MADISON, Wis. – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) on Nov. 7 announced the City of Westby is an applicant for funding through the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program (SDWLP) to address deficiencies in its public drinking water system. This project includes the replacement of water mains and sanitary sewer on Sunset Lane, Greenbriar Drive, Meadowlark Lane, Blackhawk Lane and Ulland Street in the City of Westby.

Activities related to this project are minor actions under Chapter NR 150, Wis. Admin. Code, for which no environmental analysis is required; however, following the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program federal requirement 40 C.F.R. §35.3580, an environmental review must be conducted before funding this project.

The Safe Drinking Water Loan Program has determined that the project will not result in significant adverse environmental effects, and no further environmental review or analysis is needed before proceeding with funding the project.

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The public is encouraged to submit comments regarding this decision and the potential environmental impacts of this project. Submit comments by Nov. 18 to: Department of Natural Resources, C/O Kevin Olson, Community Financial Assistance, CF/2, 101 S. Webster St. P.O. Box 7921 Madison, WI 53707, [email protected] or 608-234-2238.

Based on the comments received, the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program may prepare an environmental analysis before proceeding with the funding process. The analysis would summarize the DNR’s consideration of the project’s impacts and reasonable alternatives.

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Pasadena Water and Power is submitting its 2022 Public Health Goals (PHG) Report to the City Council’s Municipal Services Committee on Tuesday, Nov. 8, as required by the California Environmental Protection Agency, under the California Health and Safety Code, of community water utilities like PWP.

The City Council is expected to conduct a public hearing and receive public comment on PWP’s recommended 2022 PHG Report in early December, before authorizing it to be forwarded to CalEPA.

The PHG Report describes what’s in Pasadena’s drinking water: the ‘occurrence of constituents’ – including contaminants – in PWP’s treated water that have concentrations greater than the PHG levels established by CalEPA and the Maximum Contaminant Level Goals (MCLGs) established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These goals are the level of a contaminant in drinking water below which there is no known or expected risk to health.

The report includes a description of the types of public health risks, treatment methods if available, and related estimated costs.

According to CalEPA requirements, PWP should provide the public the opportunity to review and comment on the PHG Report. The City Council is also required to accept and approve the PHG Report.

To view the PHG Report, visit PWP’s webpage in the water quality section at http://www.PWPweb.com/WaterQuality/.

Aside from the PHG Report, PWP is also required to publish a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) on an annual basis and distribute this among its customers. PWP published its 2021 CCR on July 1. This can be accessed through www.pwpweb.com/ccr2021 and is also available in the PWP water quality section at www.PWPweb.com/waterquality/.

Pasadena sources more than 60 percent of the City’s water supply from imported water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California, while the rest is provided from local groundwater sources.

The City maintains eighteen groundwater wells, nine of which are considered “inactive” by the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) Division of Drinking Water (DDW). The City also has five interconnections with MWD and several more with other water retailers.

In the PHG Report for the City Council, PWP said the City’s drinking water meets all California SWRCB’s DDW and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standards set to protect public health. All constituents that have been identified in the report are below the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) after treatment via the City’s Monk Hill Treatment System (MHTS) or other rigorous blending plans. To reduce the constituents further would be at an additional treatment process, which would be costly to the City, PWP said.

Tuesday’s Municipal Services Committee meeting begins at 4 p.m. Members of the public may be able to access it through

http://pasadena.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=9 and www.pasadenamedia.org.

Public comments are welcome. Anyone wishing to make a public comment during the meeting is advised to submit a speaker card at www.cityofpasadena.net/commissions/public-comment. 

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World

When destitute small towns mean dangerous tap water

When destitute small towns mean dangerous tap water

07 November,2022

02:02 pm

KEYSTONE, W.Va. (AP) — Donna Dickerson’s heart would sink every time she’d wake up, turn on the faucet in her mobile home and hear the pipes gurgling.

Sometimes it would happen on a day when her mother, who is 86 and has dementia, had a doctor’s appointment and needed to bathe. Sometimes it would be on Thanksgiving or Christmas when family had come to stay.

“It was sickening, literally a headache and it disrupted everything,” she said. “Out of nowhere, the water would be gone, and we’d have no idea when it’d be back.”

It is hard enough to care for someone with dementia. Caring for someone with dementia with no safe water takes the stress to another level.

While failures of big city water systems attract the attention, it’s small communities like Keystone, West Virginia, that more often are left unprotected by destitute and unmaintained water providers. Small water providers rack up roughly twice as many health violations as big cities on average, an analysis of thousands of records over the last three years by The Associated Press shows. In that time, small water providers violated the Safe Drinking Water Act’s health standards nearly 9,000 times. They were also frequently the very worst performers.

Federal law allows authorities to force changes on water utilities, but they rarely do, even for the worst offenders.

“We’re talking about things that we’ve known in drinking water for a century, that we have an expectation in this country that everybody should be afforded,” said Chad Seidel, president of a water consulting company.

The worst water providers can have such severe problems that residents are told they can’t drink the water. For 10 solid years Dickerson and 175 neighbors in the tiny, majority Black community of Keystone had to boil all their water. That length of time is nearly unheard of — such warnings usually last only for days. The requirement added gas and electricity costs on top of the water bill. In addition, residents would lose water outright for days or even weeks at a time with no warning.

A coal company had built the original system, but since left, leaving no one in charge.

When Dickerson’s water went out, she would drive the dying county’s winding mountain roads to the food bank, or buy water at Dollar General – one of the area’s only stores. She’d haul containers back home and heat up pots on the stove to fill the tub, so her mother could bathe. She stored water in containers in her mobile home’s two bathrooms to flush toilets. Dishes and laundry would pile up.

There was the cost of gas, the cost of 5 gallon water jugs, the cost of washing clothes at the laundromat. There was also an emotional cost.
“It drains you,” she said. “You have to learn how to survive.”

When President Gerald Ford signed the landmark Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, he said “nothing is more essential to the life of every single American,” than clean water to drink, also mentioning clean air and pure food. The law protected Americans against 22 contaminants, including arsenic. Nearly half a century later, evolving science has broadened the coverage to more than 90 substances, and strengthened standards along the way.

The miracle is that most water systems keep up – 94% comply with health standards.

But Dickerson lives in one of the places that didn’t, the AP found, that struggles and fails repeatedly.

After years of problems, Keystone finally got hooked up to a new water system last December, McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities. The deteriorating water mains were replaced, and a nonproft called DigDeep helped pay to connect homes to the new infrastructure.

When a water utility doesn’t treat water properly or has high levels of a contaminant, states are supposed to enforce the law. They usually give communities time to fix problems, and often they do. But if there is intransigence or delay, the state can escalate and impose fines. In many towns, that doesn’t go well.

“Giving them a penalty is not going to get you anywhere. It’s just going to make the situation worse in most cases,” said Heather Himmelberger, director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico. The towns can’t afford the work.

Some 3% of all systems the AP analyzed landed on the EPA’s enforcement priority list last year. Even worse are the 450 utilities that stayed on the list for at least five of the last 10 years. Four million Americans rely on these systems.

Regulators rarely step in to force change.
“Mostly what regulators have is moral appeal and they’ll wag their finger,” said Manny Teodoro, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who focuses on public policy and water.
The EPA says the vast majority of systems do provide safe water and for those that struggle, the agency has increased technical assistance, inspections and enforcement. Those efforts have decreased the number of systems consistently committing health violations, according to Carol King, an attorney in the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Teodoro said originally water systems sprouted up when communities did, giving rise to a fragmented drinking water sector dominated by small providers. School districts in America formed the same way, but went through a period of consolidation. That’s happened far less with community water systems.
The top concern of the sector is funding for infrastructure, according to a survey.
Josiah Cox has a special view of which towns end up in the worst trouble. He spent years working on water issues and noticed many small utility owners failed to save money for maintenance or struggled when experienced staff members left.
So he started a business, Central States Water Resources, buying up problem utilities, doing upgrades and billing customers for the costs over time.
Terre Du Lac, Missouri was one. It’s a private, 5,200-acre community of roughly 1,200 homes nestled around 16 lakes. It advertises a relaxed atmosphere an hour south of St. Louis where people come to golf or water ski.
But rust coated the water tower. The community drinking water well was pulling up naturally-occurring radioactive material that can cause cancer.
He has seen a lot: bird feces in drinking water and one place that treated its water with chlorine tablets meant for swimming pools.
“You start what we call the death spiral of these utilities” where they don’t have the resources to pay for what regulators are demanding, Cox said.
Michael Tilley, who was slammed by regulators for how he operated the Terre Du Lac system before Cox took over, spent most of his life in the community and knows many residents. He said he felt a responsibility to serve them well, but repeatedly faced hurdles finding grant money.
“I think if I had any claim to fame it was just keeping the rates low and trying to operate this thing on a shoestring,” he said. “I look back a lot of times and that was my problem.”
Recruitment of professionals to run small water system is also a major issue. The largely white, male workforce is aging, according to surveys.
Earlier in his career, Tim Wilson, a water project manager, spent time running the treatment plant in Wahpeton, Iowa, a community of just over 400 that expands when vacationers rush in during the summertime.
Small, rural communities have a “ridiculously hard” time recruiting certified operators, he said. Then once they trained, they can be lured away by better pay and benefits elsewhere.
The job demands can also be overwhelming. In Wahpeton, Wilson was the lone employee responsible for the treatment plant. He doubled as a snow plow driver and zoning expert at local government meetings. His crowning achievement, he says, was convincing officials to hire another person to help. It took six years.
Nearly 1,000 miles south in Ferriday, Louisiana, staffing is one problem, but the water has failed people in every major way.
You know your water is in trouble when it’s being distributed by the National Guard. That’s where residents of Ferriday took their bottles and buckets for four months back in 1999.
“I haven’t drunk the water since,” said Jameel Green, 42, who has lived in town most of his life. He now makes sure his two girls, ages 16 and 8, don’t drink Ferriday water either, even if it costs $60 a month.
He held up a garden hose caked with a white film from the water.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ferriday had a vibrant music scene – Jerry Lee Lewis was a local and acts like B.B. King stopped by. Some 5,200 people called Ferriday home. There are about 40% fewer people now, and Ferriday is a mainly Black community. The Delta Music Museum that celebrates the town’s place in music history is surrounded by mostly empty shops.
In 2016, the water situation was supposed to change. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped fund a new treatment plant that went into operation.
But when the company that built the plant walked away after completion, the people operating it were left with little training on how to run it. Staff have struggled to find the right mix of chemicals, according to the Rev. James Smith Sr., who was brought in to help with the issue.
“That’s the big problem. Everybody is still doing trial and error,” Smith said.
Ferriday’s water problems represented “a system in total breakdown,” according to Sri Vedachalam, director of water equity and climate resilience at Environmental Consulting & Technology Inc, who reviewed public files.
Water disinfection in Ferriday is leaving behind levels of carcinogens that are too high. For failing to fix its problems, the state issued Ferriday a $455,265 fine in November 2021.
Smith said the water is now significantly improved. It’s tested regularly and plant operators are working on new treatment methods.
But Ferriday never responded to the fine and the Louisiana health department is threatening to ask a judge to impose a timeline for improvements and force payment.
Without a lot more money and more aggressive intervention in the worst places, experts say many Americans will continue to endure an expensive search for drinkable water, or else they’ll drink water that is potentially unsafe.
“In my view, this is a desperate problem,” Teodoro said.
 

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The demand for bottled water is an “exceptionally clear case” of how an abundant public substance has been transformed into a valuable product by Maltese industry, making its consumption (and sale) one of the “biggest mysteries of capitalism.” 

This is the concern of the negative environmental impact of plastic bottles by MCAST researchers Alex Rizzo and Christian Camilleri, who conducted a questionnaire to determine what drives Maltese customers to opt for bottled water, rather than “cheaper, more accessible, and similarly high-quality tap water.”  

The study starts with the premise that “tap water supplied in Malta is in line with the Drinking Water Directive and, thus, perfectly safe to consume”. Additionally, it is delivered directly to the point of use. But there seems to be a gap between the actual quality of tap water in Malta and the customer’s perception, which explains why tap water has remained relatively untapped. 

The lower consumption of tap water in Malta is confirmed by a European Commission report issued in 2018 that revealed consumption in Malta to be the lowest in the European Union. While on average, Europeans use 120 litres of tap water each day, the Maltese only use 50 litres for all of their household needs. This may suggest that the Maltese are more economic in their use of water and rely on other sources like groundwater – but it could also suggest a greater consumption of bottled water.  

To establish why the Maltese remain wary of tap water, the two researchers relied on an online questionnaire answered by 107 respondents, exploring the influence of a number of factors, namely image, social norms, emerging trends, advertising, convenience, lack of public information on tap water, taste and hardness of tap water, the colour of tap water, health and safety risks associated with tap water, and irregular water supply. 

The aim of the study was to inform policymakers and environmental activists on how to “launch aggressive campaigns which further encourage the use of tap water and hence minimize the environmental damage caused by plastic bottles.” 

The study found that the ‘organoleptic quality’ of tap water – which includes taste and hardness, and colour of tap water – was the strongest variable influencing demand of bottled water. Water ‘hardness’ refers to the percentage of calcium and magnesium dissolved in water, with hard water implying a high dissolved rate of these elements in the water. The taste of tap water is impacted by chlorine which is used for eliminating bacteria and other microbes in water. “This proves the hypotheses that the lower the organoleptic quality of tap water, the higher consumption rate of bottled water,” the researchers said. 

Significantly the study found that the second most important variable was ‘tap water insecurity’: the hypothesis that the higher the perceived safety of bottled water, the higher the consumption. 

The authors said that despite clear evidence that tap water in EU countries was completely safe, the perception that bottled water is safer than tap water also features in numerous other studies carried out in Western countries. 

The study does not discount other factors such as ‘social influences’, the third most important factor which also includes marketing and advertising. The study points out that common keywords used by bottling companies in their advertising campaigns include ‘natural’, ‘pure’, and ‘pristine’ while other studies suggest that 10% to 15% of the price of bottled water goes towards advertising.  

The results of the study tallies with the focus by the Water Services Corporation on improving the taste of Maltese tap water by increasing the portion of desalinated water in the tap water blend.  

The WSC is also participating in the EU funded Purilma ‘pure water’ project whose aim is to have more consumers choosing tap water as their drinking water, and eliminate the use of bottled water and reduce plastic waste.  

The project is set to identify innovative technologies that can disinfect Malta’s water while using lower chlorine quantities, to improve the taste and smell of the drinking water that is supplied by WSC. 

The University of Malta will determine the extent to which each technology can disinfect water effectively, according to the levels defined by the EU’s Drinking Water Directive. 

The most successful technological method will be further assessed by means of a pilot project carried out by the Water Service Corporation. By using disinfection technology at a national level, public health will be safeguarded, and the taste and smell of tap water will be improved. This will lead to tap water being more acceptable for drinking purposes, at no additional cost to consumer. 

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Originally Appeared Here

Calvin’s Clean Water Institute (CWI) has begun preparations to conduct research on the health of water bodies around campus. This research would help improve the Institute’s comprehension of water-related treatment applicable to projects around the world. 

The Institute has ongoing projects in Ecuador and Honduras, but projects in the city of Grand Rapids and country of Guatemala are also on the horizon, as the Institute looks to extend its work into new parts of the world.  

“

We take it for granted here in the United States, [that] we can walk up to any faucet, any drinking fountain … [in some places] you have to have an intentional plan every single day [for] ‘How am I gonna get my clean drinking water?’”

— Douglas Vander Griend

Professor Douglas Vander Griend, director of the CWI, has been a leading force in expanding the Institute’s effort. 

Getting students involved, such as through the Joseph and Sang Jin Kim scholarship, which is available to students who decide to participate with the institution, has helped grow the Institute’s research capacity.

“I believe that this new wave of projects is a result of intentional community building by the institute. The efforts of our director have led us to student outreach through the water-testing research and a first-year student scholarship, all in the efforts of raising student awareness of our goals,” Isabel Latvaitis, outreach intern for the CWI and a senior studying biology, told Chimes. 

Mission

“Our mission is to unleash students and researchers to have an impact on the world and [make] clean water more available, specifically drinkable, clean water,” Vander Griend said. 

After identifying communities in water-related crises, the institute brings together students, faculty and researchers to support those communities. 

Over the eight years the institute has been running, they have begun projects in places such as Liberia and Jordan, where there has been limited access to safe drinking water. 

“We take it for granted here in the United States, [that] we can walk up to any faucet, any drinking fountain … and get gobs of clean water … [in some places] you have to have an intentional plan every single day [for] ‘How am I gonna get my clean drinking water?’” Vander Griend said.   

“

The way that we show love is [to] make someone else’s problem your problem.”

— Douglas Vander Griend

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), about two billion people live without access to safe water in their home. 

According to Vander Griend, it is not only a common human responsibility to care for our neighbors but also an important part of the Christian walk. “The way that we show love is [to] make someone else’s problem your problem,” he said.  

Helping effectively  

The CWI has centered its mission not on offering charity but on trying to make changes that are sustainable through partnership with communities affected by lack of access to clean water.  

Vander Griend said that asking questions like “What sort of solutions work? What sort of solutions don’t work … What would you want from people trying to help? What would you not want from people trying to help?” promotes effective changes in those communities. 

CWI members pose with water testing supplies. (Adelaide Mei)
The rest of this academic year’s team demonstrate supplies in the lab. (Adelaide Mei)

“I think that ‘effective helping’ is the willingness to build long-lasting relationships with the communities you are aiming to help and giving them agency to build a solution that would best suit their needs, instead of entering a situation with what you think is best,” Latvaitis said. 

The CWI prides itself on making use of an interdisciplinary approach to solving water-related issues. “We recognize that there’s no one discipline that is the answer to this clean water issue … You can’t solve it with just chemistry … [or] engineering … [or] business,” Vander Griend said. “You probably need all of those in some way and depending on the exact situation political science comes into play as well, because [of] how the government is running things.”

Through the integration of different academic disciplines, the institute is able to treat each problem on a case-by-case basis. “We absolutely try to treat each situation with the uniqueness that it deserves. We don’t want to treat it like a cookie-cutter thing,” Vander Griend said. 

Empowering students 

The CWI tries to enable students involved to see the world in new ways via exposure to different communities. 

“

It gives students an opportunity to knowledgeably engage with a global issue and make real change.”

— Isabel Latvaitis

“You travel, you start getting perspective … that perspective makes you wiser [which] makes you more understanding,” Vander Griend told Chimes.

“It gives students an opportunity to knowledgeably engage with a global issue and make real change,” Latvaitis said. 

According to Vander Griend, the CWI is based on the same foundations that Calvin is designed upon. 

“Lots of disciplines, lots of areas coming together but also motivated to truly love people in a way that puts their best interest first,” he said. 

Taryn Hoeksema, a senior studying public health and social work, partnered with the CWI and the Sawyer Institute in a study of clean water in Honduras. She said that the CWI “challenges the Calvin community to think deeply about the different global influences on water and how solutions may be met … [seeks] justice regarding the access to, quality and sustainability of clean water globally … [and lives] wholeheartedly by working to better understand and achieve our vocations through our interactions with water justice and sustainability.” 

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Originally Appeared Here

Bengaluru: Drinking water will soon be available 24 hours a day to the urban local bodies of the state except the Bengaluru city. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to launch an ambitious scheme to provide clean drinking water in urban local bodies under the (Thirst-Free Karnataka) ‘Daahamukta Karnataka’ scheme.

The project is worth Rs 7,620 crore. For the project, the central government will provide 50% of amount, while the state government will bear the remaining 50%. The Daahamukta Karnataka project is targeted for completion by March 2024, with a tendering process immediately after launch.

Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum, Vijayapur, Kalaburagi, Bellary, Tumkur, Davangere, Mysore Municipal Corporation and other municipal councils of the state have been included in the scope of this scheme. In the state, under the Jal Jeevan Mission – Mane Manege Gange project, water supply to all the houses in rural areas through taps is already in progress, and now this project to supply water to urban areas is getting underway. Due to this, clean drinking water will be supplied to rural and urban areas.

Prime Minister Modi will arrive in the state on the 11th and participate in many programs including the unveiling of the statue of Nadaprabhu Kempegowda. Sources said that this program is also expected to be launched on the same day.

There has been a demand for drinking water supply in urban local bodies for many years. For this, a huge amount of planning has been made and decided to be undertaken. Urban Development Minister Byrati Basavaraj said that drinking water will be supplied to every house by getting water from the river source and other water sources.

The issue of regularisation of houses built for the poor on revenue land in urban areas has been discussed in the cabinet sub-committee and will soon come before the cabinet. The Minister Byrati Basavaraj said that the issue of violation of plan approval and construction of houses without obtaining permission from the local bodies within the limits of city and town areas was also discussed.

Urban Development Minister, Byrati Basavaraj said, Drinking water supply in urban local bodies has been a long-standing demand. Under Amrut-2.0 the central government will support and the state government will bear the rest of the cost. Due to this, clean drinking water will be supplied in all urban areas of the state. The scheme will be fully implemented within a one-year timeframe.

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Originally Appeared Here

POESTENKILL, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The Town Board of the Town of Poestenkill has been awarded $3.32M in state funding from the WIIA grant in effort to bring safe drinking water to the residents of Poestenkill and the Averill Park School District. The grant will cover 60% of the estimated cost associated with creating a second water district covering Algonquin Middle School and the surrounding area to assist residents with addressing the PFOA contamination in their water.

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“On behalf of the Town of Poestenkill I would like to thank our legislative delegation,
NYS Department of Health, Rensselaer County Department of Health and our staff here
in the Town for their tireless efforts.” Said Supervisor Hammond. “It is through our
combined efforts that we will overcome the challenge that the PFOA contamination
presents in our community’s water. I look forward to continuing to work with our
residents and funding partners to create a water system that will be able to provide safe
potable water to our children and residents for years to come”.

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Originally Appeared Here

Ancient Rome pioneered the building of sewers that dumped effluent into nearby waterways — same as Nassau County is still doing. As a result, says John Turner, senior conservation policy advocate at Seatuck Environmental Association, the water table underlying Nassau is shrinking.

At least 85% of Nassau is sewered and from the sewage treatment plants on the north and south shores of the county this “highly treated wastewater” is sent via outfall pipes into nearby waterways and the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. The centuries-old Roman system continues in Nassau.

What should be happening instead, says Turner, is for the “highly treated wastewater” to be used to fertilize golf courses and be “recharged” into the ground to keep stable the quantity of water — the sole source of potable water for Nassau residents.

With the water table, the underground aquifers, contracting, Hempstead Lake “has been called Hempstead Puddle,” says Turner, and Valley Stream the “Valley No-Stream.” Also affected have been other streams, waterbodies, and wetlands in Nassau.

And this also invites saltwater intrusion. Because of over pumping and pollution, Brooklyn lost its potable water supply. An upstate reservoir system was built that today serves New York City, but there’s not enough water in those reservoirs to also serve Nassau.

Seatuck Environmental Association, based in Islip, is now preparing a “Long Island Water Reuse Feasibility Study, A Blueprint for Water Reuse on Long Island,”according to Turner.

Not only water quality but water quantity is critical for Nassau and Suffolk counties, with their limited underground supply and only rainwater as the source of water for the aquifers.

Water reuse is now expanding in the U.S. and other nations. Indeed, there is a highly active organization, WaterReuse Association, which says: “The fundamental principle of water reuse is using the right water for the right purpose….Our efforts touch on every aspect of promoting water reuse to make it fit for purpose.”

About 25% of Suffolk County is sewered. It does have smaller treatment plants that recharge treated wastewater into the ground, but most of its bigger sewage treatment plants follow the way of Nassau — and ancient Rome — and discharge wastewater into nearby waterways, the Atlantic, and Sound.

Suffolk’s largest sewage plant, its Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in West Babylon, was built to send 30 million gallons of wastewater a day through an outfall pipe into the Atlantic. The wastewater from the county’s Southwest Sewer District is discharged into the ocean and the county has been pushing for new sewer systems to also send their effluent through the plant and into the Atlantic — including from Ronkonkoma in the middle of Suffolk.

A breakthrough in Suffolk, which Turner points to, is an upgrade in 2016 of the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant, and now its effluent is sent to the Indian Island Golf Course where it fertilizes the turf rather than, as was the practice, dumped into Flanders Bay.

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Originally Appeared Here

“It drains you,” she said. “You have to learn how to survive.”

When President Gerald Ford signed the landmark Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, he said “nothing is more essential to the life of every single American,” than clean water to drink, also mentioning clean air and pure food. The law protected Americans against 22 contaminants, including arsenic. Nearly half a century later, evolving science has broadened the coverage to more than 90 substances, and strengthened standards along the way.

The miracle is that most water systems keep up – 94% comply with health standards.

But Dickerson lives in one of the places that didn’t, the AP found, that struggles and fails repeatedly.

After years of problems, Keystone finally got hooked up to a new water system last December, McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities. The deteriorating water mains were replaced, and a nonproft called DigDeep helped pay to connect homes to the new infrastructure.

When a water utility doesn’t treat water properly or has high levels of a contaminant, states are supposed to enforce the law. They usually give communities time to fix problems, and often they do. But if there is intransigence or delay, the state can escalate and impose fines. In many towns, that doesn’t go well.

“Giving them a penalty is not going to get you anywhere. It’s just going to make the situation worse in most cases,” said Heather Himmelberger, director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico. The towns can’t afford the work.

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Originally Appeared Here

More than 50 lakh households in rural West Bengal now get drinking water through piped connections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Saturday. 

Congratulating those involved in the project, Banerjee said her government is dedicated to serving the people and ensuring their welfare.

“I’m delighted to announce that more than 50 lakh rural households in Bengal now have access to clean potable water through tap water connections,” she tweeted. 

The West Bengal government has provided over 23.37 lakh tap water connections in this fiscal, officials said.

(Inputs from PTI)

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Originally Appeared Here