Parkway, environmental groups receive water quality grants.
These and other projects across the mountains are the award recipients of the Pigeon River Fund of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.
The fund recently awarded $182,440 to environmental groups working to improve surface water quality, enhance fish and wildlife habitats, expand public use and access to waterways and increase water quality awareness in Buncombe, Haywood and Madison counties.
Since 1996, the Pigeon River Fund has distributed $6,371,037 in grants.
The grants will enable us to begin a community and stakeholder planning process to think about the future of the property, discuss what’s on the land, what’s special about the resource, what are community interests, and what are the interest of adjacent communities.” Another grant recipient is the French Broad River Academy, a private boys school off Riverside Drive in Woodfin.
The academy received $14,960 to develop wetland areas on the school’s campus adjacent to the French Broad River, to re-establish a natural area that will help filter rainwater and runoff before it makes its way into the river.
The wetland area is the first in a multi-layered plan to improve the environmental sustainability of the campus, and to teach the middle-schoolers about environmental stewardship first-hand, said John Douglas, the school’s development director.
Haywood Waterways Association: • $13,950 toward the Shelton Branch Stream Relocation Project at Vance Street Park in Waynesville.
The Conservation Fund: $30,000, contingent upon other funds, toward the acquisition of 93 acres known as the Urban Property in Haywood County on the north side of Maggie Valley.
The property helps protect the watershed that provides the valley’s drinking water.

Solar energy powers clean water, business opportunities for refugees.
DAR ES SALAAM (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sadick Thenest remembers how his 8-year-old daughter had a narrow brush with death two years ago, when she contracted cholera after drinking contaminated water.
“She was so gaunt, weak and had terrible diarrhea,” said the refugee from Burundi.
“I always ensure that my children use clean and safe water,” he said.
“I have instructed them to wash their hands with soap after using a toilet.” Thenest, who works as a technician with international engineering charity Water Mission, said the health situation in the camp is improving as more people get access to clean water from a recently installed solar-powered water treatment facility.
As part of a broader initiative to help refugees access clean energy and sanitation, Water Mission is installing more such plants in three refugee camps in western Tanzania.
The $5.3 million project, funded by the Denmark-based Poul Due Jensen Foundation, is expected to provide safe water for some 250,000 refugees in Nyarugusu, Nduta and Mtendeli camps.
“We will document saved lives and ensure general public health, as a result of safe water,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A recent shipment of 780 solar panels to Tanzania will produce 226,000 watts of power and provide a continuous supply of safe water to keep children in good health, it said in a statement.
Yet while access to clean energy for refugees and their host communities is a global priority for UNHCR, analysts say millions of displaced people still lack access to sustainable, cheap energy sources because of a lack of funding.

For Petunia Mohale, safe drinking water was not a given.
Mohale was one of approximately 300 million people in Africa who do not have access to safe drinking water.
Steere and Kate Thiers Steere founded I-Drop Water as an alternative solution to make safe drinking water affordable and accessible for people like Mohale in South Africa and the African continent.
I-Drop purification systems are installed in any grocery store with access to a running tap, at no cost to the shop owner.
Customers can then purchase safe drinking water for just R1 per litre – an approximate 80% discount on bottled water.
“We’ve removed these capital cost barriers by making it [the filtration system] free for any grocery store to install in their shop and start selling.” In the months after installing the machine, Mohale sold around five bottles of filtered water a day, with more on the weekends.
While an I-Drop technician is available to repair the machine should it malfunction, Thiers Steere is typically able to address any technical problems remotely via the machine’s cellular-based platform and the data she receives from it.
Ultimately, I-Drop aims to be an environmentally friendly, affordable alternative to the bottled water industry and a practical solution to deteriorating water infrastructure.
According to the South African Institute of Civil Engineering’s Infrastructure Report Card 2011, the replacement value of the water resources infrastructure was R139 billion.
Steere and Thiers Steere believe in the eventual scalability of I-Drop throughout Africa and elsewhere.

Solar energy powers clean water, business opportunities for refugees.
By Kizito Makoye DAR ES SALAAM, June 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sadick Thenest remembers how his 8-year-old daughter had a narrow brush with death two years ago, when she contracted cholera after drinking contaminated water.
"I always ensure that my children use clean and safe water," he said.
Thenest, who works as a technician with international engineering charity Water Mission, said the health situation in the camp is improving as more people get access to clean water from a recently installed solar-powered water treatment facility.
As part of a broader initiative to help refugees access clean energy and sanitation, Water Mission is installing more such plants in three refugee camps in western Tanzania.
The $5.3 million project, funded by the Denmark-based Poul Due Jensen Foundation, is expected to provide safe water for some 250,000 refugees in Nyarugusu, Nduta and Mtendeli camps.
"We will document saved lives and ensure general public health, as a result of safe water," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A recent shipment of 780 solar panels to Tanzania will produce 226,000 watts of power and provide a continuous supply of safe water to keep children in good health, it said in a statement.
Yet while access to clean energy for refugees and their host communities is a global priority for UNHCR, analysts say millions of displaced people still lack access to sustainable, cheap energy sources because of a lack of funding.
Providing solar street lamps and lanterns and energy-efficient cooking stoves can greatly improve the lives of refugees and contribute to their protection, Okello said.

On California, the drought and the ‘yuck factor’.
David Sedlak: Our water systems bring water into our cities from great distances, and that means we need lots of infrastructure—dams, reservoirs, treatment plants and pipes.
Are these water recycling systems already being used in the state?
There are several of these advanced treatment plants in California.
It’s likely they’ll have a potable recycling project up and running in the coming decade.
The constructed wetlands that we’ve spent the most time studying is a system in Riverside County on the Santa Ana River called the Prado Wetlands.
We’re currently in the process of conducting experiments in support of several different types of wetland treatment systems that are being considered in the Bay Area.
Will climate change affect the country’s water supply?
But the problem is the kinds of solutions that are needed to deal with the drought often require a long time to build, so it’s hard to build a new water supply over night.
But very few people currently own them in California.

Natarajan is a one-man army, who is trying to make a dent in that ocean.
He has earned the epithet of being Delhi’s "Water Man" because in a single day, he delivers 2,000 litres of potable water to the city’s urban power.
Watchmen, household help, rickshaw pullers and children from a nearby slum began frequenting his house at all hours of the day to make use of the clean water.
"I live in an affluent area.
What does it cost to give people water?
That one pot has multiplied to 60.
Every morning, Natarajan wakes up at 4.30am, gets into his modified van with a huge water tank where the seats should be and makes his first water run.
Natarajan feels he still has a long way to go before he can make a difference.
He said: "My voice is not loud enough yet – it needs to be much more forceful.
His dream is that one day all homes in Delhi will keep a pot of water outside to help the poor.

Former Wilmington mayor: “We’re here to express our outrage” over GenX contamination in drinking water, Cape Fear.
That study, published in 2016, showed GenX had been detected in drinking water, with its upstream source being Chemours.
Chemours has not sampled its discharge and instead used modeling to estimate levels of GenX.
He emphasized that Knappe’s study indicated GenX is only one of several PFOAs in the Cape Fear.
PFOAs are endocrine disruptors, which affect hormone levels and can play general havoc in the body.
But earlier this week, just a day after DEQ began sampling water from the Cape Fear — and after the EPA launched an investigation — the company announced it would stop discharging GenX into the river.
The EPA, Brander said, “doesn’t have a lot of strength right now to do the research.” Attorney John Green said funding shortages at both the EPA and DEQ prevent those agencies from being legally tough on DuPont and Chemours.
“Because of budget cuts, we don’t have great faith in the regulatory community to joust with DuPont,” Green said.
GenX, also known as C6, is similar to the chemical C8.
Also manufactured by DuPont, C8 was phased out after several class-action lawsuits showed a link between it and cancer and other health problems.

The cost of drinkable water in Cottage Grove keeps increasing — but only for 3M Co.
The costs are for perfluorochemical mitigation projects after two Minnesota agencies — the Department of Health and the Pollution Control Agency — lowered the recommended levels of PFOS and PFOA in drinking water.
The city shut down five wells and reduced pumping for three, enacted a watering ban and created a plan to reintroduce water from affected wells at lower PFC levels.
Travis Carter, public affairs director with 3M counsel Brewer Attorneys, said 3M has spent more than $100 million on various mitigation efforts.
James Kelly, environmental health manager for the Health Department, said he would expect the cost of a Cottage Grove facility to be between $5 million and $10 million.
3M sent a letter last week to the Health Department and Cottage Grove officials contesting total responsibility for PFC levels in city water, saying they could not confirm that all contamination was caused by the company.
Kelly said the Health Department’s “conclusion all along” has been that 3M is responsible for the PFC levels and is therefore responsible for mitigation costs.
Carbon filtration systems, which the MPCA will install in homes on affected private wells, cost several hundred dollars.
“They (homeowners) shouldn’t have to worry about any of those costs,” Krueger said.
This issue was not caused by Cottage Grove.

Turning Salt Water into.. Fresh Water.
This new method of distillation is game changing.
The process requires a huge amount of energy to produce enough heat needed to boil the water.
According to Water treatment expert and co-author of the study, Qilin Li: Direct solar desalination could be a game changer for some of the estimated 1 billion people who lack access to clean drinking water This off-grid technology is capable of providing sufficient clean water for family use in a compact footprint, and it can be scaled up to provide water for larger communities.
By using a technique called membrane distillation.
When the nanoparticles are added to the membrane, it’ll heat up by itself.
Unlike the distillation method used at present, this method will not require energy to heat the water.
It’s called "nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation" technology, or NESMD.
The team tested the NESMD chamber and managed to get a water production rate of about 6 litres per square metre per hour.
Header: Shutterstock

CSC to examine State Water Policy NL Correspondent SRINAGAR: A six member cabinet sub-committee be examine the proposal of J&K water policy, which says “unreliable” water supply system has the potential of causing “social unrest” in the state.
It was framed in the backdrop of the cabinet decision to examine the draft to make the policy more comprehensive.
It has been tasked to submit its report within a period of one month.
“Rapid growth in demand for water due to population growth, urbanization and changing lifestyle pose serious challenges to water security,” it reads.
It states that access to safe water for drinking and other domestic needs, continues to be a problem in many areas.
The draft of the policy says that public agencies in charge of taking water related decisions tend to take these on their own without consultation with stakeholders, often resulting in “poor and unreliable service characterized by inequities of various kinds”.
The draft also stresses on preparation of the master plan for the flood-prone areas, and called for various measures to protect the valley from floods in future.
“Measures to establish the extensive networks for flood forecasting to give timely warnings to the people likely to be effected shall also be outlined.
A roadmap for determination of the limits of the flood basins and the necessary exercises to be carried out shall be prepared,” it reads.
The State had enacted Jammu and Kashmir State Water Resources (Regulation and Management) Act for regulating water resources, ensuring judicious, equitable and sustainable management, allocation and utilization of water resources and fixing the rates for use of water in 2010.