Boil water advisory issued near Kalamazoo’s West Main Hill neighborhood.
KALAMAZOO, MI — A precautionary advisory is being issued for municipal drinking water customers living near the West Main Hill Neighborhood.
The city of Kalamazoo’s Department of Public Services is repairing a water main break west of an intersection of Stadium Drive and West Michigan Avenue at West Lovell Street.
All water intended for drinking within the affected area should be boiled due to a temporary pressure loss that will occur within the water main during the repair.
The affected area includes Stadium Drive and West Michigan Avenue from Eldred Street to West Lovell Street.
This advisory is precautionary.
There have not been any confirmed tests showing bacteria present in the water main at the location of the break.
The city expects the advisory will be lifted within 72 hours.
A Boil Water Advisory warns residents their drinking water may be contaminated.
Call (269) 373-5337 with any questions related to boiling tap water or general water quality questions or visit the City of Kalamazoo website at kalamazoocity.org.

Over hundred villages in Mysuru district facing acute drinking water scarcity.
Over a hundred villages in Mysuru district are facing acute drinking water scarcity.
Drinking water is being provided to these villages through tankers.
This was revealed at a special drought review meeting held on Monday under the chairmanship of H.C. Mahadevappa, PWD Minister and also Mysuru district in-charge.
Manjunath, Exeuctive Engineer, Department of Rural Drinking Water Supply, said that over 1,061 works to provide drinking water had been taken up at an estimated cost of ₹1,200 lakh.
Of these, 943 had been completed and 118 were under way.
He added that changing of pipelines and deepening of borewells was taken up.
Multi-village projects Apart from this, 31 multi-village drinking water supply projects were initiated at a cost of ₹288 crore in the district.
Over 36,000 fodder mini-kits were provided to farmers and the department had sought 12.000 more such kits for the district.
Lakshminarayan, District in-charge secretary, Shivashankar, Chief Executive Officer, T. Venkatesh, Additional Deputy Commissioner, Mahesh, Commissioner of Mysuru Urban Development Authority, participated in the meeting.

Pa’s failure to address Chesapeake Bay cleanup is hurting local drinking water: Dominic Bassani.
Nitrogen from manure is the biggest problem because it’s partially an airborne pollution that settles in our waterways and works its way to the Bay.
Yet, planning to address one of the largest environmental challenges of our time continues to revolve around taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded solutions that only provide minimal impact as the stress on our drinking water – and the Bay – continues.
Local wastewater treatment plants have spent billions to improve their facilities to handle cleanup, and more local authorities are being pushed to do the same.
In all, stormwater authorities still need to reduce 3.5 million pounds of nitrogen at a projected cost in excess of $6 billion.
Farmers can then sell nitrogen credits through a competitive bidding program to municipalities at a much lower cost to help them meet the Chesapeake Bay mandate, literally saving taxpayers, farmers and businesses billions.
We know this solution will save money because a 2013 study by the nonpartisan Pennsylvania Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) concluded that Bay mandate costs could be reduced by as much as 80 percent if Pennsylvania approves legislation to put a competitive bidding structure in place.
This should concern every Pennsylvania taxpayer, farm and business in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
Pennsylvania can take action to avoid hitting residents and businesses with billions in additional costs by mandating stormwater authorities use competitive bidding for nitrogen reduction.
This is what the status quo has created: Communities throughout south central Pennsylvania must treat their drinking water because it has too much nitrogen.

The World Health Organization has warned that billions of people across the world are drinking contaminated water as a result of poor sanitation and a lack of investment.
Together with the UN, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a new report “UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) 2017.” While significant strides have been made in some areas of the world to secure and improve water supplies, the report found that many of the world’s poorest are still at risk from unsafe water because world governments are not investing enough money in infrastructure development in order to meet what are known as the ambitions Sustainable Development Goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a complex set of criteria that differs from nation to nation, but they all have one common goal: that by the year 2030 everyone in the world will have access to safe water.
For example, the report praises countries for increasing their annual spending on sanitation over the past three years.
While spending has increased, actual commitments to global aid for sanitation have decreased from US$ 10.4 billion to US$ 8.2 billion as of 2015.
A report from UNICEF issued in late March finds that 27 million people around the world are at risk of famine while also not having access to safe drinking water.
A lack of sanitation then creates more people who are unwell, and so the cycle continues.
That means that their spending can’t focus on the specific problem of safe water because they are still trying to establish things like reliable power and road access.
According to the World Bank data provided by WHO, an investment of some US $114 billion per year solely targeted at sanitation and securing water supplies would be needed.
Access to safe drinking water is one of the most fundamental and basic requirements we all need.

DEHDADI DISTRICT, Balkh Province – Shiny new pipelines connect the water storage tank to the tanker parked beside the main road of Karmalik village.
The tanker provides sufficient drinking water for all the residents of the village.
Abdul Ahad, 45, is responsible for making sure every house in the village has access to water.
“When the water supply was disrupted, things were very difficult for us.
The village main road was being paved recently, making it easier for locals to transport goods, but the road works ruptured the existing water supply network.
With the supply system collapsing, households could no longer access drinking water through their pipeline system.
This was hard as well as unhygienic because stream water is not very clean,” says Aqela, 50, a resident of Karmalik village.
Every time we need water, we just turn on the tap in our homes and have access to clean water,” she says, smiling.
The village water supply network was restored by a Maintenance Cash Grant (MCG) awarded by NSP.
We have access to drinking water in our homes now,” says Abdul Ahad.

Solar-powered device pulls drinking water straight out of thin air.
People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that is all around them – the air, US researchers say.
Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several litres every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal Science.
Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link "It takes water from the air and it captures it," said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper.
The technology could be "really great for remote areas where there"s really limited infrastructure", she said.
The system, which is still in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores.
When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed, essentially "pulling" the water out of the air, the scientists said.
Areas going through droughts often experience dry air, but Wang said the new product could still help them get access to water.
"Now we can get to regions that really are pretty dry, arid regions," she said.
It opens the way for use of [the technology] to water large regions as in agriculture."

Bottled water: Is it all the same?.
“People never tend to read water composition since we all know the importance of water and that a person can live 40 days without eating but never without drinking,” she said.
Each element in different brands of bottled water is important for the body, she adds.
According to Nadine, even though sodium in drinking water contributes only a small fraction of a person’s overall sodium intake, it is highly recommended to drink water low in sodium content.
“It is for nutrition’s best sake to choose water rich in calcium and magnesium but low in sodium.
Since our diet is very high in salt, it is recommended to drink water with sodium content lower than 20 mg/L.
Gulf News looked at the composition of six different brands of bottled waters sold in the UAE and found that each contained a certain level of sodium.
Most of them had sodium that was less 20mg/L.
Nadine recommended such volumes for those who want to reduce their sodium intakes.
Excess sodium consumption from eating a meal high in salt can increase the body’s water content which can show up on the scale, but the body sheds the excess over the next day or so as the sodium is excreted.

What is pH level?
Can water alone do it?
By staying hydrated and drinking a lot of water, the kidneys are able to excrete the acids better.
They will indirectly affect the buffering mechanisms of the body, and therefore also affect the body’s pH.
Once alkaline water enters your stomach, your body simply pours in greater amounts of acid to neutralize it, they say.
It is important to establish the difference between the acidity or alkalinity (pH level) of one’s body, meaning the pH of one’s blood, and the acidity of one’s stomach.
The human body’s acidity level (the acidity of the blood) is not, in any way, affected by the pH level of the stomach or the pH of what is eaten or drunk.
The following is how each buffering system gets rid of the excessive acid in a nutshell: • The lungs get rid of the acids by converting acid into Carbon Dioxide, which we simply breathe out • The kidneys combine the acids with Bicarbonate and excrete the excessive acids through the urine • The blood, which has high a concentration of proteins, combines them with the acids, and this keeps the pH in the normal range Is the human stomach in mainly an acidic environment as the gastric juices are acidic?
Hence, sparkling waters are mildly acidic (pH level is between 6-7).
Some bottled water brands in UAE and their pH and sodium levels

This new bacterial filtration system could provide the world with access to clean water.
Unfortunately, the water purification plants that can provide millions of people with clean drinking water are not available everywhere.
Two examples of potential solutions that have been developed are the LifeStraw and the Drinkable Book.
The LifeStraw, available since 2005, has provided over 620,000 children in developing countries with clean drinking water.
The Drinkable Book, only available since 2015, uses silver nanoparticles to kill 99.9 percent of bacteria in water, though “the project has not yet been proven to remove protozoa and viruses.” Unfortunately, both products are limited in that they can only filter up to 1000 litres and 100 litres of water, respectively, before the filters are no longer effective.
To combat the need for frequent filter replacement, researchers at the University of British Columbia have come up with a purification system that uses bacteria to make the water drinkable.
It’s low-maintenance and as efficient as conventional approaches that need chemicals and complex mechanical systems to keep the membranes clean,” he said.
This new water filtration method is as effective as the complex techniques with their chemicals and mechanical systems, removing “99.99 per cent of contaminants” from the water.
According to the study, this method is “ideally suited to provide high quality water especially where access to financial resources, technical expertise and/or electrical power is limited.” At this point, it looks like this might be the best option for people in developing countries to get easy access to clean drinking water.
Maybe now, with the help of this new development, they will.

Two billion people drinking contaminated water: WHO.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on 13 April 2017 published a report, Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) 2017, that states that nearly two billion people currently use contaminated water.
The revelation was by made in the new report published by WHO on behalf of UN-Water.
Key highlights of the report • The report states that countries will not meet global aspirations of universal access to safe drinking-water and sanitation unless steps are taken to use financial resources more efficiently.
• Contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause more than 500000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.
• Contaminated water is also a major factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including intestinal worms, schistosomiasis and trachoma.
• As per the report, countries have increased their budgets for water, sanitation and hygiene at an annual average rate of 4.9 per cent over the last three years.
• However, 80 per cent of countries report that Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) financing is still insufficient to meet nationally-defined targets for WASH services.
• Planned investments have yet to take into account the much more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals targets, which aim for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030.
• Water and sanitation official development assistance disbursements increased from USD 6.3 to USD 7.4 billion from 2012 to 2015.