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

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

Excellent video on bottled water’s growth (and decline).  http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

Sorry, but that’s a headline that I just could not resist passing along.  The image of suicidal shrimp forced me to read on.  And, of course, I’m always interested in the effects of water contaminants on humans and the environment. 

Using the same levels of the antidepressant that humans “excrete into waste water,” the scientists discovered that the shrimp were five times more likely to swim towards light than away from it.  Normally shrimp swim away from light because their predators (birds and fishermen) are associated with light. 

As more of our pharmaceuticals find their way into our wastewater, and waterways, I expect we’ll see more of these types of unintended consequences.

Antidepressants in the water are making shrimp suicidal

Improving human mental health is having some serious unintended consequences for our friends in the ocean. Exposure to antidepressants makes shrimp five times more likely to place themselves in life-threatening situations, and the broader effects could damage the entire ecosystem.

Exposure to the antidepressant fluoxetine causes shrimp to radically alter their behavior. While normal shrimp are more likely to avoid swimming towards light because it’s often associated with prey like birds or fishermen, those exposed to fluoxetine become five times more likely to swim towards light than away from it. That change in behavior places them in harm’s way, and if enough shrimp are exposed to the antidepressant the entire population could be at risk.

Alex Ford, a marine biologist at the UK’s University of Portsmouth, explains how that can reverberate throughout the oceanic ecosystem and why this is a serious concern:

Crustaceans are crucial to the food chain and if shrimps’ natural behaviour is being changed because of antidepressant levels in the sea this could seriously upset the natural balance of the ecosystem. Much of what humans consume you can detect in the water in some concentration. We’re a nation of coffee drinkers and there is a huge amount of caffeine found in waste water, for example. It’s no surprise that what we get from the pharmacy will also be contaminating the country’s waterways.

Ford exposed some shrimp to the same amount of fluoxetine that humans excrete into the waste water that gets carried out to sea. He found that even this seemingly small amount was enough to trigger this major behavioral change in the shrimp. He had been motivated to investigate this question by a parasite that is known to cause such changes by altering serotonin levels in shrimp. He wanted to find out whether the same deleterious result could be obtained using human antidepressants; the answer, sadly, is yes.

He explains how small individual amounts of antidepressants adds up to a big problem:

Effluent [outflowing waste water] is concentrated in river estuaries and coastal areas, which is where shrimps and other marine life live — this means that the shrimps are taking on the excreted drugs of whole towns.

Prescriptions for antidepressants have skyrocketed in recent years, but this is one of the very first attempts to figure out what ecological impact all that pharmaceutical sewage could have. The most worrying part of it all is that this might just be the tip of an ecosystem-altering iceberg – there are lots of other drugs other than fluoxetine that affect serotonin levels, and Ford hasn’t even tested any of those yet to see what they do to shrimp and other marine organisms.

This is no longer a new story, but studies continue to find prescription drugs in our drinking water supplies.  The reports always come with the disclaimer that the contamination levels are “far below concentrations that could cause immediate problems.”  Regardless of immediate problems, I prefer zero anti-convulsives and hormones in my drinking water.  

And for my kids, I’m okay with zero parts per trillion endocrine disruptors in the water they bring to the sidelines of their soccer matches.  Maybe I am a little bit picky, but knowing that most of these contaminants come from waste treatment plants does not make me more comfortable.

So, I’ll continue to drink my purified Reverse Osmosis water.  I’ll get my mood stabilizers and analgesics elsewhere… 

Delaware Drinking Water at Risk: Prescription drugs on tap from major suppliers

BY JEFF MONTGOMERY • THE NEWS JOURNAL • AUGUST 4, 2010

Newly released details from a state drinking water study show that prescription drugs and personal care chemicals have crept into water supplies used by every major water utility tested.

The results, provided in response to a request from The News Journal, show smatterings of medicines ranging from analgesics and antibiotics to anti-convulsives and hormones in water used both by public and private companies, including all three of New Castle County’s largest public utilities and major suppliers in Kent and Sussex counties.

None of the medications detected at water intakes and treatment plants is regulated, and none is targeted or routinely removed by current treatment methods. Detection ranged from caffeine and analgesics in United Water Delaware’s big freshwater intake near Stanton to micro-bits of synthetic estrogen in a Seaford well.

The Division of Public Health released specific findings for each utility checked in response to a request by The News Journal, after issuing a summary earlier this year without naming individual suppliers. Agency officials conducted the scan of drinking water and farm supplies in late 2008 and early 2009.

The details included a finding that Brandywine Creek in Wilmington delivers traces of a common antibiotic cleanser to city drinking water, while a well serving a mobile home community near Lewes supplies tiny dregs of a common anticholesterol drug.

Among the other detection: a farm water source near Laurel yields up small amounts of anti-seizure medication, among other compounds; Georgetown’s treatment plant released tiny amounts of the analgesic ibuprofen; minuscule amounts of the hormones testosterone and progesterone can be found in Newark water.

Results were measured in parts-per-trillion — far below concentrations that could cause immediate problems. But concern about unexamined risks and cumulative effects from such pollutants is growing around the nation, and last month led to a formal petition by two environmental groups seeking greater federal and industry study and control.

"I would consider it to be very significant potential impact," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist in the Washington, D.C., office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group. "Especially for things like endocrine disruptors, mood stabilizers, hormones. These drugs work naturally in the body at very low levels."

Researchers and state officials say most of the contaminants likely come from treatment plants, septic systems and sewage sludge used as fertilizers. Some enter the environment when people flush outdated or unused medicines down toilets. Other chemicals escape from human waste and washwater, passing untouched through treatment plants.

Geraldine DeMoss, a former New Castle resident, said she was not surprised at the state’s results. Moss has lived for 15 years in the Donovan/Smith community near Lewes, where tests found up to 460 parts per trillion of the anti-cholesterol drug called gemfibrozil, sold under the name Lopid, in water from wells 50 to 160 feet deep.

"All I can say is, there’s a lot of chemicals out there. They’re being flushed; they’re going through the systems and eventually going out into the ground," DeMoss said. "Personally, I don’t drink this water. I drink distilled water and I have for years."

More than 56 percent of state agricultural monitoring wells also contained one or more compounds.

DPH spokeswoman Heidi Trueschel-Light said the Environment committee of the Delaware Cancer Consortium requested the survey, which found at least one contaminant examined in nearly 55 percent of public water system samples. Nineteen out of 20 public utilities, including all large suppliers checked, had at least one detection.

Trueschel-Light said in a written statement that no local follow-ups are planned.

"The results are consistent with what has been found in other studies of this type," Trueschel-Light said. "DPH is aware that EPA is conducting studies to determine the significance and potential health effects of these low levels of contaminants."

The NRDC and Great Lakes Environmental Law Clinic last month asked the Food and Drug Administration to look closer, too. Those groups recommended changes to rules that now exempt pharmaceutical companies from environmental impact studies if expected contamination levels fall below 1 part per billion.

One shallow farm irrigation well between Laurel and Dagsboro contained 1.1 parts per billion of sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic that can interact dangerously with the anti-clotting drug wafarin. The same well also produced water with 41 parts per trillion of the anti-seizure drug carbamazepine, also known as Carbatrol, among other names, and about half a part per billion of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Contamination of farm wells has created its own set of concerns.

The American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology published a study last month showing that those same pharmaceuticals and personal care products can accumulate in soybeans irrigated with contaminated water. Soybeans are a bedrock crop in Delaware.

"We need more research at this moment," Chenxi Wu, a University of Toledo research scientist and lead author of the federally backed study, said Tuesday. "We need more experiments to see if livestock that eat those soybeans accumulate those compounds in the meat."

The state’s summary of findings noted 17 different drugs were found in 101 samples of treated and untreated water from public systems. Tests of 95 shallow farm irrigation wells detected 14 compounds. Some samples had as many as nine different substances.

Sass said her group believes that pharmaceutical companies should be required to take back unused or outdated medicines, and said those same companies should be required to report amounts produced and sold.

She also said that better dispensing practices are needed to limit waste and oversupply that leads to unsafe disposal practices.

The NRDC and Great Lakes Environmental Law Clinic last month asked the Food and Drug Administration to look closer, too. Those groups recommended changes to rules that now exempt pharmaceutical companies from environmental impact studies if expected contamination levels fall below 1 part per billion.

One shallow farm irrigation well between Laurel and Dagsboro contained 1.1 parts per billion of sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic that can interact dangerously with the anti-clotting drug wafarin. The same well also produced water with 41 parts per trillion of the anti-seizure drug carbamazepine, also known as Carbatrol, among other names, and about half a part per billion of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Contamination of farm wells has created its own set of concerns.

The American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology published a study last month showing that those same pharmaceuticals and personal care products can accumulate in soybeans irrigated with contaminated water. Soybeans are a bedrock crop in Delaware.

"We need more research at this moment," Chenxi Wu, a University of Toledo research scientist and lead author of the federally backed study, said Tuesday. "We need more experiments to see if livestock that eat those soybeans accumulate those compounds in the meat."

The state’s summary of findings noted 17 different drugs were found in 101 samples of treated and untreated water from public systems. Tests of 95 shallow farm irrigation wells detected 14 compounds. Some samples had as many as nine different substances.

Sass said her group believes that pharmaceutical companies should be required to take back unused or outdated medicines, and said those same companies should be required to report amounts produced and sold.

She also said that better dispensing practices are needed to limit waste and oversupply that leads to unsafe disposal practices.

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. 

July 8, 2010, 1:22 PM

A City’s Motto: I ♥ Tap Water

By MIREYA NAVARRO

New York City is so proud of its tap water that the Bloomberg administration has come up with a product line to trumpet its quality and promote it as an affordable and sustainable alternative to bottled water.

City of New York The new NYC Water coaster.

The merchandise, bearing an NYC Water logo, ranges from glasses ($5) to T-shirts ($23) and is available at CityStore, the city’s online shop for all things New York. There are also coasters, decanters and water bottles sold both online at www.nyc.gov/citystore and at Fishs Eddy, the New York-based purveyor of dinnerware, glassware and kitchen goods.

“Our high-quality drinking water not only quenches New Yorkers’ thirst, but is the not-so-secret ingredient in the bagels, pizza, and thousands of other dishes that people come from around the world to get,” the city’s environmental protection commissioner, Cas Holloway, said Thursday in a statement announcing the products.

The Environmental Protection Department, which introduced the line in a partnership with Fishs Eddy, oversees a daily supply of more than one billion gallons of water that serves more than nine million people, including eight million in New York City and a million residents of Ulster, Orange, Putnam and Westchester counties. The water, so clean that it does not require filtration, comes from a highly protected watershed upstate.

One product consumers won’t find on the city’s store is the water itself.

“We sell water directly to people’s homes,” said Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection. “The message of the department is not to drink bottled water because it takes energy to produce plastic bottles and the bottles end up as litter.”

To reduce consumption of bottled water, the city is also providing outdoor drinking water stations this summer connected to fire hydrants at parks, public plazas and other outdoor spaces. The stations come with six faucets — and separate water bowls for pets.

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