Stainless Steel Watts Residential Units Added to Pure Water Products UV Offerings

by Hardly Waite

Pure Water Products announced today that the company is adding Watts stainless steel residential ultraviolet (UV) systems to its product offerings.

After a two year trial period of selling and supporting the Watts units, the company today began offering the Watts units on its main webpage.

Pure Water Products now stocks all models and all parts of the Watts units for same-day shipment.

According to General Manager Katey Shannon,  “UV is our best commercial product.  We’ve been selling UV units since 1990.  Adding the stainless steel Watts units to our popular line of plastic Pura units gives us a powerful, high output UV system that’s simple to install and maintain yet inexpensive to purchase.   Since we are predominantly online sellers,  we like products that are tough and effective yet simple enough for non-professionals to install and service.  We’ve given the Watts systems a good test and we really like them.”

Watts UV units come in popular residential sizes from two to twelve gallons per minute with pipe sizes of 1/2″ (2 gpm unit), 3/4″ (6 and 8 gpm units) and 1″ (12 gpm unit).   Even the largest unit is priced under $500.

Pages to visit:

Watts UV Spec Sheet (PDF)

Watts Ultraviolet Disinfection Systems

Aging Sewage Systems Are Crumbling While Cities Look for Money to Replace Them

Many US cities are facing expensive replacement of ancient sewer lines at a time when money is hard to find in the budget.

A good example is Rock Hill, SC,  where one-hundred-year-old clay sewer pipes have been ignored and neglected for years. The pipes once carried about one million gallons of dirty water a day from a finishing plant to a lagoon.  The lagoon is now a soccer field, but the leaky clay pipe is still in place.

In the 1920s and 1930s, adjoining sewer lines were put in to serve the growing residential areas,  but the city has had to deal with cracks in the clay pipes and repair complications because parts of the original lines were laid in the back yards of some homes.

New sewer lines are being moved under roads and in the public right-of-way and will relieve some stress on the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Abandoning the old clay sewer lines, filling them with concrete and installing new iron pipes should stop rainwater from entering the sewage system.

The problem with rainwater entering the pipes is that it then goes on to the treatment plant and adds greatly to the wastewater treatment load.

Rock Hill’s wastewater plant processes almost 9 million gallons a day from homes and businesses in the city and from adjoining areas.

The $889,524 sewer line replacement project started in late September and is on track to be finished by the end of 2012.

The good news is that the entire project is being paid for, without borrowing, by a modest increase in utility rates that began in 2007. The city also has budgeted $1.42 million this year for major infrastructure improvements. Recent utility rate increases also will help pay off future loans when the city borrows money to expand its wastewater treatment plant. The expansion could cost about $60 million, and more plant capacity will be needed as soon as 2017 or 2018.

The “pay as you go” system financed by modest increases in utility rates has allowed the city to keep its infrastructure sound without creating crippling debts.

The EPA’s UCMR Program

 

The EPA is a much busier agency than most people think.

In addition to looking after currently regulated drinking water contaminants through its familiar list of MCLs,  the EPA maintains a Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) comprised of other contaminants that may be subject to future regulation.  The public is not so aware of the CCL.

CCL-listed contaminants include those that have been found in drinking water at Public Water Supplies (PWSs),  or others that have been identified through EPA research.  Contaminants on the list are prioritized based on their potential health risk to humans,  as assessed by the EPA’s Office of Water’s Office of Science and Technology.

In other words, the CCL list consists of currently unregulated contaminants and the purpose of monitoring is to determine if further regulation is appropriate.

Now (to make this a bit more confusing with yet another acronym), the CCL is managed under  an EPA program known as its Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring program (UCMR) .

The UCMR program requires the EPA to issue a list every five years of not more than 30 currently unregulated contaminants to be monitored by PWSs.

The new list is actually the third issued since the program’s inception.  UCMR 3 , initiated in April 2012,  will monitor 30 new additional contaminants (28 chemicals and two viruses) during the period from 2013 to 2015.

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Assessment Monitoring (List 1 Contaminants)

Under UCMR3,  all PWSs serving more than 10,000 people, along with 800 EPA-selected PWSs serving 10,000 or fewer people, will be required to monitor 21 separate contaminants. The contaminant list includes seven different volatile organic compounds, six different metals, six perfluorinated compounds, one synthetic organic compound and one oxyhalide anion.  Specific List 1 contaminants to be monitored include some familiar names and some that are not so familiar:

• 1,2,3 — trichloropropane

• 1,3 — butadiene

• chloromethane (methyl chloride)

• 1,1 — dichloroethane

• bromomethane (methyl bromide)

• chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC—22)

• bromochloromethane (halon 1011)

• 1,4 — dioxane

• vanadium

• molybdenum

• cobalt

• chromium

• chromium-6

• chlorate

• perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)

• perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)

• perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA)

• perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS)

• perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA)

• perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS)

• strontium

For the full report on the additional complexities of UCMR3.

How Such Diverse Factors as the Japanese Tsunami and EPA Flue Gas Emissions Rules Affect the Price of Your Water Filter Cartridge

Filter carbon, the most universally used component of modern water treatment,  is a manufactured product.

The main raw source materials are coal (lignite,  sub-bituminous,  bituminous,  and anthracite), coconut shell charcoal,  and wood (softwood,  hardwood,  and bamboo).  Most carbons used in water filters are made of either coal or coconut shell,  largely because with these materials most of the raw material is usable,  the ratio of raw material to finished product being close to 3 to 1.  Other source materials are not so efficient.  Nevertheless,  filter carbon can also be made from peat, olive pits, fruit nut shells, palm shells, pecan shells, and macadamia nut shells.  Some lesser materials are used in niche markets.  Eucalyptus carbon, for example, is a very porous carbon that works well with tannin treatment,  but it is now in short supply because it also performs well for olive oil producers.

The raw  materials used to manufacture activated carbon are subject to the same global marketing laws of supply and demand that cause price fluctuations in other products. The Japanese, immediately after the March 2011 tsunami, realized that because of radioactive fallout resulting from their nuclear accident they would need huge amounts of activated carbon for the cleanup.  Other countries also realized that carbon would be needed to clean up their reservoirs affected by the fallout.  Consequently, thousands of metric tons of activated carbons were purchased in addition to regular demand, depleting manufacturers’ stocks and driving prices up worldwide.

Similarly, the EPA’s tightening of the rules governing mercury in flue gas emissions at coal-fired power plants is expected to create a market for an additional 500 to 800 million tons of powdered activated carbon.  Other factors that affect the carbon market are import duties, EPA regulations (a new disinfection by-product rule scheduled to go into effect in 2013 will likely make city water departments much better carbon customers), and the world economy in general.

Reference: Ken Schaeffer, “The Activated Carbon Market,” Water Conditioning and Purification, June, 2012.

San Francisco Water Recycling Plant Is Capable of Putting Out 2.8 Million Gallons of Recycled Water Per Day

The state of California gave approval for irrigation of the golf course at TPC Harding Park with recycled water.  To now, the 175-acre course has been irrigated with water from the Hetch Hetchy system — the same water that is delivered to households and businesses for consumption by people.

Other golf courses in the city are already irrigated with recycled water.  The North San Mateo County Sanitation District in 2003 built a new facility to produce recycled water.  The facility can produce up to 2.8 million gallons of non-potable water per day, but there has been a demand for only about 1,000,000 gallons per day.

In supporting the recycling project, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission stated: “California has been safely using treated recycled water since 1929. There has not been one confirmed case of anyone becoming ill from the proper use of recycled water for landscape irrigation, commercial, municipal or industrial uses.”

is a regional water system,” he said of using water recycled in Daly City.

The SFPUC also is in the planning stages of other recycled water projects, including a wastewater recycling facility near Ocean Beach at the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant and another on the east side of The City at a location that has yet to be determined.

“It is the first in a long line of recycled water projects in The City,” Jue said of the Harding Park project.

According to an SFPUC document about the Harding Park project, “California has been safely using treated recycled water since 1929. There has not been one confirmed case of anyone becoming ill from the proper use of recycled water for landscape irrigation, commercial, municipal or industrial uses.”

San Francisco’s action follows a national trend to find alternative sources of irrigation water for golf courses.  The average golf course uses about 10,ooo gallons of water per day.  More than 2.5 billion gallons of water are used every day to irrigate golf courses worldwide.

Golfing Industry Focuses on Water Consumption

Editor’s Introductory Note:  You probably know that golf is one of the world’s biggest water gluttons.  I’ll let the article below, from the Waterless company’s website,   provide the data, but figures like “10,000 gallons per day” water consumption for the average golf course, or “about 50 billion gallons annually,” should tell you that putting water saving urinals in the clubhouse isn’t going to make golfing a friend of the environment. –Hardly Waite,  Gazette Senior Editor.

 

Vista, CA – October 16, 2012 – The International Golf Federation (IGF), which has members in more than 150 countries, has agreed to new policies intended to make the industry more sustainable. In particular, these initiatives focus on finding ways to conserve water and use it more efficiently.

There are more than 16,000 golf courses in the U.S. Current estimates indicate that the average American golf course uses more than 10,000 gallons of water per day, or about 50 billion gallons annually.

World Watch magazine reports that more than 2.5 billion gallons of water are used every day to irrigate golf courses worldwide.

“However, steps are being taken to reduce [golf course] water consumption,” says Klaus Reichardt, CEO and Founder of Waterless Co., Inc., makers of no-water urinal systems. Reichardt writes and lectures frequently regarding water issues.

“For instance, improved irrigation methods are helping golf courses use water more efficiently, reducing consumption by more than 2 million gallons of water annually,” Reichardt continues.

It is estimated that more than 1,000 golf courses in the U.S. now use recycled or reclaimed water for irrigation. This number is likely to grow considerably in years to come.

And many golf and residential communities–especially those located in dry Arizona and Nevada–are now employing new software programs and technologies that help reallocate and reduce water usage. These systems are helping to reduce water consumption by 10 percent and energy consumption by an additional 10 percent.

“The golfing industry is very involved with reducing water consumption off the course as well,” says Reichardt. “Many facilities are leaders in installing low-flow faucets and showers and no-water urinal systems in clubhouse restrooms.”

The IGF also announced that they will be holding a “water summit” November 6–7, 2012, in Dallas, TX, to focus further on water-related issues associated with the game.

Pure Water GazetteFair Use Statement

How Caffeine Is Stripped from Coffee by Use of the Chemical-Free Water Method

Caffeine is in the coffee bean for a reason.  It’s a natural alkaloid that serves the coffee plant as a pesticide.  It paralyzes bugs that invade the plant and also gives off a bitter flavor as a warning of its toxic nature.

Caffeine is water soluble, as are most of the other ingredients of the bean that give coffee its flavor.

The art of decaffeination,  therefore, consists of stripping the caffeine from the coffee bean while leaving behind the desirable ingredients that provide the coffee taste and aroma.

Several methods are used to remove caffeine from coffee.  Many involve chemicals, but others rely almost entirely on water.  The water methods are definitely the more desirable.  The so-called Swiss Method is considered the standard of excellence.  Here’s how the process is described:

The green, or unroasted coffee is fully submerged in filtered water that has been heated, in order to extract all the soluble material from the beans. The water solution is then filtered through carbon to separate the caffeine compounds from any of the aromatics that also came out during the extraction, and the coffee beans are then placed in an immersion tank with the caffeine-free solution, allowing them to reabsorb everything but the jitters.

World standards differ on the definition of “decaffeinated coffee,”  some allowing 97% caffeine reduction, but the highest  standards require elimination of  as much as 99.9% of the alkaloid content of coffee in order to display the decaffeinated label.

 

Reference:

Serious Eats Website

Pure Water Gazette:  What Kind of Water Makes the Best-Tasting Coffee

Sunlight Can Eliminate Harmful Pathogens from Water Quickly and Easily

One of the simplest ways to purify small amounts of water for emergencies or even for daily use is to expose it to six hours or more of sunlight.  UV-A rays from the

sun, (Ultraviolet-A, longwave, 315-400 nm), will eliminate most harmful bacteria,  parasites,  and even viruses from water if given enough exposure to the sun.

Understand that sunlight will kill pathogens, but it will not remove chemicals.  The water to be purified  must be clean and free of harmful chemicals.  Simple pre-filtering through a small sediment filter can be helpful for cloudy water,  but some form of carbon filtration will be needed it the water is contaminated with chemicals.

The easiest way to treat water with sunlight is to simply put it into a very clean and clear plastic bottle–PET is preferred–and place it where it can get at least 6 hours of direct sunlight.  Temperature doesn’t matter, and the process can work even on cloudy or partly cloudy days–it just takes longer.  If it’s cloudy half of the time, allow at least two days for treatment.

Six hours of good sunlight can achieve a 99.999 percent reduction of such nasty items as E. coli, vibrio cholera, salmonella, shigella flexneri, campylobacter jejuni,  and rotavirus.  Of the cysts common to lake and river water, giardia can be eliminated in the six-hour exposure, but it is recommended to treat for at least 10 hours for cryptosporidium.

The bottle?  First, don’t use glass.  It blocks too much UV.  Also, colored plastic bottles are out. Here’s an expert recommendation for choosing a bottle:

The plastic water bottle should be no bigger than 3 liters. In moderately cloudy water, UV-A will lose 50 percent effectiveness at a depth of 10 mm (about 0.5 inch), whereas UV-A will only lose 25 percent effectiveness at a depth of 10 mm in clear water. Just use a typical size soda bottle or water bottle.

References:

Sodis

Modern Survival Blog

More information about water filters for emergencies: “Emergency Water Filters,” from the Pure Water Occasional.

See also on this site.

 

History of the Clean Water Act

Introductory Note:  The following history of the most significant legislation protecting the nation’s water is taken directly from the EPA website.  Today, October 18,  2012, marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Clean Water Act.

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 was the first major U.S. law to address water pollution. Growing public awareness and concern for controlling water pollution led to sweeping amendments in 1972. As amended in 1972, the law became commonly known as the Clean Water Act (CWA).

The 1972 amendments:

• Established the basic structure for regulating pollutants discharges into the waters of the United States.
• Gave EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry.
• Maintained existing requirements to set water quality standards for all contaminants in surface waters.
• Made it unlawful for any person to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained under its provisions.
• Funded the construction of sewage treatment plants under the construction grants program.
• Recognized the need for planning to address the critical problems posed by nonpoint source pollution.

Subsequent amendments modified some of the earlier CWA provisions. Revisions in 1981 streamlined the municipal construction grants process, improving the capabilities of treatment plants built under the program. Changes in 1987 phased out the construction grants program, replacing it with the State Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund, more commonly known as the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. This new funding strategy addressed water quality needs by building on EPA-state partnerships.

Over the years, many other laws have changed parts of the Clean Water Act. Title I of the Great Lakes Critical Programs Act of 1990, for example, put into place parts of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978, signed by the U.S. and Canada, where the two nations agreed to reduce certain toxic pollutants in the Great Lakes. That law required EPA to establish water quality criteria for the Great Lakes addressing 29 toxic pollutants with maximum levels that are safe for humans, wildlife, and aquatic life. It also required EPA to help the States implement the criteria on a specific schedule.

More information from this site.

IBM Is Expected to Pick Up Most of the Cleanup Cost for East Fishkill  PCE Pollution from the 1970s

 

The EPA Superfund program operates on the principle that polluters should pay for the cleanups, rather than passing the costs to taxpayers. After sites are placed on the Superfund list of the most contaminated waste sites, the EPA searches for parties responsible for the contamination and holds them accountable for the costs of investigations and cleanups. The cleanup of a Superfund site at East Fishkill NY is expected to be performed by IBM with oversight by the EPA. The estimated cost of the cleanup is $2.7 million.

Between 1965 and 1975, Jack Manne, Inc. rented a property at 7 East Hook Cross Road in East Fishkill and operated a facility there to clean and repair computer chip racks supplied to it under a contract with International Business Machines Corp. As part of this process, solvents, including PCE, were disposed of in a septic tank and an in-ground pit located at the property.

In 2000, well sampling conducted by the New York State Department of Health indicated that residential wells in the vicinity of the facility were contaminated with PCE above the federal and state maximum contaminant levels. Following this discovery, the EPA initiated an emergency response at the site and began the delivery of bottled water to affected residences. The EPA and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation determined that the source of the PCE contamination in these nearby residential wells was the Jack Manne/IBM facility.

 

Tetrachloroethylene—also known as PCE, perchloroethylene or perc—is a common chemical solvent used in dry cleaning, the cleaning of metal machinery, and in the manufacture of some consumer products and chemicals. It arrives in drinking water through discharge from factories and dry cleaning facilities.

 

Tetrachloroethylene has toxic effects on the central nervous system. According to the WHO, when once used to treat parasitic worms, it was known to cause “inebriation, perceptual distortion, and exhilaration.” Evidence as to its carcinogenicity remains insufficient, although it is classified by the EPA as a “likely human carcinogen” that can lead to liver problems with long term exposure.

With EPA oversight, IBM completed the removal of the sources of ground water contamination at the facility. Under the same order, IBM proposed to study alternative water supplies. In early November 2003, the EPA presented the public with the alternatives for providing a permanent water supply, and the EPA subsequently selected a connection to the Fishkill municipal water supply. In March 2009, the public water supply system was completed and began to supply drinking water to the Shenandoah Road community. In September 2002, IBM had entered into a second agreement with the EPA to perform a study of the nature and extent of contamination that remained at the site as well as cleanup alternatives.

More details on the EPA website.

More about PCE.