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News Clips
We present the following in the belief that once you know the facts you will take action. There are articles discuss the many benefits of not just clean water but also conditioned and filtered water.
Newsweek:
"Several million Americans are drinking water that is potentially hazardous due to chemical or bacterial contamination"
LA Times:
"Communities with drinking water contaminated by chemicals are being hit with strange patterns of illness"
ABC Network News:
"U.S. Industries ... Generate some 88,000,000 pounds of toxic wastes a year, 90% of which, the EPA estimates, are improperly disposed."
The New York Times:
"More than one in five Americans unknowingly drinks tap water polluted with feces, radiation or other contaminants ... Nearly 1,000 deaths each year and at least 400,000 cases of waterborne illness may be attributed to contaminated water."
Houston Chronicle
"The parasite [Cryptosporidium} that killed more than 100 people in Milwaukee in 1996 has been found in drinking water systems that serve 45 million people."
USA Today
"Parasites in water is widespread ... can be dangerous, even fatal, to people with weakened immune systems."
U.S. News and World Report
"Some individuals, federal officials said last week, should not drink water straight from the tap because a disease causing parasite can slip right through many municipal water treatment systems."
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Posted on Tue, Nov. 21, 2006 |
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Two decades of discharge from septic tanks and fertilizers are being blamed for tainting part of Morro Bay’s drinking water supply. High levels of nitrates found in six Morro Bay water wells last week likely accrued at a steady rate for the past 20 years, City Manager Bob Hendrix said Monday. The city learned Wednesday that nitrate levels in its groundwater wells were above acceptable drinking levels. The city normally uses state water, but an annual shutdown for maintenance on the pipeline meant the city had to switch to groundwater. That prompted the city to advise people to avoid drinking tap water, especially pregnant women, infants younger than 6 months and people with blood- related disorders. If ingested, nitrates take oxygen from the blood supply. Symptoms including shortness of breath, and blueness of the skin can develop within days in infants. The advisory was lifted Saturday, and as of Monday, the city was back to using state water. Hendrix said the city’s water supply usually has higher nitrate levels than state water, but this was the first year that levels exceeded state standards. The city uses six groundwater wells around the same time each year when the state water system shuts down for annual maintenance. Those wells — four in Morro Valley and two in the Chorro Valley — were producing water that exceeded state standards for nitrates. Hendrix said that nitrate levels may have increased throughout the past 20 years, but they spiked significantly over a period of 24 hours from Wednesday to Thursday. "It changed very quickly," he said. "We never had that experience before." As of Monday, city officials had not received any reports of illnesses related to the polluted water. As an alternative to the groundwater supply, the city resorted to powering its rarely used desalination plant on Friday to remove excess nitrates from the water. That plant is used only for emergencies and had not been fired up in nearly two years. The polluted water was filtered to remove excess nitrates, and then put back into the city’s drinking water supply. Operating expenses, including electricity used to power the plant and water-quality testing, cost about $1,000 per day, according to city Capital Projects Manager Bill Boucher. That extra expense is part of general operation and maintenance costs supported by water rates. Boucher said the city is still using the desalination plant until officials start to see a stable trend in nitrate levels in the wells. He said the water is being tested daily to determine the extent of nitrates in the water. The treated water will then be put back into the city’s supply. Officials don’t know how much longer the plant will be used. As of Monday morning, test results already yielded very low levels of nitrates. Hendrix said excess nitrates might not be preventable. But if they’re found again, the city would be able to take out nitrates from the water through the desalination plant. "We want to make sure we’re doing the best job we can in that kind of circumstance," Hendrix said. He also noted that in the past, the city has been able to go through the state water pipeline maintenance without using the groundwater wells. "If demand is low and there is ample supply we’ve been able to get through the break completely without tapping the groundwater," Hendrix said. Reach Sona Patel at 781-7924. Visit sanluisobispo.com to read an earlier story on the issue of Morro Bay water being unsafe. |
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Water leaders adopt new long-range plan
By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO ---- Regional water officials adopted a new 25-year water supply plan Thursday that counts heavily upon residents cutting water use more than ever before.
The plan also will rely on the building of plants to turn seawater into drinking water and boosting ground water and waste-water uses.
The 191-page plan, approved by the San Diego County Water Authority board, spells out exactly how and from where residents can expect to get all the water they will need through 2030. The Water Authority supplies nearly all the water county residents use each year, mainly by buying and importing water from the Colorado River and Northern California.
Water agencies statewide are required to update their urban water plans every five years, and Water Authority officials have been working on their new plan for the last year.
Water Authority officials said the biggest difference between the new plan and previous incarnations is that the new one illustrates that the agency has become a full-fledged water supplier.
For most of its 61-year history, the Water Authority has been mostly a "pipeline" agency, one willing to buy nearly all of its water from Southern California's main water supplier ---- the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water district ---- and deliver it to county residents.
That changed drastically in 2003, when the Water Authority reached a deal to buy billions of gallons of water from Imperial Valley farmers through 2045, and possibly 2075.
The result is that while the Water Authority bought 85 percent of the county's water from Metropolitan as recently in 2004 ---- the new plan predicts cutting that reliance to 32 percent by 2030.
"The '05 plan identifies for the first time that the Water Authority has its own supply ---- not just from Met," Dana Friehauf, senior water resources planner for the Water Authority said.
The new plan relies mainly upon the Imperial Valley water transfer and a subsidiary deal to be the main replacements for the water that would have been bought from Metropolitan.
The transfer itself, which ramps up slowly throughout 19 years, will provide 21 percent of all of the county's water supply by 2030, enough water to sustain 400,000 households a year.
Another 8 percent ---- enough water to sustain an additional 154,000 households a year ---- will come from a canal-lining deal attached to the transfer.
The Water Authority plans to line earthen canals in Imperial Valley. The water that will no longer percolate into the desert soil, 25 billion gallons a year, will be shipped to San Diego County residents for 100 years.
But the new plan also hopes to boost water supplies by more than doubling conservation.
That means getting residents and businesses to cut water use even more than they already have in recent decades through the use of low-flush toilets, low-flow shower heads and other measures.
Water officials track conservation efforts ---- such as the installation of low-flow shower heads ---- and chart the amount of water they save. That allows them to compare the "conserved" water to their total water supply and track it as a percentage.
In 2004, conservation equalled 4 percent of the total local water supply.
The new plan hopes to push that to 12 percent by 2030 ---- by more than 100,000 acre feet or by enough water that could have sustained 200,000 homes.
Friehauf said the agency hopes that can be accomplished by cutting outdoor water use, which water officials say makes up 50 percent of all residential water use.
The new plan also:
· Creates a goal that water agencies can more than double the production of groundwater projects ---- projects that store or clean water in porous rock underground. Groundwater storage projects made up just 2 percent of the county's total water supplies in 2004. The new plan predicts that will jump to 5 percent by 2030.
· Triples the input from recycled water projects ---- programs that treat sewer water so it can be used for irrigation purposes. Recycled water also accounted for just 2 percent of the local supply in 2004. The new plan projects that to jump to 6 percent of supply by 2030.
· Expects to build plants capable of turning 80,000 acre-feet a year of seawater into drinking water. That expectation is based mainly upon reaching a deal with Poseidon Inc., a private company, to build a seawater desalination plant at the Encina Power Plant in Carlsbad.
Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com
