would step aside from ongoing cases if the agency’s ethics panel required it.
Pruitt’s recusal statement, obtained by E&E news and dated May 4, outlines several lawsuits he has agreed not to be involved in until one year after his Senate confirmation on February 18 of this year.
“I am profoundly committed to carrying out my ethical responsibilities”, Pruitt said in the statement.
They include Oklahoma and the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a public policy group involving Republican attorneys general that targeted environmental rules.
Pruitt formally recused himself in an agency memorandum Thursday, saying he will not participate in 12 lawsuits, all but one of which were filed against the EPA.
During Pruitt’s confirmation hearing, Democrats pressed him on his stances on rules meant to protect against climate change and air and water pollution and urged him to recuse himself from the 14 cases in which he had participated in lawsuits against the agency he was named to lead.
Last week, a federal appeals court granted President Donald Trump’s request to halt the lawsuit, effectively sending the rule back to the EPA for review and likely quashing the measure that aimed to combat carbon dioxide emissions from coal power plants.

Sewer systems leave many newly built wastewater treatment plants with idle capacity.
Despite the buildup of sewage treatment facilities around the country over this decade, insufficient sewer systems are gumming up the works for China’s wastewater treatment plants.
In bigger cities, officials have long favored public works projects that people can see – such as wastewater treatment plants – over projects people can’t see – such as sewer pipes, according to the Economic Information Daily report.
In cities, the main sewer lines generally run along the major roadways, so they don’t have any major problems channeling wastewater, Zhang said.
The real problem is with the network of smaller pipes that reach across the city, according to Zhang.
That translates to three problems for every kilometer of sewer pipeline.
However, because the state of sewer systems in rural areas is often worse than in cities, much of that new sewer treatment capacity ends up idle, the Economic Information Daily report said.
Planned improvements China plans to spend 564.4 billion yuan ($81.79 billion) on the country’s sewer systems and wastewater treatment facilities during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), according to the Economic Information Daily report.
The government aims to increase newly added capacity to treat sludge with organic detoxification methods by 160.7 percent to 60,100 tons per day during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), according to the Economic Information Daily report.
It also plans to increase the amount of recycled wastewater by 56.7 percent to 15.05 million cubic meters per day.

Buffer Zones To Be Extended To Stop Water Pollution In Dam, Catchment Areas.
Buffer Zones To Be Extended To Stop Water Pollution In Dam, Catchment Areas ISKANDAR PUTERI, May 8(Bernama) — The buffer zones in 14 gazetted damand catchment areas in Johorwill be extended to solve the problem of water pollution.
Chairman of the Johor Public Works, Rural and Regional Committee, DatukHasni Mohammadsaid the buffer zones would now be extended to 500 metres from the current 50 metres.
"However, this extension is still in the proposal stage by the JohorWater Regulatory Body (Bakaj)and will be submitted to the state government soon," he said at the Johor State Assembly sitting in Kota Iskandarhere today.
He was replying toa question from Dr Sheikh Ibrahim Salleh (PAS-Sungai Abong) who asked about the state government’s proposal to extend the buffer zones in dam and water catchment areas as a way to solve the problem of pollution.
Hasni said the supply of raw water in the dams and catchment areas must be maintained so that the supply of raw water to the treatment plants always met the standards of raw water set by the Health Ministry.
Hasnisaid in the second quarter of this year, Bakajwill installthree water quality surveillance units inSungai Johorto monitor pollution and as an early warning to water treatment plants to take action to prevent worse water disruption.
He said since early last year, the state government had frozen licences for all sand-mining activities in Sungai Johor.
The move was successful in reducing pollution in Sungai Johorin terms of turbidity and suspended solid wastes.
Source : http://www.bernama.com/bernama/state_news/news.php?cat=st&id=1354182

Another Water Grab?
Potential Potash Mine Angers Residents.
Just six miles from Nestle’s wells, Michigan Potash, a Colorado-based company, is seeking permits to drill 11 injection wells for a potash mining operation.
"It requires 1,200 gallons per minute of fresh, clean water – drinking water – to create these potash cavities,” Ford said.
A permitting hearing was held before the Environmental Protection Agency in January, but no decision has been made.
The application also is being reviewed at the state level by the Department of Environmental Quality.
Ford said that at least two other companies have tried unsuccessfully to operate potash mines in the same area.
"A lot of our roads got destroyed, the air quality was terrible, there are times when your eyes burn,” he said.
“You worry about what that stuff’s doing to the environment, truck traffic, and noise, and then the water pollution."
Their analysis has concluded the aquifer cannot sustain the intended water withdrawals, and that permanent damage to the environment would result.

Our opinion: Revelations in a federal and state probe of widescale lapses in pollution monitoring equipment at the Momentive plant in Waterford show the need for an immediate and thorough health assessment for the areas downwind.
Now a second settlement has been reached with the owners of a chemical plant in Waterford after years of air pollution violations that spewed unknown amounts of hazardous gasses into the air.
So an important task remains: a full assessment of the environmental health impacts on communities.
Momentive Performance Materials will pay $1.25 million to state and federal authorities to settle the latest case involving the illegal shutdown of pollution control equipment at its Waterford plant.
The settlement acknowledges the routine turning off of pollution sensors, effectively allowing continuous and dangerously inefficient operation of the plant’s incinerator.
When operating properly, the incinerator and the plant automatically shut down if it is running inefficiently or when air pollution standards for a given period are exceeded.
The complaint includes an astonishing finding: Company workers illegally bypassed the incinerator’s pollution control mechanism 4,213 times between December 2006 and November 2008.
It all started before Momentive purchased the former GE silicone manufacturing plant in 2006.
The complaint stated GE employees falsified pollution control records and, in just a five-month period, allowed the incinerator to operate in an unsafe manner nearly 1,900 times.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation says it has no data to assess health impacts so long after the fact.

by Jason Baumsteiger and Peter Moyle In part I of our blog, we projected a bleak future for many freshwater fishes, especially in California.
What if it no longer exists in its natural habitat or in the wild?
In our recent paper (Baumsteiger and Moyle 2017), we attempted to tackle these questions and provide an honest, although imperfect, way to assess extinction.
This is an area between formal threatened/endangered status and global extinction, where a species is in limbo – it is partially extinct.
Categorizing “grey extinction” Mitigated extinction- This category represents the many ways that a species can become dependent on humans for its existence.
Native-range extinction – As the name implies, this is a species which no longer exists in its natural range but may exist elsewhere (say a reservoir somewhere).
Wild extinction – This category is one step further than native-range extinction.
Apparent extinction – This category is the final “holding pattern” category when we think the species is globally extinct because we cannot find it anywhere.
As a species becomes endangered, we start doing everything we can to conserve that species, one species at a time.
When we put these ideas together, we generated a decision tree to help navigate the many categories and approaches that one might take in assessing extinction (Fig.