Gazette Numerical Wizard Bea Sharper brings you up to date on the current water news in numbers. These facts surfaced in water news stories during September 2014.

Percentage of trash found on Australian beaches that is plastic — 75%. 

Percentage of dead seabirds examined in a recent study that had plastic in their guts — 43%. 

Percentage of people in Georgia who drink water from private wells — 43%. 

Estimated percentage of US wells that have over 10 ppb arsenic — 7%. 

Estimated number of private wells in Georgia in 2012 — 648,000. 

Percentage of these wells that were tested during 2012 — 3.5%. 

Percentage of beer samples tested recently that contained plastic microfibers — 100% 

Number of years that it takes most plastic water bottles to decompose — 500. 

Number of African children who die each day of diarrhea – 4,000.

Amount that the California Water Resources Control Board has already allotted to buy bottled water for residents of East Porterville, which has run out of water. – $500, 000. 

Amount it would cost to connect East Porterville homes to the nearest municipal supply – $50,000,000. 

Time required for such a connection (if there were no political objections) – 5 years.

Year when the US Toxic Substances Control Act went into effect — 1976.

Number of times it has been updated since 1940 — 0.

Number of registered chemical compounds that have been recorded by the EPA — 84,000.

Number of these that have been tested fully for health effects on humans — unknown, but a tiny fraction of the total.

Rank by size in 1900 of the now dry Aral Sea among the world’s lakes — 4.

Number of residents of Sao Paolo, Brazil, which is dangerously close to running out of water — 20,000,000.

Current percentage of capacity of Cantareira, the lake complex that supplies half the water for Sao Paolo — 7.6%.

Fraction of China’s farmland that is located in the northern part of the country — 2/3.

Fraction of China’s natural available freshwater that is in the northern part of the country — 1/5.

Year in which Mao Zedong first proposed sending water from southern China to the north — 1952.

Year in which the new Grand Canal project sending water to the north was completed — 2014.

Number of people moved from their homes to make room for the great new canal — 330,000 plus.

Factor by which Chinese industry uses more water than the average western industrial country — 10 times.

Gallons of sea water needed to produce one gallon of potable water by reverse osmosis desalination — 2.

Daily production capacity of the largest sea water desalination in the United States, located at Carlsbad, CA — 50,000,000.

Daily production of the modest sized plant in Santa Barbara, CA — 2, 800,000.

Number of US desalination plants currently in planning or under construction — 15.

Number in Mexico — 3.

Number of square miles covered by the extension of the great marine sanctuary created in September 2014 — 490,000.

Amount of increase in the antimony content of bottled water stored at 158 degrees F. as compared with the same water stored at refrigerator conditions – 319-fold.

According to recent NSF research, percentage of Americans who are concerned about contaminants in tap water — 82%.

Percentage who are concerned about detergents — 24%.

Rank of pesticides among the concerns documented in the survey — #1.

El Capitan girls water polo scores — 6-3, 4-2, 3-1.

These items appeared originally in the Pure Water Occasional during Sept. 2o14.

Final Barrier Treatment: A Concept that Makes Sense

by Pure Water Annie

The Water Quality Association of America uses the term “final barrier” to describe the practice of doing water treatment at the point where water is actually used.  In the case of drinking water, this means providing a “final barrier” of defense at the point where the water is consumed–the kitchen sink, in most  homes–rather than attempting to prepare perfect drinking water at a distant water treatment and send it through miles of piping to the point of use.

Only about 1% of the water that leaves the water treatment plant is actually consumed by people; the other 99% is classed as “working water” that  waters lawns, washes automobiles, flushes toilets and performs dozens of other tasks that require good quality but not perfect water.

According to the WQA, ” treating 100% of the water in a municipal system to ‘drinking water quality’ and then wasting 99% of that quality through leakage, flushing toilets, watering lawns, fighting fires, is an unsustainable strategy for the future .” 

Municipal water departments in advanced countries do an incredible job of turning millions of gallons per day of water from lakes, rivers, and wells into aesthetically acceptable and microbiologically safe water,  But to get to the end user,  the treated water has to pass through miles of often ancient and always questionable infrastructure where it is subject to ruptured pipes, accidental backflow contamination, corroding metal, and contaminants that are leached from the pipes themselves.

The practical solution is to threat the water immediately before human consumption with a “final barrier” device.

Final barrier devices are by now familiar objects.  The most common and reliable are reverse osmosis units, ion exchange devices,  carbon filters, and, to an increasing extent, small ultraviolet purifiers.

 A high quality undersink filter or reverse osmosis unit can turn tap water into  exceptionally high quality drinking water.

 The Water-Energy Nexus

 Click image for larger view.

Editor’s Note:  This piece is adapted from CleanTechnica.com.  Go to the source for a more complete version and additional references. –Hardly Waite.

Did you know that it takes 3,000-6,300 gallons of water per year to power just one 60W incandescent light bulb? Now, I know that that must sound a little farfetched, but unfortunately it’s true. But how can this be, don’t light bulbs use electricity? In short, yes, but what most people don’t know is that we use large amounts of water to produce electricity. You see, electricity and water are connected through what is known as the energy-water nexus, and while that phrase may not mean anything to you at the moment, it will by the end of this article. So what exactly is the energy-water nexus, and why should you care?

The water-energy nexus is best understood as a connection between water and energy, however it goes much deeper than that. First, let’s look at the connection between the production of energy and water. The three most common ways we produce power today are coal, natural gas and nuclear power and all three of these require the use of water. Essentially these systems heat fresh water and turn it into steam, and that steam spins a turbine which creates energy. Curious just how much water these systems use? Click on the image below to see just how much water each of these systems needs to produce just 1 kWh of energy:

As you can see, supplying power to our homes requires a ton of water, but what about supplying them with water? Well, in short, it requires a ton of energy. You see, before water reaches your home it’s passed through a water treatment plant which ensures that it’s safe to drink and use in your home. After its been treated a series of electrical pumps will bring the water to your home where it will be used and then pumped back to another waste water treatment facility to be re-treated and sent back out. All the while, using energy which requires water to create it. So what does this mean to you as both an energy and water consumer? Take a look at your latest water bill, odds are you’ll find an electrical charge listed under your current charges. This is to cover the cost of the electricity required to pump the water to your home.

As you can see water and energy a far more than just connected, and by conserving one we can directly conserve the other.

Source:  CleanTechnica.com. 

 The Aral Sea’s Disappearing Act

 by Anna Nemptsova

Satellite photos show how the depredations of dictators have turned the world’s fourth largest inland sea into a poisonous desert. 

The vanishing sea is a warning: a harbinger of the long feared war over water in Central Asia.

If the pictures are new, the news of the Aral Sea shrinking is old. The story goes back to a Soviet desire to create a new breadbasket, far from southern Russia and Ukraine and possible Western invasion, where, indeed, war rages today.

The giant irrigation projects began in the 1960s in the dry lands of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. To irrigate cotton fields in Central Asia, Soviet workers built 45 dams diverting the twin rivers of Central Asia’s “little Mesopotamia,” the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into the so-called “virgin lands.” By the late 1990s the sea level dropped by 16 meters, leaving fishing boats and ships resting on the sandy and salty bottom.

As a result, disaster struck dozens of villages and small towns. In vain, fishermen waited for the sea to come back: there were no fish, there was no money for their families. The wind blew dry, salty air from the former seabed far to the south and east. The air mixed with fertilizers and pesticides that for decades were washed from the fields into the sea by irrigation water. The noxious winds poisoned the local population.

The final chapter began in 2005, when the World Bank gave Kazakhstan the first $68 million credit to build a 13-kilometer-long dam to split the Aral Sea into halves: the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the Southern Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The dam prevented water from Kazakhstan’s Syr Darya from flowing into Uzbekistan’s half of the sea.

By 2008, Kazakhstan had managed to completely take control over the Syr Darya water, reviving 68 percent of the northern sea, reducing the salinity by half, and once again developing the fishing industry.

On the southern, Uzbek side, however, the sea dried up that much faster. Uzbekistan, largely dependent on cotton, the industry of white gold, could not afford to re-channel water to its half. Also, with the water vanishing, the Russian oil company Lukoil found a silver lining in the disaster, setting out in 2006 to explore for oil and gas on the bottom of the Aral Sea in the Uzbek sector.

In the last couple of years, neighboring Central Asian countries have had tense disputes about their water, which is so vital to their prosperity.

The construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Kyrgyzstan, which has border skirmishes from time to time with Uzbekistan, threatened the future independence of cotton farmers there. Each year their fields need at least 53 billion cubic meters of water for irrigation. Once, in 2013, Kyrgyzstan halted water for its reservoirs, and at least 11 regions of Uzbekistan suffered shortages.

In the past decade both Russian and Western ecologists expressed concerns about the worsening environment for millions of local people exposed to the salty wind. But that is not the only risk posed by the ghost of this vanishing sea.

An abandoned Soviet military base sits on Renaissance, or Vozrozhdenie, island, and was a test site for the Soviet biological weapons program. Rumors persist that the weapons were buried there. Where better to test cultures of anthrax, typhoid, plague and tularemia than on an island in a sea in the middle of the desert? No longer on an island, the site is now left exposed to anybody willing to walk across the drying sands. 

via earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Article Source:  The Daily Beast

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Should you worry about BPA in reverse osmosis tanks?

Because of the widely publicized presence of BPA in some plastic products, the public has developed a general suspicion of all plastics as a source of BPA.  Actually, the plastic products that contain BPA are mainly the hard, shatter-resistant,  usually clear water bottles as well as baby bottles and a few other plastic containers. You normally will not find BPA in plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene.  BPA is not one of the materials used in preparing these plastics.

If a product is NSF certified (certified to ANSI/NSF standard 58), the certifying agency has scanned the product for BPA.  If the product contains BPA, it will fail the extraction test and will not be certified.

The materials in high quality RO tanks that touch the water are stainless steel (the spout only), polypropylene (the liner in the chamber that holds the water), and butyl (the bladder that holds air and pushes the water out of the tank).  The butyl (aka chlorobutyl) bladder material in high quality tanks is specially cured so that it will not put out bad tastes or contaminants.

There are lots of things that contaminate food and water that we should worry about.  but reverse osmosis tanks aren’t one of them.

US announces world’s largest marine sanctuary in the Pacific 

Washington: The United States on Thursday announced the creation of the world’s largest marine sanctuary in the Pacific, where commercial fishing and energy exploration are off limits.

The move expands the already existing Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, west of Hawaii and northeast of Australia to six times its previous size.

“We’re talking about an area of ocean that’s nearly twice the size of Texas, and that will be protected in perpetuity from commercial fishing and other resource-extraction activities, like deep-water mining,” said Secretary of State John Kerry.

Former president George W Bush declared the area a national monument in 2009, and an executive order from President Barack Obama makes the protected space even larger. The total protected area now includes 490,000 square miles (1.27 million square kilometers) around the Wake and Jarvis Islands and Johnston Atoll.

“This is the grand-daddy of all marine protected areas around the world. Some of these areas had like a 50-mile radius around them, now they are going to have a 200-mile radius,” said Jackie Savitz, vice president for US oceans at the advocacy group Oceana.

A key goal is to protect the undersea mountains that provide habitat and hunting grounds for tuna, sea turtles, manta rays, and sharks, and to allow them to breed and multiply.

The area “is also home to millions of seabirds that forage over hundreds of miles and bring food back to their rookeries on the islands and atolls,” the White House said in a statement.

Coral reefs that are in peril from bleaching and ocean acidification are plentiful in the area, and protecting them allows scientists to use them as a benchmark for global research on climate change.

The marine protected area is considered federal land where commercial fishing is prohibited. However, some recreational fishing will continue to be allowed, with special permits.

Biologists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service say the establishment of the protected area has already helped boost some creatures that had all but disappeared at Johnson Atoll.

They include “Great Frigatebirds, Sooty Terns, Red-tailed Tropicbirds, and other species that are known to feed as much as 300 to 600 miles offshore,” the statement said. Obama first announced plans to expand the marine reserve in June at a two-day conference on the world’s oceans, hosted by the State Department.

With just one to three per cent of the world’s oceans currently under protection, Kerry called on global powers to take more steps to end overfishing and protect global fish stocks.

“There’s just too much money chasing too few fish,” he said.

Source: IBN Live.

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USGS report: Pesticides contaminate nation’s streams

by Laura Lundquist

Source: Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

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What is the ideal water for brewing coffee?

by Gene Franks

British scientist Christopher Hendon recently published research seeking to define the perfect water for brewing coffee.  Essentially what he recommends, from the point of view of water quality, is

1. Clear,fresh, odor-free water.

2. Zero or near zero chlorine or chloramine.

3. TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) around 150 ppm.

4. Total alkalinity of around 40 ppm.

5. Calcium hardness of around 4 grains per gallon (68 ppm).

6. pH of 7.0.

7. Sodium of around 10 ppm.

The best way to get water that fits this description is simply to have non-chlorinated well water that fits this description.  The second best way is to have city water that fits the the requirements except #2 and filter out the chlorine or chloramine with carbon filtration.

Most standard water treatment strategies have their shortcomings if your entire purpose in treatment is to make excellent coffee. Here is a rundown:

A. Polyphosphate is often used by restaurants. It protects the coffee-making equipment from calcium build-up and does not affect the taste of the coffee. Some cartridges mix polyphosphate with granular carbon. This has the positive effect of removing the chlorine/chloramine.  It does not affect mineral content.

B. Distiller.  Not good for coffee.  It takes out virtually all the hardness and sodium and leaves almost zero TDS.  It will probably remove most of the chlorine.

C. Reverse Osmosis.  Not ideal for coffee. RO leaves less than 10% of the sodium/hardness content, which is too little unless you start with a whole lot.  For example if your raw water has a salty 100 ppm of sodium, RO would bring it down to the ideal figure.  RO (or the carbon filters with it) removes chlorine/chloramine, but it probably will drop the pH below the ideal 7.0.

D. Water Softener.  Not good for coffee.  Softened water has no hardness and way too much sodium. Softeners don’t remove chlorine.

E. Activated carbon filter.  Probably the best choice with most waters.  It removes chlorine and chloramine, improves taste, and doesn’t affect minerals.

F. Bottled water. Good if you find water that meets the criteria.  Bottled water can be distilled, prepared with reverse osmosis, or simply filtered spring or municipal water.  Because of the mineral content, filtered municipal water is probably your best choice.

Keep in mind that most people do a lot more with water than make coffee.  Perfect water for coffee may not be the best for bathing or drinking. It might make more sense to soften your water to protect appliances and buy a bottle of water now and then to make coffee with. “What profiteth a man if he gains good coffee but loses his hot water heater?”

Reference: Water Technology, paper issue for Sept. 2014.

 Water Testing Kits

by Dr. Joseph Cotruvo

Editor’s Note:  The selection below is excerpted from Water Technology’s popular Professor POU/POE feature. — Hardly Waite.

Providers of water services always need water quality data to evaluate the type of contamination problem they are facing, be it hardness, corrosion or microbes, to select the types of technical interventions that might be needed. There are many test kits on the market that provide good estimates of concentrations of many kinds of water parameters and contaminants. They are inexpensive and easy to use with some practice, and do not require the expertise of an analytical chemist or microbiologist, or an expensive fixed laboratory. Many can be run in the field. They always require care and cleanliness and good practices and carefully following the directions, so as to produce reliable results.

Parameters and circumstances that require an expert analytical laboratory

Of course, many analyses require complex equipment and a qualified analytical laboratory. Some examples include trace organic chemicals like THMs or pesticides, many inorganic chemicals and more complex microbial analyses like for giardia or Cryptosporidium protozoa. These could cost hundreds of dollars per sample and may require days or weeks before the results are provided. Virtually all analyses that will be used for official standards and regulatory compliance determinations will require data from a state certified laboratory. So, for example, data from public water systems to determine official compliance with chemical and microbial drinking water regulations all fall into that category. Except for standard inexpensive microbial analyses like coliform bacteria they are usually required infrequently. The good news is that there are many simpler analyses for some of the substances that even public water systems can use for tracking treatment processes and day-to-day performance.

Parameters that can be tested with kits

This is not an exhaustive list but it gives an overview of the types of kits that are available and sources of many of them. Some of these involve use of a meter and others are color or other simple tests. Among the general water parameters that can readily be tested are: pH, turbidity, temperature, alkalinity, conductivity, hardness or total dissolved solids. Chemical tests include: Chloride; free, total and combined chlorine; chlorine dioxide; chromium VI; copper; arsenic; fluoride; iron; lead; manganese; nitrate; nitrite; nickel; phenols, phosphate; sulfide; sulfite; and sulfate. Simple microbial tests include: Fecal and total coliforms; E. coli, and fecal streptococci. Some basic examples of these methods and products are described below. Many more are available in the catalogues of the various suppliers.

General parameters

Alkalinity: Available simple kits can measure alkalinity on site as calcium carbonate. Some use a small direct reading titrator. Testing ranges are about 0-200 ppm with sensitivity ~4 ppm as CaCO₃. Costs for 50 tests are about $35.

pH: The measurement of pH should be done in the field rather than by taking a sample to a laboratory, because pH will change by exposure to the atmosphere, such as by losing or picking up carbon dioxide. There are battery operated pH meters suitable for field use that cost several hundred dollars each, but they can measure hundreds of samples.

Meters provide a precise measurement, but there are simpler and much less expensive ways of obtaining a very good estimate of pH. Simple litmus paper gives a quick indication of acidity or basicity. Hydrion or Universal pH paper is available at very low cost (a few cents per test) from many sources. Dipping a small strip of the paper in the water produces a color indicating the approximate pH that can be read off of a color chart.

Hardness: There are kits capable of measuring calcium hardness as calcium carbonate on site. Their performance is in the typical drinking concentration range as well as above by dilution of the sample. Cost is about $50 for a kit that can perform 50 tests.

Temperature: Water temperature is easily measured with numerous standard thermometers, but digital readout devices are also available.

Inorganic chemicals

Arsenic: Several arsenic test kits are available that will measure arsenic +3 and arsenic +5 in the low ppb range. A common technique involves adding reagents to a water sample that results in color formation on a test strip. Some tests require about 15 minutes for color production. The color on the strip is compared to a color chart to determine the concentration of total arsenic. Costs are typically about $175 to $200 for 50 samples.

Chloride: Kits for on-site chloride in fresh water samples are available using a direct reading titrator. Costs are about $50 for 50 tests.

Chlorine: There are free, total and combined chlorine test kits available from several suppliers that can quickly measure on site the three chlorine disinfection species in the range of typical drinking water concentrations. Two reagents are added to a water sample and the color formation is measured with a color comparator. Cost is about $65 for a kit that can perform 50 tests.

Copper: Copper test strips are available to measure total copper levels from 0 to 3 ppm in seconds. Colorimeter tests are available with greater precision and accuracy.

Iron: Numerous low cost field test kits are available for iron in the drinking water concentration range from about 0.5 ppm to 10 ppm. The simplest kits involve color generation with a reagent and comparison with a color chart.

Nitrate-nitrogen: Several low cost test kits are available for this important water quality parameter. They usually involve adding a solid reagent to the water in a vial and then allowing the color to develop, then inserting the vial in a color comparator.

Microbial indicators

The traditional testing for microbial indicators like coliforms once required a microbiology laboratory facility and trained microbiology technicians or microbiologists along with sample preparation equipment, and glassware and growth media and autoclaves for sterilization and temperature controlled ovens. That is no longer the case. There are now techniques available that do not require special equipment or special training beyond some basic instruction. For total coliforms andE.coli the original new test was Colilert, but numerous variants are now also available. As a presence-absence test it involves adding a special solid reagent to the water sample and storing it for 18 to 24 hours at 98^o F. If a yellow color develops, that indicates total coliform bacteria. If the same tube fluoresces when a UV light is shined on it that indicates the presence of E.coli. So, two important microorganisms are identified in one test in 24 hours or less with minimal facilities. The method is also amenable to multiple tube most probable number quantitations if the sample is diluted, divided and incubated. When purchased in bulk the unit costs can be in the area of $5 or $6 including sterilized containers and the reagent. Similar tests are available for enterococci and pseudomonas.

There are other simple and low cost systems available for heterotrophic, sulfate reducing, iron and pseudomonas bacteria. One group is called biological activity reaction test (BART) systems and they are available from several suppliers. All of these microorganisms can be problematic in water systems and plumbing and their identification facilitates selection and application of corrective actions.

Source: Water Technology.

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