Knight’s legislation would clean contaminated water.
In an effort to recycle contaminated water in the Santa Clarita Valley, Congressman Steve Knight (R-Antelope Valley) introduced a bill Tuesday to treat areas contaminated by perchlorate.
Under the House of Representatives Bill 2116, known as the Perchlorate Reclamation and Water Replenishment Act, the Secretary of the Interior would develop projects with local water agencies to capture, treat and distribute recycled water affected by perchlorate.
“While California’s water outlook has improved this year, we still must take steps to ensure we have a clean and abundant water supply in the Santa Clarita Valley,” Knight said in a statement.
“This legislation is a local priority that would bring relief to communities.” Multiple water wells in the Santa Clarita Valley are currently unused because of perchlorate contamination, Knight’s office said.
This bill would assist communities nationwide with the contamination, but would prioritize water districts that have previously taken steps toward solving contamination issues.
Castaic Lake Water Agency General Manager Matt Stone said in a statement that the agency is a proponent of the bill.
“Communities like ours that have been impacted by perchlorate contamination will now have resources to help replenish lost water supply,” Stone said.
“We look forward to working with him as this legislation moves through the process.” Last year, Knight introduced the Castaic Drinking Water Act to authorize the Bureau of Reclamation to participate in perchlorate cleanup.
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Study: Fracking is not contaminating ground water in West Virginia.
Scientists at Duke University have completed a 3-year study which found that fracking in an area of West Virginia has not contaminated groundwater there.
From Fox News: “Based on consistent evidence from comprehensive testing, we found no indication of groundwater contamination over the three-year course of our study,” explained Avner Vengosh, the professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment… ”However, we did find that spill water associated with fracked wells and their wastewater has an impact on the quality of streams in areas of intense shale gas development,” Vengosh added.
The researchers took samples from 112 drinking wells in northwestern West Virginia.
This indicated that they occured naturally in the region’s shallow aquifers and were not the result of the recent shale gas operations.
This is not the first such finding we’ve reported here at Hot Air.
Last November, Jazz reported on a similar two-year study in Wyoming which found no evidence of contamination of groundwater by fracking.
In that case, evidence suggested a problem which created a bad smell was likely caused by the EPA itself.
A six-year EPA study released last December concluded that there was evidence fracking had contributed to surface water contamination (as did the West Virginia study) but was silent on the issue of contamination of ground water.
Related Posts:

Fracking isn’t contaminating groundwater, study finds.
A major anti-fracking argument by environmentalists may not have the facts to back it up, a new study conducted by Duke University found.
Fracking has not contaminated groundwater in northwestern West Virginia, according to the peer-reviewed study published this month in a European journal.
“Based on consistent evidence from comprehensive testing, we found no indication of groundwater contamination over the three-year course of our study,” explained Avner Vengosh, the professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
The growing industry could help create as many as 3.5 million jobs by 2035, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
While the study concluded that fracking didn’t contaminate groundwater, the researchers did say accidental spills of fracking wastewater could be dangerous to surface water in the area.
West Virginia groundwater not affected by fracking, but surface water is https://t.co/VNzsjEXA37 pic.twitter.com/7CcgZ7pZo8 — Duke Environment (@DukeEnvironment) April 24, 2017 ”However, we did find that spill water associated with fracked wells and their wastewater has an impact on the quality of streams in areas of intense shale gas development,” Vengosh added.
“The bottom-line assessment,” he continued, “is that groundwater is so far not being impacted, but surface water is more readily contaminated because of the frequency of spills.” To complete the research, water samples from 112 drinking wells in northwestern West Virginia were evaluated during a three year period.
Twenty of the water wells were sampled prior to drilling or fracking started in the area in order to obtain a baseline for later comparisons.
Tests demonstrated the presence of saline groundwater and methane in both the pre-drilling and post-drilling well water samples.

Nearly 400 Military Bases Must Be Tested for Water Contamination.
But with so many sites to evaluate, the cleanup "is not super-simple to do," said Mark Correll, an Air Force official.
Research on other potential health effects is ongoing, and some experts contend that even water below the EPA’s health advisory level is unsafe.
Contamination has been found near 27 military bases in 16 states, according to the Air Force, Navy, and Army.
The military has also addressed contamination in on-base drinking systems on 15 installations.
In Newburgh, N.Y., where drinking water was tainted by the foam used at an Air National Guard base, officials are pressing the military to pay for connecting city residents to a new clean water source.
The Air Force, Navy, and Army say they have similar plans: First, they will sample bases where the foam, known as aqueous film-forming foam, may have been used, then assess whether remediation is needed.
Officials then started paying more attention to the chemicals as the EPA began focusing on them, said Correll, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for the environment, safety, and infrastructure.
Navy officials established a policy for the testing and cleanup last June, a month after the EPA released new guidelines, and have completed sampling at 11 of 127 bases.
The Army will follow the same process as the Navy and Air Force, a spokesman said, but inspections at 61 bases have not yet begun.

Boil water advisory issued for University Park Water District in Riley County.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued the advisory Tuesday morning because the system will be replacing valves that may cause a loss of pressure.
KDHE says customers should look at the following precautions until further notice: Boil water for one minute prior to drinking or food preparation, or use bottled water.
 Dispose of ice cubes and do not use ice from a household automatic icemaker.
 Disinfect dishes and other food contact surfaces by immersion for at least one minute in clean tap water that contains one teaspoon of unscented household bleach per gallon of water.
 Water used for bathing does not generally need to be boiled.
Persons with cuts or severe rashes may wish to consult their physicians.
 If your tap water appears dirty, flush the water lines by letting the water run until it clears.
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Contamination from former or current military installations has ignited a nationwide review of water on or around bases that used a firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals. The military is now testing nearly 400 bases and has confirmed water contamination at or near more than three dozen, according to an analysis of data by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. The new numbers offer the best look to date at the potential scope of the problem. But despite more than $150 million spent on the effort so far, the process has been slow and seemingly disjointed. The Air Force, for example, has completed sampling at nearly all of its targeted bases; the Navy, barely 10 percent. The Army has not begun. The branches and the Pentagon say they are coordinating, but have varying responses on how many bases must be tested, and limited information about remediation timelines and cost. “We’re going to be dealing with this for quite some time.” The lack of answers has been so confounding that Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., moved to amend the defense spending bill to compel the Pentagon to release a list of all bases that used the foam. But with so many sites to evaluate, the cleanup “is not super-simple to do,” said Mark Correll, an Air Force official. While this process plays out, the chemicals in soil or groundwater could continue to leach into drinking water, experts say, meaning the problem could grow. “I am not going to be terribly surprised if, once a month for the next several years or something, we hear of a small community somewhere that was impacted,” said Christopher Higgins, a top researcher on this type of contamination and a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. “We’re going to be dealing with this for quite some time.” Used in manufacturing and in military firefighting foam, PFCs have been linked to health problems including testicular and kidney cancers, thyroid disease, and high cholesterol. For residents near former naval bases in Willow Grove…

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Over time this gets deposited underground.
For the study, the researchers collected samples of groundwater from a depth of 820 feet under the Earth’s surface.
The water at this level is known as "fossil", mainly because it is almost 12,000 years old.
This fossil water was then tested and the researchers found traces of modern-day rainwater mixed with the ancient sample.
The scientists mainly detected tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen — which is generally found in human contaminated waters.
It was once thought that the fossil water was impervious to the pollutants on the surface, but the study proved that groundwater pollution is a reality.
While groundwater pollution and contamination was discovered perchance, the researchers were originally focused on ascertaining how much of Earth’s fossil water was over 12,000 years old.
The researchers noted that a significant amount of groundwater reserves today had deposits of fossil water, which was at least 12,000 years old.
Being from such an old period, the scientists were certain that this groundwater would not possess any human contaminants.

Groundwater drunk by BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s.
A shocking new study has revealed that groundwater drunk by billions of people may have been contaminated by decades of nuclear weapons testing.
Researchers looked at more than 6,000 wells around the globe, some containing water more than 10,000 years old, found more than half had traces of tritium.
Although most of the groundwater that is accessible from deep wells is thousands of years old, the presence of tritium – an isotope of hydrogen – shows at least some of it is vulnerable to modern contamination.
He said: ‘It supplies drinking water to literally billions of people and therefore if the reserves are vulnerable to contamination, we really need to know about that.’
But much more groundwater has been stored beneath the Earth’s surface for many thousands of years.
They said this is significant because tritium was spread around the globe by nuclear testing carried out in the 1950s, showing at least some of the groundwater in the wells post-dates this time.
Professor Kirchner said: ‘Tritium occurs in rainfall as a by product of nuclear weapons testing in the mid 1900s.
A third of Americans get their drinking water from public water systems that use ground water, more than 105 million people.
The oceans contain about 97 per cent of the Earth’s water, but that, of course, isn’t drinkable.

South Mumbai gets dirtiest water in the city, finds BMC survey; Mulund, Parel no better.
A report of water samples collected by the BMC from across the city between April 2016 and March 2017 shows south Mumbai gets the most amount of contaminated water at 9%.
It also reveals the BMC still supplies 3.10 % contaminated water — a slight improvement from the past three years.
Water contamination levels in 2015-16, 2014-15 and 2013-14 were 4.6%, 4.5% and 10.84% respectively.
The latest findings of water testing by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) revealed even though contamination levels in the water that surrounds the city have fallen to an all-year low, there continues to exist cases of E. coli contamination in the water.
Of the 36,833 samples collected around the year, 186 samples have tested positive for E.coli.
The bacteria concentration was also high in Mulund with 23 samples out of 1,082 showed presence of E coli followed by Parel with 17 samples out of 1084 tested positive.
The main causes of water contamination are old, corroded and damaged water pipelines especially in the island city, informed officials.
However, the Hydraulic department is confident that it will be able to further reduce the water contamination levels by next year.
“There has been constant improvement in the reduction of water contamination level over years.

HYANNIS — The first results are in from soil testing to determine if the Barnstable Municipal Airport contributed to contamination of two wellfields serving the Hyannis water system.
The chemicals are typically found in the types of firefighting foams that have been used in the past at the Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy and the airport.
In November, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection notified airport officials that the site had been identified as being potentially responsible for some of the contamination of the Hyannis water supply that had to date been attributed to the county training academy.
“This (report) is just a status to update DEP,” said Barnstable Public Works Director Daniel Santos.
“We don’t have a lot of analytical results yet, and when they are available is when we’ll be able to make some conclusions or recommend more study.
A lot of the work hasn’t been done yet.” According to the report, the soil samples were collected in December from three locations where firefighting foams had been used for training or during an aircraft incident.
Barnstable town officials have issued public health advisories for the Hyannis water system twice since 2015.
Last summer, the town of Barnstable filed a lawsuit against Barnstable County seeking several million dollars in compensation for cleanup of the Hyannis Water District’s Mary Dunn Wells near the county’s fire and rescue training academy.
The water contamination at the Maher wells is not part of the town’s lawsuit against the county.
— Follow Geoff Spillane on Twitter: @GSpillaneCCT