Majority of Americans worry about clean drinking water.
Americans want to drink clean water, even more than they want to breathe clean air.
A new public survey and study conducted by Nestlé Waters North America on 4,756 American adults across the lower 48 states asked the respondents to share their views on water-related topics.
The “Perspectives on America’s Water” Study, unveiled key takeaways: — Clean drinking water is more important than clean air to Americans — Two out of three Americans believe their community is vulnerable to a water crisis – A majority of the public believes significant, immediate investments in water infrastructure are needed to avoid future water crises – The public and water resource scientists agree that climate change will have an increasing impact on access to clean drinking water This is a significant finding, especially in the wake of the state-inflicted water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and continued attempts to repeal many Obama-era EPA regulations on air and water.
Many American consumers and experts question whether the tap water in their home (36 percent and 30 percent, respectively) and schools (40 percent for both) is clean and safe.
Parents with school-aged children under age 18 are more likely to worry: 45 percent of this group question the safety of the tap water in their schools.
Two-thirds (66 percent) believe water crises will have widespread consequences for individuals, businesses and the United States as a whole.
American consumers expect local (71 percent), state (71 percent) and federal governments (65 percent) to play a role in ensuring that people have access to clean drinking water, but they expect consumers (39 percent) and businesses (35 percent) to help in some way.
On the other hand, experts are more likely to see opportunities for consumers (45 percent) and businesses (40 percent) to be involved.
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Behind closed doors, New York City, State and federal officials are hammering out the details of a revised plan to safeguard New York City’s irreplaceable Catskill and Delaware water supplies, which provide drinking water to over nine million New Yorkers. The stakes are high. If New York’s watershed plan does not advance stringent pollution prevention efforts over the next five to ten years, water quality in the city’s six giant Catskill mountain reservoirs could decline. That could leave city officials with no choice but to construct massive drinking water filtration facilities at a price tag of over 10 billion capital dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operating costs and large scale energy demands that would continue for decades. Water ratepayers in New York City and Westchester County would see large spikes in their water bills. And the incentive to head off pollution discharges before they enter our upstate reservoirs would vanish. The new plan, which is expected to be released in draft form within days, is being prepared pursuant to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. That statute requires all municipalities with surface water supplies, like rivers or reservoirs, to filter their drinking water unless officials can demonstrate that their source waters are of high quality and that they have a comprehensive watershed protection program to minimize the potential for contamination. New York City is one of only five big cities in the nation that has sought to protect its drinking water quality via this pollution prevention approach, rather than by constructing and operating expensive, energy-intensive water filtration facilities. (The others are Seattle, San Francisco, Portland (OR), and Boston.) The draft plan is expected to be open for public comment and hearings this summer, before modifications are made and the final plan and filtration avoidance determination are issued by the State. One complicating factor is the large number of stakeholders involved. New York City, which owns the reservoirs and manages the system, is the key participant. But reviewing the city’s watershed plan are two state agencies – the NYS Health Department, which has authority to approve a filtration avoidance plan or order the city to construct filtration facilities and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, which has specialized expertise in the mechanics of protecting watershed lands and the streams and rivers that flow into city reservoirs. Also involved is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It…

Green Party proposes tighter rules for water sales.
The Green Party says it will charge bottling companies access to water, if elected to government.
Photo: Supplied At its campaign launch in Nelson, the party said too many exporters were profiting from a free resource.
It said it would put an immediate 10 cent per litre levy on the sale of water and the revenue would be split between local councils and mana whenua.
The councils would be expected to use the money for environmental programmes and drinking water management.
The Green Party said it would also ban any new resource consents for bottling companies until a comprehensive commercial water pricing scheme was in place.
As part of its policy to protect drinking water, the party would also reinstate the Drinking Water Subsidy which previously resulted in $100 million over 10 years being allocated to small communities.
Those communities would receive upgraded equipment and technical advice to help access clean water.
The Green Party would also make changes to the Resource Management Act and the National Environment Standard for Drinking water.
It said councils would be required to prioritise drinking water when making decisions about allocating resources.

Green Party proposes tighter rules for water sales.
The Green Party says it will charge bottling companies access to water, if elected to government.
Photo: Supplied At its campaign launch in Nelson, the party said too many exporters were profiting from a free resource.
It said it would put an immediate 10 cent per litre levy on the sale of water and the revenue would be split between local councils and mana whenua.
The councils would be expected to use the money for environmental programmes and drinking water management.
The Green Party said it would also ban any new resource consents for bottling companies until a comprehensive commercial water pricing scheme was in place.
As part of its policy to protect drinking water, the party would also reinstate the Drinking Water Subsidy which previously resulted in $100 million over 10 years being allocated to small communities.
Those communities would receive upgraded equipment and technical advice to help access clean water.
The Green Party would also make changes to the Resource Management Act and the National Environment Standard for Drinking water.
It said councils would be required to prioritise drinking water when making decisions about allocating resources.

How did water quality in Montclair, Glen Ridge fare last year?.
The latest Water Quality Report has been issued for Montclair and Glen Ridge, and the results appear to give the drinking water a good-to-swallow grade.
Glen Ridge receives water through its three interconnections with Montclair, according to the report.
The report notes that the state does not require monitoring of certain substances every year, as concentrations of those substances do not change frequently.
The tests also detect levels of contaminants such as lead and copper, along with a batch of substances known as "unregulated" contaminants like dioxane and chromium, where there are no health standards, such as maximum levels established for them.
The last samples were taken in 2015, according to Montclair’s 2016 report; they were included so the township could be transparent in its reporting, said Obszarny.
The readings were conducted as part of the township’s annual drinking water quality testing.
The Water Bureau sent for sampling materials to do additional testing of its wells in compliance with DEP recommendations.
The 2016 Water Quality Report lists PFOA among the unregulated contaminants, with an average of .017 parts per billion found in the 2015 sampling.
According to the DEP’s Division of Water Supply and Geoscience website, the DEP has identified a guidance level of .04 parts per billion for PFOA.

Untreated sewage flows in most of our rivers.
A popular Kannada adage says that drinking water from the Tunga is equal to taking a bath in the Ganga.
However, the condition of the Tunga would make one balk at the idea of drinking its water, with untreated sewage from the Shivamogga City Corporation limits being discharged into it.
While this is one of the starkest cases of pollution and official apathy, many rivers in Karnataka are polluted by untreated urban sewage.
In Hassan district, for instance, among the eight urban local bodies, five have installed plants to treat sewage.
The continuous monitoring of major rivers in Karnataka indicates that domestic sewage continues to be the single largest source of pollution, and if left untreated could choke the river flow.
Water samples drawn from a few rivers, including the Lakshmanatirtha, Cauvery and Arkavati at certain stations, conform to ‘Class E’ as per environmental norms and hence are fit only for irrigation or industrial cooling.
Though quality of water along maximum stretches of the rivers in the State conforms to ‘Class C’ (fit for drinking only after treatment and disinfection), pollution owing to untreated sewage flowing into the rivers is on the rise.
The degradation of river water because of untreated domestic sewage is so high that portions of major rivers in the State have been designated as ‘Polluted river stretches’ by the CPCB, according to the report.
in Hassan.)

HGS ties up with Jaldhaara Foundation.
Hinduja Global Solutions Limited has tied up with Jaldhaara Foundation to provide access to safe and clean drinking water to underserved communities in Bengaluru.
Through this tie-up, HGS will set up three WaterHealth centers in the city by August 2017, with the first being inaugurated at Hosur Road, Bengaluru on July 6.
Specific to Bengaluru, a report submitted to the World Bank by Karnataka Slum Clearance Board said that the city accounts for 862 slums out of 2,000 slums in Karnataka.
Over 60% of these slums lack water supply lines and are served by intermittent Bengaluru Water Supply and Sanitation Board (BWSSB) tankers and community piped water supply.
The HGS – sponsored WaterHealth centers are being set up by Jaldhaara along with technical partner WaterHealth India (WHIN).
Leveraging WHIN’s award-winning water purification and disinfection technology, the centers are expected to provide safe drinking water to approximately 90,000 – 100,000 people within a radius of 5-10 kms.
The production of water can be optimized depending on the needs of the community.
The resultant reduction of water-borne diseases can help decrease women drudgery, improve children’s health and reduce absenteeism at school and work.
We believe that access to clean water will help pave the path for a healthier society and their economic development.” “This tie-up is an opportunity for Jaldhaara Foundation (JF) to celebrate and reaffirm our commitment to working together with various corporates and development partners.

Rule repeal threatens clean water.
At first glance, complaints surrounding the Trump administration’s rollback of an Obama-era rule protecting small streams and wetlands sound like “the sky is falling” hyperbole we’ve come to expect from environmental groups.
After all, hasn’t our nation made great strides cleaning up water pollution since it passed the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, four decades before the Obama administration enacted the rule in 2015?
The rule, also known as Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), was put in place to clarify which wetlands and small waterways get protected under the Clean Water Act.
The rule made it clear that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate pollution on smaller streams and wetlands, encompassing more than half the nation’s waterways.
More than two dozen business groups and states have challenged it in court.
“This is the first step in the two-step process to redefine ‘Waters of the U.S.’ and we are committed to moving through this re-evaluation to quickly provide regulatory certainty, in a way that is thoughtful, transparent and collaborative with other agencies and the public,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said last week.
One reason the Obama administration created the 2015 rule was to answer complaints from industry and environmentalists that existing regulations dating from 1986 were too confusing to follow, notes Jon Devine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
More than 117 million Americans get drinking water from public systems that draw supply from headwater, seasonal or rain-dependent streams covered under the rule, Devine noted.
Everyone who values clean water should be concerned that Pruitt and Donald Trump’s EPA will attempt to further roll back Clean Water Act protections in “part two” of the process.

Imphal, July 06 2017: Amidst the flood that hit the State following torrential rain, scarcity of drinking water has surfaced as people of the State particularly the valley districts are facing an acute shortage of clean water supply . Meanwhile, officials of Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) have appealed to all to use drinking water thriftily . Talking to The Sangai Express, Additional Chief Engineer of PHED, Loktongbam Swamikanta said torrential rain in the State has triggered flood and landslides causing untold misery to the people . Now people of the State particularly valley districts are facing problem due to acute shortage of drinking water as low lying areas remained submerged by flood water, he said . He appealed to all concerned to use drinking water thriftily supplied by the department through water tankers . During normal times, water from Iril River is supplied to the people after undergoing treatment at Porompat Water treatment plant. However, due to overflowing and breaching of river…

The state government is praying for rain and experts doubt monsoon will be below normal this year. Weather anxieties apart, what this could mean is this: Bengaluru could face water scarcity even as early as August. The government, however, says come what may it will ensure there is enough drinking water for Bengaluru. The Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) that supplies water to Bengaluru is witnessing poor rainfall and every passing day gives signs that there will be acute shortage of water in the middle of the year. According to Water Resources Minister MB Patil, the KRS, which should have received 34 tmc ft water by June has…