Taylor Made Water Systems

New York city tap water has tiny shrimp in it?  According to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, yes it does, but it’s nothing to be concerned about.  In cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle where the source water for tap water is above federal standards, no filtration is required.  Therefore, tiny marine life is natural and common in their tap water.  The copepods pictured below are small crustaceans that New Yorkers and others are swallowing every day. 

New York’s experts agree that they pose no health risk to humans, but they add that if you are concerned, a simple filter will remove the 1-2 millimeter, invisible shrimp. 

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/02/whats-water-tiny-invisible-shrimp/

What’s in Your Water? Probably Tiny Invisible Shrimp

By Jeremy A. Kaplan

Published September 02, 2010

 

Copepods like this one are in every glass of New York city tap water — and that’s nothing to worry about.

Invisible shrimp could very well be living in every drop of water you drink — but that’s OK, they’re nothing to worry about.

A photo posted to the online sharing site Reddit has the Internet abuzz. It shows a tiny animal — a shrimp-like crustacean called a copepod — and announces that the reader found it in his New York City tap water.

"You swallow these invisible shrimp with every gulp of NYC tap water," trumpeted online blog Gizmodo about the discovery. Time magazine’s website also announced the find breathlessly, exhorting New Yorkers to "drink up" — but noting that the critters may pose a problem for many of the city’s Jewish residents.

"Besides a serious ‘ick’ factor, the copepods are technically crustaceans, which means they aren’t kosher for the city’s large Orthodox, observant Jewish population," the site warned.

It’s all true. There are, indeed, copepods in New York’s drinking water — and the reason they’re there is that the city’s water is superb for drinking. In fact, people across the country with excellent natural water supplies swallow invisible bugs like these every day.

Most copepods are so small — barely 1 to 2 millimeters long — that they’re more or less transparent. And they can be found in most freshwater habitats, including the reservoirs that supply public drinking water to cities like New York.

"It’s one of those interesting facts you learn about local drinking water — but it’s in no way dangerous," Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), told FoxNews.com.

He explained that many cities filter their water, but if the water quality exceeds federal standards — which New York City tap water does — it doesn’t require filtering, a process that would remove the copepods. Among other cities that don’t filter their water are Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Sklerov said.

He said the copepods "pose no risk to human health. It’s not something that’s regulated because there’s no harmful effects from them."

A representative of NOAA’s Fisheries Services explained that copepods are a form of plankton, the minuscule creatures that form the majority of the biomass in the ocean and feed many animals, notably whales.

"There are areas that have blooms of copepods at certain times of year, such as Cape Cod bay in the spring," said NOAA’s Teri Frady. "Right whales eat them, and that’s why you see right whales near Cape Cod at that time of year."

They’re also harmless for humans, though if you’re disturbed, simply pass your water through an ordinary, over-the-counter filter.

Many people do have allergies to crustaceans, the large group of shellfish that includes lobsters, shrimp and copepods, raising the specter of allergic reactions to tap water. That’s probably not a concern, said Clifford W. Bassett, medical director of Allergy and Asthma Care of NY and faculty, NYU School of Medicine and Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine Long Island College Hospital..

"Shellfish allergy has risen to be one of the most common food allergens in the US, in adults. Although not studied formally to my knowledge, in general, there needs to be exposure to an allergen, and be significant enough to cause an immune response in an allergic individual, for symptoms to occur," he told FoxNews.com.

In any event,  I suspect the "dilutional" effects of drinking water most likely would reduce the risk," Bassett said.  

"Any individual who suspects they may have a food allergy should be seen by an allergist for proper evaluation and management of this condition."

And don’t worry. The bugs are kosher.

In a 2004 article in The Jewish Press, Rabbi David Berger, a professor of history at the City University Graduate Center, said, "The notion that God would have forbidden something that no one could know about for thousands of years, thus causing wholesale, unavoidable violation of the Torah, offends our deepest instincts about the character of both the Law and its Author."

So drink up. The shrimp’s on the house.

Okay, so that’s not a huge shocker of a headline to most of us, but here’s a pretty easy tip to lose a few pounds based on new Virginia Tech research.  Drinking a half liter (16.9 fl ounces) of water before meals helped the trial participants lose more weight and keep it off.  The researchers haven’t figured out exactly why this works, and there are many possible explanations, but as they say, it works and it’s easy, so give it a shot. 

 

http://www.economist.com/node/16881791?story_id=16881791

Drink till you drop

A magic elixir is shown to promote weight loss

 

CONSUME more water and you will become much healthier, goes an old wives’ tale. Drink a glass of water before meals and you will eat less, goes another. Such prescriptions seem sensible, but they have little rigorous science to back them up.

Until now, that is. A team led by Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech has run the first randomised controlled trial studying the link between water consumption and weight loss. A report on the 12-week trial, published earlier this year, suggested that drinking water before meals does lead to weight loss. At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, Dr Davy unveiled the results of a year-long follow-up study that confirms and expands that finding.

The researchers divided 48 inactive Americans, aged 55 to 75, into two groups. Members of one were told to drink half a litre of water (a bit more than an American pint) shortly before each of three daily meals. The others were given no instructions on what to drink. Before the trial, all participants had been consuming between 1,800 and 2,200 calories a day. When it began, the women’s daily rations were slashed to 1,200 calories, while the men were allowed 1,500. After three months the group that drank water before meals had lost about 7kg (15½lb) each, while those in the thirsty group lost only 5kg.

Dr Davy confidently bats away some obvious doubts about the results. There is no selection bias, she observes, since this is a randomised trial. It is possible that the water displaced sugary drinks in the hydrated group, but this does not explain the weight loss because the calories associated with any fizzy drinks consumed by the other group had to fall within the daily limits. Moreover, the effect seems to be long-lasting. In the subsequent 12 months the participants have been allowed to eat and drink what they like. Those told to drink water during the trial have, however, stuck with the habit—apparently they like it. Strikingly, they have continued to lose weight (around 700g over the year), whereas the others have put it back on.

Why this works is obscure. But work it does. It’s cheap. It’s simple. And unlike so much dietary advice, it seems to be enjoyable too

 

NYC, boasting some pretty good tap water, is launching a campaign to promote its tap water over bottled water.  And they’re selling T-shirts and reusable water bottles!  But, they won’t bottle their water as that would go against their Green message of discouraging plastic bottles for energy and waste reasons. 

(more…)

 

I like this, and not just because they are using a Point of Use Cooler, like our TM1R…

 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/dc/dc-grocer-bans-water-bottles.html

D.C. grocer bans water bottles

 

MOM’s Organic Market is getting in on D.C.’s anti-plastic push with a decision to eliminate the sale of water bottles from its six regional markets.

As part of its “Battle the Bottle” campaign, the grocer plans to add water filtration machines in stores, allowing customers to fill their own bottles with up to a gallon at no cost. The new system should be in place within the next few weeks, Scott Nash, the founder and CEO of MOM’s, said.

"Societies are truly addicted to plastic, much in the way we are addicted to oil," Nash said in a statement.
Pollution and fears over potentially harmful chemicals in plastic bottles have helped drive anti-plastic sentiment in recent years.

In January, D.C. added a 5-cent tax on plastic bags that has forced a dramatic drop in their use.

Nestle is raising salmon in municipal well water to determine if tapping 100 million gallons of local spring water in a small Oregon town is feasible.  Faced with decreasing revenue in its massive bottled water empire, Nestle is getting creative in trying to thwart environmentalists’ objections to its acquisition of source water from rural springs in small towns.  Many of these towns are economically depressed and the potential new revenue and job source is very tempting.  Personally, I prefer purified municipal water, so I’m happy leaving rural springs pristine.  Of course, I’m not Nestle. 

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704414504575243921712969144.html?KEYWORDS=nestle

MAY 25, 2010

Bottled Water Pits Nestlé vs. Greens

By DEBORAH BALL

CASCADE LOCKS, Oregon—In this idyllic town on the north slope of Mount Hood, an autopsy on three dead rainbow trout may play a role in Nestlé SA’s efforts to reverse a deep slide in its bottled-water business.

Bottled water, which for years delivered double-digit growth for Nestlé, is under fire from environmentalists. They decry the energy used to transport it and the use of billions of plastic bottles, and oppose efforts to use new springs, citing concerns about water scarcity.

In Cascade Locks, Nestlé is trying to tap 100 million gallons of water annually for its Arrowhead water brand from a new spring—and keep the environmentalists happy, too. A key is proving that water drawn from the spring—which supplies a hatchery that raises Idaho Sockeye, an endangered species—can be replaced with municipal well water, with no harm to the fish.

Nestlé is running a one-year test here to raise 700 rainbow trout in a tank filled with well water. Worried that activists might sabotage the test, Nestlé put the 1,700-gallon tank under lock and added security cameras. Officials from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife monitor the fish’s progress and are now autopsying the three that have died so far.

"We are accused of mining water, which would suggest we are depleting a resource," says Kim Jeffrey, chief executive of Nestlé’s North American water business. "But instead, we take water in a sustainable way. The notion that we just take what we want is simply not factual."

The project is testament to Nestlé’s determination to fix its bottled-water business. Its North American water sales fell to 4.4 billion Swiss francs, or $4.2 billion, in 2009, down 13% from 2007.

"Water is a category that gave us so many years of joy," Nestlé Chief Executive Paul Bulcke said in an interview. "And all of a sudden, it changes. That is what hurts."

Until 2007, bottled water was a dream business for Nestlé, whose brands include Pure Life, Poland Springs and Perrier. Per-capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. soared to 29 gallons in 2007 from 16 gallons in 2000. A bottle of Nestlé’s San Pellegrino water became a trendy statement of health consciousness.

Annual growth rates of Nestlé’s U.S. water business topped 15% in the mid-2000s. By last year, it had 38% of the $10 billion U.S. bottled-water market, more than rivals Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. combined.

But the gusher has slowed the past two years as environmentalists have tried making bottled water a new cause. Some tony restaurants in Los Angeles and New York have conspicuously stopped offering bottled water. A slate of documentaries claims that water producers mislead the public about the virtues of bottled water compared to tap.

Nestlé’s water sales have been hit badly by the economic downturn, as shoppers began seeing bottled water as an unnecessary luxury, turning to cheaper tap water instead. Moreover, consumers who still wanted bottled water began buying some of the slew of cheaper new private-label brands that supermarkets have launched over the last couple of years. In response, Nestlé has been pushing Pure Life, a lower-priced water that comes from purified municipal sources.

Bottlers say bottled water represents a small share of water use and is typically tapped in a sustainable way, a view backed by independent hydrologists. But the attacks hurt.

In 2007, one group launched a campaign called "Lying in Advertising." One poster read: "Bottled Water Causes Blindness in Puppies," with a tagline reading, "If bottled-water companies can lie, we can too." And now, a Congressional bill that would slap a 4% tax on bottled water to pay for upgrades of municipal water systems is gaining fresh attention, after a rupture in a water main left two million Boston residents without drinkable water in May.

Nestlé has been a favorite target of activists since the 1970s, when it encountered tough criticism of how it marketed baby formula to poor mothers in underdeveloped countries. Its role as leader of the U.S. bottled-water market and the fact that it taps springs in often-pristine rural areas has exposed it to particular criticism from opponents of bottled water.

Some 80% of Nestlé’s bottled water is from springs, while the rest is purified municipal water. Coke and Pepsi’s bottled water brands largely come from purified municipal sources.

Last fall, Nestlé threw in the towel on plans to tap one glacier-fed spring in Northern California after a six-year battle. Nestlé waged a six-year court case to carry on using a spring in Michigan, reaching a settlement last summer. In October, it gained approval to tap a Colorado source, after agreeing to 44 conditions.

Now, in Cascade Locks, Nestlé is fighting environmentalists’ opposition to its plan to draw water from a spring in this 1,100-person town.

Finding the right spring for bottled water is no easy task.

Water is costly to transport, so a spring must be relatively close to large markets, yet far enough to protect it from urban pollutants. It must have enough spare capacity to make it worth building a bottling plant nearby, and the water needs the right balance of minerals to taste right.

The job has gotten tougher as Nestlé tries to cut costs and carbon emissions by decreasing the distances its trucks travel; it has cut the average miles each delivery requires by about 15% since 2007. Nine out of 10 candidate springs turn out to be unsuitable, says Dave Palais, a Nestlé resource manager.

Cascade Locks is a rare fit. Mr. Palais has been searching for a spring to supply water to Northwest markets since 2007. The company currently trucks water from California or British Columbia.

Cascade Locks, which gets about 80 inches of rain a year and sits right off Interstate 84, is home to Oxbow Springs. When Nestlé came calling in 2008, Cascade Locks’ town fathers were thrilled. Since the decline of the timber industry in the 1970s, Cascade Locks has struggled. With 18% unemployment, the town has seen an exodus of residents. Last year, the high school closed due to a drop in enrollment. The number of businesses has dwindled from about 90 three decades ago to about a dozen.

To bottle Oxbow Springs’ water, Nestlé has proposed a plan that includes looking out for Idaho Sockeye, which are among the fish raised in a 100-year-old hatchery managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Nestlé would pipe water from the spring to a proposed new $50 million bottling plant that would employ 53 workers. In turn, it would pump Cascade Locks’ municipal well water to the hatchery to replace all the water taken from the spring—buying 300 gallons a minute from the town for the switch, or about a sixth the total municipal capacity.

Town officials say Nestlé would pay about $360,000 a year for the water under current industrial rates, but say they could strike a deal for special pricing for such a large customer.

The project would boost Cascade Locks’ beleaguered finances by doubling the city’s property taxes. City Administrator Bernard Seeger envisions sprucing up the town’s dilapidated main street and expanding police service from three days to five.

"When Nestlé came, we said, ‘Wow, this would be amazing,"’ says Mr. Seeger. "We’re sitting on a massive amount of water here."

The Fish and Wildlife Department, which had looked for a way to bring more water to the hatchery several years ago but found it too expensive, could use the new pumps and pipes that Nestlé would install to expand the operation, says Douglas Bochsler, the agency official in charge of the project.

Nestlé has held two town hall meetings to explain the project and hear residents’ concerns. It has rented a store front on Cascade Locks’ main street where Mr. Palais spends several days a month to answer questions and set up a toll-free number, although it says few calls have come in so far.

Environmentalists have been just as quick off the mark. Washington D.C.-based Food and Water Watch, a dogged opponent of Nestlé, has created a coalition of 16 environmental and religious groups dubbed "Keep Nestlé Out of the Gorge." In March, it delivered a 10-gallon water bottle holding 3,700 signatures of opponents to Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. Protesters waved placards reading "Protect Oregon’s Water."

Julia DeGraw, the Food and Water Watch activist leading the campaign, argues that a resource as precious as water should never fall into corporate hands, saying it discourages cities from investing in water infrastructure and increases the risk corporate interests may prevail over public ones in case of a drought. She raises environmental concerns, including the effect on fish. Ms. DeGraw also accuses Nestlé of targeting towns that are economically depressed, an allegation Nestlé denies. She says Nestlé has paid on average one-fifth of one cent a gallon to buy spring water, while selling it to consumers for $5.30.

"A lot of Oregonians don’t want to see the state’s resources extracted by a multinational that would make a massive profit off it," says Ms. DeGraw, a native Oregonian. "It’s all or nothing for us."

Nestlé says it offers towns fair conditions to tap springs and fully informs citizens of its plans. Nestlé says the difference between its purchase price and the retail sales price is due to the cost of filtering, bottling and distributing its water; it says its lowest retail price for a gallon of spring water is about $1.20.

The Oregon Water Resources Department plans to hold a public comment period before deciding, while the Department of Fish and Wildlife says it would include a clause to break any contract with Nestlé in case of adverse environmental impacts.

Nestlé says it’s conducting studies to address some environmental concerns. Only after studies are done, and the year-long test to see that the fish survive in municipal water, will Nestlé file its application with state authorities.

"If Food and Water Watch wants to be responsible, they should wait to see what the [tests] say and not make spurious arguments," says Nestlé’s Mr. Jeffrey.

In April, at a screening of a new anti-bottled-water documentary, "Tapped," Mr. Jeffrey challenged Jim Walsh, a Food and Water Watch leader also in attendance. "Do you want to come in and talk to me about the issues, or do you just want to see us out of business?" Mr. Jeffrey says he asked Mr. Walsh.

"The latter," responded Mr. Walsh, according to Mr. Jeffrey’s recollection.

Mr. Walsh says he doesn’t recall saying he wanted to see Nestlé go out of business, but says his group is "fundamentally opposed to the process of bottling water."

Mr. Jeffrey, a 32-year veteran of the bottled-water business, says state authorities monitor Nestlé’s spring withdrawals too closely for it to deplete water. A Nestlé plant draws about the same amount of water in a year as a single ski area or a large farm, he says, and would have to abide by restrictions during droughts.

Hydrologists say bottled water is a tiny fraction of what industry, farms and homes use and don’t generally view it as a threat to aquifers. "Bottled water use is a drop in the bucket," says Thomas Harter, expert in water management at the University of California at Davis.

The Cascade Locks efforts are part of a push by the company to cast its water in a friendlier light. Nestlé is launching a lighter bottle with nine grams of plastic, a quarter of that found in some sports-drinks packaging. Nestlé truck drivers must now turn off engines instead of idling and the company is introducing hydrogen-fuel-cell forklifts.

Environmentalists say it is impossible for a company that churns out 20 billion plastic bottles a year to become environmentally friendly and dismiss the efforts as "bluewashing."

In Cascade Locks, some resent seeing a rare business opportunity possibly lost. "This is becoming the Battle of the Middle Gorge," says Mayor Brad Lorang. "Stopping Nestlé won’t save the planet, but getting Nestlé to come here could save the town."

Write to Deborah Ball at deborah.ball@wsj.com

Based on 15 years of data, a new report shows that over 2 million Californians have had harmful levels of nitrates in their water.  Nitrate sources include fertilizer, animal manure, and wastewater treatment.  According to the report, Nitrates are linked to “blue baby syndrome” and other health issues.  Public water systems are required to remove nitrates. 

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/16/MNLC1DCRMF.DTL

State’s nitrates problem grows unchecked

Julia Scott, California Watch

Monday, May 17, 2010

The water supply of more than 2 million Californians has been exposed to harmful levels of nitrates over the past 15 years, a period marked by lax regulatory efforts to contain the colorless and odorless contaminant, a California Watch investigation has found.

Nitrates are the most common groundwater contaminant in California and across the nation. A byproduct of nitrogen-based farm fertilizer, animal manure, wastewater treatment plants and leaky septic tanks, nitrates seep into the ground and can be expensive to extract.

The problem affects rural Californians and wealthier big-city water systems. State law requires public water systems to remove nitrates. But many rural communities don’t have access to the type of treatment systems available in metropolitan areas.

Nitrates have been linked to "blue baby syndrome," in which an infant’s oxygen supply is cut off.

Statewide, the number of wells that exceeded the health limit for nitrates jumped from nine in 1980 to 648 by 2007. Scientists anticipate a growing wave of nitrate problems in some parts of the state if remedial steps aren’t taken.

And yet the state’s patchwork regulatory efforts remain riddled with gaps that have allowed nitrate contamination to spread virtually unchecked. Consider:

– The leading source of nitrate pollution in many regions of the state – nitrogen fertilizer – is not regulated. Lettuce farmers can apply as much fertilizer as they want, within feet of a water supply well. Officials aren’t equipped to determine the sources of contamination to hold anyone accountable.

– Sixty-five percent of domestic wells at Central Valley dairies test over the public health limit for nitrates, putting residents at risk of potential exposure. Yet, according to records obtained from the state water board, none of the dairies was fined for a nitrate problem identified by the state.

– When polluters are found responsible for nitrate contamination, the state rarely does anything to correct it. California has issued 248 enforcement actions against 44 polluters for nitrate contamination in the past six years. But only once has the state ordered a polluter to clean up contaminated groundwater.

Families in rural communities typically pay more for tainted water than ratepayers hooked up to clean water systems. Residents in the tiny town of Seville in eastern Tulare County, for example, pay a monthly fee of $60 for nitrate-laden water that the county’s health department has warned them not to drink.

By comparison, the average water bill is $26.50 a month for San Francisco residents, who consume water from the pristine Hetch Hetchy water system.

"The people who are polluting the water, they don’t pay for that cleanup – the ratepayer does," said Debbie Davis, a legislative analyst with the Oakland-based Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, a network of groups advocating for clean water. "If California is going to meet the water challenges of the future, we have to figure out how to deal with nitrates."

Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the State Water Resources Control Board’s division of water quality, said his agency has chosen to spend more time and resources dealing with chemicals such as perchlorate and dry cleaning solvents, which cause more acute health effects when leached into groundwater.

Contaminated wells

It’s not clear how often nitrate exposure leads to serious health problems, including acute "blue baby syndrome," because state officials do not keep records and doctors are not required to report such cases. Bottle-fed infants whose formula was prepared using water are at greatest risk if the water exceeds public health limits for nitrates.

Many of the state’s fastest-growing regions overlie vast stores of nitrate-polluted groundwater. In the eastern San Joaquin Valley, 1 in 3 domestic wells has nitrate levels that exceed public health limits.

One of those wells is on property owned by Camelia and Manuel Lopez in East Orosi, a small town in Tulare County.

The Lopez family volunteered to have their private well tested by the state last winter. The water contained nearly three times the federal health limit for nitrates, which is the equivalent of half a teaspoon in a swimming pool. Follow-up testing of the family’s tap water by California Watch confirmed those results.

"You would never imagine in this country that someone would have this problem," said Camelia Lopez, who emigrated from Mexico as a young woman and moved to the countryside from the Bay Area.

Now the family buys bottled water for drinking and cooking at a cost of $60 a month – a hardship because Manuel Lopez, a contractor, is unemployed.

Camelia Lopez has taught their three boys – ages 6, 16 and 18 – to brush their teeth with bottled water and keep their mouths closed when they’re in the shower. Putting filters on all the taps in the house would cost at least $750.

School water tainted

On the other side of Tulare County, nitrate problems have been one long, expensive headache for Norm Brown, principal of Citrus South Tule Elementary School in Porterville.

Several years ago, Brown applied for a state grant to dig a $100,000 well on school property to alleviate the school’s chronic nitrate problem, only to learn that the school’s groundwater basin was loaded with nitrates.

"I was really going to make a difference on that," Brown recalled. "But if they’re digging a well, they’re not going to find clean water. It’s a waste of money."

The school, which has 53 students, is one of 12 schools in the state with nitrate contamination in their well water, according to public health records.

Bottled water is the only affordable remedy for Citrus South, which pays more than $2,000 each year to stock its water coolers and distribute plastic cups. Brown is required to test the well water every month, at a cost of $2,500 last year, before sending the results to the county.

Officials say nitrates are so common and mobile that they are difficult to track once they get into the groundwater, making the contaminant hard to monitor.

"It is much more difficult to go out and identify a single cause of a nitrate problem in the area, and it can be also very difficult to identify responsible parties and figure out what corrective action needs to be taken," said Ken Landau, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Little enforcement

Farmers and companies are urged not to degrade groundwater but are mostly left to employ voluntary strategies to comply. Fruit and vegetable farmers are exempt from enforcement oversight of groundwater, according to a review of agricultural policies across the state.

The wells at Monterey Mushrooms Inc. in Watsonville, the nation’s largest marketer of fresh mushrooms, have exceeded nitrate limits 17 times, according to records reviewed by California Watch.

In 2006, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board cited the company for four of the violations. "Nitrate out of control!" one staff member scrawled on a lab report obtained by California Watch. But the facility has not been fined.

General Manager Wayne Bautista said the high nitrate readings are from a well closer to other fields on a ridge above the mushroom plant. He said the company has reduced the wastewater it applies to land.

Camelia Lopez feels helpless about her family’s nitrates problem, which testing has traced to animal manure, possibly from nearby cattle ranches, or a leaky septic system.

"Please care a little bit about this community," she says. "Just like I’m worried about this, there are other mothers with a lot of kids who are worried about this issue, too. If it were you and your kids in this community, what would you think? What would you do?"

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting with offices in the Bay Area and Sacramento. Read more about nitrate contamination on its Web site at www.californiawatch.org.

Water research

The State Water Resources Control Board has funded a series of studies by the U.S. Geological Survey to measure nitrates in groundwater across the state. Much of that information can be found in a searchable mapping database called GeoTracker:geotrackerbeta.ecointeractive.com/gama

On World Water Day, the UN released a report stating that polluted water creates illnesses that fill more than half of the world’s hospital beds.  They estimate that 3.7 percent of all deaths are related to polluted water, which is more than die from all forms of violence.

They also confirmed that the bottled water used in the U.S. alone requires 17 million barrels of oil to produce.

Those are two good reasons to filter your own water!   

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100322/ap_on_re_af/un_un_clean_water

UN: Polluted water killing, sickening millions

 

AP – An Indian village boy runs through a parched field on World Water Day in Berhampur, Orissa state, India, …

By RONALD BERA, Associated Press Writer – Mon Mar 22, 12:30 pm ET

NAIROBI, Kenya – More people die from polluted water every year than from all forms of violence, including war, the U.N. said in a report Monday that highlights the need for clean drinking water.

The report, launched Monday to coincide with World Water Day, said an estimated 2 billion tons of waste water — including fertilizer run-off, sewage and industrial waste — is being discharged daily. That waste fuels the spread of disease and damages ecosystems.

"Sick Water" — the report from the U.N. Environment Program — said that 3.7 percent of all deaths are attributed to water-related diseases, translating into millions of deaths. More than half of the world’s hospital beds are filled by people suffering from water-related illnesses, it said.

"If we are not able to manage our waste, then that means more people dying from waterborne diseases," said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Undersecretary General and executive director of UNEP.

The report says that it takes 3 liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water, and that bottled water in the U.S. requires the consumption of some 17 million barrels of oil yearly.

Improved wastewater management in Europe has resulted in significant environmental improvements there, the UNEP said, but that dead zones in oceans are still spreading worldwide. Dead zones are oxygen-deprived areas caused by pollution.

"If the world is to thrive, let alone to survive on a planet of 6 billion people heading to over 9 billion by 2050, we need to get collectively smarter and more intelligent about how we manage waste, including wastewaters," Steiner said.

A Boston article points out that offering quality coffee as an office perk can improve morale.  Based on a January survey by Keurig (yes, the results are self serving, but still true!), many employees would prefer gourmet coffee and tea over a Holiday Party.  In fact, coffee ranked about as high as flexible hours and casual work days in the perk pecking order.

Of course, as an Office Coffee Service provider, Taylor Made Water Systems has been saying this for many years, but now office workers have confirmed what we already knew.  Quality coffee is a great office perk that cannot be overlooked (or worse – eliminated!).  We have seen numerous instances of employees showing their passion for the salubrious (promoting health or well being – we looked it up) effect of a good cup of coffee in the office.  So, drink up! 

 

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/03/free_joe_can_ca.html

Free joe can caffeinate workplace morale

Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 report spending an estimated $440 a year and log more than 38 hours of time toward purchasing coffee and tea during the work week.

So concludes a survey commissioned by Keurig Inc., a Reading brand that markets machines that can brew a single cup of coffee. (At right is a photo of a Keurig machine) Keurig is a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. of Vermont.

One focus of the survey was to get input on how to improve the mood of the workplace. Not surprisingly perhaps, the survey finds that free Joe can have a salubrious effect on cubicle morale – under the right circumstances, complimentary caffeine can cause even the most cynical of drudges and drones to whistle while they work.

In fact, free gourmet coffee is as nearly as prized as flexible hours and casual work days when employees can mothball the pinstripes and bust out the khakis and cargo pants, the survey suggests.

Undertaken in early January, the national survey is based on telephone interviews with 958 adults, Keurig said.

As a perk, meanwhile, the annual holiday party around Christmas may be highly overrated, with 37 percent of employees surveyed saying that they would prefer free, daily fresh gourmet coffee or tea over a party, Keurig said.

Why is free coffee so prized? Perhaps it’s because 50 percent of employees surveyed reported they are looking to cut back coffee-and-tea spending, suggested Keurig, which added that small perks can make employees "feel more valued."

 

Mother Jones put out another article on Bottled Water, citing the distance traveled by many top bottled water brands and the associated carbon emissions created by the transportation of the bottle to San Francisco (results will vary if you live on the East Coast, but you probably know that).  For those who wonder why bottled water is picked on when we import spices, food, drinks, etc. from all over the world, the main point is that this is water.  And water is water.  Everywhere.  Two hydrogens and one oxygen.  There may be variations in the amount of minerals in the water and the makeup of those minerals, but water is water.  We have local spring water, local purified water, local artesian water, local sparkling water, and any water you can think of right here in the United States.  So, there’s no need to ship an 18 ounce glass bottle over 6,000 miles to quench our thirst.  It’s all right here – if you have to go bottled, at least go local bottled.

Or, you can purify your own at home (shameless plug). 

 

How Far Did Voss and San Pellegrino Travel to My Whole Foods?

We charted the miles per bottle for nine top water brands.

— By Jen Phillips

September/October 2009 Issue

NAME SOURCE MILES TO SF BOTTLE WEIGHT (IN OZ.) CO2 (TRAVEL ONLY; LBS./1 L. BOTTLE) SELLING POINT Evian(Danone) Evian-les-Bains, France 6,265 3.35 .61 "French Alps" Volvic(Danone) Volvic, Auvergne, France 6,255 2.34 .59 drawn from "deep inside the lush, green ancient volcanoes" San Pellegrino(Nestlé) San Pellegrino Terme, Italy 6,135 17.74 (glass) .80 "preferred by top restaurants" Perrier(Nestlé) Vergeze, France 5,900 17.61 (glass) .63 "50 million bubbles" Fiji Water Yaqara Valley, Viti Levu, Fiji 5,470 4.15 .49 "untouched by man" Voss Hordaland County, southern Norway 5,100 18.93 (glass) .57 "pure water unlike any other" 365 (Whole Foods) Shasta, California 223 1.5 .07 "replenish*refresh*rehydrate" Balance Baxter, California 149 2.14 .06 "Australian flower essences" Dasani(Coca-Cola) San Leandro, California 22 1.94 .01 "live positively"

 

After its articles on Fiji Water garnered so much attention, Mother Jones followed up with a list of other missteps by bottled water companies.  From Coca-Cola’s drying up a village in India to IBWA’s fake Twitter “Water Babe,” desperate times are creating desperate measures. 

 

From Arrowhead to Volvic, Fiji’s not the only bottled water with a PR challenge.

— By Jen Phillips

September/October 2009 Issue

Sam’s Choice (Wal-Mart)

WET REGRET Water comes from the Las Vegas municipal supply. A test by the Environmental Working Group found it had 200% of the allowable trihalomethane, a carcinogen, and included several chemicals known to cause DNA damage.

Dasani (Coca-Cola)

WET REGRET Coca-Cola’s bottling plant near the village of Plachimada in Kerala, India, began pumping groundwater in 2000. When wells dried up and villagers couldn’t irrigate their fields, Coke offered a goodwill gesture: heavy-metal-laced sludge from the plant to use as fertilizer. After company ignored years of protests—and two government orders to install wastewater treatment and provide drinking water to villagers—the state ordered Coke plant to close in 2004. (Coke won the right to reopen the next year.)

Arrowhead (Nestlé)

WET REGRET Nestlé is seeking a permit to pipe 65 million gallons a year from a spring in rural Colorado. When critics raised concerns about the effect of climate change on local water supplies, Nestlé said it was "illogical" to base decisions on changes "many years in the future."

Volvic (Danone)

WET REGRET Last fall, Japan recalled 570,000 bottles of the French water after finding the toxic paint chemicals xylene and naphthalene in the bottles.

Deer Park (Nestlé)

WET REGRET In the middle of a drought, convinced officials to let it pump water from Florida’s Madison Blue Spring State Park for 14 years for no fee except a $230 permit (more than offset by nearly $1.7 million in tax subsidies).

Ice Mountain (Nestlé)

WET REGRET Pays nothing (other than small lease and $85 yearly well fee) to pump from a Mecosta County, Michigan, spring. Citizens sued, saying the plant would damage nearby waterways, and prevailed. But Nestlé appealed and this past July won the right to continue pumping up to 200 gal./minute.

International Bottled Water Association

WET REGRET Created @Bottled H20Babe on Twitter: "A lover of bottled water, a convenient, refreshing beverage that shouldn’t be restricted by governments or false claims."