Raleigh, N.C. — State regulators have ordered Chemours to supply bottled water to a group of residents near the chemical company’s Fayetteville Works plant after drinking water there showed elevated levels of GenX, used to make Teflon and other products.
The company, the chemical and several related compounds have been the center of an investigation since media reports widely revealed the presence of unregulated contaminants in the Cape Fear River, the primary source of drinking water for Brunswick, Bladen, New Hanover and Pender counties.
A news release from the Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday said the agency directed Chemours to supply bottled water to 11 homeowners near the Bladen County plant. Private wells on those 11 properties, one-third of the 32 wells sampled so far, exceeded the state’s health goal for GenX.
"We want to make sure people with elevated concentrations of GenX in their wells have an immediate alternative water source," DEQ Secretary Michael Regan said in the release. "Making sure people have clean drinking water is our top priority."
Roy Cooper’s office announced that he would veto legislation that would provide $435,000 for the cleanup and study of the chemicals discovered in the Cape Fear River. The legislation would also repeal a ban on plastic grocery bags along the Outer Banks. Cooper said the bill provided only a fraction of the $2.6 million he requested to take on the GenX issue, while weakening other environmental protections.
Republican leaders, who have criticized the Democratic governor’s response to the GenX revelations, slammed Cooper’s rejection of "the only proposal that will actually help clean our drinking water in the lower Cape Fear region" and vowed an override.

Millions of people around the world still don’t have secure access to drinking water.
According to the most recent statistics compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), four out of every 10 Salomon Islanders don’t have secure access to clean drinking water. This makes the Salomon Islands a member of the small group of countries in which the drinking water situation has not improved, but rather worsened, in the past few years.
Around the world, 89 percent of the population has access to clean water.
Despite the recent setbacks seen in some island nations, the overall situation is improving year after year.
Whereas at least two-thirds of urban populations have access to clean water, that number can plunge to less than a third in rural areas, where most of the population lives.
Worldwide, 95 percent of city dwellers have access to clean water while that number is only 80 percent for those living in rural areas.

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AKIPRESS.COM – Drinking water in Tajikistan has high levels of coliform bacteria and low palatability, according to the new World Bank report.
Access varies to safely managed water sources (i.e. those that are improved, available when needed, and free of fecal contamination). While 57% of urban households have access to safely managed water, only 31% of rural households have so.
Over the last decade, access to sanitation has improved, but Tajikistan continues to have some of the poorest conditions in Central Asia. Access to flush toilets connected to a sewer system in rural areas remains low, at only 1.7%, as opposed to 60% in urban areas.
Tajikistan suffers from high prevalence of childhood undernutrition and stunting; this study suggests that childhood stunting is strongly associated with deprivations relating to access to adequate drinking water and sanitation, food deprivation, and care practices.

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Further public and private funding in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania are needed to ensure drinking water is brought up to EU standards, a report by the European Court of Auditors has found.
The three countries have to invest more than €6bn by the end of 2020 to cover these needs and meet the standards of the 1998 EU Drinking Water Directive, the spending watchdog concluded.
Access and supply of drinking water had overall improved in the countries, largely due to EU investment in recent years, the report found.
“Financial support from the EU budget to these water networks has been substantial, but it should not replace expenditure by the member states,” said George Pufan, member of the ECA responsible for the report.
There are still areas in the three nations where water from the public supply is not compliant with EU standards and additional funding will be required to ensure that EU-funded water facilities can be maintained.
Between 2007 and 2020, the European Development fund and Cohesion Fund support for the supply and management of drinking water in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania will total €3.7bn.
During 2007-2013, more than €7.3bn was allocated to projects across the EU involving drinking water, with about €4bn dedicated to the EU13 member states – including Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
A total of €4.7bn has been allocated to drinking water for the period ranging between 2014 and 2020, with €3.4bn earmarked for the new EU member states.

Groundwater Nitrate Sources and Contamination in the Central Valley.
by Katherine Ransom and Thomas Harter In California’s Central Valley, many communities depend significantly or entirely on groundwater as their drinking water supply.
Other sources in the Central Valley are estimated to leach 20-25 thousand tons N to groundwater (urban areas: 10, municipal wastewater and food processing percolation basins: 4, dairy lagoons and animal holding areas: 6, and septic leach fields: 3).
Crop production has continued to increase steadily over the past 70 years (Harter et al., 2012; Tomich et al., 2016; Harter et al., 2017).
Land use, nitrate leaching, and domestic groundwater The amount of nitrate that leaches to groundwater (nitrogen loading rate) can be highly variable between different crop or land use types and among an individual crop or land use.
We performed a Central Valley analysis of domestic well nitrate data to relate groundwater nitrate to surrounding land uses and to estimate the amount of nitrogen loading from 15 crop and land use groups.
Results of this “fingerprinting” study indicate that multiple nearby sources have likely contributed to an individual well’s nitrate concentration; it also shows some regional patterns in groundwater nitrate sources: manure sources are often more dominant in private wells located in dairy regions such as Hilmar, while fertilizer sources are more dominant in the citrus crop regions of Orosi and Woodlake.
Among the 146 mapped variables, groundwater chemistry related to denitrification or very old groundwater, historical nitrogen application amounts in agriculture, groundwater age, well distance to rivers, and amount of natural land use surrounding wells (among others) were rated as the most important to determine a location’s nitrate concentration.
Ransom, K. M., A. M. Bell, Q. E. Barber, G. Kourakos, and T. Harter, 2017a.
Nitrogen sources and loading to groundwater, Addressing Nitrate in California’s Drinking Water with a Focus on Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley Groundwater.

NMED Confirms ‘Boil Water Advisory’ To Be Issued By Chaco Culture National Historic Parks Water System.
SANTA FE ― The New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED) Drinking Water Bureau (DWB) is confirming a required “boil water advisory” for the Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System.
Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System is required to issue the advisory today after bacteriological contamination (E. coli) was detected in repeat drinking water samples from the water system’s distribution system.
Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System is required to notify all water system users of this finding.
Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System is a non-transient, non-community public water system located approximately 70 miles south of Farmington in San Juan County and serves approximately 250 visitors and staff users per day.
This advisory applies to the drinking water from the Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System, and does not extend to any other surrounding water systems.
Consumers of the Chaco Culture National Historic Park Water System were advised to boil the water for one minute (3 minutes if above 6,500 feet in elevation) before drinking, cooking, washing fruits and vegetables, feeding a baby, brushing teeth, preparing drinks, making ice, and providing drinking water for pets.
More details about precautions in English and Spanish can be found on the DWB’s webpage at: https://www.env.nm.gov/drinking_water/boil-water-advisories/ The NMED DWB will provide compliance oversight and technical assistance to the water system as necessary.
For more information, please contact NMED DWB Compliance Officer, Tanya Trujillo, at 505.222.9539.

13 Countries with Least Access to Clean Water.
So before we move on to our water poor countries list, let’s consider how many countries don’t have clean water at all?
Well, no nation is that far gone.
Well, according to WHO, from where we have constructed our list and ranked countries based on the percentage of their population using improved drinking water sources, an improved drinking water source is one which “by nature of its construction and design, is likely to protect the source from outside contamination.” Interestingly, bottled water alone, unaccompanied by any other source, is not considered an improved water source by WHO, even though some large bottled water companies, which include the 10 largest bottled water companies in the world and top 10 healthiest bottled water in the world, provide very safe and healthy water.
Mauritania Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources: 57.90% Mauritania, a country located in the midst of Northwest Africa, has actually done quite some work in the water department as its access percentage given above used to be 42% in 2000.
Eritrea Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources: 57.80% Not only does almost half the population of Eritrea not receive clean water, but the government does not even proffer the citizens basic human rights.
Maybe the destruction caused by the earthquake is the reason that the percentage of the population using improved drinking water sources actually reduced in the nation from 60.8% in 2000 to 57.7% in 2015.
Afghanistan Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources: 55.30% Afghanistan is one unfortunate nation.
Angola Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources: 49.00% We have arrived at the point in our list where more than half the country’s population does not have access to clean water, which is a very sad fact indeed.
Equatorial Guinea Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources: 47.90% Unfortunately, Equatorial Guinea hasn’t improved much since 2000 in providing access to clean water to more people.

Underground drinking water sources in parts of the U.S. and three Asian countries may not be as safe as previously thought due to high levels of manganese, especially at shallow depths, according to a study led by a researcher at the University of California, Riverside.
Of the four regions, the Glacial Aquifer had the fewest contaminated wells.
While groundwater can be contaminated with a number of heavy metals, more emphasis has been placed on assessing the levels of arsenic than manganese, although the latter also poses a threat to human health.
Although the WHO suggests a health-based limit of 400 ppb, manganese is not listed as a contaminant on the EPA’s National Primary Drinking Water Regulations, and therefore the levels are not monitored or enforced.
In the current study, the researchers collected and analyzed chemical data from 16,000 wells in the Glacial Aquifer, the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Mehta Basin in Bangladesh, the Mekong Delta in Cambodia, and the Yangtze River Basin of China.
When accounting for both metals at levels suggested by the WHO, the percentage of contaminated wells across all depths increased as follows: Glacial Aquifer (U.S): 9.3 percent contaminated when considering arsenic only; increased to 16.4 percent when considering arsenic and manganese.
Ganges-Brahmaputra-Mehta Basin (Bangladesh): 44.5 percent contaminated when considering arsenic only; increased to 70 percent when considering arsenic and manganese.
“However, due to increasing knowledge on the detrimental impact of manganese on human health, particularly on children, manganese levels in these sources should be monitored more closely and governments should consider introducing manganese drinking water standards.
The title of the paper is “Depth stratification leads to distinct zones of manganese and arsenic contaminated groundwater.” In addition to Ying, UC Riverside contributors include: Michael V. Schaefer, a postdoctoral researcher and Jun Li, an associate professor of statistics.
Co-contributors include Scott Fendorf, a professor of soil biogeochemistry at Stanford University, and Alicea Cock‐Esteb, program manager at Aquaya Institute.

Rohingya refugees in B’desh suffer from lack of food, medicines, clean water.
The Rohingya Muslims, who have taken refuge in Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf border areas in Bangladesh after they fled the barbarous persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are now suffering due to an absence of food, shelters, medicines, sanitation facilities and clean water.
People involved in providing humanitarian assistance to the refugees have called for a central coordination and proper initiatives, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said around 4,00,000 refugees have fled from the violence-affected Myanmar’s Northern Rakhine state and sought refuge in Bangladesh, where the limited shelter capacity is already exhausted.
Many of over 3,50,000 refugees, staying either under open sky or at the new refugee camps and shelters, are suffering from diarrhoeal and different diseases and don’t have an access to even clean drinking water and proper medicines.
Despite the aid from the government, NGOs and many voluntary organisations, there is no relief to the refugees as medicines, sanitation facilities, clean water and shelter remain scarce.
For the proper and equal distribution of aid items to the refugees the Cox’s Bazar deputy commissioner’s (DC) has already opened a control centre to receive donations and relief items.
Yesterday, India decided to send consignments of humanitarian assistance to Bangladesh, in response to the humanitarian crisis.
The statement further read that India stands ready to provide any assistance required by Bangladesh in the hour of need.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Drinking water crisis to deepen in Panchthar as project stalled.
Residents of these villages were largely hopeful that the under-construction Tamor Lift Drinking Water Project would relieve them of water scarcity.
After discussion, the management team reconsidered Loripa as the best location for water source and consequently recommended constructing road till Loripa diversion.
Around 11 kilometer long road must be constructed to connect Loripa diversion with the road network.
And considering the budget required for constructing the road, some stakeholders are arguing to build the water source reservoir at Lamughat, Lawati said.
“Some are protesting against building the water reservoir at Lamughat, but they have to understand that it’s not possible to built infrastructure at Loripa as it lacks road.
We are in discussion with the stakeholders and look forward to resume the project by taking everyone concerned into confidence,” Chaudhari said.
Despite Chaudhari’s assertion, locals have their own concerns.
Dinanath Ghimire, a Lamughat resident asserted that, “Lamughat is more prone to landslides compared to Loripa.
“We are very much affected by water crisis and fetching water leaves little time to us for doing other things.