by Meghan Foley, originally posted on April 7, 2016

 

WEST SWANZEY — A state agency has received further validation that extending the village’s water line is the best option to address well water contamination in abutting Westport.

However, it will likely be “a couple of years” before such a project takes place, Gary S. Lynn, administrator for the N.H. MtBE Remediation Bureau, said Tuesday.

 

by Rick Sherman, originally posted on April 7, 2016

 

PacifiCorp says a coalition of environmental groups that filed a lawsuit alleging the Huntington Power Plant has violated the Clean Water Act, “have a history of opposing the use of coal,” and the action was anticipated by the company. The groups contend the power plant has been in violation for decades by using a fake farm to improperly dispose of polluted water.

Heal Utah and the Sierra Club claim the violations involve the use of water contaminated by coal fly ash and other pollutants to irrigate the company’s research farm. The practice was billed as an innovative disposal method when the power plant went into operation more than 40 years ago. The groups claim contaminated water applied to the farm fields could leach into ground water and surface water could drain into Huntington Creek.

In a news release, PacifiCorp said the company will refute the allegations, noting it has dealt for many years with threats and lawsuits by Sierra Club and HEAL Utah, which are on record as working to immediately stop the use of coal to generate electricity. It went on to say recent publicity tactics by these groups are particularly objectionable in how they selectively use data to make misleading and, in some cases, false claims.

Unsupported by facts

PacifiCorp asserted that many of the conclusions the plaintiffs claim are not supported by the facts. Spokesman Dave Eskelsen told the Sun Advocate, “The claims are largely unfounded and the conclusions are not warranted in regard to how PacifiCorp handles storm water and plant water in its agricultural operation.”

According to the Statement of Basis (made by the company) for renewal of a ground water permit with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality in 2011, the Huntington Research Farm consists of 255 acres of farmland located southeast of the power plant.

Controlled irrigation to avoid runoff

Wastewater is stored in a clay-lined evaporation pond throughout the year and is used to irrigate the Research Pond from April through November. Irrigation water is applied at a rate to minimize surface water runoff and infiltration into groundwater.

The statement goes on to say the bedrock at the plant site is Mancos Shale, which contains large amounts of soluble salts that leach into ground and surface water. Precipitation falling on the site dissolves more soluble minerals from the Mancos Shale the longer it has been in contact with the formation. As a result groundwater quality varies considerably making it difficult or impossible to distinguish between naturally-occurring changes in water quality from changes due to activities and facilities related to the power plant.

Ground water in the alluvial aquifer under the Research Farm is of limited extent and generally poor quality, except in wells adjacent to Huntington Creek. Monitoring data since the late 1970s shows that land applications of wastewater has not significantly affected ground water quality. A new set of ground water monitor wells was installed in 1997 and has been sampled semi-annually since then. By design protection levels are a fraction of the ground water quality standard to provide an early warning of impending ground water contamination and if necessary, implement corrective actions.

Surface water monitored

To evaluate whether PacifiCorp’s activities are affecting water quality in Huntington Creek, surface water is sampled in Huntington Creek above and below PacifiCorp’s facilities. Surface water quality standards must be met at the downstream monitoring point.

Eskelsen said, “These groups probably don’t understand that there has been research conducted at those farms by Utah State University in the utilization of processed water in this way. The irrigation process is closely monitored so the application of water is completely used.”

“We are not in violation of any laws under our federal and state permits,” he concluded.

by Josephine Agbonkhese and Anino Aganbi, originally posted on April 7, 2016

 

The popular saying “Water, e no get enemy!” culled from one of late Fela Anikulapo’s hit tracks connotes the extremely essential role water plays in human life. From washing to cleaning and cooking, not a single home functions without water each day. But while this amenity may be available for such domestic uses most times, the unavailability of safe drinking water remains a major burden for most families and communities in Nigeria. In fact, as a recent World Health Organisation, WHO, report puts it, less than a fifth of Nigeria’s population has access to potable water.

Meanwhile, the average individual requires at least 8 glasses of water per day, as the body requires water for metabolic activities.

 

Burden on home-makers

The consequent burden on home-makers to make available, daily, safe drinking water for their families can therefore only be imagined.

“I have a family of five and I buy big bottles of purified water regularly. Sometimes I even buy bags of sachet water. Most times, we finish about two bags in one day. This might be financially tasking but it is better than letting any of my children fall ill because of bad water,” Mrs Barisi Peters, a Port Harcourt-based business woman told Woman’s Own.

“For me, I simply make sure I boil water every day and allow to cool for everyone to drink. Our borehole appears clean but I still boil it because that’s the only way I can feel safe,” another Abeokuta-based home-maker, Mrs Tajudeen, said.

“I don’t boil. We have a borehole equipped with a water purifier device. This takes care of the water for me,” says an Abuja-based banker.

 

Bought water and boiled water

While this burden persists, entrepreneurs have continued to thrive in the water business, with thousands of sachet and bottled water brands claiming to be providing ‘pure’ and ‘safe’ drinking water springing up almost on daily basis.

While some may indeed be potable, the quality of many of the so-called “pure water” remains questionable, especially as many have most times been caught filling refillable bottles with clean looking but untreated water.

People like Mrs. Peters who find sachet water most convenient however believe they are safer for consumption; while Mrs. Tajudeen was quick to condemn them.

She said: “I don’t trust them. In fact, everybody does the business these days. There is also one behind my house whose hygiene practices I find very appalling.  Why would I then rely on such people for drinkable water?”

 

Water scientist

A water scientist with one of the biggest water producing companies in Lagos however told Woman’s Own that the distillation processes carried out in water factories could make a huge difference in their quality compared to simply boiling and drinking.

But while that may be true, the chemical components of products used in packaging these waters have remained subjects of discussion among health practitioners.

originally posted on April 7, 2016

 

A report of the Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) has revealed that 22 brands supplying water were found to be unsafe due to chemical or microbiological contamination.

According to press release issued on Wednesday, the 22 brands supplying contaminated water include ECO, Coral Water, HI-Fresh, New Nation, Pak Aqua, HFC, Total, NG Fresh Water, Al-Habib, Silver, ORION, Aqua Arabia, Well Care, Desert Dew, New Deep, Lite Aqua, Aqua Smart, Avalon Pure Water, New Smart Aqua, Mazan Pure, Royal Blue and Aqua National.

Of these unsafe brands, 12 have higher level of Arsenic ranging from 12-85 ppb than the PSQCA water quality standard for arsenic (10 ppb). These brands include New Nation, HFC, Total, Well Care, Desert Dew, New Deep, Lite Aqua, Aqua Smart, New Smart Aqua, Mazan Pure, Royal Blue, Aqua National.

The excessive arsenic can cause various types of skin diseases, diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, heart diseases birth defects, black foot diseases and multiple types of cancers etc. As many as three brands – ECO, Coral Water and HI-Fresh – were found to be unsafe due to microbiological contamination which may cause cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis and typhoid etc. The remaining brands were found unsafe due to the presence of higher levels of Sodium and Potassium.

The poor quality of drinking water has forced a large cross-section of citizens to buy bottled water.

According to the report, from January to March, 111 samples of bottled water brands were collected from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Tando Jam, Bahawalpur, Sargodha, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Sahiwal, Multan, Gujranwala, Karachi, Quetta, Muzaffarabad and Peshawar.

by Camillia Lanham, originally posted on April 6, 2016

 

Get tested.

It sounds like that oft-repeated mantra from a sex education textbook. But, this time it has nothing to do with STDs. Actually, it’s all about groundwater. And specifically, it deals with nitrate—often used as a growing aid for row crops like strawberries and leafy greens.

Before your eyes roll back into your head and you stop reading, think about this: Wouldn’t you want to know what you’re drinking?

Leslie Terry, an environmental health specialist with the SLO County Office of Environmental Health, thinks you should. And so does Angela Schroeter, a senior engineering geologist with the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. Why? During the most recent board meeting, Schroeter presented the results of two-plus years’ worth of testing about 4,000 groundwater wells on Central Coast farmland for nitrate contamination.

“The important thing that we’re learning from this data is that nitrate contamination is pretty widespread on the Central Coast,” Schroeter told New Times. “And that’s significant because of the health impacts.”

Too much nitrate can inhibit the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. It can lead to something known as blue-baby syndrome: Babies start to turn blue because oxygen isn’t getting where it needs to go in their bodies.

In SLO County, of the 1,398 wells sampled, 14 percent exceeded the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for nitrate, which tops out at 10 milligrams per liter of water. Concentrations higher than that are considered to be unhealthy for humans to consume. Basically, if SLO’s city water tested above that standard, the water wouldn’t be delivered to customers. One well in the county tested at 12 times that standard, ringing in at 124 milligrams per liter.

Monterey County is definitely worse off, with 34 percent of the 1,244 wells tested showing above that MCL. And Santa Barbara County? Of the 867 wells tested, 28 percent had nitrate levels above the MCL. One well held water with 870 milligrams per liter of nitrate: That’s 87 times what’s considered to be safe.

“Many domestic well owners, and even the staff at county environmental health—the many counties: Monterey, Santa Barbara, SLO—were unaware of the scope,” Schroeter said. “So what we are trying to figure out at the water board is the best way to inform [people].”

A 2013 update to the Ag Order was put into place in part to make sure that people drinking water with excess nitrate levels are notified. Owners of farmed land with domestic wells that tested above the MCL are also required to provide safe drinking water to the people living on that land.

However, Schroeter said the Regional Water Quality Board’s regulatory authority ends on farmed land—technically speaking, potential polluters. Residential properties without commercially irrigated land in the rural areas of the county are not required to test domestic wells for nitrate contamination.

“They’re not polluting, but they are being impacted,” Schroeter said. “If you’re on a domestic well, you should get your water tested every year.”

But nobody can make you do it.

And that’s unfortunate, according to Terry with SLO County environmental health, because often people who live on wells don’t really know that much about them. They don’t know what’s in the water they consume—whether it’s nitrate, pesticides, arsenic, or whatever else.

South SLO County had the majority of the hits for wells testing over the maximum nitrate level, which makes sense because it’s an agricultural area, Terry said, adding that it’s not the only area the county is worried about as far as drinking water goes.

“We’re concerned about everybody; we want everybody to test their water at the end of the day. And people are so reluctant to test their water, and I don’t really understand why,” Terry said. “A nitrate test is like $20. It’s like fill up a bottle and drop it off. … It’s so shocking why people don’t do it.”

Most facilities don’t even have to test, says one expert: “It’s unconscionable.”

-Julia Lurie and Edwin Rios, originally posted on April 6, 2016

 

Students at nearly half the public school buildings in Newark, New Jersey, have been drinking bottled water for the last month, ever since public officials disclosed that the water from drinking fountains and faucets contained high levels of lead. Just last week, the school district released a new batch of results that implicated charter schools as well. The fountains at these schools have been shut off, and signs posted in the bathrooms urge kids not to drink from the taps.

But Newark is hardly alone: Students in Boston, Baltimore, and Camden, New Jersey, have been drinking trucked-in water for years due to lead concerns. In a way, they are the lucky ones: These systems are actually testing their water for lead, either voluntarily or because of public pressure. “It’s definitely the schools that you do not hear about” that are the most concerning, says Mark Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor whose follow-up studies in Flint revealed the extent of the lead contamination there.

It may seem incomprehensible that drinking water for children could go without scrutiny, yet roughly 90 percent of the nation’s schools aren’t required to test their water, says Yanna Lambrinidou, a Virginia Tech University scientist who studies the issue. The Environmental Protection Agency requires schools to be connected to a water source that is regularly tested for lead, but those schools needn’t test for on-site contamination.

The problem is, the vast majority of the lead contamination comes from within—from schools’ lead pipes, lead solder, water cooler linings, and leaded brass drinking fountains. “It’s a regulatory vacuum,” says Lambrinidou. “From a public health perspective, it’s unconscionable”

Any school or day care with old plumbing may be vulnerable, Lambridinou says, and that’s “the vast majority.” Because even though lead service lines and solder were banned in 1986, schools continued to install leaded brass drinking fountains until just a few years ago. Here’s a quick drill-down of some major school districts where bottled water is the new normal.

Newark Public Schools: Water fountains in 30 of the district’s 66 public school buildings were shut off on March 9 after water tests found lead in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency’s action limit of 15 parts per billion. About 12 percent of samples taken from Newark school buildings between 2012 and 2015 had previously exceeded the EPA cap, but until this year the schools addressed the problem by replacing individual filters and faucets.

Upon learning of the test results, schools superintendent Christopher Cerf, who took over last year, says he immediately reached out to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, which recommended temporarily cutting off water to the fountains. “Our national consciousness has been raised by other national events,” Cerf told the New York Times. “I think the way the world would receive these data is different after Flint.”

Schools serving 17,000 Newark students—a number that will rise with the most recent findings—now rely on bottled water for drinking and food prep, although students still wash their hands with the tap water. The city is working on a longer-term testing and treatment plan. In the meantime, schools are offering free blood tests for students. Some 300 have gotten the screenings to date, but no results have been made public.

Camden City School District: Schools in Camden, about 85 miles from Newark, have been distributing bottled water since 2002 at an annual cost of $75,000 for their roughly 12,000 students. In July of that year, the district discovered that 26 of 34 school facilities showed signs of impermissible lead levels. State officials then put up $140,000 to install flushing systems at 28 schools to eliminate standing water in their pipes. (The other schools already had such systems in place.) This coincided with a state effort to remove 3,000 lead water lines from Camden’s antiquated infrastructure.

At the time, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that schools would stick with bottled water—a temporary solution, noted one school board member—until they could meet the federal lead standard. In March 2003, seven residents sued the school district, claiming officials had failed to institute routine water testing in schools despite allegedly knowing about the high lead levels for years. A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that the school board qualifies as a state agency and is thereby immune to lawsuits.

In late March, district spokesman Brendan Lowe told NJ.com that he was unaware of any plans to fix the aging infrastructure. He said the water coolers, “along with flushing systems in our older buildings and filtration systems in our newer buildings—has worked successfully for students and staff to date.”

Boston Public Schools: Five-gallon coolers have replaced drinking fountains in more than two-thirds of Boston’s school buildings, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Many of the fountains were shut off back in 1988, when tests at roughly half the city’s elementary schools revealed lead levels higher than the old EPA action limit of 50 parts per billion—it’s now 15 ppb.

According to the Boston Globe, roughly two dozen of the 37 schools that are still using tap water haven’t been tested for lead in six years. Of those schools that were tested, three exceeded the EPA standard—a drinking fountain at one elementary school had water seven times the federal limit.*

In a statement, BPS spokesman Richard Weir said the district “is taking all necessary steps” to ensure that any new water fountains meet state and federal standards. The district recently launched a $300,000 pilot program to install new hybrid fountains with bottle-filling stations at six schools, but some of those fountains have already tested for elevated lead, the Boston Globe reported. The district says it is investigating.

Baltimore City Public Schools: The saga began in the 1990s, when it was revealed that water in numerous Baltimore schools exceeded the federal lead standard. Some got water coolers, and the school district, which encompasses nearly 85,000 students, ordered drinking fountains shut off. But nobody ever followed up to make sure the order was carried out.

In 2003, James Williams Sr., whose child had suffered from lead poisoning in the previous decade, visited dozens of schools and found students drinking from fountains that had previously tested high for lead. His findings prompted Peter Bielenson, the city’s health commissioner at the time, to order the fountains shut down. But despite subsequent efforts to implement testing and flush lead from school water systems, the district still couldn’t shake off its lead problem.

In 2007, the city health department randomly tested 74 water fountains at 10 different schools and found 10 dispensing water with lead levels in excess of 20 ppb. Andres Alonso, then Baltimore’s schools chief, announced that the entire district would switch to bottled water, which was cheaper than fixing all the infrastructure—the bottled option at the time cost $675,000 per year. Joshua Sharfstein, then Baltimore’s health commissioner, told the Sun, “It just would cost so much more to test and fix and test and fix than doing what I think people prefer anyway.”

BPS spokesman Richard Weir contacted us after the story was published to add that after the high lead levels were detected, all of that school’s fountains were deactivated, and the school went back to bottled water. He says that tests conducted in 2011, prior to installation of new fountains, showed permissible lead levels.

 

 

originally posted on April 6, 2016

 

Dhaka: Twenty million poor Bangladeshis are still drinking water contaminated with arsenic, two decades after the potentially deadly toxin was discovered in the supply, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

A new report from the rights group said Bangladesh had failed to take the basic steps needed to tackle the problem, which kills an estimated 43,000 Bangladeshis every year, mostly in poor rural areas.

The contaminated supply dates back to the 1970s, when the Bangladesh government drilled millions of shallow tube wells to provide villagers with clean water, not realising that the soil was heavily laced with naturally occurring arsenic.

“Bangladesh isn’t taking basic, obvious steps to get arsenic out of the drinking water of millions of its rural poor,” HRW researcher Richard Pearshouse told AFP.

“The reasons why this huge tragedy has remained so pervasive are due to poor governance.”

Bangladesh has been building deep tube wells to source water from beneath the arsenic-tainted soil.

But HRW said there was no proper government oversight of the scheme, with politicians earmarking the new wells for their own supporters rather than putting them in the worst-affected areas.

“It means the situation is almost as bad as 15 years ago,” said Pearshouse.

There was no immediate response from the government, but an official who asked not to be named told AFP that individual lawmakers decided where 50 percent of the state-funded tube wells should be built.

“It’s a government-approved policy. The lawmakers have every opportunity to misuse their power and divert the tube wells to their supporters rather than distributing them to the people who are affected by arsenic contamination,” he said.

The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) has called Bangladesh’s arsenic crisis “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history”.

Chronic exposure to arsenic is linked with cancers of the liver, kidney, bladders and skin, as well as heart disease, but HRW said many victims in Bangladesh had no access to health care.

It warned that millions of Bangladeshis would die if the government and international donors do not act to mitigate contamination.

by Tom Perkins, originally posted on April 6, 2016

 

YPSILANTI, MI — In October, a Michigan State Housing Development Authority report suggested the Water Street parcels where Ypsilanti proposed a $12 million affordable housing project were too contaminated with lead, arsenic and PCB’s to build on.

In response, Mayor Amanda Edmonds and other city officials slammed MSHDA and media reports stating that the area is contaminated.

Six months later, it’s confirmed the site is indeed contaminated, leading officials to scrap the project, which took over two years to plan.

The development, which was to be called Riverwalk Commons, was controversial and loudly opposed by many in the city who didn’t want affordable housing built on the 38-acre Water Street site.

But on Tuesday, city staff presented a new plan that calls for a two-story, mixed-use affordable housing and retail development fronting Michigan Avenue.

By a 5-1 vote the Ypsilanti City Council approved a resolution allowing staff to start negotiating over the new proposal with developer Herman & Kittle. The plans must go back before council by the end of May.

Mayor Pro Tem Lois Richardson said she had some concerns but liked the project’s new look.

“I think, yes, there was a lot of contention over the project and affordable housing before … but the fact that there will be businesses on Michigan Avenue makes it a lot different, and I think it makes it viable and sellable to our community,” she said.

Plans previously called for a four-story, 75,000-square-foot multiunit complex that would have housed 80 apartments on a 1.7-acre parcel in Water Street’s southeast corner.

The new development is proposed for two parcels totaling three acres near the River Street and Michigan intersection that wrap around the Family Dollar. Plans call for a mixed-use building with approximately 14,000 square feet of first floor commercial space and 80 residential apartments ranging from one bedroom to four bedrooms on both stories. The site would also include a 150-space parking lot and a tot lot.

Mike Rodriguez, a development analyst with Herman & Kittle, said the new location could address MSHDA’s concerns.

“(MSHDA) was concerned about digging up contaminated soil and fugitive dust,” Rodriguez said, adding that the new site appears to be contamination-free.

A significant portion of the project’s funding comes from MSHDA, so the authority must be satisfied that the site is safe enough for human habitation. That’s a requirement for it to provide loans and protect itself legally. Without those loans, there is no development.

Two areas that appear to still be contaminated on Water Street are in and around the three-acre site of the now dead project.

Aside from the two areas of concern, MSHDA also found that contamination boundary lines delineating contaminated areas aren’t accurate, and contamination on the site is 10 to 40 times what’s considered safe by state and federal regulations in some spots.

“Moving the location addresses many of MSHDA’s concerns with future developments and the impact of construction of the development. The proposed development will create natural boundaries with garages on the site,” Beth Ernat, the city’s economic development director, said.

“We are cautiously optimistic. (Herman & Kittle) had a preliminary discussion with MSHDA and it looked positive, but part of this is starting the process and moving quickly,” she added.

Council Member Brian Robb was the lone vote against the resolution. He offered a list of reasons why he opposed it including:

-The city originally expected to net $1.1 million for the two parcels, and Herman & Kittle is offering $170,000 for the land.
– Herman & Kittle is still asking for a tax break in the form of a PILOT, and the new PILOT provides a bigger break.
-Herman & Kittle isn’t committing to as much infrastructure improvements – like building roads and installing underground electric – to the site.
-The plan calls for breaking from the grid plan developed and adopted by City Council and the Planning Commission “after months of public hearings.”

Robb said he also isn’t enthusiastic about where the development would sit on the property. The city envisioned the type of mixed-use development Herman & Kittle proposed, he said, but the PILOT would cost the city $25,000 in annual tax revenues and up to $750,000 less over the PILOT’s 30-year life. That significantly cuts the project’s actual value to the city.

“This takes a project that a lot of people hated and moves it into a prime real estate location,” he said. “This is like putting the senior high rise down there. This projects keeps morphing and morphing further from what we wanted.”

“I think this is the wrong project for the site.”

Robb added that he is hesitant to provide a Water Street tax break to a developer just as the city is preparing to ask voters to pay off the rest of its Water Street debt.

“This will destroy any chance we have of doing a Water Street millage, and we have to decide what’s more important,” he said.

Several council members agreed with concerns over the PILOT, but Ernat stressed that city staff has yet to negotiate with Herman & Kittle.

“We have not sat down and discussed in any way how this would look,” Ernat said.

Out of about 4,400 cases of contamination, which have been addressed between January 2015 till February this year, 2,536 are from the city area.

-originally posted on April 6, 2016

 

The island city has the highest number of cases of water contamination in Mumbai in comparison to the eastern and western suburbs, as per records of the hydraulic engineering department. Out of about 4,400 cases of contamination, which have been addressed between January 2015 till February this year, 2,536 are from the city area.

Civic chief Ajoy Mehta stated that the high number of cases in the island city was on account of the fact that the city’s water supply system is the oldest of the three zones. “The issue of contamination will be taken seriously and we are attending to them on a priority basis to prevent outbreak of gastrointestinal diseases which tend to increase during monsoons,” he said.

Officials from hydraulic engineering department stated that since August 2015, they have been in the process of changing old pipelines. “We have proposed 349 pipe connection bunches and have been converting them into single water pipelines. These are prone to punctures and contamination,” an official said. Of all the complaints of water contamination received, 43 are pending. In a presentation to the municipal commissioner and other officers April 2, the hydraulics department displayed a list of short supply areas to restore supply.

 

A new report by Human Rights Watch says the country is doing little to solve a chronic drinking-water crisis that affects over 10 per cent of its population.

-by Ravena Aulakh, originally posted on April 6, 2016