water-conservation

Kit provides clean water

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:50:28 +0100

from Canada.com

As winter sets in, many Canadians will head to warmer climates and that includes places that don't have the clean and fresh water we're used to at home.

But if your trips take you off the beaten path, and bottled water isn't close by, a portable invention called the LifeStraw can be. New to North America, the award-winning personal filtration system was invented in 2005 by a Swiss Company, Vesergaard Fransden. It's filtration technology has been used by millions of people in developing countries without access to clean water.

Its success has garnered the product numerous awards and accolades, including "best invention of 2005" in Time magazine and in 2008 the Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas.

The lightweight device resembles a large plastic syringe, and is used just like a straw. It removes 99.9% of water-borne bacteria.

State's proposed clean water rules draw concern

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:15:26 +0100

from News-Press

The state's most recent attempt at developing standards for water quality in lakes, rivers and estuaries is under attack from critics who say the draft rules are too weak and won't satisfy the Federal Clean Water Act.

Members of the state Environmental Regulatory Commission next week are scheduled to review the Department of Environmental Protection's newest proposed rule to regulate the amount of allowable pollution in Florida fresh water. The proposed rules were updated earlier this month.

Among the most controversial issues is the use of water quality averages to determine whether a water body is in compliance or not. The rule requires multiple tests be taken at various times of the year from different locations. If the body exceeds the baseline standards two out of three years, the body is considered out of compliance.

The rules do not designate criteria for nutrient levels at the "end of the pipe", which means discharges of particular sources are not specifically monitored. Linda Young, of the Clean Water Network, said the lack of source-specific limits means that water bodies are turned into large mixing zones that literally dilute the harm caused by specific polluters.

"The state government’s single-minded focus in protecting the economic and political goals of the regulated interests in Florida is short-sighted and undemocratic," Young said in a response to the Oct. 6 revisions. "The citizens and taxpayers of Florida understand the importance of clean water to our health, economy and quality of life."

Water-quality standards have been a major issue in Florida during the past couple of years, as business groups and many state and local leaders have fought EPA efforts to impose stricter standards through what are known as "numeric nutrient criteria.''

A 2008 lawsuit argued that the EPA had failed to enforce provisions of the federal Clean Water Act, despite an agency ruling in 1998 ordering states to comply with its edict to set verifiable limits on nutrient discharges that are largely responsible for algae blooms and other degradation of Florida's inland waters. Opponents contend that the criteria would force costly upgrades of facilities such as sewage-treatment plants, which discharge water into rivers and streams. But supporters say the standards would help clean up the state's waterways, preventing health and environmental problems.

A number of industry groups say Florida's water quality issues are unique, and better suited to state regulation than to a one-size-fits-all federal mandate. They also argue that there's no scientific evidence for the EPA-proposed rules.

Typical of the favorable comments received on the proposed DEP rules is the comment from phosphate company CF Industries.

"CF Industries remains concerned that EPA’s controversial stream criteria, which CF and others have consistently maintained are not supported by science or appropriate for application as water quality standards in Florida," said Craig A. Kovach, director of environmental affairs for the company in a comment filed on the proposal.
Monica Reimer, an attorney for EarthJustice, which filed the lawsuit that forced EPA to enforce the clean water standards, said the proposed rules appear to contain a number of loopholes that will allow the state to acknowledge the federal standards while maintaining more flexible state standards.

"It appears they are saying that, we don't think there is a cause and effect relationship between nutrients and bad things happening in the stream," Reimer said.

The ERC has scheduled a public hearing to discuss the new standards and take public comment. Going forward, the commission is scheduled to take a vote on the new standards in December.

'Future of Water' authors expect clean water to be scarce, expensive

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:11:48 +0100

from Lincoln Journal Star

"The Future of Water, A Startling Look Ahead" by Steve Maxwell with Scott Yates, American Water Works Association, 165 pages, $29.95

Water, one of the most precious resources on Earth, is also the most abundant, covering about three-quarters of the planet. Yet the prized, fresh, clean water that humans need for life is becoming increasingly scarce, polluted and expensive.

This book explains all about this increasingly dangerous situation and should be read by politicians, policy makers and folks like you and me. It is a book that looks at the conditions of water now, with projections into the future, which are based on the history of past water use.

There are three major themes of this book, according to the authors:

First, they see that "water is rightfully becoming recognized as one of the key criteria, or ‘factors of production' in industrial manufacturing, public policy-making, and personal decision-making." Water is joining labor, capital and energy as crucial to economic decisions and our standards of living.

Secondly, the "water footprint" or the total way that water impacts all we do, all we own and all we consume will become more important in the future as clean water becomes more scarce.

And third, the price of water is likely to increase rapidly in the future and have a major impact on our future priorities and behavior. Water today is cheap (almost free), and the price doesn't truly reflect the true costs of delivering it for use, or the true value to our lives. Our attitudes about its use obviously will change as it becomes more dear in dollars and abundance.

For most Americans, the biggest home use of water is to keep lawns green. Enjoy those lawns now, say the authors, "because the future doesn't look bright for wide expanses of green grass surrounding every home." Especially because we use expensively treated clean water, the same that we drink and clean with, to spray grass and plants.

Worldwide, most fresh water is used to irrigate crops for humans and animals, and that is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, even with expected radical changes in irrigation systems and watering on farms that are outlined. With a projected shortage in fresh water just about everywhere, dire hunger can be expected to increase as more food is needed to feed more mouths, but having less water to use. Currently, irrigation improvements have contributed to a slight decrease in U.S. per capita water consumption, but that is changing here and worldwide with increased populations, climate warming and heavy droughts.

This book is strangely fascinating. With its sharp analysis of current facts and trends and projections of those facts and trends into the future, it reads like a model for disaster. Which it is.

However, the authors give some hope for fresh water sustainability in their concluding chapter, if people and governments will act promptly. They lay out seven areas of reform that will do so. After all, "water will play a much more critical and central role in our lives and behavior in the future," they write. Perhaps the biggest reform we face is acknowledging that our "free" water isn't, that it is costly to produce and find and that supplies are very limited.

Feds award grants to aid water conservation in Sacramento region

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:37:45 +0100

from The Modesto Bee

Sacramento-area water agencies have been awarded more than $400,000 in federal grants to improve their water conservation efforts.

The grants from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation total about $3.5 million statewide. They are expected to result in water conservation or efficiency improvements equal to 161,000 acre-feet annually, or enough water to serve about 300,000 average homes.

• Natomas Central Mutual Water Company: $154,000 to construct a weir, slide gates, and automated controls on the Barnes Crossing Control Structure; $23,700 to install a flow meter on the Northern Main and improve pumping plan operations; and $17,000 to install flow meters and monitoring system at the Pullman Pumping Plant.

• City of Sacramento: $149,600 to fund residential water-use efficiency audit and rebate programs for customers receiving water meters for the first time.

• City of Roseville: $70,000 to expand rebate programs for low-flow toilets and landscape irrigation efficiency.

For more information on the grants, contact Lee Mao at (916) 978-5202 or Laurie Sharp at (916) 978-5232.

Group Hopes to Encourage Water Conservation

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:35:19 +0100

from Montgomery Patch

Between 2005 and 2050, the western Lake Michigan area is expected to see a 38 percent growth in population. And if water consumption continues at the same rate it has been, many communities will find their groundwater supplies depleted.

That’s why representatives from five counties have banded together to put forth a plan for water conservation. Formed in September 2010, they call themselves the Northwest Water Planning Alliance, and as Engineer Pete Wallers explained to Montgomery trustees Tuesday night, the group hopes to soon have a water conservation ordinance that all 80-some communities they represent can adopt.

Wallers, who serves as an advisor to the group, said water depletion is not an immediate problem. But conservation is needed now to keep up with projected demand.

Those projections come from a study compiled by the Alliance, which Wallers said deserves attention for being a stakeholder-driven project. He said water suppliers have taken its message to heart.

The Alliance brings together five councils of government from five counties: Kane, Kendall, DeKalb, McHenry and Lake. All told, the area includes about 1.3 million people.

There are three sources of water for communities in this area: ground water, meaning wells drilled down to deep aquifers; surface water, meaning rivers like the Fox; and Lake Michigan. Wallers said Lake Michigan water was pumped to the suburbs starting in the 1980s, as a “silver bullet” to keep water levels from depleting.

The communities represented by the Alliance all use groundwater or surface water, Wallers said, and the group would be working on ways to reduce the strain on deep aquifers, such as the one Montgomery pumps from. Wallers said a big component of the Alliance’s work would be educational.

The Alliance is managed by 14 elected officials from the five counties - the five county board chairmen, and nine municipal leaders, including Montgomery Village President Marilyn Michelini. All members work on a volunteer basis, Wallers said.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said to trustees. “You’ll be hearing about water planning for a while.”

Water Conservation Certification Awarded to St. Andrews Country Club

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:44:08 +0100

from Hospitality Industry

BOCA RATON, Fla., Oct. 19, 2011 - St. Andrews Country Club has received certification in Water Conservation from the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses (ACSP), an international program administered by Audubon International designed to help landowners preserve and enhance the environmental quality of their property. This most recent certification follows the Environmental Planning achievement earned in August. St. Andrews Country Club is seeking to earn certification in all six categories, all of which involve projects that enhance habitat for wildlife and preserve natural resources for the benefit of the local community.

George Kervern, St. Andrews Country Club Director of Golf Course Maintenance, was commended for his usage of a modern and flexible irrigation system in the South Florida region where water resources are at a premium.

“Our participation in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program is an example of our commitment to protecting and preserving the habitat and wildlife found around the club,” said Craig D. Martin, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager St. Andrews Country Club. “We fully support George and his team’s efforts in obtaining all six certifications. It directly ties in to our brand promise to follow an operational path that leads to increasing real estate values within the community.”

Additional certifications include Wildlife and Habitat Management, Chemical Use Reduction and Safety, Water Quality Management, and Outreach and Education. For more information on golf and the environment, visit http://www.golfandenvironment.org.

The Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses provides an advisory service to help existing golf courses develop effective conservation and wildlife enhancement programs. This worldwide effort is coordinated by Audubon International and is sponsored in part by the United States Golf Association.

Audubon International is an environmental organization dedicated to educating, assisting, and inspiring millions of people from all walks of life to protect and sustain the land, water, wildlife, and natural resources around them. In addition to businesses, Audubon International also provides programs for golf courses, schools, communities, and new developments. For more information, contact Audubon International, 46 Rarick Rd., Selkirk, NY 12158, USA, (518) 767-9051, e-mail them via the Internet at cacsp@auduboninternational.org or visit their website at http://www.auduboninternational.org.

About St. Andrews Country Club

St. Andrews Country Club of Boca Raton, a resident-only Platinum Club of America, internationally recognized for magnificent estate residences. The Club features superior amenities, two 18-hole championship golf courses, including an Arnold Palmer Signature Design®. In November 2010 a brand new state-of-the-art Golf Performance Center was unveiled and includes an indoor hitting bay, private practice area, covered patio with complimentary beverage station, state of the art V1 Digital Coaching System and FlightScope Launch Monitor® technologies and a Callaway Golf® branded club fitting area. The Club also offers 15 clay tennis courts, including a European red clay court, a state-of-art spa and fitness center and a 125,000 square foot Clubhouse in the center of it all. The Clubhouse provides unequalled culinary delights, a year-round social calendar and offers spectacular views of the lakes, fountains, fairways and manicured greens. St. Andrews has played host to numerous PGA golf exhibitions led by touring pros such as Phil Mickelson, Arnold Palmer, John Daly and Rocco Mediate, and is the home course to LPGA Touring Professional Morgan Pressel. For more information, please visit http://www.standrewscc.com or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

On Its 39th Anniversary, The Clean Water Act Needs Defenders

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:52:40 +0100

from Tree Hugger

Chris Brown/CC BY 2.0

In 1969, a river caught fire.

People of a certain age probably remember when it happened. The Cuyahoga (pictured above), which runs through northeastern Ohio and outlets into Lake Erie in Cleveland, was heavily contaminated -- so much so that stretches of the waterway contained no life at all. It was thick with pollutants; Time called it the river that "oozes rather than flows." The ooze ignited on June 22.

That fire wasn't the river's first. It was approximately the thirteenth time the river's surface had burned. But the conflagration in 1969 was the last time.

There's a simple explanation why. Three years later -- thirty-nine years ago today --the Clean Water Act became law, inspired in part by the Cuyahoga fire and over the veto of President Nixon. No longer could companies dump pollutants into waterways; no longer could states turn a blind eye to their doing so.

But three years after the Clean Water Act passed, public investment in water infrastructure as a share of our gross domestic product had peaked. As the decades have passed, we've invested less and less in our water infrastructure. At this point the EPA estimates that in order for America's water systems to be able to operate without sewage overflows or contamination, we'd need to invest $188 billion dollars.

Here's the thing: we can't afford not to. Each year, enough untreated sewage is released into America's waterways to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania in sewage one inch deep. Spending the money to prevent those overflows would pay off: adding over a quarter of a trillion dollars to the economy and employing nearly 1.9 million people.

Unfortunately, this isn't the direction we're headed. The Clean Water Act, never popular with polluters, is coming under increased attack. A still-stagnant economy is the perfect opportunity for those who think it's easier to dump pollutants in our rivers than to dispose of them properly. The polluters, and their allies in Washington, are fighting hard to curtail the Clean Water Act, using the now-hackneyed argument that having to clean up their messes costs jobs.

As Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Robert Adler wrote in yesterday's New York Times, regulations like the Clean Water Act don't increase costs. They determine who absorbs them. Polluted waterways have a cost that's borne by local residents whose health is impacted and by those like fishermen who rely on the waterways for their businesses. The Clean Water Act insists that the polluters pay those costs. Not us.

We have a choice. America can either improve out water systems (click to see how!) or we can weaken them. We can either create jobs or increase the profit margins of polluters. We can build from the success of the Clean Water Act -- or we can revert to a time when our rivers were so polluted that they were flammable.

It shouldn't even be a question.

Increased monitoring finds more water pollution in California

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:31:55 +0100

from Los Angeles Times

The latest review of water pollution data in California shows substantial jumps in toxic and pesticide contamination, the number of dirty beaches and tainted fish. But federal regulators attribute the rise to improved monitoring and data collection by the state rather than a tide of new pollution.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, states are required to monitor water quality and periodically submit the results to the Environmental Protection Agency. California's 2010 list, which the EPA finalized Tuesday, shows a number of dramatic increases compared with the 2006 list.

--Waters with toxic pollution increased 170%.

--Locations in which bacteria levels were unsafe for swimmers climbed 90%.

--Waters fouled by trash jumped 76%.

--The number of waterways tainted by pesticides increased 36%.

--The number of waters inhabited by fish unsafe to eat was 24% higher. Mercury contamination was up the most.

Although many of the more remote streams, rivers and coastline lack monitoring data, EPA Water Division Director Alexis Strauss said “California has done a a superb job" of assembling pollution information. The state used 22,000 data sets to compile the new tally, seven times the number reviewed for the previous listing.

More than 1,000 waterways are deemed "impaired" by pollution of one kind or another. “To me it was fairly shocking,” EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said of the new figures. "That really does speak to the enormity of the problem in front of us."

China to increase investment in water conservation projects

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:25:31 +0100

from xinhuanet.com

BEIJING, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to increase its investment in water conservation infrastructure construction and accelerate its pace of building water conservation projects, a senior official said Wednesday.

China had invested nearly 260 billion yuan (40.63 billion U.S. dollars) in water conservation infrastructure construction by the end of September, with the central government's investment reaching 113.9 billion yuan, Jiao Yong, vice minister of water resources, said at a press conference.

The investment has been used to improve the availability of safe drinking water for 63.5 million rural residents, teachers and students, reinforce 6,595 dangerous reservoirs, harness 800 rivers and build early warning systems for flooding in 1,100 counties, Jiao said.

Despite severe flooding this year, the country reported no breaches of major rivers and tributaries and no bursts in mid- to large-sized reservoirs, Jiao said.

China aims to harness more than 5,000 rivers over the next five years, reinforce 5,400 reservoirs and speed up the construction of early warning systems for flooding and storm tides.

The country will also work to ensure safe drinking water for residents, renovate key irrigation facilities, prevent and control land soil erosion, and restore the ecosystems of some environmentally-deteriorated regions over the next five years, Jiao said.

Efforts will be intensified to promote water conservation as well as the sustainable use of the precious resource, he said.

The government has been paying increasing attention to water conservation, as flooding and drought in recent years have exposed its weaknesses in the field.

The country said in this year's No. 1 document that up to 10 percent of local land transaction fees should go to farmland irrigation projects.

China also aims to double its average annual spending on water conservation to reach 4 trillion yuan over the next decade.

When asked how the government will spend the massive investment, Zhou Xuewen, chief planner of the Ministry of Water Resources, said that 20 percent will be used for the construction of farmland irrigation projects.

"Thirty-eight percent will be spent on flood control and disaster reduction programs, 35 percent will be invested in water-supply projects and the rest of the money will be used for water and soil conservation projects as well as ecological construction," he said, adding that the country welcomes foreign investment in all the projects.

When asked whether the country can provide sufficient water supplies for its people and economic development, Jiao said that the country's usable water resources total 814 billion cubic meters, and its current water supply stands at 600 billion cubic meters, leaving the country with over 200 billion cubic meters in potential water resources.

However, Jiao called for the sustainable use of water due to the uneven distribution of water resources and the country's increasing demand caused by the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization.

When asked if the government plans to divert water from the Brahmaputra River to ease its water shortages, Jiao said the country has no such plans,considering technical difficulties, environmental impacts and state relations.

The river is a transnational river which originates in southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region. Every year, 166.1 billion cubic meters of water from the river flow into other countries.

Jiao added that the Three Gorges Dam has played a crucial role in preventing flooding, shipping and power generation.

The Missouri River in KC 40 Years after the Clean Water Act

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:08:32 +0100

from Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (October 11, 2011) – In 1972, the Clean Water Act was passed and so began the regulatory control of pollutants pouring into the nation’s rivers. What has 40 years of cracking down on water pollution in the Missouri River, where Kansas City draws its drinking water, done for our community and its citizens?

On Thursday, October 13, John Dunn, environmental engineer with the Environmental Protection Agency, will address the regional impact of the Clean Water Act on the Missouri River as part of the Big Muddy Speaker Series in Kansas City. All Big Muddy sessions are free and open to the public.

Who: John Dunn, Environmental Engineer
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7

What: Big Muddy Speaker Series
Organized by Friends of Lakeside Nature Center, Little Blue River Watershed Association and Missouri River Relief

When: October 13, Thursday, 7 p.m.

Where: Farmhouse Restaurant, 3rd & Delaware, Kansas City, Mo.