Recently in Drinking Water Category

The America Water Works Association (AWWA) has an annual conference to bring together water utility professionals from all over the country.

I imagine the conference, held in Chicago this year, is incredibly wonky and the average person might not be able to appreciate it without falling asleep.

However, they have a pretty serious tap water tasting competition every year, where many cities from all over the country participate to find "the best of the best". The surprise winner this year? Stevens Point, Wisconsin. That is impressive. A small town beating out the biggest, most sophisticated water systems in the country.

But what is more impressive? New York City, the biggest mega-metropolis in the country was number two!! TapIt's beloved home city beat out the best, including Boston, San Francisco and many other cities with amazing water systems.

New York is doing something right with it's water, that's for sure.

Photo credit: Jenny Downing on Flickr

Water is becoming a more important issue for the planet every year. It is something that we must pay attention to for future generations.

For environmentalists reducing our carbon output in order to combat climate change often takes priority over other environmental issues.

It turns out however, that water conservation and reducing our energy use are intricately related. According to a 2009 report (dug up by NYT Green Blog) put out by the River Network, Americans use at least 520 Billion Kilowatt hours a year (equivalent to 150 coal fired power plants!) or 13% of the nations energy use to heat, treat and transport water for daily use.

This means that when communities are able to find ways to make significant reductions in their per-capita water use (click here for some easy conservation tips), they are preserving our water supply and saving tons of energy.

Energy use also uses lots and lots of water. The Department of Energy estimated that in the year 2000, 39% of fresh water withdrawals were used for coal, nuclear and natural gas power generation. So by reducing energy use, you save even more water.

In essence, increasing water conservation and energy efficiency lead to the same ends and are absolutely necessary to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

Scientists at MIT in conjunction with their Korean colleagues, have developed a micro water desalination device the size of a postage stamp.

The units electrostatically separate salts and microbes from water instead of using a membrane like conventional desalination techniques. This is what allows the unit to be so small.

In a test, using a mixture of Massachusetts beach water, plastic microbes and blood, the device was able to separate 99% of contaminants from the water.

The size and effectiveness of this device gives it promise for use in disaster relief or areas with very little infrastructure that need clean water.

One of these units can only process small amounts of water. However the scientists plan to use up 10,000 units in conjunction to have a much larger capacity.

Photo Credit: MIT/Patrick Gillooly

Residents of Paw Paw, Michigan are suing Coca-Cola for contaminating their ground water with heavy metals. The suit alleges that wastewater discharged from a local Minute Maid juice plant run by Coca-Cola has allowed heavy metals to seep into the water table.

Residents are suing for damages related to reduced property value and the cost of cleaning up the contamination. Some plaintiffs in the suit allege health issues, including gastrointestinal, kidney and central nervous system disorders from drinking local water.

Coca-Cola agrees with the the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment that the groundwater does indeed contain heavy metals and has taken steps to remedy the problem.

As part of the plan, which has included building a water treatment plant, Coca-Cola has quite ironically been providing as much as 20 residents with free bottled water for over a year, as a precaution.

So Coca-Cola basically ruins Paw Paw's water and then offers them Dasani? This is an accidental yet telling illustration of the problems of bottled water.

photo credit: quaziefoto from flickr creative commons

 

There has been a battle in New York in the past six months to save New York City's water supply from dangerous hydraulic fracture natural gas drilling.

Amid public uproar, the gas drilling company that owned drilling rights in New York City's watershed decided not to drill there, citing PR concerns.

This was great news except the New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) refused to put a legal ban on the practice in the watershed. That all changed on Friday. Kind of.

The new rules announced on Friday for the watershed will require drillers to get approval for drilling on a well by well basis. While in other parts of the state, presumably areas that are not as environmentally sensitive, there are general environmental guidelines that need to be followed, allowing for gas companies to more easily comply and drill.

These new rules will effectively make gas drilling in the watershed too costly and time consuming for companies to consider. However, it falls short of an actual ban that many New Yorkers were hoping for. There is more work to be done to make sure our water is safe. New York cannot afford to even have even the slightest chance of one of our most important natural resources to be contaminated.

The movement against bottled water is heating up, especially in Canada. Brita, the maker of filters for the home and office, launched a $2 Million marketing campaign in Canada.

Brita will be airing a 60 second commercial (see video below) that will be play on various prime time shows in Canada, such as American Idol, CSI, The Mentalist and The Biggest Loser.

Clearly getting rid of disposable water bottles is gaining momentum in Canada with Ottawa's new million dollar tap water marketing budget and University of Ottawa's recent bottled water ban. We hope to see this happen everywhere.

Detroit has seen the worst economic decline of any American city. With the collapsing American auto industry and manufacturing continuing to be sent over seas, Detroit has gone from a peak population of about 2 million in the 1950's to 800,000 today and loses 10,000 residents a year.

To make things a little worse, many people in Detroit are getting disconnected from the city water supply. Due to decreasing revenue and budget shortfalls, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) has raised prices and shut tens of thousands of resident's water off over the past few years.

Residents in less populated areas often share water between houses using hoses as service does not come to every house. The problem may only get worse. Detroit's population is projected to bottom out in 2020, leaving many years for services to potentially decline even more.

Residents that lose water access tend not to have the income to pay for tap water alternatives, such as bottled water, that can cost up to a thousand times more. Hopefully the city can find a way to provide basic services that many need to survive.

photo credit: stan on flickr

TapIt is happy to be officially launching our program in the Portland, OR this week! Big thanks to the Portland Water Bureau for partnering with us to get the word out. You have great tasting water! 

TapIt has signed up over 50 local Portland food service businesses to be official 'TapIt Partners' who will always offer free tap water to the public. When on-the-go, Portlanders or visitors can use the TapIt iphone App, mobile website or look for a TapIt sticker on the windows of cafes to find where they can easily refill their personal water bottles, no questions asked.

TapIt was inspired by the idea that we should all have easy access to a great public resource like water. Even if you are away from your home or your office, you should not feel forced to buy water in a plastic bottle. You should have a clean place to get a water refill, for free. Our partner businesses believe in this idea and want to support the community by offering this service.

We think that using the TapIt network can be fun and helpful. We also hope TapIt will encourage people to think about water, how important it is to us and how we need to work together to keep it clean and plentiful.

A campaign was launched this week against the construction of Nestle Water North America's first Pacific Northwest bottling plant. The plant, which is proposed to be built in Cascade Locks, Oregon, 45 miles outside Portland in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge, would source the water from a nearby spring that also feeds a fish hatchery.

The opposing coalition includes The Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, Columbia Riverkeeper and local residents. They argue, rightly, that it is silly to have a water bottling plant in an area with an abundant and very clean public water supply.

A natural resource manager for Nestle working on the project argues, "If bottled water wasn't present [in stores], people wouldn't just be turning to tap water, they'd be turning to sodas and sugary beverages." Which, in our opinion is also true.

This is a great reminder for us that we not only need to slow the growth of bottled water, but provide more viable solutions for people to conveniently get access to clean tap water wherever they may be.

The coalition against the plant has gathered 3,700 signatures. The plant will not be built without a fight.

The Floating Sensor Network, a project at UC Berkeley is developing tiny robots that float (or swim) in rivers or any fresh water to monitor changing conditions in real time.

Although this sounds like a strange, science-fiction like concept, these devices have the potential to give all kinds of new information to water managers. Having a way to monitor water while it flows from its source is very difficult. This provides that information literally while it happens.

They become especially useful in catastrophic events such as a major flood. The robots can tell which direction water flows are going and can immediately tell if this water becomes contaminated. So, before water enters pipes for drinking or other uses, someone will already know the condition of the water and whether it is safe.

See a test of the robots in the video below. Although they are huge right now, the development team plans to eventually make them the size of golf balls. I can tell you, I would be a little freaked out to run into one of these while canoeing.

For an overview of the project, visit the the project website.