Satellites track post-Sandy pollutants
Damage from Hurricane Sandy took several wastewater treatment plants offline, emptying bacteria- and virus-filled raw sewage into waterways.
Know where your water comes from and sign up for that treatment plant’s updates. If they don’t send at minimum text alerts for emergencies, pressure them to do so.
Ignorance is bliss,” or so the old adage goes but unfortunately, when it comes to water, ignorance can be dangerous. According to a survey conducted by the Nature Conservancy, 77% of Americans who do not use private wells do not know where their drinking water comes from.
Kate Cline, managing Editor of Water Quality Products
**************************************************************
Where does your water come from?
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (October 30, 2012) – More than 8 million Americans were left without power in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. To help protect the safety of both food and drinking water, public health and safety organization NSF International provides the following safety tips.
Methods of Purifying Water…
Both public and private water supplies can be compromised during extensive flooding. If you aren’t sure about the quality of your water supply, don’t drink it. There are several ways to purify water that may have been contaminated or comes from a questionable source:
Read more for information on food safety.
Employees of the water district in Davao City gather outside the city hall to protest a proposed P100-million loan from the Local Water Utility Administration that would lead to the privatization of the city’s water system.
World Water Day - Did you know?
Fetching water is part of the gender inequality. Check out these statistics from the United Nations Water for Life initiative:
- In rural Benin, girls ages 6-14 spend an average of one hour a day collecting water compared with 25 minutes for their brothers.
- In Malawi, there are large variations in the amount of time allocated for water collection based on seasonal factors, but women consistently spend four to five times longer than men on this task.
- In Tanzania, a survey found school attendance to be 12 per cent higher for girls in homes located 15 minutes or less from a water source than in homes one hour or more away. Attendance rates for boys appeared to be far less affected by distance from water sources.
- In 12% of households children carry the main responsibility for collecting water, with girls under 15 years of age being twice as likely to carry this responsibility as boys under the age of 15 years.
- Research in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that women and girls in low-income countries spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water—the equivalent of a year’s worth of labour by the entire Work force in France.
- In Africa, 90% of the work of gathering water and wood, for the household and for food preparation, is done by women. Providing access to clean water close to the home can dramatically reduce women’s workloads, and free up time for other economic activities. For their daughters, this time can be used to attend school.
In honor of World Water Day, here’s the tale of two cities in Texas that have run out of water because of the drought. The town of Robert Lee in West Texas has already cut its water consumption by 80 percent, and conditions are only getting worse.
According to climate scientists, little rainfall compounded by record high temperatures across the Southwest could be the new norm. In 2011, losses in crops, livestock and timber from the drought reached $10 billion.
(Photos by Saskia de Melker)
-KC
Since this debate is closed to the public and is only open to Forum participants, who must pay prohibitive fees in travel and registration to attend, I feel rather than participate in the debate myself, you should hear from a citizen directly impacted by water privatization schemes,” wrote Hauteur to Benedito Braga, President of the International Forum Committee.
“No company should profit from the endeavor to supply the world with clean water and sanitation,” wrote Hauter. “Anything less is unacceptable, and that is why I will not support the Forum with my participation in this debate.
(Source: enewspf.org)
Did you know that an estimated 30-50 percent of the food produced in the world goes uneaten? AND nearly 70 percent of our fresh water resources are used for agricultural purposes. (UN Report via RTT) It’s time to think about how we can eliminate waste.
Bolded content added by WaterSavvy. Thank you Michael (climateadaptation) for posting the report link.
Tapped Trailer (by tappedfilm)
lots of extra info on this site
Privatized water has been well established in France since the days of Napoleon. By the time then U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan began calling for more privatization, three large companies already supplied water to more than half of the French population.
The business of water started with the realization that there was money to be made delivering it to places where people needed it the most - homes and factories.
Suez and Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement) are France’s largest water companies.Suez’ roots in the water business go back to 1822. It now has more than 125 million customers around the world.
Veolia provides water and wastewater services to more than 110 million people around nearly 100 countries. During the nineties, their revenue from water more than doubled to $12 billion a year.
This article is from March of 2004 but still relevent. Read more about leaders of these companies.
