water water every where how much will you pay

AMESBURY, MA — Some families here may see as much as a $450 increase in their water bill over the course of next year as the town struggles to repay bonds it issued for construction of its new water treatment plant, The Daily News of Newburyport reported November 21.

The town recently proposed an immediate rate hike of about $72 annually for residents fitting the “typical” usage profile, the article said. Town officials also have said another increase between $172 and $230 annually for typical usage will be necessary within six months after the first increase. Residents who don’t fit the typical usage profile — such as a family of four — may see an initial rate increase of $216 instead of $72, Department of Public Works Director Rob Desmarais said in the story.

Construction on the treatment plant is scheduled to begin January 1. Desmarais said the first of the bond payments comes due in spring 2010, and the town must have money in reserve to make payments.

“What we don’t want to do is raise the rate 40 percent (immediately). Part of the advantage of raising the rate now is banking that money,” Desmarais is quoted in the story as saying.

To read the story, click here.

For related information, click here.

could it be

NORTH POLE, AK — Residents and business owners, grappling with how a chemical used to make fuel entered their city water supply and private well water, learned during a November 23 public meeting that the contamination stems from a sulfolane spill in the year 2000 at the Flint Hills Resources oil refinery, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported November 24.

The city of North Pole was forced to shut down one of its two drinking water wells after it found trace levels of the contaminant in its supply, as WaterTech Online® reported.

Residents who rely on now-contaminated private wells for drinking have made the switch to bottled water, as have some residents and businesses that receive publicly supplied water. Tracy Harmon, a restaurant manager whose family is on the public water system, said in the story that his family has switched to bottled water, despite the city’s assurance that its supply now is safe.

Sulfolane is not a regulated drinking water contaminant and “some uncertainty exists about the health risks posed by the chemical,” according to Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

According to the DEC’s Cindy Christian, the chemical bonds easily with water, which is how the spilled chemical leached into the water table near the refinery, contaminating supplies.

To read the story, click here.

YOU ALL THINK I'M CRAZY BUT !! water tect news

MILWAUKEE — Lawyers for several environmental groups have notified the US Environmental Protection Agency of their intent to sue the agency for failing to protect Wisconsin water from phosphorus and nitrogen pollution that can cause toxic algae blooms and threaten drinking water quality, according to the Journal Sentinel’s “Nature’s State” news blog.

The EPA said in 1999 that it would start to regulate the pollutants, which come from farm fields, manure, lawns and municipal wastewater treatment plants.

The state of Wisconsin has been tracking phosphorus loadings in state waters, and that is one reason why the law firms, the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center and Madison-based Midwest Environmental Advocates, selected Wisconsin.

Albert Ettinger of the Environmental Law & Policy Center told Journal Sentinel reporter Lee Bergquist, “The science is farther ahead in Wisconsin.”

According to the blog, the threat of a potential lawsuit could set the stage for new regulations of phosphorus and nitrogen.

To read the full blog, click here.

For related information, click here.

WATER WARS ARE STARTING HERE NOW IT'S ONLY TIME

ATLANTA — Metro Atlanta is poised to lose up to 280 million gallons of water a day — costing businesses up to $39 billion a year — if the city is cut off from its main water source, Lake Lanier, Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) reported November 23.

This news was delivered to Georgia’s water task force during a November 23 meeting at Gov. Sonny Perdue’s mansion. The group, which met for the second time, is working to develop an alternative plan to using the lake.

Georgia has been embroiled in a decades-long water-rights fight with the neighboring states of Alabama and Florida. In July Georgia was told by a federal judge that metro Atlanta and the rest of the state had three years to find a new source of drinking water or to gain congressional approval after the fact for use of the lake as a drinking water supply. The judge said use of the lake should be returned to the original uses for which it was created: controlling floods, allowing downstream navigation and generating power, as WaterTech Online® reported.

If Lake Lanier's use for drinking water discontinued, GPB reported, the hardest-hit Georgia counties would be Gwinnett, Forsyth and Hall.

Georgia’s water task force also discussed conservation measures such as graywater recycling, and finding additional source water via groundwater or seawater desalination.

Georgia is continuing its appeal of the federal judge’s decision about the use of Lake Lanier for drinking water. The state has hired Seth Waxman, a former US solicitor general, to lead its appeal, GPB reported November 21. The state will pay Waxman $855 an hour.

To read the full GPB November 23 report, click here.

For related information, click here.

CORK, IRELAND — More than 50,000 residents here, who have been struggling with flood conditions and without running water since November 20, may not have their tap water restored for another full week, local and international news agencies recently have reported.

Cork, along with other cities in southwest and midwest Ireland and the Lake District in England, have been inundated with heavy rains that have caused historic flood conditions. In Cork, the Republic of Ireland’s second city, officials have referred to the flooding as the worst the country has experienced in nearly a millennium. Ireland Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who this week was touring the hardest hit parts of the country, is quoted in a November 23 BBC News article as saying: “We are talking about events which have been described as once-in-800-years.”

Local media initially reported that the Cork water treatment plant was shut down as a precautionary measure to protect pumps and the water system, as WaterTech Online® reported. Later it was determined that the plant had been flooded and that vital equipment was under 7 meters (about 23 feet) of flood water.

City manager Joe Gavin said in a November 21 IrelandOn-Line report: It is “a very serious crisis.”

Local businesses, including restaurants and other food businesses, also have been impacted by the flood conditions, and those that have been able to reopen are doing so under national health department rules. The rules require that food businesses wishing to operate during the water treatment plant’s shutdown have a reliable potable water supply from either bottled water or by boiling water supplied by the municipality in tankers, IrelandOn-Line reported November 24.

Police and armed forces have been delivering water to locations throughout the city and directly to the sick and elderly. Local officials are preaching conservation.

The city of Cork also is struggling with maintaining sanitation, and the Cork City Council on November 23 warned of a sanitation crisis with 18,000 homes unable to flush toilets or operate hygiene facilities, according to a November 24 Independent report.

In England’s Lake District, the flooding claimed the lives of at least three, and searches for missing individuals continued. According to a November 23 story in The New York Times, among those dead are an environmental contractor, a canoeist and a police constable.

Officials there are estimating months of cleanup, and England’s Environmental Secretary Hilary Benn said that the “relentless rains” were expected to continue.

For related information, click here or here.

[More Environment]

this will be the next BIG WAR or levrage water tect news11-25-09

MOSCOW — Russia has said that within the next decade it could begin the export of drinking water to needy countries, according to a November 24 report by news agency Press Trust of India.

Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the State Duma (lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the parliament of the Russian Federation), said during Pure Water 2009, a November 25 international water forum here, “Our country has enough potential for this, and our many neighbors have need for water.”

Gryzlov said during the event, slated to run through November 25 at Moscow’s International Trade Centre, that global shortages have put water in the category of other key resources like oil and natural gas. “I presume that after five years, maximum 10 years, the export of water could become a reality for Russia,” he is quoted as saying.

The news agency also reported that Gryzlov said as part of the diversification of its national economy, Russia also could provide cutting-edge technology for water conservation and purification to its needy neighbors, primarily Kazakhstan and other Central Asian republics.

To read the report, click here.

For related information, click here.

[More Market Updates]

pay to get votes

So now bribery is called horse trading .
So the next time your in court or pulled over by a cop do some horse trading
evidently it's legal the senate can do as well as the congress it's called HORSE TRADING

11-24 -09 water tect when will it end no one /city spends the money where it needs to for maintance

NEW YORK — In the last three years, nearly 40 percent of the nation’s sewage systems — including those in major cities like New York — have reported violating federal clean water laws by releasing untreated or partially treated human and industrial waste into waterways, according to the latest of New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg’s series of articles on the state of America’s waters and regulators’ responses.

In his report, “As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways,” Duhigg examines data that reveals how outdated combined sewer/stormwater treatment systems fail, especially during heavy rainstorms, creating overflow discharges into the environment as well as violations of the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Duhigg reports: “Fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows. It is not clear whether the sewage systems that have not reported such dumping are doing any better, because data on overflows and spillage are often incomplete.”

The report also examines how untreated sewage ends up in drinking water sources, and how academic research suggests that as many as 20 million people each year become ill from drinking water containing bacteria and other pathogens that are often spread by untreated waste.

Duhigg quotes the US Environmental Protection Agency, which said in a statement that officials agreed that overflows posed a “significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for EPA enforcement since the mid-1990s.”

In October, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, said the agency was stepping up its efforts on Clean Water Act enforcement, as WaterTech Online® reported.

“The public has no clue how important these sewage plants are,” said Bob Connaughton, a plant engineer at the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The Owls Head plant is overwhelmed during half of all rainfalls occurring in the city, the report said. Connaughton added, “Waterborne disease was the scourge of mankind for centuries. These plants stopped that. We’re doing everything we can to clean as much sewage as possible, but sometimes, that isn’t enough.”

To read the full report, click here.

For related information, click here.

[More Regulatory Matters]

News Items

When someone develops an infection at a hospital or other patient care facility that they did not have prior to treatment, this is referred to as a healthcare-associated (sometimes hospital-acquired) infection (HAI).

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a global crisis affecting both patients and healthcare workers.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at any point in time, 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections acquired in hospitals.

A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report published in March-April 2007 estimated the number of U.S. deaths from healthcare associated infections in 2002 at 98,987.

The risk of acquiring healthcare-associated infections in developing countries is 2-20 times higher than in developed countries.

Afflicting thousands of patients every year, HAI often leads to lengthening hospitalization, increasing the likelihood of readmission, and adding sizably to the cost of care per patient.

Financially, HAIs represent an estimated annual impact of $6.7 billion to healthcare facilities, but the human cost is even higher.

Until recently, a lack of HAI reporting requirements for healthcare facilities has contributed to less-than-optimal emphasis being placed on eliminating the sources of healthcare associated infections. However, growing public anxiety regarding the issue and resulting legislation on state and local levels demanding accountability is serving to accelerate initiatives to combat HAIs.

To learn more about the impact of healthcare-associated infections for both medical professionals and patients, please visit www.haiwatch.com.

11-23-09 water tect news

Colo. tightens stance on chlorination	<<>
Friday, November 20, 2009
DENVER — The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has revoked chlorination waivers from as many as 72 public drinking water systems in the state as part of its response to an unprecedented Salmonella poisoning event in Alamosa last year, The Denver Post reported November 19. In March 2008, there were 442 reported cases of sickness and one death associated with the outbreak in Alamosa, a community of 8,900. State health experts released a report on November 18 confirming their suspicion that a decrepit infrastructure allowed the bacteria into the Alamosa supply. They also said that up to 1,300 people may have been ill from the bacteria, the Post article said. Symptoms of the infection typically include vomiting and diarrhea. The state’s report said that if the city had used chlorine to disinfect its supply, the bacteria might not have grown. The Post reports: “That finding has now prompted the state to redouble its efforts to require chlorine treatment in most places where the public shares a water supply.” The report also cited other Alamosa water system defects, including poor maintenance, incorrect bacteria testing and inadequate supervision by a chronically short-staffed state drinking water program. To read the full article, click here. For related information, click here.

11-10-09

So the congress passed health care
will the senate do the same in a month or so
what is wrong with this country do not want to work for any thing ,Do we expect every thing with
a out lay . Did our fathers not teach us to respect or to work . Will we just give up and let country be taken by the progressives and die or fight back and pull are boot strap up and take it back
GO Mike Pence

11-10-09

Rainwater safe to drink: study	<<>
Thursday, November 05, 2009
ADELAIDE, Australia — A study investigating the health effects of rainwater consumption has concluded that untreated rainwater is safe to drink, Monash University reported in a November 4 news release. The research was led by Karin Leder, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, in conjunction with Water Quality Research Australia (previously the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Quality and Treatment). Three hundred households in Adelaide participated in the one-year study. All the volunteers in the study were given a filter to treat their rainwater; however, only half the devices were real while the rest were “sham” devices that looked real but did not contain filters. Participating households did not know whether they had a real filter. Families recorded their health over the 12-month period, after which time the health outcomes of the two groups were compared. “The results showed that rates of gastroenteritis between both groups were very similar. People who drank untreated rainwater displayed no measurable increase in illness compared with those who consumed the filtered rainwater,” Leder said in the release. Leder said the study confirms the low risk of illness associated with drinking rainwater, but noted that the results may not be applicable in all situations. Other experts in rainwater catchment say, for example, that rainwater collected off roofs can be assumed to be contaminated by bird droppings, insects and other debris, and they recommend that roof-harvested rainwater intended for drinking receive some kind of disinfection treatment. “Expanded use of rainwater for many household purposes can be considered and in current times of drought, we want to encourage people to use rainwater as a resource,” she said. The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and Water Quality Research Australia. It is scheduled to be presented at the American Public Health Association 137th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on November 11. To read the full release, click here. For related information, click here.
[More Technology]