The Dutch water company Hatenboer-Water has developed the Plastic Free @Sea concept, which allows shipowners to reduce the tens of thousands of plastic water bottles onboard to virtually zero. This was announced in a press release.

As a bonus, the new solution helps to save cost and handling time, Hatenboer-Water said.

“(We) are in contact with some cruise operators/owners as our Plastic Free @Sea onboard clean drinking water system is certainly suitable for cruise and passenger ships … especially because of the triple filtration system taking away fears for taste and contamination. On cruise ships, the water taps could even be installed for passenger use,” the company’s spokesperson told Cruise Industry News.

According to the press release, the Plastic Free @Sea concept comprises of a contact free water bottle filling station, a filtration unit to guarantee quality drinking water and reusable bottles. Each water fountain features hands-free sensor activation, providing users with a sanitary, touchless bottle filling experience.

The key components have an antimicrobial protection that inhibits the growth of mould and mildew. In addition, as crew members are often reluctant to drink tap water from the water tanks due to their past experience, Hatenboer-Water provides on- and offline training and information to get all crew acquainted with the ins and outs of the system.

“By design, the units are easy to maintain and the dispenser clearly indicates when filters need to be changed. Tests with first clients have shown that crew members quickly grow confident and even fond of drinking water from the tap,” Hatenboer-Water said.

To this day, Hatenboer-Water has successfully installed bottle filling station on 40 non-cruise vessels.

“When COVID came in, we switched gear to adapt and introduce contact-free tap points fast … It all comes together: office staff likes the potential savings and the short return on investment, the fleet is happy with clean, good-tasting water,” Hatenboer-Water’s Sales Manager for Water Quality, Mark Knoester, noted.

The company’s other water treatment systems – such as reverse osmosis and hot and/or cold water treatment packages – have been installed onboard vessels sailing for Saga Cruises, Star Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea. River cruise brands like A-ROSA and Lüftner River Cruises also use Hatenboer-Water systems onboard.

“On river cruises water treatment is especially challenging due to the ever changing quality source water. But as our factory is situated next to the river Nieuwe Maas in the Netherlands, we have test facilities at hand,” explained the spokesperson.

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• Kliptown resident Cavlyn Fredericks found small silver balls in her drinking water, which she suspected to be mercury. 
• Her kids spent three days in hospital after experiencing vomiting and diarrhoea, and blood samples confirmed low levels of mercury in their system.  
• Joburg Water sent a team to collect samples in the area on 3 December, and has denied the existence of mercury in the water. 

Kliptown mother Cavlyn Fredericks and her family have been left afraid to drink the water running from their taps after three children got sick from suspected mercury poisoning. 

Fredericks and her mother Irene were boiling water on 18 November when they found three silver balls in their kettle.

“My mom thought it was those silver balls you play marbles with, and I said it was too small for that. And how did it get in there?” she told News24. 

READ | Residents in parts of Cape Town advised to avoid drinking tap water due to strange taste, smell

When her mom tried to remove the ball with her finger, she said, they multiplied 

“Two days later, my two-year-old got sick. He was vomiting and had a fever and runny tummy. We didn’t know it was because of the water. My six-year-old also got sick. She had cramps and a runny tummy, so did my 12-year-old,” said Fredericks. 

She posted pictures of what she had found in her kettle on her community group and one resident said it might be mercury. A frantic Fredericks started googling what mercury was and where it could have come from, considering they do not live close to a mine and had not done any plumbing recently. 

“This whole ordeal has been something else. It’s hard to find structural support, especially with the mercury situation, and it affected my children. My two-year-old had to get a referral to Lilian Ngoyi Hospital and, from there, they referred us to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.

“They were checked immediately and spent three days in hospital. My two-year-old has issues with his liver. My children have to go for check-ups for three months. Their next check-up is in January,” said an emotional Fredericks 

Residents in Kliptown found small silver balls in their water which they suspect is mercury

Supplied Supplied

She added:

My children were tested for mercury because blood and urine samples were taken which showed low levels of mercury at the moment. We are still waiting for more results for the little one. We are waiting for more urine tests.

The Daily Maverick, which first reported on the matter, visited the area and took samples of what was suspected to be mercury to the Modderfontein Laboratory Services. They reported that, after the sample was observed, it was confirmed to be mercury. 

Rico Euripidou, the director of environmental justice organisation groundWork, explained how mercury was an element that can never be destroyed.

“The fact that it was found in the water, was visible to the people, and that they could confirm that it was mercury – and I have [also] subsequently read reports that confirms that it was mercury – implies that it got into the watered piping system in one way or another. Let’s be clear, it shouldn’t be there. There shouldn’t be mercury in people’s water supply,” he said. 

Euripidou said that mercury was of great concern to the global public health governance system because of its profound impact on health. 

“In the early and late 19th century, when occupational health diseases became evident to the modern medical practitioners, one – in particular – was people that made felt hats. You know, these tall black hats, and there is a particular story in Alice in Wonderland about the Mad Hatter, and there is a reason for that. And that is because those felt makers, those hatters used mercury to make the felt soft, and in doing so, they incurred occupational health disease, it would affect their nervous systems,” he said. 

He explained how mercury in different forms had differing effects on the human body.

He said:

Now, if you had to swallow metallic mercury, if you had to swallow one of those tiny silver shiny balls in a glass of water, the likelihood is that it would pass right through your system. It won’t get absorbed in the gut and it’ll just pass through you.

“However, if you did something simple like boil the water and those mercury droplets then transformed into a vapour form, so that you could breathe in, then that mercury vapour would enter into your lungs.

“It would get carried to different organs and if it makes its way into your brain and your central nervous system. Then you can expect severe symptoms like peripheral neuropathy etc. It will have a material impact on that person’s health,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Johannesburg Water said, in a 15 December statement, that they had escalated the matter after receiving a complaint. However, they denied the existence of mercury in the family’s water.

“Johannesburg Water would like to confirm that the laboratory test results of all four-sample points did not detect mercury as samples were found to be compliant with drinking water standards as per SANS 241 (2015). The entity prides itself on providing residents with good quality drinking water with the monthly water quality compliance reports available to the public from our website,” they said. 

‘I am still waiting for solid results’

Euripidou, however, said that cross-contamination of portable water supplies was hugely uncommon, but that if it (contamination) was detected, water engineers usually tried to flush it out of the system. 

He said:

Unless you find the root cause of this mercury getting into the water system, then you’re not really addressing the problem and that is what has to happen. There has to be a systematic investigation on the ground by environmental health practitioners.

“They have to do inspections, find out which households have recorded mercury in their water supply and they probably have to do a questionnaire of lots of different households to find out if anybody else has found mercury.

“They probably have to do a fact sheet and explain to people what mercury is and what they should be looking for, and if they see it, they should report it. So you can either do it through house-to-house surveys or through public meetings or through churches or whatever. They really have to find out the root cause of this. Unless they do that, they’re not addressing the problem,” he said. 

In the meantime, the Fredericks family have been relying on bottled water out of fear of their tap water. When News24 visited the family, newly elected Patriotic Alliance councillor for Ward 17, Dwain Ponsonby, was there delivering bottled water. 

Residents in Kliptown found small silver balls in their water which they

Supplied Picture supplied

Ponsonby said that since Fredericks had brought the matter to his attention, several other residents had complained about similar illnesses and rashes. He said that they were working on getting a water tanker for the Fredericks family. 

“There was a planned water outage scheduled from 15 November. After that, I received a call from Cavlyn to say they had spotted mercury. I immediately spoke to the authorities, and they have said they needed to look into it.

“I am still waiting for solid results, which I have requested from Joburg Water and environmental health. We have seen Cavlyn and her children suffering, so we want to see if there is mercury in the water, but there has been proof now that the children have been affected by the mercury. We now need to establish the truth and do proper fact-finding.” 

On 17 December, City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane told News24 that, at the moment, the City could not confirm anything and that they were waiting on results from the environmental health inspectors, which would inform their interventions. 

We want to hear your views on the news. Subscribe to News24 to be part of the conversation in the comments section of this article.

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RALEIGH, North Carolina — In 2015, all U.N. member states agreed to Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) to “ensure availability and sustainable management for water and sanitation for all” by 2030. Five years prior, in 2010, the U.N. General Assembly officially recognized access to clean drinking water and sanitation as human rights. For several decades prior to these U.N. declarations, a Guatemalan nonprofit called Agua del Pueblo (AdP), which translates to The People’s Water, committed to advancing access to clean water and sanitation in Guatemala.

The Origin of Agua del Pueblo

Today, Agua del Pueblo is “reportedly the oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to water supply, sanitation and community development in the world.” The organization has helped more than 700 rural communities build water and sanitation systems. It also helps implement sustainable management practices for those systems. Agua del Pueblo refined its successful methodology over the decades. Now, it serves as a model for other organizations that want to work toward SDG 6.

In an interview with The Borgen Project, Bruce Clemens, a founder of Agua del Pueblo, says the story began in 1972. This is when he and the rest of a “band of starry-eyed, pollyannaish volunteers” gathered at the San Lucas Mission in San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. The group included several Americans, a Canadian and an Irishman. “The fundamental goal of each of the volunteers was to address the poverty and maldistribution of wealth in rural Guatemala,” says Clemens.

The group’s host and founder of San Lucas Mission, Monsignor Greg Schaffer, suggested that the group seek to accomplish its goal by improving rural access to water and sanitation in Guatemala. The group consisted of several engineers, an architect, a social scientist and a master plumber. Therefore, this suggestion seemed like a logical strategy — one that the group took to heart.

The Early Days of the Project

The original project did not lack ambition. The group decided to pump water from Lake Atitlan to a couple of communities several miles away. After drafting the engineering plan, the group traveled four hours to Guatemala City to procure the necessary materials, including $100,000 worth of PVC pipes (the equivalent of $661,000 today).

Not having the cash on hand, the PVC pipe company graciously provided the pipe on credit. The group then secured some donations from U.S. companies and struck a deal with “a coffee plantation owner” who agreed to invest in the project in return for access to the water supply for his plantation.

Inspired by the project’s positive impact on the communities, the group formalized a project methodology and worked to obtain legal status as an NGO. According to the American Journal of Social Issues and Humanities, the group legally established “The People’s Consultants” nonprofit in 1974 in the United States, and then, “Asociación Pro Agua del Pueblo” in 1981 in Guatemala.

Even before the formal establishment of Agua del Pueblo, the group intentionally transferred control of the organization to Guatemalans of mostly Mayan ethnicity because “many other Guatemalan organizations” commonly “exclude indigenous people from leadership positions.” In the United States, The People’s Consultants acts as a strategic partner to AdP by lending technical expertise/consultancy and by fundraising for projects.

The Fight for Equality for Indigenous People

In a population of more than 15 million people, close to 50% of Guatemalans “self-identify as Indigenous,” with the largest ethnic bloc belonging to the Mayan people. Indigenous people in Guatemala face gross political underrepresentation. For this reason, they suffer from widespread discrimination that extends into areas of health care, education, food, water and sanitation. According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, the poverty rate for Indigenous people is about 75%, more than double the poverty rate for non-Indigenous people.

For centuries, non-Indigenous, Spanish-speaking people sought to oppress the native-speaking people of the region. Between 1960 and 1996, the factions fought a bloody civil war that led to 200,000 fatalities, with Indigenous Maya people accounting for a staggering 83% of these casualties. This conflict posed significant risks for AdP and the communities it assisted. Because the AdP’s mission centers around organizing Maya communities, Clemens says that “government-backed forces assassinated a number of AdP employees and collaborators.” Government-backed forces were seemingly unwilling, or unable, to make the distinction between organizing communities for infrastructure development versus organizing them for combat efforts.

In 1995, the two sides agreed to an accord defining the Guatemalan population as “multi-ethnic, pluricultural and multilingual.” However, the fight for constitutional equality for Indigenous people has never fully materialized.

The AdP Methodology Puts Community Involvement Front and Center

In the process of providing water and sanitation for Guatemala’s most impoverished, AdPs method ensures strong community engagement on projects. This not only helps ensure that the project will be sustainable but also ensures that the community will grow in confidence to take on other projects with their newfound sense of organization. Once community members see what they are capable of, they often look to other ways to improve their communities, such as building roads or schools.

For this reason, AdP requires that communities ask the organization for assistance, ensuring that the community itself recognizes a pressing need and that the community shows a willingness to engage. Furthermore, 80% of community residents must sign a petition for the project. This ensures that the community will have enough people to build and pay for it.

Community members contribute a third of the project’s cost in unskilled labor and a third through a low-interest loan paid off through monthly taxes. The remaining third comes from outside donations and grants, often from The People’s Consultants.

While AdP uses its technical expertise to conduct feasibility studies, the community puts together a water committee of local leaders. AdP also trains locals to become rural water technicians. These so-called “barefoot engineers” are the technical link between the engineer and the community. After the project is complete, these technicians and the water committee are responsible for maintaining the infrastructure for long-term sustainability.

The Work Continues

The need for water and sanitation in Guatemala is significant. While the nation has made plenty of progress over the past 20 years, the rural coverage for basic drinking water and sanitation service stood at 90.1% and 55.5% respectively in 2020.

The lack of sanitation is especially concerning because inadequate sanitation puts drinking water sources at risk of contamination. This is evident in the “algal blooms” that have periodically plagued Lake Atitlan since 2009. Approximately 400,000 people live in the lake’s watershed, which has no outflows such as rivers. This means that watershed pollutants cannot escape the lake.

Because water and sanitation are complimentary for sustainability, AdP always requires the installation of sanitation within water access projects. As for Lake Atitlan, the organization has plans to systematically install adequate sanitation. The plan is to install sanitation at the highest elevations and work down toward the lake over time. The organization estimates that providing water and sanitation access to all the people in the watershed will cost about $40 million.

For its part, ADP is working tirelessly to help Guatemala reach SDG 6. The AdP plays an integral part in accomplishing this because its community engagement model ensures that the community is invested in the project design, build and maintenance. This not only ensures successful projects for water and sanitation in Guatemala but also empowers communities to seek out further community improvements, thus setting them solidly on the path toward escaping poverty.

– Jeramiah Jordan
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Originally Appeared Here

Navy personnel prepare massive carbon filter systems on Dec. 18, 2021, that will be used to flush contaminated water from military communities near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. (Luke McCall/U.S. Navy)

Nearly 4,000 residents of military housing for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam are facing the holidays in hotels or in homes without potable water as the Navy flushes contaminated water lines, a job that may stretch into late January.

The Navy planned to start flushing water lines at the Pearl City Peninsula military housing neighborhood on Monday, the first of 17 system purges in military communities, according to a news release Sunday from the joint base. The Pearl City flush was expected to take one day.

Individual homes at Pearl City will also be flushed between Monday and Jan. 4, according to a plan to purge the contaminated water system announced Friday. Pearl City is first to be flushed due to its proximity to the Waiawa well, the Navy’s source of drinking water after two other wells were shut down Nov. 28 and Dec. 3.

The last communities, McGrew Point and Halawa, may be completed Jan. 20, according to a Sunday update of the base’s plan to flush the water system.

Residents of military housing complained in late November of an odor and oily sheen in their tap water. Tests confirmed the presence of petroleum products in the base water supply, and the Navy tracked the contamination to a Nov. 20 jet fuel spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

By Friday, more than 1,600 individuals had moved temporarily to hotels, while nearly 2,200 people are staying home without clean water, according to a factsheet on the water emergency compiled by the base.

The plan to flush the system was developed by a team of doctors, engineers and scientists, with input from state and federal regulatory agencies, Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of Pacific Fleet, told reporters Friday.

“We’re going to flush the system,” Converse said. “We’re going to flush each of the individual lines going to the homes, and we’re going to flush each of the homes to restore clean water. And we’re going to test the system at several steps along the way to the appropriate standards.”

Tens of millions of gallons of tainted water in the distribution system will be processed through massive carbon filtering systems the Navy flew in over the past week and that are now being assembled, according to the base.

Tainted water in individual households – typically 80 to 120 gallons in pipes and water heaters – will be flushed into the regular sewage system, Converse said.

As the Navy scrambles to tackle the issue, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General announced Monday its intent to evaluate the “operation, maintenance, safety, and oversight” of the Navy’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

The investigation follows a request from the Hawaiian congressional delegation of Reps. Ed Case and Kaiali’i Kahele and Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz. The delegation applauded the decision and said the results would determine the future of Red Hill.

“Recent events have called into question the Navy’s operations of the Red Hill facility and their ability to ensure the safety of water provided to Hawaii’s military families and Oahu residents,” the delegation said in a news release Monday. “It is critical that the military restore safe drinking water immediately. We also need answers.”

Alex Wilson

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Originally Appeared Here