Illegal cannabis farming has negatively impacted the area greatly by introducing petroleum contamination into water sources, rodenticide poisoning of wildlife and illegal clearing of forests for farming. The Eel River Recovery Project has been working with cannabis cultivators in the Humboldt county region for four years now, and together they have held a series of community meetings focused on toxic algae blooms and local resident health. The Eel River Recover Project is a program sponsored by the Institute for Fisheries Resources, part of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. Legalization and regulation of cannabis farming in California has allowed agencies to work with farmers to provide support and offer best practices for conserving the…

Hi, I’m Angela Godwin for WaterWorld magazine, bringing you water and wastewater news headlines for the week of March 20th.
Coming up… Water, wastewater funding takes hit in Trump budget proposal Water accelerator showcases winners, finalists Utah water data ordered to be made public Study finds water quality impacted by ‘legacy phosphorus’ The Trump administration released its proposed budget last week, which includes several cuts impacting water, wastewater and environmental programs across the nation.
However, this proposal guts the USDA infrastructure budget which has funded rural infrastructure for the past 70 years."
The budget also proposes a 31% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, which would impact funding for enforcement, water pollution cleanup programs like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the Superfund toxic cleanup program.
Water innovation accelerator Imagine H2O showcased the winners and finalists of its 8th annual innovation program last week.
Twelve water data startups were selected from 180 applicants from 30 countries.
Top honors went to Utilis for its cost-competitive satellite imagery solution to detect leaks in water distribution systems.
The database used by the state of Utah to calculate its annual water usage and future water needs should be public information.
The scientists suggest that solutions be focused on "stopping phosphorus from going onto the landscape or mining the excess amount that is already built up.” You can learn more about their research at wisc.edu.
As you were browsing http://www.waterworld.com something about your browser made us think you were a bot.

Hyderabad, India, March 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The report “Consumer Water & Air Treatment Market Analysis: Technology (Water-Reverse Osmosis, Ultra Violet Treatment Distillation, Conventional Filtration; Air-Electrostatic, Conventional Filtration) Application (Water Treatment, Air Treatment)-Forecast(2017-2022)”, published by IndustryARC, estimates that the Asia-Pacific region will be a key future growth driver as public awareness regarding pollution grows. Browse 20 Market Tables, 50 Figures spread through 145 Pages and an in-depth TOC on “Consumer Water & Air Treatment Market 2017 – 2022” http://industryarc.com/Report/10617/consumer-water-air-treatment-market.html Scope & Regional Forecast of the Consumer Water & Air Treatment Market Consumer water and air treatment systems are devices which are installed in households to provide clean water and fresh air. With rising pollution and contamination of air and ground water resources it is imperative for households to install such devices to get clean water and air. Another driving factor for this growth is the rising consumer concerns about aesthetic qualities of air care products and improving living standards. Whole house air and water treatment systems segment will witness the highest growth in coming years due to the rising awareness in consumers about the air and water contamination. Consumer water and air treatment market is expected to grow with the rise of integrated home solutions in U.S. and Europe during the coming years. The market for Water and Air treatment includes geographical segmentation with regions such as North America, Europe,…

Carmen Garza, 74, moved to the city of East Chicago, Indiana 41 years ago. She bought her house with her husband and quickly made it home, turning their backyard into a tomato and chili garden every summer. “They were so good,” Garza tells Colorlines in Spanish. “Riquísimos.” Three years ago, that ended after a neighbor asked the couple why they were growing vegetables in contaminated dirt. The Garzas quickly abandoned their garden. But they were left with more questions than answers: “She told me it was contaminated, but she didn’t say of what,” Garza recalls. The contaminant turned out to be lead, the couple ultimately found out thanks to community efforts to discover this information. And it’s not just in the dirt—it’s in the Garza’s drinking water, too. This is because East Chicago, a predominantly Black and Latinx city of nearly 30,000, is located on the USS Lead Superfund Site. The former USS Lead facility ran here until 1985. The site was placed on the National Priorities List of the worst contaminated sites in the country in 2009, but the EPA was aware since the facility’s closure that it was contaminating nearby areas, according to this 1985 inspection report. And as a Chicago Tribune investigation in December 2016 unearthed, government officials were warned that this contamination posed a public health risk for decades. Still, they failed to test the soil or begin cleanup efforts until 2014. That soil data didn’t make it into city officials’ hands until May 2016. With it, they saw how severe the problem really was: Some homeowner’s backyards had lead levels higher than 45,000 parts per million, far beyond the federal limit of 400 parts per million. No one told prospective buyers like Garza—not when she first bought her home or even when government officials came to inspect her yard about 10 years ago to “examine the dirt in people’s yards to clean for the animals,” as she says officials told her. She didn’t find out what was going on until last year when community members from the West Calumet Housing Complex started organizing around the issue. “Imagine you stop going outside,” Garza says. “You don’t grill steak outside anymore. What can I do? I don’t have money to move.” And…

Union Leader Correspondent BEDFORD — Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics is considering extending public water to at least 64 homes with contaminated wells in Bedford, but town officials are hoping that even more residences will be included in the plan.
“The town absolutely, and I believe the Department of Environmental Services, feel the same way that people on bottled water need to be on municipal water in 2017,” said Town Manager Rick Sawyer.
Although Bedford officials have not received anything in writing from Saint-Gobain, they have been notified by DES that Saint-Gobain has requested a design proposal from Pennichuck Corp. to provide public water to 64 properties.
Sawyer said town officials previously requested that Saint-Gobain consider providing a public water extension to 288 properties in Bedford — not just the original 64 homes where perfluorooctanoic acid was discovered in private wells last year.
“That is part of our request — that Saint-Gobain work toward providing water to the entire area, and at least do the design solution if at all possible,” said Sawyer.
He is still hopeful that Saint-Gobain, which owns a Merrimack plant that is the likely source of the PFOA contamination, will still consider providing public water to the nearly 300 properties.
Elevated levels of private well water contamination were detected at houses on Hemlock Road, Green Meadow Lane, Back River Road, Smith Road and other streets.
“We are hoping to get more definitive announcements in the short term.” Martin said that although Saint-Gobain has requested an estimate from Pennichuck Corp. on design work for about 64 homes in Bedford, that doesn’t mean that discussions aren’t taking place to provide more Bedford properties with municipal water.
Work is ongoing to address water problems in Litchfield and Merrimack as well.
Free blood testing is still being offered to residents who live near the Saint-Gobain facility who have private wells with PFOA contamination above 70 parts per trillion.

As President Trump promises major investment in infrastructure, people across the country are hoping that includes spending on water pipes for drinking.
Flint, Mich., was a high-profile example of the many communities — like one in Eastern Kentucky — where people just can’t trust their water.
Josie Delong, a resident of the county, says she used to drink tap water until a doctor told her it could be the cause of her health issues.
" Now, she says she does all she can to avoid drinking from the tap.
The county water treatment plant needs serious upgrades, and the distribution pipes are so leaky that they lose more water than they deliver.
When the system is once again turned on, the water can be brown or black and very smelly.
When they find a leaky pipe, Hammond says all they can do is patch it up.
As the local coal industry has continued to decline, it’s only become more difficult to find money for infrastructure investments.
"That’s one of the problems with drinking water is that it’s underground — it’s hidden."
State and local officials say they’ll be looking out for any federal spending that could help rebuild trust in the county’s tap water.

At toxic cleanup sites across the country, environmental agencies have allowed groundwater contamination to go untreated and slowly diminish over time — a strategy that saves money for polluters but could cost taxpayers dearly and jeopardize drinking water supplies.
Alvarez is particularly critical of the use of MNA at radioactive waste sites around the country, where it’s estimated that certain radionuclides will take millions of years to naturally degrade to safe levels.
It appears that most state environmental agencies, which supervise many cleanups, do not keep data on MNA use over the years.
“Their only source of drinking water is groundwater.” More than $100 million already has been spent on an active cleanup of the pollution over the years.
But contaminants are continuing to spread, and the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the agency overseeing the cleanup, claims that they won’t reach safe levels for up to 500 years if MNA is applied as proposed by the Air Force.
That directive, and the EPA’s updated guidelines, state that MNA shouldn’t be applied when, among other things, the source of pollutants isn’t yet under control, when the tainted groundwater still is spreading and when the contaminants won’t break down to safe levels within a “reasonable” period.
At some Superfund sites, critics say, MNA has been applied in circumstances that clearly violate the agency’s guidelines.
While EPA guidelines call for MNA only where pollution will degrade to safe levels within a reasonable period, it is one of the techniques being used at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southwestern Washington State along the Columbia River.
Cheryl Whalen, an official regulating the cleanup for the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program, downplayed environmental concerns about the plume.
“Monitored Natural Attenuation says, ‘we’re not going to do anything because it costs too much money,’” she said.

Study: Natural Methane To Blame For Tainted Water, Not Fracking.
University of Texas at Austin researchers said high levels of methane in well water was likely caused by naturally-occurring, shallow natural gas deposits, not leaks from fracking operations near Fort Worth.
“Over geologic time, methane has accumulated into these shallower reservoirs,” Dr. Jean-Philippe Nicot, a geologist at UT involved in the research, said in a press statement.
A judge later ruled this “was not done for scientific study but to provide local and national media a deceptive video.” “Shortly after the EPA issued its baseless endangerment order, numerous experts testified at a Texas Railroad Commission hearing that methane in Parker County groundwater was not due to drilling,” Steve Everley, a spokesman for pro-industry Texans for Natural Gas, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The EPA curiously refused to attend that hearing,” Everley said.
Environmentalists often cite Parker County as an example of how fracking contaminates groundwater.
Activists argued in an article published by DeSmogBlog that while “local geology plays a role in leaks,” methane contamination was “traced to natural gas wells with insufficient cement barriers to separate them from surrounding rock and water or to improperly installed steel casings that allow the gas to travel upward.” EPA eventually dropped the case in 2012 and the Texas state government began an investigation.
Terry Engelder from Penn State University, one of the most well-respected experts on shale gas development in America, concluded in 2014 that there is ‘no link between fracking and groundwater contamination in the Fort Worth Basin.
“Our funders, the groups that had given us funding in the past, were a little disappointed in our results,” Amy Townsend-Small, the study’s lead researcher, told Newsweek in April.
Texas’s Barnett Shale is estimated to hold 172 million barrels of shale oil and 176 million barrels of natural gas liquids, twice as much natural gas and oil as expected, according to a December study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

WASHINGTON – While the Trump administration orders the EPA do less to protect Americans from dirty air and water, and Congress threatens to dismantle the agency altogether, Food & Water Watch and 34 advocacy organizations are demanding that the agency do more to protect communities from factory farms.
Today, the groups filed a legal petition with Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), citing its duty under the law to hold concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs or factory farms) accountable for their water pollution, which threatens public health and the environment.
The petition asks EPA to overhaul its regulations for how CAFOs are regulated under the federal Clean Water Act and its permitting program, noting that current rules fail to prevent pollution and protect communities.
But the EPA is legally bound to protect communities from pollution, and we intend to hold the agency accountable for doing its job.” Clean water advocates have experienced Pruitt’s weak record on CAFO pollution in Oklahoma.
“I have seen beautiful rivers turn green as a result of runoff from CAFOs,” said Earl Hatley, Oklahoma’s Grand Riverkeeper.
The vast quantities of manure generated from CAFOs are typically disposed of, untreated, on cropland, where it can seep or run off to pollute waterways and drinking water sources.
“That’s why we’re standing with other organizations from around the U.S. who care about social justice to demand that Scott Pruitt’s EPA take action to ensure that regulations for factory farms protect the interests of all communities, not Big Ag.” “Even in Wisconsin, where all CAFOs are required to have Clean Water Act permits, water contamination from mega-dairies is a widespread and growing threat to public health.
It also asks the EPA to require large corporate integrators that control CAFO practices to obtain permits, instead of just their contract producers, who currently bear the burden of following permits and managing waste.
The petition further asks EPA to strengthen permits in several ways, including: requiring pollution monitoring and reporting, as is required of virtually all other industries; restricting waste disposal in order to better protect water quality; and regulating CAFO discharges of a wider range of pollutants than permits currently address, including the heavy metals and pharmaceuticals found in industrial livestock waste.
Lenient laws and regulations have made Iowa a haven for corporate polluters.

Because the state data doesn’t account for the nearly 2 million Californians still relying on private wells or factor in contamination from Chromium-6, experts said the number of people with toxic water is likely even higher.
“When I shower my kids, I use to give them hot baths, but not anymore,” Gonzalez said.
“Now we just wash, rinse and get out.” The water that comes out of her Oakvale Park home is contaminated.
The contaminated water runs into about 100 homes in the area.
“It can cause cancer (and) in the case of nitrate in very high levels, it can even cause death after a few days of high exposure.” Her organization said short-term health effects of drinking uranium-contaminated water include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, as well as liver and kidney damage.
Water is shut-off to some 18,000 students at four different school districts as further testing is done.
“Having toxic water coming out of your tap, not being able to access water in schools, this is really basic.” Tainted water in wells and public water systems in the San Diego area contain unsafe levels of uranium, fluoride, nitrate and arsenic, according to the state data.
“Here we are in the 21st century in the great state of California, one of the largest economies in the world, and people do not have water running in their homes.” While the state has made progress in getting clean, safe drinking water to rural residents, Felicia Marcus, chair of California’s Water Resources Control Board, says there’s more to do.
Although more than a million residents are estimated to be affected by contaminated water, it’s not something on the minds of those living in California’s urban centers.
In Oakvale Park, Juana Gonzalez helps some of her less fortunate neighbors by giving them a ride to the nearest place to buy water.