Common drugs affecting plant growth,  study shows

Water Woes Among Topics for 8 Governors in Vegas

by Ken Ritter

Facing dwindling water supplies, Western states are struggling to capture every drop with dam and diversion projects that some think could erode regional cooperation crucial to managing the scarce resource.

Against that backdrop, eight Western governors meeting in Las Vegas this weekend will address regional water issues, and water managers from seven states arrive next week to work on ways to ensure 40 million people in the parched Colorado River basin don’t go thirsty.

Gary Wockner, a conservationist with the Denver-based advocacy group Save the Colorado, said there’s already jostling amid the fear of empty buckets. “Everyone is trying to get the last legal drop of water,” he said.

Colorado River Water Users Association representatives deny there’s discord at their table.

“Fifteen years of drought has tightened everything. But I don’t see this as people are getting ready to fight,” said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. That agency is dealing with a double-whammy ? drought on the Colorado River and in the Sierra Nevada and Northern California.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval will host Western Governors’ Association counterparts from Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming this weekend to consider several issues, including water. Two days of drought workshops follow.

“The motto is: We save the system as a whole,” said Pat Mulroy, longtime general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas and now a senior policy fellow with the Brookings Institution.

“If we get into, ‘I’m going to win,’ and, ‘You’re going to lose,’ there won’t be a winner,” Mulroy said.

But Wockner said Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are considering dams and diversions in the mountains to capture water they’re entitled to before it reaches the Colorado and flows to the deserts.

New Mexico has plans to divert and store water from the Gila River for cities and farms before it flows into Arizona and empties into the Colorado River near the Mexico border.

“Diversions extract water from the system,” said Jack Schmidt, professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University. He just completed three years studying the Grand Canyon for the U.S. Geological Survey. “More water use and more water retention in the upper basin means less water flowing through the Grand Canyon to the lower basin.”

Schmidt referred to the Colorado River Compact of 1922 and agreements with Mexico that promise about 16.5 million acre-feet of water annually from a river system that has historically taken in about 15 million acre-feet from rainfall and snowmelt. But that amount has diminished during almost 15 years of drought. One acre-foot of water is about enough to serve two average Las Vegas homes for a year.

“You could say that we decided how to divide the pie, but the pie is smaller than anybody thought,” Schmidt said. “With climate change, it is even smaller than that.”

In Las Vegas, which virtually relies on water from Lake Mead, officials are making plans to add a $650 million pumping facility to draw from the reservoir even if levels drop below 1,000 feet above sea level. That’s the line at which Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric turbines would be idled.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority already is drilling an $800 million tunnel to tap water from the bottom of the lake, at 860 feet above sea level.

At 900 feet ? so-called “dead pool” ? the river would end at Hoover Dam. Nothing would flow downstream.

The lake reached its high water mark in 1983 at 1,225 feet.

The Metropolitan Water District’s Kightlinger said the seven basin states ? Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico upstream and California, Arizona and Nevada downstream ? have a history of cooperating, and they have forged several landmark agreements.

A 2012 amendment to a 70-year-old treaty between the U.S. and Mexico has the river flowing south of the border again.

Last summer, water agencies in Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix began an $11 million pilot program with the federal government to pay farmers, cities and industries to cut use of Colorado River water.

The goal is to prop up Lake Mead, which stood Friday at 1,084 feet above sea level ? just 9 feet above the crucial 1,075 level that would trigger cuts to Arizona, Nevada and California.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation this week projected a better than 50 percent chance that it will declare such a shortage in January 2017.

The Central Arizona Project would face the first cutbacks, and farmers would be hit hardest, agency chief David Modeer said.

“Hoping for snowpack is not sufficient to solve this,” Modeer said. “It’s going to take cooperation and sacrifice among all of us to stave off disaster in the river.”

Source: ABC News.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Avoid Amazon’s “Cyber Monday,” and buy local

by Jim Hightower

It’s “Cyber Monday” – get out there and buy stuff!

But you don’t actually have to go anywhere, for this gimmicky shop-shop-shop day lures us to consume without leaving home, or even getting out of bed. Concocted by Amazon, the online marketing monopolist, Cyber Monday is a knock-off of Black Friday – just another ploy by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to siphon sales from real stores.

Seems innocent enough, but behind Amazon’s online convenience and discounted prices is a predatory business model based on exploitation of workers, bullying of suppliers, dodging of taxes, and use of crude anti-competitive force against America’s Main Street businesses. A clue into Amazon’s ethics came when Bezos instructed his staff to get ever-cheaper prices from small-business suppliers by stalking them “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”

Jeff Crandall, who owns Old Town Bike Shop in Colorado Springs, is one who’s under attack. He offers fair prices, provides good jobs, pays rent and taxes, lives in and supports the community. But he has noticed that more and more shoppers come in to try out bikes and get advice, yet not buy anything. Instead, their smartphones scan the barcode of the bike they want, then they go online to purchase it from Amazon – cheaper than Crandall’s wholesale price. You see, the Cheetah is a mulitibillion-dollar a year beast that can sell that bike at a loss, then make up the loss on sales of the thousands of other products it peddles.

This amounts to corporate murder of small business – and, yes, it’s illegal, but Amazon is doing it every day in practically every community. So, on this Cyber Monday, let’s pledge to buy from local businesses that support our communities. For information, go to American Independent Business Alliance: www.amiba.net.

Source: “Amazon’s ruthless practices are crushing Main Street–and threatening the vitality of our communities,” www.hightowerlowdwon.org, September 2014.

Radon In Water:  How it gets there and How to Get Rid of It

 Radon is one of the more perplexing and misunderstood issues in home water treatment.  The material below is excerpted from several sources, especially from an excellent Penn State University Extension services publication.

Radon is a colorless, tasteless, odorless, radioactive gas. It is formed from the decay of radium in soil, rock, and water and can be found worldwide.

The radon in the air in your home generally comes from two sources: the soil or the water supply.  It escapes from the earth’s crust through cracks and crevices in bedrock, and either seeps through foundation cracks or through poorly sealed areas into basements and homes, or it dissolves in the groundwater. Radon can be trapped in buildings where it can increase to dangerous levels. Radon entering your home’s air supply through the soil is typically a much larger risk than the amount of radon   In general, radon is of much greater danger when it enters through the soil than when it enters via the water supply.

Radon can be inhaled from the air or ingested from water. Inhalation of radon increases the chances of lung cancer and this risk is much larger than the risk of stomach cancer from swallowing water with a high radon concentration. Generally, ingested waterborne radon is not a major cause for concern. The extent of the effects and the risk estimates involved are difficult to determine. According to the EPA’s 2003 Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes, radon is estimated to cause about 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year. The National Research Council’s report, Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water, estimates that radon in drinking water causes about 160 cancer deaths per year due to inhalation and 20 stomach cancer deaths per year due to ingestion.

Radon in water usually originates in water wells that are drilled into bedrock containing radon gas. Radon usually does not occur in significant concentrations in surface waters.

Dissolved radon in groundwater will escape into indoor air during showering, laundering, and dish washing. Estimates are that indoor air concentrations increase by approximately 1 pCi/L for every 10,000 pCi/L in water. For example, a water well containing 2,000 pCi/L of radon would be expected to contribute 0.2 pCi/L to the indoor air radon concentration. Based on the potential for cancer, the EPA suggests that indoor air should not exceed 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L).

EPA and various states have recommended drinking water standards for radon in water ranging from 300 to 10,000 pCi/L but no standard currently exists. One study of radon present in over 900 Pennsylvania water wells found that 78% exceeded 300 pCi/L, 52% exceeded 1,000 pCi/L and 10% exceeded 5,000 pCi/L.

Since most exposure to radon is from air, testing of indoor air is the simplest method to determine the overall risk of radon in your home. Test kits for indoor air radon are inexpensive and readily available at most home supply stores.

Testing for radon in water is also inexpensive but requires special sampling and laboratory analysis techniques that measure its presence before it escapes from the sample. Test kits are available from various private testing labs

The presence of waterborne radon indicates that radon is probably also entering the house through the soil into the basement which is generally the predominant source. Therefore, treating the water without reducing other sources of incoming airborne radon probably will not eliminate the radon threat. Therefore, you should also test the air in your home for radon.

Treating Radon in Water

The main objective of water treatment is removing radon from water before the radon can become airborne. Most water treatment, therefore, focuses on “point of entry” rather than “point of use.”

Granular Activated Carbon (GAC)

One method for removing radon from water is with a granular activated carbon (GAC) unit. Although these systems come in a variety of models, types and sizes, they all follow the same principle for removal . The standard radon GAC filter is a tank-style unit that can have either a backwashing control or a simple non-backwashing head. Non-backwashing GAC units must be protected from sediment with a prefilter.  Radon filter sizing depends on the amount of radon present, service flow rates, amount of water treated, the size of the treatment bed and other factors, so each application must be considered separately and radon testing for effectiveness of the filter should be carried out regularly.

Typical setup for a GAC filter treating radon.

Various estimates suggest that GAC should only be used on water supplies with a maximum radon concentration of less than 30,000 pCi/L.  If you do decide to purchase a unit, select a filter size that matches your water use and conditions.  According to EPA, a three-cubic-foot unit can handle as much as 250 gallons of water per day and effectively reduce radon levels. Typical water use in the home ranges from 50 to 100 gallons per person per day.

A major drawback to the use of GAC filters for radon removal is the eventual buildup of radioactivity within the filter. For this reason, the GAC unit should be placed outside the home or  in an isolated part of the basement to minimize exposure. The carbon may also need to be replaced annually to reduce the hazard of accumulated radioactivity. Spent GAC filters used for radon removal may need special disposal.  Disposal of spent carbon should be in compliance with local waste disposal regulations.

GAC treatment units are frequently also installed to remove chlorine, pesticides, petroleum products, and various odors in water. In these cases, the GAC filter may unknowingly be accumulating radioactivity as it removes radon from the water. Radon should always be tested for and considered as a potential hazard with the use of GAC filters.

Aeration

EPA has listed aeration as the best available technology for removing radon from water. Home aeration units physically agitate the water to allow the dissolved radon gas to be collected and vented to the outside. With new technological advancements in home aeration, these units can have radon removal efficiencies of up to 99.9%. Standard aeration treatment units typically cost $3,000 to $5,000 including installation.  Be aware that aeration specifically for radon reduction is not the same as aeration for iron or hydrogen sulfide reduction.  While “closed tank” systems designed for iron and sulfide reduction might help with radon, they are not designed to provide the large ventilation capacity needed to assure release of radon to the atmosphere.

When considering installation of aeration units, other water quality issues must be taken into account, such as levels of iron, manganese and other contaminants. Water with high levels of these types of contaminants may need to be pre-treated in order to prevent clogging the aeration unit. Disinfection equipment may also be recommended since some aeration units can allow bacterial contamination into the water system.

Typical Spray Aeration System Designed  for Radon Reduction in a Private Home

There are several styles of aeration treatment units but all work on the same principle of aerating or agitating the water to allow the radon gas to escape so it can be captured and vented. Each type of unit has advantages and disadvantages. One of the more common styles is a spray aeration unit shown above. In this case, water containing radon is sprayed into a tank using a nozzle. The increased surface area of the sprayed water droplets causes the radon to come out of the water as a gas while the air blower carries the radon gas to a vent outside the home. About 50% of the radon will be removed in the initial spraying so the water must be sprayed several times to increase removal efficiencies. To keep a supply of treated water, a 100-gallon or larger holding tank must be used.

Another common aeration unit is the packed column where water moves through a thin film of inert packing material in a column. The air blower forces radon contaminated air back through the column to an outdoor vent. If the column is high enough, removal efficiencies can reach 95%.

Another type of aeration system uses a shallow tray to contact air and water. Water is sprayed into the tray, and then flows over the tray as air is sprayed up through tiny holes in the tray bottom. The system removes more than 99.9% of the radon and vents it outside the home.  Go here for illustrations of other aeration systems.

See also:  the EPA publication and a list of resources from RadonResources.com.

Main Source:  Penn State University.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement