Inquiry into Havelock North water contamination saga delayed.
A delay has been granted for the release of findings into the reasons for last year’s Havelock North water contamination.
Lawrence Yule has a new free solution for residents who are paying thousands to combat the taste of chlorinated water.
Source: 1 NEWS The gastro outbreak affected over 5000 people and led to the town’s water supply being chlorinated.
An inquiry was launched late last year and will now report back to the Government in two stages.
The inquiry will report back to Attorney-General Chris Finlayson by May 12.
It will examine the existing regime involved in delivering drinking water to see if improvements can be made – and won’t report back until December, well after the general election.
Source: 1 NEWS Mr Finlayson says the inquiry needs to be comprehensive to ensure there’s a clear understanding of what happened in Havelock North.
The extension was requested by the panel for a number of reasons, including a delay caused by legal action between the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and the Hastings District Council and the need to ensure the safety of the town’s water.
An inquiry heard today from a community wanting answers after 5000 locals fell ill.

Michigan and Flint just agreed to replace 18,000 lead-tainted pipes.
Michigan and the city of Flint have agreed to spend the next several years replacing roughly 18,000 aging underground pipes as part of a far-reaching legal settlement over the city’s ongoing crisis involving lead-tainted water.
Under the agreement, the state will agree to pay $87 million for the undertaking and will keep another $10 million in reserve in case more pipes than expected need replacing.
About $30 million of that money will come from the $100 million that Congress approved late last year in aid to Flint.
Rick Snyder (R) on Monday declined to comment, citing a judge’s order limiting public comment on the case until he approves a settlement.
Under the terms of the deal, state officials also must continue to deliver bottled water to housebound residents and must continue to operate free bottled water distribution centers around the city through early September, though it could begin to phase out some sites after May 1 if demand fades.
It has been nearly a year and a half since state officials acknowledged that Flint’s water was tainted with dangerous levels of lead, and more than two years since residents began complaining about problems with the water in the wake of a decision by a state-appointed emergency manager to switch the supply source to the Flint River to save money.
State officials failed to ensure proper corrosion-control treatment of the new water source.
17 key moments in Flint’s water crisis Play Video3:05Live Video Please enable flash to watch this video.
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Nanotechnology could have a big future as a tool for upstream oil and gas and other industries to use to clean up contaminated water, Professor Michael S. Wong of Rice University, Houston, told the SPE Gulf Coast Section’s R&D Study Group recently.
In addition, Wong said, “An exciting new role for catalysis is in the treatment of produced water for reuse.” Introducing a catalyst into a chemical process can bring about or speed up a chemical reaction, with the catalyst remaining unconsumed in the reaction and thus able to act repeatedly.
Only tiny amounts of catalyst are needed to achieve these effects.
Wong stressed the advantage of catalytic conversion techniques over the established methods of activated carbon adsorption and air stripping that are used to remove many contaminants from water.
Treating TCE-Laced Water He posed the example of treating water contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) by traditional methods vs. a catalytic technology that his research group has developed.
Activated carbon treatment can remove it from water, but when the carbon becomes saturated with TCE, the carbon must be disposed of or cleaned by burning off the contaminant.
While one problem has been solved, “you now have another contaminated stream to deal with,” Wong said.
By adjustments in the amount of palladium, the surface coverage of the catalyst can be altered as needed.
The catalyst has performed very well in the laboratory, he said, and his group is working to bring the technology into field applications.
NEWT Partnership He also discussed work by the Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), a collaborative initiative between universities, industrial companies, and other organizations.

Flint’s 18,000 Lead-Contaminated Water Lines Will Be Replaced by 2020.
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the city of Flint, Michigan, as well as the state of Michigan, agreed to replace at least 18,000 lead or galvanized-steel pipes in the city that are leaching harmful pollutants into the residents’ drinking water.
The state will finance the project with $87 million and said it would keep an additional $10 million on reserve to deal with future problems.
The AP also reported on Monday that both former president Barack Obama and current president Donald Trump played a part in making this agreement go through.
Obama signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016 in December to help solve the nation’s water safety problems, and the current Environmental Protection Agency under Trump accepted the proposal to divert $100 million out of the $170 million in the fund to aid the people of Flint.
To recap, back in April 2014, government officials in Flint, Michigan, began using what they claimed was "treated" water from the Flint River in an effort to save the city money.
According to PBS, it’s estimated that roughly 100,000 residents have been exposed to the contaminated water, and Vox reported that this number includes around 8,000 children.
Given that the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 41.2% of residents live below the poverty line, the median household income is $24,862, and over 56% of the community is black, the contamination also ignited nationwide discourse about how these communities are treated and the speed at which their problems are addressed.
A federal judge will be given the new settlement on Tuesday for sign-off, according to AP.
Related: What It’s Really Like to Live in Flint, Michigan Check this out:

Water contamination bill soars to $1.5m for regional council.
A report to be presented at tomorrow’s regional council meeting shows a total $1,484,800 has been spent on the inquiry and their own investigation.
The paper, prepared by group manager resource management Iain Maxwell, states $1,040,549 was spent up to March 16 on the inquiry, including $283,629 on internal time and $756,910 on external costs.
The council also spent $444,251 on its own investigation to determine whether the contamination was in part or wholly the result of resource consent conditions not being met.
The outcome of this investigation saw the regional council drop its two charges against the Hastings District Council for unlawful water takes.
Continued below.
The amount spent on the investigation included $211,977 in external costs – with $100,000 spent on external laboratory testing, and $20,000 on legal advice from Jonathan Krebbs for the investigation for prosecution.
Mr Maxwell wrote the past period had seen further significant costs "given the nearly two weeks of hearing time".
While there would be further costs associated with the second stage of the inquiry, it was thought these would be "significantly less" than for stage one.
Mr Maxwell wrote they understood the inquiry panel would, or had already, sought permission from the Government to extend the reporting dates to allow stage one to be reported in May, and Stage two toward the end of the year.

Proposed $97M deal reached in Flint drinking water case.
Detroit — The state will spend an additional $47 million to help ensure safe drinking water in Flint by replacing lead pipes and providing free bottled water under a proposed settlement announced Monday.
The money is in addition to $40 million previously budgeted to address Flint’s widespread lead-contamination crisis.
The lawsuit was filed last year by a group led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the ACLU of Michigan, Concerned Pastors for Social Action and Flint resident Melissa Mays, who also declined comment Monday.
The proposed deal covers a four-year period and comes 10 days after the Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $100 million emergency grant to Michigan to fund infrastructure upgrades in Flint, where lead-contaminated water damaged service lines.
The state will provide bottled water, free filters, cartridges and water-testing kits at each of the centers.
An evaluation will be conducted in approximately one year and if there are more than 18,000 lines, the state will spend the $10 million in reserve funds to replace those pipes.
The government also agreed to monitor lead levels in Flint’s tap water for one year – more time than required under the law.
According to the settlement, an independent program will be created for additional monitoring.
Additionally, Flint residents can continue to have their tap water tested for free for the next four years.

12th SuSanA Thematic Discussion: “Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) in Schools – A neglected issue”.
While nowadays the topic of MHM is gaining more and more attention, it has widely been neglected in the past.
SDG4 (education), SDG5 (gender equality) and SDG6 (water and sanitation) require female friendly sanitation facilities and available informational materials at schools around the globe.
Taking into account the magnitude of the population affected by issues around MHM, schools provide an ideal environment to reach girls as well as young women and to address taboos and misconceptions in a culturally sensitive manner.
The question, however, is how to approach the topic in a culturally sensitive manner?
Running for two weeks from today (March 27 until April 09) the discussion on the SuSanA forum will look at two areas: Week 1: Breaking the taboo around MHM Thematic Lead: Dr. Marni Sommer (Associate Professor, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health) Week 2: Infrastructural barriers and how to monitor MHM Thematic Lead: Thérèse Mahon (Regional Programme Manager South Asia, WaterAid) During the discussion, regular summaries of forum entries will be posted to keep you updated on our conversation.
Coordination on behalf of the SuSanA secretariat for this thematic discussion will be carried out by Dr. Bella Monse, Jan Schlenk and Mintje Büürma.
For any questions, you can post on the forum or contact us directly at info@susana.org.
To join the discussion, follow: http://bit.ly/2nZn4n6 And to read the first contribution by Marni Sommer, click on: http://bit.ly/2n9JLkv

A pair of hazardous chemicals used for decades in firefighting at Joint Base McGuire/Dix/Lakehurst have contaminated ground, surface, and drinking water on and near the base, a spokesman said last week, with tests showing levels 20 to thousands of times higher in some samples than federally recommended standards. Three of 131 private wells tested at homes off the base show evidence of the fluorinated chemicals known as PFOS and PFOA, Staff Sgt. Dustin Roberts said Friday, with one home’s drinking water containing 1,392 parts per trillion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory for these chemicals has set 70 parts per trillion as its recommended level. Roberts said the base was providing the affected homes with bottled water and was studying ways to remediate the problem. None of the affected private wells serve schools or other public institutions, he said. Two shallow wells that provide drinking water to the base showed levels as high as 215 parts per trillion, according to Roberts. He said he did not know how much of the base’s drinking water comes from…

Veterans, families have lingering questions about contamination even as VA starts disability compensation JACKSONVILLE — When Wayne Rummings left Buffalo, N.Y., in 1983 to enlist in the U.S. Navy, he could not have known he would find himself in the middle of one of the largest cases of water contamination in the nation’s history. Camp Lejeune’s 34 years of water contamination ended in 1987, while Rummings was still serving as a medic at the sprawling Onslow County base. He did not feel the effects for years until, in 2010, he thought he had kidney stones. His doctor suspected something else was amiss when Rummings wasn’t crying from pain and ordered a CT scan. Seven years later, Rummings is recovering from a bout with kidney cancer — one of the hallmark diseases of Camp Lejeune water poisoning. Recounting the ordeal recently, Rummings sat at his dining room table, a compression sleeve on his right arm in an effort to numb the painful throbbing a nervous system condition shoots through his fingertips. “I think about cancer when I wake up, I think about cancer when I go to bed because I know what cancer does,” Rummings said. His wife, Johana Rummings, helps him cope with the anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress that came along with the diagnosis. At the other end of the table sat Joe Walker, Johana’s brother who stuck around Jacksonville after leaving the Corps in 1974. Walker made a living bouncing people from local nightclubs and nabbing shoplifters, but was forced to stop when he was told multiple sclerosis — not vertigo — had been causing his bouts of dizziness. Now, a year later, the self-described tough guy can’t stand without the aid of his ever-present cane. X-rays show lesions spiking across his head. “My brain,” Walker said, “hurts so bad.” Both Walker and Rummings believe their ailments can be traced to their service on Lejeune, the site of water contamination between 1953 and 1987. This month, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) began accepting disability claims for veterans exposed to chemicals in Lejeune’s water. Rummings’ kidney cancer is among the eight diseases earmarked for approval, along with adult leukemia, aplastic anemia, bladder cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease. Walker and thousands of others must be able to prove their illnesses were caused by the benzene, trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride in Lejeune’s well water. Many of them are eligible for free VA medical care, but not the disability compensation. The $2.2 billion compensation program approved in the final months of the Obama Administration was hailed as a victory for Marines poisoned on Camp Lejeune, but many veterans and advocates say the Marines continue to shirk responsibility for poisoning as many as 1 million people, according to past estimates by health officials. “The United States Marine Corps and the Department of the Navy have not been held accountable,” said retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, who heads The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten, which advocates for those affected by the contamination. The program The VA estimates it will spend $379.8 million on disability compensation during the first year of the program, which is similar to one granting compensation to Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Lejeune’s case is different, though, in that it is the first time veterans are eligible for disability compensation for injuries not sustained in combat. “We have a responsibility to take care of those who have served our nation and have been exposed to harm as a result of that service,” outgoing VA Sec. Rob McDonald said after the ruling was released. U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both fought to get the “presumptive status” because many of Lejeune veterans’ claims were being denied. “I’m disappointed at how long it took,” Burr said. “I think it is safe to say that the VA has known what scientific data has shown for a while.” Any Lejeune veteran with one of the eight conditions won’t have to provide documentation proving it was caused by tainted water. Active-duty, Reserve and National Guard members who served at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days between Aug. 1, 1953, and Dec. 31, 1987, are eligible. While health officials have estimated as many as 1 million people may have been exposed to the water, the ruling only applies to veterans — not men, women or children who lived or worked on Lejeune but were not enlisted. ‘Two-thirds of our family’ Joe Walker’s holidays begin at the Coastal Carolina State…

The following is a transcript of the WaterWorld Weekly Newscast for January 23, 2017. Hi, I’m Angela Godwin for WaterWorld magazine, bringing you water and wastewater news headlines for the week of January 23. Coming up… Court upholds EPA water transfer rule Manual offers guidance for making wastewater projects more sustainable Scientists develop method to extract radioactive elements from water California water allocation estimate increases after winter storms Matt Damon talks water at World Economic Forum Last week, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency when it deemed the agency’s 2008 ‘water transfer’ rule reasonable — reversing a previous 2014 decision. The rule permits government agencies to transfer water between waterbodies without an NPDES permit. The case centered around the transfer of water from the Schoharie Reservoir in the Catskills to Esopus Creek via an 18-mile-long tunnel that environmentalists maintain deposited dirty water into the popular trout-fishing stream. Eight other states, as well as several environmental groups, joined New York in opposing the rule. A dozen states, along with New York City, supported it. The Water Environment Federation’s Envision Task Force has released a tool to help the water sector apply the Envision® sustainability rating system to wastewater infrastructure projects. The Envision system and planning guide was developed in 2013 by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure and the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at Harvard University. It provides metrics that can be used to compare the strengths of design ideas for infrastructure projects by awarding points and credits on 60 criteria in five categories related to sustainability. WEF’s task force assessed the system’s relevance to wastewater and in its new manual, “Applying Envision 1.0 to Wastewater Projects,” rates the applicability of each of the Envision credits. The manual also describes each objective, reasons for the relevance rating, potential areas in which to apply credits, as well as additional resources. To learn more, visit the Sustainability topic in the “Resources” section at wef.org. Researchers at Rice University and Kazan Federal University in Russia have found a way to extract radioactivity from water and that they say could help treat contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Research shows their oxidatively modified carbon (OMC) material is highly efficient at absorbing radioactive metal cations, including cesium and strontium. According to lead researcher James Tour, the material leverages the porous nature of two specific sources of carbon: an inexpensive, coke-derived powder known as C-seal F, and a naturally occurring, carbon-heavy mineral called shungite found mainly in Russia. OMC can also trap common radioactive elements found in water floods from oil extraction, such as uranium, thorium and radium. As a result of recent heavy rain and snow in the west, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has increased its estimate of this year’s State Water Project (SWP) supply from 45 to 60 percent of most requests. The state isn’t quite out of the woods yet. DWR Acting Director William Croyle said: “Our water supply outlook is definitely brighter, but we still haven’t shaken off the effects of our historic drought.” Many in the state still depend on bottled water and some reservoirs remain low. DWR said that with more rain and snow in the forecast, it hopes to be able to increase the allocation further. Final allocations will be announced in April. In international news, last week at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Matt Damon highlighted the need for clean water and sanitation in the world’s poorest areas. The actor was joined by Gary White, the co-founder of his non-profit organization Water.org, at a packed Q&A session to discuss why he wants to provide safe water to millions of people worldwide. “I mean leaving aside the fact that every 90 seconds a kid is dying because…