Cauvery water to be available for Bengaluru until June 15.
BENGALURU: Allaying fears of drinking water scarcity in the backdrop of drought, Karnataka water resources minister MB Patil said on Monday that the city had enough Cauvery water to meet drinking water needs until June 15.
Krishna Raja Sagar (4.438 tmc) and Kabini (0.295 tmc), the main sources of drinking water for Bengaluru, have a live storage of 4.7 tmc of water.
The city needs about 4.14 tmc of water to meet drinking water needs for the next 60 days.
"With this storage, we can provide drinking water for Bengaluru until June 15.
We hope the pre-monsoon showers in May and arrival of monsoon in early June would help us tide over the crisis," Patil said, speaking to reporters after a meeting with officials of Water Resources department and the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB).
The presently available water in KRS, Kabini, Harangi, Hemavathi, Almatti, Narayanapura, Hidkal, Hipparagi, Tungabhadra and Malaprabha reservoirs would be drawn only for drinking water purposes, Patil said, and appealed to farmers to co-operate with the district administration in this regard as water would not be released for agriculture.
Elaborating on meeting the water needs of Bengaluru, the minister said, “BWSSB needs daily discharge of 600 cusecs from the reservoirs.
However, taking into account the transit losses, evaporation and syphoning of water en-route, water resources department has assured daily discharge of 800 cusecs.
This will enable us to meet the drinking water needs of Bengaluru until June 15 with present storage”.

Dr. Christopher Swindell: US, state take backward steps on water quality.
Fast forward three years and the administration not only made what happened then legal now, but encouraged water pollution as a way of "bringing back jobs."
Dumping waste into streams does not bring back jobs.
These costs are only transferred when companies are allowed to dump without consequence.
The costs do not somehow go away.
But it is for certain that paying to clean filthy water is expensive.
Be clear, West Virginia American Water does its best to make the water safe.
At the intake pipe, the unseen suffering starts at the human level.
But, fouling the water supply?
The supply we get our drinking water from?

Ranga Reddy district draws up plan to tackle drinking water scarcity.
According to the data, four mandals registered deficit rainfall while 14 mandals received normal rainfall and four mandals registered excess rainfall.
Open Hyderabad: The Ranga Reddy district administration has drawn up an action plan to meet the drinking water requirements for summer.
Proposals have been sent to the State government requesting sanction of Rs 8.96 crore to ensure adequate water supply to residential colonies along the city suburbs and villages in the district.
District Collector M Raghunandan Rao is scheduled to meet Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao during the district Collector’s conference to be held here on April 10, on issues related to water supply.
Officials have identified 639 villages in 22 mandals as affected and water will be supplied either through tankers or water drawn from hired borewells.
At present, water is being supplied to 75 villages and 32 habitations in the district.
According to the data, four mandals registered deficit rainfall while 14 mandals received normal rainfall and four mandals registered excess rainfall.
The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board is supplying water to villages in Maheswaram, Kandukur, Ibrahimpatnam and Shankarpally apart from areas on the city suburbs and colonies that have come up inside the ORR radius.
A senior official said the water board prepared proposals of over Rs 4.65 crore to meet the drinking water needs in villages and colonies in parts of Shamshabad and Rajendranagar areas, Hayathnagar and Saroornagar under the Calamity Relief Fund (CRF).

Israeli start-up extracting water from air, around the world.
“We created a product that can really be the next source of drinking water,” Maxim Pasik, executive chairman of Rishon Lezion-based Water Gen, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“[And] what they drink is not healthy.” In India, the memorandum inked between Water Gen and Vikram Solar enables the latter to manufacture and distribute the Israeli company’s products, incorporating solar power to fuel the water generation process in remote locations.
If you have bad pipes it doesn’t matter how much good water you put in the pipes.” The GENius technology works on-demand by trapping the humid air inside the device, then cleaning and drying the air and extracting the now clean water, Pasik said.
“People cannot live without water.” Pasik said that in the future, technologies like Water Gen’s devices will have the capacity to prevent wars and foster peace, in regions where people are fighting for access to clean water.
“It’s very important that this kind of solution comes from Israel,” he said.
“This is kiddush Hashem [sanctification of God’s name] and tikkun olam [repairing the world].” As an investor in sustainable technology solutions, Pasik also serves as executive chairman at a variety of other Israeli and international companies, including the Ramot Hashavim-based Vertical Field and partner Green Wall Israel, which focus on building natural gardens on vertical surfaces.
“The biggest problem in the world is drinking water and the second is pollution,” he said, “We don’t have a place in the city to put trees.” A 1,000-meter vertical field is equivalent to 50 trees, each 15 meters tall, which would take many years to grow, Pasik explained.
While Vertical Field and Green Wall can provide critical solutions to dense urban communities plagued by air pollution, Pasik stressed that solving the world’s water scarcity problem is still his top priority.
“Two-thirds of the world has drinking-water problems,” Pasik said.

Apparently the Trump administration hasn’t heard about the latest Gallup poll, which puts Americans’ concerns about water pollution and drinking water at their highest levels since 2001.
And while recent and ongoing crises like the one in Flint have highlighted urban drinking water problems, it is also true that rural communities—whose voters helped put President Trump in office—have plenty to worry about.
Gallup’s annual Environment Poll found that 63 percent of Americans worried “a great deal” about pollution of drinking water, and 57 percent have a similar level of concern about pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
The Trump administration is trashing clean water protections Against this backdrop of Americans’ rising water worries, President Trump is taking actions that will actually make the nation’s waters dirtier.
As the Washington Post reported last Friday, a leaked EPA memo sheds new light on the budget cuts previewed a few weeks earlier.
By my tally, the cuts to EPA Office of Water programs total more than $1 billion.
Water worries are rising in farm country It’s not just urban or industrial communities that will suffer from the Trump administration’s budget cutting.
The USDA has estimated the cost of removing agricultural nitrates from public water supplies at about $1.7 billion per year, and the total cost of environmental damage from agricultural nitrogen use has been estimated at $157 billion annually.
Last summer, UCS documented the potential benefits to farmers, taxpayers, and businesses from an innovative farming system integrating strips of perennial native prairie plants with annual row crops.
Smart farm policy can deliver clean water and rural prosperity This is timely, because Congress is already at work on the 2018 farm bill, that massive piece of legislation that comes around every five years and shapes the nation’s food and farming system.

La Crosse County, WI (WXOW) – La Crosse County Health Department issued a health advisory on Thursday after dangerous levels of nitrates and bacteria were found in private wells in the Town of Onalaska and the Town of Holland.
La Crosse County Health officials said they found clusters of private wells with contaminated water during annual water testing.
They say the water contamination is the result of bacteria and nitrate build up for over a decade.
Health officials said traces of nitrate are evident in normal drinking water, but some of the groundwater tested in the private wells had dangerously high nitrate levels.
High nitrate levels could cause birth defects and the rare, "Blue Baby Syndrome."
"Municipal water sources are safe," Rombalski said.
"They routinely test and very often monitor their well water quality, and there is no concern at this time about municipal water supplies."
She urges residents in those areas to use bottled water for drinking and cooking, or boil it to kill bacteria.
There is no easy solution to removing these contaminants.
It may be a long-term problem.

Keeping those four counties under a drought declaration ensures money continues to flow for emergency drinking water projects to help water-short communities address dry or contaminated wells, the governor’s order said.
The governor’s order said most of the conditions that prompted his drought declarations of 2014 and 2015 have diminished.
Indeed, another storm was moving through California as the governor issued his order.
“Conservation must become a way of life.” Within the four counties, most communities and farmers are not affected by the continued drought declaration, but small communities where wells have gone dry or there is no access to clean water are included, said water board officials.
For example, Gomberg said, “It allows us to continue the emergency measures, such as for bottled water or emergency hookups in East Porterville.” The State Water Resources Control Board announced Friday that it has approved up to $35 million in grants and loan forgiveness to connect East Porterville residents dealing with dry and contaminated wells to clean and reliable drinking water from the city of Porterville’s public water system.
Cities with ample water supplies will continue to live by state rules as other communities in California’s 54 other counties, state water officials said.
Being better stewards of our natural supplies is critical to securing a sustainable water future for California’s people, economy, and environment.” But a spokeswoman for Westlands Water District, the largest agriculture water district in the nation, said farmers had little choice but to pump water from the ground.
The district supplies water to farmers in Fresno and Kings counties as part of the Central Valley Project, a joint agreement between the federal government and the state.
In the last three years, the district’s farmers have received little to no water from the Central Valley Project.
“Water that typically has gone to the region has stayed in the delta for the protection of fish species.” Holman said the continued drought emergency won’t have an impact on Westlands farmers this year.

JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST — Military records show that tens of millions of gallons of water from two contaminated wells on the joint base were used to supply drinking water to base workers and residents over the past decade, despite base officials stating that the wells were used only to back up the main well.
Despite repeated assurances from joint base officials that drinking wells found to be contaminated by PFOS and PFOA are "backup" wells, records provided by the base to this news organization show otherwise.
And the military’s own well pumping records show the wells contributed about 16 percent of the system’s drinking water from 2007 to 2016.
From May 2014 to April 2015, records show that the two contaminated wells supplied 25 million gallons to the Hill system, as the main well was undergoing maintenance.
That means about three-quarters of the water going into the Hill system was coming from those contaminated wells during that time.
When asked if it’s likely that base residents and workers served by the Hill system had consumed water from the shallow aquifers, Eagan wrote: "Probably.
The report concluded that the two main Lakehurst drinking water systems — the Hill and the Helo — "are subject to potential contamination" by the chemicals.
Robert Delaney, an environmental quality specialist with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, has been helping investigate contamination from perfluorinated chemical compounds like PFOS and PFOA around the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in that state.
Because the EPA’s limit is 70 ppt, and the contaminated wells were found to be about three times higher, at least 33 percent of the water had to come from the contaminated wells in a given month to reach the 70-ppt threshold, even after mixing the contaminated water with cleaner water.
This news organization has requested full pumping records for all wells drawing water from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer and all wells on the base that have been tested for PFOS and PFOA.

PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY – Residents of Bloomfield and Picton can safely drink tap water after Hastings and Prince Edward Health Unit lifted a boil-water advisory Thursday morning.
The municipality’s Emergency Control Group met with local media shortly after noon at Shire Hall, announcing the Picton/Bloomfield drinking water plant had passed all tests, allowing the Hastings and Prince Edward Health unit to lift the advisory.
The Picton drinking water plant resumed normal operations and was reconnected to the Picton/Bloomfield water distribution system (Wednesday) evening,” he said.
Quaiff said despite the end of the boil-water advisory, the municipality will remain in a state of emergency until likely early next week to ensure no threat remains.
“Although the Health Unit has lifted the Boil Water Advisory, the County will remain in its state of emergency until such time as we are confident that contamination in Picton Bay no longer poses a threat to the drinking water system,” he explained.
“(Barge operators) McKeil Marine has retained Pinchin Limited, one of Canada’s largest environmental, engineering, health and safety consulting firms to develop and perform a water column monitoring program.
Also on Thursday, the Health Unit lifted its advisory for people with shore wells in the area.
If their drinking water has any change in taste, odour, or colour, or if a chemical sheen is seen within 50 feet (15 metres) of your well, it is recommended that they: • avoid drinking the water • use an alternate water source (e.g. bottled water, for drinking and other domestic purposes) • Contact the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change’s Spills Action Centre at 1-800-268-6060 for further information •Test your well water once the issue has been resolved.
Fire Chief Scott Manlow who is chairperson of the Emergency Control Group said he was pleased with the municipality’s role in the situation.
“Residents and businesses in Picton and Bloomfield have had to boil their water for a week now (and) to add to that, we’ve seen that many residents took great measures to conserve their water use since that initial request was made almost two weeks ago,” he said.

Green groups target Trump voters in swing states.
Green groups are seeking to convince Trump voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states to split from the president over his stewardship of the environment.
They point to President Trump’s proposed cuts to programs that would clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay and their watersheds, arguing the White House’s policies will hurt the voters who helped him topple Hillary Clinton.
They support having clean air and clean water … you can’t do that in a budget that cuts the Great Lakes program.
Adrian Gray, a Republican strategist and consultant, said that could be a good way to sway Republican voters.
“Democrats generally do environmental issues on a more global scale,” Gray said.
“The budget returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities,” officials wrote in the budget outline.
But environmental groups think the deep budget cut proposals, even if they are unlikely to be realized, will hurt the Trump agenda.
The cuts already have been condemned by some Republican lawmakers in the affected states.
A Gallup poll last month found that 63 percent of Americans are concerned “a great deal” about drinking water pollution, while 57 percent are concerned about pollution in lakes, rivers and reservoirs.