Officials appear to have lost patience with a council water contractor, and are demanding accountability.

The Clutha District Council yesterday took the unusual step of summoning contractor Citycare Water to make a public appearance at its next meeting on December 8, to account for what councillors said were “unacceptable’’ failures in service delivery.

The move was proposed by Clutha Mayor Bryan Cadogan during the council’s service delivery committee meeting in Balclutha yesterday afternoon, and backed unanimously by councillors.

The council will now make a formal request for senior representatives of Citycare to attend and answer councillors’ concerns in person.

The move came about in response to a report from service delivery group manager Jules Witt, which detailed a compliance sampling breach where the contractor had failed to take wastewater treatment plant samples for September and October.

Mr Cadogan said the failure to take samples was “shocking’’, and indicative of a wider service delivery issue.

“I’m at my wits’ end. Three years ago we had our sewage debacle, yet look where we are today.

“Repeated boil water notices, response times to urgent service requests numbering in the hundreds of hours, and continued issues with non-compliance.

“This is unacceptable. We’ve breached [consents] on sampling. Did they forget? Did they just decide they wouldn’t do it this month?’’

In December 2020, the council and Citycare were taken to court by Otago Regional Council for sewerage network failures, leading to a fine of almost $500,000 for the council.

At the time, Citycare pleaded not guilty to 12 charges relating to the case, which they are answering before Christchurch District Court this week.

Mr Cadogan said the council’s contract with Citycare was worth $20million.

“The ratepayers are paying to ensure this is done. We’re paying the bill to the contractors to ensure this doesn’t happen.’’

This week RNZ reported two Clutha water schemes had been issued with boil water notices.

The report said some residents on the Richardson South water scheme and in Kaka Point had been without reliable tap water since Saturday.

Last month, Lawrence resident Mark Robertson said civic water leaks in the town had remained unfixed for about six months, despite repeated appeals.

And in August, Waihola residents joined forces to complain about long-standing issues with inadequate drinking water quality and supply, after they came to a head following a burst main.

Last night Citycare Water chief executive Tim Gibson said he was unable to comment without knowing further details.

“Until we receive formal notification from Clutha District Council, we’re not in a position to respond further.’’

 

Originally Appeared Here

Staff and board members from the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, along with other water managers from across western Colorado, this month visited the lower basin states — Nevada, Arizona and California — on what they called a fact-finding trip.

The tour took participants by bus from Las Vegas though the green alfalfa fields of the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, past the big diversions serving the Central Arizona Project and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and to the hot, below-sea-level agricultural expanse of the biggest water user on the river: the Imperial Irrigation District. Among the about 50 participants on the three-day tour were Kathy Chandler-Henry and Steve Beckley, River District board representatives from Eagle and Garfield counties. Pitkin County representative John Ely did not attend.

The River District’s mission is to protect, conserve, use and develop the waters within its 15-county area of western Colorado and to safeguard the water to which the state is entitled.

With the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which store Colorado River water — at record-low levels that threaten hydropower production, and calls for conservation coming from the federal government, it’s more important than ever for western Colorado residents to understand how water is used in the lower basin, said River District general manager Andy Mueller.

“We have to be able to understand (lower basin) interests and their needs so that we can find ways to meet their interests while protecting our own,” he said. “There’s a system at risk of collapse, and we are an integral part of that.”

An often-repeated fact about the Colorado River is that it provides water to 40 million people in the Southwest. But perhaps an even more salient statistic is that 1 in 17 people in the U.S. — about 19 million — get their water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. About half of that comes from the Colorado River.

Since 1941, MWD’s Whitsett Pumping Plant has taken water from Lake Havasu and pumped it into the Colorado River Aqueduct, where it then travels 242 miles to urban Southern California. The water district spans 26 municipalities and six counties.

The future of providing enough water to all these urban customers may be something called direct potable reuse — MWD calls it raw-water augmentation — which would allow them to recycle wastewater into drinking water instead of discharging it into the ocean. MWD is testing this concept with its Pure Water Southern California demonstration facility, located in Carson, Calif., which was the last stop on the tour.

Direct potable reuse takes sewage, treats it using sophisticated — and expensive — filtering and disinfection techniques and returns it to taps as drinking water without first diluting it in a larger body of water. Last month, Colorado’s Water Quality Control Commission gave preliminary approval to regulate direct potable reuse.

MWD is working toward using the recycled water for industrial purposes and groundwater recharge, and it eventually hopes to deliver it to residents’ taps. The water provider could have a preliminary portion of the project online by 2028. This new supply of recycled water could meet about 10% of MWD’s demands, according to Rupam Soni, MWD’s community-relations team manager.

“It provides us with so much operational flexibility and water reliability because this supply is available to us rain or shine, it’s climate resilient, and that’s really important to us right now, with climate change and the challenges it’s imposed on our imported supplies,” Soni said.

Rupam Soni, MWD’s community-relations team manager, gives a tour of MWD’s Pure Water Southern California demonstration facility. MWD is hoping to soon use recycled wastewater, known as direct potable reuse, to augment its supplies from the Colorado River. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Although it’s true that much of the country’s winter produce, especially lettuce, comes from lower basin farmers, the No. 1 thing grown with Colorado River water is forage crops: alfalfa and different types of grasses to feed livestock.

The Imperial Irrigation District uses 3.1 million acre-feet a year of Colorado River water. By comparison, the entire upper basin (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming) uses between 3.5 and 4.5 million acre-feet per year from the Colorado River. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre to a depth of one foot and is enough to supply one or two families for a year.

IID’s No. 1 crop is alfalfa and represents almost 31% of the acres grown. Bermuda grass and Sudan grass are second and third, respectively. These top three crops account for about 56% of the acres grown in IID.

Forage crops comprise the majority of what is grown in the upper basin, too. But growers in Colorado’s high-elevation valleys can expect about two cuttings a year, while much of the lower basin grows hay year-round, getting seven to nine cuttings. That means switching to less-thirsty forage crops in the lower basin could have a greater impact on the amount of water used.

In Colorado, some irrigators are experimenting with growing forage crops that use less water in an effort to adapt to a hotter, drier future.

Kremmling rancher Paul Bruchez, a representative on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is trying out test plots on his family’s ranch. He’s growing sainfoin, a legume with a nutritional value similar to that of alfalfa. Bruchez, a participant on the tour, said some lower basin water managers and growers have expressed interest in meeting with him to learn more about growing less-thirsty crops.

Bruchez stressed that switching forage crops in the upper basin is not about propping up Powell and Mead with water saved from agriculture, especially since there isn’t currently a demand-management program in place to account for that water savings. It’s about survival.

“People just don’t have enough water to irrigate the way they used to irrigate,” he said. “They are just trying to make a living and stretch their water to go further.”

Upper basin bears brunt of climate-change impacts on streamflows

Over the past two decades, the Colorado River has lost nearly 20% of its flows. Part of that is because of the ongoing drought, the worst in 1,200 years, which means less precipitation. But according to researchers, about one-third of that loss can be attributed to hotter temperatures driven by climate change. Decreased river flows mean that less water ends up in Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

These reduced streamflows in the upper basin mean water users may have to adapt their operations because less water is available to them. If there’s less water in the stream, junior users may get cut off and senior users may not be able to take their full amount. Streamflows can be particularly inadequate during the late-summer and early-fall irrigation season and some water users are at the mercy of dry local conditions.

Upper basin water managers like to point out that this isn’t the case in the lower basin. Although western Colorado has thousands of small-scale water users diverting from dwindling rivers, the lower basin has just a handful of large-scale water users who have the benefit of two huge upstream storage buckets that release the water exactly when it’s needed.

“Our farmers in particular live within that hydrology in flux and we have learned how to adapt to climate change,” Mueller said. “In the lower basin, their agriculture and outdoor landscaping are absorbing more water because of the hotter temperatures, so they just call for more from the reservoirs.”

Evaporation loss not accounted for in lower basin

The thing about building giant reservoirs in the desert is that a portion of the water evaporates into the hot, dry air. In the upper basin, these evaporative losses from the reservoirs of the Colorado River Storage Project are accounted for and charged as part of the consumptive use to each state depending on their allocation of water.

For example, as laid out in the 1948 Upper Colorado River Compact, Colorado’s allocation of upper basin water is 51.75%. Therefore, the state takes 51.75% of the evaporative losses for Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge and Lake Powell. Such is not the case in the lower basin, where evaporative losses in reservoirs remain unaccounted for.

Upper basin water managers have long said this accounting is unfair and enables overuse in the lower basin.

“We are asking for (the lower basin) to be treated the same way we are so the system and the playing field is even,” Mueller said. “Once we are on an even playing table, then we can address the way we work in the future, but it’s really hard to do that when the rules they play by down here enable so much more water use than what we have in the upper basin.”

The upper basin may finally be making progress on this point, for at least one lower basin water provider has taken up the rallying cry. In an August letter to federal officials, Southern Nevada Water Authority’s John Entsminger recommended that each lower basin contractor be charged for evaporation losses so that “the lower basin can reduce its reliance upon excess water from the upper basin to balance reservoirs.”

A subsequent study by SNWA found about 1.5 million acre-feet in evaporation and transit losses each year downstream of Lee Ferry, the dividing line between the upper and lower basins that is just downstream of Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam.

“We divorced the water use in the lower basin from the hydrology,” Mueller said. “When you have 50 years of reliable water supply, you don’t think about the fragility of the natural system that’s providing that water.”

Originally Appeared Here

Re “Cambridge returns to using municipal water supply early” (Metro, Nov. 20): I was pleased to read that Cambridge returned to using its municipal water supply after switching to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority system following the detection three months ago of six PFAS chemicals above the state limits for drinking water. I relied on Cambridge water during my graduate school days and, for most of my life, relied on MWRA water piped from Western Massachusetts to Boston and surrounding suburbs, so I recognize the importance of these critical public water systems.

Yet I cannot help but think about the inequities that exist in drinking water protections and resources across the state. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Private Wells PFAS Sampling Program found that about 5 percent of private wells tested across 85 towns had six PFAS chemicals above the same state limits Cambridge and other public water systems have to meet.

The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts’ grant-funded Private Well Program to Protect Public Health, led by the nonprofit RCAP Solutions, has found that on average about 30 percent of private wells tested in 12 towns across the state had contaminants exceeding state drinking water standards. In one town, that figure was 55 percent.

In contrast to the city of Cambridge, these private well owners cannot switch to another water supply, and there has been no systemic approach to supporting these homeowners in understanding and identifying options for remediation, which can cost thousands of dollars.

We must do more to close the drinking water gap and ensure that all Massachusetts residents have safe drinking water regardless of where they live.

Amie Shei

President and CEO

The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts

Worcester

Originally Appeared Here

Islamabad: The water supply has finally been restored in sectors G-7 and G-8 after completion of repair work at RL-1 Water Treatment Plant.

According to the details, the Water Management Wing of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) initiated the repair work some two weeks ago that caused suspension of supply of water to two residential sectors.

The record showed that the civic agency had been constantly receiving complaints from the residents of these sectors about quality and non-supply of water for last many months. The initial assessment found out technical problems after which repair work was initiated at the treatment plant.

The civic agency has been working tirelessly to improve water supply in the city for last few months. In this regard, leakages in the supply lines have been fixed in addition to replacement of pipe lines in different areas of the city. Similarly, damaged portions of conduction lines of tubewells have also been repaired that has resulted in increase of water supply in different areas.

An official informed that they have successfully completed the repair work and now the water is being supplied to the residential sectors through this water treatment plant. “We have examined the quality of water and it is up to the mark.

The residents have also shown their satisfaction over restoration of supply of water that was suspended for quite some time,” he said. He said “Water Management staff members are also cleaning the clarifier water tanks at water works to ensure clean drinking water to residents of Islamabad.” The official said “We have also completed rehabilitation work at Simly Dam that is one of the main sources of clean drinking water. The efforts are underway to address the issue of illegal connections because it is also interrupting smooth supply of water.”

Originally Appeared Here

Activists asking New York State to fund a public water extension to homes in Manorville held a press conference on Wednesday urging the state to allocate money for the project, after a grant request was not funded earlier this month.

More than 20 people gathered inside the Manorville Fire House, surrounded by cameras and members of the press, to urge Gov. Kathy Hochul and state representatives to fund connecting 64 homes on the Riverhead Town side of the hamlet served by contaminated private wells to public water. The project carries a price tag of roughly $9.5 million. Riverhead has received $3.5 million in federal funds for the project already, leaving a gap of around $6 million.

“For three years, this community has pleaded for the State of New York to help them access clean, safe drinking water,” said Adrienne Esposito, the executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, the organizer of the press conference.  “The community deserves this, the community needs this and the community should be able to obtain this, but it is still out of reach.”

Esposito cast the blame for losing the grant on the “ineffectiveness from politicians,” including State Senator Anthony Palumbo and Assembly Member Jodi Giglio, who Esposito said scarcely engaged with the community on the matter and did not work in Albany to get the grant requests funded.

“Water is not political. We are not playing games here,” said Old River Road resident Kelly McClinchy, a leader in organizing for public water in her neighborhood. “We turn on the faucet and we’re nervous every single day, we’re nervous about what’s coming out of that faucet. Somebody who might have had a clean well one day doesn’t have a clean well the next day because we know that the water is moving underground.” 

“We are at the point now where we can’t take anymore. We shouldn’t be asked to wait any longer. The state needs to step in and they need to do what’s right for this community,” McClinchy said.

Neither nor Palumbo nor Giglio, or government officials from Riverhead, were present at the press conference. In an interview today, Palumbo did not directly address comments putting him at blame for the grant being denied, but instead pointed at his record supporting funds for water infrastructure projects in the legislature, including the law that created the grant program and the recently passed $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act. 

He said the decisions made about which grant requests are funded are ultimately made by the governor’s office. 

“It’s the Hunger Games. We’re statewide, so people don’t get every single grant that they’re requesting, of course,” Palumbo said. “But there is no tolerance at all — and I have no tolerance, I don’t think anyone does — for any sort of contaminants in their water.”

Giglio did not return calls requesting comment.

Riverhead Town and the Suffolk County Water Authority reached an agreement in September for the Suffolk County Water Authority to provide public water to the area in Manorville, which is located in the southwest corner of the Town of Riverhead near the Brookhaven Town line. The area is closer to the nearest Suffolk County Water Authority main than it is to the nearest Riverhead Water District main, and the water authority is doing its own extension project in Manorville that was also partially funded by federal funds.

The homes in question are serviced by contaminated private water wells, including some contaminated by harmful chemicals like perfluorinated alkylated substances, also known as PFAS, thought to cause cancers and other adverse health effects. 

Residents and activists have blamed the former Grumman site in Calverton, now the Calverton Enterprise Park, as the source of the pollution, and have called for the U.S. Navy, which owned the site, to pay for the extensions. While activity on the Navy property included the use of chemicals responsible for some contamination in Manorville, evidence has yet to draw a conclusive connection between the site and the Manorville contamination, and the Navy has refused to fund the project, to the ire of residents and public officials. 

Ron Martz, a lifelong Manorville resident, said one of his family members who lived in the area had died from cancer. He said others in the area have also had cancer, a pattern that he said was hard to ignore.

“I want the clean water and I want it now. I mean, I don’t want to see any of my good friends and neighbors here that I have to go visit them in a hospital, or worse yet visit them in a nursing home or in a funeral parlor. That’s all I ask,” Martz said. “Let the state get off their ‘you know what’ and get this done now. We can’t wait any longer.”

There has been no study conducted analyzing instances of cancer in the area, Esposito said, but she believes the water contamination has caused a “cancer cluster” in Manorville.

The hope to get funding for the water extension project may rest on federal representatives. Last year, both the Town of Riverhead and the Suffolk County Water Authority received $3.5 million of Community Project Funding from the congressional budget.

This year, requests for more project funding have been made by Rep. Lee Zeldin to the House Appropriations Committee for the 2023 budget process. The congressman requested $6,468,800 for Riverhead Town to “extend clean drinking water” to homes served by private wells. In addition to Manorville, the Riverhead Water District is also pursuing public funds to help cover the cost of more than $16 million in other extension projects in the area.

The state grant program, called the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act, is a yearly grant program distributed through the Environmental Facilities Corporation. $279 million in awards were distributed this year, including to one project in Riverhead Town and four projects in the Suffolk County Water Authority’s service area.

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Originally Appeared Here

Valve issue at the city’s water plant to blame

By

[email protected]
|
on
November 23, 2022

Some Storm Lake residents may have noticed slight cloudiness in their tap water this week, but city officials say the problem has been fixed and there are no safety issues when it comes to consuming the water.

The city said in a news release that late Monday night, an automatic valve at the water treatment plant failed, causing more lime than normal to back up in the system overnight. That resulted in water that appeared slightly milky or cloudy at homes located closest to the water treatment plant.

The issue was corrected immediately Tuesday morning and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources was notified of the situation, the city said. Hydrants in the area were flushed until the water returned to normal.

Lime is used in the water softening and purification process and not harmful. If residents notice any remaining cloudiness in tap water, the city said running the cold water tap for a short time should eliminate the condition.

Originally Appeared Here

Thousands of social media users have shared a 1974 video of a car in France supposedly running on water, claiming this is a non-polluting hydrogen-based solution that was stopped by the petroleum industry. However, documents show the car in the video ran on a mixture of water and alcohol and engineers say it is not possible for a motor to be powered by water. Vehicles running on hydrogen do exist, but producing it as fuel generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

“A water-powered car in 1974 suppressed by Big Oil!” read captions placed over the black-and-white archive video, which shows an old Citroen driving past Rouen Cathedral in Normandy, northern France, and men pouring liquids into its fuel tank.

“This car can cruise at speeds of up to 70-odd miles (113 km) an hour — on water,” says the voice-over in English. “The energy factor of course is hydrogen, which as any schoolboy knows is contained in water in the ratio of two parts to one of oxygen — a formula described by (French novelist) Jules Verne more than 100 years ago. So what have we been waiting for?”

Screen shot taken on November 23, 2022 of a June 18, 2019 Facebook post on the ‘water powered car’

Along with filmed images of French mechanics presenting their invention in a garage, it goes on: “The engine can also power a generator, provide light and heat. What’s more, it’s pollution-free. The car’s already run for well over a thousand miles and the promoters say the scheme is practical and a commercial proposition — fuel on tap, in fact.”

The video has been shared more than 101,000 times on Facebook (here and here) and has also appeared on Twitter, YouTube and Bitchute. It has been shared thousands of times in French in posts that present the invention as a “hydrogen motor”.

However, the video wrongly describes the technology involved. Several experts consulted by AFP explained that water by itself cannot provide the energy needed to power a car’s motor.

Story continues

‘Water motor’ myth

A Google search reveals the original video in the archive of the US news agency Associated Press. In that archive, the story is titled, “At Rouen, a car which runs on a mixture of water and alcohol.” It contains a shotlist that indicates that alcohol is shown in the video being put into the car’s tank as well as water.

Screen shot from AP Archive taken on November 17, 2022

The car was also filmed in 1974 by the cinema news broadcaster Gaumont in a report that identifies the inventor: Rouen mechanic Jean Chambrin. The documentary group Gaumont Pathé Archives sent AFP documents that shed light on the invention, including a sheet dated October 1974 describing the report on the so-called “Chambrin water motor”.

“In a demonstration for visitors, Mr Chambrin uses a mixture of water and alcohol in the following manner. To start the motor and raise the temperature, it runs for three to four minutes on pure alcohol. Once the desired temperature and speed have been reached, Mr Chambrin cuts the alcohol and switches to his mixture,” the description reads.

Sheet detailing a report on Chambrin’s motor filmed in October 1974 by news broadcaster Gaumont ( GP Archives)

An article published online by the Lyon newspaper Le Progrès in August 2021 pictures Chambrin and his associate Jack Jojon in the workshop where it says they made the invention.

The idea that the Chambrin invention is a “water motor” or a “semi-hydrogen motor” is a “myth”, Louis-Pierre Geffray, a transport expert at France’s Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), told AFP on November 16, 2022. “It is nothing more than a petrol motor in which alcohol is combusted, and it works,” he said. “It is simply the equivalent of a petrol car that runs on E85 (an ethanol blend), such as we have in France.”

Screen shot from Le Progrès website taken on November 17, 2022 showing mechanics Jean Chambrin and Jack Jojon

“A water-powered motor is not physically possible,” Geffray added. “Water is not an alcohol, it is not flammable, so there is no energy to be obtained from it in liquid form.”

Gaëtan Monnier, a transport specialist from the French energy and transport research institute IFPEN, told AFP in an email on November 17, 2022: “There is no such thing as a motor using water as fuel — there is no energy stored in water, which is a molecule that is oxidised and stable.”

‘Water doping’

Television channel France 3 Normandie filmed a report on the Chambrin motor in August 1977. “Here is the famous ‘water motor’… in a manner of speaking, since for the time being it runs on half-water, half-alcohol,” the reporter says at the start of the report to Jean Chambrin.

“Some people don’t believe in it, but those people haven’t come to see it,” the mechanic replies. “We have been visited by physicists who believe it.”

The story “was quite an event at the time — an invention by a man from Normandy! Since the price of fuel was high in the 1970s, the stated aim of the Chambrin system was to consume less petrol when driving,” the journalist who authored that reportage, Richard L’Hôte, told AFP on November 18, 2022.

Screen shot of a 1977 France 3 report taken from the site of French archive INA on November 18, 2022

Announced during an energy crisis in the early 1970s that sparked high petrol prices and shortages, Chambrin’s invention led to theories that oil companies and governments had covered it up.

The article in Le Progrès said the French authorities at the time carried out a technical and economic evaluation that did not lead to the idea being adopted.

In his patent application, Chambrin claimed to have developed a “device and means of conditioning a mixture of water and fuel, and even pure water, causing a thermochemical reaction resulting in the production of hydrogen in a plasma state for use in a thermal motor or in a heating system.”

Screen shot of Jean Chambrin’s 1975 patent application, taken on November 17, 2022

Bertrand-Olivier Ducreux, a transportation engineer at the French public environmental policy agency ADEME, said systems that use fuel mixed with water are also known as “water doping” or “Pantone motors”.

“You see them come back into the limelight whenever there is an economic crisis, particularly when the price of fuel at the pump goes up, along with unclear claims about them being disruptive technology, hushed up by the petrol lobby,” he told AFP on November 17, 2022.

He said ADEME funded several studies on the practical applications of such systems. Researchers “measured the fuel consumption and power of the modified motors: in each case, the results for consumption, emissions and yield were found not to show any significant change” compared to motors that did not use the water systems, he said.

“It is perfectly possible to run a petrol motor by putting into it a mixture of water vapour and petrol vapour, but that presents no advantage in terms of yield or consumption,” said Ducreux. He added that claims in Chambrin’s patent were not “credible” in terms of physics.

Water use limited

“It is possible to break up a molecule of water by applying heat to separate the hydrogen and oxygen that it is made up of. But this procedure requires very high temperatures over 2,700 degrees Celsius. These are not the temperatures mentioned in the patent filing,” he said.

Even if the two elements were separated, he added, the patent does not state how they could be transferred in this unstable state to the motor.

“You can patent anything. A patent isn’t a proof that a system is valid,” he said. “A patent means that the idea belongs to the person who filed it, but it never endorses the claims that are made in it.”

Technology does exist today that allows water to be injected into some petrol engines, said Louis-Pierre Geffray. For example, BMW developed a system for injecting a small amount of water into petrol motors.

“Although it works very well technically and yields reductions of a few percent in terms of fuel consumption and nitrogen oxide emissions, this device has never got to the stage of being used in mass-produced vehicles. This is doubtless due to the costs compared to other technologies with better potential value: hybrid vehicles, electric cars, etc.,” he added.

“It is clear that adding water mixed with diesel fuel or petrol, beyond the few millilitres used by BMW, causes the motor to dysfunction in numerous ways,” Geffray said. He said this has been seen in service stations where condensation has occurred in the fuel tanks.

Hydrogen power: energy-intensive

Hydrogen is being explored as a possible source of low-carbon energy to help people switch away from the fossil fuels that are driving climate change. However, Chambrin’s invention was not a hydrogen motor and cannot be compared to today’s hydrogen fuel projects, said Ducreux.

Some carmakers have announced that they have started manufacturing vehicles running on hydrogen, such as Stellantis. Experts say that producing hydrogen causes heavy emissions of greenhouse gases, limiting its usefulness as a mass means of energy for the low-carbon transition.

“Ninety-five percent of hydrogen is currently produced from natural fossil gas, which emits carbon dioxide,” said Geffray. “The first challenge is to decarbonise hydrogen production, before it can be used as an energy vector for new purposes such as transport.”

Originally Appeared Here

DETROIT LAKES — Residents of Detroit Lakes, Perham, Frazee, Mahnomen and Long Prairie will save money on water infrastructure projects, thanks to low-interest loans and grants from the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority.

Detroit Lakes

will save over $119,000 on a $3.9 million project to rehabilitate sewer lines and replace aging water main along Willow, Holmes, and Frazee Streets.

Funding comes from a $1.9 million Clean Water Fund loan, which provided the 20-year loan at 2.6% – an estimated savings to Detroit Lakes of $57,821.

Detroit Lakes also received a $2 million Drinking Water Fund loan for 20 years at 2.6%, saving the city about $61,627.

Frazee

will save about $686,000 on a $1.4 million project to replace an aging sanitary sewer and water main along Highway 87 and Maple Avenue, in conjunction with a state highway reconstruction project.

Funding comes from a $622,142 Water Infrastructure Fund grant, a $573,624 Clean Water Fund loan – over 20 years at 2.12%, at an estimated savings Frazee of $50,819, and a $155,536 Drinking Water Fund loan at 2.12% – an estimated savings to Frazee of $13,673.

Perham

will save over $168,000 on its $3.62 million project to replace aging sanitary sewer lines and also install new water main, hydrants and gate valves.

The project is funded in part by a $1.8 million loan from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which provided a 20-year loan at 2.21% interest – an estimated savings to Perham of $53,810.

Perham also installed a new PVC watermain, 9 hydrants and 28 gate valves on First Avenue North, and Fourth and Fifth streets S.W.

This was funded by a $1.8 million loan from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which provided a 20-year loan at 2.21% – an estimated savings to Perham of $114,511.

The City of

Mahnomen

will save at least $1.9 million on a $5.7 million project to improve its sanitary sewer and drinking water distribution system.

Mahnomen’s project received two state special appropriations of $650,000 and $1.3 million in Public Facilities Authority funding, and the project received a $3 million loan from USDA Rural Development and $173,000 from the city.

Long Prairie

will save over $270,000 on an $8.6 million project to replace the aging sanitary sewer and water main along Todd County Highway 56.

Funding comes from a Clean Water Fund loan of $4.8 million, over 20 years at 2.29%, at an estimated savings to Long Prairie of $148,549.

Long Prairie also received a $3.8 million Drinking Water Fund, over 20 years at 2.6% – an estimated savings to Long Prairie of $122,162.

In all, the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority provided $191 million in grants and loans for water and infrastructure projects to 29 Minnesota communities this year.

Originally Appeared Here

LAKKI MARWAT      –         Deputy Commissioner Fazal Akbar inaugurated a water filtration plant in Serai Naurang Town of Lakki Marwat district on Tuesday. The filtration plant has been completed with the support of Helping Hand for Relief and Development Pakistan, a global humanitarian and relief organisation. Naurang Tehsil Council chairman Azizullah Khan, additional AC Gohar Ali, NC chairman Munawar Khan and officials of Tehsil Municipal Administration were also present. Speaking on the occasion, the DC said that the filtration plant would help provide the local residents with clean and pure drinking water. He said that use of clean water by citizens would also help to contain water borne diseases in the congested town of the district.

Originally Appeared Here

SPRINGVILLE — A new water line will deliver something that residents of a rural Pennsylvania community have gone without for the last 14 years — a clean, reliable supply of drinking water — after a public utility Tuesday released the first details of a plan to mitigate the damage that a gas driller is charged with causing.

The tiny crossroads in northeastern Pennsylvania, about 15 miles from the New York state line, drew national notoriety after residents were filmed lighting their tap water on fire in the Emmy Award-winning 2010 documentary “Gasland.”

Pennsylvania American Water said it plans to drill two wells — what it calls a “public groundwater system” — and build a treatment plant that will remove any contaminants from the water before piping it to about 20 homes in Dimock, Susquehanna County, site of one of the most notorious pollution cases ever to emerge from the U.S. drilling and fracking boom.

“Pennsylvania American Water is pleased it had the opportunity to partner with the Attorney General’s office to develop a safe drinking water solution for the residents of Dimock, who like all of us, deserve access to clean, safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water,” Dan Rickard, the utility’s engineering manager, said in a statement.

Dimock residents were briefed on the plan Monday night at a meeting with Pennsylvania American Water and high-level officials in the state attorney general’s office, which is pursuing criminal charges against the drilling company blamed for polluting Dimock’s aquifer.

Residents declined comment Monday night as they left the meeting at a high school near Dimock, saying they’d been instructed by a prosecutor not to talk.

“Our office remains laser focused on using our limited tools to restore clean drinking water for the residents of Dimock,” Jacklin Rhoads, a spokesperson in the attorney general’s office, said in a statement Tuesday. “Yesterday, our attorneys along with Pennsylvania American Water updated the impacted residents on the status of the case and the extensive independent research done with one goal — how best to provide clean water to their homes.”

Further details of the water line plan, including its cost and whether the driller, Coterra Energy Inc., will bear the financial burden as part of any settlement of the criminal case, were not publicly released Tuesday.

Residents of Dimock have used bottled water, bulk water purchased commercially, and even water drawn from creeks and artesian wells, saying they don’t trust the water coming from their wells.

The state attorney general’s office got involved in June 2020, filing criminal charges against the former Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. after a grand jury investigation found the company failed to fix its faulty gas wells, which leaked flammable methane into residential water supplies in Dimock and surrounding communities.

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Cabot, which recently merged with Denver-based Cimarex Energy Co. to form Coterra Energy Inc., has long maintained the gas in residents’ water was naturally occurring. It faces 15 criminal counts, most of them felonies, including illegal discharge of industrial wastes and unlawful conduct under the state’s Clean Streams Law.

The company — the most prolific driller in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas-producing state — said Tuesday that it is working to resolve the criminal charges.

“Coterra remains committed to achieving an amicable resolution with the Office of the Attorney General. We continue to work towards a resolution that is productive and beneficial to the community and landowners,” said George Stark, a company spokesperson.

Pennsylvania American, meanwhile, was involved in the state’s aborted 2010 effort to connect the residents of Dimock to a municipal water system about 6 miles away.

A dozen years ago, state environmental regulators secured nearly $12 million in financing for the project — and pledged to sue Cabot to recoup the money — but were forced to back down under legal threat from the company and local officials, who called it a boondoggle. Instead, Cabot agreed to pay residents $4.1 million and install individual water treatment systems.

But some residents say the systems never worked properly, forcing them to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking and get larger deliveries of water for showering, washing dishes and flushing toilets. Those same residents flatly rejected a proposal by the attorney general’s office last December that Cabot pay for the installation of new treatment systems.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro won the state’s gubernatorial election this month and will take office in January.

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