Showing posts with label ground water contamination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ground water contamination. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
DOE Plans to Leave Strontium 90 in Groundwater
The Resident
The Department of Energy recently revealed its cleanup plans for F Reactor at the Hanford Site in Washington State: just leave the radioactive contaminants in the groundwater to dissipate and monitor it. For 264 years. The Hanford Advisory Board would like to see a pump system implemented to protect the area's drinking water, but the DOE claims that will be unnecessary - and of course, too expensive.
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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Soon We'll Be Drinking Recycled Pee; Some of Us Already Are
AOL News
Someday, millions of Americans will be drinking their own urine, says Robert Roy Britt, managing editor of LiveScience.com, a news site that prides itself on the provocative approach it takes to science.
In a recent commentary for the site, Britt, based in arid Phoenix, said that because of imminent drought in the West, many people will have to rely on treated sewage -- containing human waste -- for their drinking water.
"We now have too many people living in places where we don't have fresh water," Britt told AOL News.
As an example, Britt cited the Phoenix area, which gets its drinking water from a remote body of reservoirs, including Lake Mead, which sits more than 230 miles away.
He suggested that Phoenix and other cities throughout the Southwest may soon go the way of Orange County, Calif., which does exactly what he's foretold – it recycles wastewater into tap water.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
10 Reasons Our Shallow Water Supply is in Deep Trouble
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It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!Print this page
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Research proves 'gender-bending' chemicals affect reproduction
New research has provided the first evidence that 'gender bending' chemicals which find their way from human products into rivers and oceans can have a significant impact on the ability of fish to breed in UK Rivers.
The findings from the four year study, led by the universities of Exeter and Brunel, has important implications for understanding the impacts of these chemicals on ecosystem health and possibly on humans.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) disrupt the ways that hormones work in the bodies of vertebrates (animals with backbones), including humans.
They can be found in everything from female contraceptive drugs and hormone replacement therapy pills, to washing up liquid, with the most well studied EDCs being those that mimic oestrogen (female hormone).
EDCs have been seeping into rivers through the sewage system for decades and have an observed effect on fish, altering male biology to make them more female – hence the 'gender bending' reputation of these chemicals.
Until now, there has been no solid evidence to show the long-term impact of this effect on fish in the wild - but the new research focusing on wild roach in two UK rivers (Bourne and Arun) has provided new evidence. Two large-scale breeding studies assessed the ability of fish to breed by using a genetic technique (DNA microsatellites) to match offspring produced to their parents.
It was found that intersex fish – those that had their sexuality compromised by EDCs and which contain both male (sperm) and female (eggs) sex cells – had their reproductive performance reduced by up to 76%.
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It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!Print this page
Monday, October 11, 2010
The New Oil: Water Becoming Our Most Precious Resource
Should private companies control our most precious natural resource?
Jeneen Interlandi
NewsWeek
Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world’s most spectacular lakes. Nestled into a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snowpack and glaciers, the reservoir, named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues, holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment. The city’s tiny population—fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles—makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka’s reserves go unused. That could soon change. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil—and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. The project is the brainchild of two American companies. One, True Alaska Bottling, has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka’s bountiful reserves. The other, S2C Global, is building the water-processing facility in India. If the companies succeed, they will have brought what Sitka hopes will be a $90 million industry to their city, not to mention a solution to one of the world’s most pressing climate conundrums. They will also have turned life’s most essential molecule into a global commodity.
The transfer of water is nothing new. New York City is supplied by a web of tunnels and pipes that stretch 125 miles north into the Catskills Mountains; Southern California gets its water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Colorado River Basin, which are hundreds of miles to the north and west, respectively. The distance between Alaska and India is much farther, to be sure. But it’s not the distance that worries critics. It’s the transfer of so much water from public hands to private ones. “Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years,” says James Olson, an attorney who specializes in water rights. “Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous.”
Everyone agrees that we are in the midst of a global freshwater crisis. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and aquifers are dwindling faster than Mother Nature can possibly replenish them; industrial and household chemicals are rapidly polluting what’s left. Meanwhile, global population is ticking skyward. Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to outstrip supply by more than 30 percent come 2040.
Proponents of privatization say markets are the best way to solve that problem: only the invisible hand can bring supply and demand into harmony, and only market pricing will drive water use down enough to make a dent in water scarcity. But the benefits of the market come at a price. By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim. As the crisis worsens, companies like True Alaska that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won’t necessarily weigh the needs of wealthy water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé against those of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana; privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection. Other commodities are subject to the same laws, of course. But with energy, or food, customers have options: they can switch from oil to natural gas, or eat more chicken and less beef. There is no substitute for water, not even Coca-Cola. And, of course, those other things don’t just fall from the sky on whoever happens to be lucky enough to be living below. “Markets don’t care about the environment,” says Olson. “And they don’t care about human rights. They care about profit.”
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
10 Reasons Our Shallow Fresh Water Supply is in Deep Trouble
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!
Print this page
 |
| Lake Mead, NV |
NewsWeek
Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world’s most spectacular lakes. Nestled into a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snowpack and glaciers, the reservoir, named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues, holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment. The city’s tiny population—fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles—makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka’s reserves go unused. That could soon change. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil—and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. The project is the brainchild of two American companies. One, True Alaska Bottling, has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka’s bountiful reserves. The other, S2C Global, is building the water-processing facility in India. If the companies succeed, they will have brought what Sitka hopes will be a $90 million industry to their city, not to mention a solution to one of the world’s most pressing climate conundrums. They will also have turned life’s most essential molecule into a global commodity.
The transfer of water is nothing new. New York City is supplied by a web of tunnels and pipes that stretch 125 miles north into the Catskills Mountains; Southern California gets its water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Colorado River Basin, which are hundreds of miles to the north and west, respectively. The distance between Alaska and India is much farther, to be sure. But it’s not the distance that worries critics. It’s the transfer of so much water from public hands to private ones. “Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years,” says James Olson, an attorney who specializes in water rights. “Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous.”
Everyone agrees that we are in the midst of a global freshwater crisis. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and aquifers are dwindling faster than Mother Nature can possibly replenish them; industrial and household chemicals are rapidly polluting what’s left. Meanwhile, global population is ticking skyward. Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to outstrip supply by more than 30 percent come 2040.
Proponents of privatization say markets are the best way to solve that problem: only the invisible hand can bring supply and demand into harmony, and only market pricing will drive water use down enough to make a dent in water scarcity. But the benefits of the market come at a price. By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim. As the crisis worsens, companies like True Alaska that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won’t necessarily weigh the needs of wealthy water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé against those of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana; privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection. Other commodities are subject to the same laws, of course. But with energy, or food, customers have options: they can switch from oil to natural gas, or eat more chicken and less beef. There is no substitute for water, not even Coca-Cola. And, of course, those other things don’t just fall from the sky on whoever happens to be lucky enough to be living below. “Markets don’t care about the environment,” says Olson. “And they don’t care about human rights. They care about profit.”
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
10 Reasons Our Shallow Fresh Water Supply is in Deep Trouble
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!Print this page
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