Should we tow icebergs from Antarctica to combat drought?.
Drought has become an intractable problem in the United Arab Emirates, and the desert nation’s groundwater is expected to dry up in as little as 15 years.
Desalination currently supplies 98 percent of the drinking water for residents of UAE’s gluttonous cities, but desalination is expensive and ravaging to the local environment.
Meanwhile, Antarctica contains around 70 percent of the planet’s freshwater.
Towing icebergs from Antarctica might seem like an extreme idea– the idea has certainly garnered its fair share of ridicule– but an Abu Dhabi-based firm, the National Advisor Bureau Limited, is dead set on carrying it out, and they believe it can offer a real solution to their region’s water woes.
Al Shehi also believes that the out-of-place iceberg could become a significant tourist attraction, making the project more financially feasible.
That’s certainly a bit of salesmanship– an iceberg would have to be impractically huge to significantly alter the region’s rainfall– but the mammoth block of ice could absolutely generate clouds in its immediate vicinity, making it an even bigger spectacle for tourists.
The firm has released a somewhat amusing animation that visualizes the whole plan, even depicting wildlife still living on the towed iceberg.
(Specifically, it depicts penguins and polar bears– a bit of a faux pas given that polar bears only live in the Arctic.)
You can view it here: The video also misleadingly suggests that the plan will eventually transform the arid landscape of the UAE into a verdant, green paradise.

Around 750 villagers belonging to ST community have been facing acute drinking water scarcity for the last few years during the summer.
The parched villagers have no other option but to walk for one and a half km to collect drinking water from small pits on dry bed of Brahmani Gadia, a pond situated near Koluapata on the outskirts of the village.
As the groundwater level has drastically gone down, the villagers have dug five small pits which are the only sources to meet their needs.
The villagers alleged that though the district administration had set up a drinking water project under Swajaldhara scheme at an estimated cost of `65 lakh two years back, it has failed to supply due to lack of adequate depth of the boring, low motor capacity for pumping water and depletion in groundwater level for the last three months.
Similarly, four tubewells set up by the Government in the village have failed to provide water in the summer due to depletion of groundwater, said Gangadhar Nayak, a villager.
As a result, the tribal women of Rajeev Nagar have to walk one and a half km to fetch water from the pits.
“After collecting water from the pits, we purify it by filtering or boiling,” said 45-year-old Kamala Gochhi.
Junior Engineer of RWSS Baishnab Mallik said due to depletion of groundwater, both the tubewells and drinking water projects are not functioning.
However, the under construction project at Nistipur village will meet the water demand once it is operational, he added.
Sarpanch of Kuspangi panchayat Pushpalata Parida has urged the administration to provide drinking water to Rajeev Nagar village through tankers.

Hide caption Twenty-two landscape professionals went through a full day of training known as the Green Industries Best Management Practices, or GIBMP for short. [SUBMITTED] Twenty-two landscape professionals recently completed a full day of training known as the Green Industries Best Management Practices, or GIBMP for short. The trainees were exposed to modules on pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation, lawn and landscapes and, most importantly, an overview of watersheds and non-point source pollution. The source of water pollution that comes from diverse sources, such as lawns, landscapes and roadways, is called non-point source pollution — and it is a problem. We all contribute to it, even unwittingly. Oil leaks from a car, grass clippings left on the street, fertilizers not watered in — all these things end up as pollutants in our water. Rainfall and excessive irrigation will move sediments across impervious surfaces (roads, driveways, sidewalks, rooftops and compacted soils) right to the storm drains on our streets. Storm water does not get treated and filtered. It flows directly to the ponds, lakes, streams and rivers near our homes and businesses. Eventually, all of these bodies of water are connected to the aquifer,…

Merrimack River: MRWC wants CSO annoucements.
TEWKSBURY — The Merrimack River provides five cities and 600,000 residents in New Hampshire and Massachusetts with drinking water; it also collects sewage from treatment plants that do not have any obligation to inform anyone when they dump the combination of polluted rainwater runoff and raw sewage into the river.
“The Merrimack water isn’t clean; it has to be treated to be drinking water for Lowell, Lawrence, Andover, and other towns on the Merrimack.
Then, the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, which allowed the water from the combined source systems to be taken into sewage treatment plants.
“When it rains heavily, the sewage treatment plant can’t handle the amount of flow, so the proprietors have built an overflow valve that allows the sewage system to dump directly into the river.
The sewage system that is part of these cities (Manchester, Nashua, Lawrence, Lowell, and Haverhill) overflows into the Merrimack.” The concern for Russell and others at the MRWC is the number of people relying on the Merrimack River for drinking water.
“I’m not saying that the water is polluted, but it’s more at risk than other water systems.” “Some sewer systems allow people to sign up for an email list, so I get a notice from Haverhill at some point after there’s been a CSO,” said Russell.
The public doesn’t have a right to know.” His next step, after being a concerned citizen, is bringing more attention to Senate Bill 448.
Haverhill’s 2016 CSO report says that their combined sewage discharged into the Merrimack did not receive any treatment.
According to the MRWC, almost all of the 600,000 people drinking from the Merrimack live below at least one of the sewage treatment plants that release untreated combined sewage and runoff.

"My government is attaching priority to the drinking water supply programme," said Naveen.
The chief minister directed the officials to make provisions for 100 per cent piped water supply in 112 urban local bodies on war footing.
At present, 79 per cent people in the urban areas are getting piped water.
Steps will be taken to receive public grievances through mobile phones.
About one per cent of 4.39 lakh-odd tube wells are lying defunct.
Repair of 463 defunct piped water supply projects are also going on.
On February 24, Naveen directed officials to complete maintenance of drinking water projects by March 31.
The extension officers were assigned to monitor water supply in every panchayat and asked to submit the report to block development offic-ers.
These are municipal corporations of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Rourkela and Sambalpur and the municipalities in Puri, Baripada, Balasore and Bhadrak.
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Mayor Jack Smiley calls on Altus residents to be stewards of water supply in honor of Drinking Water Week.
The City of Altus and the American Water Works Association or AWWA are celebrating Drinking Water Week and the role clean drinking water plays in the United States.
The city workers have been operating a public water system since 1927, the year the Ambursen Dam at Lake Lugert-Altus was completed and the first water treatment plant for the area was built.
As part-owner of the Mountain Park Master Conservancy District, the money from the city for construction and maintenance gives the municipality water rights from assures the reservoir.
“The water currently produced is the cleanest, safest water ever produced in our city’s history.” Supervisor Gene Leister, Senior Operator Ronnie Jones, Lab Technician Rick Stebbens, and operators Tim Williams, E.M. Collier, Tim Jeffrey, Tia Dameron and C.J.
Morris have been licensed by the State of Oklahoma through a process that includes higher level algebra and chemistry exams.
According to Barron, the Altus Water Treatment Plant runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and stores about one day’s worth of treated water in case the plant needs to be shut down for short-term maintenance.
We are extremely proud of the work accomplished by our water treatment operators.” Access to water from Tom Steed Reservoir not only provides drinking water to Altus residents, but also provides fire protection, supports industrial and commercials business and promotes a healthy environment, Barron said.
We should all know how to find and fix leaks, care for our home’s pipes, and support our utility’s investment in water infrastructure,” AWWA Chief Executive Officer David LaFrance said.
Reach Katrina Goforth at 580-482-1221, ext.

Website addresses drinking water crisis.
The website, SafeWaterForCA.org, will also be advertised on the radio around the state in areas with high numbers of contaminated water systems.
“Contaminated drinking water is an issue that matters to everyone,” Wade Crowfoot of the Water Foundation said.
“Access to safe and affordable drinking water is a human right and we need to be innovative and aggressive in finding solutions.
Some of these families have been without clean water for over a decade.
That is not acceptable.” As many as one million Californians are exposed to unsafe, contaminated drinking water in their homes, schools and businesses.
SafeWaterForCA.org is an educational campaign bringing awareness to this drinking water crisis.
The website includes powerful testimony from individuals who have lived or are living with contaminated water, news articles, facts surrounding the drinking water crisis and polling information commissioned by the Water Foundation in January.
The Water Foundation is a nonprofit public foundation that is transforming how water is managed so communities and natural places thrive.
It is the only grantmaking foundation entirely focused on improving the way water is used and managed in the American West.

The city of Dayton stopped pumping water at a Huffman Dam well field in April after a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base monitoring well near the dam showed tainted groundwater above a federal environmental threshold for contaminants found in firefighting foam, officials say.
The Dayton production well field will remain closed until the city and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency “are comfortable that operation of these wells will not cause the migration” of groundwater contaminants from the base into the city’s well field, according to Michelle D. Simmons, a city water department environmental manager.
However, city and base environmental officials say drinking water in both the city of Dayton and at Wright-Patterson is safe to consume.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a threshold health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion for drinking water from contaminants found in Aqueous Film Forming Foam, a fire suppressant.
Base will reopen closed wells Wright-Patterson tentatively expects to reopen two closed contaminated drinking water wells next week in Area A when a new $2.7 million water treatment facility starts operations.
The Ohio EPA has cited concerns a contaminated groundwater plume could potentially reach other drinking wells on base and the seven city of Dayton production wells at Huffman Dam.
The two contaminated wells in Area A at Wright-Patterson posed “a continued threat to public health from the potential plume emanation to the city of Dayton well field,” the state agency reported last summer.
Since then, water had been cycled through one pump each day at Huffman Dam and sent to a treatment facility to keep the pumps in operation, Simmons said.
Additional tests for contamination None of the city’s monitoring wells at the Huffman Dam well field sampled in December showed contamination levels above the EPA threshold nor has it been detected in the water distribution system, according to Simmons.
In addition to the new $2.7 million water treatment facility, the base has spent about $1.5 million on groundwater testing-related costs, according to Bashore.

Water Quality Advisory for City of Kelowna.
A Water Quality Advisory has been issued for all customers in the City of Kelowna water utility.
A Water Quality Advisory alerts residents that there is a modest health risk associated with consuming water.
During a Water Quality Advisory, the Interior Health Authority makes the following recommendations: Who should take precaution: People with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses People under 12 and over 65 years of age People wishing for additional protection How to take precaution: Boil water for one minute, then store in clean covered containers in your refrigerator.
Be sure water is cool before drinking to avoid burns or scalds.
Use filtered or distilled water Use an alternative water resource (e.g. bottled water) The advisory is issued due to higher than normal turbidity levels at water intakes.
“Interior Health has been notified and we will be monitoring turbidity levels at all City pump stations,” said Ed Hoppe, Water Quality and Customer Care Supervisor.
"We are seeing unprecedented water levels and flows into Lake Okanagan.
As a result, we have adjusted our UV disinfection and chlorine levels to ensure that we continue to maintain a clean, coliform bacteria free system.
A Water Quality Advisory notice is available here and can be printed on standard letter size paper and posted until further notice.

However, a multiyear, interdisciplinary study of water use in one of the country’s rural areas conducted by a team of Vanderbilt University researchers has uncovered two major problems not reflected in the national statistics.
“The most surprising and disturbing result of this research was discovering that, in the communities we studied, there was almost no reliable year-round access to safe drinking water, while most residents did not know that their water was unsafe.
Even when almost all water was unhealthily salty and had unsafe levels of arsenic and other chemicals, most people reported that the water tasted good and used it regularly,” summarized co-author Jonathan Gilligan, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt.
In March, the journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, featured the article to mark World Water Day and made it free for anyone to read through the end of May.
“To mark this year’s World Water Day, we wanted to draw attention to a range of articles that both mark the latest thinking in the field and have ‘real world’ impact,” explained Daniel Pullin, content coordinator of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Against the backdrop of 663 million people globally living without a safe water supply close to home, this research is especially important in raising awareness during a time of crisis.” The researchers studied several rural communities in southwestern Bangladesh, combining social and natural sciences to understand regional and seasonal variation in water security.
They also measured water quality in both rainy and dry seasons.
They found that during the rainy season most people collected rainwater, which provided them with an ample supply of safe drinking water.
“Fixing a problem begins with knowing that there is a problem, so we are continuing to work with colleagues in Bangladesh to extend this research to many more communities and to raise awareness of these critical issues,” Gilligan said.
Members of the interdisciplinary research team include environmental engineering doctoral student Laura Benneyworth, Professors of Earth and Environmental Sciences John Ayers and Stephen Goodbred, earth and environmental sciences master’s students Gregory George and David Fry, Professor of Sociology Katharine Donato and sociology doctoral student Bhumika Piya from Vanderbilt; Amanda Carrico from the University of Colorado at Boulder; and Rezaul Karim and Farjana Akter from Khulna University in Bangladesh.