Taylor Made Water Systems

 

Nestle is ending the bitter battle to put a huge plant in McCloud that would have taken 200 million gallons of water per year from McCloud for Neste’s bottled water division.  With the recent acquisition of a Sacramento site, the McCloud fight was not worth the battle.  McCloud has become a poster child of sorts for communities trying to prevent Nestle from bottling local water supplies.  This will no doubt be seen as a victory for the many small towns who see Nestle’s effort steps to secure more water sources for its bottling operations. 

http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=72640

 

Nestlé’s Patience Runs Dry on Bottling Plant

The company met surprising resistance to its plan to bottle McCloud’s spring water. With the market shifting, it will move on

By Susan Berfield

After six years of surprisingly contentious and frustrating attempts to bottle the glacier-fed spring water flowing in the small Northern California town of McCloud, Nestlé is giving up.

In 2003, Nestlé (NESN) signed a contract to build a facility in McCloud. Some locals claimed the deal with the local government was done in secret, without proper environmental evaluation, and they managed to stall construction year after year. During that time, the economy bubbled and burst; people drank more bottled water and paid less for it; concerns about the environmental impact of the industry took hold; and Nestlé itself changed some of the ways it does business. Last year the company scaled back the project. Then, earlier this month, it withdrew its proposal altogether. McCloud had become an inconvenience.

In a Sept. 10 letter addressed to McCloud’s leaders and citizens, Kim E. Jeffery, the head of Nestle Waters North America, wrote: "We have sincerely appreciated the time, input, and patience both supporters and opponents have shown as all stakeholders considered our evolving project proposal in McCloud. We know that this dialogue has not been an easy process, and we are grateful for your willingness to stay engaged and provide us with feedback every step of the way."

GREENER OPTION

Jeffery went on to write that Nestlé no longer needed to build a plant in McCloud because it had secured a site in Sacramento that was closer to its Northern California customers, which would help lower costs and reduce the company’s environmental footprint. The site is in an industrial area. There is an existing facility, with all the permitting and zoning already in place. Nestlé will bottle spring water there as well as purify tap water for bottling.

In McCloud, a former mill town struggling to reinvent its economy, some were disappointed to lose the revenue and potential jobs. Debra Anderson, president of the McCloud Watershed Council, which led the fight against Nestlé, was elated. "I was thankful and grateful for this decision," she says. "A lot of things worked in our favor. My sense is that Nestlé felt pulling out of McCloud was a good business decision for all kinds of reasons: the economy, fuel costs, bad press. For them it would be a lot better to go somewhere else."

When BusinessWeek first chronicled the fight between Nestlé and its opponents in McCloud last year, it seemed likely that Nestlé (whose brands include Perrier, Poland Spring, and Arrowhead) would prevail, even if doing so took longer than usual. "I want all the t’s crossed, all the i’s dotted," Jeffery said of the project. "I don’t want anyone to say we didn’t do it right."

DECLINING PRICES

Even then, though, the economics of the bottled water industry were changing. It turns out that bottled water consumption peaked in 2007, at 29 gallons per person (having grown from 13.5 gallons a decade earlier). Prices, meanwhile, have been declining as competition from private-label brands increased. Bottled water itself became a commodity.

At Nestlé, now the largest bottled-water company in America, that complicated matters more. Nestlé is one of the few suppliers that mine pristine springs (in places such as McCloud) for much of its bottled water. Yet the brand most responsible for its growing market share during the Great Recession is Pure Life, which is purified tap water. Naturally, that process is cheaper to begin with: Nestlé doesn’t have to buy any land and usually doesn’t have to ship the bottled water very far.

Jeffery says thatNestlé’s recent actions should not leave the impression that a bigger shift from spring water to tap water is under way at the company. Nestlé does, of course, want to build smaller plants closer to its customers, for all kinds of reasons. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will all be in cities and use municipal water (a business that also has plenty of critics). Even the Sacramento facility will bottle some spring water that Nestlé already owns.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Nestlé plans to open three new plants in the coming years, says Jeffery, and has some locations picked out already. One of them is Cascade Locks, a town 40 miles east of Portland, Ore. This time, Nestlé says it is trying to work with the whole community right from the beginning. Dave Palais, one of the company’s 10 geologists who look for new sources of water and Nestlé’s main representative in McCloud, says he’s in Cascade Locks for a couple of days every month to answer questions about a potential spring water bottling plant. When Nestlé holds meetings there, it brings in an outside facilitator to run them. Yet Anderson, of the McCloud Watershed Council, says she has already received calls from people in Cascade Locks asking for advice about how to deal with Nestlé.

Back in McCloud, Nestlé still owns the 250 acres it intended to build on. Jeffery says the company will have the land appraised and then look for a buyer. Nestlé has also promised to finish a two-year scientific study of the local watershed. "When it’s done, they will see they have abundant water," says Jeffery. "It’s a crime that the townspeople weren’t able to use it."

 

A Colorado report found bacteria in showerheads, especially when the showerhead is first started, including bacteria linked to pulmonary disease and biofilms.  They believe the pathogens are most dangerous for those with compromised immune systems, so there is no need to panic and start a bath only regiment.  The bacteria load is also highest when the shower is first turned on, so letting a little water run before you put your face in the water is a good idea.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/50fe20a5a5376631bbad2024f89b02c0.html 

 

Daily Bathroom Showers May Deliver Face Full of Pathogens, Says CU-Boulder Study

September 14, 2009

While daily bathroom showers provide invigorating relief and a good cleansing for millions of Americans, they also can deliver a face full of potentially pathogenic bacteria, according to a surprising new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

The researchers used high-tech instruments and lab methods to analyze roughly 50 showerheads from nine cities in seven states that included New York City, Chicago and Denver. They concluded about 30 percent of the devices harbored significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, a pathogen linked to pulmonary disease that most often infects people with compromised immune systems but which can occasionally infect healthy people, said CU-Boulder Distinguished Professor Norman Pace, lead study author.

It’s not surprising to find pathogens in municipal waters, said Pace. But the CU-Boulder researchers found that some M. avium and related pathogens were clumped together in slimy "biofilms" that clung to the inside of showerheads at more than 100 times the "background" levels of municipal water. "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy," he said.

The study appeared in the Sept. 14 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors of the study included CU-Boulder researchers Leah Feazel, Laura Baumgartner, Kristen Peterson and Daniel Frank and University Colorado Denver pediatrics department Associate Professor Kirk Harris. The study is part of a larger effort by Pace and his colleagues to assess the microbiology of indoor environments and was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Research at National Jewish Hospital in Denver indicates that increases in pulmonary infections in the United States in recent decades from so-called "non-tuberculosis" mycobacteria species like M. avium may be linked to people taking more showers and fewer baths, said Pace. Water spurting from showerheads can distribute pathogen-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs, he said.

Symptoms of pulmonary disease caused by M. avium can include tiredness, a persistent, dry cough, shortness of breath, weakness and "generally feeling bad," said Pace. Immune-compromised people like pregnant women, the elderly and those who are fighting off other diseases are more prone to experience such symptoms, said Pace, a professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department.

The CU-Boulder researchers sampled showerheads in homes, apartment buildings and public places in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Tennessee and North Dakota.

Although scientists have tried cell culturing to test for showerhead pathogens, the technique is unable to detect 99.9 percent of bacteria species present in any given environment, said Pace. A molecular genetics technique developed by Pace in the 1990s allowed researchers to swab samples directly from the showerheads, isolate DNA, amplify it using the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, and determine the sequences of genes present in order to pinpoint particular pathogen types.

"There have been some precedents for concern regarding pathogens and showerheads," said Pace. "But until this study we did not know just how much concern."

During the early stages of the study, the CU team tested showerheads from smaller towns and cities, many of which were using well water rather than municipal water. "We were starting to conclude that pathogen levels we detected in the showerheads were pretty boring," said Feazel, first author on the study. "Then we worked up the New York data and saw a lot of M. avium. It completely reinvigorated the study."

In addition to the showerhead swabbing technique, Feazel took several individual showerheads, broke them into tiny pieces, coated them with gold, used a fluorescent dye to stain the surfaces and used a scanning electron microscope to look at the surfaces in detail. "Once we started analyzing the big metropolitan data, it suddenly became a huge story to us," said Feazel, who began working in Pace’s lab as an undergraduate.

In Denver, one showerhead in the study with high loads of the pathogen Mycobacterium gordonae was cleaned with a bleach solution in an attempt to eradicate it, said Pace. Tests on the showerhead several months later showed the bleach treatment ironically caused a three-fold increase in M. gordonae, indicating a general resistance of mycobacteria species to chlorine.

Previous studies by Pace and his group found massive enrichments of M. avium in "soap scum" commonly found on vinyl shower curtains and floating above the water surface of warm therapy pools. A 2006 therapy pool study led by Pace and CU-Boulder Professor Mark Hernandez showed high levels of M. avium in the indoor pool environment were linked to a pneumonia-like pulmonary condition in pool attendants known as "lifeguard lung," leading the CU team into the showerhead study, said Pace.

Additional studies under way by Pace’s team include analyses of air in New York subways, hospital waiting rooms, office buildings and homeless shelters. Indoor air typically has about 1 million bacteria per cubic meter and municipal tap water has rough 10 million bacteria per cubic meter, said Pace.

So is it dangerous to take showers? "Probably not, if your immune system is not compromised in some way," said Pace. "But it’s like anything else — there is a risk associated with it." Pace said since plastic showerheads appear to "load up" with more pathogen-enriched biofilms, metal showerheads may be a good alternative.

"There are lessons to be learned here in terms of how we handle and monitor water," said Pace. "Water monitoring in this country is frankly archaic. The tools now exist to monitor it far more accurately and far less expensively that what is routinely being done today."

In 2001 the National Academy of Sciences awarded Pace the Selman Waxman Award — considered the nation’s highest award in microbiology — for pioneering the molecular genetic techniques he now uses to rapidly detect, identify and classify microbe species using nucleic acid technology without the need for lab cultivation. That same year he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work.

A video news release on the showerhead and pathogen study is available at www.colorado.edu/news.

 

For the last couple of years, I’ve been looking at Rainwater catchment systems as I think technology is getting close to making capturing rainwater (and runoff) for residential use practical.  I get irritated watching all of that water run down my steep driveway, especially my own sprinkler water, only to purchase more from my municipality the next day.  Anyway, I like rainwater catchment and am hoping it pans out.

But, I never thought of rainwater beer.  That’s an even better idea.  Think of all the cool names you could use.  I wonder if they’ll bring back that Rainer motorcycle commercial.  Different meaning to Rainier, of course, but still a great commercial.

 

When it rains, it’s beer

http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=72537

Friday, September 04, 2009

 

CUMMING, GA — A company that makes rainwater harvesting equipment has teamed up with anAtlanta micro-brewery to produce what they say is the first micro-brewed beer in the United States to be made entirely with rainwater.

The partnership involves Cumming-based RainHarvest Systems and the 5 Seasons Restaurant and Brewery, which operates three locations in the Atlanta area. The rainwater-brewed beer will be used by RainHarvest Systems for its promotions and at public events to increase awareness of rainwater catchment systems, according to an August 31 RainHarvest press release.

Meanwhile, the brewery, which makes about eight different premium beers, plans to brew all its future beers with rainwater, and its production will be based solely on rainwater, according to the release.

Randy Kauk, president of RainHarvest Systems, said in the release that the partnership with the brewery “demonstrates the broad array of applications where rainwater can be used instead of chemically treated drinking water; plus, it is a great way to create public awareness of rainwater harvesting.”

The new rainwater beer will be formally introduced September 14 in Decatur, GA, on the first day of the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association’s three-day national conference in Decatur. What the companies call an “advance trial” of the beer will occur at the brewery’s Westside location in Atlanta (1000 Marietta St.) earlier that day.

• This is a little scary and very sad. Really bad tap water! http://bit.ly/yEtV0 #

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According to a new report by the New York Times, 1 in 10 Americans have been exposed to dangerous chemicals in their tap water.  Even though I have seen some of this before, this is a pretty scary article (it’s worth reading the entire 7 pages).  In a community only 17 miles from a State Capitol, residents apply lotion after showering to relieve the burning sensation caused by tap water?  Really?  And teeth are capped because the tap water destroyed a child’s enamel.  Yikes!  The video is even worse.  The kids’ bath time is awful?  Bath time with my kids was a blast (albeit a messy one) and that is how it is supposed to be. 

And yes, this is happening right here in the United States in 2009.  Municipalities cannot control everything that goes into our drinking water supplies.  Nor can they test for every possible contaminant.  So, this kind of contamination will happen.  Not everywhere, of course.  And eventually, it will be discovered and remedied.  But, the problem is that by then it will be too late.  So, protect yourself – get a reverse osmosis unit.  No link this time – I’m starting to feel guilty about the blatant self promotion. 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

TOXIC WATERS

Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Ryan Massey, 7, shows his caps. Dentists near Charleston, W.Va., say pollutants in drinking water have damaged residents’ teeth. Nationwide, polluters have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

 

The New York Times surveyed violations of the Clean Water Act in every state, and the response by state regulators.

 

How Safe Is Your Water? (September 13, 2009)

Toxic Waters

Unchecked Pollution

Articles in this series are examining the worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Jennifer Hall-Massey relies on drinking water that is brought in by truck and stored in barrels on her porch near Charleston, W.Va.

 

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

Because it is difficult to determine what causes diseases like cancer, it is impossible to know how many illnesses are the result of water pollution, or contaminants’ role in the health problems of specific individuals.

But concerns over these toxins are great enough that Congress and the E.P.A. regulate more than 100 pollutants through the Clean Water Act and strictly limit 91 chemicals or contaminants in tap water through the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Regulators themselves acknowledge lapses. The new E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said in an interview that despite many successes since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, today the nation’s water does not meet public health goals, and enforcement of water pollution laws is unacceptably low. She added that strengthening water protections is among her top priorities. State regulators say they are doing their best with insufficient resources.

The Times obtained hundreds of thousands of water pollution records through Freedom of Information Act requests to every state and the E.P.A., and compiled a national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by states or the E.P.A. (For an interactive version, which can show violations in any community, visit www.nytimes.com/toxicwaters.)

In addition, The Times interviewed more than 250 state and federal regulators, water-system managers, environmental advocates and scientists.

That research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways.

Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells. Wells, which are not typically regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, are more likely to contain contaminants than municipal water systems.

Because most of today’s water pollution has no scent or taste, many people who consume dangerous chemicals do not realize it, even after they become sick, researchers say.

But an estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. That figure does not include illnesses caused by other chemicals and toxins.

Enlarge This Image

Damon Winter/The New York Times

A water sample collected from a water heater by Patty Sebok, a neighbor of Jennifer Hall-Massey. Residents say such water is typical and has destroyed toilets, dishwashers and washing machines.

U.S.

Toxic Waters: Coal in the Water

Jennifer Hall-Massey of Prenter, W.Va., explains how water pollution, which she believes is caused by nearby coal companies, has impacted her family and community.

Clay Massey, 6, waits for his mother to put prescription ointment on painful scabs and rashes that she said were caused by polluted bath water.

In the nation’s largest dairy states, like Wisconsin and California, farmers have sprayed liquefied animal feces onto fields, where it has seeped into wells, causing severe infections. Tap water in parts of the Farm Belt, including cities in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Indiana, has contained pesticides at concentrations that some scientists have linked to birth defects and fertility problems.

In parts of New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, California and other states where sewer systems cannot accommodate heavy rains, untreated human waste has flowed into rivers and washed onto beaches. Drinking water in parts of New Jersey, New York, Arizona and Massachusetts shows some of the highest concentrations of tetrachloroethylene, a dry cleaning solvent that has been linked to kidney damage and cancer. (Specific types of water pollution across the United States will be examined in future Times articles.)

The Times’s research also shows that last year, 40 percent of the nation’s community water systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data. Those violations ranged from failing to maintain proper paperwork to allowing carcinogens into tap water. More than 23 million people received drinking water from municipal systems that violated a health-based standard.

In some cases, people got sick right away. In other situations, pollutants like chemicals, inorganic toxins and heavy metals can accumulate in the body for years or decades before they cause problems. Some of the most frequently detected contaminants have been linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders.

Records analyzed by The Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves. Companies sometimes test what they are dumping only once a quarter, so the actual number of days when they broke the law is often far higher. And some companies illegally avoid reporting their emissions, say officials, so infractions go unrecorded.

Environmental groups say the number of Clean Water Act violations has increased significantly in the last decade. Comprehensive data go back only five years but show that the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act grew more than 16 percent from 2004 to 2007, the most recent year with complete data.

Polluters include small companies, like gas stations, dry cleaners, shopping malls and the Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park in Laporte, Ind., which acknowledged to regulators that it had dumped human waste into a nearby river for three years.

They also include large operations, like chemical factories, power plants, sewage treatment centers and one of the biggest zinc smelters, the Horsehead Corporation of Pennsylvania, which has dumped illegal concentrations of copper, lead, zinc, chlorine and selenium into the Ohio River. Those chemicals can contribute to mental retardation and cancer.

Some violations are relatively minor. But about 60 percent of the polluters were deemed in “significant noncompliance” — meaning their violations were the most serious kind, like dumping cancer-causing chemicals or failing to measure or report when they pollute.

Finally, the Times’s research shows that fewer than 3 percent of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments by state officials. And the E.P.A. has often declined to prosecute polluters or force states to strengthen their enforcement by threatening to withhold federal money or take away powers the agency has delegated to state officials.

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I told you that our water infrastructure is failing.  Now we have fire trucks being swallowed whole by our failing infrastructure!  This is a monster problem that will get worse – expect to see massive numbers of fire trucks being devoured in the coming years.

Okay, maybe not, but these pipes were supposed to last another couple of decades and we’ve got all kinds of infrastructure that is already past its life expectancy.  We will have problems, but most of them won’t involve massive vehicles sucked into a sink hole. 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/firetruck-in-sinkhole.html

 

Crews pulling firetruck from sinkhole in Valley Village [Updated]

September 8, 2009 | 10:19 am

[Updated at 1:20 p.m.: Crews are pulling the stuck firetruck out of the sinkhole in Valley Village.]

The Los Angeles Fire Department and the L.A. Department of Water and Power are still working this morning to free a firetruck from a muddy sinkhole in Valley Village.

The work will take all morning because the 22-ton engine truck needs to be lifted up and pulled out of the sinkhole in a single maneuver, said Devin Gales, a spokesman for the DWP.

Before 5:30 a.m., firefighters from Station 60 were responding to a call about flooding when they came upon running water on the road. The fire captain instructed the driver to begin backing up and had the two firefighters in the back get out to direct the truck, department spokesman Richard Matheney said.

Suddenly the ground gave way underneath the front of the truck, and the vehicle began sinking. The driver and captain crawled out of the windows and made it onto stable ground, Matheney said. No one was injured.

DWP officials say the Valley Village break was unrelated to the water main break Saturday on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard.

[Updated at 11:20 a.m.: DWP officials said the 6-inch residential water line that failed on Bellingham Avenue at Hartsook Street in Valley Village was installed in 1969 and should have held up for several more  decades. The pipes normally have a 100-year lifespan; officials are investigating the cause of the break. The two breaks are about 2 1/2 miles from each other.]