Fields of nightmares in Weston (l)?
CT DEP and Health Department monitoring wells here just in case.  NEXT:  How about Stamford?  Link to terrific NYTimes graphic.

H2O PAGE CONTENTS HERE.




U.S.G.S. link;  Click here for Saugatuck Reservoir news - NOTE: view left, 2nd row is not of Weston--it is Barkhamstead Reservoir early in Spring 2002...Eastern CT regional plans for a major link in a water project was completed when a pipeline snaked beneath the Thames River between Montville and Gales Ferry in April 2006.  Map on second row shows sewer and water service in SWR.  Guess which is blue and which is brown.  "Rural Salem" page;  "Eightmile" page.  Hartford Landfill pix and graphic story of how it grew.  NYTIMES editorializes about PCB's and the  Hudson River.  Darien's shoreline inspired one of "About Town's" favorite artists!


C O N T E N T S   O F   T H I S    P A G E . . .
THE WATER CYCLE:  So what are we talking about, in language that we all can understand?






Putnam Lake in Greenwich

Not just in Southwestern CT!
Parched English fields reveal ancient sites

YAHOO
31 August 2010

LONDON (Reuters) – The exceptionally dry early summer months in Britain have revealed the ghostly outlines of several hundred previously unknown ancient sites buried in fields across the English countryside.

From Roman forts to Neolithic settlements and military remains dating to World War Two, English Heritage has been busily photographing the exciting discoveries from the air.  Known as crop marks, the faint outlines of unseen buried structures emerged because of the length of the dry spell, leading the national conservator to label 2010 a vintage year for archaeology.  The outlines show up when crops grow at different rates over buried structures. Shallower soils tend to produce a stunted crop and are more prone to parching, bringing to light the new features.

"It's hard to remember a better year," said Dave MacLeod, a senior investigator with English Heritage.

"Crop marks are always at their best in dry weather, but the last few summers have been a disappointment," he said.

"This year we have taken full advantage of the conditions. We try to concentrate on areas that in an average year don't produce much archaeology."

One of this year's most important finds is a Roman camp in Dorset, southwest England. Experts say it is a relatively rare structure in that part of the country with only three others known of in the region.  The lightly built defensive enclosure, which emerged from parched barley fields, provided basic protection for Roman soldiers on maneuvers in the first century AD.  In the Holderness area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, an area rich in agricultural land on the east coast, 60 new, mainly prehistoric sites, were found in just one day.

Archaeologists say at least 200 new historic sites have been discovered with detail on many more existing structures revealed for the first time.  At another Roman site for example, a fort at Newton Kyme in North Yorkshire, the crop marks showed stronger defensive walls built of stone three meters thick, together with a massive enclosing ditch.

English Heritage says some important structures have not been seen in their entirety since the scorching conditions of the 1976 drought.


Dry spell prompts Rell to urge water conservation
CT POST
John Burgeson, Staff Writer
Published: 11:19 p.m., Thursday, August 19, 2010


BRIDGEPORT -- There's no need to trade in your car for a camel just yet, but state and national officials are taking note of the lack of rain and are urging people to save water.

On Thursday, Gov. M. Jodi Rell issued a statement urging residents to conserve water "due to the lack of a soaking rain and a dry spell in the near-term forecast."

The statement from the governor's office was made after Rell met with her Interagency Drought Advisory Workgroup, a panel of experts that determined it was time to issue a "drought advisory stage" in the state. This means people are being asked to "avoid unnecessary water usage such as watering lawns, washing cars at home or running ornamental fountains."

This summer, June and July have had close to normal rainfall amounts. But someone turned off the rain spigot about Aug. 1.

"Since Aug. 1, we've had only about 20 percent of the normal rainfall," said meteorologist Paul Walker of AccuWeather. "But this is a short-term thing -- even if you go back to July 1, we've had 90 percent of the normal rainfall in Bridgeport."

Meanwhile, the National Drought Mitigation Center, the federal agency that monitors rainfall, or the lack of it, has placed the state at a "moderate" drought level, meaning that rivers and streams are exceptionally low, farmers with livestock have to purchase hay because grass isn't growing very much, and the forest fire danger is on the upswing.

"We do have moderate drought in the area now," said NDMC climatologist Brian Fuchs, who added that the dry conditions are seen in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, too. "What we really focus on is the lack of rainfall, and most of the rivers and streams are running significantly lower than they should be for this time of year," he said. "Soil moisture is dropping as well."

He said impacts so far are few, in that there are no mandatory water restrictions yet. "But as we progress more with the drought, we're going to see more of these issues become a concern," he said.

There are five levels of drought: abnormally dry, moderate, severe, extreme and exceptional. A different gauge of dryness, the Palmer Drought Severity Index, also places Connecticut in a "moderate" level of drought. And the national Crop Moisture Index has most of the state with "excessively dry" croplands.

River and stream data from the U.S. Geological Survey has nearly all of the flow levels in the state as running well below what's normal.

For example, as of Thursday, the Rooster River in Fairfield is discharging at a rate that's about 8 percent of average. Other discharge rates, as reported by the USGS, are 30 percent for the Farmington River, 24 percent for the Housatonic River, 13 percent for the Norwalk River, 7 percent for the Naugatuck River and 34 percent for the Connecticut River.

Still, the situation isn't quite as dire as these figures make it seem, according to Bill Jacquemin, director of the Connecticut Weather Center, who notes that while it's been dry for the last few weeks, the rainfall since Jan. 1, 2010, has been about 2 to 3 inches ahead of normal. "We've had many, many worse years, and no one has gotten excited," he said. "The numbers really don't support a drought -- we're not even in a deficit. Even in the early 1990s, we've had situations where wells were running dry -- we're not even close to that."

The Aquarion Water Co., which serves most of lower Fairfield County, had asked for voluntary cutbacks in July, although company officials said that was done because too many homeowners are watering their lawns and that was straining the distribution system. Those voluntary cutbacks have since been rescinded.

The company's reservoirs remain in "terrific" shape, company officials say.

"While we always urge conservation, people can feel free to use all the water they want," said company spokesman Bruce Silverstone. "Our reservoirs are a little down from normal this time of year, but we are in fine, fine shape."

One of the worst dry spells in recent history was in 1965-66, when mandatory water restrictions were put in place in many towns and cities in Connecticut. In 1965, the weather station at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks recorded only .42 inch of rain in June, .44 in July and .35 in August, or about a 3-inch deficit for each of those three months. That drought didn't ease until 1967.

Silverson said the 1965-66 drought today is seen by the company as a "baseline" for how dry it can get.


Rell calls for water conservation
New London DAY
Associated Press
Article published Aug 19, 2010

Hartford  (AP) — Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell is asking residents and businesses to limit their use water as groundwater and stream levels continue to decrease during the prolonged hot and dry weather.

Rell says the state's not in an emergency situation, but there's not much rain expected in the next two weeks and conditions are likely to deteriorate across the state.
Rell also says the fire danger in the state remains high.

The governor's drought advisory workgroup says a high number of days with temperatures over 90 degrees have boosted evaporation rates and reduced groundwater and stream levels to the lower end of their normal ranges.

The National Weather Service says the Hartford area has received nearly 25 inches of precipitation this year, about 4 inches below normal.




Weston: As temperatures rise, water levels fall
Weston FORUM
Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 11:49

With hot weather now the norm for the summer, officials are urging residents to be aware of both their electric and water consumption. The state is also monitoring potential drought conditions as rainfall amounts remain far below average for this time of year.

Last week, temperatures reached record highs as they stretched into the double-digits for several days in a row, making the 90s and 80s that followed feel cool by comparison.

Air conditioning and electric fans are the most popular way to beat the heat these days. Across the state, peak demand for electricity happens most often between noon and 8 p.m. on weekdays, usually when it’s hot and humid. According to CT Energy Info, most of this is due to air conditioning use.

Last week, peak electricity usage across the state almost reached the 2006 record of 7,367 megawatts when residents used 7,000 megawatts on Tuesday, July 6, according to Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P).

There are other things that drive up electricity use during peak periods, namely pool pumps, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, and even computers.
Water

The other thing that gets used a lot during hot weather is water.

The same day that CL&P reported the highest peak electricity usage (July 6) Aquarion Water Company reported the highest customer demand for water in more than 150 years — the company delivered 145 million gallons to its customers in lower Fairfield County. Demands for water have been running between 30% and 50% above normal.

Compounding the problem of high demand is low supply. According to Gary Lessor of the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury, the average rainfall for the first 12 days of July is 1.22 inches. This year, only 0.08 inch had fallen in that time period.

Year-to-date, the region is not too far off from the average of 24.22 inches — thus far, we have had 22.16 inches. However, this March alone saw nearly five inches more than normal.

But the last three and a half months saw about eight inches less rain than average, Mr. Lessor said. April, May and June each normally have more than four inches of rainfall; this year, there was 1.49 inches in April, 1.41 inches in May, and 2.46 inches in June.

Mr. Lessor said the area is not in a drought situation, but at the beginning of a drought “if the precipitation pattern doesn’t change. Over the next two weeks, it appears we are not in a favorable pattern to change and above normal temperatures will continue,” he said.

However, the lack of rain in recent months has affected reservoir levels and the underground water table.
Water emergencies

As reservoir levels dropped, Aquarion issued temporary water emergencies in Ridgefield, Darien, New Canaan, Greenwich, and Stamford. It also asked customers to voluntarily restrict their water use through the end of this week.

Compounding problems for Aquarion, a water main in Westport broke on Monday, affecting service in several area towns. As a result, the water company asked all first selectmen and mayors in Aquarion’s coverage area — including Weston — to cease all public watering for the day.

Aquarion, whose Saugatuck Reservoir is in Weston, serves relatively few customers in town (only 93 residential customers, plus 69 fire protection connections — sprinklers — mostly in town and school buildings); most Westonites have private wells. But, officials say it’s still important for Westonites to pay close attention to water usage.

“I think even those on wells need to be careful with our water usage, given the near drought conditions,” said Weston First Selectman Gayle Weinstein. She urged Westonites to follow the same voluntary water restrictions Aquarion is recommending.

These include:

    * Watering lawns and plantings on alternate days, and between the hours of 5 and 9 a.m. or 7 and 9 p.m.
    * Defer washing boats, cars, and other motor vehicles at home.
    * Turn off any ornamental fountains.
    * Put off power-washing homes, decks or other areas.
    * Cover pools when not in use to prevent evaporation.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell offered similar caution, especially while the state’s fire danger remains high.

“We are not in an emergency situation, but it is important for people to take sensible steps now to stretch our water supply,” Ms. Rell said.

Scattered storms help slightly, but until there is a sustained, soaking rain, the water table is in danger of dropping considerably, Ms. Rell warned.

“These water conservation measures should also be heeded by people with private wells as well — no water supply is inexhaustible,” the governor added. “At the same time, the dry weather increases the risk of brush, grass and forest fires. Careless smoking, improper burning and other fire risks must be eliminated.”

Drought panel

On Monday, July 12, the Interagency Drought Work Group met in Hartford. The group includes representatives from the state agriculture, environmental protection, and public health departments, as well as the Office of Policy and management, the Office of Emergency Management, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The panel was established in 2003 to create a plan to respond to water emergencies of varying severity.

“Every day we go without a good, soaking rain the situation will be aggravated,” the governor said after the drought group met. “The spotty weekend showers were not nearly enough to really refill the water table and the forecast for this week remains uncertain,” she said.

“While there is no emergency, it is still important to residents to avoid non-essential uses of water like watering lawns or washing cars at home until the water levels are back to normal,” Ms. Rell said. “State agencies will continue to monitor the situation.”

The drought work group said higher demand for water during nighttime hours suggests the increased usage is related to lawn watering.

The group is recommending that those with automatic watering systems consider having their systems reprogrammed to reduce the flow and/or frequency of watering.



Ohio lake's algae dangerous to swimmers, economy
YAHOO
By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 2, 5:09 pm ET

ST. MARYS, Ohio – Patches of green and turquoise slime floated like thick paint in the channel behind Kyle Biesel's home. His pontoon boat sat covered up, unused for weeks, on a wooden lift stained by the algae.

A foul smell enveloped the backyard where he used to fish and watch blue herons glide over the water. He called it a "sickening combination of manure and propane gas."

Even more alarming, tests reveal that the waters in Ohio's largest inland lake contain dangerous toxins with the potential to cause rashes, vomiting or even liver and nerve damage. State officials say it's no longer safe for swimming and skiing.

It's causing economic and environmental distress for hundreds of people who work along Grand Lake St. Marys in western Ohio, an area already hurt by manufacturing cuts that have contributed to Ohio's highest unemployment rates in a quarter century. Tourism brings an estimated $216 million into the area with much of that coming from visitors to the lake.

"People are scared to death," said Chuck Black, who manages Windy Point Marina. "You can look out on this lake and count the boats on one hand."

Boat repairs are the only thing keeping Black in business because gasoline sales are down by more than half and could cost him well over $50,000 this year. He now wears waterproof boots when he's fixing boats after getting a rash when water dripped on his feet.

This is the second straight summer of water warnings along what locals call "Ohio's other Great Lake." The water problems led to a drop in visitors last year to 687,000, down from about 737,000 a year earlier.

It's likely to be even worse this summer.

Boaters and tourists have canceled trips, leaving cottages and camp sites empty during what normally would be a bustling Independence Day weekend. Marinas and restaurants are cutting workers, and a few have shut down for good.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland asked the heads of the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and agriculture department on Friday for financial and environmental assistance in dealing with the lake's water.

"We have reached a tipping point where the degraded nature of the lake is causing a significant loss to local businesses and the total livelihood of the region," the governor said in his letter.

Grand Lake St. Marys is one of the state's most lakes polluted because of the fertilizer and manure that runs off from nearby farms and into creeks and streams flowing into the lake, feeding the algae that produces toxins.

This year state environmental regulators have found a different species of algae that can produce up to seven different toxins. Water tests have shown there are low levels of two toxins that can affect the liver and nervous systems.

While this type of blue-green algae has been found elsewhere in lakes and rivers, less is known about the toxins they produce.

There are no guidelines from the federal government or the World Health Organization on how much exposure is dangerous so state regulators decided to warn people not to touch the water.

"We just don't know what's safe," said Dina Pierce, spokeswoman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Closing public beaches or banning swimming hasn't been done because of the lack of guidelines, said Mike Helton, a spokesman for Ohio's natural resources department. "We're letting people use their own use discretion," he said.

Boating still is allowed, and the state says it's safe to eat the fish.

So far, there are no reports of anyone getting sick from the water.

Those at the greatest risk are swimmers who accidentally gulp the water and people on Jet Skis and boats who are splashed repeatedly. The spray sends particles of the bacteria into the air where it can be easily inhaled or ingested, said Linda Merchant-Masonbrink, who oversees the state EPA's monitoring of inland lakes.

There's also the potential for catastrophic fish kills with large algae blooms that rob the water of oxygen.

About 300 dead fish washed up in the algae-filled channel behind Biesel's home a week ago. "I worry about the wildlife," he said. "I watched the ducks out there, and they could hardly push through it."

How much algae covers the water varies each day depending on the weather and winds. Earlier this week, parts of the lake showed no signs of the smell or algae, but it was apparent in some areas.

For generations, the 9-mile long lake has been lined with fishing shacks and vacation cottages, but in recent years more expensive homes have been built by retirees who have relocated near the water.

Many worry that the algae outbreak will bring down their property values, and some real estate agents say potential buyers have backed out of deals.

Some residents say they've been warning politicians about the increasing pollution flowing into the lake for at least a decade. State officials say they've been meeting with farmers, asking them to cut down on the manure that makes it way to the lake.

But residents aren't satisfied. They say stricter regulations are needed on large farms, limiting when they can apply manure to their fields and how close they can plant to streams.

"It's getting to the point where somebody needs to step on somebody's toes," said Dave Meyer, a member of the Lake Improvement Association.

No matter what happens, it may take a long time to get rid of the algae and the stigma surrounding the lake.

Jason and Delarie Adams, of Chicago, spent three days at a cabin along the lake this week, not knowing about the water warnings until they arrived.

They stayed clear of the lake and kept their 1-year-old daughter's sand toys packed away. "We saw the bubbles on the water," said Delarie Adams. "It looked like dishwashing detergent."

"I don't think we'd come back," her husband said. "I mean we can't even get in the water."



Clay In West Hartford's Soil Spells Drainage Woes
Hartford Courant
By BILL LEUKHARDT
11:44 PM EDT, May 9, 2010

WEST HARTFORD —

During spring rains, the grassy fields of St. Joseph College become more wading pool than lawn.

And, like clockwork, in low-lying neighborhoods off North Main Street, hoses sprout post-rainstorm from flooded basements to pump out water.

Blame the annual problems of poor drainage on clay — a geologic calling card left 14,000 years ago by the last glacier to scour Connecticut and the northern half of the continental United States. A band of dense clay snakes through subsoils in the eastern part of town. It is 100 feet thick in a few spots, less than 6 inches in others. But, thick or thin, it prevents water from quickly draining.

"We have ponding each spring," said Vince Draper, grounds manager at St. Joseph for the past 11 years. "A few years ago, we couldn't mow some sections until June because it was so wet. I call this a floating campus."

Localized flooding is a problem on those days when the heavens open up. And the flooding is tough to avoid in clay-rich neighborhoods.

"You can dig a dry well to help, but it only does so much, because water can't dissipate in the clay," said Eddie Salvatore of Brothers Landscaping on Albany Avenue. The clay, studied by geologists for clues about New England's past, can shift when wet, just enough to wear out pavement prematurely.

'It's Like Iron'

"Your streets can move. Your pipes can move," Town Manager Ronald Van Winkle said of the elastic clay underlying half his hometown.

Road contractors here often put down a protective fabric before paving to prevent movement and keep asphalt from cracking. That fabric, commonly used in Louisiana and other low-lying, wet states, is being installed this month on Edgemere Avenue, off South Quaker Lane, before a contractor repaves it, highway supervisor Brian LaVoie said.

"You don't want to pave over mud," LaVoie said. "If clay is not wet, it's like iron. When it's wet, it is loose. You have a squishy road base and you'll soon get wheel ruts."

Mike Mancini, manager of engineering with the Metropolitan District Commission, the capital district's regional water and sewer authority, said the ability of clay to move sometimes results in sections of newly laid pipe getting pushed upward overnight before the trench is filled and paved.

When the MDC began cutting a tunnel through bedrock under Hartford last year for new sewer lines, Mancini said, the district was cautioned to keep the multi-ton boring machine moving so "it wouldn't sink into the clay" before reaching the rock layer.

To geologists such as Janet R. Stone of the U.S. Geological Survey office in East Hartford, the clay and how it got here during the last Ice Age are fascinating.

It's found mostly on the west side of the Connecticut River, from Rocky Hill north into Vermont. It was deposited 12,000 to 17,000 years ago when glacial Lake Hitchcock ran 200 miles, occupying that same swath from Rocky Hill to northern Vermont, Stone said. Layers of the clay sediment can be extracted in cores.

They can be read like tree rings and hint at annual weather patterns from a time when no human lived in the state, and most of what's now known as New England and the continental United States were under a 2-mile-thick ice sheet, she said.

The immense weight and pressure of the ice cap pushed the earth down almost 1,000 feet and slowly pulverized everything in its path. In places such as Berlin, where redstone and other sedimentary rocks got ground up, the clay is red. In areas without sandstone, like West Hartford, the clay is gray, Stone said.

Starting in Colonial times, the clay was used by dozens of brickyards established from Berlin to Windsor.

In West Hartford's Elmwood section, the Goodwin Bros. Brickyard once was the town's largest employer. It burned in 1908 and closed down.

At one time, Old Windsor had 40 brickyards. East Windsor had a dozen brickyards, eight of them along the Scantic River. Bricks were hauled by barge downriver to Hartford for sale.

Now the state has one last operating brickyard — KF on Fitch Boulevard, South Windsor. It began 100 years ago and is one of four American brickyards owned by Redland Brick of Maryland.

"The large glacial lake system is why we have so much clay because sediment settled out for several thousand years. In some places, it's more than 100 feet thick," said Julie Brigham-Grette, a geoscience professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies Lake Hitchcock's history, geology and effects. "If people don't understand what they're building on, they'll get wet basements."

Her house is built on sand.

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant







'Water, water, every where . . . '  Extremely wet weather has basements flooding across the region like never before
By Judy Benson, Day Staff Writer
Article published Mar 25, 2010

Like a sponge that can't absorb one more drop, the ground is so saturated from this month's heavy rains that water is finding its way into basements around the region that had stayed dry for decades.

"I haven't had water in my basement for years," Al Chapman, senior engineer for the City of Groton and also a resident, said Wednesday of the 2 inches of water in his cellar.

Since the beginning of March, 7.4 inches of rain has been measured at the gauge maintained by Groton Utilities, and more is forecast to fall today and Friday. That compares to an average rainfall for the entire month of 4.6 inches.

Dennis Schain, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the Connecticut River is still rising due to snowmelt in the north, and the DEP is monitoring it as well as dams and flood-control equipment around the state.

"The ground is already so saturated it won't be able to absorb much more water," Schain said.

Basement flooding occurred around the region after the heavy downpours two weeks ago, and some cellars had just been dry a few days when about three more inches of rain came Monday and Tuesday and flooded them again.

"With the water table so high, we've had a lot of basement flooding," said Gene Arters, emergency management director in Norwich. "Some were people who had never had a flood in 30 years."

Fire departments around the region stayed busy after the March 13-14 deluge, pumping out basements for homeowners who also lost power and couldn't run sump pumps.
After this week's rain, fire crews responded to more calls. Groton City Fire Chief Nicholas DeLia said most people were able to get rid of the water themselves, this time with shop vacuums, mops and pumps, but fire crews did help a few whose furnaces were at risk from the flooding.

Center Groton Deputy Chief Derek Fauntleroy said his department responded to a half-dozen requests for pump-outs Tuesday and Wednesday. The Old Mystic Fire Department also helped about a half-dozen residents on Sandy Hollow Road and Pequot Avenue, some of whom hadn't had their basements flood previously, said Chris Clarkin, captain of the department.

The Mystic Department found itself going back this week to some of the same homes it had been to two weeks ago, Chief Fritz Hilbert said.

In New London, the basement of a home on Dart Street flooded this week with about 2 feet of water, which city firefighters were able to pump out in about an hour, Fire Department Battallion Chief Tom Curcio said.



A Connecticut Fund For the Environment e-mail received Nov. 17, 2009:

Long Island Sound License Plate Fund

Did you hear the good news? Thanks to concerned citizens like you and a timely letter from Attorney General Blumenthal, the state legislature and governor reinstated the Long Island Sound License Plate Fund and returned over $600,000 that had been stripped from it since June. This is a major victory for the Sound-the fund will now be able to continue to spark projects like coastal trails, public education, and town docks. We thank you for your support.



Yemen's capital running out of water
Heather Murdock, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Sunday, November 15, 2009

SAN'A, Yemen | Five years ago, Hussein Saleh al-Ayni's well was full.

He grew onions, garlic and other vegetables in his garden and sold them for $30 a day.

Now, a slight breeze blows beige dust where crops once grew. An old tire and a yellow bottle of cooking oil poke out of the mud at the bottom of the well. Mr. al-Ayni drives a motorcycle taxi and supports his wife and two children on about $5 a day.

"I just make enough for daily food," he said.

Water shortages can be felt in every corner of Yemen's capital. Gardens are dry, and water trucks crisscross the city to deliver to households that can afford it. Those who cannot send women and children to line up at mosque spigots.

With well levels dropping as much as 65 feet a year, many Yemenis and outside specialists predict that San'a will become the first capital city to run out of groundwater. The shortages pose a special challenge in an impoverished nation that is already fighting two insurgencies and al Qaeda.

"The problem is not in the future," said Saleh Aziz, a Yemeni farmer who heads the Hamdan Water Association. "We are suffering now."

Ten years ago, there was 20 percent more rainfall in San'a - 9.84 inches per year compared to 7.87 inches now, according to a water resource specialist at San'a University, Abdullah Al-Numan.

Other parts of Yemen receive less than a third of the water they received a decade ago, dropping from 11.81 inches a year on average to 3.93 inches, he said.

When rain does come, the timing is unpredictable and the concentration so heavy that the water's value is lost, he said. In some areas, the entire yearly rainfall can now happen in a matter of days. Last year 58 people were killed and 20,000 people fled their homes in October floods.

The drought extends into East Africa and is the worst in the region since 2000, according to the Economist magazine. Yemen is among about 50 countries, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, that are facing water shortages owing largely to population increase and climate change. One in six people on the planet do not have enough clean water to drink. By 2025, the United Nations predicts, about two-thirds of the world's population will live in areas where water is scarce.

In Yemen, most homes do not have running water and about a third of the population of 22 million has no access to safe, clean water, according to the U.N.

International efforts to slow the crisis in Yemen have failed, according to Ramon Scoble, a water-resource specialist for the German development agency GTZ.

The United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and the World Bank pump tens of millions of dollars into Yemeni water projects each year. But a lack of government will and capability, coupled with a population that is largely uneducated about water issues and resistant to change, have crippled efforts to build a sustainable water system, he said.

In the capital, Mr. Scoble estimates that the population consumes 10 to 20 times the water replenished by rainfall.

"There are families out there that are literally drinking sewage here in San'a," he said.

The future looks even bleaker. Yemen's population is expected to double in the next 20 years. Climate change could mean even less rainfall for a country afflicted with drought for years.

Three current armed conflicts in Yemen, while not directly caused by water shortages, are a sign of the times, Mr. Scoble said. Government forces are battling a Shi'ite Muslim insurgency in the north, secessionists in the south and al Qaeda adherents in the ungoverned countryside.

Water protests are also turning violent. In late August, one person was killed and three were injured in a riot after water access was cut in several districts in the southern port city of Aden.

Besides the growing population and diminished rainfall, rapid urbanization, traditional farming practices and plain old waste are to blame for the crisis, according to Saleh al-Dubby, director of the San'a Basin Water Management Project, which is funded by the World Bank.

As villages dry out, people flock to the cities, further taxing already strained resources. And because city planners cannot keep up with the influx, families dig their own toilets, polluting the groundwater.

Those who remain in arid rural areas buy water from trucks. Farmers say the price of water has tripled in the past four years, and the quality of life in Yemen, already one of the world's poorest countries, is dropping as fast as the water table.

But it is difficult to convince farmers to adopt modern irrigation systems, Mr. al-Dubby said. Farmers, accustomed to flooding their fields many times a year, have a hard time believing that drip-irrigation systems will grow their crops.

"If I am a farmer, I can't imagine that will be enough for my plants," he said.

The most profitable crop in Yemen - khat, a mildly narcotic leaf that is wildly popular here - consumes about a third of the country's water supply, maybe more.  Most Yemeni men spend hours a day chewing the leaves, which saps productivity in every sector, including the government, Mr. Scoble said. The national addiction also makes farmers and government officials reluctant to change.

"We're in Yemen, and almost everything is 'insh'allah, bukra' ["God willing, tomorrow"], except [khat] o'clock," he wrote in an e-mail.

Yahiya al-Hubaishi, a khat farmer, picked leaves off his trees and added them to the tennis-ball sized wad in his cheek. Mr. al-Hubaishi, who also grows grapes and tomatoes in a rocky valley on the outskirts of the capital, said he floods his fields about 13 times a year and that no one has suggested he abandon this traditional method of irrigation.

"The water will not finish," he said. "There is still rain."

But experts say the groundwater will disappear if these practices continue. Even if Yemen could afford to build desalination plants, that would not provide enough water to support agriculture, the mainstay of an overwhelming majority of Yemenis.  Increasing unemployment could boost al Qaeda recruitment in the country of Osama bin Laden's father's birth and produce a host of other ills, from mass migration to food shortages to crippling women's rights.

Johan Kuylenstierna, a specialist on water issues for the U.N., notes that millions of women and girls in water-scarce countries walk for hours a day to fetch water. They carry it home balanced on their heads in 45-pound jerry cans, sometimes climbing mountains late at night.

Girls miss school to collect water and often drop out when they reach puberty because there are no gender-specific toilets, or no toilets at all, he said. Women with no bathrooms go to the outskirts of villages for privacy and are often victims of rape or other attacks.

"You're outside alone, unprotected," Mr. Kuylenstierna said. "You are a very easy target."

Malik al-Amari, who drives a water truck in San'a, moved to the city from a distant village that is now close to uninhabitable. Five years ago, a pump drew water from a local well 24 hours a day. Now, the pump runs dry after two hours, he said.

But villagers are still not conserving water, Mr. al-Amari said, as he leaned against his pink-and-blue-painted metal water truck. He glanced at a crowd of noisy children climbing on his truck, and crossed his arms.

"I'm scared for the whole country," he said.





WESTON'S MOREHOUSE FARM PARK (l) -  Weston glad to help CT DEP and the CT Health Department break new ground, using Morehouse Farm Park as an example of a method by which pesticides and herbicides on public fields might be regulated;  center photos of Scofield investigation;  at right, contractors for the city of Stamford install a water main at the corner of Larkspur Road and Skymeadow Drive to address contaminated wells on Hannahs, Larkspur, Cousins and Very Merry roads on Thursday. (Kathleen O'Rourke/Staff photo)

Stamford unveils new well testing plan
Stamford ADVOCATE
Magdalene Perez, Staff Writer
Published: 10:24 p.m., Thursday, June 10, 2010

STAMFORD -- The city health department has announced plans to test 50 randomly selected North Stamford wells in an effort to define the extent of area pesticide contamination.

Interim Health Director Anne Fountain said she hopes to have city workers collecting water samples by this summer, with half the results going to state labs for analysis. The city would send the other 25 samples to Premier Laboratory in Dayville, at a cost of about $8,500.

If adopted, the testing would represent the city's first active search for pesticides since January, when the health department discontinued a sampling program that discovered 35 wells contaminated with one or both of the toxic pesticides chlordane and dieldrin. The pesticides are known to cause a range of adverse health effects and are suspected human carcinogens.

In a presentation before the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force Wednesday, Fountain said the city will use GIS software to randomly select 50 locations. City workers will then send letters to property owners at the nearest addresses. Once inspectors reach the site, they will collect information about well location and depth, the home's age, and geographical information in addition to water samples, she said. In all, the study will cost about $2,500 to $3,000 in overtime, Fountain said. The city would seek to perform up to 100 tests, if more funding were available, she said.

The effort comes in response to more than a dozen calls from North Stamford residents notifying the city they had independently found pesticide contamination in their wells, Fountain said.

"Based on the calls, I decided to do random samples of the area to get a better idea of the extent of the contamination," she said.

Board of Representatives President Randy Skigen, a task force member, said he did not believe 50 samples would be adequate to create an accurate picture of contamination in North Stamford, a vast chunk of the city that comprises more than 5,000 households.

"My concern here is we're doing 50 tests, which is approximately 1 percent of North Stamford," Skigen said. "I'm concerned that whatever the results are, it's going to overstate or understate the problem."

Another task force member, Scofieldtown resident Yossi Stern, questioned why the city decided to rule out testing for volatile organic compounds and heavy metals, two other pollutants that have been found in nearby Scofieldtown Park, a former dump.

Fountain said the city wanted to focus on pesticides because they are most clearly "the issue at hand."

The health department tests would come in addition to a planned study, lead by a University of Connecticut professor, which city officials have said will seek to uncover the contamination source.

The testing announcement came three months after the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force asked city officials to sketch out scenarios for a new water testing program in light of confirmed reports that pesticides had been found in wells as far north as Briar Brae Road and as far south as Wire Mill Road, near the Merritt Parkway.

Task force members at the time said the reports were alarming because they were far from a previously known cluster of contaminated wells around Very Merry and Hannahs roads. The city has been responding to pollution concerns since May 2009, after a federal report of PCBs and other contaminants in Scofieldtown Park led officials to close the facility. Later, the health department surveyed 209 wells in a less than one-mile radius of the park.

The city testing program was discontinued in January, after a study concluded the pesticides did not stem from the landfill. Since then, the city has recommended homeowners test their own wells, at a cost of about $350.

Fountain said the city knows at least 515 homeowners have privately undertaken tests, though a much smaller number have reported the results, as officials have encouraged them to do.

To build community awareness of the problem, Fountain said the health department is launching a new safe drinking water webpage and planning an upcoming health fair on the issue.

Staff Writer Magdalene Perez can be reached at 203-964-2240 or magdalene.perez@scni.com.

New contamination found in North Stamford wells
By Magdalene Perez, Staff Writer
Published: 10:42 p.m., Tuesday, March 9, 2010

STAMFORD -- A panel examining pesticide contamination in North Stamford drinking wells suggested Tuesday it may ask the city to expand a discontinued testing program in light of new evidence showing the contamination may be more extensive.

In a presentation before the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force on Tuesday, City Engineer Lou Casolo said the city recently learned of two additional contaminated wells north and south of the area near Scofieldtown Park, a former industrial and residential dump.

One is on Briar Brae Road, the other just off Wire Mill Road. The farthest is about three-quarters of a mile from a previously known cluster of contaminated wells around Very Merry and Hannahs roads, Casolo said.

Both results were reported to the city by private homeowners who tested their own wells, he said.

Task force members said they felt the information was significant because both wells are far from the cluster. Task Force member Leigh Shemitz said she felt the city's decision to end a well testing program was "a mistake."

The program, which began in the summer after a federal report of PCBs and other contaminants found in Scofieldtown Park, surveyed 209 wells in a less than one-mile radius of the park. It revealed 35 wells contaminated with one or both of the toxic pesticides chlordane and dieldrin. The pesticides are known to cause a range of adverse health effects and are suspected human carcinogens.

After a city-hired consultant concluded in December that the contamination did not stem from the Scofieldtown landfill, the city chose to end the water testing program. City officials reported the final results earlier this month.

"We won't know the extent of the problem unless we have comprehensive testing, and we won't have comprehensive testing unless the city does the tests," Shemitz said, drawing applause from dozens of Scofieldtown-area homeowners who gathered in the Stamford Government Center's Legislative Chambers for the hearing.

Since concluding its testing program in January, the city health department has recommended homeowners test their own wells for pesticides and other contaminants known as volatile organic compounds. Co-interim Health Director Anne Fountain said residents can request the testing from Environmental Analysis Corporation in New Canaan at a cost of about $350. Health department officials have asked homeowners to share the results with the city.

In response to the newly revealed well contamination, the task force requested the health department sketch out scenarios in which the city could expand testing to a 2- or 3-mile radius around the cluster. The panel could use that information to decide whether to request funding for further testing, Shemitz said.

Task force member Yossi Stern said any further testing should include tests for heavy metals.

Previously the city tested for a range of pesticides and volatile organic compounds, but not heavy metals.

The panel said if the city does pursue further testing, it may not choose to test the well of every home, but perhaps every second or third.

Casolo also reported the city last week completed a $3.4 million project to connect homes on nine affected streets to the city's water supplier, Aquarion Water Company.

Mayor Michael Pavia has said the city will not pay to connect more homes to the Aquarion lines.


Stamford workers scour Scofieldtown area for debris
By Magdalene Perez, Stamford ADVOCATE Staff Writer
Published: 08:58 a.m., Tuesday, March 9, 2010

STAMFORD -- City workers began a search of Scofieldtown Park and other nearby city properties Monday in an effort to locate and remove decaying 55-gallon drums and other debris.

The effort is in response to complaints from nearby residents, who in recent months discovered dozens of large metal barrels in and around Scofieldtown Park, a former residential and industrial dump.

The search included the Scofield Magnet Middle School property, where, in January, a hazardous waste team removed a 55-gallon drum a neighbor found while walking his dog near a school baseball diamond. The team said the barrel appeared to contain water and some traces of oil; since then, city officials have said testing confirmed the barrel did not contain hazardous materials.

Beginning 9 a.m. Monday, workers from the parks and highways departments fanned out in the woods behind the Scofieldtown Recycling Center, collecting rusted fragments of empty metal barrels, dozens of tires, an old washing machine, a refrigerator, car parts and other debris. Workers piled the waste in the back of a flatbed truck for removal.

The city used approximately 30 municipal workers to search several city-owned properties, including Scofieldtown Park; Scofield Magnet Middle School; Scofield Manor, a retirement home operated by the city Housing Authority; Smith House, a municipal nursing home; the Bartlett Arboretum nature preserve; and Potter's Field, a cemetery where the city once buried destitute residents.

City Operations Director Ernie Orgera said the workers removed four to five truckloads of debris by the day's end. While the men found barrel carcasses, none contained any liquids, he said.

A similar number of workers will continue the search on the Smith House and Bartlett property Tuesday, he said.

In a Friday statement, a spokesman for the mayor had invited the public to participate in a grid search, but also warned residents to not try to remove debris themselves.

Several Scofieldtown neighbors, eager to keep an eye on the city's cleanup efforts, took the city up on the invitation Monday. About 20 neighbors joined city workers in their trek through mud, leaves and brush at the northern perimeter of the city compost facility for just more than an hour, until Orgera asked all noncity workers to leave the area for safety reasons. Orgera said residents could join city employees in their search of other city facilities later in the day.

Residents said they did not believe the search was adequately organized. They said city employees did not appear to have clear directions nor a methodical approach to the work.

"It's totally disorganized," said Jay Crutcher, a homeowner from nearby Hunting Ridge Road. "The guys down there don't know who's in charge."

Orgera, who oversees the city's parks, highways and solid-waste departments, among others, said Monday the city was not actually undertaking a grid search, a technique of combing an area methodically by spreading out people who walk slowly in parallel lines.

"This is a walk-through," Orgera said. "We call it a grid search, but it's not technically a grid search, where we're going to have men walking every 3 feet in a line."

Orgera said he took responsibility for any disorganization that may have resulted from him not being present at the search site when it began. Doug Hoyt, an operation supervisor, was in charge, he said. Orgera said he arrived late because he was in last-minute budget meetings with the mayor, as the mayor presented his budget recommendation Monday.

"It was my fault that I didn't give him enough direction," Orgera said of the on-scene supervisor.

The city has been responding to concerns about toxins in the Scofieldtown area since a federal report of contaminated soil in Scofieldtown Park led the city to close the facility in May. In response, the city tested 209 nearby residential wells, finding 33 contaminated with the toxic and long-banned pesticides chlordane and dieldrin. Orgera has said the city is near completion of a project to connect waterlines to nine affected streets, at a cost of $3.4 million.

The Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force, a group formed under former Mayor Dannel Malloy to address the contamination and subsequent cleanup efforts, is scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss an upcoming study aimed at pinpointing the source of the pesticide contamination. The 6:30 p.m meeting is at the government center, 888 Washington Blvd, in the legislative chambers.


City backs funding for Scofieldtown study
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Elizabeth Kim And Devon Lash, Staff Writers
Published: 09:03 p.m., Wednesday, February 10, 2010

STAMFORD -- In an attempt to find the source of contamination in Scofieldtown, Mayor Michael Pavia has obtained preliminary approval for a $250,000 no-bid contract with the University of Connecticut to conduct a research study.

The Board of Finance and Planning Board voted Tuesday night to approve the capital appropriation request, which was drafted the same day by the mayor. It will go to the Board of Representatives for final approval. In a memo to the boards, Pavia said he will seek a bid waiver to approve the contract, which has not yet been drafted.

Lou Casolo, the city engineer, presented the plans to the two initial boards.

"This is an opportunity to scratch beneath the surface, to look harder," Casolo said.

The impetus for the study came from a task force appointed to look into the area's pesticide contamination. Casolo said its members wanted the city to commission an independent assessment.

In December, TRC Environmental, an environmental consultant hired by the city, concluded that Scofieldtown Park was not the source of the pesticide contamination, as many residents suspected. Last month, a state Department of Environmental Protection official suggested the water contamination found in nearly three dozen North Stamford homes might have been caused by pesticides used by exterminators.

One of the first tasks of the UConn study would be to review the study by TRC.

The research will be led by Gary Robbins, a professor of geology who is considered an expert in hydrogeology and environmental matters.

UConn students will also participate in the research, Casolo said.

Kathleen Murphy, an Independent on the Board of Finance, cast the lone vote against the funding, saying there was not enough information available to move forward and that approving it without scrutinizing the details would set a bad precedent.

Murphy also questioned the legality of awarding the contract to UConn without asking for competitive bids or obtaining a bid waiver.

The city is required to ask for bid proposals for projects awarded to an outside contractor.

Though the project has been divided into three phases, Casolo said he did not know exactly when it might be completed. He said Robbins has said the work could be done within a year.

One possible hurdle that may prolong the project is the need to collect soil samples from private properties. The city, he said, has yet to obtain formal consent from the affected homeowners.

Earlier this month, the administration announced it was delaying having Aquarion Water Co. place caps on the wells of 10 homes on and around Alma Rock Road to connect them to its water mains.

Officials said they feared capping the wells would hamper UConn researchers from examining the wells.

Five other homeowners have declined to cap their wells in support of a study, according to Director of Operations Ernie Orgera.

In the event, however, that homeowners do not cooperate with the study, Casolo said the city has hired the New England-based law firm Pepe & Hazard to see if there might be a legal recourse that would permit the city to gain access to the properties.

Since it began testing wells last August, the city has spent more than $4 million to addres contamination in the North Stamford neighborhood.

As of Jan. 29, 34 homes have tested positive for the banned pesticides chlordane, dieldrin or both.

At the meeting before the Planning Board, Casolo did not specify what legal ramifications might result from the study in the event it identifies a private property owner as the source.

"If, as it turns out, the pollution is on private property, that does create a dilemma for that property owner," he said.
 
   –
[This user is an administrator] Jay
If we accept the counter-intuitive theory that residential use of these pesticides is the source of contamination, and not dumping at an industrial landfill by Parrott, we're still left with a claim made by Patrick Bowe of the CT DEP Remediation Division -- that this type of contamination could likely be found across the entire state. If the Scofieldtown area test results are an indicator for the rest of North Stamford or the rest of the state, does that mean that 15% of all residential wells are contaminated with toxic levels of pesticides? Wouldn't it be helpful to know that before Mr Casolo tries to pin this problem on a handful of homeowners? 
The UConn study should look throughout all of North Stamford as part of their research, and to deliver a real benefit to the public, suggest a broad regimen of testing that truly reassures everyone on well water, without scaring half of the state into suing the other half. Telling individual homeowners to test their own water isn't sufficient, because water moves. I could test my well today, and have no idea what could flow in next month or next week. 

I sincerely hope this UConn research helps point to a solution, rather than just focus on a scapegoat.

Yesterday, 10:32:50 PM


New North Stamford advocacy group discusses wells
By Devon Lash, Stamford ADVOCATE STAFF WRITER
Published: 04:34 a.m., Monday, February 1, 2010

STAMFORD -- Motivated by a newly formed advocacy group, nearly 200 North Stamford residents met Sunday afternoon to discuss the ongoing investigation into the area's well water contamination.

The objectives of the group, North Stamford Concerned Citizens for the Environment, are straightforward, said Joanna Manley-Moore, a member of the group's executive board.

First, the group, which calls itself the NSCC, aims to obtain clean drinking water in the neighborhood, and then, to discover the source of the contamination and successfully remediate the area, said Manley-Moore, an Alma Rock Road resident.

North Stamford residents have been battling for clean water and remediation since a federal report detailing soil contaminants in Scofieldtown Park, a former industrial dump, prompted officials to test nearby wells last summer. Since then, the city has found more than 30 wells contaminated with one or more of the toxic pesticides chlordane and dieldrin. The city undertook a project to connect waterlines to nine affected streets in the fall, at a cost of $3.4 million.

During the two-hour meeting at Villa Maria School, the group's executive board announced the beginning of a partnership with a public health and environmental nonprofit Toxics Action Center.

With offices throughout New England, Toxics Action Center specializes in waging grass-roots campaigns to force polluters and unresponsive bureaucracies to protect the community's health and safety, said Megan Jenny, a commuter organizer for the Connecticut branch.

Jenny said the NSCC's next step is to divide its members into committees to proceed on such fronts as health and environment, legal affairs and government, and site remediation.

Sunday's meeting was the largest such gathering of residents since former Mayor Dannel Malloy held a public meeting at Scofield Magnet Middle School last year, many said.

"We wanted it to come off as organized and professional, because we need" the members, executive board member Robert DeFalco said.

"There is strength in numbers," DeFalco added, echoing the remarks of many organizers who said they were surprised at the standing-room-only crowd.

Many in the audience who are already hooked up to city waterlines said they came to get more information about a problem that could affect more of the city. Others were familiar with issues surrounding the contamination and came to show support for the fledgling group.

"It was very informative," North Stamford resident Janet Heisel said, adding the outcome of the remediation could have an effect on the area's home prices.

The NSCC adjourned the public forum after 35 minutes into a session closed to the media to discuss the group's strategy.

"We were really going to talk about strategy, just overall strategy, and we felt that would be best suited by having just the members in attendance," Manley-Moore said.

After a preliminary city-hired consultant report pointed to individual pesticide applications for well water contamination -- and not the former landfill, as many residents said they believe -- many have said they are skeptical of city motives.

Investigators find no hazardous material in discarded barrel on Stamford school property
By Magdalene Perez, Stamford ADVOCATE Staff Writer
Published: 09:53 p.m., Tuesday, January 26, 2010

STAMFORD -- An environmental contractor removed an abandoned chemical drum from Scofield Magnet Middle School property Tuesday morning after deeming its contents nonhazardous.

Investigators from Environmental Services Inc., based in South Windsor, said the barrel, located near a baseball diamond north of the Scofieldtown Road school, contained about two to three gallons of water and some oil. After testing the contents, investigators sealed the drum in a larger barrel and turned it over to city officials for storage at the city garage on Magee Avenue.

"Evidently, there was oil in the barrel originally," city Operations Director Ernie Orgera said.

Orgera said he does not believe the barrel had any connection to a nearby former industrial dump at Scofieldtown Park, located across the street, nor any relation to water contamination on several nearby streets.

No children were endangered by the material, he said.

Firefighters and a state Department of Environmental Protection official responded to the area Saturday after a North Stamford resident reported finding the drum, as well as others at nearby Scofield Manor, a city-owned retirement facility.

On Tuesday, the environmental contractors also removed two drums from the Scofield Manor property, Orgera said. One contained a sandlike material and the other about three gallons of fluid, he said. The firm also secured two 5-pound bags of powder, labeled methoxychlor, a banned pesticide, that were located in a storage shed behind the retirement home. Scofield Manor is managed by Charter Oak Communities, the city housing authority.

Orgera said Environmental Services will take samples from the drums and send them to a laboratory for further testing. A DEP official Monday said one of the barrels, found on the retirement home property, may contain embalming fluid.

In addition to the three barrels, Environmental Services found four empty chemical drums, which city employees removed and delivered to the recycling center, Orgera said.

City officials learned of the barrels Saturday, after North Stamford resident Robert DeFalco reported finding the rusted 55-gallon drum north of Scofield Magnet Middle School. Firefighters responded to the scene and cordoned it off with police tape. A fire marshal contacted the state DEP, which sent a member of its emergency response team to investigate.

Based on conversations with DeFalco and another North Stamford resident, Bob Boucher, the DEP official, learned of other potentially hazardous materials stored or discarded on the Scofield Manor property. The retirement home, also on Scofieldtown Road, is southwest and across the street from the school.

On the Scofield Manor property, the state official found a second 55-gallon drum, chemical containers and bags of pesticides. In the same area as the drum, located in a wetland not far from a community garden, the group also found a vintage car half buried in an embankment, and other debris, such as tires.

City officials treated the materials as hazardous, placing police tape around the two areas and waiting until a professional contractor could examine the materials before removing them. They had planned to begin testing contents of the barrels Monday, but heavy rain prevented further investigation, they said.

The weather cleared Tuesday, and by 8:30 a.m., a half-dozen city officials gathered in the school parking lot to wait for the Environmental Services workers to arrive. Two workers donned white protective gear, boots and masks before checking out the drum, located in a patch of tall grass and bushes near the road. The rusted carcass of another drum lay nearby.

Less than 20 feet from the barrel, a stack of 10 tires lay in the grass. Orgera said the tires are used by school officials for athletic training.

Several North Stamford residents, including members of the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force, gathered behind a police line to observe the proceedings.

Diane Lauricella, an environmental consultant hired by neighbors concerned about nearby water contamination, said she was happy to see the city is taking "proactive" action.

"The citizens are glad the city hired a professional to do the work, and they await the results," she said.

After taking a sample of the fluid, workers said the material was not hazardous, packed the drum in a larger container and sealed it. The workers did the same with the two barrels found near Scofield Manor, Orgera said. They took soil samples from below each of the barrels, he said.

By afternoon, the city also called in a tow truck in an attempt to haul the vehicle out from the embankment. The decayed car split in two, and city workers disposed of it in pieces, Orgera said. One city employee said the car had "Sunset Home" inscribed on the door and what appeared to be a date of 1932.

John Baldino, the Scofield Manor facilities manager, said the storage facility and shed, where investigators found the bags of pesticides and one drum, had not been in use during his 22 years on the job. Baldino said employees did not use the storage buildings -- one an old stone structure and the other a small red wooden tool shed -- because they had dirt floors.

"They served no purpose for us," Baldino said.

The discoveries came amid rising concern among neighboring residents about chemical drums found in Scofieldtown Park. Last week, residents gathered at the park to demand the city move forward with plans to remediate the former dump. They said they found 28 chemical drums on property north of the city compost site.

Mayor Michael Pavia responded to the concerns Friday, saying the city is close to developing a plan to remediate the landfill.

The city has been responding to concerns about toxins in the Scofieldtown area since a federal report of contaminated soil in Scofieldtown Park led the city to close the facility in May. In response, the city tested nearly 200 nearby residential wells, finding 33 contaminated with the long-banned pesticides chlordane and dieldrin. The city undertook a project to connect waterlines to nine affected streets in the fall, at a cost of $3.4 million.

A Scofield Manor resident, George Donella, said residents had been informed Monday morning that potentially hazardous materials had been found on the property and that city and state officials would be in the area.

"I hope they get rid of all of it, for safety's sake," Donella added.

2 more wells in North Stamford found to be contaminated
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Magdalene Perez, Staff Writer
Published: 09:54 p.m., Friday, January 8, 2010

STAMFORD -- The city found two additional wells contaminated with pesticides in the latest round of North Stamford water testing results, released Friday. The wells, one on Northwind Drive and the other on Haviland Drive, have elevated levels of the pesticide dieldrin, according to Stamford Interim Operations Director Ernie Orgera.

The new results bring the number of known contaminated wells to 31. The well on Haviland contained the pesticide at a level six times the state limit, while the well on Northwind showed a level just over twice the cutoff deemed safe for drinking.

The city began testing private wells in the area for pesticides and other toxins after a federal report showed soil and water contamination above state limits in Scofieldtown Park.

Both positive results are the second case of contamination officials have discovered on the respective streets. Orgera said the city's environmental consultant, TRC Environmental, will discuss the results Wednesday at a meeting of the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force. The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Government Center, 888 Washington Blvd., in the legislative chambers on the fourth floor.


What’s in that toxic water anyway?
December 17, 2009 at 1:13 pm by Magdalene Perez

Yesterday’s announcement from the city’s environmental consultant that preliminary groundwater tests results do not indicate pesticide contamination is coming from the former dump at Scofieldtown Park did not come as a complete surprise to some Scofieldtown neighbors. Even prior to Wednesday night’s task force meeting, it was rumored that the consultant, TRC Environmental, had come to such a conclusion in its draft report.

Perhaps more surprising were the results of TRC’s ground-penetrating radar survey of the dump. Carl Stopper, the environmental engineering firm’s vice president, told the task force Wednesday that the survey showed no buried drums to a depth of about 25 feet. Not only that, but soil samples collected from a depth of 25 feet did not show evidence of pesticides, Stopper said.

Which raises the question, how could there be no barrels in the dump if barrels have been emerging at the surface of the landfill over the past three decades? Also, it is surprising to hear that there is no evidence of pesticides in the landfill, when one of the most recent EPA reports on the landfill, from 2008, found nine different types of pesticides in surface soil samples, including: DDD, DDE, DDT, Alpha Chlordane, Gamma Chlordane, Aroclor-1254, Arochlor-1248, and Arochlor-1260.

I asked Stopper how the TRC findings could be reconciled with the EPA report. He said the results are different because the EPA tested surface soil samples, while TRC tested from within the dump.

“The presence of pesticides in the soil where the EPA tested doesn’t mean there was enough of those pesticides used or spilled to affect the groundwater,” Stopper said. “That’s going to happen, it’s just the nature of the way these things occur.”

So what else did TRC find with the monitoring wells?

There were plenty of chemicals found, but here’s a list of just those compounds that were above state limits:

From wells on Very Merry Road and Alma Rock Road:

1, 1, 1, 2-Tetrachloroethane

Chlordane

Dieldrin

From wells within the landfill underneath the city composting site:

Benzene

Vinyl Chloride

Extractable Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (I’m told this is a test that will pick up oil products such as gasoline)

Barium

Calcium

The tests also found arsenic, below state limits, in the landfill below the compost facility, and 16 other volatile or semi volatile organic compounds. Interestingly, most of the VOC and SVOC hits came from samples that lay below the composting site, rather than in other sampling areas, such as the park and the Scofield Magnet Middle School property.

Next Scofieldtown Task Force Meeting Wednesday
December 11, 2009 at 2:33 pm by Magdalene Perez

Here’s the best update I have at the moment on what’s going on with the water contamination/investigation situation in Scofieldtown.

The city will have it’s next Task Force meeting on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the government center legislative chambers. The agenda is pasted below.

TRC Environmental, the environmental engineering firm hired by the city as a consultant, has not yet given the task force members any written update on its groundwater and radar monitoring testing, according to Board of Representatives President Randall Skigen. The aim of the testing is to figure out the source of the groundwater pollution.

The city most recently posted well water test results on its Web site Dec. 9. All of the new results were negative for pesticides, according to Margarita Arenas, executive secretary to the director of operations. However, the latest map says that there are 29 contaminated wells, rather than 28, as the city previously reported. Apparently there was an error on the prior report, and the correct number of contaminated wells is 29.

Hope that helps!

SCOFIELDTOWN AREA REMEDIATION TASK FORCE
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2009 – 6:30 P.M.
LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER – 4TH FLOOR
888 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD
STAMFORD, CT 06901

I. Call to Order

II. Staff Reports

a. Water Sampling Program – Dr. Johnnie Lee
b. Site Investigation – Carl Stopper – TRC
c. Water Main Project – Lou Casolo

III. Open Items

a. Well Capping – Purpose and Accessibility for Future Sampling
b. Well Sampling – Concerns Regarding Turn Around Time and Long Term Sampling Plan
c. Municipal Water Hookup – Homeowners Request to Hookup. Providing a Formal Request Process
d. Additional Site Investigations, Scope and Actions – Identification and Remediation of the Contaminant Source(s)

IV. Correspondence

a. Letter from Northwind Drive Residents

V. New Business

VI. Adjournment

cc: Task Force Members
Dr. Johnnie Lee, Health Director
Mike Kraynak, Health Department
Amy Lehaney, Health Department
Lou Casolo, Engineering
Michael A. Pavia, Mayor
Ernie Orgera, Acting Director of Operations
Town Clerk
Valerie Pankosky, Board of Representatives
Technology Department




No pesticides found in streams and ponds near Scofieldtown Park
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Magdalene Perez,
Staff Writer
Posted: 11/16/2009 10:03:36 PM EST
Updated: 11/16/2009 10:03:36 PM EST

STAMFORD -- Recent tests do not show evidence of pesticides in streams and ponds near the former dump at Scofieldtown Park, an environmental consultant told a city task force Monday.

TRC Environmental Corp. Vice President Carl Stopper said water tests conducted by the company showed low levels of benzene, zinc and barium in the surface water around the park, but none of the types of hazardous pesticides the city has found in dozens of nearby wells. None of the chemicals or metals found "raise a red flag in terms of exposure" according to state water quality standards, Stopper said.

"The positive of that is that we are not seeing anything emanating to the streams from the landfill proper," Stopper told the Scofieldtown Area Remediation Task Force at its first meeting Monday. "We found no detection of any chlordane, pesticides or herbicides.

The city hired TRC Environmental to help it develop a response plan to soil and groundwater contamination in and around the former industrial dump after a federal test showed hazardous levels of chemicals in the park. Since then, the city has found 27 private drinking wells with hazardous levels of pesticides on eight nearby streets to the east, west and south of the park.

Stopper said the company does not yet have enough information to advise the city what steps should be taken to clean up the pollution.

"We have not been discussing with public works any next steps at this point," Stopper said. "Right now the plan is to complete the investigation."

More than 50 city residents attended the meeting to get more information about the city's response to the problem.

One city resident asked whether it is true that people can undergo medical tests to determine whether their bodies have absorbed pesticides.

City Health Director Johnnie Lee said such tests do exist, but that the city does not have the capacity to do them. The tests usually involved sampling fat cells, Lee said.

Diane Lauricella, an environmental consultant hired by a group of Scofieldtown neighbors questioned why the city has not tested all nearby wells for heavy metals, especially given that some metals are known to render ineffective the type of carbon filters the city has given residents to remove pesticides.

Lee said the filters should be considered a temporary solution.

TRC is still working on additional testing that will help determine the extent and source of the contamination, Stopper told group of assembled residents.

TRC has drilled eight groundwater monitoring wells to try to determine which direction groundwater is flowing. Three of the monitoring wells are within the landfill, one is on Very Merry Road, one is on Alma Rock Road, one is west of the park and others are on the Scofield Magnet Middle School property. Researchers will not have results from the monitoring wells until later, Stopper said.

TRC also used ground-penetrating radars on the landfill site to determine whether there are any materials in the dump that may threaten chemical releases. The results of the study are pending, Stopper said.

"Our goal is to identify if there are any additional areas of concern," Stopper said



Stamford reservoir ruled safe

Aquarion: North Stamford well contamination has no affect on water supply
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Magdalene Perez, Staff Writer
Posted: 10/17/2009 07:45:01 AM EDT
Updated: 10/17/2009 11:47:02 PM EDT

STAMFORD - The city's water company said Friday there is no connection between well contamination near Scofieldtown Park and the North Stamford Reservoir.

Aquarion, the private company that provides Stamford's water supply, responded Friday to concerns that the latest round of city testing for pesticide contamination in private drinking wells near Scofieldtown Park have shown hazardous levels of pesticides in wells less than a half mile from the North Stamford Reservoir. The company operates the North Stamford Reservoir, as well as the Laurel Reservoir, which together serve 100,000 people in Stamford. John Herlihy, director of water quality and environmental management for Aquarion, said the company regularly tests water samples from the reservoir and has never found pesticides. The most recent tests were completed in 2008, he said.

"We have tested the reservoirs 13 times since 1998 and have not detected dieldrin or chlordane or any other pesticides," Herlihy said.

The tests, required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and performed every three years, search for 41 compounds, including pesticides, herbicides and PCBs, Herlihy said. The test results are reported to the state Department of Public Health.

Despite reassurances from Mayor Dannel Malloy Wednesday that Aquarion has water filtration systems capable of removing pesticides, Aquarion's water quality director said that is not the case.

"There may be some removal of pesticides, but the treatment
processes that we have in place are not designed to remove pesticides," Herlihy said.

Herlihy said the fact the plant is not designed to treat pesticides is "a non-issue" because pesticides have not been detected.

Aquarion treats water coming from its reservoirs through sand and chemicals that help precipitate substances such as chemicals, soil particles, and color from vegetation, Herlihy said. The water is also treated with bacteria and leaves the plant colorless and odorless, he said.

City officials have said contamination of the reservoir is unlikely because there is little transfer between groundwater, deep in bedrock, and surface water, such as the reservoir. The reservoir extends to a depth of about 30 feet, Herlihy said. Nearby wells, by comparison, have depths ranging from under 200 feet to over 300 feet.

The city began testing for water contamination in private wells near Scofieldtown Park this summer, after a report showed hazardous levels of pesticides and PCBs in the park, a former industrial landfill. So far, 22 wells have been found to contain unsafe levels of pesticides, and the city continues to gather and process samples. The city released the results of 26 tests Friday, which found no additional wells with contamination.

A recent round of tests found contamination on Alma Rock Road, closer to the North Stamford Reservoir than any prior findings. Satellite maps of the area show one contaminated lot is about 1,700 feet from the nearest point of the reservoir. David Emerson, the city's Environmental Protection Board director, said the distance is closer to 2,200 feet.

Herlihy said Aquarion had not previously been aware that Scofieldtown Park is a former landfill, nor that there could be a contamination source there.

Emerson said Friday the contaminated wells are in a different watershed than the reservoir, an indication that groundwater may not be flowing from the contaminated area toward the reservoir. Watersheds are areas where all water drains toward the same place.

According to city maps, all homes that have tested above state limits for pesticides are located in the Poorhouse Brook watershed, while the nearby reservoir is located in the Rippowam River watershed. North of Interlaken Road, nearly all of the Rippowam River watershed is east of High Ridge Road.

In most cases, groundwater follows the path of surface water, Emerson said. Sometimes, however, cracks deep in bedrock divert the path of groundwater in unpredictable ways. The city cannot be certain which direction groundwater in the area is flowing until it completes a groundwater study, Emerson said.

The city has hired an environmental consultant, TRC Environmental Corp., in Windsor, to undertake such a study.


5 more homes test positive for pesticides
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Elizabeth Kim, Staff Writer
Posted: 10/13/2009 09:52:29 PM EDT
Updated: 10/13/2009 09:52:30 PM EDT

STAMFORD -- Another five homes in North Stamford have tested positive for pesticides, according to City Operations Director Benjamin Barnes.  About 15 properties around Alma Rock Road, Skymeadow Drive and Mary Joy Lane were tested as part of the city's effort to respond to contamination of wells in Scofieldtown.

"This reinforces what we need to do," Barnes said at a meeting Tuesday night before the city's Planning Board.

The properties that tested positive were: 48, 66, 75 and 80 Alma Rock Road, and 58 Skymeadow Drive.  Afterward, the Planning Board unanimously approved a $750,000 capital budget request for the city to install a water main extension to Alma Rock Road and Mary Joy Lane.  Most homes in the area, near a former industrial landfill in Scofieldtown Park, get their household water through private wells.

A $2 million plan was approved last week to install water lines and extensions to reach Hannahs, Larkspur, Cousins and Very Merry roads. The plan was approved after tests discovered hazardous levels of pesticides in 17 wells on Hannahs, Very Merry and Larkspur roads.

Alma Rock and Mary Joy Lane residents argued that they should be provided water lines because homes on the streets are within 1,000 feet of sites on Larkspur where contamination was confirmed.  The city was to break ground to install water lines on the first project this week.


Scofieldtown neighbors ask for groundwater study
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Magdalene Perez, Staff Writer
Posted: 09/12/2009 09:24:15 PM EDT
Updated: 09/12/2009 11:28:44 PM EDT

STAMFORD -- With the mayor preparing to meet with Scofieldtown Park neighbors Tuesday to address concerns about contaminated well water, some members of the community insisted a comprehensive study of the area's groundwater flow is long overdue.

After a federal test found contaminants in the park -- built on a landfill -- earlier this year, the city began testing wells for toxic substances, finding two pesticides at levels above state limits in several wells. Most, if not all, homes in the immediate vicinity of the park are not connected to water lines and use private wells.

While neighbors said the first concern should be providing residents in the area with water lines, some said the city cannot make educated decisions about next steps without knowing how water flows through the landfill site and nearby neighborhood.

Netta Stern, a resident on Very Merry Road, said people used to scoff at the idea that well water on the street could be contaminated, because the surface grade on the street is higher than the park. That the city has found pesticides in several wells on Very Merry reinforces that groundwater flow is not self-evident without expert review, she said.

"We need a hydrogeologist to figure out where the groundwater is going. There could be homes that are affected that we don't know about," Stern said. "The water can split, and it can go in different directions, and only a hydrogeologist can figure that out."

The well tests,  undertaken with the state Department of Public Health, looked for pesticides, PCBs and volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, city Director of Operations Benjamin Barnes said. The city and state did not test for heavy metals. So far, the city has found two pesticides, dieldrin and chlordane, at levels above state limits in eight wells on Hannahs Road and Very Merry Road. Officials are waiting for results of at least 20 more tests and plan to undertake more this weekend, Barnes said.

Dieldrin and chlordane have been banned from use for decades. The potential health effects of ingesting chlordane in water include liver and nervous system problems and increased risk of cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Studies have shown oral exposure to dieldrin can cause adverse neurological, reproductive and immunological effects in animals.

Diane Lauricella, an environmental investigator neighbors hired to look into whether the former landfill may affect wells in the area, said a study of groundwater flow is a basic step in any assessment of a hazardous waste site. Lauricella, a former regulator with the state Department of Environmental Protection Hazardous Waste division, said she found it surprising that the EPA did not undertake a groundwater study as part of a 2008 assessment of the former landfill.

"It's the normal way to conduct an investigation," Lauricella said. "I think it's a missing link in the way this site has been evaluated. Because of the lack of a groundwater study, it would be difficult to make informed decisions on many levels."

The estimated population that relies on groundwater drinking sources within 4 miles of the former landfill is 21,864 people, according to the EPA report. The nearest private drinking well, on Hannahs Road, is estimated to be within 500 feet of the Scofieldtown Park property, the report states.

Mayor Dannel Malloy said the city would undertake a groundwater study if the state deems it appropriate.

As a temporary measure, the city is providing bottled water to five streets: Hannahs Road, Larkspur Road, Very Merry Road, Skymeadow Drive between Scofieldtown Road and Larkspur Road, and Nos. 3 to 18 on Cousins Road. According to the mayor, the state will provide water filtration systems for affected homes within weeks.

Barnes said the environmental consultant the city hired to evaluate the site, TRC, may eventually conduct a groundwater study, but the firm's current scope of work is to review the existing state and federal documents on the landfill site, where the city accepted industrial waste for nearly two decades.

Barnes said the city has not ruled out that the pesticides may have come from a source other than the Scofieldtown landfill, saying the city would be "remiss" if it did not consider the possibility. Board of Representatives President David Martin agreed.

"It's possible this contamination did not come from Scofieldtown," said Martin, who is running for mayor. "An exterminator may have poured pesticides on the ground."

The most recent EPA report states that samples of water from 16 private wells found three pesticides and three metals that were "at least partially attributable to source areas located on the Scofieldtown Road Park property."

Martin said a groundwater flow test is a good idea, but the city must focus its efforts on well testing to ensure it is aware of every home that is affected.

Some neighbors said the time for testing is past and the city should instead take immediate action to put residents on water lines.

"We're at a point where this is not about testing where the water is flowing," said Michele Haiken, who lives on Hannahs Road. "Our priority within the neighborhood is getting clean water."

The public information meeting will take place Tuesday in the gymnasium of Scofield Magnet Middle School at 7 p.m. According to the mayor's office, the City Health Department, the State Department of Public Health, the State Department of Environmental Protection and the City Engineering Bureau will all be present to answer questions about well contamination, temporary measures such as bottled water and filtration systems, and public health.

Staff writer Magdalene Perez can be reached at magdalene.perez@scni.com or 203-964-2240.
Learn more A public information meeting about Scofieldtown Park will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the gymnasium of Scofield Magnet Middle School.




Marrella named environmental commissioner
DAY
By Judy Benson

Published on 9/10/2009

Amey Marrella, nominated by Gov. M. Jodi Rell Tuesday to be the state's new commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said increasing recycling, raising air quality standards, responding to the challenges of climate change and new regulations for the use of fresh water resources will be among her priorities.

”My first love and passion is environmental issues,” Marrella said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

She also vowed to maintain a commitment to state parks and to the No Child Left Inside Initiative begun by her predecessor, Gina McCarthy, to foster a love of the outdoors and outdoor activities among young people. Marrella, 50, who lives with her husband, John, in Woodbridge, has been acting commissioner since June, when McCarthy was named to a post at the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Before joining the DEP in 2006 as deputy commissioner for environmental quality, Marrella served for five years as first selectwoman of Woodbridge. Prior to that she was an attorney adviser in the EPA's office of general counsel.

Her experience with both municipal and federal government, she said, gives her the background to head the DEP, with responsibilities that include wildlife management, flooding issues, hazardous spill response, environmental restoration, state parks and trash disposal, stormwater, land use, water quality and pollution regulations, among many others.

From her perspective as a former municipal official, she said, she understands that “municipalities are important customers and constituents” of the DEP.

”We regulate them, we deal with them on land-use issues, on deer, moose and bear, on flooding and stormwater issues,” she said. “There's so many ways we intersect with them.”

Marrella will head an agency with 1,000 full-time employees and an annual budget of about $149 million. The salary range for the DEP Commissioner is $106,000 to $162,000, said DEP spokesman Dennis Schain. Marrella's salary has not been determined, he said.

State budgetary constraints and the voluntary early retirement of 68 DEP employees means that the agency will “have to be very careful with our resources,” Marrella said. “That is going to be a challenge. We're planning to run a very tight ship, and focus on where we add the most value to the environment.”

Marrella's nomination will go to the General Assembly for the confirmation process when it convenes in February.

Among those praising Marrella's nomination was the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

”This is excellent news for Connecticut,” said Charles Rothenberger, staff attorney for the New Haven-based group. “The DEP is an overburdened and short-staffed agency with a very expansive mandate, requiring exactly the kind of leadership that Acting Commissioner Marrella has been providing. Permanent leadership is particularly important at this time, when Connecticut is working towards implementing the landmark global warming legislation passed last year; endeavoring to boost its enforcement against polluters; and maintaining the many parks and recreation areas in the state despite a down economy. We are confident that Ms. Marrella brings the essential skills and experience to the position.”



UN Report: Nature Best Controls Climate Gases
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:23 a.m. ET
June 5, 2009

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- The U.N. Environment Program says nature's way is best for controlling the gases responsible for climate change.

A UNEP report says better management of forests, more careful agricultural practices and the restoration of peatlands could soak up significant amounts of carbon dioxide, the most common gas blamed for global warming.

It says millions of dollars are being invested in research on capturing and burying carbon emitted from power stations, but investing in ecosystems could achieve cheaper results. It also would have the added effects of preserving biodiversity, improving water supplies and boosting livelihoods.

The U.N. agency released the report Friday at U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany. The event was Web cast worldwide.



Groundwater contamination found in Milford; After a common dry cleaning solvent was found in the ground, wells are being drilled to determine how far it spread
CTPOST
By Frank Juliano, STAFF WRITER
Updated: 06/04/2009 12:51:36 AM EDT

MILFORD -- Three test wells dug Wednesday at the Robert Treat Apartments will determine the extent of groundwater contamination from a long-closed dry cleaner.

Milford Cleaning Village operated at 987-995 Bridgeport Ave. for decades before closing in 2004. The apartment complex is directly behind the shuttered business.

"I've lived here 35 years and they were open went I got here," said Herb Batterson, a resident of the 124-unit complex.

Test wells on the dry cleaner's property and at the Treat Apartments have found elevated levels of a common dry-cleaning solvent, said Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The perchloroethylene -- also known as tetrachloroethylene, PCE, and PERC -- was found at both locations recently, Schain said, and the new wells dug Wednesday are to locate the extent of the plume. Test results will likely be available in a month, he said.

There is no immediate health hazard, officials said, because the apartment complex is served by public water mains owned by the Regional Water Authority.

Dr. A. Dennis McBride, the city health director, said apartment residents will be kept informed by his department of all developments and test results. An information sheet prepared by the Milford Health Department notes that while tests have shown PCE in large amounts causes liver and kidney cancer in animals, its effect on humans isn't known. Based on this evidence, PCE is considered a probable increase to the risk of cancer in people, the fact sheet states.

Owners of both the apartment complex and the former dry cleaner are cooperating with the investigation, Schain said, and the ultimate cost of remediation will be billed to the owners of the commercial property, 993 Bridgeport Avenue LLC.

State officials said it is not clear yet whether any people have been exposed to the PCE.

Deputy DEP Commissioner Amey Marrella said in a prepared statement, "If these tests show there are elevated levels of PCE in the groundwater, it may be necessary to conduct further tests in some buildings. This would allow us to determine if vapors from the groundwater are migrating through cracks in building foundations and entering into the indoor air at levels requiring remediation. If this turned out to be the case -- and it's too early to know -- steps can and will be taken to quickly and efficiently remediate the problem."

Soil contaminated with PCE was removed from the commercial property in 2007, but groundwater samples indicated that the plume was migrating off the former Milford Cleaning Village property toward the adjacent Robert Treat Apartments property, DEP officials said.

Batterson said that residents in the nine-building complex are satisified at the officials' response to the problem, and with the letter sent Tuesday to all residents by the management office explaining the contamination.

A test well in a courtyard was surrounded with yellow caution tape Wednesday afternoon, while workers from Connecticut Test Borings of Seymour put fresh cement around a newly capped well in a parking lot. A machine was digging the third well nearby. An employee declined to speak to a reporter.

"I'm in charge of the pool, and it's been filled for the season," Batterson said. "I understand that it will not be affected by any of this, unless there is a leak in the lining."



Students at Staples raise, release trout into Saugatuck River to test water purity
By JILL BODACH, Hour Staff Writer
Posted on 05/29/2009

The trout population in the Saugatuck River increased by 100 Friday morning as students at Staples High School released the brown trout they have been raising in their classroom since November into the water.

It was raining heavily as students released the trout, cup-by-cup, into the river. The trout will now become acclimated to a natural habitat after being cared for in aquariums by the students.

"I do this program as a way to give the students real hands-on experience and the chance to participate in a real environmental and conservation endeavor," said Mike Aitkenhead, advanced placement environmental science teacher at Staples.

The program is part of an education outreach program led by Trout Unlimited, a nationwide conservation organization. The program began 10 years ago when a wealthy New York businessman granted funding to the organization to use to teach young people about water quality.

Each fall, about 70 classrooms across the state receive 500 fertilized eggs each from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and students raise them in aquariums. Students must monitor the conditions of the water, clean the tank and feed the fish until they are old enough to be released...full story here.




Rising Calls to Regulate California Groundwater
NYTIMES
By FELICITY BARRINGER
May 14, 2009

TULARE, Calif. — For the third year in a row, Mark Watte plans to rely on the aquifer beneath his family farm for three-quarters of the water he needs to keep his cotton, corn and alfalfa growing, his young pistachio trees healthy and his 900 dairy cows cool.

That is 50 percent more than he used to take, because the water that once flowed to the farm from snow in the Sierra Nevada has been reduced by a long dry spell and diversions to benefit endangered fish.

Since 2006 the surface of the aquifer, in the Kaweah subbasin of the San Joaquin basin, has dropped 50 feet as farmers pumped deeper, Mr. Watte says. Some of his pumps no longer reach far enough to bring any water to the surface.

If he lived in almost any other state in the arid Southwest, Mr. Watte could be required to report his withdrawals of groundwater or even reduce them. But to California’s farmers and developers, that is anathema. “I don’t want the government to come in and dictate to us, ‘This is all the water you can use on your own land,’ ” said Mr. Watte, 57. “We would resist that to our dying day.”

Although California has been a pathbreaker in some environmental arenas, like embracing renewable energy and recycling, groundwater rights remain sacrosanct. But the state government is facing growing pressure to embrace regulation.

Recent scientific studies indicate that in the long term, climate change is diminishing the potential for the Sierra snowpack to generate enough runoff. Aquifers are thus a crucial insurance policy for water users.

Critics argue that refusing to monitor and regulate groundwater could prove catastrophic to the state’s real estate sector and its $36 billion agricultural economy.

“We really have reached the limit of surface water in California,” said Tony Rossman, a San Francisco lawyer specializing in water rights.

“The answer so far has been to drill deeper,” he said. “This can’t continue.”

The opening volley in the current campaign to change the system was fired last fall by Catherine Freeman of the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan advisory agency. In a report, she recommended that the Legislature regulate groundwater pumping statewide.

Then Fran Pavley, a Democratic state senator, proposed a bill requiring that the state measure groundwater usage — a proposal that has been made on and off for half a century.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed similar legislation in 2005, 2006 and 2007, saying that a state-run system would be too expensive and cumbersome.

But even Mr. Schwarzenegger is heeding the growing drumbeat on groundwater. Issuing an emergency drought declaration in February, he asked local governments and water districts for the first time to supply the state with data on groundwater supplies.

Compliance so far has been spotty, said Mark Cowin, deputy director of the state’s Department of Water Resources. “In a lot of cases,” Mr. Cowin said, “it’s simply a matter of the information not existing.”

On the grass-roots level, resistance to monitoring is based not just in a property-rights credo but also in a belief that the state can ride out any dry spell.

Older Californians are quick to recall more severe droughts. Heavy groundwater pumping in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s caused large overdrafts, meaning the groundwater pumped out exceeded the natural recharge of water percolating down from the surface. Some water tables dropped 400 feet; in some areas the ground itself sank as much as 50 feet.

Beginning in midcentury, the state enjoyed a respite with completion of the Central Valley Project, a large hydroengineering effort to redistribute surface water around the San Joaquin Valley. Aquifers were gradually recharged, and today, California accounts for at least 20 percent of the nation’s groundwater use, down from 50 percent in the 1950s, according to the Water Education Foundation, a nonprofit group that works on water resource issues.

But this year, the Westlands water district — the state’s largest, in the San Joaquin Valley — got a taste of what the future may hold when its allocation of surface water from the Central Valley Project was cut by about 90 percent. As a result, area farmers expect to pump two and a half times the usual amount of groundwater this year.

This has led Tom Birmingham, the water district’s general manager, to a subtle shift in his thinking. “Westlands would be opposed to the control of groundwater by a state agency,” Mr. Birmingham said. “However, that doesn’t mean that collecting information is necessarily a bad thing.”

Don Mills, general manager of the neighboring Kings County district, sees only two solutions: recharging aquifers by creating asphalt- and agriculture-free zones where water can be pooled to percolate down to the aquifer, or pumping less.

Regulating demand, Mr. Mills said, “is the tough part.” Some farmers have been phasing out row crops and vegetables in favor of fruit trees, for example; leaving an orchard dry for a year is not an option.

“After one year of no irrigation, it’s firewood, not peach trees,” Mr. Mills said.

Developers have also benefited from groundwater policies as California’s population grew annually by 500,000 in recent years, reaching 38 million. Yet a few local governments are starting to rein in groundwater use.

Visalia, a city of 123,000 a dozen miles north of Tulare, is one of the fastest-growing in California. Under a 2005 ordinance, all housing projects must either cede their surface water rights to the city or pay a fee that is used to set land aside for recharging the aquifer or related activities.

“Unless you can provide water, you can’t subdivide,” said Bob Link, the city’s vice mayor. But aggressive measures like this are the exception.

Landowners and farmers like Mr. Watte say it should be up to them to manage the aquifers.

“When government gets involved in control and oversight, it’s fraught,” Mr. Watte said.

Ms. Pavley, the state senator who proposed the water monitoring bill, predicted a “very tough fight” and said, “Dealing with climate change is easy compared to this.”




Not the Poseidon venture...another re-use here.

Desalination Plant Is Approved
NYTIMES
May 14, 2009


SAN DIEGO (AP) — The water board here gave final approval for construction of the largest water desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.

The $320 million project proposed by Poseidon Resources could be operational by 2012 in Carlsbad and produce 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, or 10 percent of the supply for San Diego County. The plant will take in 100 million gallons of sea water a day. The water would then be filtered. Half of it would be used by consumers, with the rest returned to the ocean.



Expert: World's water crisis will grow worse if action not taken 
DAY
By Judy Benson 
Published on 4/4/2009

New London - Friday's intermittent rain and dense fog suited the occasion: the first of two days of a conference featuring scholarly talks about water.
The conference, “Water Scarcity & Conflict,” focused on a commodity many Americans take for granted and often waste, but one that is increasingly the source of tensions and supply problems across the world.

”I think there is a water crisis, and it's getting worse, not better,” said Peter Gleick, a leading expert on the sustainable use of water, who gave the opening address. Gleick is co-founder and president of The Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group focusing on environment and development issues. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Gleick noted there is good news about water - Americans consume less than 20 years ago, for example, thanks largely to water-conserving toilets and a shift away from industries that use large amounts.

It's not inevitable that water problems will get worse, if action is taken, said Gleick. There is ample water to fill human needs, he said, and the technology and wealth exist to solve sanitation, water-quality and distribution problems. But actually doing so requires directed political and social will that has too often been lacking, he said.

One billion of the world's people don't have access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion are without adequate sanitation, leading to the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera and chronic diarrhea that result in thousands of deaths each year.

”All of them are preventable, and most of the victims are under age five,” Gleick said.

The overuse and misuse of water also impacts ecosystems, causing wildlife declines and extinctions and the loss of natural system functions that benefit humans but are often unseen, Gleick said.

Another recent troubling trend, he said, is that pharmaceutical and chemical residues are increasingly being found in public water supplies as well as natural lakes, rivers, estuaries and groundwater.

”Water quality is deteriorating with industrial waste and pharmaceuticals in mixes we don't expect, and with consequences we don't understand,” he said.

Climate change is also affecting water supplies, he said. As the planet warms, hydrological cycles change, and with them, rainfall and storm patterns are disrupted. That could have direct impacts on agricuture and drinking water systems.

Population growth is also stressing water supplies, he said, noting that populations are growing fastest in the parts of the world with the biggest water problems. The present world population is estimated at 6.7 billion. In some areas, aquifers are being pumped faster than they can recharge.

Cutting wasteful water use with higher water and sewer rates is one way, he said. The rate structure, he added, should be tiered with lower rates for low-income households. He said he strongly believes that access to clean water is a basic human right, but that doesn't mean it should be free.

”Everything we do with water we can do with less water,” Gleick said.

Investment in aging water-supply, distribution and water-treatment systems is also needed to increase efficiency and remove more contaminants. To increase supply, he advocated more harvesting of rainwater and reusing wastewater for watering lawns, golf courses and industry to increase supply.

”Where we're heading is where we don't want to go,” he said. “But the good news is that there is a path to a sustainable system.”

The conference, held at Connecticut College, was organized by the college's Goodwin-Niering Center for Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies. 



Link to the Weston Water Resources Guide here, for more on TCE...
Exposed to Solvent, Worker Faces Hurdles
NYTIMES
By FELICITY BARRINGER
January 25, 2009

BEREA, Ky. — When the University of Kentucky published new research in 2008 suggesting that exposure to a common industrial solvent might increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease, the moment was a source of satisfaction to Ed Abney, a 53-year-old former tool-and-die worker.

Mr. Abney, now sidelined by Parkinson’s, had spent more than two decades up to his elbows in a drum of the solvent, trichloroethylene, while he cleaned metal piping at a now-shuttered Dresser Industries plant here.

The university study had focused on him and his factory co-workers who worked near the same 55-gallon drum of the vaguely sweet-smelling chemical. It found that 27 workers had either the anxiety, tremors, rigidity or other symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, or had motor skills that were significantly impaired, compared with a healthy peer group. The study, Mr. Abney thought, was the scientific evidence he needed to claim worker’s compensation benefits.

He was wrong. The medical researchers would not sign the form attesting that Mr. Abney’s disease was linked to his work.

Individuals like Mr. Abney are caught between the conflicting imperatives of science and law — and there is a huge gap between what researchers are discovering about environmental contaminants and what they can prove about their impact on disease. The gap has ensured that only a tiny fraction of worker’s compensation payments are received by those who were exposed to harmful substances at work.

“It’s awfully difficult for any doctor or researcher to say to an individual: ‘You have this disease because you were exposed at this time,’ “ said J. Paul Leigh, a professor of public health sciences at the University of California, Davis.

How many people are caught in the same bind as Mr. Abney, “nobody really knows,” said Rafael Metzger, a California lawyer who specializes in cases involving diseases contracted in the workplace.

“Most workers who have an occupational disease don’t think they have an occupational disease,” Mr. Metzger said, adding that “the few who might think it are mostly not successful” in getting compensation “because there isn’t a robust body of literature to support the claim.”

Mr. Abney’s wife, Anita Susan Abney, is frustrated by the high standard of proof required. “If you’re saying in your study, ‘Yes, the dots have been connected,’ you should be able to say it in a court of law,” Ms. Abney said. “You should be able to say it at all levels.” She added, “I don’t blame it on the doctors, but on the strictness of the research.”

Trichloroethylene was nearly ubiquitous in American industry in the latter part of the 20th century. Production grew from to 321 million pounds in 1991 from 260,000 pounds in 1981, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The National Toxicology Program has declared that the solvent, also known as TCE, can “reasonably be anticipated” to be a carcinogen. It is a contaminant in drinking water in some areas of the country and is found in more than half the 1,430 priority Superfund sites listed by the E.P.A.

There was no question in Mr. Abney’s mind what he was working with.

“It was a good cleaner,” he said in an interview, his cane at his side. His wife recalled, “When he came home at night, he would say, ‘The smell is killing me.’ ”

Mrs. Abney sat next to her husband, with the fat files she has accumulated documenting aspects of his case — communications with doctors and with lawyers (all of whom left after the doctors refused to sign the forms.)

Some of the paperwork documents the progression of Mr. Abney’s ailment: the day in 1996 when “on my left hand, a finger was twitching” or the day he could not enunciate the lesson to the Sunday school class he was teaching; and then, the day neither his hands nor his voice would perform his morning devotional rituals.

For five years, he received a series of diagnoses, including Lou Gehrig’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., correctly diagnosed his condition in 2001.

He left work and now receives federal disability payments of $1,200 a month. He was referred to Drs. Don M. Gash and John T. Slevin and joined a group of Parkinson’s patients involved in the testing of an experimental drug.

Mr. Abney mentioned that some of his co-workers also had neurological problems. Researchers mailed a questionnaire to 134 former Dresser workers; 65 responded.

Three, including Mr. Abney, had full-fledged Parkinson’s. The researchers found that of 27 others, 14 reported they had symptoms of the kind associated with the disease, and 13 others had significant slowing of motor responses or other symptoms of Parkinson’s.

A parallel study showed that feeding the solvent to rats resulted in injured neurons in the same area of the brain whose degeneration causes Parkinson’s in humans.

The conclusion, published in the Annals of Neurology in February 2008: “These results demonstrate a strong potential link between chronic TCE exposure and Parkinsonism.” But when it came to the specifics of Mr. Abney’s case, Dr. Gash said in an interview, “He started working at Dresser over 25 years ago, maybe 28 years ago. Trying to reconstruct what was going on then is just impossible.”

He added, “Certainly, we focused on one aspect of the toxins he was exposed to, but he was exposed to other toxins,” including agricultural pesticides or fumigants used to kill vermin at the plant.

“Was it the trichloroethylene?” Dr. Gash asked. “It could have been. But it could have been other things, too,” including a genetic predisposition to the disease.

Implicating TCE requires ruling out other potential causes, he said — something that could take years.

Which leaves few options for compensation. Dwight Lovan, Kentucky’s commissioner of worker’s compensation, said, “We are dependent on the scientific and medical communities for the element of causality.”

In other circumstances, proof of causality has been eased or waived. For instance, the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2001 added Lou Gehrig’s disease to the list of service-related disabilities for Persian Gulf war veterans; in September 2008 it agreed to consider any service member who served for at least 90 days eligible for disability benefits if they later contracted A.L.S.

A crucial element of this decision, according to a veterans affairs official, was that the agency made no link between the onset of A.L.S. and a service member’s experience — whether exposure to the anthrax vaccine or the fires Saddam Hussein set in the oil wells under his control.

Kentucky officials do not have that option. In the workplace, as John Burton, an emeritus professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, said, “You still have the underlying requirement to establish that the workplace was the cause.” Because the burden of proof is so high and the relative benefits are so low, lawyers have little financial incentive to take on a case like Mr. Abney’s.

And scientists like Dr. Gash have little enthusiasm for working with lawyers.

E. Donald Elliott, a Yale Law School professor specializing in these cases, said that simply being exposed to a risk in the workplace “should in itself be a compensable injury.”

“You don’t have to prove you got the Parkinson’s because of the exposure,” Professor Elliott said. “From a policy standpoint, does it make sense for the entire burden of uncertainty or unknown science to fall on the injured parties rather than falling on the business or industry involved?”

For Mr. Abney and his wife, the disappointment still rankles. “You read this study and you hear about it and it builds you up,” Mr. Abney said. “And then you get let down. You get to where you just don’t care.”


Latest news...water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink...not any more!


Question 1:  Where in CT is Willimantic?  Oh, there it is, at Interstate 84, on a railroad line.

ECSU Opens Eco-Friendly Science Building
The Hartford Courant
By GRACE E. MERRITT
December 15, 2008

WILLIMANTIC —

A wide sidewalk crosses a shallow pool filled with river rocks and leads into an oval-shaped lobby. A modern patchwork of natural wood squares panels one wall, while multicolored slate fills another. The air seems clean and the mood is calm.

Ahhhhh.

The visitor instinctively relaxes. The earthy, low-key entrance seems an appropriate welcome to the new Science Building at Eastern Connecticut State University, the latest addition to the university's ongoing makeover and one of the latest "green" buildings to spring up on Connecticut campuses.

The $46 million building exudes a green vibe, with soothing, earth-toned walls and floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobby and corridors.

Inside the walls, pipes carry recycled water and sensors monitor air quality and gauge room occupancy to turn lights on and off. Offices and classrooms ring the building's outer rim to take advantage of natural light.

All of the furniture is locally made from recycled materials. Even the urinals are eco-friendly; they don't use water.

Eastern's Science Building is part of a national trend to go green in campus architecture. The new buildings are designed to have more healthful interiors, take advantage of natural light, use recycled materials and conserve energy and water.

Other recent examples of "sustainable" college buildings include the University of Connecticut's football and training center, which has turf made from ground-up sneakers and tires, and Yale University's Sculpture and Art Building, which features translucent panels filled with Nanogel, or "frozen smoke," to increase natural lighting while insulating walls.

The trend sprang up on campuses in early 2000, when one of the first sustainable buildings in the country opened at Oberlin College in Ohio. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin is packed with "sustainable" features, including a wetland-based ecosystem to treat and recycle wastewater.

The movement gained momentum in 2006 and 2007 as colleges used all kinds of new materials, including insulation made from recycled bluejeans, carpets woven from plastic soda bottles and walkways paved with crushed airplane windshields.

There are currently 260 college buildings nationwide, including laboratories and administration buildings, that meet the strict Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system set by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization.

Hundreds of other college leaders, including those at Eastern, are seeking certification for their green buildings.

"Colleges and universities tend to be innovators and see themselves as producing the next generation of leaders. Because they are early adapters of new technology, they tend to embrace things such as renewable energy on campus and want to build very efficient buildings," said Melissa GallagherRogers, who manages the government sector of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Eastern professors say they are pleased with the state-of-the-art facility, which replaces 1970s-era lab and office buildings scattered around campus.

"I don't have to carry distilled water across the campus to my office anymore," biology Professor Ross Koning said.

Not only are the roomy, new labs piped with running distilled water, but also all classrooms and labs, as well as the stadium seating-equipped lecture hall, are wired with overhead projectors connected to a document camera and a computer with Internet access.

"It's a big building at 174,000 square feet. But because there is natural light at the end of every corridor, it doesn't look institutional at all," said Nancy Tinker, director of facilities management and planning at Eastern.

"It really opens up this side of campus and makes it complete," said Katelyn Ercolani, 19, of Wethersfield.

Some college administrators say they feel morally compelled to build sustainable buildings.

"Certainly in terms of the environment and the future, it's the right thing to do," Tinker said. "It's a more efficient building, so it costs you less in the long run to operate it."

In fact, a flat-screen TV in the Science Building's lobby shows how much electricity the building is using in real time and compares it with other academic buildings on campus.

Sustainable design experts say going green has other benefits, such as recruiting students.

"Sustainability is an important criteria for prospective students for deciding where they are going to college," said Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

It also can help keep students and faculty healthier, Dautremont-Smith said.

"Good indoor air quality and natural light both have an impact on student learning and productivity," he said.

Some professors predict that the imposing new building also will encourage more students to major in biology and will help attract faculty to Eastern.

"You can't help but recruit faculty when you have a nice space," Koning said.



Wrestling With Uranium:  Heavy Metal Showing Up In Drinking Water, But Health Effects Uncertain
The Hartford Courant
By DAVID FUNKHOUSER
December 14, 2008

Uranium contamination poses a persistent problem in as many as 16 well water systems serving thousands of people around the state, according to a Courant analysis of test records from the state Department of Public Health.

The contaminated sites include Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, a mobile home park in Killingworth and 10 condominium complexes in Brookfield. At those sites and in four other towns — Danbury, Kent, Madison and Newtown — well water systems exceeded federal limits for uranium in drinking water at some point in the past year.

Earlier this fall, contamination at a condominium complex in Madison prompted officials to test two nearby public schools, where they also found uranium. The discovery alarmed residents and prompted officials to turn off the taps, bring in bottled water and start a broad public education campaign.  Brian Toal of the state Department of Public Health's water section said the department sent out letters a few weeks ago to all the towns affected by uranium contamination, recommending that they look around the wells in question and alert nearby private well owners to make sure it isn't a more widespread problem.

Uranium, found as a trace metal in bedrock throughout the Northeast, is not highly radioactive, though it is a heavy metal known to damage the kidneys at high enough exposures. State health officials said they are unaware of any health problems directly linked to the contamination, and don't expect any at the levels that have been found.

But the federal Environmental Protection Agency has required testing for uranium in communal well water systems only in the past few years, and the state and communities involved are just beginning to understand the scope of the problem and how to cope with it.  Health officials consider a system to be out of compliance if the average of test results from the previous 12 months exceeds the federal standard of 30 parts per billion of uranium.

Still Running

The water supply at Johnson Memorial Hospital has contained an average of 38 to 42 parts per billion of uranium over the past year, tests show.

For now, the water is running as usual, and the hospital has posted notices of the test results in public areas, hospital officials said. The hospital, which is being bought by the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, has proposed a $500,000 plan to provide filtration and address the problem.

"I am aware of our levels and the limits set by the [EPA], and I am very comfortable drinking the water," said Peter J. Betts, the hospital's interim chief executive officer.

Bill Blitz, director of the North Central District Health Department in Enfield, said state health officials notified him about the contamination at the hospital a week or two ago. He said the DPH is working with the hospital to address the problem.

"We're planning now to do some testing of wells of housing around the site to see how far the pollution extends," he added.

Getting a handle on uranium contamination is tricky, and health officials say there is no sure way to know, when a well is dug, whether the water in it will be contaminated. Some areas are more susceptible because of the underlying bedrock that may contain uranium. Most of the contaminated sites are in the western part of the state.

"You came to the right place — the home of radionuclides," Brookfield First Selectman Bob Silvaggi joked when asked about his town's problem. He said the town has been dealing with the issue of radioactive elements in its water for two decades. Parts of town have been plagued by excessive radon and radium, both by-products of uranium decay.

In the most recent test results, for the third quarter of this year, six condominium groups in Brookfield with a combined 1,740 residents were found with uranium above the federal standard, according to the DPH. The amounts ranged from 41 to 257 parts per billion.  Most of the violations are clustered in two areas, Silvaggi said: on Silvermine Road and further south along Route 7 near the Danbury line. Brookfield is seeking millions of dollars in loans from the state to connect the affected areas to public water supplies. In the meantime, residents have largely been responding by drinking bottled water and installing filters.

All residential public water systems serving 25 or more people must test for uranium. That doesn't include non-residential schools, clinics, restaurants and other transient facilities where people are likely to drink less water than at home. Tests are done quarterly, and the results fluctuate.

As of the end of September, nine systems in four towns were out of compliance. Seven other systems that had violated the uranium standard earlier in the year were in compliance after the latest round of tests.

Health directors in the affected communities said they were considering how to respond. Most said they were likely to recommend more testing of private wells.

For individual homeowners, a test for uranium costs about $50, and special filters are available that can remove not only uranium but also radon and radium. Health officials consider radon and radium to be more dangerous. Radon, which poses a problem in the air in many parts of the state, can cause lung cancer. Radium poses a risk for bone cancer, Toal said.

Community systems face a more expensive problem: Treating large quantities of uranium-contaminated water wastes a lot of water and typically involves flushing contaminated water into the ground — something state environmental officials generally oppose.

"If high levels of uranium in drinking water are a cause for concern, you would not want to discharge water back into the ground that could contaminate unaffected or uncontaminated sources," said Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP is suggesting that communities first look into tying into alternate sources of water, Schain said. That can be expensive, too. In Madison, officials estimated that it would cost $1 million per mile to extend a water main up to the affected condos and schools.

Other Fallout

The other systems affected by uranium contamination include Candlewood Park in Danbury, which serves some 500 residents. Test results were slightly above the uranium standard earlier this year, but it is now in compliance.

In Killingworth, Jensen's Beechwood Mobile Home Park, with about 750 people, averaged 60 parts per billion over the past year. Town Health Director Edward Winokur said local officials have invited the DPH down to talk over the issue at a meeting Wednesda, 7 p.m., in town hall.  Uranium was found just above the standard in well water serving the Marvelwood School's faculty houses in Kent earlier this year, but the system is now in compliance, the DPH said.

Madison's Legend Hill Condominiums have been out of compliance for at least the past year. The problem prompted officials to look at the nearby Ryerson and Brown schools, where they found three times the allowable level of uranium. Town officials are talking to health officials and the DEP about possible long-term solutions.

Uranium was found in the well water at the Middle Gate School in Newtown, but the school has since been hooked up to the public water supply, according to health director Donna Culbert.  Also in Newtown, the Meadowbrook Terrace Mobile Home Park was above the uranium standard earlier this year but is now in compliance, according to DPH data.

Across the state there are at least 186 separate well water systems serving residential and non-residential schools, and they are all regularly tested for various contaminants, such as bacteria, lead and copper, pesticides and herbicides and various other chemicals. But only schools with 25 or more resident students and faculty must test for uranium and other radionuclides.  Two hospitals besides Johnson Memorial are served by wells and considered residential systems, and so must test for uranium: Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown and Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford.





Poor water quality results in prohibition on recreational shellfishing in Scott's Cove
Stamford ADVOCATE
Posted: 07/03/2009 09:18:56 PM EDT

Though much of the natural beauty of Scott's Cove remains just as noted landscape artist John Frederick Kensett portrayed it in the 1870s, a not-so-little dirty secret seems to be spreading just below the surface of the bay's placid waters.

Something is, ahem, rotting in Scott's Cove.

This spring, the state Bureau of Aquaculture prohibited shellfishing by recreational fisherman around much of Scott's Cove -- the watery backyard to the multimillion-dollar neighborhoods of Tokeneke, Salem Straits, Delafield Island and Contentment Island.

One reason for permanently prohibiting recreational shellfishing in the cove is deteriorating water quality in the form of high fecal bacteria counts collected in samples over the past several years, officials say.

The culprit appears to be leaking residential septic systems perched on the granite ledge of stone that supports many of the waterfront homes, said David Carey, director for the Bureau of Aquaculture. Shellfish are particularly sensitive to pollution and can, in turn, make people sick.

A mature oyster filters as much as 70 gallons of water every day, which concentrates pollutants in the bivalve for a number of days, when it should not be eaten, Carey said.

Darien Shellfish Commission Chairman Sandy McDonald said he and the commission were surprised the state was contemplating closing the shellfish beds when he began hearing about it one year ago. He has since fielded complaints from a few shellfishermen who have been barred from plying their hobby in the cove. About 60 people purchased recreational shellfishing licenses in Darien this year.

With the help of town health officials, the bureau conducted a two-year shoreline survey of Darien that included 543 parcels of private property. Initially, 52 property owners declined to allow the state onto their land for the physical inspection. With the help of officials in Darien, that number dwindled to eight. Of that survey, which was undertaken to locate pollution sources, about 50 septic systems around Scott's Cove were found to be failing, Carey said.

Darien Public Health Director David Knauf disputed Carey's numbers and challenged the bureau to come up with addresses and data that show so many septic systems are leaking raw sewage into the cove.

"I didn't see any failing systems and I went out with them on several days," Knauf said.

With the help of Harbormaster Bob Price, Knauf began collecting water samples in the cove himself on Thursday. "I am not under any illusion that our testing will change the mind of the state as far as Scott's Cove is concerned, but we as a community want to know what our water quality is," he said.

Carey admits the case against septic systems has not been entirely proven. The source of pollution, however, can only come from humans or animals such as geese. The bureau believes the large amount of home expansions allowed on properties with septic systems built for much smaller homes is causing the problem.

He is also troubled by the eight property owners who have so far shied away from the inspections.

"When someone doesn't allow you on the property you have to suspect that there is an ulterior reason," Carey said.


SEWERLINE BREAK
Robert Grierson of DPW for the Town of Greenwich, at the scene of a break in a sewer main on Sound Shore Drive in Cos Cob which an EPA administrator in Boston says spilled 28 million gallons of raw sewage into the Mianus River over the course of a 4 day period. (Bob Luckey/Staff Photo)


Shellfish test normal after Greenwich spill
Greenwich TIME
By Colleen Flaherty, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/20/2008, but we suspect that this is a mistake, since the article was close to the top of news for Jan. 2, 2009!

Seawater and shellfish meat samples show normal levels of bacteria following last month's sewer main break in Cos Cob, the state Bureau of Aquaculture & Laboratory Services said.

Water samples tested Wednesday and shellfish meat samples tested last week were the first and only samples to be tested following the Dec. 12 incident, which caused 28 million gallons of sewage to be diverted into the Long Island Sound via the Mianus River over four days, one of the largest spills in New England history. The samples showed normal levels of bacteria, said bureau Director David Carey.

"The samples are never clean but we have cutoffs," said Carey, at his office in Milford Wednesday. "The (bacteria) levels are significantly below the cutoff."

Carey said he would pass on the information to the town's Shellfish Commission, which shut down seven of eight Greenwich shellfish beds following the sewer main break.  The eighth bed was already closed, for other reasons.

Roger Bowgen, the town's shellfish commissioner, hadn't yet spoken with Carey Wednesday but said, "The beds will not open until we as a Shellfish Commission are completely satisfied that there is no danger to the general public."

Three weeks ago, a high-pressure sewer main carrying wastewater from eastern Greenwich ruptured near Sound Shore Avenue.

During the four days it took to repair the main, which was complicated by the discovery of a nearby gas line, wastewater was diverted to Long Island Sound via the Mianus River.  The cause of the break is still unknown, according to town and state officials.  The town's Health Department posted no signs around the sewer bypasses at Cos Cob Harbor and Juniper Lane, according to Director of Environmental Services Michael Long.

"September through May, any swimming is at your own risk because we don't do any weekly testing during the winter season," he said.

All of the town's shellfish beds, however, have remained closed due to shellfish feeding habits, said Carey.

"Shellfish are filter feeders," he said. "They can filter 70 gallons of water a day. So when you go to eat them on the second day (of a spill), they've got 140 times the bacteria. You're more at risk."

Some fish are filter feeders, also.  Bowgen said signs indicating the closure of the beds spanned the shoreline, and that the information also was available on the town's Web site and on the shellfish hotline, 622-7777.

Greenwich sewage spill one of largest in New England Sewer main break spilled 28 million gallons into Mianus River
Greenwich TIME
By Colleen Flaherty, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/30/2008 08:04:57 AM EST

The Dec. 12 sewer main break in Cos Cob sent 28 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the Mianus River, according to a report filed by the town of Greenwich with state and federal environmental officials.

The amount, diverted into the Long Island Sound via the river over four days, could have filled 42 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

"This is one of the larger spills," said Michael Fedak, senior enforcement coordinator for water programs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's New England office in Boston.

Fedak, an EPA official for 30 years, said he could recall only two other spills of similar magnitude, one in Worcester, Mass., and one in Wethersfield.

The report, which was due on Dec. 17, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection, was faxed to the EPA and DEP on Dec. 26, according to officials there.

Through last week, town officials said they did not know the amount of sewage that was diverted into the river. The report, prepared by Wastewater Division Manager Richard Feminella, said its estimate of 28 million gallons had finally been made based on the drop in the town's treatment plant flow combined with bypass pumping rates during repair work.

On the morning of Friday, Dec. 12, town workers responded to a sewer main break at Sound Shore Avenue in Cos Cob.

Wastewater from the high-pressure main, which transports effluent from eastern Greenwich to the Grass Island treatment facility, was temporarily diverted into the Mianus River , one at Cos Cob Harbor and one in Riverside on Juniper Lane.  Efforts to repair the main were complicated by the discovery of an adjacent gas line midday Saturday, which prevented contractors from installing shoring around the site to prevent a possible collapse.

Town officials have said they asked Connecticut Natural Gas to cut the line, which supplies the Cos Cob Power Plant, but it initially refused. The gas company finally agreed to remove the several-meter section of the pipe in question only after Commissioner of Public Works Amy Seibert issued an order that it do so Monday, Dec. 16.  The sewer main was not repaired until lunchtime Tuesday, Dec. 16.

Fedak, who had only looked at the report preliminarily Monday, said he expected he would be in contact with town and state officials in the near future to discuss the root causes of the incident, key to preventing such breaks in the future.

"The report basically talks about what the town did in response to the break," he said. "It's probably premature to figure out what the root cause of it was."

Feminalla said Monday he wasn't sure what had initially caused the 16-foot crack in the bottom of the main. That section of the pipe has been removed and will be studied by an outside firm, he said.

"There's a couple of things that could have contributed to the failure of that piece of pipe," he said, citing exterior pressure points caused by rocks as an example.

Feminella said the situation inside the pipe was exacerbated by the heavy rains and high tides the night before the incident.  Asked if he felt the town could have predicted the break in the aging main, which had a history of leaks, Feminella said, "I don't think so, no. This particular force main is three miles in length."

He added that the town was constantly monitoring known problem areas along the pipe, but, he said, "You don't just go out and install a brand new pipe. You do it in sections and everything costs money."

In the meantime, the shellfish beds throughout Greenwich are still closed. Shellfish Commission Director Roger Bowgen did not return a call for comment.

Michael Long, director of environmental services for the town's health department, said Monday he did not know the results of the commission's most recent water and shellfish tests.  Conservation Commission Director Denise Savageau said Monday that the Long Island Sound would suffer no long-term damage as a result of the spill.

"As a municipality," she said, "we're really in good shape."

Savageau continued, "Cities like New York and Bridgeport are dumping sewage right into the Long Island Sound every time there's a storm event. We just had a one-time event in Greenwich. We just have to fix in and move forward."

Jo Conboy, a Greenwich environmentalist and chairman of Save Our Shores, a local environmental group, however, called the break and the four days it took to fix it "unacceptable" Monday.

"There's a lot of work that needs to be done on our sewer system here," she said. "We have to look into our infrastructure because we've neglected it."


A Tall, Cool Drink of ... Sewage?

NYTIMES
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
Published: August 8, 2008

Before I left New York for California, where I planned to visit a water-recycling plant, I mopped my kitchen floor. Afterward, I emptied the bucket of dirty water into the toilet and watched as the foamy mess swirled away. This was one of life’s more mundane moments, to be sure. But with water infrastructure on my mind, I took an extra moment to contemplate my water’s journey through city pipes to the wastewater-treatment plant, which separates solids and dumps the disinfected liquids into the ocean.

A day after mopping, I gazed balefully at my hotel toilet in Santa Ana, Calif., and contemplated an entirely new cycle. When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

Opened in January, the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System is the largest of its type in the world. It cost $480 million to build, will cost $29 million a year to run and took more than a decade to get off the ground. The stumbling block was psychological, not architectural. An aversion to feces is nearly universal, and as critics of the process are keen to point out, getting sewage out of drinking water was one of the most important public health advances of the last 150 years.

Still, Orange County forged ahead. It didn’t appear to have a choice. Saltwater from the Pacific Ocean was entering the county’s water supply, drawn in by overpumping from the groundwater basin, says Ron Wildermuth, who at the time we talked was the water district’s spokesman. Moreover, population growth meant more wastewater, which meant building a second sewage pipe, five miles into the Pacific — a $200 million proposition. Recycling the effluent solved the disposal problem and the saltwater problem in one fell swoop. A portion of the plant’s filtered output is now injected into the ground near the coast, to act as a pressurized barrier against saltwater from the ocean. Factor in Southern California’s near chronic drought, the county’s projected growth (another 300,000 to 500,000 thirsty people by 2020) and the rising cost of importing water from the Colorado River and from Northern California (the county pays $530 per acre-foot of imported water, versus $520 per acre-foot of reclaimed water), and rebranding sewage as a valuable resource became a no-brainer.

With the demand for water growing, some aquifers dropping faster than they’re replenished, snowpacks thinning and climate change predicted to make dry places even drier, water managers around the country, and the world, are contemplating similar schemes. Los Angeles and San Diego, which both rejected potable reuse, have raised the idea once again, as have, for the first time, DeKalb County, Ga., and Miami-Dade County, Fla.

While Orange County planned and secured permits, public-relations experts went into overdrive, distributing slick educational brochures and videos and giving pizza parties. “If there was a group, we talked to them,” says Wildermuth, who recently left Orange County to help sell Los Angelenos on drinking purified waste. “Historical societies, chambers of commerce, flower committees.” The central message was health and safety, but the persuaders didn’t skimp on buzz phrases like “local control” and “independence from imported water.” Last winter, the valve between the sewage plant and the drinking-water plant whooshed open, and a new era in California’s water history began.

When I visited the plant, a sprawl of modern buildings behind a concrete wall, in March, Wildermuth, in a blue sport coat and bright tie, acted as my guide. “Quick!” he shouted at one point, mounting a ledge and clinging to the rail over a microfiltration bay. “Over here!” I clambered up just as its contents finished draining from the scum-crusted tank. The sudsy water, direct from the sewage-treatment plant, was the color of Guinness. “This is the most exciting thing you’ll see here, and I didn’t want you to miss it,” he said.

Wildermuth went on to explain what we were looking at: inside each of 16 concrete bays hangs a rack of vertical tubes stuffed with 15,000 polypropylene fibers the thickness of dental floss. The fibers are stippled with holes 1/300th the size of a human hair. Pumps pull water into the fibers, leaving behind anything larger than 0.2 microns, stuff like bacteria, protozoa and the dread “suspended solids.”

The excitement and the bubbles were backwash: every 21 minutes, air is injected into the microfibers to blast them clean. The schmutz goes back to the sewage-treatment plant, and the cleaner water, now the color of chamomile tea, is pumped toward reverse-osmosis filters in another building. Before we saw that process, Wildermuth led me underground to inspect several enormous pumps and pipes large enough to crawl through. I noted that everything was clearly labeled and scrupulously clean. Then it dawned on me: reassurance was the reason we’d taken the detour.

We followed the pipes up to a sunlit, metal-clad building where the water, now dosed with an antiscalant and sulfuric acid to lower its pH, was forced at high pressure through hundreds of white tubes filled with tightly spiraled sheets of plastic membranes. Reverse osmosis, Wildermuth says, stops cold almost all nonwater molecules (things like salts, viruses and pharmaceuticals). The stuff that’s removed is washed back to a pipe that discharges into the ocean. The filtered water, now known as permeate, moves one building over, where it’s spiked with hydrogen peroxide, a disinfectant, and then circulated past 144 lamps emitting ultraviolet light. “Destruction of compounds through photolysis,” Wildermuth said, nodding. Anything that’s alive in this water can no longer reproduce.

Strolling back through the campus, Wildermuth took me to a three-part demonstration sink with faucets streaming. The basin on the right contained reverse-osmosis backwash: it was molasses black, topped with a rainbow slick of oil. “Don’t touch,” Wildermuth warned as I leaned in for a better look at the ocean-bound rejectamenta. The middle basin contained the chamomile water from microfiltration. And on the left was the stuff Orange County would eventually drink. It was clear and had no smell.

But even this suctioned, sieved and irradiated water wasn’t quite set for sipping; it still needed to be decarbonized and dosed with lime, to raise its pH. Finally it would enter a massive purple pipe, which dives into the ground inside a nearby pump house and reappears 13 miles to the north, in Anaheim. There, the water would pour into Kraemer Basin, a man-made reservoir, where it would mix with the lake water and filter for six months through layers of sand and gravel hundreds of feet deep before utilities throughout the county pumped it into taps.

The reservoir is a prosaic ending for a substance that’s been through the glitziest of technological wringers, transformed from sewage to drinking water only to be humbly redeposited into the earth. This final filtering step isn’t necessary, strictly speaking, but our psyches seem to demand it.

To understand the basics of contemporary water infrastructure is to acknowledge that most American tap water has had some contact with treated sewage. Our wastewater-treatment plants discharge into streams that feed rivers from which other cities suck water for drinking. By the time New Orleans residents drink the Mississippi, the water has been in and out of more than a dozen cities; more than 200 communities, including Las Vegas, discharge treated wastewater into the Colorado River. That’s the good news. After heavy rains, many cities discharge untreated sewage directly into waterways — more than 860 billion gallons of it a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. However — and this is where we can take solace — the sewage is massively diluted, time and sunlight help to break down its components and drinking-water plants filter and disinfect the water before it reaches our taps. The E.P.A. requires utilities to monitor pathogens, and there hasn’t been a major waterborne-disease outbreak in this country since 1993. (Though there have been 85 smaller outbreaks between 2001 and 2006.)

So confident are engineers of so-called advanced treatment technologies that several communities have been discharging highly treated wastewater directly into reservoirs for years. Singapore mixes 1 percent treated wastewater with 99 percent fresh water in its reservoirs. (In Orange County, the final product will contain 17 percent recycled water.) Residents of Windhoek, Namibia, one of the driest places on earth, drink 100 percent treated wastewater. For 30 years, the Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority, in Virginia, has been mixing recycled wastewater with fresh water in a reservoir and serving it to more than a million people. Still, no system produces as much recycled water as Orange County (currently 70 million gallons a day, going up to 85 million by 2011), and none inserts as many physical and chemical barriers between toilet and tap.


Environmentalists, river advocates and California surfers — the sort of people who harbor few illusions about the purity of our rivers and oceans — generally favor water recycling. It beats importing water on both economic and environmental grounds (about a fifth of California’s energy is used to move water from north to south). “The days are over when we can consider wastewater a liability,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental research group in Oakland. “It’s an asset. And that means figuring out how best to use it.”

As we deplete the earth’s nonrenewable resources, like oil and metals, the one-way trip from raw material to disposed and forgotten waste makes less and less sense. Already we recycle aluminum to avoid mining, compost organic material to avoid generating methane in landfills and turn plastic into lumber. As it becomes more valuable, water will be no different.

“We have to treat all waste as a resource,” Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, says. “Our water source, hundreds of miles away, is drying up. If the population is growing, what are our options?”

Water conservation could take us a long way, as would lower water subsidies for farmers. But sooner or later, stressed-out utility managers come back to the same idea: returning wastewater to the tap.

The process isn’t risk-free. Some scientists are concerned that dangerous compounds or undetectable viruses will escape the multiple physical and chemical filters at the plant. And others suggest that the potential for human error or mechanical failure — clogged filters or torn membranes that let pathogens through, for example — is too great to risk something as basic to public health as drinking water.

Recycled water should be used only as nondrinking water, says Philip Singer, the Daniel Okun Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of North Carolina. “It may contain trace amounts of contaminants. Reverse osmosis and UV disinfection are very good, but there are still uncertainties.”

And then there are those whose first, and final, reaction is “yuck.”

“Why the hell do we have to drink our own sewage?” asks Muriel Watson, a retired schoolteacher who sat on a California water-reuse task force and founded the Revolting Grandmas to fight potable reuse. She toured the Orange County plant but came away unsatisfied. “It’s not the sun and the sky and a roaring river crashing into rocks” — nature’s way of purifying water. “It’s just equipment.”

The Santa Ana River forms in the San Bernardino Mountains and flows southwest through Riverside and then Orange counties to the sea, the largest coastal stream in Southern California. But that’s not saying much: in the summer, the Santa Ana’s flow is nearly 100 percent wastewater. The river’s base flow — what enters the channel from runoff, rain and wastewater-treatment plants — is increasing. Not only is more effluent entering the river, a consequence of population growth, but as the county develops and paves more surfaces, rainwater runs off the earth faster, sluicing into the river channel before it can sink into the earth and replenish aquifers.

To capture and clean that water, the Orange County Water District has gone into hyper-beaver mode on the river. Twenty miles upstream from Anaheim, the water district has created the Prado Wetlands. It’s a lovely place, lush with willow and mule fat, busy with butterflies and, over the course of the year, 250 species of birds. Moving through a series of rectangular ponds, river water filters slowly through thickets of cattails and bulrushes meant to extract excess nitrate from upstream dairy farms and sewage-treatment plants. Returned to the main channel, the water wends around T- and L-shaped berms that slow the water and maximize its contact with the river bottom. Gates and sluiceways then shunt the water into nine man-made ponds and pits. The goal is to get more water into the county’s groundwater basin, a 350-square-mile, 1,500-foot-deep bathtub of sand and gravel layers, which act as natural scrubbers. The system upriver — using gravity and gravel — and the system in Fountain Valley — in tanks and tubes — both achieve the same goal. Sort of.


It’s one of the many pardoxes of indirect potable reuse that the water leaving the plant in Fountain Valley is far cleaner than the water that it mingles with. Yes, the water entering the sewage-treatment plant in Fountain Valley is 100 percent wastewater and has a T.D.S. — a measure of water purity, T.D.S. stands for total dissolved solids and refers to the amount of trace elements in the water — of 1,000 parts per million. But after microfiltration and reverse osmosis, the T.D.S. is down to 30. (Poland Spring water has a T.D.S. of between 35 and 46.) By contrast, the “raw” water in the Anaheim basins has a T.D.S. of 600.

If everything in the Fountain Valley plant is in perfect working order, its finished water will contain no detectable levels of bacteria, pharmaceuticals or agricultural and industrial chemicals. The same can be said of very few water sources in this country. But once the Fountain Valley water mingles with the county’s other sources, its purity goes downhill. Filtering it through sand and gravel removes some contaminants, but it also adds bacteria (not necessarily harmful, and local utilities will eventually knock them out them with chlorine) and possibly pharmaceuticals.

In other words, nature messes up the expensively reclaimed water. So why stick it back into the ground? “We do it for psychological reasons,” says Adam Hutchinson, director of recharge operations for the water district. “In the future, people will laugh at us for putting it back in, instead of just drinking it.”

Psychologists and marketers have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what makes a product, or a process, seem natural. Obviously, framing the issue properly is the key to acceptance. “If people connect the history of their water to contamination, you’ll get a disgust response no matter how you treat that water in between,” says Brent Haddad, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “But if you enable people to frame out that history by telling them, for example, that ‘the clean water has been separated from the polluted water,’ they no longer make that connection.” We abridge history all the time, Haddad adds. “Think of the restaurant fork that was in the mouth of someone with a contagious disease, the pillow that was underneath people doing private adult things in a hotel bedroom. If you think of it that way, the intermediate steps, like washing with hot water, don’t matter.”

All water on earth is recycled: the same drops that misted Devonian ferns and dripped from the fur of woolly mammoths are watering us today. From evaporation to condensation and precipitation, the cycle goes on and on. But in the planet’s drier regions, where the population continues to rise, we can expect the time between use and reuse to grow ever shorter, with purification, pipes and pumps standing in for natural processes. Instead of sand and gravel filtering our drinking water, microfibers and membranes will do the job; instead of sunlight knocking out parasites, we’ll plug in the UV lamps.

You could argue that in coming to terms with wastewater as a resource, we’ll take better care of our water. At long last, the “everything is connected” message, the bedrock of the environmental movement, will hit home. In this view, once a community is forced to process and drink its toilet water, those who must drink it will rise up and change their ways. Floor moppers will switch to biodegradable cleaning products. Industry will use nontoxic material. Factory farms will cut their use of antibiotics. Maybe we’ll even stop building homes in the desert.

But these situations are not very likely. No one wants to think too hard about where our water comes from. It’s more likely that the virtuosity of water technology will let polluters off the hook: why bother to reduce noxious discharges if the treatment plant can remove just about anything? The technology, far from making us aware of the consequences of our behavior, may give us license to continue doing what we’ve always done.

The recycled water coming out of the sink at the Fountain Valley plant looked good enough to drink. Wildermuth didn’t press me to taste it, but I was eager for a sample — to satisfy my curiosity, and to be polite. I filled a plastic cup and took a sip. The water tasted fine, if a little dry; I’m used to something with more minerals. It did cross my mind that any potential health issues from drinking so-far undetectable levels of contaminants would be cumulative and take decades to manifest.

Then I reminded myself: no naturally occurring water on earth is absolutely pure. And most everything that’s in Orange County’s reclaimed water is in most cities’ drinking water anyway.

It was hot, my throat was parched, and I asked for a refill.




Saturday is the day for St. Louis to receive the crest.  Upriver, Gulfport, Illinois intersection at right.  Click here for Hurricane Katrina reports.
Mississippi Surges Over Nearly a Dozen Levees
NYTIMES
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR and MONICA DAVEY
Published: June 20, 2008

The swollen Mississippi River continued to spread destruction on Thursday, surging over nearly a dozen levees in the St. Louis area and flooding vast areas of farmland, as the region’s growing crisis pushed corn and soy prices toward record levels.

The runaway river claimed its latest Missouri town late Wednesday night when it broke a levee in Winfield, just outside of St. Louis, leaving a 150-foot hole, deluging the small community and sending a surge of water downstream toward the next levee. Crews of firefighters spent the night evacuating residents, in some cases by boat, as workers fought to contain the river further south.

With weather forecasters calling for as many as two inches of rain in some parts of Missouri on Thursday, crews of emergency responders, sandbags in hand, were preparing for the worst.

St. Louis is the next major town in the path of the surging river, which is expected to crest at 40 feet there on Saturday. Because the river widens in St. Louis and connects with several tributaries, the damage is expected to be minimal. Still, the threat was great enough to prompt the city to relocate its annual Independence Day fair and festival for the first time.

President Bush was expected on Thursday to visit several communities, including Cedar Rapids, where the waters have receded but 25,000 people are homeless, according to the White House.

Since the flooding began, 20 levees have been breached — 11 of them in the St. Louis area — and as many as 30 more were in peril. Estimates of the damage to farmland throughout the Midwest ranged from 2 million to 5 million acres of crops, pushing corn prices close to a record price of $8 a bushel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is said to be planning a thorough review of the damage later this month.

On Wednesday, the surging river was gruesome news for the farmers and residents — about 100, the authorities said — near the tiny hamlet of Meyer in western Illinois. Around the small community, part of a region of endless fields of soybeans, corn and cattle, state conservation police officers rode door to door in boats to ensure that everyone had left, and flew over in a helicopter, scanning for anyone stranded.

So it went all along the Mississippi this week, through Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, north of St. Louis: People marching along levees and flood walls, scanning for the slightest puddle or hint of pressure in the sand, waiting for what might come. In Quincy, Ill., local officials raced to reinforce a levee they were worried about south of town; at stake were 100,000 acres of farmland and access to the Mark Twain Bridge. And federal authorities said they were closely monitoring more than 20 other levees they view as vulnerable, as the waters continue to rise downstream in the coming days.

Around Meyer, farmers were devastated. “That’s all been lost, and it’s not going to be replanted this season,” said Gerald Jenkins, general manager of Ursa Farmers Cooperative, not far from Meyer. One of the cooperative’s grain elevators, in Meyer, was swamped, Mr. Jenkins said, another at risk.

Worse, Mr. Jenkins said he feared that so many fields under water would mean not much grain for the cooperative to sell come the fall harvest. “It’s a very sickening feeling,” he said.

Still, the breached levees were a guilty relief for others, here in Canton and in the other towns on the Missouri side of the river or downstream, who had watched the water rise and rise, and hoped that a breach somewhere else might mean less flooding where they were.

“It’s too bad for them, but that’s the way it is,” Joe Clark, the mayor of Canton, said on Wednesday. Throughout the town, hundreds of workers scrambled to raise a three-mile-long levee still higher, with two-foot-tall wooden boards and piles upon piles of sandbags. So far, the levee here was winning, but the river’s crest — only inches short of the highest ever here — was not expected until early Thursday. Mr. Clark said he was hopeful that the town’s levee would hold, and its empty, shuttered downtown would be spared. “Now it’s a matter of waiting,” he said.

A few miles south, the waters crept waist high in some parts of LaGrange, Mo. Still, the levee failures elsewhere might lessen the blow, even in LaGrange. “Everything that’s broken other places is helping us,” said Pat Ryan, who continued to pile sandbags around his house, despite the rising waters.

In towns throughout the area, roads closed, train cars sat empty on flooded tracks, and bridges over the river were barricaded. Everywhere, sore, sweaty volunteers filled sandbags — more than 12.8 million of them have been issued so far during this flooding, by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Despite several days of mostly dry weather here, the sheer volume of water already in the tributaries of the Mississippi had led, inevitably, to flooding along the Mississippi itself. More rain, though, may be on the way: a storm system was forecast to roll over some of the flooded areas on Thursday and Friday, bringing scattered thunderstorms, up to an inch of rain and even the possibility of large hail in parts. The storms were not expected to raise flood levels significantly, though.

South of here, in Clarksville, the water that had already swamped some homes rose nine more inches by Wednesday.

“You just see it creeping up,” Tommy Beauchamp, a volunteer firefighter, said on Wednesday.

There was one piece of good news, though: the water was expected to crest about three inches lower than had been predicted, perhaps, in part, because of upstream levee breaks. To Mr. Beauchamp, the difference did not seem measly. “We celebrate every inch that we can get,” he said.



Link above (r) to another part of this website that tracks developments in Pakistan.

Water Dispute Increases India-Pakistan Tension
NYTIMES
By LYDIA POLGREEN and SABRINA TAVERNISE
July 20, 2010

BANDIPORE, Kashmir — In this high Himalayan valley on the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, the latest battle line between India and Pakistan has been drawn.

This time it is not the ground underfoot, which has been disputed since the bloody partition of British India in 1947, but the water hurtling from mountain glaciers to parched farmers’ fields in Pakistan’s agricultural heartland.

Indian workers here are racing to build an expensive hydroelectric dam in a remote valley near here, one of several India plans to build over the next decade to feed its rapidly growing but power-starved economy.

In Pakistan, the project raises fears that India, its archrival and the upriver nation, would have the power to manipulate the water flowing to its agriculture industry — a quarter of its economy and employer of half its population. In May it filed a case with the international arbitration court to stop it.

Water has become a growing source of tension in many parts of the world between nations striving for growth. Several African countries are arguing over water rights to the Nile. Israel and Jordan have competing claims to the Jordan River. Across the Himalayas, China’s own dam projects have piqued India, a rival for regional, and even global, power.

But the fight here is adding a new layer of volatility at a critical moment to one of the most fraught relationships anywhere, one between deeply distrustful, nuclear-armed nations who have already fought three wars.

The dispute threatens to upset delicate negotiations to renew peace talks, on hold since Pakistani militants killed at least 163 people in attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. The United States has been particularly keen to ease tensions so that Pakistan can divert troops and matériel from its border with India to its frontier with Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents.

Anti-India nationalists and militant networks in Pakistan, already dangerously potent, have seized on the issue as a new source of rage to perpetuate 60 years of antagonism.

Jamaat-u-Dawa, the charity wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the Mumbai attacks, has retooled its public relations effort around the water dispute, where it was once focused almost entirely on land claims to Kashmir. Hafiz Saeed, Jamaat’s leader, now uses the dispute in his Friday sermons to whip up fresh hatreds.

With their populations rapidly expanding, water is critical to both nations. Pakistan contains the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system, water experts say. It has also become an increasingly fertile recruiting ground for militant groups, who play on a lack of opportunity and abundant anti-India sentiment. The rivers that traverse Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and the heart of its agriculture industry, are the country’s lifeline, and the dispute over their use goes to the heart of its fears about its larger, stronger neighbor.

For India, the hydroprojects are vital to harnessing Himalayan water to fill in the serious energy shortfalls that crimp its economy. About 40 percent of India’s population is off the power grid, and lack of electricity has hampered industry. The Kishenganga project is a crucial part of India’s plans to close that gap.

The Indian project has been on the drawing board for decades, and it falls under a 50-year-old treaty that divides the Indus River and its tributaries between both countries. “The treaty worked well in the past, mostly because the Indians weren’t building anything,” said John Briscoe, an expert on South Asia’s water issues at Harvard University. “This is a completely different ballgame. Now there’s a whole battery of these hydroprojects.”

The treaty, the result of a decade of painstaking negotiation that ended in 1960, gave Pakistan 80 percent of the waters in the Indus River system, a ratio that nationalists in Pakistan often forget. India, the upriver nation, is permitted to use some of the water for farming, drinking and power generation, as long as it does not store too much.

While the Kishenganga dam is allowed under the treaty, the dispute is over how it should be built and the timely release of water. Pakistan contends that having the drainage at the very base of the dam will allow India to manipulate the water flow when it wants, for example, during a crucial period of a planting season.

“It makes Pakistan very vulnerable,” said a lawyer who has worked on past water cases for Pakistan. “You can’t just tell us, ‘Hey, you should trust us.’ We don’t. That’s why we have a treaty.”

India has rejected any suggestion that it has violated the treaty or tried to steal water. In a speech on June 13, India’s foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, called such allegations “breast-beating propaganda,” adding “the myth of water theft does not stand the test of rational scrutiny or reason.”

Water experts concur, but say Pakistan does have a legitimate cause for concern. The real issue is timing. If India chooses to fill its dams at a crucial time for Pakistan, it has the potential to ruin a crop. Mr. Briscoe estimates that if India builds all its planned projects, it could have the capacity of holding up about a month’s worth of river flow during Pakistan’s critical dry season, enough to wreck an entire planting season.

Here in Bandipore, where engineers and laborers work long shifts to build the powerhouse and tunnel for the long-awaited dam, the work is not merely a matter of electricity. National pride is at stake, they said.

“This dam is a matter of our national prestige,” one of the engineers on the project said. “It is our right to build this dam, and our future depends on it.”

Pakistanis say they have reason to be worried. In 1948, a year after Pakistan and India were established as states, an administrator in India shut off the water supply to a number of canals in Pakistani Punjab. Indian authorities later said it was a bureaucratic mix-up, but in Pakistan, the memory lingers.

“Once you’ve had a gun put to your head and it’s been cocked, you don’t forget it,” said the Pakistani lawyer, who asked that his name not be used because he was not part of the current legal team.

A genuine water shortage in Pakistan, and the country’s inability to store large quantities of water, has only made matters worse, exposing it to any small variation in rainfall or river flow. Pakistan is about to slip into a category of country the United Nations defines as “water scarce.”

“They are confronting a very serious water issue,” said a senior American official in Islamabad. “There’s a high amount of anxiety, and it’s not misplaced.”

The design of the dam requires that much of the water in the Kishenganga River be diverted for much of the year. That will kill off fish and harm the livelihoods of the people living in the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir, Pakistani officials say.

Kaiser Bengali, an economist, argues that Pakistan’s water crisis has little to do with India, and says that the real way to ease it is to introduce water conservation methods and modern farming techniques. In a country where summer temperatures reach 120 degrees, as much as 40 percent of Pakistan’s water is lost before even reaching the roots of the plants, experts say.

The water dispute would not be nearly as acute, experts said, if India and Pakistan talked and shared data on water. Instead, the distrust and antagonism is such that bureaucrats have hoarded information, and are secretly gunning to finish projects on either side of the line of control in order to be the first to have an established fact on the ground.

“It’s like a bad marriage in which we have proscribed roles,” the Pakistani lawyer said. “Would it be better if we were communicating openly? Yes. But in the present circumstances we are not.”





The Food Chain:  Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water
NYTIMES 
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: July 21, 2008

CAIRO — Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.

Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.

The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.

“The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita,” Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

Losing confidence in world markets, these nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply.

Djibouti is growing rice in solar-powered greenhouses, fed by groundwater and cooled with seawater, in a project that produces what the World Bank economist Ruslan Yemtsov calls “probably the most expensive rice on earth.”

Several oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia, have started searching for farmland in fertile but politically unstable countries like Pakistan and Sudan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home.

“These countries have the land and the water,” said Hassan S. Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain’s agriculture ministry. “We have the money.”

In Egypt, where a shortage of subsidized bread led to rioting in April, government officials say they are looking into growing wheat on two million acres straddling the border with Sudan.

Economists and development experts say that nutritional self-sufficiency in this part of the world presents challenges that are not easily overcome. Saudi Arabia tapped aquifers to become self-sufficient in wheat production in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the kingdom had become a major exporter. This year, however, the Saudis said they would phase out the program because it used too much water.

“You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money,” said Elie Elhadj, a Syrian-born author who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic.

Egypt, too, has for decades dreamed of converting huge swaths of desert into lush farmland. The most ambitious of these projects is in Toshka, a Sahara Desert oasis in a scorched lunar landscape of sand and rock outcroppings.

When the Toshka farm was started in 1997, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, compared its ambitions to building the pyramids, involving roughly 500,000 acres of farmland and tens of thousands of residents. But no one has moved there, and only 30,000 acres or so have been planted.

The farm’s manager, Mohamed Nagi Mohamed, says the Sahara is perfect for farming, as long as there is plenty of fertilizer and water. For one thing, the bugs cannot handle the summer heat, so pesticides are not needed.

“You can grow anything on this land,” he said, showing off fields of alfalfa and rows of tomatoes and grapes, shielded from the sun by gauzy white netting. “It’s a very nice project, but it needs a lot of money.”

Mr. Mubarak calls his country’s growing population an “urgent” problem that has exacerbated the food crisis. The population grows about 1.7 percent annually, considerably slower than a generation ago but still fast enough that it is on pace to double by 2050.

Adding 1.3 million Egyptians each year to the 77 million squeezed into an inhabited area roughly the size of Taiwan is a daunting prospect for a country in which 20 percent of citizens already live in poverty

One recent morning in the Cairo slum of Imbaba, people crammed in front of a weathered green bakery shack for their daily rations of subsidized bread, a pita-like loaf called baladi that sells for less than a penny, so cheap that some Egyptians feed it to their livestock.

The bakery shares the end of a dead-end street with a mountain of garbage, 25 feet by 5 feet, that looks as if it is moving because so many flies swarm over it.

“Most people are really suffering, but what can they do?” asked Mohamed Faruk, a 38-year-old grocery worker who moonlights as a bus inspector, as he carried nine loaves of baladi in newspaper.

Awatef Mahmud, a 53-year-old mother of five who sat on a nearby stoop waiting for her bread to cool, said higher prices had led to dietary changes for her family. “Instead of buying one kilo of meat every week, we buy a half a kilo,” she said. “People used to buy pasta to make for their kids. But now that it’s four and a half pounds,” she said, referring to the currency, “they give them bread instead.”

Economists say that rather than seeking to become self-sufficient with food, countries in this region should grow crops for which they have a competitive advantage, like produce or flowers, which do not require much water and can be exported for top dollar.

For example, Doron Ovits, a confident 39-year-old with sunglasses pushed over his forehead and a deep tan, runs a 150-acre tomato and pepper empire in the Negev Desert of Israel. His plants, grown in greenhouses with elaborate trellises and then exported to Europe, are irrigated with treated sewer water that he says is so pure he has to add minerals back. The water is pumped through drip irrigation lines covered tightly with black plastic to prevent evaporation.

A pumping station outside each greenhouse is equipped with a computer that tracks how much water and fertilizer is used; Mr. Ovits keeps tabs from his desktop computer.

“With drip irrigation, you save money. It’s more precise,” he said. “You can’t run it like a peasant, a farmer. You have to run it like a businessman.”

Israel is as obsessed with water as Mr. Ovits is. It was there, in the 1950s, that an engineer invented modern drip irrigation, which saves water and fertilizer by feeding it, drop by drop, to a plant’s roots. Since then, Israel has become the world’s leader in maximizing agricultural output per drop of water, and many believe that it serves as a viable model for other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Already, Tunisia has reinvigorated its agriculture sector by adopting some of the desert farming advances pioneered in Israel, and Egypt’s new desert farms now grow mostly water-sipping plants with drip irrigation.

The Israeli government strictly regulates how much water farmers can use and requires many of them to irrigate with treated sewer water, pumped to farms in purple pipes. It has also begun using a desalination plant to cleanse brackish water for irrigation.

“In the future, another 200 million cubic meters of marginal water are to be recycled, in addition to promoting the establishment of desalination plants,” Shalom Simhon, Israel’s agriculture minister, wrote via e-mail.

Still, four years of drought have created what Mr. Simhon calls “a deep water crisis,” forcing the country to cut farmers’ quotas.

Egypt, at least, has the Nile. Under a 1959 treaty, the country is entitled to a disproportionate share of the river’s water, a point that rankles some of its neighbors. It has built canals to bring Nile water to the Sinai Desert, to desert lands between Cairo and Alexandria and to the vast emptiness of Toshka.

For Saad Nassar, a top adviser in Egypt’s ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, the country has little choice but to try to make the desert bloom, even in unlikely places like Toshka, which it says will eventually succeed: all of Egypt’s farms and population are now crowded onto just 4 percent of its land.

“We don’t have the luxury of choosing this or that,” he said. “We have to work on every acre that is cultivatable.”

Egypt is establishing an estimated 200,000 acres of farmland in the desert each year, even as it loses 60,000 acres of its best farmland to urbanization, said Richard Tutwiler, director of the Desert Development Center at the American University in Cairo. “It’s sand,” he said, referring to the reclaimed desert land. “It’s not the world’s most fertile soil.”

As Cairo’s population has grown — to an estimated 12 million today — hastily constructed apartment buildings have sprouted among the fields. “They sow apartment buildings instead of wheat,” said Gideon Kruseman, a Dutch agriculture economist working with the government to improve farming there.

For more than 5,000 years, farmers have worked the land along the Nile and in the Nile Delta, the lotus-shaped plain north of Cairo where centuries of accumulated silt have produced a deep, rich layer of topsoil. They have endured drought, flood, locust and pestilence.

Now the scourge is development. For farmers like Magdy Abdel-Rahman, the new buildings not only ruin the rural tranquillity of his ancient fields, with the constant hammering and commotion, but they also reduce his yields.

“The shade is not good for the plants,” said Mr. Abdel-Rahman, who farms corn and clover on a half-acre lot 20 miles from downtown Cairo.

Five miles farther out, Talaat Mohamed’s three acres of sweet potatoes are squeezed between four-, five- and seven-story apartment buildings like a jigsaw puzzle. A building recently went up a dozen feet from his field, with steel bars jutting from the foundation and piles of gravel alongside.

Mr. Mohamed, 60, routinely turns down eager land speculators because, he says, he loves working outdoors. But he complains about all the time spent removing urban detritus from his field, which on this day included a maroon brassiere, soda cans, food wrappers, wads of indistinguishable plastic, a Signal toothpaste box and a black flip-flop.

“The Egyptians invented farming,” he said, peering despairingly at a landscape of electric wires and buildings, traffic and trash. “And this is what it has become.”




How dry is it in Catalonia? You’re looking at the bottom of the Sau reservoir near Barcelona. The ruins of the medieval stone church were deeply submerged when the reservoir was first filled in the 1960’s and did not reappear until late last fall. This photo was taken in early April. (Gustau Nacarino/Reuters)

Water Woes From Florida to Spain to Orbit
NYTIMES
By Patrick J. Lyons
May 16, 2008,  12:24 pm

You need water more urgently than anything other than breathable air, yet the difficulty of securing a clean, reliable supply seems to be making headlines all over, and not just in desert areas or in the ravaged wake of disasters like the Sichuan earthquake or the Irrawaddy Delta cyclone.
 
The latest this morning from all-too-soggy South Florida is that the place has not shaken its Ancient Mariner problem after all. (You know: “…nor any drop to drink….”) Temporary restrictions on water use that were lifted in April will have to go back on, and may become permanent, The Miami Herald reports,because Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the region’s supply, started dropping precipitously again as soon as they were relaxed. The water level in the lake is now only six inches above historic lows, The Herald says, and the start of the rainy season is still a couple of weeks away.
Relief is even further off for the drought-seared Catalonia region of Spain, where the city of Barcelona has had to resort to chartering ships to bring in fresh water from abroad; the first one reached the city on Thursday. Barring miraculously atypical weather, the ships will have to keep coming until October, the city says.

The drought afflicting Australia has gone on for seven years now, and the government has moved far past short-term contingencies like tanker ships; its new $13 billion national water plan includes building desalination plants and buying back irrigation-water rights from farmers in the vast drainage area of the Darling and Murray rivers, which, like the Colorado, are so heavily tapped now that they would silt up and peter out before reaching the sea if not for constant dredging. About $1 billion of the money, the government said Wednesday, will go to help cities turn waste water, salt water and storm runoff into potable supplies.
Recycling sewage into drinking water is a concept that has long been more feasible technically than politically.

No matter what the scientific tests say about the purity of the results, the very idea just skeeves a lot of people. Out in Los Angeles, though, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa broke with the nose-wrinklers on Thursday, proposing a package of supply and conservation measures that conspicuously included plans for reprocessing sewage effluent into drinking water, Randall Archibold reports in The New York Times today. The mayor opposed the idea a decade ago on safety grounds, but he says the technology has improved since then and the city needs the water too badly to forego it.

Neighboring Orange County has been doing it since November, and San Diego and San Jose are wrestling with it too, as are a host of other cities around the country. NASA said this week that a system for recycling astronauts’ urine in space will be flown up to the International Space Station on the next shuttle mission.

Back on earth, many municipalities are taking it one step less far, recycling sewage into “gray water” that can be used for industrial or irrigation purposes, to spare the limited supplies of the purer stuff for uses that really require it, like drinking, cooking and bathing.

That irrigation (rather than, say, long showers or half-filled dishwashers) is the principal culprit in many an urban and suburban water drama can be seen in how, when supplies start to get tight, the first thing officials do is tell people to cut back on how often they water their lawns. In South Florida, the limit looks headed back to two days a week, The Herald says; in Barcelona, forget it completely.


Warming Leads To 'Africanization' Of Spain 
DAY
By Elisabeth Rosenthal , New York Times News Service    
Published on 6/3/2008 


Fortuna, Spain - Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses - dozens of them, all recently built - give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.

There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: This province, Murcia, is running out of water. Spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development, swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert.

Murcia, traditionally a poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water.

This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. They are buying and selling water like gold on a burgeoning black market, mostly from illegal wells.

Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical drought, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict.

The battles of yesterday were fought over land. Those of the present center on oil. But those of the future - a future made hotter and drier by climate change in much of the world - seem likely to focus on water, they say.

Dozens of world leaders will be meeting at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome starting Tuesday to address a global food crisis caused part by water shortages in Africa, Australia and here in southern Spain.

Climate change means that creeping deserts may eventually drive 135 mill88ion people off their land, the United Nations estimates. Most of them are in the developing world. But Southern Europe is experiencing the problem now, its climate drying to the point that it is becoming more like Africa's, scientists say.

For Murcia, the water crisis has come already. And its arrival has been accelerated by developers and farmers who have hewed to water-hungry ventures highly unsuited to a drier, warmer climate: crops like lettuce that need ample irrigation, resorts that promise a swimming pool in the backyard, acres of freshly sodded golf courses that sop up millions of gallons a day.


FROM THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, January 29, 2008:

DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) — Warnings of a water and food crisis seemed incongruous among the lavish hospitality of Davos this year, but the danger was stressed repeatedly to the assembled world elite. 
Scarcity of water was named by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a top priority at the World Economic Forum and he warned that conflicts lay ahead if the provision of the vital resource could not be assured.

"Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon," he said in a speech on Thursday.

Ban reminded the gathering of the world's wealthy powerbrokers in Davos that the conflict in Darfur in Sudan was touched off by a drought. "Too often where we need water, we find guns," he said.

Rising food prices are also causing problems in emerging countries, with demonstrations and violence witnessed in a host of countries including Mexico and African nations Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal.  Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath warned earlier in the week that prices of some foodstuffs had doubled in his country at a time when 25 million people in India were estimated to have moved from taking one to two meals a day.

"What does 25 million people moving from one to two meals a day do for prices?" he asked a room of corporate bigwigs and policymakers who pay thousands of dollars to attend the exclusive get-together here.

Referring to the challenge of providing food at affordable prices, he said: "Next year in Davos we'll be discussing this..."






A Super Study on water use (quantity as well as quality) in Las Vegas (2007-2008) here!  Great graphics!  More here.

VIDEO ON COMING DROUGHT
Agency opposes water recycling at homes
Return less to Lake Mead, it says, and we’ll get less out
Las Vegas Sun
By Alexandra Berzon
Mon, Apr 13, 2009 (2 a.m.)

In Las Vegas, water used indoors travels a continuous loop.


From homes, water flows to a treatment plant, which sends it back to Lake Mead. Then an equivalent amount is pumped from the lake, and the 12-mile journey to treatment plants and Southern Nevada’s taps begins again.  The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants that system preserved because it allows Las Vegas to consume more than its annual 300,000-acre-foot allotment from the Colorado River. Water returned to the lake converts to credits that the Water Authority can use to pump more water from the lake.

But some homeowners, builders and environmentalists watching this continuous loop wonder: Why not shorten the distance water travels by allowing homes to keep and recycle the water they use — what’s known as graywater? Water from sinks, showers and washing machines could be reused to more efficiently and cheaply water lawns or other landscaping, they say.  Building codes in Clark County don’t allow household graywater recycling.

The water authority, after studying the idea, decided this year to make it official policy to oppose it.

The debate over how and where water recycling should occur, in a region with a diminishing supply, flared up last week in Carson City during debate on Assembly Bill 363, which would allow household graywater recycling. Beyond questions of energy efficiency and water conservation, the debate came down to the concept of property: Once a household uses water, who owns it?

“People paid for that water and I think they should be allowed to do with it what they wish,” said Launce Rake, spokesman for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.

Rake said he supports on-site graywater recycling because it would cut down on considerable energy use for treatment plants and pumping, and save the water that gets lost in the journey to and from Lake Mead. It’s wasteful to use drinking water — a precious resource — on lawns and landscaping, he said.  Such views are part of a nationwide trend toward graywater use.

“Potable water is really highly valued water,” said Peter Gleik, president of the Pacific Institute. “You’ve spent a lot of money cleaning it up and you should use it for high-value things.”

Such a view also has a populist appeal.

As an experiment a couple of years ago, Southwest Homes President Todd Slusher reworked the pipes beneath a trailer in Pahrump and rerouted the graywater tank so that it watered a 2,000-square-foot plot of plants and grass. The trailer’s resident rarely had to pick up a hose.  Slusher figured a similar system could be a popular feature on the new homes he builds. An investment of a couple of hundred dollars could cut water bills by 60 percent to 70 percent, he estimated. It would also protect home buyers if water were to become a lot more expensive than it is now, the homebuilder said.

But the water authority contends that’s the problem. What’s the incentive for residents to curb consumption if their water bills drop? water officials argue. Even more water would be drawn from Lake Mead, without returning.

“It doesn’t help us stretch the existing allocation out of the river,” water authority spokesman Bronson Mack said.

In addition, the cleanliness of graywater is questionable, he said.

“The quality of graywater is very, very, very low,” Mack said. “Just look at the back of your shampoo bottle or what’s in laundry detergent.”

Graywater recycling proponents insist the water has been proven to be safe.  Graywater recycling is popular in some places that don’t have municipal recycling systems for potable water. Tucson, for example, will by 2010 require that new developments be plumbed to allow graywater use.

And the water authority supports residential graywater recycling in rural areas outside of Las Vegas where water doesn’t flow back to Lake Mead.  Policy in Las Vegas has moved in the opposite direction. In December the water authority board voted to approve a recycling policy that prohibits graywater systems in the Las Vegas Valley. That proposal was recommended by the Clean Water Coalition after the organization studied graywater policy in other states.

County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani’s vote against that policy was her last as a member of the water authority board. She then promoted a state bill to allow graywater recycling.  Drafted by Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, AB363 requires the state Health Board to adopt regulations allowing residential graywater recycling.  Testifying last Monday in Carson City before the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee, Giunchigliani said the bill would save water and energy, and create green jobs.

Environmentalists testified in support of the bill. Water authority representatives opposed it.

The bill wasn’t voted out of committee last week, a deadline for bills to advance, and the idea appears unlikely to proceed.  At the hearing, Assemblyman John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, asked Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, a co-sponsor of the bill, if the use of graywater would decrease water returned to Lake Mead.  Care replied that he was interested in helping Las Vegans reduce their water bills, which is their right.



Is world's wettest place getting drier? 
By Alastair Lawson
BBC News, Meghalaya 
21 July 2008

The town of Cherrapunjee, in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, is reputed to be the wettest place in the world.

But there are signs that its weather patterns may be being hit by global climate change.

"Not without reason has Cherrapunjee achieved fame as being the place with the heaviest rainfall on earth," wrote German missionary Christopher Becker more than 100 years ago.

"One must experience it to have an idea of the immense quantity of rain which comes down from the skies, at times day and night without a stop. It is enough to go a few steps from the house to be drenched from head to foot. An umbrella serves no purpose."


Late monsoon

But according to Cherrapunjee's most renowned weather-watcher, Denis Rayen, the climate of the town is changing fast.  

"In the days of the Raj, the British used to come here to the the Khasi hills to escape the heat - we are 4,823ft (1,484m) above sea level," he says.

"But today I am not sure they would be able to do that, because it is getting a lot hotter here and the monsoon is arriving later."

Official figures compiled by the Indian Meteorological Office in the nearby city of Guwahati back up Mr Rayen's arguments that north-east India as a whole is getting hotter.

"The average temperature for Guwahati at this time of the year should be around 32C - but this year the temperature has been as high as 38C," said weather expert Harendas Das.

"It's too early yet to say precisely what is happening, but the evidence suggests that higher temperatures mean the whole area is experiencing less rainfall."

Figures compiled by Mr Rayen show that Cherrapunjee may struggle to maintain its position as the world's wettest place. Rainfall figures for 2005 and 2006 were below average.

"The average rainfall at Cherrapunjee during the last 35 years has been 11,952mm (470ins) and there were several years when it was substantially more than this," he says.

In 1974 it rained 24,555mm (967ins) - which Mr Rayen says is "the highest recorded rainfall in any one place in any one year".

On 16 June, 1995, it rained a record-breaking 1,563mm (61.53ins) over a 24 hour period.

"But in 2005 and 2006 our yearly rainfall was well below the average. We could well be witnessing a severe change in our climatic conditions because of global warming."

While the annual rainfall for 2007 was back to normal, Mr Rayen argues that the "pattern of delivery" of Cherrapunjee's rainfall is changing. In previous years, 98% of the area's rainfall was between March to October.

This year the rains did not arrive until June, and the reason for that he says could be man-made.

"During the last few years, I have seen the forests vanish in front of my eyes," said Mr Rayen.

"A combination of global warming and intensive deforestation is taking a heavy toll in this, one of the most beautiful areas of India.

"Because it now rains heavily over a shorter time period, crops are destroyed and there is intensive soil erosion. The lack of woodland means that the water flows faster from Meghalaya into the Bangladesh delta, only 400km (249 miles) away."

Mr Das says that parts of Meghalaya are "at risk from desertification" because of a combination of increasing urbanisation and industrialisation on the one hand and deforestation and shortages of ground water on the other.

"Because the capacity of the soil to hold water is lost, there is a real possibility that the wettest place in the earth may soon be facing water shortages," he says. 



Slide show

California Water Law Curtailing New Development
NYTIMES
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: June 7, 2008

PERRIS, Calif. — As California faces one of its worst droughts in two decades, building projects are being curtailed for the first time under state law by the inability of developers to find long-term water supplies.

Water authorities and other government agencies scattered throughout the state, including here in sprawling Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, have begun denying, delaying or challenging authorization for dozens of housing tracts and other developments under a state law that requires a 20-year water supply as a condition for building.

California officials suggested that the actions were only the beginning, and they worry about the impact on a state that has grown into an economic powerhouse over the last several decades.

The state law was enacted in 2001, but until statewide water shortages, it had not been invoked to hold up projects.

While previous droughts and supply problems have led to severe water cutbacks and rationing, water officials said the outright refusal to sign off on projects over water scarcity had until now been virtually unheard of on a statewide scale.

“Businesses are telling us that they can’t get things done because of water,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said in a telephone interview.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schwarzenegger declared an official statewide drought, the first such designation since 1991. As the governor was making his drought announcement, the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County — one of the fastest-growing counties in the state in recent years — gave a provisional nod to nine projects that it had held up for months because of water concerns. The approval came with the caveat that the water district could revisit its decision, and only after adjustments had been made to the plans to reduce water demand.

“The statement that we’re making is that this isn’t business as usual,” said Randy A. Record, a water district board member, at the meeting here in Perris.

Shawn Jenkins, a developer who had two projects caught up in the delays, said he was accustomed to piles of paperwork and reams of red tape in getting projects approved. But he was not prepared to have the water district hold up the projects he was planning. He changed the projects’ landscaping, to make it less water dependent, as the board pondered their fate.

“I think this is a warning for everyone,” Mr. Jenkins said.

Also in Riverside County, a superior court judge recently stopped a 1,500-home development project, citing, among others things, a failure to provide substantial evidence of adequate water supply.

In San Luis Obispo County, north of Los Angeles, the City of Pismo Beach was recently denied the right to annex unincorporated land to build a large multipurpose project because, “the city didn’t have enough water to adequately serve the development,” said Paul Hood, the executive officer of the commission that approves the annexations and incorporations of cities.

In agriculturally rich Kern County, north of Los Angeles, at least three developers scrapped plans recently to apply for permits, realizing water was going to be an issue. An official from the county’s planning department said the developers were the first ever in the county to be stymied by water concerns. Large-scale housing developments in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties have met a similar fate, officials in those counties said.

Throughout the state, other projects have been suspended or are being revised to accommodate water shortages, and water authorities and cities have increasingly begun to consider holding off on “will-serve” letters — promises to developers to provide water — for new projects.

“The water in our state is not sufficient to add more demand,” said Lester Snow, the director of the California Department of Water Resources. “And that now means that some large development can’t go forward. If we don’t make changes with water, we are going to have a major economic problem in this state.”

The words “crisis” and “water” have gone together in this state since the 49ers traded flecks of gold for food. But several factors have combined to make the current water crisis more acute than those of recent years.



An eight-year drought in the Colorado River basin has greatly impinged on water supply to Southern California. Of the roughly 1.25 million acre-feet of water that the region normally imports from that river toward the 4.5 million acre-feet it uses each year, 500,000 has been lost to drought, said Jeff Kightlinger, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Even more significant, a judge in federal district court last year issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta — where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet and provide water to roughly 25 million Californians — to protect a species of endangered smelt that were becoming trapped in the pumps. Those reductions, from December to June, cut back the state’s water reserves this winter by about one third, according to a consortium of state water boards.

The smelt problem was a powerful indicator of the environmental fallout from the delta’s water system, which was constructed over 50 years ago for a far smaller population.

“We have bad hydrology, compromised infrastructure and our management tools are broken,” said Timothy Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. “All that paints a fairly grim picture for Californians trying to manage water in the 21st century.”

The 2001 state water law, which took effect in 2002, requires developers to prove that new projects have a plan for providing at least 20 years’ worth of water before local water authorities can sign off on them. With the recent problems, more and more local governments are unable to simply approve projects.

“Water is one of our most difficult issues when we are evaluating large-scale projects,” said Lorelei Oviatt, the division chief for the Kern County Planning Department. In cases where developers are unable to present a long-term water plan, “then certainly I can’t recommend they approve” those developments, Ms. Oviatt said.

As the denied building permits indicate, the lack of sufficient water sources could become a serious threat to economic development in California, where the population in 2020 is projected to reach roughly 45 million people, economists say, from its current 38 million. In the end, as water becomes increasingly scarce, its price will have to rise, bringing with it a host of economic consequences, the economists said.

“Water has been seriously under-priced in California,” said Edward E. Leamer, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. “When you ration it or increase its price, it will have an impact on economic growth.”

The water authority for Southern California recently issued a rate increase of 14.3 percent, when including surcharges, which was the highest rate increase in the last 15 years. In Northern California, rates in Marin County increased recently by nearly 10 percent, in part to pay an 11 percent increase in the cost of water bought from neighboring Sonoma County.

Interest groups that oppose development have found that raising water issues is among the many bats in their bags available to beat back projects they find distasteful.

“Certainly from Newhall Ranch’s standpoint, water was a key point that our opponents were focused on,” said Marlee Lauffer, a spokeswoman for Newhall Ranch, a large-scale residential development in the works is Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles, among others, has opposed the development.

To get around the problem, Newhall Ranch’s planners decided to forgo water supplied through the state and turn instead to supplies from an extensive water reclamation plant as well as water bought privately. Other developers, like Mr. Jenkins, have changed their landscaping plans to reduce water needs and planned for low-flow plumbing to placate water boards.

Mr. Schwarzenegger sees addressing the state’s water problem as one of his key goals, and he is hoping against the odds to get a proposed $11.9 billion bond for water management investments through the Legislature and before voters in November.

The plans calls for water conservation and quality improvement programs, as well as a resource management plan for the delta. Among its most controversial components is $3.5 billion earmarked for new water storage, something that environmentalists have vehemently opposed, in part because they find dams and storage facilities environmentally unsound and not cost effective.

The critics also point out that the state’s agriculture industry, which uses far more water than urban areas, is being asked to contribute little to conservation under the governor’s plans. As more building projects are derailed by water requirements, the pressure on farmers to share more of their water is expected to grow.


Schwarzenegger declares drought in California 
DAY
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer 
Posted on Jun 5, 6:52 AM EDT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a statewide drought after two years of below-average rainfall, low snowmelt runoff and a court-ordered restriction on water transfers.

Schwarzenegger warned that residents and water managers must immediately cut their water use or face the possibility of rationing next year if there is another dry winter.

"We must recognize the severity of the crisis that we face," the Republican governor said Wednesday at a news conference.

He signed an executive order directing the state's response to unusually dry conditions that are damaging crops, harming water quality and causing extreme fire danger across California. Many communities already require water conservation or rationing.

The statewide drought declaration is the first since 1991, when Gov. Pete Wilson acted in the fifth year of a drought that lasted into 1992.

Schwarzenegger directed the state Department of Water Resources to help speed water transfers to areas with the worst shortages, to help local water districts with conservation efforts and to assist farmers suffering losses from the drought.

California depends on winter snow accumulating in the Sierra Nevada for much of its summer water supply. But March, April and May were the driest winter months on record, forcing water use cutbacks by farmers and urban residents alike.

The Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev., reported that precipitation in California during that period was 1.2 inches, or 22 percent of the average for the 114 years since record-keeping began.

Snow measurements last month found that the Sierra held just 69 percent of an average winter. Runoff into California rivers was at 55 percent of a normal year. The state's major reservoirs are at 50 percent to 63 percent of their capacity at a time when they ideally would be full.

Conditions could be even worse next year if there is another dry winter, Water Resources Director Lester Snow said.

"We need at least above normal in terms of our snowpack, and then we're still going to be tight," Snow said. "The idea is to put programs in place now to soften the impact in 2008 and to prepare for a potential third year of drought in 2009."

California's population has mushroomed since the last drought, while the water supply has dwindled, he said.

An eight-year drought in the Southwest means California can't depend on Colorado River water to help supply Southern California. And a federal judge's order last year requires that more Northern California water be left in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to aid declining fish populations.

"We're suffering the perfect storm, if you will," said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. "The purpose of the governor's declaration is to send a wake-up call."

California has never resorted to statewide rationing during droughts, Quinn said.

Worst-hit so far is the San Joaquin Valley, which could soon merit an emergency declaration because of crop damage, Snow said.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said this week it would cut water supplied to Central Valley farms to 40 percent of the amount growers contract for with the federal government. Water deliveries from state reservoirs could drop to 35 percent, Snow said.

That could mean hundreds of acres of crops won't be planted this year, according to the giant Westlands Water District, which supplies growers who produce about $1 billion worth of crops annually.

The state is exploring ways to send scarce water to farmers for the growing season now while cutting deliveries later, Snow said.

"Giving water to the farmers in September doesn't help the fact that they need it on their tomato crop in June," Snow said. "It's not just the tomato crop that you lose. It's the employment that's associated with the tomato crop."

Schwarzenegger used the drought declaration to push a nearly $12 billion bond to fund delta, river and groundwater improvements, conservation and recycling efforts, and reservoirs. Legislators have not agreed to his plan.

"It is easy for Sacramento to put off dealing with the water infrastructure," Schwarzenegger said. "But as we now see, there is no more time to waste, because nothing is more vital than to protect our economy, to protect our environment, and to protect of quality of life."



Western States Agree to Water-Sharing Pact
NYTIMES
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: December 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 — Facing the worst drought in a century and the prospect that climate change could yield long-term changes on the Colorado River, the lifeline for several Western states, federal officials have reached a new pact with the states on how to allocate water if the river runs short.

State and federal officials praised the agreement as a landmark akin to the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which first outlined how much water the seven states served by the river — California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — would receive annually.

The new accord, outlined by federal officials in a telephone news conference Friday, spells out how three downriver states — California, Arizona and Nevada — will share the impact of water shortages. It puts in place new measures to encourage conservation and manage the two primary reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which have gone from nearly full to just about half-empty since 1999.

The accord is expected to forestall litigation that was likely to have arisen as fast-growing states jockey for the best way to keep the water flowing to their residents and businesses in increasingly dry times. It would be in effect through 2026 and could be revised during that time.

Some environmental groups said the pact did not go far enough to encourage conservation and discourage growth. But federal officials said they took the best of several proposals by the states, environmental organizations and others and emphasized the importance of all seven states agreeing with the result.

“I think for the first time in 85 years we are on the same page,” said Herb Guenther, the director of water resources in Arizona, which had initially balked at some terms of the agreement and was threatening legal action over it.

But with water levels in reservoirs dropping, a record eight-year drought, the prospect that climate change could bring more dry spells and new scientific analyses suggesting the West could be drier than has been traditionally believed, the states were pushed to act.

These factors “forced the issue to the head and we decided to do something unique and different,” Mr. Guenther said.

The agreement, the product of two-and-a-half years of negotiation and study, establishes criteria for the Interior Department to declare a shortage on the river, which would occur when the system is unable to produce the 7.5 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply 15 million homes for a year, that the three downriver states are entitled to.

Water deliveries would be decreased based on how far water levels drop in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the river system, predicts about a 5 percent chance of such a shortage being declared by 2010, but it all depends on how much the states are able to conserve and, of course, the weather.

The probability projection “does not imply it can’t happen,” said Terry Fulp, a bureau official involved in managing the river.

Water districts, anticipating an eventual cutback of Colorado River water, have been storing large amounts of water and the accord encourages them to continue to do so.

The pact, which Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to sign Thursday, includes a bundle of agreements with the states. One is approval for water managers in the Las Vegas area, which gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado, to get a greater share of Lake Mead water in exchange for financing a reservoir in California to capture large amounts of river water destined for Mexico but beyond that country’s entitlement by treaty.

“It’s hugely important for us,” said Scott Huntley, a spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “This really does provide the bridge for us to get into the next decade.”

But John Weisheit, conservation director for Living Rivers, a Utah-based environmental group, said the agreement sends the message to the states that growth trumps sensible water management. Mr. Weisheit said the conservation should have been emphasized and the government’s computer modeling was overly optimistic about future water supply.

“There is more water on paper than there actually is on the landscape,” he said. “They are looking at this in a way that will allow more development even though the water is not theoretically there.”



From Sewage, Added Water for Drinking:
This Orange County, Calif., Water District plant will purify sewer water to feed drinking water supplies, but not directly to the tap.
NYTIMES
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: November 27, 2007

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — It used to be so final: flush the toilet, and waste be gone.  After a process of microfiltration, chemicals, ultraviolet light and reverse osmosis, the treated sewer water will be injected underground to refill aquifers.
 
But on Nov. 30, for millions of people here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water — after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground.

On that Friday, the Orange County Water District will turn on what industry experts say is the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water to increase drinking water supplies. They and others hope it serves as a model for authorities worldwide facing persistent drought, predicted water shortages and projected growth.

The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the wary, is getting a close look in several cities.

The San Diego City Council approved a pilot plan in October to bolster a drinking water reservoir with recycled sewer water. The mayor vetoed the proposal as costly and unlikely to win public acceptance, but the Council will consider overriding it in early December.

Water officials in the San Jose area announced a study of the issue in September, water managers in South Florida approved a plan in November calling for abundant use of recycled wastewater in the coming years in part to help restock drinking water supplies, and planners in Texas are giving it serious consideration.

“These types of projects you will see springing up all over the place where there are severe water shortages,” said Michael R. Markus, the general manager of the Orange County district, whose plant, which will process 70 million gallons a day, has already been visited by water managers from across the globe.

The finished product, which district managers say exceeds drinking water standards, will not flow directly into kitchen and bathroom taps; state regulations forbid that.

Instead it will be injected underground, with half of it helping to form a barrier against seawater intruding on groundwater sources and the other half gradually filtering into aquifers that supply 2.3 million people, about three-quarters of the county. The recycling project will produce much more potable water and at a higher quality than did the mid-1970s-era plant it replaces.

The Groundwater Replenishment System, as the $481 million plant here is known, is a labyrinth of tubing and tanks that sucks in treated sewer water the color of dark beer from a sanitation plant next door, and first runs it through microfilters to remove solids. The water then undergoes reverse osmosis, forcing it through thin, porous membranes at high pressure, before it is further cleansed with peroxide and ultraviolet light to break down any remaining pharmaceuticals and carcinogens.

The result, Mr. Markus said, “is as pure as distilled water” and about the same cost as buying water from wholesalers.

Recycled water, also called reclaimed or gray water, has been used for decades in agriculture, landscaping and by industrial plants.

And for years, treated sewage, known as effluent, has been discharged into oceans and rivers, including the Mississippi and the Colorado, which supply drinking water for millions.

But only about a dozen water agencies in the United States, and several more abroad, recycle treated sewage to replenish drinking water supplies, though none here steer the water directly into household taps. They typically spray or inject the water into the ground and allow it to percolate down to aquifers.

Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, among the most arid places in Africa, is believed to be the only place in the world that practices “direct potable reuse” on a large-scale, with recycled water going directly into the tap water distribution system, said James Crook, a water industry consultant who has studied the issue.

The projects are costly and often face health concerns from opponents.

Such was the case on Nov. 6 in Tucson, where a wide-ranging ballot measure that would have barred the city from using purified water in drinking water supplies failed overwhelmingly. The water department there said it had no such plans but the idea has been discussed in the past.

John Kromko, a former Arizona state legislator who advocated for the prohibition, said he was skeptical about claims that the recycling process cleanses all contaminants from the water and he suggested that Tucson limit growth rather than find new ways to feed it.

“We really don’t know how safe it is,” he said. “And if we controlled growth we would never have to worry about drinking it.”

Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego, in vetoing the City Council plan there, said it “is not a silver bullet for the region’s water needs” and the public has never taken to the idea in the 15 years it has been discussed off and on.

Although originally estimated at $10 million for the pilot study in San Diego, water department officials said the figure would be refined, and the total cost of the project might be hundreds of millions of dollars. Although the Council wants to offset the cost with government grants and other sources, Mr. Sanders predicted it would add to already escalating water bills.

“It is one of the most expensive kinds of water you can create,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the mayor. “It is a large investment for a very small return.”

San Diego, which imports about 85 percent of its water because of a lack of aquifers, asked residents this year to curtail water use.

Here in Orange County, the project, a collaboration between the water and sanitation districts, has not faced serious opposition, in part because of a public awareness and marketing campaign.

Early on, officials secured the backing of environmental groups, elected leaders and civic groups, helped in part by the fact the project eliminated the need for the sanitation district to build a new pipe spewing effluent into the ocean.

Orange County began purifying sewer water in 1976 with its Water Factory 21, which dispensed the cleansed water into the ground to protect groundwater from encroaching seawater.

That plant has been replaced by the new one, with more advanced technology, and is intended to cope with not only current water needs but also expectations that the county’s population will grow by 500,000 by 2020.

Still, said Stephen Coonan, a water industry consultant in Texas, such projects proceed slowly.

“Nobody is jumping out to do it,” he said. “They want to make sure the science is where it should be. I think the public is accepting we are investigating it.”





Bottled water: Really better?
Everett Herald, WA
By David Chircop
Published: Monday, August 20, 2007

Everett sells millions of gallons of water every year to companies that pour it into bottles and jugs, slap on brand names, and then sell it to consumers.

So it didn't surprise Mark Christensen to learn that PepsiCo's Aquafina - the nation's most popular bottled water brand - gets its water from the tap.

For two decades, the owner of A & W Bottling Co., located along the bustling industrial belt west of Paine Field, has filtered and sold tens of millions of gallons of water and soft drinks using city tap water.

Three other companies in Snohomish County also bottle water from municipal sources, according to the Washington Department of Agriculture, which regulates the bottled-water industry in the state.

A & W Bottling and other companies do additional filtering and treatment before selling the water.

"It finally caught up with them," said Christensen about Aquafina. Labels on his Cascade Ice brand say it is made of purified water from "A Municipal Source," in accordance with Food and Drug Administration labeling rules. Aquafina had been using "P.W.S.," which stands for "public water source."

That change has ignited a debate on whether bottled water is actually worth the extra price to consumers and the environment.

It has also highlighted an open secret. Much of the bottled water sold in stores, 25 percent to 40 percent, according to government and industry sources, is tap water - sometimes further treated, sometimes not.

"The propaganda of the industry leads people to believe they shouldn't drink tap water, but I don't do that," said Jon Gergen, owner of Crystal Mountain Pure Drinking Water in Arlington.

His company sells three- and five-gallon jugs of water to about 250 residential and commercial customers in Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom and San Juan counties. He buys the water from Marysville, which gets its water from Edward Springs, the Stillaguamish River and Spada Lake. Gergen's company removes chlorine from the water and disinfects it before shipping it out.

Many of his customers order his water because their homes are on wells that pump out foul-tasting water with heavy minerals or they are at construction sites without access to running water.

Not all are so tolerant of the tap. Dan Harbeck, owner of Get Distilled Water Services Inc. of Mukilteo, says tap water is often unhealthy. His company's marketing material says water-borne-diseases pollute tap water, and minerals in tap water are harmful.

The company uses Everett tap water but filters out various compounds and disinfects the water using either ultraviolet light or ozone.

Steve Hatch, who owns Allwater Corporation in Lynnwood, a fourth business that bottles tap water in the county, declined an interview request.

Government health experts question claims that tap water is unhealthy.

While tap water does contain impurities, it's strictly monitored for safety, said Leslie Gates, a manager with the state Department of Health's office of drinking water. She added that both tap water and bottled water contain impurities.

City water providers are required to monitor water quality around the clock to make sure that it is safe to drink. If it becomes unsafe, they must shut down the water system.

"We have some of the best water in the world and people pay taxes, water fees and bills to make it that way," she said. "We want people to understand they can trust their tap water. It's as clean as bottled water, it's frequently tested for safety and it's a heck of a lot cheaper."

And most public water providers have to publish annual consumer confidence reports. Those reports include where water comes from, how it's treated and the results of water quality tests. They also list concentrations of potentially harmful substances, such as lead and arsenic.

Water bottlers are subject to regular government health inspections but aren't required to publish specific sources of their water, although the FDA has talked about the possibility of similar disclosure requirements.

"It's really not clear to consumers where their (bottled) water is coming from and what the quality of the water is," said Deborah Lapidus, a national organizer with Corporate Accountability International, which is taking credit for forcing Aquafina to label that its water is coming from public water sources.

The Aquafina revelation also coincides with a backlash against the bottled-water industry. Environmentalists say that transporting, refrigerating and manufacturing the plastic bottles is damaging the environment and that the discarded bottles are clogging landfills.

San Francisco and Los Angeles have banned spending city money to buy bottled water and some high-end restaurants in New York and elsewhere are dumping bottled water and opening the tap.

While the debate over bottled water continues to boil, there is one thing most agree with in Snohomish County: Everett's water, which comes from rain and snowmelt from the Cascade Mountains, is considered pristine.

The city's water is considered the "gold standard" by some bottlers, said Tom Thetford, Everett's utilities manager. He oversees the city's water system, which serves about 80 percent of the county, including people in Lake Stevens, Snohomish, Monroe, Lynnwood and Marysville.

Christensen, the owner of A & W, whose family has been bottling beverages in Everett since 1962, agreed.

In 2006, his company purchased more than 7.6 million gallons of the water, according to public records.

"We're fortunate," he said, standing by a conveyer that moved an endless row of plastic bottles into a contraption that placed labels on them. "We've got good water to begin with."





US President Barack Obama. File photo
Barack Obama urged the world to "act with a sense of urgency" on Sudan

Page last updated at 14:30 GMT, Monday, 19 October 2009 15:30 UK

US offers 'incentives' to Sudan

US President Barack Obama has offered Sudan "incentives" if it acts to improve situation on the ground, unveiling a new policy on Khartoum.

But Mr Obama threatened "increased pressure" if Sudan failed to make progress towards achieving peace.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US remained focused on reversing the "ongoing dire human consequences of genocide" in the Darfur region.

The UN estimates that 300,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003.

In a statement, Mr Obama said: "If the government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace, there will be incentives.

"If it does not, there will be increased pressures imposed by the United States and the international community."

The US has sanctions in place against Khartoum, and President Omar al-Bashir is wanted on an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

On Monday, Mr Obama said he would renew tough measures against Khartoum later this week.


Study Finds a Pattern of Severe Droughts in Africa
NYTIMES
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
April 17, 2009

For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers reported in a new study.

That sobering finding, published in the April 17th issue of Science, emerged from the first study of year-by-year climate conditions in the region over the millenniums, based on layered mud and dead trees in a crater lake in Ghana. Although the evidence was drawn from a single water body, Lake Bosumtwi, the researchers said there was evidence that the drought patterns etched in the lakebed extended across a broad swath of West Africa.

More such mega-droughts are inevitable, the research team that studied the patterns said, although there is no way to predict when the next may unfold.

The lead authors of the report, Timothy M. Shanahan of the University of Texas at Austin and Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, warned that global warming resulting from human-generated greenhouse gases was likely to exacerbate those droughts and that there was an urgent need to bolster the resilience of African countries in harm’s way.  The study said that some of the past major droughts appeared to be linked to a distinctive pattern of increases and reductions in surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, known as the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.

Typically over the last 3,000 years, a severe drought developed every 30 to 65 years, the researchers said. But several centuries-long droughts in the climate record, the most recent persisting from 1400 to around 1750, are harder to explain, they said.  While that extraordinary drought occurred during a cool spell in the Northern Hemisphere called the “little ice age,” other extreme droughts appear to have hit West Africa at points when the world was relatively warm over all.

In interviews, a range of independent experts on African climate and poverty said that the study underlined that it was important for developed countries to curb greenhouse gases to keep climate shifts around the globe in as manageable a range as possible. But many stressed that the most urgent concern arising from the study was for the welfare of tens of millions of people with little capacity to endure today’s vagaries in rainfall, let alone epic dry spells.

“It’s a critical report,” said Kevin Watkins, the director of the Human Development Report office of the United Nations.

“Many of the 390 million people in Africa living on less than $1.25 a day are smallholder farmers that depend on two things: rain and land,” he said. “Even small climate blips such as a delay in rains, a modest shortening of the drought cycle, can have catastrophic effects.”

Given the sub-Saharan region’s persistent vulnerability, Mr. Watkins added, the new findings and the prospect of further global warming could be “early warning signs for an unprecedented and catastrophic reversal in human development.”

To gather the data, the research team extracted cylinders of mud from the lakebed. The bottom of the circular lake, formed when a crater was blasted into the region one million years ago, has unusually fine layers of mud. Each layer represents a year’s accumulation, yielding a trove of chemical and physical clues to past temperatures and other conditions.  The team also studied wood samples from ancient dead trees that still poke from the lake’s surface, in areas that were exposed and forested during dry spells several centuries ago but are now under 45 to 60 feet of water.

Recent climate data from the lake analysis were compared with weather records from across the region, providing confidence that the lake record was a reasonable reflection of conditions elsewhere, according to the paper.

Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University who has studied past extreme droughts in other dry areas, including the American Southwest, described the century-scale droughts revealed in the lake mud as “startling.”

He said the study showed that much more work needed to be done to refine computer simulations of climate so they could replicate such phenomena. Only then is there a chance that scientists can move toward predicting climate shifts reliably in particular regions and within specific time frames, he noted.

“The most pressing problem we now face is to predict climate in the near-term future — years to decades,” Dr. Seager said.

Mr. Watkins of the United Nations said that the urgency was multiplied by high population growth rates in West Africa. Just in the last century, when its populations were far smaller, periodic droughts in sub-Saharan African claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

In an interview, Dr. Shanahan of the University of Texas said that the growing population density around Lake Bosumtwi itself, which is 20 miles southeast of Ghana’s second-biggest city, Kumasi, suggested the potential human impact of a seismic drought. (From 1972 to 1974, when Ethiopia’s population was around 31 million people, one million died in a severe drought, for example. Today Ethiopia has more than 70 million residents.)

“There was nothing between the lake and Kumasi when we first went there,” he said. “But three years later it’s a traffic jam.”


Water find 'may end Darfur war'
Last Updated: Wednesday, 18 July 2007, 11:03 GMT 12:03 UK

A huge underground lake has been found in Sudan's Darfur region, scientists say, which they believe could help end the conflict in the arid region.
Some 1,000 wells will be drilled in the region, with the agreement of Sudan's government, the Boston University researchers say.

Analysts say competition for resources between Darfur's Arab nomads and black African farmers is behind the conflict.

More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and 2m fled their homes since 2003.

"Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages," said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, according to the AP news agency.

"Access to fresh water is essential for refugee survival, will help the peace process, and provides the necessary resources for the much needed economic development in Darfur," he said.

'Significant'

The team used radar data to find the ancient lake, which was 30,750 km2 - the size of Lake Erie in North America - the 10th largest lake in the world.  A similar discovery was made in Sudan's neighbour Egypt, where wells have been used to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland, the researchers say.

The discovery is "very significant", Hafiz Muhamad from the lobby group Justice Africa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"The root cause of the conflict is resources - drought and desertification in North Darfur."

He says this led the Arab nomads to move into South Darfur, where they came into conflict with black African farmers.  He also said that it has long been known there was water in the area but the government had not paid for it to be exploited.  French researcher Alain Gachet has also been using satellite images to look for new water resources in Darfur.

Last month, the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) said there was little prospect of peace in Darfur unless the issues of environmental destruction were addressed. It said deserts had increased by an average of 100 km in the last 40 years, while almost 12% of forest cover had been lost in 15 years.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said climate change was partly to blame for the conflict in Darfur in an editorial for US newspaper The Washington Post in June.


Radar finds water for Sudan refugees 
By Martin Plaut, BBC News
Last Updated: Wednesday, 20 July 2005, 03:24 GMT 04:24 UK 

A new technique using satellite radar images may hold the key to providing the water needs of 200,000 Sudanese living in sweltering heat in camps along the Chadian border.  

Alain Gachet, a geologist who spent most of his working life exploring for oil and mining companies, has developed a system that uses satellites orbiting 800km above the earth to search for water.

A good deal of geological exploration now uses the visual images produced by Nasa shuttle missions.

But this only sees the surface features of the earth. Dr Gachet uses two forms of radar to look deep below the soil.

"C Band Radar penetrates to a depth of 50cm, while L band goes down to a maximum of 20m," says Mr Gachet.

By using all three systems, it is possible to plot likely areas for drilling across vast areas. The watersheds in the region can be mapped, the slope of the land and - most importantly - the best sites for drilling.

Dramatic

This work is carried out from an office in the town of Tarascon, in the French region of Provence, where Mr Gachet works surrounded by the objects he has collected over many years of work in Africa.

The results have been dramatic.  Although Mr Gachet is cautious about his findings, he believes that this technique can double the success rate of water exploration in the region.  In March 2004 the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, asked Dr Gachet to carry out a pilot survey of eastern Chad.

"By July 2004 we supplied water target maps covering over 22,500 sq km of territory around the refugee camps of Oure Cassoni, Touloum and Iridimi," says Mr Gachet.


Potential

Comparing the optical and the radar images of the area around Iridimi refugee camp in Chad illustrates the potential.  The photograph shows the wadi, or dry river bed, on the left of the picture, with red dots showing dry wells and blue dots the productive wells.

Red lines are the fractures, which could hold water.  There is no real way of knowing why some wells provide water while others are dry. But the radar image is clear.

The black areas are dry, while the bright areas have the potential to hold water. 
The three red dots, indicating dry wells are in the black and therefore dry area, while the blue dots are on the bright areas or on a fracture.

'Unique technology'

Firoz Verjee, from Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University, says that while some of these applications have been developed in laboratory and scientific conditions, this is the first time Dr Gachet's approach has been applied in a large-scale, humanitarian crisis.

"This is a promising example of how space technologies can have a practical and critical role in humanitarian assistance and international development," said Mr Verjee.

Craig Sanders, head of operations in Chad and Darfur for the UNHCR, says the technique is unique: "It has saved us a lot of time and energy searching for water in an area twice the size of Switzerland.

"This tool allow us to focus on the best areas to drill. It is not a panacea - we still have to prove the results on the ground. But it has helped us a lot."

Rationing

Water is one of the UN's most serious problems in eastern Chad. The area is not only extremely remote it is also sandy, with almost no surface water.  The refugee camps are row after row of tents, pitched on flat, desolate areas.

Finding water is a top priority, but such is the difficulty that in some camps water supplies have had to be rationed. Instead of receiving 15 litres a day, each person is limited to just five litres for all the refugees needs, including washing, cooking and drinking.

With the heat rising to 50C, this is a tiny quantity. There have been intermittent clashes with local people over wood and water, which underlines the importance of finding fresh supplies.

When the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region finally ends, the new wells discovered using these techniques will continue to serve the people of eastern Chad.

UNHCR's Jennifer Pagonis says Dr Gachet's study "paves the way towards sustainable water management in the region".

 

Reaping Consequences Of Technology
Hartford Courant
Robert Thorson
May 10, 2007

`The largest poisoning of a population in history." That's how an epidemiologist from the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Smith, describes arsenic groundwater contamination in India. In the Indian state of West Bengal, more than 40 million people live in the poison zone. In Bangladesh, more than 82 million are threatened.

Why? Because even the most promising environmental technologies often have unseen dark sides, to which governments are sluggish to respond. Here is a cautionary tale for those waiting for the magic bullets of better engineering to solve our environmental problems.

At center stage is the delta built by the Ganges River in India and the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh. The flat rich soils make agriculture productive, allowing the land to teem with people and farm animals. Before the mid-1960s, surface drinking water supplies such as streams, pools and open wells were often contaminated with water-borne pathogens, especially cholera. Thousands of people perished due to contaminated water, especially near Kolkata (Calcutta) where the concentration of poverty and population peaked.

Then, tube wells came to the rescue. These were little more than pipes with a porous tip that could be pressed, hammered and (or) augered into the sandy alluvium below the soil. A simple hand pump attached to the top of the pipe could raise an endless supply of germ-free groundwater. Problem solved.

But beware the Trojan horse of aqueous geochemistry. Inside the gift of germ-free groundwater was a high concentration of arsenic. It didn't kill with the quick, painful march of cholera, which would have made the poisoning easy to identify. Instead, it killed slowly, over years, usually by pre-conditioning the body for skin cancer.

Brown spots on the palms of the hands were often the first symptoms. These developed into calluses, which in turn developed into cancerous tissue leading to almost certain death. Though reliable epidemiological statistics aren't available, more than 14,000 cases of arsenicosis have been documented in the West Bengal alone. And the problem is spreading to other Indian states of Bihar, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh and throughout Bangaledesh.

There's nothing artificial about arsenic, which is element No.33 on the periodic table. The most common natural source of arsenic is from specks of metallic minerals, especially pyrite (FeS2; also known as "fools gold") and a related mineral called arsenopyrite (FeAsS; which could be mistaken for silver).

Both of these minerals are widely present in rocks made from abyssal marine sediments, which are abundant in the Himalayan Mountains. Hence, sediments eroded from the mountains and deposited as deltas contain countless specks of arsenic-bearing minerals. Slowly, and often with the aid of otherwise harmless bacteria, the metal dissolves invisibly into groundwater, frequently in dangerous concentrations. As with radon, it's a completely natural, yet very stealthy killer.

Like iron, arsenic travels readily in groundwater low in dissolved oxygen, but precipitates quickly from oxygenated surface water. Thus, the onset of arsenic poisoning coincided with the switch from oxygenated surface to un-oxygenated shallow groundwater sources, which traded one problem (cholera) for another (arsenicosis).

The link between tube wells, groundwater arsenic and skin problems was made convincingly in 1982 by Kshitish Saha, a dermatologist from the School of Tropical Medicine in Kolkata. Yet only in the past few years - and due largely to pressure from a crusading environmental scientist named Dipankar Chakraborti - has the Indian government finally begun to respond seriously ($500 million) with water treatment facilities and alternative sources of potable water.

This same script has been playing with different actors throughout the history of environmental policy. Technology viewed as a panacea for one problem creates another.

For example, the magic bullets of synthetic pesticides, nuclear power, cheap electricity from coal and antidepressant drugs have ricocheted back with species die-offs, radioactive anxiety, climate change and "happy" clams in drug-polluted water, respectively. Governments demur when new, unfunded problems appear on their watch, paying little attention until crusaders reach the ear of the electorate and become impossible to ignore. Bureaucracies then respond, but ponderously.

Meanwhile, people in India are dying, especially poor ones who can't afford the $1 a month hookup fee to public, arsenic-free water supplies. Can we put a price on a human life? Can we put a price on scientific ignorance?




300 Million Chinese Drink Unsafe Water

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Writer
December 29, 2005

SHANGHAI, China - About 300 million people living in China's vast countryside drink unsafe water tainted by chemicals and other contaminants, the government said Thursday in its latest acknowledgment of mounting risks from widespread pollution. The most common threat to water, after drought, is chemical pollutants and other harmful substances that contaminate drinking supplies for 190 million people, state media quoted E Jingping, a vice minister for water resources, as saying.

The report follows recent chemical spills in the northeast and south of the country that temporarily spoiled water supplies for millions of people and highlighted the severity of the pollution crisis.  The problems are not limited to the countryside. About 90 percent of China's cities have polluted ground water, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a recent nationwide survey.

In Shanghai, the country's biggest and wealthiest city, fetid, stinky canals bubble with pollution. The city's tap water, drawn partly from the heavily polluted Yangtze River, is yellowish and smelly, despite efforts to clean up local waterways.  Some 136 Chinese cities report severe water shortages, adding to the problem, Xinhua said.

"The top priority of our drought relief work is to ensure safe drinking water and safeguard people's health," Xinhua quoted E as telling a conference this week in the western city of Chengdu.  Heavily polluting paper and chemical plants have long been cited as key sources of degradation of most of China's waterways. In some areas, the problems have prompted riots by local residents outraged by chronic health problems and the destruction of their fields and fish farms.

Millions of other Chinese face risks from naturally occurring contaminants, such as excess fluorine, which affects water supplies for 63 million people, and arsenic, which taints water supplies for 2 million. Another 38 million have only brackish water to drink, the report said.  Earlier this week, authorities reported that toxins in the Bei River, in southern China's Guangdong province, had nearly returned to safe levels after a Dec. 15 spill of more than 1,000 tons of cadmium-laced water from a smelter in the city of Shaoguan.

Cities along the Bei temporarily stopped drawing water from the river and dams were closed to keep the spill away from the provincial capital, Guangzhou.

Residents in Russia's Far East have been warned against eating fish after a 110-mile-long slick from a chemical spill in northeastern China crossed the border earlier this week. That spill, from a Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion in the city of Jilin, forced Chinese cities along the Songhua River to shut off water for days.



Water fight: Blumenthal to challenge price hike
Greenwich TIME
By Hoa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Published May 22 2007


Three years after helping to defeat a rate increase sought by the Aquarion Water Co., Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is preparing to fight another proposed rate hike that would have Greenwich customers paying 24 percent more for water and Stamford residents shelling out 55 percent more.

"There will be undoubtedly arguments made by the company for a rate increase, but we'll give them critical scrutiny and certainly oppose this rate increase because its magnitude seems excessive," Blumenthal said. "A rate increase of this magnitude seems unjustifiable and insupportable."


Aquarion announced last week that it wants to increase its water service revenue by an average of 28 percent statewide to offset the more than $129 million the company said it has spent in Connecticut since 2004 to improve water quality and service delivery.

"These improvements in large part are required so that we can continue to meet the requirements that have been set forth by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act," spokeswoman Adrienne Vaughan said.

The proposed revenue increase requires the approval of the state Department of Public Utility Control, which also would scrutinize the proposed rate hikes for Aquarion's service area. In Connecticut, Aquarion serves 179,000 business, residential and other customers in three dozen municipalities.

Under the proposal, Aquarion would charge Greenwich and Darien residential customers 26 cents more for every 200 gallons of water they use a day, increasing the price to $1.34. In Stamford, residents, who now pay 65 cents for 200 gallons of water, would be charged $1.01. In Wilton, Westport and Weston, an extra 32 cents would bring the price to $1.36.


That means the monthly bill for an average family of four in Greenwich would increase from about $33 to $41. In Wilton, Westport and Weston the average bill would increase from $32 to $41 and in Stamford, it would go from $20 to $31 a month.

Greenwich's and Darien's fire departments also would be hit with a 7.5 percent increase to the rate they pay to rent and use water from fire hydrants. Stamford, Wilton, Westport and Wilton would escape those increase, primarily because cost-of-service studies show those areas already pay high hydrant rates, Vaughan said.

Reaction to the proposed rate hikes yesterday ranged from municipal leaders who believed Aquarion was due for some sort of increase to those who believed the proposed hikes were bloated.

"If I were to try to do that in property taxes or sewer taxes, I would be run out of town," Stamford Operations Director Ben Barnes said of Aquarion's proposed 55 percent increase for that city. "I honestly think it's ridiculous for them to ask for that."

Aquarion had tried to increase rates three years ago but were denied by DPUC, which ordered rates in Stamford to stay the same and lowered them for Greenwich and Darien residents. That means Stamford hasn't seen rates increase in eight years, those in Westport, Wilton and Weston haven't seen one in a decade and Greenwich and Darien have gone without one for seven years.

"You have to ask yourself what entity can you think of that hasn't had its cost go up in the last seven years," First Selectman Jim Lash said. "I don't know whether 24 percent after seven years is appropriate or not but I don't think zero would be the right number."

Assistant Fire Chief Peter Siecienski, who will head the department in August, said the town had put more money in the coming year's budget as part of a plan to rent more fire hydrants from Aquarion, but those plans may be in jeopardy if DPUC approves the rate hike.

"We're going to have to monitor and participate in that process," he said.

Darien Town Administrator John Crary said what is vexing about the proposal was that a few months ago when he was preparing the town's budget, he called Aquarion to ask whether the utility had plans to raise rates. That appears to have changed and if the utility gets its way, the hikes would take effect in December.

"A 7.5 increase would be noticeable," Crary said.




Aquarion works to build bridge over troubled waters
By Hoa Nguyen, Greenwich TIME Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/17/2008 01:00:00 AM EDT

Several months after encountering fierce neighborhood opposition to their ambitious expansion plans, Aquarion Water Co. officials are working to repair the discord with neighbors.

The water company, which expects to submit the plans to the town for land use review next month, will meet with neighbors today to discuss proposed landscaping improvements and unveil more details of their plans to persuade neighbors to drop their opposition.

At issue is a plan to triple the size of a water storage tank and build a new 6,800-square-foot chemical storage structure at the Putnam Water Treatment Plant on DeKraft Road. The upgrades and additions are necessary because the 1926 plant is antiquated, officials said.

"It's in a sorry state of repairs," Carolyn Giampe, Aquarion's project manager, said yesterday. "Emergency repairs will no longer cut it."

The water storage tank, which has weathered nearly a century of use, also is too small to meet Greenwich's water needs, officials said. At the moment, it has a capacity to hold only a million gallons of water.

Under modern engineering standards, Greenwich should be served by a tank with a capacity of 4.4 million gallons of water, Giampe said. But because that size tank won't fit on Aquarion's property, officials propose building a smaller 3.5 million gallon tank.

"We're not willing to design anything smaller." Giampe said.

Although the tank is designed to be buried 6-feet deeper than the existing tank, it is so mammoth that the top of it will rise 21 feet high from the ground and be set back 40 feet from the property line. That means the new tank will be more than three times as high and sit about half as close to the property line as the existing one.

Additionally, the water company also proposes building a new storage structure on the property. The new structure would have enough space for officials to centralize the chemicals used at the plant. At the moment, the hazardous materials are scattered to different corners of a building that also serves as the plant's administrative offices.

"The way the chemicals are stored here is hazardous," Giampe said. "This facility will be infinitely safer."

The additional storage space also would allow officials to discontinue use of chlorine gas and switch to sodium hypochlorite, a liquid form of bleach.

"Hypochlorite is a little more expensive but infinitely safer," said David Medd, Aquarion's operations manager.

Several residents who plan on attending today's meeting declined to comment on the project, saying they want to reserve their judgments until after they receive more information.

One neighbor, Isabel Maddux, said she is open to the project if the water company promises to plant trees and other landscaping measures to help screen the structures. She said the company also must commit to upkeep in the future.

"This whole project can be camouflaged," she said. "If they do it for the sake of getting a permit and not maintain the trees and the foliage of the plantings, there's no point. I continue to have an open mind. My issue with them is they have made promises (in the past) that haven't been kept."

Medd said Aquarion will have to consider reserving a bigger budget for landscape maintenance.

"We're going to try and do a better job of landscaping," he said. "We're willing to commit to that in the future."


Water demand heats up
Greenwich TIME
By David Hutter
Published August 13, 2005

The weather in southwestern Connecticut has been hotter and drier than normal this summer, and residents are using water at an unparalleled rate.

With rainfall totals about 3 inches below average for the summer and 90-degree temperatures a common occurrence, water is being used at a record pace, according to Adrienne Vaughan, corporate communications director for the Bridgeport-based Aquarion Water Company of Connecticut.  Bridgeport has received 5.71 inches of precipitation since June 1, compared with an average of 8.69 inches, according to the National Weather Service. From Jan. 1 to Aug. 11, Bridgeport had received 23.05 inches of precipitation, more than 4 inches below its historical average of 27.51 inches.

Since June 1, Bridgeport has had 10 days in which the temperature reached at least 90 degrees, according to the agency. Since the agency began keeping records in 1948, the average number of 90-degree days in Bridgeport from June 1 to Aug. 31 is six.  Vaughan said the company's clients are collectively using as much as 130 million gallons of water per day. In 2002, the last year of especially high water usage, the company's clients used 118 million gallons of water per day, she said.

"It's the highest recorded water usage" ever for the company, which began in 1857, Vaughan said. The company has about 600,000 clients, including 16,000 homes and businesses in Greenwich.

This summer, the amount of water used by Aquarion customers in Greenwich exceeded 18 million gallons per day at its peak. On a typical day in past summers, the company's clients used 12 million to 14 million gallons of water per day, said Dave Medd, manager of supply operations for Aquarion.  Historically, the summer, with lawn and garden watering, is the busiest season for water consumption. The reason for this year's record water usage stems from an increase in the number of construction projects and home irrigation systems, Vaughan said.

Greenwich has not instituted any water restrictions, said Denise Savageau, director of the Conservation Commission. If the dry weather pattern were to continue into the fall and winter, then the town would first ask residents to voluntarily reduce their water consumption before it enacted a restriction.

"If we start getting excessive demands, we'll ask people to cut back on water usage," said Savageau, who works with Aquarion officials to determine when to enact a water-use restriction based on the town reservoir's levels.

Greenwich has five reservoirs that were cumulatively 84.8 percent full as of Tuesday, said Medd. This figure falls in the middle range of the 20-year average of the reservoir levels, he said.

"From a reservoir standpoint, we're in pretty good shape," Medd said.

The five-day forecast for Greenwich calls for high temperatures in the upper-80s to mid-90s and a 30 percent chance of showers most days. The heat index, a figure derived from the combination of temperature and humidity, could reach 100 degrees today.

"It's not a drought, but we definitely could use some rain," said Brian Ciemnecki, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Upton, N.Y.


Water use outpaces Connecticut average
By Hoa Nguyen, Greenwich TIME Staff Writer
March 20, 2004
Greenwich households not only use more water than other households in the state, they also are using more water than they have in past decades, said researchers and conservation officials who have tracked water usage since the 2002 drought.  Greenwich's growing water needs conflict with U.S. Geological Survey figures released last week, which show that nationally, water use has remained relatively stable, even declining from highs of 25 years ago.

"Nationwide there have been a lot of conservation measures put in place," Greenwich Conservation Commissioner Denise Savageau said.  The USGS report, which is released every five years, showed that in 2000, Americans used 408 billion gallons of water a day, about 32 billion gallons less     than in 1980.

"Now we're having it replaced by irrigation for lawns," Savageau said.  Town residents, especially those who live on several acres of property, use more water than the typical household in the state, according to the soon-to-be published report from the USGS.  A typical household in Connecticut uses 200 gallons of water a day, said John Mullaney, an East Hartford-based USGS hydrologist who worked on the report.

In Greenwich, the median water use among people who live on half-acre or smaller lots is 219 gallons a day per household, Mullaney said, adding
that the data came from the Aquarion Water Co. Those who live on a 4-acre or larger lot have a median use of 1,082 gallons a day per household.

"In more affluent areas, although you have a high number of water-saving devices, you have more water uses," said David Medd, Aquarion's
operations manager.  Much of Greenwich's water use is for external purposes, such as for pools and lawns, he said.



Water use surges on large lots
By Michael Dinan, Greenwich TIME Special Correspondent
December 15, 2003
People who live on large properties average five times the water consumption of those living in homes on properties smaller than 4 acres, according to a study that will be presented next month to the Conservation Commission.  The Connecticut District of the U.S. Geological Survey's Greenwich Groundwater Study found that residents who live in homes on more than 4 acres use about 400 gallons of water daily, compared with 80 gallons for those living on a half-acre. Greenwich households, like those nationwide, average fewer than three members per household.

That difference is probably due to those residents' use of water for aesthetic and recreational purposes, USGS hydrologist John Mullaney said.  "I think the reason you see differences is, as you get to bigger lot sizes you tend to have more landscaping," said Mullaney, who examined public water supply data, measured stream flow, and tracked water consumption and well-completion reports for about 3,000 Greenwich homes betwen 2000 and 2002.

"It does appear that there is more water use by lot," Mullaney said. "Maybe those residences are more likely to have a larger lawn or swimming pool. Outdoor water use could typically be a large part of the trend."  Water consumption became a problem in Greenwich during a four-month drought
that started in October 2001. During a second drought late in the summer of 2002, the town declared a state of emergency and only recently lifted a yearlong moratorium on the drilling of new irrigation wells.

Although Northeast Regional Climate Center statistics show that the area has had greater than average precipitation since May, it is important to develop a town emergency drought plan, said Aleksandra Moch, an environmental analyst for the Conservation Commission.  "We've had a lot of rain, but you have to understand that rain is a very limited resource," Moch said. "The demand for water in Greenwich has grown drastically and this is something we're very concerned about because we have very limited resources to plan for the future."

Mullaney said the purpose of his study was to compare how different watershed areas in town consume water. That was largely accomplished by tracking the height of the water table, which is the point below the surface where the ground becomes saturated with water, he said.  The data Mullaney's team collected will be used to develop an emergency plan, Moch said.

"It is a very interesting discovery," she said, "that larger lots -- though they maintain more vegetation -- are not necessarily good for the environment."  Though he was intrigued by how much more water was consumed on larger residential properties, Mullaney said he lacked sufficient information to judge how unusual the results are.  "It's hard to say because I really have nothing to compare it against," he said.  "Certainly, though, I found it very interesting that there was such a difference." 




Seeking A New Level;  Mohegan-backed project taps water from ample Groton supply to quench the needs of a growing, thirsty region
DAY
By Paul Choiniere
Published on 8/20/2006

New London County has an abundance of fresh water — the legacy of the last great glaciers that reached their southern-most advance 24,000 years ago then melted, leaving a landscape dotted with lakes.  Despite this geological blessing, the region has remained vulnerable to droughts. Although the region has water, it hasn't always been able to move the liquid to where it was needed.

Sometime late this year, or early next, that should all change.

The $13.5 million “Thames Basin Regional Water Interconnection Project,” begun in the spring of 2004, is nearing completion. It will tap the ample reservoirs controlled by Groton Utilities and make them available throughout the region.

The 102-year-old municipal utility, owned by the City of Groton, built a water system to serve its industrial customers, particularly medicine producer Pfizer Inc. But over the last decade Pfizer has phased out manufacturing, focusing its Groton operation on drug research and development.  Its water system, supplied by the Poquonnock and Pohegnut reservoirs and Smith Lake in Groton, and the Ledyard and Mohegan Pond reservoirs in Ledyard, is capable of providing 12.1 million gallons of water a day. Demand is now a little under 6 million. Water constantly spills from the brimming reservoirs into Long Island Sound.

“We spill more than we pump,” said Alfred C. Dion, a deputy director at the Groton utility, who said his work on developing a regional system has been the most rewarding of his 42-year career there.

In addition to tapping into the ample Groton supplies, the revamped system should make it possible, in an emergency, to move water from the other major utilities in the region — Norwich Public Utilities and the New London Water and Sewer Authority — to any point in the system. The New London system, serving that city and Waterford, can provide 9 million gallons a day. The Norwich system can yield 7 million.

“It dramatically reduces the region's vulnerability to a drought,” said Chris Clark, operations manager of the Mohegan Tribal Utility Authority and the primary architect of the system.

•••••

Over time, neighborhoods now using wells or small independent systems might begin tying into the more robust system.

About 70 percent of the region's population is served by a water supply system, according to the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, a group instrumental in getting the regional system constructed.  Groton Utilities first proposed a regional plan in 1999, but the idea did not move beyond discussions until 2002, when the Mohegan Tribe, intent on finding a long-term, reliable source of water for its growing casino, offered to finance the construction of a water main crossing the Thames River to make a regional system possible.

The key elements of the new system are the 1,400-foot, 20-inch diameter pipe buried as deep as 85 feet beneath the riverbed of the Thames River, and two new water towers. One is on Rogers Hill in Waterford, and a second is at Holmberg Orchards in northwest Ledyard.

The cross-river pipe, recently completed and tested, will allow water for the first time to move between water systems on both sides of the river. The two water tanks, each about 310 feet above sea level, equalize pressure in the system, allowing for the movement of water where needed. The Rogers Hill tank is finished, and the Ledyard tank is nearly done.

“With water, height is everything,” said Clark.

The tribe has received accolades for fronting the money to pay for the $13.5 million project. As the various towns use the improved system to tap into the water source and expand their supply territories, they must reimburse the Mohegans a proportional share of that investment, but the tribe is not counting on recovering all its money, Clark said. Montville is reimbursing $4.3 million of the $13.5 million because of the immediate benefits it will receive.

The cross-river connection alone would have been enough to tap into the Groton water supply, but the new tanks and pumping stations create a significant regional system.

“We tried to look at the thing from a big perspective,” said Mark F. Brown, tribal chairman at the time the offer was made. “There had been problems with drought and, when the benefits of doing it this way was explained to us, we came to the conclusion, 'Why wouldn't we do this right?' ”

With the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, all parties worked out a detailed agreement outlining how the water will be metered and protocols for an emergency. The agreement gives Groton Utilities the authority to manipulate the system from a central control room using radio-controlled valves.  Officials from the City of Groton, Ledyard, Montville, Norwich, Preston, Waterford and the tribe signed the agreement on May 27, 2004.

The tribe's commitment stood fast, even after costs went up nearly $4 million from initial estimates.

“We grew up here,” said current tribal Chairman Bruce “Two Dogs” Bozsum. “Once we were committed, we were going to get this done for the region. It's the Mohegan way.”

The system is expected to be fully completed by November and operational soon after, Clark said.

•••••

The most immediate beneficiary will be the Mohegan Sun casino and the stores and businesses along and adjacent to Route 32 in Montville.

With the turn of several valves, water will flow north from the Groton filtration plant six miles into Ledyard, where it will take a hard left down Hurlbutt Road under the Thames River and then emerge on the west bank, just south of the Montville boat launch. A right turn will take the water along Route 32 in Montville, providing as much as 1.93 million gallons of water daily, 1 million of it for the Mohegan Sun casino and hotel.

Norwich has provided water to the casino since it opened in 1996 and to the United Nuclear Corp. that was located there previously. It began serving business and neighborhoods along Route 32 in Montville 15 years ago. Now Norwich wants to use its water for its own development needs, said John Bilda, general manager of Norwich Public Utilities.

Preston First Selectman Robert Congdon, who is on a commission appointed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell to study ways of diversifying the region's economy, said having a reliable water system for the region is key to attracting business and industry.  Even with the imminent improvements, the search for new water supplies will continue, Dion said.

“While the region continues to grow, so will the demand for water,” he said. “And while we are in good shape now, we cannot assume that will always be the case.”

Different Towns, Different Benefits

City of Groton

Groton Utilities will be able to sell access water. It now uses only about half of the 12 million gallons it can supply daily. When the system is done, the utility will sell up to 930,000 gallons per day to the Southeastern Connecticut Water Authority,which, in turn, will bill customers in Montville. Up to 1 million gallons of day will go to the Mohegan Sun casino. Groton Utilities has not calculated the additional revenues it expects but says the money will go back into maintenance of the system.

Ledyard

The new water tank in the northwest corner of town will improve fire protection in the western half of Ledyard.Water will be supplied to the Avery Hill Road neighborhood, where mobile homes have had water problems in droughts. Public water could be taken to other neighborhoods, including Aljen Heights.

Montville

The town can provide water to future commercial developments along the Route 32 corridor, as well as neighborhoods off the turnpike. The area had gotten water from the Norwich system and a smaller amount from New London. Some spots, however, were under water supply restrictions from the state Department of Environmental Protection,which limited development potential. Those restrictions will be lifted.

Norwich

The city can use the water it once sent to Montville and the Mohegan Sun to meet its own or nearby development needs, including those for the proposed Utopia Studios entertainment complex at Norwich Hospital.

Mohegan Tribe

The Mohegan Sun casino will receive an ample water supply for today's needs and those that might arise with any expansions. The new system adds redundancy, greatly reducing the risk that water problems in a portion of the system would force the casino to temporarily close.

Preston

The new system would supply the Utopia development, if it occurs, or any other project at the former Norwich Hospital property. Groton would serve as a back-up water supply. T he town could also connect neighborhoods to the Groton supply.

New London and East Lyme

While these two communities are not partners in the project, they could reap benefits. New London will no longer send 70,000 gallons of water a day to Montville. It could use that amount for neighborhoods in East Lyme. New London,which has had problems in droughts, now has access to both the Norwich and Groton systems in an emergency.
 



And on another, semi-related subject...How can Weston relate to this?
Agenda 2002: Coping With Growth (a view from Southeastern CT)
Published on 01/20/2002

The Eastern Connecticut economy, once heavily dependent on defense spending, has diversified significantly so that bioscience, tourism and casinos as well as maritime research and activity now join military spending as key components of regional growth.

The challenge for Eastern Connecticut as a region is to outline and encourage an agenda that identifies common problems and opportunities. The
many issues require regional solutions that overcome local provincialities.  Cities and towns together must anticipate the housing, transportation and educational needs and water supplies required to make the region work...

New London public schools

New London's public schools face a crisis of confidence. Many parents are voting with their feet, either by moving out of the city or electing to pay to send their children to private or suburban public schools.

The exodus is most prominently felt at New London High School, which is rapidly losing what was already a small base of young people being prepared for college. The drop-out rate is very high as well. Test scores continue to be low.

The New London Board of Education and the community have supported the efforts of Superintendent Julian Stafford to reorganize the central office and the administrative leadership among principals at individual schools. These included a controversial appointment of a new high school principal.

But now Dr. Stafford and his staff must begin to show some positive results. The superintendent, upon arriving, asked that he be judged by performance and be held accountable. The community and the board should do so.

Adequate water supplies

The Southeastern Connecticut region is split into a large number of private and public providers of water, including supply departments owned by the cities of Norwich, New London and Groton and the town of East Lyme. Water, along with housing, represents the most challenging and critical issue for the continued prosperity of the region.

Some towns – East Lyme is a good example – desperately need more water. The city of Groton has a surplus. But the array of multiple suppliers does not meet the future needs of the region effectively, and that is a threat to economic development in this section of the state.

The Southeastern Connecticut Regional Water Authority was organized more than 30 years ago, but it has never had the support and cooperation of the municipal suppliers, most especially Groton and Norwich.  There have been small pockets of success. New London and Waterford cooperated and Norwich and New London have supplied Montville, for example. But all the more often, individual suppliers spent their energies protecting their respective turfs.  Towns and cities alike should realize that continuing on this path ultimately will be destructive to the economic and social needs of the region.

High on the Chamber's and the Council of Governments' list of priorities should be comprehensive talks leading to the acquisitions of the water companies to organize them into a metropolitan water district. If the towns cooperated, there would be strong legislative support to create the water district.  The cost savings inherent in one comprehensive regional water system would be predictable and beneficial.





Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show
NYTIMES
By CHARLES DUHIGG
December 8, 2009

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year.

In some instances, drinking water violations were one-time events, and probably posed little risk. But for hundreds of other systems, illegal contamination persisted for years, records show.

On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee will question a high-ranking E.P.A. official about the agency’s enforcement of drinking-water safety laws. The E.P.A. is expected to announce a new policy for how it polices the nation’s 54,700 water systems.

“This administration has made it clear that clean water is a top priority,” said an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Adora Andy, in response to questions regarding the agency’s drinking water enforcement. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, this year announced a wide-ranging overhaul of enforcement of the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollution into waterways.

“The previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and the environment,” Ms. Andy added.

Water pollution has become a growing concern for some lawmakers as government oversight of polluters has waned. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, in 2007 asked the E.P.A. for data on Americans’ exposure to some contaminants in drinking water.

The New York Times has compiled and analyzed millions of records from water systems and regulators around the nation, as part of a series of articles about worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer.

In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004.

However, almost none of those systems were ever punished. Ramsey was not fined for its water violations, for example, though a Ramsey official said that filtration systems have been installed since then. In New York, only three water systems were penalized for bacteria violations, according to federal data.

The problem, say current and former government officials, is that enforcing the Safe Drinking Water Act has not been a federal priority.

“There is significant reluctance within the E.P.A. and Justice Department to bring actions against municipalities, because there’s a view that they are often cash-strapped, and fines would ultimately be paid by local taxpayers,” said David Uhlmann, who headed the environmental crimes division at the Justice Department until 2007.

“But some systems won’t come into compliance unless they are forced to,” added Mr. Uhlmann, who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school. “And sometimes a court order is the only way to get local governments to spend what is needed.”

A half-dozen current and former E.P.A. officials said in interviews that they tried to prod the agency to enforce the drinking-water law, but found little support.

“I proposed drinking water cases, but they got shut down so fast that I’ve pretty much stopped even looking at the violations,” said one longtime E.P.A. enforcement official who, like others, requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “The top people want big headlines and million-dollar settlements. That’s not drinking-water cases.”

The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

It is unclear precisely how many American illnesses are linked to contaminated drinking water. Many of the most dangerous contaminants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act have been tied to diseases like cancer that can take years to develop.

But scientific research indicates that as many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses and bacteria in drinking water. Certain types of cancer — such as breast and prostate cancer — have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water.

The violations counted by the Times analysis include only situations where residents were exposed to dangerous contaminants, and exclude violations that involved paperwork or other minor problems.

In response to inquiries submitted by Senator Boxer, the E.P.A. has reported that more than three million Americans have been exposed since 2005 to drinking water with illegal concentrations of arsenic and radioactive elements, both of which have been linked to cancer at small doses.

In some areas, the amount of radium detected in drinking water was 2,000 percent higher than the legal limit, according to E.P.A. data.

But federal regulators fined or punished fewer than 8 percent of water systems that violated the arsenic and radioactive standards. The E.P.A., in a statement, said that in a majority of situations, state regulators used informal methods — like providing technical assistance — to help systems that had violated the rules.

But many systems remained out of compliance, even after aid was offered, according to E.P.A. data. And for over a quarter of systems that violated the arsenic or radioactivity standards, there is no record that they were ever contacted by a regulator, even after they sent in paperwork revealing their violations.

Those figures are particularly worrisome, say researchers, because the Safe Drinking Water Act’s limits on arsenic are so weak to begin with. A system could deliver tap water that puts residents at a 1-in-600 risk of developing bladder cancer from arsenic, and still comply with the law.

Despite the expected announcement of reforms, some mid-level E.P.A. regulators say they are skeptical that any change will occur.

“The same people who told us to ignore Safe Drinking Water Act violations are still running the divisions,” said one mid-level E.P.A. official. “There’s no accountability, and so nothing’s going to change.”




Water supply for NYC comes from upstate...anyone who has seen "Die Hard 3" knows that!
City’s Water Is Ranked Best in a Taste Test
NYTIMES
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: August 27, 2008

Beating more than 150 other municipal water systems, New York City came in first — for the first time — in the New York State Water Taste Test at the State Fair in Syracuse this week.

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 Leave a Comment on City Room Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wasted no time issuing a statement on Wednesday bragging about the distinction and calling the tap-water system “the lifeblood of our city.”

But who came in second?

The second-place winner, announced on Tuesday, was the village of Pulaski, population 2,398, in Oswego County, near the eastern edge of Lake Ontario. By car, the upstate village (locals pronounce it pull-ask-EYE) is nearly five hours from New York City.

So far, Pulaski is taking the news well. “We were very proud to have come in second place,” Gary M. Stevens, superintendent of public works for the village since 1992, said in a phone interview. “First place would have been better, but things happen.”

The village’s mayor, Ernest C. Wheeler, said, jokingly: “We’d like to know where you get your water from. You don’t get it from Lake Ontario, do you?”

The annual water taste test — this was its 22nd year — is a “nonscientific competition” sponsored by the State Department of Health and the New York section of the American Water Works Association. About 250 people attending the fair judged the blind taste test.

Mr. Stevens, of Pulaski, has never been to New York City. Mr. Wheeler, who has been the mayor for two years, said he last visited three years ago. He did not remember the city’s water too well. “It tasted O.K., but ours is better,” he said. “Whatever.”



AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
Stamford ADVOCATE
By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writers
Published March 10 2008, 8:17 AM EDT

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
 
But the presence of so many prescription drugs -- and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen -- in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas -- from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies -- which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public -- have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

_Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

_Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

_The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

_Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.


The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water -- Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.
 
The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" -- regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers -- one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas -- that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe -- even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs -- and flushing them unmetabolized or unused -- in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.


Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity -- sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

 
Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby -- director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. -- said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life -- such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along."

With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere -- every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs -- or combinations of drugs -- may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants -- pesticides, lead, PCBs -- which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why -- aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies -- pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.


Pesticides Found in Most Rivers, Streams
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
March 3, 2006, 1pm

WASHINGTON - Pesticides linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders contaminate almost all of the nation's rivers and streams and most fish found in them, but seldom at concentrations likely to affect people, government scientists said Friday.

Though the pesticides were less common in ground water, the     U.S. Geological Survey's study of data between 1992 and 2001 found them present in streams in both urban and agricultural areas at concentrations that could affect aquatic life or fish-eating wildlife.

Robert Hirsch, the USGS associate director for water, said that "while the use of pesticides has resulted in a wide range of benefits to control weeds, insects, and other pests, including increased food production and reduction of insect-borne disease, their use also raises questions about possible effects on the environment, including water quality."

About 40 pesticides of 100 that were studied accounted for most of the findings in water, fish and sediment. Three herbicides used mainly on farms, atrazine, metolachlor, and cyanazine, were the most frequently detected in agricultural streams. Three herbicides used commonly in cities, simazine, prometon, and tebuthiuron, showed up more often in urban streams.

The pesticides also showed up more than 90 percent of the time in the fish tissue found in agricultural, urban and mixed land-use areas.

At least one pesticide was detected in water from all the streams studied. Pesticide compounds were found at nearly all times of the year in about 19 of every 20 streams with agricultural, urban or mixed land-use watersheds, the agency said. The most frequent occurrence was in shallow ground water beneath agricultural and urban areas, where more than half the wells contained one or more pesticide compounds.

Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a national research and advocacy group, said the data surrounding the nation's reliance on about 1 billion pounds of pesticides a year "shows an urgent need to strengthen policies at all levels of government and curtail pesticide use."

The USGS report is based on an analysis of data from 51 major river basins and aquifer systems nationally, and a study of an aquifer system that runs through eight states from South Dakota to Texas, east of the Rocky Mountains.

It found that concentrations of individual pesticides nearly always complied with     Environmental Protection Agency drinking-water standards, though no water samples from streams were taken at drinking-water intakes.

EPA also is responsible for reviewing pesticides, based on pesticide-makers' tests that can cost tens of millions of dollars. It typically takes up to a decade to study each one before it can reach the marketplace, according to industry figures.

But simply detecting the presence of a pesticide does not always mean there is reason for concern, said Jay Vroom, president of CropLife America, which represents pesticide developers and manufacturers. He emphasized that the use of pesticides by farmers, ranchers and others is strictly regulated by federal and state laws.

"Water quality is of paramount importance to us," he said. "And the USGS report correctly recognizes that the large majority of pesticide detections in streams and groundwater were trace amounts, far below scientifically based minimum levels set for protecting human health and the environment."



General Electric agrees to buy water company

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, AP Business Writer
Mar 14, 4:30 PM EST

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- General Electric Co. will buy a water treatment company in Canada for $656 million in a deal that will accelerate the conglomerate's plans to tap into a fast growing market in a thirsty world, company officials said Tuesday.

GE's acquisition of Zenon Environmental Inc. will provide technology to help convert seawater into drinking water and to reuse waste water from municipalities and industry, company officials said.

"We think it will position us as the leader and the lowest cost producer of fresh water from these new sources," said Colin Sabol, chief marketing officer for GE Water and Process Technologies. "We'll be able to make fresh water less expensively than anyone in the world."

The Fairfield-based industrial, financial services and media company entered the water business in 2002.
 
"We saw water scarcity spreading across the globe," Sabol said.

GE is helping build one of the world's largest water desalination plants in Algeria.

Zenon makes advanced membranes for water purification, wastewater treatment and water reuse. The company pioneered the use of technology for water and wastewater treatment that is spreading rapidly throughout the world, company officials said.

Zenon's technology will lower costs to treat water in the initial step, Sabol said. The membranes are well suited to handle fluctuations in water quality typically associated with seawater and wastewater, he said.

GE's water business, now $2.1 billion, is expected to grow to about $2.5 billion next year and $5 billion in five years, Sabol said.

GE expects to use the new technology in water-thirsty countries such as China, India and Australia.

"It will allow us to accelerate our growth in desalination," Sabol said.

The transaction will require the approval of Zenon's shareholders and regulators.

GE shares rose 11 cents, to close at $33.78 Tuesday on the New York stock Exchange. The stock has traded between $32.21 to $37.34 over the past year.




General Electric agrees to buy water company

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN,  AP Business Writer

Mar 14, 4:30 PM EST


STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- General Electric Co. will buy a water treatment company in Canada for $656 million in a deal that will accelerate the conglomerate's plans to tap into a fast growing market in a thirsty world, company officials said Tuesday.

GE's acquisition of Zenon Environmental Inc. will provide technology to help convert seawater into drinking water and to reuse waste water from municipalities and industry, company officials said.

"We think it will position us as the leader and the lowest cost producer of fresh water from these new sources," said Colin Sabol, chief marketing officer for GE Water and Process Technologies. "We'll be able to make fresh water less expensively than anyone in the world."

The Fairfield-based industrial, financial services and media company entered the water business in 2002.       
 
"We saw water scarcity spreading across the globe," Sabol said.  GE is helping build one of the world's largest water desalination plants in Algeria.

Zenon makes advanced membranes for water purification, wastewater treatment and water reuse. The company pioneered the use of technology for water and wastewater treatment that is spreading rapidly throughout the world, company officials said.  Zenon's technology will lower costs to treat water in the initial step, Sabol said. The membranes are well suited to handle fluctuations in water quality typically associated with seawater and wastewater, he said.

GE's water business, now $2.1 billion, is expected to grow to about $2.5 billion next year and $5 billion in five years, Sabol said.  GE expects to use the new technology in water-thirsty countries such as China, India and Australia.

"It will allow us to accelerate our growth in desalination," Sabol said.  The transaction will require the approval of Zenon's shareholders and regulators.

GE shares rose 11 cents, to close at $33.78 Tuesday on the New York stock Exchange. The stock has traded between $32.21 to $37.34 over the past year.


Article Last Updated: Thursday, November 25, 2004 - 6:30:44 AM EST
GE buys 4th pure-water firm for $1.1b
By ROB VARNONrvarnon@ctpost.com

FAIRFIELD - General Electric Co. continued its expansion into the water treatment technology business Wednesday, announcing a $1.1 billion acquisition of a Massachusetts company.

GE is buying Ionics Inc. of Watertown for $44 a share, in an all-cash transaction. Ionics will be added to GE's Wilton-based GE Infrastructure unit after shareholder and regulatory approvals, which GE expects sometime in 2005.

Jeffrey DeMarrais, a spokesman for GE Infrastructure, said Ionics' desalination technology was one of the company's biggest attractions, because the world's supply of potable drinking water is being stretched thin.

Desalination turns saltwater and other types of fouled water into drinking water. DeMarrais said GE expects the need for this type of technology to grow dramatically in China, India, Africa and the western part of the United States, where a lack of water is becoming a bigger problem.

GE has acquired three water technology companies during the last several years in anticipation of higher demand for water purification systems, he said.

It's too early to tell if the acquisition will cost the Massachusetts firm any jobs as it is bought up, DeMarrais said. But it definitely will not affect employment in Wilton, an administrative facility.  The Ionics acquisition was the company's second billiondollar-plus deal this week...

OTHER G.E. news:
GE announced on Monday the $4.4 billion purchase of CitiGroup's transportation financial services division.  Shares of GE dropped 17 cents to $35.64 in New York Stock Exchange trading Wednesday.



Water Purification Equipment and Personnel Dispatched From U.S. Army's TARDEC To Assist Mississippi Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief
Thursday September 15, 7:00 am ET
- U.S. Army, Office of Naval Research and the Bureau of Reclamation Have Begun Producing as Much as 100,000 Gallons of Potable Water Per Day for Gulf Coast Residents -

WARREN, Mich., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Engineers from the U.S. Army's Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), earlier this week began generating potable water using purification equipment to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

The Expeditionary Unit Water Purification (EUWP) system demonstrator, capable of generating 100,000 gallons of potable water per day, has been set up on the beach in Biloxi, MS, to provide water for the nearby Biloxi Regional Medical Center. Since the hurricane hit, the hospital has been without potable water and relying on bottled drinking water for patients and staff.

As additional capability, two 600 gallon per hour Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units (ROWPU) and one 1500 gallon per hour Tactical Water Purification System (TWPS) have been deployed to the region. Two sites in Waveland, MS, are being set up to support local residents. The systems are being operated by engineers from TARDEC and Reclamation with support from the 38th Infantry Division's 38th Main Support Battalion.

On September 4, FEMA requested support from the Office of Naval Research for the EUWP, which is equipment created in coordination with TARDEC. The EUWP, a demonstration platform designed to evaluate new water purification technologies, is capable of delivering potable water in humanitarian relief missions around the world as well as in forward locations on the battlefield. It is C-130 transportable and compatible with the Army Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck-Load Handling System (HEMTT-LHS) transport vehicle. Development of this technology is a collaborative effort with input from other partners including: the Environmental Protection Agency, Reclamation and NASA as well as academia.

"We are pleased this emerging technology will be put to use to help the local residents who have suffered from the effects of the most devastating hurricane in this country's history," said Dr. Richard E. McClelland, Director, TARDEC. "Years of research, design and engineering have gone into the development of this technology so that it can be helpful in such a critical situation today."

The EUWP is the world's largest transportable desalination system. The relief mission in Mississippi is the second deployment of the EUWP in a real- world disaster relief scenario. Previously, a unit was put in place at Port Clarence, Alaska, Coast Guard station, where it produced approximately 250,000 gallons of purified water in 3 days, after a storm surge flooded the areas fresh water ponds.

TARDEC is headquartered at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Michigan and is located in the heart of the world's automotive capital. Part of the Army Materiel Command's Research, Development and Engineering Command, TARDEC is the nation's laboratory for advanced military automotive technology. TARDEC's mission is to research, develop, engineer, leverage and integrate advanced technology into ground systems and support equipment. TARDEC's 1,100 associates develop and maintain vehicles for all US Armed Forces, numerous federal agencies and over 60 foreign countries. TARDEC continually pushes the state-of-the-art in technology areas of survivability, mobility, intelligent systems and maneuver support and sustainment, making sure that they field robust equipment that meets the performance needs of the Soldier.




Aquatic alarm: Norwalk River's oxygen drop may threaten fish
By John Nickerson, Stamford ADVOCATE Staff Writer
May 5, 2004
NORWALK -- Unexplained plunges in the amount of oxygen in the Norwalk River have officials and environmentalists scrambling to halt a trend that
could threaten aquatic life.  The unusual drops in oxygen levels were first noticed nearly two weeks ago by an employee of The Maritime Aquarium
at Norwalk watching a Web site.

The University of Connecticut Department of Marine Sciences Web site, MYSound, displays water-quality information from seven sensors around
the state. One sensor is in 18 inches of water on the end of the aquarium's boat dock just north of the Stroffolino Bridge.  The aquarium staffer called John Frank, chairman of the city's Shellfish Commission.

Days before the call was made, millions of oyster larvae died unexpectedly in an indoor South Norwalk hatchery. The facility grows fledgling oysters in tanks of water pumped from the river about a quarter-mile downstream from the aquarium, close to Long Island Sound.  Frank has since called state and city agencies to figure out how to stabilize oxygen levels.

"We have found some strange spikes downward that do not make sense. They do not follow the normal biological process," Frank said.  Last month, oxygen content in the river dropped below 2 milligrams per liter seven times, he said. The drops in oxygen levels have lasted for about 15 minutes.
When oxygen levels drop below 1.5 milligrams per liter, fish can die, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Long Island Sound office. When oxygen levels drop below 3 milligrams per liter for four or so days, fish also can suffer.

Oxygen levels are normally higher in the spring than in the height of summer, when levels naturally decline because of water temperature and pollution.  Dick Harris, a director for Westport-based HarborWatch/RiverWatch, which does routine water quality sampling in the Sound, said oxygen levels usually decrease to about 7 or 8 milligrams per liter this time of year.

Archived material from the University of Connecticut's Web site show 19 of the first 21 days of April recorded levels below 6 milligrams of oxygen per liter.  "If its true, a lot of juvenile fish will not make it this spring," said Harris, adding that he doesn't believe the situation is a disaster.  In the next few days, Harris said he will use another oxygen meter to test the water.

Dissolved oxygen levels fluctuate normally throughout the day.  When the sun comes out, microscopic aquatic plants called phytoplankton release oxygen elevating levels of oxygen in water. At night, a reversal occurs as phytoplankton feed on oxygen, lowering its amount.  But recent oxygen levels show wild variations occurring sometimes twice during the night.

At Sargeant's Cove oyster hatchery in the Tallmadge Bros. building on Water Street, the lack of oxygen may have claimed its first victims.  Dave Hopp, an oyster boat skipper who runs the hatchery, said millions of oyster larvae died in four tanks a day after one of the most severe oxygen depletion episodes was recorded April 21.  According to the university graph, at midnight April 20 the oxygen level dipped below 1 milligram per liter. The next day, Hopp pumped river water into four tanks containing the larvae.

A day after that when the free-swimming oysters were examined, 5 million larvae were dead. The usual mortality rate for that size batch is 125,000, Hopp said.  "We don't know if it was due to that," he said. "It just happened to be at the same time. We have lost larvae before -- they are a fragile animal. It just happens sometimes. It could have been food or temperature."  But just in case oxygen could be the culprit, Hopp is purchasing an oxygen meter and will begin testing water pumped into the barrels used to grow oysters.

Frank said he first suspected that the city's wastewater treatment plant was to blame.  But Department of Public Works Director Harold Alvord said the plant is operating well and has not been releasing oxygen-depleted water into the river.  Alvord said he believes the problem is manmade and may be originating from one of the 210 drainpipes that end at the river within the city.

In the past week, Operations Management International, the private company that runs the sewage plant, has begun testing its discharge on an hourly basis.  Levels of oxygen have not dipped below 6 milligrams per liter, said Tom Closter, Health Department chief environmental officer.         Although he has not seen April's figures, Closter said the plant's daily average readings dating from March show the oxygen levels did not go below 6.1 milligrams per liter.

A health department employee was sent out a week ago to test for bacteria, which also can cause oxygen levels to drop.  No elevated readings were recorded, Closter said, adding that the plant is rapidly being ruled out as the cause of the low-oxygen conditions.  But William Ziegler III, who joined with the family of the late Hillard Bloom to create Sargeant's Cove hatchery, said he remains concerned about the sewage plant.

"It's a darn shame that we can't make better use of the facility (treatment plant) to keep the oxygen levels high and the nitrogen levels low. It is a major source of nitrogen," Ziegler said.  But Alvord said nitrogen levels, which lead to the growth of algae which lowers oxygen levels, are very low at the plant.  Closter, Frank and Alvord believe that the low oxygen levels may be the result of someone dumping chemicals in the river. Additional oxygen meters could be placed upstream to better locate the origins of the problem, Closter said.

Frank said city and state are cooperating in the effort to discover the source of the problem.  He said the situation could pose a danger, not only to fish but the oyster and clam business.  "We think of that upper part of the harbor as a natural nursery. A lot of oysters and clams spawn up there and they produce clams and oysters that end up settling or digging into the ground a good deal further downstream. Even though nobody goes clamming up there, we see that as an important part of the shellfish system," Frank said.




Aquarion seeking land deal with town
Greenwich TIME
By Hoa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Published June 12 2006

The Aquarion Water Co. wants to begin negotiating with Greenwich officials over the sale of up to 365 acres of land near reservoirs and other water supplies in town.

Though Greenwich officials have been talking to Aquarion for years about purchasing some of its land, the water company took a step closer to sealing the deal this week by saying it was notifying state regulators of its intention to enter formal negotiations with the town.

"This is an official notification," Aquarion spokeswoman Adrienne Vaughan said. "This is the beginning of negotiations."

Aquarion said it is willing to sell or give up development rights on 365 acres the water company owns in town.

"It signals our unwavering commitment to the perpetual preservation of water utility property for the protection of our water supplies and open space," Aquarion President and Chief Executive Officer Charles V. Firlotte said in a press release.

Town officials and conservation advocates have supported the sale for years, saying it would help protect the acres of meadows from being developed. The town had been in informal talks with Aquarion for years, though this is the water company's first formal recognition of Greenwich's interest in the land.

"It's great news because we hadn't gotten that formalized," Conservation Director Denise Savageau said of the negotiations.

First Selectman Jim Lash declined to comment by telephone on the announcement, though he said in a press release Aquarion issued that "all of Greenwich's residents will benefit from the protection of these land parcels."

The land deal involves 96 acres of land Aquarion owns on Lake Avenue and North Street for which the water company has little use. This land is farther away from Aquarion's reservoir supplies than other water company property being considered, so it could be eventually be used for recreational purposes.

The other 269 acres are adjacent to or near Putnam Lake and Rockwood Lake reservoirs and as a result would likely remain an open meadow buffer between drinking supplies and nearby developed areas.

Aquarion, which serves more than 16,300 homes and business in Greenwich and 221,000 households in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, said any land deal would take from two to three years to negotiate and finalize, including receiving regulatory approval from the state departments of Public Health and Public Utility Control.

Recently passed legislation rewards utility companies that sell their excess land for open space uses by allowing company shareholders to keep a larger percentage of the proceeds than if the land was sold for development. In the latter case, nearly all the profits could only go to benefit utility customers.

"It's in their best interest to sell it for open space conservation or public recreation," DPUC spokeswoman Beryl Lyons. "It benefits the company, but it benefits the public as well."

Before a sale could occur, Aquarion must have the land appraised and sell the land for at least that price.

Because the cost will likely be in the millions -- with few officials venturing to give a more precise figure -- the town will likely seek to create a public and private partnership that in the past successfully purchased the 110-acre Treetops property for $11.5 million on the Greenwich-Stamford border. Private donations along with municipal and state money went into the purchase of that property.

"There's going to be significant dollars," Savageau said of the Aquarion deal. "That's about all you can say at this point."


ENDANGERED LANDS BILL - OFA Fiscal Note

Explanation
The bill specifies requirements and restrictions on the abandonment of certain watershed lands and results in state and municipal impact. Passage of this bill will not result in a fiscal impact for the Departments of Public Health or Public Utility Control, as its provisions will not materially alter the agencies' regulatory responsibilities.

Section 1 of the bill may restrict future development activities on certain watershed lands, and correspondingly impact the tax base of any municipality in which such land is located. Passage of this section of the bill would result in potential revenue loss that is not known at this time.

Section 2 of the bill requires entities acquiring certain water companies to grant the state a permanent conservation easement (1) on the lands involved as a condition of the approval of the transfer. It provides that the easement be imposed once the abandonment of the watershed lands being transferred has been approved. To the extent that such an easement is considered a taking of that land, the state would have to compensate the owner for the loss in value of the land. The average bargain sale price for such lands is $5,800 per acre. Fair market value for the same lands is $12,500 per acre, which represents an increase of more than 50%. Passage of this section of the bill would result in potential significant cost to the state. (2)

Section 3 of the bill requires that all economic benefits from such transfers be allocated to ratepayers. Current law requires that these benefits be equally allocated between ratepayers and shareholders.

(1) A permanent conservation easement allows for the preservation and protection of public water supplies and natural resources,
predominantly as natural, scenic or open space lands.

(2) This analysis assumes that the Department of Environmental Protection would be initiating the purchase of any such lands.




State preparing for water battle; Experts anticipate legal fight over Colo. River rights
By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News
December 11, 2004

Colorado will spend as much as $2 million in the next two years to build a legal war chest shoring up its rights to the drought-plagued Colorado River.  The new initiative comes as Lake Powell and Lake Mead - the river's giant storage ponds - have reached historic lows, triggering anxiety over future supplies from Los Angeles to Denver.

"About a year ago the people at the Colorado Water Conservation Board began sounding the alarm, saying we need to move to protect ourselves, and I agreed," said Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Division of Natural Resources. "Essentially we're building the best legal case that Colorado can have so that we presumably prevail when it comes down to making decisions.

"I think we have a couple of years (before the river's supplies could drop low enough to trigger a demand for more water for Nevada, Arizona and California). But we can't waste time."

The money is being spent on new computer models detailing how the river's supplies will be affected by ongoing drought and on creating a computerized historic archive documenting Colorado's use of the river under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. It also will pay for new legal research to help guide the state in the unlikely event that the lingering drought prompts new claims to Colorado's share of the river's supplies, George said.

In all, seven states have rights to its waters. How much each state gets is outlined in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, a hard-fought document that envisioned plenty for all.

Next week at the annual meeting of all the river's users in Las Vegas, Colorado plans to push to open new talks over long-standing problems on the river surfacing because of the drought and the West's population boom.

"The last 20 years have been a positive period for coming up with imaginative solutions on the river," said Jim Lochhead, a water attorney who advises Colorado cities on river compact issues and a former executive director of the Colorado Division of Natural Resources. "The next 20 years, though, may produce more difficult challenges if we continue to be in a dry cycle and the system continues to go down."

Millions depend on river

Colorado's destiny is intimately tied to the river whose birthplace lies high in the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. It supplies roughly half the drinking water 3.6 million Front Range residents use annually, provides water for snowmaking from Winter Park to Vail and irrigates the peach and apple orchards that dot the Western Slope.

All told, roughly 25 million people in the West depend on its liquid bounty.  Nearly a century ago, before computer models could track snowmelt and streamflows, most believed the river's largesse was boundless.

The compact assumed, for instance, the river generated about 20 million acre-feet of water annually. Compact writers divided up 16 million acre-feet of its supplies among the seven states, saying they could argue over the rest later, according to Lochhead.  Experts now believe that surplus never existed and that the river generates 13 million to 13.5 million acre-feet (maf), on average. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, enough to serve up to two urban families for one year.

The seven basin states rely on excess water generated in exceptionally wet years to make up the difference between the 13.5 maf and the 16 maf, with Lake Powell and Lake Mead acting as liquid bank accounts.  But the past five years have been harsh and dry, robbing Powell and Mead of their surpluses, threatening critical electric generating stations, endangering fish and drinking supplies.

How to deal with shortages has never been detailed before, George said. He and others believe all the basin states must move deliberately and calmly to decide how the water will be shared should the drought and the population boom continue.

"Ultimately the goal is to have an understanding among the seven states that everybody is cutting back and not wasting water so that we don't have to get to a true shortage that forces us back into our corners. That's never occurred, but we think it would get really ugly," he said.

3 issues to be resolved

In Colorado that means Front Range cities and Western Slope ski towns must begin planning now for potential cutbacks in their share of the river's supplies, George said.  The state's new water models are designed to help them determine what would happen under a number of different cutback scenarios, with spring snowmelt being the wild card.

For utilities with large storage reservoirs, such as Denver Water and the Northern Colorado Conservancy District, it will likely mean pushing hard to refill their own drought-stressed systems and to safeguard supplies until it's clear that Powell and Mead are beginning to refill, several water officials said.

"Maybe we have three years to accumulate a reserve," said Eric Wilkinson, manager of the Northern Colorado District. The district serves several Front Range cities including Fort Collins, Boulder and Broomfield. "That means we'll want to build an absolutely full (storage system) in case there is a call (for water from the Lower Basin states.)"

In the meantime, Colorado wants three key issues resolved:

• Under the 1922 compact, Mexico is entitled to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, to be delivered from surplus supplies. The Upper Basin was to contribute only in times of shortage. But since 1970, 750,000 acre-feet has been delivered from Lake Powell annually. That means, in Colorado's view, that the Upper Basin has delivered too much water. "That's a fundamental issue that has to be resolved," Lochhead said.

• Colorado also has asked U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton to reduce the historic outflow from Lake Powell, in light of the drought. Reducing the flows from Powell would mean the Upper Basin states could maintain a stronger buffer against a possible demand for extra water from Nevada, Arizona and California.

• And Colorado also wants Arizona to stop storing river water it doesn't need in aquifers, further draining the two giant storage ponds. "We're very concerned about that. We would like to see it fixed right away," George said.

Even if snows come through this winter, most experts believe it will take Powell and Mead years to recover, leaving Colorado and other Upper Basin states vulnerable to demands for more water, particularly if a state of chronic, low-grade drought develops.

John Keys, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, hopes his agency can forestall those demands by carefully evaluating the river's supplies and asking each state to figure out ways to live with less.

"Our biggest fear," Keys said, "is that when this drought breaks, we'll still be short of water."



Experts: Tribes may lay claim to waterways
By Matthew Strozier, Stamford ADVOCATE Staff Writer
January 26, 2003

The issue these days is land, but American Indian claims in Connecticut and elsewhere in the East could eventually involve water as well, creating a legal or regulatory quagmire for ill-prepared officials, according to legal experts.

Though frequent in the arid West, American Indian water claims are almost unheard of in states east of Missouri, experts said. Eastern states such as Connecticut also have a different doctrine of law governing water rights and it's unclear how American Indian claims would fit in it.

"What happens in many Eastern states is that water is abundant," said Judith Royster, professor of law and co-director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. "And what happens if water is abundant is that nobody is going to worry about allocating water among the various groups."

But droughts and increasing demands are hurting the East's water supply, and Royster said that could make tribes look at their water rights more closely to sustain federally recognized reservations.  Last week, spokesmen for American Indian tribes in Connecticut said they are not preparing water claims. Several said they had not even discussed the topic until asked about it by The Advocate.

"First time it's ever come up in all the years we've been doing it," said Chief Richard Velky of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, which has 400 acres in Kent, part of which borders the Housatonic River. "We don't see it as a potential problem at all, and I hope it wouldn't be."

Last month, the Bureau of Indian Affairs denied the Schaghticoke (Eastern CT) tribe's federal recognition in a preliminary decision. Scholars say federal recognition, and federally recognized reservations, are central to obtaining tribal water rights.  Charles Bunnell, deputy chief of staff for the Mohegan tribe, said the tribe has no intention of making water rights claims. "Not who they are as a people," he said.

The Mohegans are a federally recognized tribe, with a reservation on the western bank of the Thames River in Montville. Bunnell said the tribe is allowed to claim up to 700 acres to be part of the reservation but must acquire it from willing sellers. The Golden Hill Paugussetts plan to lay claim to 720,000 acres of the state from Waterbury to Greenwich, said Bill McBride, chief marketing officer for the tribe. McBride would not rule out a possible water claim but said it is not being considered.  The tribe received preliminary rejection of their federal recognition bid last week, but it has vowed to press ahead with land claims.

"That's possible," McBride said about a water claim. "Right now, we are really strategizing as to how we are going to proceed with the land claims."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said water claims have not been raised by American Indian tribes and the state would defeat them if they were. It would take federal statute, treaty, agreement or executive order to override sovereign state's rights to water, and Blumenthal called those things very unlikely.

"I don't think people should have any fear that the Connecticut River, the Quinnipiac River or our other major waterways are going to be seized by an Indian tribe," Blumenthal said. "Or that they will begin paying their water bill to the Golden Hill Paugussetts."

The lack of claims or litigation has not stopped academic debate on the subject.  The discussion revolves around the different kinds of water regulation in the East and West.  Connecticut and other Eastern states have regulated riparianism, which requires water users to obtain permits for their water consumption. Western states have an appropriative system, which gives the first users to claim the water priority.

In the event of an American Indian water claim in the East, the question would be what system should apply, or if either should. Needs for the water could include agriculture, fishing, mining and businesses, depending on federal decisions.  Villanova University law professor Joseph Dellapenna argues state water systems such as regulated riparianism apply to American Indian tribes as well. In regulated riparianism, they would get permits along with other users and share in the risk of a drought.

Royster counters that a third system of "reserved rights" would apply because federally recognized reservations are separate from state laws. The federal government would have to determine the tribe's original "time immemorial" water needs, such as for farming, and its current needs.  Royster said water and land go together for federal tribes. "I think the water rights go with the land," she said. "And if tribes have rights to land that includes rights to water. They are inseparable."

In Western states, American Indian tribes began asserting rights to water in big numbers in the 1970s, Royster said, and their victories have resulted in intense hostility from non-American Indian water users. There was a particularly protracted fight over tribal water rights in Wyoming around the Big Horn River.

Scholars said state officials should study a case in Florida with the Seminole Tribe. A settlement was reached with the state and the tribe that allowed the tribe the right to 15 percent of the available water from specified sources, rather than a set gallon amount.  Discussion of American Indian water rights may sound remote now, but Dellapenna and Royster said that will change in the East. They said addressing the various water needs and rights early is vital.

"It's not going to be easy, nobody is going to argue with that," Royster said. "It's going to be a headache, but it's not insurmountable." 


Hartford Courant editorial Monday, June 3, 2002...
Act On Water Ordinances
ENFIELD & NEIGHBORS -- Rainy days can easily wash away concerns about water shortages and summer drought.  But the wet reprieves should not stop towns from approving water conservation ordinances. It is better to prepare thoughtfully with powers that may never be used than to rush through new regulations under emergency conditions.

The rain hasn't relieved the water shortage entirely. In Manchester, for instance, municipal wells are 41/2 feet below normal levels. The April rainfall was 1 inch less than normal.

The Manchester Board of Directors is debating a water ordinance and is expected to act after some questions are answered. The directors are giving themselves time to make sure they've thought of all of the implications.

There's no water emergency in Manchester. But that could change. And the Manchester proposal anticipates other reasons for water system shutdowns, such as a terrorist act.

Enfield discussed passing a water ordinance but decided it wasn't necessary. Representatives of the Hazardville Water Company thought their aquifer supplies were sufficient and that no action was necessary. The Connecticut Water Company also assured the council that its aquifers were adequate. But it serves other towns as well and might want to draw down its water supplies to keep water flowing elsewhere. Some council members worried that a water ordinance could give the company that option.

East Windsor is scheduled to discuss a water conservation ordinance at its June 4 meeting. Officials are wisely researching other municipal regulations to tailor rules that fit East Windsor's needs.

The state often issues water conservation advisories. But those are voluntary. If towns have individual regulations they can respond quickly to local water emergencies.

With water supplies being replenished, it is easy to think there will be no drought. But it's better to be prepared.



Thursday, April 11, 2002 - 5:58:49 AM MST (Connecticut POST)
State mobilizes for growing drought danger
By PAM DAWKINS - pdawkins@ctpost.com

NEW BRITAIN -- Much of southwestern Connecticut is in the red -- not financially, but in terms of water.

Three years of below-average precipitation have left Connecticut with a rain deficit and drought watches in Fairfield, New Haven and Middlesex counties.  Now, state residents can monitor the drought through a new Web site, www.drought.state.ct.us.

"This is an unfolding story," said Arthur J. Rocque Jr., commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, during a Wednesday press conference to unveil the site. The DEP and the departments of Public Utility Control and Public Health are working together on the live Web site, through which visitors can monitor rainfall, groundwater and river levels, water restrictions and the level of danger from forest fires.

"It's not so much that we have an immediate crisis on our hands," said DPUC Chairman Donald W. Downes. But rain in the levels forecast for the immediate future is unlikely to fix the problem, unless the state and municipalities take action.

The state is calling on consumers to watch their water usage and, according to Rocque, as the situation gets closer to the "emergency" level (which comes after advisory, watch and warning levels) mandatory conservation measures will kick in.

"We're not yet at the stage where fines are ready to be imposed," Rocque said.  According to the DEP, between last July and early April approximately 19 inches of precipitation has fallen, compared with an average of 34 to 35 inches. Streams and reservoirs are well below their usual levels and, because of the lack of snow this winter, will not get their normal refill from melting snow.

Earlier this month, BHC Co., the Bridgeport-based water provider for more than 500,000 people in Greater Bridgeport, New Canaan and Ridgefield, asked its customers to cut their water use by 20 percent a day. Usual use for their customers is 70 million gallons a day, said spokeswoman Adrienne C. Vaughan.  Its Greater Bridgeport System, Vaughan said, should be at 98.5 percent capacity at this time of year; it is at 75 percent.

According to BHC, Bridgeport's rainfall since October is 9.5 inches below average.  The company has asked local officials for mandatory drought restrictions but, Vaughan said, she believes Stamford and Ridgefield are the only towns to do so yet.  The warming weather, usually so welcome in Connecticut, means an increase in water use -- for pools, watering lawns and cleaning cars -- and also an increase in water evaporation rates.

"Then we will have a water shortage " if we don't get more rainfall, Rocque said.

To stave off that shortage, the state is partnering with The Home Depot, Lowes and the utilities to promote conservation products and efforts.  DPUC Commissioner John W. Betkowski III noted Wednesday that "Faucet leaks can waste up to 500 gallons a month," and a leaky toilet can use up to 1,000 gallons a month.

"For very little cost, they [consumers] can save water," he said in announcing that conservation products are now available at home improvement stores as well as Connecticut Light & Power Co. and United Illuminating's SmartLiving Centers.  The state is also beginning door-to-door education campaigns, said DPH Commissioner Dr. Joxel Garcia.

Of the state's more than 3 million residents, he said, approximately 2.6 million are served by 95 community water systems; 88,000 get their water from 457 small water systems that each serve less than 1,000 people, and the remaining 700,000 get their water from wells.

Mandatory conservation efforts are under way for 13 of the 95 biggest systems, while 74 of them are asking residents to conserve water voluntarily. Of the smaller water systems, 389 are practicing either mandatory or voluntary conservation efforts.  Residents who get their water from wells need to watch the quality, Garcia said. As levels decline, there could be more sediment showing up in drinking water.

If this happens, Garcia suggests calling in local health departments to test the water before running out to buy filters.  "We don't want to be punitive," said Garcia of the conservation efforts. "This is something that may affect the economy if we don't take this seriously."

With that possible impact in mind, Rocque said he is talking to people at the Department of Economic and Community Development, to keep them abreast of what is happening.  For the past few years, Rocque said, businesses have already been instructed to stop using drinking water for industrial purposes, if possible.

"At this point in time, we don't see any real dislocations for business," Rocque said.



In Terms Of Water, We're Still In A Hole;  Recent Rains Don't Make Up For 9 Months Of Dry Weather
April 5, 2002
By STEVE GRANT, Courant Staff Writer

It rained last week, it rained over the weekend, and it rained Wednesday.

What drought?

"Short rainfalls like this, although they are highly beneficial - I hate to use this cliché - are a drop in the bucket," said Gerald R. Iwan, chief of water supplies at the state Department of Public Health.

Precipitation is so far below normal - a deficit of 15 inches over the past nine months - that wells in some locations are nearly as depleted as they were during the historic drought of the 1960s.

Moreover, as the growing season kicks in during coming weeks, and trees and other plants lay first claim to much of the precipitation, it will become more difficult for water supplies to rebound.

Without heavy rains, reservoirs and wells could be in even worse shape by summer. Because of that, state agencies involved in water supply management issued an advisory this week asking all Connecticut residents to voluntarily conserve water.

Though weather patterns in recent weeks have brought wetter weather, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doubt that the rain will be enough to break the drought conditions prevailing in the Eastern United States. "Months of normal-to-above-normal precipitation are necessary to end it," the agency says.

Mel Goldstein, The Courant's weather columnist and chief meteorologist at WTNH-TV, Channel 8, said Thursday that he does not see above-normal precipitation in the forecast either.

"There are no prospects for that whatsoever," he said.  "The best we can hope is stay up with normal precipitation."

Water supplies today are far more closely regulated than they were in the 1960s: Supplies have been enhanced in some places and many reservoirs are interconnected to help move water from one area affected more than another. But even with those improvements, agencies involved with drought management say there could be serious problems if dry weather persists.

Arthur J. Rocque Jr., commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, anticipating potential problems, said his agency already has taken one unusual conservation step.  It waived its requirement that operators of water impoundments release a spring freshet flow, a step
ordinarily taken in late winter or early spring to blow out organic matter downstream and ensure river health.

"That helps us save a little bit of water," Rocque said, and, because even a wild stream may not see a freshet flow every year, the effect on stream health should be nominal.

The agency also is considering altering its trout-stocking program. The DEP still plans to stock all the streams it ordinarily stocks before the fishing season begins April 20, but it plans to watch water levels closely, and if some streams become too low once the season begins, they might not receive additional fish during the season.

"It depends on Mother Nature cooperating and providing some heavier than normal rainfall over the next four or five weeks," said William Hyatt, director of the agency's inland fisheries division. Streams most vulnerable are those such as the Saugatuck River in Fairfield County that are
downstream of reservoirs.

Even with the latest rain, which has perked up most rivers, groundwater supplies remain unusually low. And groundwater supplies are a major water source for streams during summer months.

"The point a lot of people don't understand is that groundwater and stream water is one system," said Virginia de Lima, chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Connecticut district office.

The survey's Connecticut district maintains a network of indicator wells, which, according to the latest readings, are exceptionally low, some of them with levels similar to those recorded during the drought of the mid-1960s.  The water level of an indicator well in Mansfield, for example, is similar to the level recorded at this time in 1965, when the state was well into a prolonged drought.

That drought, affecting much of the Northeast, is considered the drought of record for the state, of such severity that it is likely to happen only once in 200 years. It lasted from September 1961 to September 1966 and severely taxed water supplies in many areas.

The Barkhamsted Reservoir, one of the main supplies for the Hartford area, fell to an all-time low of 42 percent of capacity at the end of 1965, compared with its current level of 77 percent. The utility said in 1965 that water supplies were in "an ever-diminishing state throughout the state."
Yearly rainfall had been running 12 to 15 inches below normal.

During summer 1966, a ban on lawn watering was imposed between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., a mild restriction compared to measures taken in New York, parts of Massachusetts and New Jersey.

What has changed since then?

Population has increased over the past 40 years, but supply improvements have been made, too. And, with better planning, water conservation measures are triggered even before serious problems develop.

Iwan said there is sketchy information available regarding the 1960s drought in Connecticut, largely because there was little overall state management of water supplies at the time.

"Coordinated responses by state agencies were few and far between," he said. The water supply office at Public Health had "no more than seven or eight employees."  Today it has upward of 50.

The number of reservoirs has changed comparatively little, but there are many more groundwater supplies being tapped.

"I would say that we augmented the supply and improved the supply with additional groundwater wells," Iwan said.  Also significant is an improved planning process for utilities, and mechanical improvements that provide flexibility between water utilities.

"We have a much higher level of technical sophistication and planning in effect now," Iwan said. "It doesn't offset the need for the rain, but it allows us to go further into a drought than arguably we were able to do in the 1960s."

A less severe drought in 1999 drew attention to problems with the Metropolitan District Commission's delivery system, which has undergone corrective measures since.  Last year the district, using a device called a "pig," scoured sediments and deposits from its main distribution line, increasing the carrying capacity of the line by 8 million gallons a day.

Water saving devices, including those for shower heads and toilets, have helped conserve water. Also, many water utilities today have interconnections with other systems that can be crucial if one system becomes taxed while a neighboring system still has a comfortable supply, Iwan said.

One problem associated with the 1960s drought in much of the East is unlikely to recur to any significant degree. In the 1960s, there were few sewage-treatment plants operating, and those that existed were primitive. When streams became low, dilution was reduced, and pollution became an even worse problem than it had been.

Today, sewage-treatment plants are ubiquitous and into their third generation of treatment efficiencies in many places. Many of these plants have the ability to move to an even higher level of treatment if flows were to drop to dangerously low levels, Rocque said.  At the moment, the agency sees no need for any change in treatment levels, Rocque said.

Legislation enacted two decades ago will help in the event of a severe drought, Rocque said. Any diversion from a river must have a permit from the state, ensuring that a business or utility can't just siphon water from a stream without regard to downstream impacts.

"Habitat impacts you would expect to see in a prolonged drought like we saw in the `60s are less likely to occur because that law is in place," he said.


Without A Doubt, It's A Drought
March 8, 2002, by STEVE GRANT, Courant Staff Writer

On a typical March day, the Barkhamsted Reservoir brims with water from melting snow, thousands of gallons raging through the spillway at its south end.  The spillway was dry Thursday morning.

The late-winter roar that usually issues from the swollen brooks that help fill the reservoir - and provide the Hartford area with drinking water - was little more than a melodic tinkle.

With almost no snow and almost no rain this winter, the worst drought in two decades is imposing increasing strains on Connecticut's water supplies, though they are not at crisis levels. At least not yet. If the drought continues in coming months, problems could be far more serious by
summer.

Four of the state's largest water utilities already have imposed mandatory conservation measures such as bans on washing cars or watering lawns. Fourteen have asked customers to voluntarily conserve water.  The New Britain Water Department, which imposed mandatory restrictions, exercised an old agreement with the Metropolitan District Commission and last month drew about 8 million gallons of water from the Nepaug
Reservoir in New Hartford, Canton and Burlington. It was the first time the city has tapped the MDC system, which manages Greater Hartford's water, since the prolonged drought of the 1960s.

The U.S. Geological Survey found troubling new evidence of the severity of the drought in its latest check of the network of 70 wells it maintains to monitor groundwater supplies statewide.  Water levels in 54 of the wells were the lowest ever recorded for February. Winter ordinarily is a time when aquifers are recharging while vegetation is dormant.

"The fact we haven't seen the rise during the winter is the concern," said Virginia de Lima, the survey's Connecticut district chief. "Water levels tend to fall beginning in April, and they will be falling from a lower point." The beginning of the drought can be traced back perhaps as far as the late 1990s, but it has been pronounced since January 2001. Since then, precipitation has run about 16 inches below normal. Since Jan. 1 this year,
precipitation is more than 3 inches below normal.

"When I go back to 1905 in our records, I can't find a [winter] season like this, this combination of warm, dry and snowless," said Mel Goldstein, The Courant's weather columnist and chief meteorologist for WTNH-TV, Channel 8. "It's not the climate of New England. It's not the climate of South Carolina. It's the climate of Arizona and the southwest part of the United States."

Snowfall is headed for a record low. The official total for Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks is about 11 inches.  The winter of 1988-89 had only 14 inches of snow, but it was different because the winter was cold. The winter of 1936-37 also recorded only 14 inches of snow, but there were nearly 7 inches of rain in December.  This season, rain also has been scarce. Last weekend, 1.25 inches fell in Windsor Locks, the first time since September more than an inch fell in a 24-hour period.

At the Barkhamsted Reservoir, the brooks and streams perked up a bit after the rain, but their flows are crashing again. The rain didn't make much difference in the reservoir's overall supply.  "As the situation has declined in regard to precipitation, we see more and more systems notifying their customers to conserve, which we think is proactive and appropriate at this time," said Gerald R. Iwan, chief of water supplies at the state Department of Public Health. "If they're able to conserve water and keep demands down, that is that much more they have for later."

The MDC, comparatively well off among Connecticut water utilities but keeping a wary eye on the ever-more-exposed shorelines of its reservoirs, estimates it has a 500-day supply at the moment, not low enough that the utility needs to impose restrictions.  On Thursday, Carol E. Youell, the MDC's natural resources administrator, sidestepped mussel shells and old stumps as she surveyed on foot acres of exposed Barkhamsted Reservoir bottom that a year ago was deep below the reservoir's surface.  MDC spokesman Matt Nozzolio said the reservoir is about 12 feet below capacity level, or 75 percent of its volume capacity. While the utility has not imposed any formal restrictions, it is urging customers to avoid waste. Once
levels fall below a 430-day supply, a first step would be to ask municipalities to cut back on non-essential use such as street cleaning and vehicle washing, he said.

"March and April historically are wetter months, so we're hoping there will be some replenishment," Nozzolio said.  Goldstein said more rain seems likely over the next 10 days, but not enough to make up the deficit. That could take months, if relief comes at all.



Drought comes to unofficial end
Greenwich TIME
By Hoa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Published December 28 2007

Recent rains have moved the town out of drought status, though officials said they do not want to lift the drought advisory until the reservoirs begin to fill up more.

The latest readings taken Wednesday show the reservoirs at 36 percent full, up four percentage points from last Friday and nine percentage points from last month when Aquarion Water Co. and town officials first issued a drought advisory asking residents and businesses to voluntarily cut water usage by 10 percent.

Despite the increase in reservoir levels, residents and businesses should continue to curtail water usage, town and water company authorities said, adding they want to make sure the reservoirs fill up some more before officially lifting the drought advisory.

"I still would like them to be at the 80 or 90 percent level where they should be," Greenwich Conservation Director Denise Savageau said of reservoir levels. "We're still way down from where we should be."

Officials called for voluntary water restrictions last month after reservoir levels dipped below 28 percent. Authorities were poised to issue mandatory water restrictions had the levels dipped below 25 percent. But the reservoirs held steady and then recent rain storms began inching levels higher. Still, town officials said they do not feel comfortable about lifting the drought advisory until they can be sure that there is more rain in the forecast.

"We would still be urging people to voluntarily look at water conservation," Savageau said. "We don't want to lift everything and go back to a drought in February and March."

One of the concerns is that although the reservoir levels are adequate for this time of year when the demand for water is low, as spring approaches, the reservoirs will have to be closer to 100 percent full in order to accommodate the traditional spike in water usage.

Spring is when people begin to use water for outdoor purposes, such as gardening and lawn care. Unless more rain falls and begins to fill the reservoirs to capacity in preparation for spring, the town could have a more serious drought problem in a couple of months, officials said.

"We could be back in it shortly unless we continue to get significant precipitation," said Adam Brill, a Bridgeport-based spokesman for the Aquarion Water Co.

A drought advisory committee convened to monitor the public drinking water supplies is scheduled to meet Jan. 8 to discuss the situation, including weather forecasts.

"We'll take a look and make an assessment," Savageau said. "Hopefully, we'll have some really good storm events."

The National Weather Service is calling for more rain tonight and tomorrow and a chance of snow or rain on Sunday. Most of the rainfall will be light -- about half an inch to three quarters of an inch of total precipitation.

"Nothing that would bring us flooding," Upton, N.Y.-based meteorologist David Wally said. "This would be good rainfall -- beneficial rainfall to help alleviate any kind of drought."

Although the 7 inches of rain that fell in parts of Fairfield County in September, October and November was at the lowest on record for the three months combined, the 3 inches that fell this month is slightly above normal, Wally said.

"A couple more rainfalls should ensure we stay above normal," he said.


Town teeters on drought
Greenwich TIME
By Hoa Nguyen
Published December 4 2007

The town's reservoirs are hanging steady just above the 25 percent of capacity mark that would require mandatory restrictions on water use, officials said.

Greenwich remains under a drought advisory as reservoir levels hovered at 27 percent of capacity, according to the Aquarion Water Co. Normally, reservoir levels should be 80 percent full this time of year, officials said.

The periodic precipitation has been paltry, including the half-inch that came during Sunday's snowfall and the quarter of an inch that fell yesterday morning, said David Medd, Aquarion's Greenwich operations manager.

Still the combination of sporadic light rain events combined with less water usage have contributed to keeping reservoir levels steady.

"A month ago, we were in a declining pattern," Medd said. "Now, we're just flattening out."

Medd said demand appears to be slightly less than it was at this time last year, although it is unclear whether that is due to the call for conservation.

"Whether it's conservation or whether it's weather -- maybe I like to think it's a little of both," he said.

At the same time, if the reservoirs stayed where they are at and don't begin filling up by mid-February, mandatory restrictions, which primarily restrict outdoor water usage, will be instituted, Medd said. That is because as the weather begins to warm up and spring prepares to kick in, water usage is expected to increase.

"If we don't start seeing increases -- and significant increases --Êin a month or so, it's going to be that much of a concern," Medd said. Under the drought advisory residents are asked to voluntary reduce their water usage by 10 percent.

Aquarion officials also have contacted some of its top business customers to ask that they do what they can to conserve water, such as fixing leaky pipes.

First Selectman Peter Tesei received an update yesterday on the drought situation from Conservation Director Denise Savageau, who said she wants to step up the town's public relations campaign and persuade more people to save water.

"Folks are talking about it, they are aware we're in a drought advisory," she said. "We want to reinforce that."

Savageau intends to update the town's Web site, www.greenwichct.org, to include tips on ways to save water around the house. Private well users also should try to conserve water because groundwater supplies appear affected by drought conditions.

"There are some streams that are flowing below normal," she said. "We're watching it very careful."



Water officials waiting on weather
Greenwich TIME
By Hoa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Published November 18 2007

If no rain were to fall in Greenwich during the next several months, the town would have only a 90-day supply of public drinking water left in its reservoirs, according to water company figures.

Despite the seemingly dire conditions, water company officials said chances are good that a soaking rain storm will pass through the area in the near future and recharge the reservoirs. They also have measures at their disposal that would allow them to stretch out and manage the public drinking water supply, including bringing water from other areas through a regional pipe system, said Aquarion Water Co.'s operation manager David Medd.

"At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic," he said. "Odds are we're going to have some precipitation."

Droughts usually occur during the summer when demand is high and there isn't much rain. This year, the dry spell came as summer turned into fall and the unseasonably warm temperatures persisted. Those conditions worked to keep water demand high, Medd said. Also, because the late summer and early fall featured unusually dry conditions, rain that did fall was quickly absorbed by the ground instead of recharging the reservoirs, he said.

But those conditions have begun to change and as the temperatures have turned colder, water demand, particularly from outdoor use, has begun to drop, Medd said. Now officials are waiting for a long soaking rain to come around to recharge the reservoirs.

"If things stay dry, then all bets are off," Medd said.

During this time of year when the reservoirs should normally be at 80 percent of capacity, Greenwich's supplies are only slightly more than a quarter full at 27 percent. In some ways, having a drought when the weather turns cold is easier to manage than during the summer, Medd said.

"To a degree yes, because it's less stressful on the system," he said, adding that demand for water in the summer is nearly double the amount as in winter. "In the summer, the severity (of a drought) can be much greater."

At the same time, encouraging water conservation also presents a greater challenge, particularly because most residents are used to summer droughts when saving water typically means turning off the sprinklers and refraining from filling swimming pools, officials said. With little outdoor water use taking place this time of year, officials are faced with the trickier challenge of educating residents on ways to conserve water indoors, such as asking residents and companies to fix leaky pipes and promoting low-flow faucets and shower heads, said Greenwich Conservation Director Denise Savageau.

"If the weather doesn't turn around for us, we need to think about conservation," she said.

Medd said that at this point, the reservoirs need a good soaking, which he would characterize as more than an inch of precipitation. Greenwich's reservoirs hold 3.5 billion gallons of water, which comes from water collected over a 35-mile watershed.

With Greenwich in a drought advisory, which calls for a 10-percent voluntary reduction on water usage, other municipalities, such as Stamford, also are close to instituting similar calls, officials said. At the same time, other parts of the state have an adequate reservoir supply. That is because the weather has been unpredictable, in some cases, giving Greenwich scant rain while showering other parts of the state with plenty of precipitation, Savageau said.

"We've been having very localized storms," she said. "It's really a hit and miss with the weather."


In another part of CT...
Norwich Residents Asked to Conserve Water 
DAY
By Izaskun E. Larrañeta    
Published on 11/16/2007 

 

Norwich Public Utilities is urging its customers to conserve water as the reservoirs that serve the city are less than 60 percent full.

Today’s announcement means the utility company has issued a Stage 1 Water Supply Emergency, asking customers to voluntarily reduce their water usage by 10 to 20 percent. Not since the mid-1980s has NPU issued this type warning.

Last month, NPU issued a water supply advisory but with lack of rain it was forced to upgrade the level of emergency.

John Bilda, general manager at NPU. said typically reservoirs are at 80 percent capacity this time of year. Rainfall totals across New England have been 35 percent below normal, he added.

The city did receive about sixth-tenths of an inch of rain Thursday but that was still not enough, said Christopher LaRose, the utilities’ operations integrity manager.

LaRose said if the weather does not improve and the city does not get more rain, a Stage 2 Water Supply Emergency, which is not voluntary, could be issued in February.



Deluge eases water worries 
Greenwich  TIME
By Hoa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Published October 13 2007

Though up to 4.5 inches of rain that fell in parts of town this week helped raise the drinking water supply, the town's reservoirs are still at half their normal levels, officials said yesterday.

The reservoirs were last measured at 33 percent of capacity on Wednesday, but even Thursday's deluge wasn'tenough to fill them to the 72 to 78 percent normally seen this time of year, said David Medd, operations manager for the Aquarion Water Co.

"We need another three or four or five days of what we've been getting," Medd said.

Earlier this month, water and town officials issued a call for voluntary water conservation because of low reservoir levels. The National Weather Service predicts another batch of rainstorms might arrive as early as Tuesday night.

"We're definitely not out of the woods yet," Medd said. "But I feel a lot better now than two weeks ago."

The heaviest downpours came Thursday night when rain gauges measured 2.5 inches of precipitation in backcountry Greenwich and 3.3 in the downtown area, officials said.  Though nearby municipalities experienced flooding problems, Greenwich had minimal damage, officials said.

"There was some pretty heavy flooding in the Old Greenwich area, but no major damage once the water subsided," Public Works Commissioner Lloyd Hubbs said.

The rainstorms were a mere shadow of the nor'easter that flooded most parts of town in April, forcing the evacuation of 100 residents living in low-lying areas and qualifying Greenwich for federal disaster relief.  Still, this week's precipitation helped officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who were touring Pemberwick yesterday, see the Byram River's raging waters for themselves. Officials were in town to inspect the frequently flooded areas of Pemberwick in preparation for a $100,000 federal study of the river.

"The water was piling over those dams pretty rapidly," said Jodi McDonald, chief of the rivers and lakes section of the corps' planning division in New York, who was among the contingent visiting Pemberwick yesterday.

The corps is conducting a so-called "reconnaissance" study to identify the flooding problems along the river, which winds through New York and Connecticut, and determine whether an engineering solution will help to fix it. Yesterday's tour, also attended by U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Bridgeport, was the corps' first visit to the Connecticut side of the river.

"It was really a straightforward first initial site visit to see where the problem areas are," McDonald said. "We may come back to show our engineering team some of the issues and what the watershed looks like and we'll go from there."

The corps expects to publish its study sometime early next year.


Drought Advisory: Trout, Reservoirs, Dairy Farms Stressed By Lack Of Rain
By RINKER BUCK | Courant Staff Writer
October 6, 2007

Trout entrepreneur Harold McMillan was not at all surprised to learn on Friday that Gov. M. Jodi Rell had issued a drought advisory for the state. All fall, he's been watching the water and the trout disappear.


McMillan, a devout fly-fisher who quit his Wall Street job to found Housatonic River Outfitters in Cornwall Bridge in 1996, normally spends the Columbus Day weekend presiding over a busy fly shop and dispatching river guides in driftboats down the Housatonic with anglers. But like anyone who lives close to the water and the land, he's acutely aware of the weather. This year, after a wet spring and early summer, it simply stopped raining in Connecticut, with barely 2 inches of precipitation being recorded at Bradley International Airport since Aug. 1;normally, in August and September, the state receives 8 inches of rain.

The results of the shortfall have been evident to McMillan and his fellow river guides along the Housatonic and Farmington watersheds all fall, especially along the major streams and tributaries where trout breed. A wildlife boom in Connecticut - predator species like hawks and fisher cats have dramatically increased in number - has combined with the drought conditions to threaten the trout trapped in stream pools. Normally, by this time of year, enough rain has fallen so that those stream trout can escape to the larger river below.

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Gov. M. Jodi Rell is calling on all homes and businesses to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 10 percent. Here are some water-saving tips from the state:

In the Bathroom
• Repair all leaks. A leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons per day.

In the Kitchen
• Use a dishpan for washing and rinsing dishes or fruits and vegetables.
• Do not use water to defrost frozen foods.
• Keep drinking water in the refrigerator instead of letting the faucet run until the water is cool.

In the Garden
• Wait until the coolest part of the day to water lawn, garden.
• Wash the car with water from a bucket rather than a hose.
• If you use a hose, control the flow with an automatic shut-off nozzle.
• Use mulch around shrubs and garden plants to reduce evaporation.

Private Well Users
• If your pump is going on more frequently, or if air bubbles come from your faucet, you may have a water problem.

Source: State Department of Public Health
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"But the streams are all exceptionally pressed for water this year and the trout are having a hard time," McMillan says. "As the water level in the pools gets lower and lower, the fish just can't get away from the predators. With the usual predation cycle in nature, it's either `fight or flight.' Well, trout can't fight, and now they've lost their option of flight because the water levels are too low. Between the ospreys, herons, raccoons and fishers, all of them feasting on our trout streams, we're getting quite a population loss this year."

Rell issued the drought advisory Friday after several large towns, including Bristol and Manchester, recorded reservoir levels below 70 percent and water monitors on the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers showed that they are flowing at seriously low levels. The Hartford area is in relatively better shape, with the Metropolitan District Commission reporting central Connecticut reservoirs running at 85 percent of capacity, only about 5 percent below normal. The University of Connecticut has also called for mandatory water conservation at its Storrs campus.

An advisory is the least severe of four levels of alerts; the others are drought watch, drought warning and drought emergency, and this one was issued in part because the National Weather Service predicts that Connecticut will receive no significant rainfall next week.

Among other measures, Rell is calling on all Connecticut homes and businesses to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 10 percent.

Normally, according to data compiled by the National Weather Service, the climate station at Bradley airport in Windsor Locks records about 35 inches of rain for the year by early October. (Hartford generally receives about 44 inches of rain for the year, with precipitation occurring on about 125 days.) But the year-to-date rainfall recorded as of yesterday was only 29.6 inches. Most of this deficit has occurred in August and September.

Kim Buttrick, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass., says there is no rain in sight for Connecticut through next Friday.

W. David LeVasseur, an undersecretary at the state Office of Policy and Management, is nicknamed Connecticut's "drought czar" because he coordinates the drought-watching activities of several state agencies and large municipalities. Water experts with several state agencies, from the Department of Environmental Protection to Homeland Security, have been meeting over the past two weeks about Connecticut's drought conditions, LeVasseur says, and they were somewhat surprised to have to move to the first stage of an emergency by issuing the drought advisory this week.

"It's been a very interesting scenario this year because we had an awful lot of rain in the spring and early summer and so our groundwater reserves appeared to be in good shape," LeVasseur says. "But a second month in a row of almost no rain triggered this drought advisory.

A complex formula of "triggers," LeVasseur says, is used to make the decision to issue a drought advisory or drought watch. For example, precipitation that is 35 percent below level for two consecutive months, or measured groundwater levels being below average for three months, can help trigger a drought advisory. The state also monitors flow on major rivers and streams, reservoir levels and the Crop Moisture Index recorded by the state Department of Agriculture.

"It's not just an index or two that triggers a drought alert," LeVasseur says. "It's a combination of factors, because we want the public to know this is based on real data from a wide variety of water measurement points."

Unlike the Housatonic River fishing guides, or the dairy farmers complaining that their grazing meadows are dry, orchard-keeper John Lyman III says that the dry conditions this fall may actually help his business. Lyman, one of the family proprietors of the large Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, annually harvests 45,000 bushels of apples in September and October. For a variety of reasons, including the changing economics of the orchard business in New England, drought hasn't threatened his crop this year. While the amount of rain that an orchard receives every year may help determine the size of apples, Lyman says, it is aggregate sunlight over a season that determines the quality of the harvest.

"Most people aren't aware of this but, typically, in a dry year, fruits and vegetables taste better," says Lyman. "If the weather is dry and clear, all that sun beating down on the fruit favors the development of natural sugars, so the apples are sweeter. But for that to happen you have to have plenty of rain early in the growing season so the fruit is fully formed before the dry weather arrives, which is exactly what happened this year. We were well positioned with rain by early August."

Lyman says that in Middlefield he was blessed by a single, mid-August thunderstorm that helped his crop - local rainfall that orchards elsewhere in the state might not have received. Still, he expects the state apple crop this year to be healthy, with slightly smaller but sweeter-tasting fruit.

The warm fall weather has helped Lyman Orchards in other ways. Like many New England apple operations, the Lyman family has aggressively diversified away from the traditional business of selling bulk apple harvests into the fickle wholesale market. The Lyman operation now includes a busy pick-your-own operation for families, a large retail store, online sales of apple products and even two golf courses.

"It's not your grandfather's orchard anymore, and the industry has transitioned to a pick-your-own model with a strong retail component," Lyman says. "So you want clear, warm weather in the fall to attract that weekend family traffic. We joke around here that the only rain we want in the fall is between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. So, warm, dry weather spins both ways for an orchard."

Lyman says that the exceptionally dry, warm conditions in September have increased his pick-your-own and retail business by 5 to 10 percent, and he expects a "very healthy" Columbus Day weekend.



Gov. issues drought advisory, state agencies must conserve water
Norwalk HOUR
October 6, 2007

HARTFORD [AP] — The governor is issuing a drought advisory for Connecticut and is directing all state agencies to take immediate steps to conserve water.
Rainfall totals over the past few months have been 35 percent below normal.  Town officials in Bristol, Manchester, Norwich, Sprague, Greenwich and Sharon have already enacted emergency rules for water conservation.

While there may be some relief over the weekend, Governor Rell says it's still important for residents to take steps to conserve water. She advises people turn off the tap when brushing their teeth, take shorter showers, stop watering their lawns and do larger loads of laundry.  The governor is also recommending that each city and town designate an official drought coordinator to work with local water utilities and the appropriate state agencies.


NPU asks customers to conserve water 
DAY
Published on 10/3/2007 

Blaming a lack of rain and an unexpectedly warm autumn, Norwich Public Utilities today announced a water supply advisory and is asking customers to conserve water. 

A water supply advisory serves to alert the public of a potential water shortage in the event of on-going dry conditions and receding reservoir levels, according to NPU.
 
Norwich water customers are served by the Deep River and Stony Brook reservoirs. During an average fall, local reservoirs are at approximately 80% of their full capacity.  Currently, local reservoirs are at 70% capacity, the utility said in a press release.

Utilities that provide water are required to have plans in place to deal with water supply issues long before a severe drought would trigger emergency measures. At the advisory level, customers are asked to conserve water by limiting their usage and restricting activities such as washing cars or watering lawns.  



Anxiously Waiting For Water, Lack Of Rain A Problem For Farmers, University
By GRACE E. MERRITT | Courant Staff Writer
September 7, 2007

Picking McIntosh apples on his farm in Woodstock on Wednesday, Doug Young noticed something was wrong: The apples seemed ready to fall off the tree yet they were still puny.

With parched conditions and no rain expected until Sunday at the earliest, he and other farmers in eastern Connecticut have plenty to worry about. In Young's case, his apples are small, his cucumbers are ruined, and his pumpkins may be in jeopardy.

"We actually had only 53/100ths of an inch of rain for the whole month of August," Young said. "We are very, very concerned."

Beyond the yellowed grass and the dried-up bittersweet, some of his apple trees are doing beautifully. These are the newer orchards where he put in irrigation as he planted. The older trees, such as the Macs, rely on old-fashioned rainwater.

Across northern Connecticut, particularly in the east, a dry spell that set in around Aug. 11 has threatened crops and prompted water conservation measures in some towns and at the University of Connecticut.

The northeast part of the state has been particularly hard hit with low stream flow conditions that have left groundwater levels below normal, said Jon Morrison, hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Stream flows began to decline in the middle of August. The region got only a little more than an inch of rain overall, almost 3 inches below normal though not record setting, he said.

As a result, some farmers are pumping water from nearby rivers and ponds to irrigate their crops while others are using water cannons, essentially backyard sprinklers on steroids, to water larger crops, said Rick Macsuga, agriculture marketing representative for the state Department of Agriculture.

In some cases, farmers are forced to be selective about which crops to save, watering only the more popular, lucrative crops, Macsuga said.

Some communities have begun conserving water. On Tuesday, UConn called for mandatory water conservation on campus. The university raised air-conditioning temperatures by 4 degrees in its buildings, and dining halls began serving breakfast and lunch on paper plates, which could save an estimated 60,000 gallons of water a day. The university also has prohibited car washing and street washing, and has limited lawn watering and water main flushing.

The town of Manchester last month asked water users to voluntarily conserve water by taking shorter showers, and running dishwashers and washing machines only with full loads. The alert came after the town's reservoirs dropped to 80 percent of capacity, said Edward Soper, Manchester water administrator.

"The water's kind of low. We haven't had a lot of rain. We want people to be aware that the situation exists," Soper said.

The U.S. Weather Service predicts a chance of showers Sunday night through Wednesday as a cold front moves through and possibly stalls over the area. In addition, a tropical system may develop to the south, which could bring a soaking rain, said Glenn Field, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service forecast office in Taunton, Mass. He said the region would need about 6 inches of rain just to reach normal levels for September.

Tom Callahan, an associate vice president at UConn, said it would take a soaking rain for UConn to lift its conservation alert, because the formula is tied to the flow of the Fenton River. The university draws its water supply from well fields in the Fenton and Willimantic rivers.

Young is not too optimistic. Other rains that soaked western Connecticut seemed to evaporate before they got to eastern Connecticut this summer.

Still, he is grateful to at least have something to harvest this fall. Last year, his entire crop was wiped out July 3 by a hail storm that pelted his tomatoes, apples and melons with quarter-sized hailstones.

"You always have to look on the bright side," Young said.




THE SAUGATUCK RESERVOIR IS A "STORAGE" RESERVOIR FOR THE ENTIRE AQUARION SYSTEM:

Saugatuck River Valley (or watershed) gets protection; looking toward Redding (#1 and #3) or Easton (#2)... a regional system some day in Eastern CT? (#4)


[IMAGE]
Above,
Lise A. Hanner, state director of The Nature Conservancy, and Charles A. Firlotte, president and CEO of Aquarion Water Company, sign a partnership agreement. (Maggie Caldwell photo)  and below,
the most beautiful view in Weston...and at the right, not as good a view, but an important link in Eastern CT's regional h2o system Groton's city water supply.Kelda Coalition to get active again (just our thought)?
26 February 2006 news of water company sale:report from "Down Under"...

The Saugatuck Reservoir feeds into watersheds on the east side of Weston. It is now part of Kelda Group plc, of Yorkshire England, no longer the friendly, Connecticut (and New York) "BHC" and no longer traded as a corporation on the New York Stock Exchange! For more about Kelda (now Macquarie Group) from their corporate, Internet homepage, click here: Kelda Group  

To paraphrase Gilbert & Sullivan, the very model of a modern global corporation...for more, e-mail the Connecticut Fund for the Environment


Water's long trip to your tap
JOHN BURGESON jburgeson@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 03/09/2008 12:47:02 AM EST

Somewhere east of Florida, a molecule of water evaporates to join countless billions of others in the atmosphere. For days it soars, albatross-like, eventually becoming part of a low-pressure system hundreds of miles across that wheels its way northeastward, rotating counter-clockwise. By now it has turned back into its liquid form, but it remains aloft on upwelling currents of air.

"Most of your moisture that falls in Connecticut would come from the Gulf Stream," said Accuweather.com meteorologist Mike Pigott. "The average time aloft would be about nine days."

Moving over Connecticut, the system intensifies, and the molecule attaches itself to a speck of dust, joining thousands of others like it to form a raindrop.

Now too heavy  to remain airborne, the drop falls somewhere in Easton, saturating the parched Earth with its life-giving moisture. In doing so, it becomes a geologic resource, joining a stream that winds its way downhill over ancient outcrops of granite, schist and gneiss before emptying into the Easton Reservoir, known officially as Easton Lake.

There our molecule might remain for months, even decades. But now it is a valuable commodity, both as something that in its own miniscule way will generate profit for the Aquarion Water Co., but also as something essential for the human beings on the other end of the faucet.

Aquarion, founded 151 years ago as the Bridgeport Hydraulic Co., today has a total reservoir storage capacity of 33 billion gallons, serves 720,000 people in four states through a network of 3,200 miles of mains. Of this number, its "East" division is by far the largest, serving 371,000 people — most of whom live in Bridgeport, Fairfield, Stratford, Shelton, Trumbull and Westport.

The East division provides 41 million gallons per day, on average — less in winter, more in summer. About 15 percent is "lost" for fire protection, leaks and theft.

The average household uses 245 gallons per day and has an annual water bill of $439. "Connecticut is fortunate — it's one of only two states in the nation than has protected water sources," said John Herlihy, Aquarion's director of water quality and environmental management. "All our water comes from either reservoirs or wells that are fed by watersheds that are mostly open space."

The only other state with a protected municipal water supply is Rhode Island.

Company officials describe a watershed as all of the land that drains downhill to a reservoir.

"The boundary of a watershed is like the rim of a bathtub, with the reservoir as the drain," said Herlihy.

Municipal water systems in other states, he said, rely on non-protected water sources — primarily river water. Along the Mississippi River, for example, water is used and reused several times before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.

"What this means is that our water needs less treatment to bring it to federal standards," he said.

Brian Roach, supervisor of Aquarion's source protection program, explained that the private homes and businesses in the watersheds are monitored for such activity as fertilizer use, septic system compliance, and oil runoff.

"Usually, people are pretty cooperative, and when there's a problem, they almost always work with us to find a solution," Roach said. "Most of the people in our watersheds understand that their actions impact water quality. Usually it's not a hard sell."

Of special concern to Aquarion are commercial establishments such as golf courses, horse farms, construction sites and gas stations, he said.

Herlihy said that the water company strives to maintain its watersheds as open space — either by owning the land directly or by giving it to The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the environment."True, we did sell off some land to developers, but these were properties that were not on reservoir watersheds," he said, noting that much of the present-day watershed was assembled by the company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There are also security concerns — particularly since Sept. 11, 2001.

"Following 9-11, we did a significant security review," Herlihy said. "We installed more fencing, changed locks and trained personnel," Herlihy said.

He said that shore fishing and hiking are only permitted along what are known as "distribution" reservoirs, and not "supply" reservoirs.

For example, the Aspetuck Reservoir in Easton is a distribution reservoir that feeds the Hemlock Reservoir — stretching from Easton to Fairfield, which is a supply reservoir.

"In Connecticut, we are extremely fortunate to have excellent quality water," said Kurt Johnson, a program director and lawyer for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment. "We have a lot to be proud of — we have some of the best water in the county."

Johnson is also critical of those who purchase bottled water, citing the litter and pollution it generates, and the amount of energy it consumes, both to manufacture the bottles and to transport the product by diesel trucks.

"From a pollution perspective, from a global warming perspective and even from a product quality perspective, you're better off drinking what comes out of the tap," he said, and encouraged people — particularly high school athletes, to use refillable water bottles.

Johnson also said that a concern other states have is that amounts of prescription drugs can find their way into municipal water systems — because they were present in urine that was flushed down the toilet someplace upstream. This is not a problem in Connecticut, he said.

"This is why Connecticut's water supply is of great value to companies that need great water — such as soda companies," he said. "It's a great economic resource."

Both Johnson and water company officials note that while municipal supplies must comply with strict Environmental Protection Agency regulations, bottled water need only comply with far less stringent Federal Drug Administration standards.

"We know what's going on in our water," said Roach, of Aquarion. "You'd be amazed what you'll find in bottled water."

All of Aquarion's nine major water treatment plants operate under the same eight-step process. The idea, Herlihy said, is to get the water to the point that it exceeds federal EPA standards and state Department of Public Health standards, and is virtually lacking in odor, taste and color, and lacks turbidity — meaning that it has a high degree of transparency. It also must be almost free of contaminants such as bacteria and one-celled organisms.

"Our goal is zero incidents, and we've always met that goal," Herlihy said.

Ninety-eight percent of Aquarion's water comes from reservoirs, or "surface" supplies. The remaining 2 percent is drawn from wells in Shelton and Westport.

The East system has eight reservoirs and three water treatment plants. These reservoirs, as of last week, are "at or near 100 percent capacity," said Adam Brill, company spokesman.

How water is treated:

The water treatment process, in simplified terms, works like this:

- Coagulation: The first step is coagulation, in which negatively charged organic molecules present in the water - mostly from leaf litter in the surrounding watersheds - is pulled out with aluminum sulfate, which is positively charged.

- Flocculation: This creates so-called "floc" particles, which results in the next step, flocculation.

- Inorganic particulate: This is the step that, in effect, clarifies water by making it cloudy - at least for a time. Looking down into the flocculation tanks, one can easily see a snowstorm of ever-larger particles created by the slow agitation of the tank, combined with the addition of FerricChlorade iron hydroxide. Water spends about 20 minutes in the two-stage flocculation tanks.

- Sedimentation: This is the stage where the denser-than-water floc particles are allowed simply to settle out in a tank.

- Filtration: In this step, the water is forced through more than 24 inches of anthracite carbon particles and another 12 inches of sand. "It's here where the remaining floc particles are removed," said Gary Kaminski, the treatment plant's process engineer. The f