Flint public health and safety officials charged in water contamination case.
Nick Lyon is accused of failing to alert the public about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area, which has been linked by some experts to poor water quality in 2014-15.
Lyon and Dr. Wells were not in court.
A message seeking comment was left for Lyon’s attorneys.
Lead from old plumbing leached into the water system.
People can get sick if they inhale mist or vapor, typically from cooling systems, some reports say.
There were nearly 100 cases in the Flint area, including 12 deaths, in 2014 and 2015.
Lyon was personally briefed in January 2015 but "took no action to alert the public of a deadly" outbreak until nearly a year later, Seipenko said.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has now charged 15 current or former government officials in an ongoing probe that began in early 2016, including two emergency managers whom Snyder appointed to run the impoverished city of roughly 100,000 residents.
In May, Mr. Schuette dropped a misdemeanor charge against a Flint official who cooperated after pleading no contest to willful neglect of duty.

Made from sewage, these “popsicles” reveal the scale of Taiwan’s water pollution.
We wouldn’t eat these “popsicles” if we were you.
Concocted by Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui and Cheng Yu-ti, a group of students from National Taiwan University of the Arts, the frozen treats comprise sewage from 100 different locations across the East Asian island nation.
Hung and company froze their samples—bottle caps, plastic wrappers, and all—to illustrate the scope of Taiwan’s water-pollution problem.
To preserve their creations, they dipped the popsicles in a polyester resin.
They even designed wrappers for each frozen non-treat based on the locations they sampled from.
Unappetizing “flavors” include “Yang-tzu-chou Drainage,” “The Large Ditch in Tianwei,” and “New Huwei Creek.” Hung said they chose to make the popsicles to illustrate the importance of clean water.
(Popsicles are, after all, mostly H2O.)
“They’re made out of sewage, so basically these things can only be seen, not eaten,” Hung told Mashable.
“[Having] pure water, a clean water source is actually very important.” Article from inhabitat.com by Jasmin Malik Chua

Water contamination advisories issued for 5 areas in Sleeping Bear Dunes.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is posting signs warning people that water quality advisories have been issued for five sites within the park’s boundaries.
Elevated bacteria levels were measured late last week at the sprawling park, headquartered in Empire.
The river and creek outlet contamination does not extend into the larger, connecting Lake Michigan, according to information from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
The contamination spots are listed on the DEQ’s Beach Guard site.
Friday, the man and his wife were playing nine holes with several church couples at Arbor Hills Golf Club in Spring Arbor Township, as they often did.
She had some broken ribs and bleeding in her skull, said Veydt, who went to the hospital Friday to pray with the couple and their family.
"They are humble, Christian people and they have served in our church for many, many years."
The 80-year-old is also a church elder.
Friday, their companions from the course accompanied them to the hospital.

In a major property rights decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a decisive victory to state and local governments and environmental groups. By a 5-to-3 vote, the justices made it much harder for property owners to get compensation from the government when zoning regulations restrict the use of just part of landowners’ property. The Constitution bars the taking of private property by the government without just compensation. The Supreme Court, for a century, has said that when the government goes “too far” in regulating property — so as to make that property economically unusable — the government also has to compensate the owner. The question is: How far is “too far”? In recent decades, property rights advocates have aggressively tried to limit regulation by demanding compensation. At the same time, cities and states have sought to manage urban sprawl, water pollution, flooding and other problems, by enacting regulations to limit what some property owners can do with their land. Friday’s decision came in a case that involved two plots of land, bought by William and Margaret Murr in the 1960s, overlooking the picturesque grandeur of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin. In 1972, the river was designated for federal protection, and the state enacted regulations to preserve its scenic and recreational qualities. The regulations barred building on any lots smaller than one acre of land. The Murrs’ two lots, including a cabin on one, combined to cover just under an acre of land suitable for development. Under the regulations, the lots were merged into one. After the Murrs transferred the property to their four children in the 1990s, the younger Murrs were denied permission to build on what had previously been the second lot….

Supreme Court Sides With Wisconsin In Property Rights Case.
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a victory today to state and local governments and environmental groups with a major property rights decision.
By a 5-3 vote, the justices sided with the government in certain disputes with private property developers.
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The Constitution bars the taking of private property by the government without just compensation.
And the Supreme Court for a century has said that when the government goes too far in regulating property so as to make it economically unusable, the government also has to compensate the owner.
The regulations barred building on any lot smaller than one acre of land.
TOTENBERG: John Groen of the Pacific Legal Foundation represented the Murrs.
TOTENBERG: The reason, he explains, is that when the government regulates private land use… LAZARUS: It almost never says that you can’t do anything with all the property you own.
TOTENBERG: And what the Supreme Court said today was that property owners are not entitled to compensation from the government when regulations reduce the value of the property by a relatively small portion and where, as in this case, those regulations to some degree have enhanced the value of the property.

Patriot, located on the north end of town, treats wastewater it receives from customers.
Then in May, Water Pollution Control started noticing the presence of dimethyl disulfide in the water, Haller said.
Andy Blockson, president of Patriot Water, said the key for him is that dimethyl disulfide is not regulated by the EPA, so his company is not required to test for it.
If Patriot discharged the compound, “we wouldn’t know because we don’t test for it,” he said.
Haller said testing indicated that Patriot did discharge the chemical, and Blockson agrees that is true.
But he also believes it has come from other sources because it’s a common chemical and “it’s everywhere.” Haller said one of the reasons the chemical went into Warren’s treatment system is because Patriot was accepting wastewater from a Dayton-area landfill.
When the public started complaining about smells, Water Pollution Control investigated its industrial facilities.
Throughout last week, the Ohio EPA conducted meetings in Warren that included the Mahoning Trumbull Air Pollution Control Agency, Warren Water Pollution Control, Patriot and Ohio Department of Health, Haller said.
Sometime late last week, Patriot shut down its discharge of water into the city’s sewers in the presence of Water Pollution Control officials except for wastewater from toilets and sinks.
Blockson said Patriot has shut off any discharges into the sewer system and is not receiving any liquid wastes until the chemical is completely gone from Patriot Water.

Ocean Alpha introduces new technology to curb water pollution in Ghana.
Ocean Alpha, a Chinese company which specializes in USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) has launched its state of the art technology to remedy the deteriorating state of Ghana’s water bodies and also to limit the rate at which our water bodies are being polluted.
The company showcased their products at the Water Africa and West Africa Building Construction Exhibition 2017 held at the Accra International Center, The week long programme created an avenue for companies to exhibit new technologies suitable for the construction industry.
In recent times Ghana has been struck with water pollution crisis and the issue is almost becoming unresolvable with the advent of “galamsey” which is like a new cancer for the country and its citizens.
Ocean Alpha believes can reduce drastically it their technology is used by industrial companies, governmental agencies, research institutes and universities to protect and monitor thet condition of our water bodies.
Aside securing our water bodies, the Ocean USV can carry out other important functions such as hydrology research, scientific exploration, hydrographic survey, emergency search and rescue.
Also security agencies like the police and navy can adopt this equipment to up security in Ghana.
The device has a GPS, obstacle avoidance, water sampling feature and it is remotely controlled.
Visiting the country for the first time, Ran Zhang, Marketing Director of Ocean Alpha in an interview stated that their USV will improve environmental protection in Ghana especially in the face of illegal mining.
see video below Source: Nii Ayi Mensah Lartey

DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The national law firm of Baron & Budd announced today it is investigating potential lawsuits related to a recent finding that The Chemours Company may have contaminated the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina with GenX, a dangerous industrial chemical. The firm’s investigation will be led by Shareholder Scott Summy, one of the most successful water contamination litigators in the U.S. Summy and the Baron & Budd team have won over $1 billion for clients. The team represents both individuals who have been impacted by water contamination, as well as public water authorities throughout the country. As the leader of Baron & Budd’s environmental practice, Summy has successfully led a number of high-profile lawsuits that have protected the drinking water of millions of Americans. In 1995, Summy met with Wilmington residents whose water was contaminated by a gas additive called MTBE. As a result of those first meetings, Summy filed his first MTBE lawsuit against Conoco on behalf of Wilmington residents. In 1997, the lawsuit was settled after a Wilmington-based jury rendered a multi-million-dollar verdict to cover the costs of medical monitoring. By 2008, Summy won the largest settlement ever against American oil companies for their part in MTBE contamination, on behalf of public water providers – protecting millions of Americans from unsafe drinking water. Summy and the Baron &…

Despite GenX worries, well water can bring own set of concerns.
Concerned about contamination in the region’s groundwater, Rick Catlin, an environmental engineer and former state legislator, is pushing New Hanover County to adopt a permitting system for private wells.
“We want to make sure people aren’t putting wells in near contaminated sites,” Catlin said.
The safety of the region’s drinking water has been in question after a StarNews story earlier this month revealed researchers had found GenX, a man-made chemical used in Teflon and a host of other products, in the Cape Fear River and the drinking water supply of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA).
Chemours, a Delaware-based chemical company that makes the chemical at a plant roughly 100 miles up the Cape Fear River from Wilmington, announced this week it will take steps to capture all wastewater containing the GenX chemical, remove the substance and dispose of it.
“In the confined aquifers, I would not think there would be an issue (with GenX),” Shew said.
Personally, for me, I’d like to do substitute for the drinking water for now.” Statewide, national issue During a meeting earlier this week with New Hanover County Manager Chris Coudriet and Health Director Phillip Tarte, Catlin shared his map of known contamination sites with the county officials.
“When you put it on a map and plot it, it is not just relegated to New Hanover County,” Tarte said.
“We have these known (contamination) sites,” Coudriet said.
“By ordinance, once a customer is connected to our system,” a CFPUA spokeswoman wrote, “they are not permitted to disconnect and move to an alternate water source.” Reporter Adam Wagner can be reached at 910-343-2389 or Adam.Wagner@GateHouseMedia.com.

You have no real way of knowing if your town, your family, or your children face the kind of water contamination that exposed everyone in Flint, Michigan, to lead poisoning. Not because Flint is an outlier–it may, in fact, be the norm—but because no one has enough data to say for sure. Five state and local officials in Flint face involuntary manslaughter charges for failing to alert the public to the looming health crisis there. Yet a recent Reuters report found 3,000 geographic areas in the US with lead poisoning rates twice that of Flint. But you would be hard-pressed to determine whether you lived in one of them because the United States lacks the data—and data collection requirements—needed to know for sure whether people are being poisoned by their drinking water. President Trump’s proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s could make it even harder to know. “The data gaps are so huge. It is abominable. We have a huge number of people in this country living completely in the dark,” says Eric Fegl-Deng, an epidemiologist at Harvard University’s Chan School of Public health and founder of the public health website ToxinAlert.org. Some 170,000 public water systems provide water to Americans. The federal government regulates that water under laws like the Safe Water Drinking Act and the Lead and Copper Rule, but leaves it to states, utilities, and property owners to test that water and enforce the laws. Yet the number of taps that must be tested remains woefully small. The rules require water systems serving at least 100,000 people, for instance, to test 100 taps every six months. The requirements decrease from there. Systems that serve, say, 90,000 people must test just 60 taps. Smaller systems, only five. And certain systems qualify for reduced testing. In some cases, that means testing once every nine years. “Would you really rely on a sample of 100 people in New York or Boston?” says Feigl-Deng. “In no universe is that going to give you a statistically significant result. That’s just ludicrous.” Lead is measured in parts per billion, or ppb. If more than 10 percent of a given system’s taps exceed 15 ppb (referred to as the “action level”) the system operator must inform the public of the risk and report the violation to the state, which reports it to the EPA. But some researchers worry that…