The wells at the school, which opened in 2000 has an enrollment of about 600, must be filtered to prevent contamination from a gasoline additive that has been detected in the ground.
“The good news is that there has not been one breach of the filter,” said Councilman James V. McMahan. But that is hardly a permanent solution, said parents, who want to close those wells and connect the building to a nearby public water line.

Trace amounts of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) were found in the two private wells at the school in 2005. Testing has shown continued MTBE contamination of the well water. Current levels of the additive, which has been nearly eliminated from gasoline supplies throughout the state, are nearly 200 to 300 parts per billion around the wells, above the amount considered safe by federal standards.

“We hope to see MTBE levels at the school go down, but it will be an estimated 10 years that we will have to keep filters in place,” said Herbert M. Meade, administrator of MDE’s oil control program.
The duration to bring the MTBE levels down has prompted parents to switch to other alternatives as children’s lives are precious.

Tampa Bay region was suffering from serious drought conditions. It was then that the authorities planned to set up large scale sea water desalination plant catering water to more than 2.5 million residents of the Tampa Bay Area.

Florida being a peninsula, the water is harvested from the sea. The authorities plan to reach up to 35 million residents in the near future. The plant can produce 25 million gallons of water per day.

The American Water and the Acciona Agua of Spain were the two companies involved in bringing this plan to meet certain specifications.

General Manager of Tampa Bay Water informed that people from around America and in fact around the world have visited the project to see how it works so that they could also replicate it in the near future.

The plant is a successful example of public- private partnership, and though residents of Alabama, Georgia and North- Carina are suffering from drought, residents in Florida are enjoying the desalinated water.

Arizona American Water Co. serves nearly 5,000 homes in Paradise Valley and Scottsdale. The trio alarm system designed to alert the employees about failure in Arizona American’s Miller Road Treatment Plant failed to work. This caused the water to flow through the taps of the residents, carrying TCE, an industrial solvent which can lead to cancer.

The worst part was that many residents there were not informed about the contamination. The Paradise Valley Town Council plans to discuss the incident during a meeting at the Town Hall.

Takata, director of Environment Protection Agency’s Superfund division disclosed that the causes are being investigated into and till then the plant will remain closed. He described the malfunction as very serious.

Arizona American Water Co. was hired by Motorola, long time back; in order to clean the water polluted by the industrial solvent released by the company which swept into the area’s groundwater aquifer. Therefore even Motorola and other three companies, involved with Motorola for dumping the solvent, will face penalties and fine.

Early in the morning, a plant technician discovered that the piece of equipment which allowed the tainted water to be processed, had failed. Moreover, the system which would have created an alarm also stopped working. It’s not something new. This same problem has occurred thrice in just 3 months in the company.

The company serves 5000 customers of Scottsdale and Paradise. Some residents, however, claimed that they have not been informed about the water problem. The company generates alert messages for the residents, but there were many individuals who did not receive these messages.

Jim Bacon, Paradise Valley town manager said that he would be meeting Arizona American management, discussing gravely about the company’s failed procedure of sending messages. The Arizona Corporation Commission issued a letter to Arizona American asking explanation with regards to reason behind the contamination.

For the time being, the company is providing free water bottles to its residents.

In this year, Texas business faired very well. And in Inc. Magazine’s this year issue, 40 Texas companies made the Inc. 500 List of America’s fastest growing private companies. The list includes 14 from Dallas, 12 from Austin, 4 from Houston and one from Fort Worth Texas, Sun Water Systems, Inc.

Sun Water Systems was founded in 1998 by its current President/ Chief Executive Officer (CEO), local businessman Charles Strand. Company has designed and produced quality water filtration products, under private label, for over 50 U.S. and international companies and is considered an industry leader in ultra-filtration products.

Sun Water manufactures and markets the popular Aquasana Home Water Filters and Shower Filters. Recent trends in the health and beauty industries towards pure water for drinking and showering have driven the growth of the company’s products. Their Aquasana, Beauty Water and Rhino brands are also sold via the Internet.

The company now has about 40 employees, 1500 dealers and has completed construction of their new 50,000 sq. ft. corporate headquarters. Charles Strand, CEO of company, informed, “We went from doing just under $1M in sales for all of 2003 to now over $1M a month in 2007… life is good! For me it’s like living the American dream and proof that hard work pays off.”

For the last 5 years, the company has sustained a 35% to 50% annual growth rate and it is forecasted that growth will stay strong for years to come. Houston Tomasz, Vice President of company, said, “The home water filtration industry as a whole is experiencing very healthy growth as consumers realize that it’s a much more logical solution to tap water than bottled water…”

According to a recent study, Hudson Bayou is getting more and more polluted day by day. The main reason behind it, being that the rainwater from the 12 acre drainage system gets directly into the bayou. The water comes from single pipe to Alderman Street. The bayou has had a bad history of getting polluted, especially after a rainfall. The county is now taking steps for the betterment of the bayou. It is planning to install more filters to extract pollutants from the water.

It is assumed that the project will cost around $1.1 million. The South West Florida Management will be funding the installation of an underground “baffle box,” or screens to pull in pollutants before they get in to bayou. The filters will help catch up sediments. Nitrogen and phosphorus stick on to these sediment particles. Also these pipes with large diameters will prevent the chances of Burns Square flooding again and again. Due to these filters the nutrient runoff can decrease by 20 percent to 30 percent.

The funding cost of South West Florida Management will be around $130,000. The construction will start in April and would continue for six months. Construction will definitely affect the traffic; therefore the authorities are planning for construction work to take place at night.

This prevents the workers from keeping a track of the internal water quality in real time, and thus it is hampering their quality of work. To add to it, he also complains that the filtration units of the plant are very old and cannot be modified.

According to him, the operators are doing a tough job. The plant has been treating cloudiness in water which had resulted in citywide boil order in December. One of the Aldermen visited the plant and stated that there might be chances of warning system being at fault. The city will be submitting an improvement plan for water treatment. It’s assumed that Illinois Environment Protection Agency might accept the plan with a low
interest loan. For the plan to initiate it will take at least 18 months and then the construction would take around six months.

To help in completing the plant quickly by the end of the March, rather than August as originally planned, The SFWMD will provide $500,000 to Palm Beach County. The district will also assist Palm Beach County in getting operational certifications from various regulatory agencies, including the Department of Health, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the state fire marshal.

Currently, the plant which has total cost $50 million is 75 percent completed. After completion, the Lake Region Water Treatment Plant is to produce high quality treated water from the Floridian Aquifer, eliminating the need for Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay to pull drinking water from Lake Okeechobee.

Water drawn from the aquifer is to be treated using reverse osmosis filter to hyper-filtrate the water, removing impurities and improving the water’s color and taste.

SFWMD Governing Board Chairman Eric Buermann said in a news release, “When completed, the Lake Region Water Treatment Plant will bring significant environmental and public health benefits to the region.” He further added, “With a worsening water shortage hitting these communities particularly hard, it is imperative that the plant come online as quickly as possible to reduce their dependence on the lake. This agency is committed to accelerating this project to enhance quality of life in the lake communities.”

The South Florida Water Management District is providing about 21 percent of total funding with a contribution of $11.7 million toward the plant’s design in construction. Palm Beach County (provided $12.5 million in funding, or about 25 percent) Pahokee, Belle Glade and South Bay contributed the remainder.

Many of the nation’s 70,000 smaller systems — from Monterey, Calif., to Charleston, W.Va. — are imposing major price hikes too.

Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the nation’s water and wastewater systems need an investment of up to $1.2 trillion over 20 years. Also, arid states such as Arizona, Texas and Utah, where water costs more to provide, have fast-growing populations.

The American Water Works Association, an industry group, reports that last year, the median residential bill was $278 for water and $276 for sewer service.

Doug Scott, a credit analyst at Fitch Ratings which evaluates the debt of municipal utilities, says, “The median rate increase was about 5%.” Average rate increases of that amount are enough to finance the industry’s capital needs, he added.

Because of the quirky pricing policy of water and sewer systems, many people will see much larger increases. And, some communities are getting scalded by price hikes of 50%, 100% or more.

The major problem is that many municipal owned systems have treated rate hikes like tax increases and avoided them for years. The Government Accountability Office estimates that 29% of water systems and 41% of sewer systems charge customers less than the cost of the service.

As a consequence, these money-losing systems have no way to finance expensive repairs without delivering a rate shock to customers.

“About the only time customers hear from water systems is when they want increases, and that makes people furious,” says Missouri Public Service Commission Chairman Jeff Davis.

According to the EPA, The USA has about 54,000 community water systems and 16,000 sewer systems. Local government supplies 88% of water and 80% of sewer service. City councils and county commissioners often vote on rates every year.

“You can get all the water you need for a buck a day,” DeBenedictis says. “But many cities are charging 25 cents. When they go to 50 cents, the headline is: ‘Mayor asks for 100% rate increase.”

Unlike other region, Pittsburgh doesn’t have problems like drought, melting mountain snow-pack and dropping river levels , said Ty Gourley, project manager for the Regional Water Management Task Force, an 11-county Western Pennsylvania group that seeks to improve water management and quality. The Army Corps of Engineers calls the city’s watershed one of the nation’s most reliable.

“We have an overabundance of water,” Gourley said.

“And no one expects Pennsylvania to get drier,” said Douglas Lecomte, a meteorologist from the federal Climate Program Office in Maryland. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded Pennsylvania winters are going to get wetter.”

Here, the issue is quality not quantity — whether it’s the state of an aging infrastructure or synthetic chemicals polluting drinking-water supplies, experts say.

John Schombert, executive director of the 3 Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program, a nonprofit in Lawrenceville said, “Ninety percent of the region’s residents get their drinking water from the local rivers.”

Many lines— for sewage, storm water or drinking water— are a century old, said Stanley States, a microbiologist and water quality manager for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. Deteriorating freshwater pipes might leak up to 25 percent of the water they transport, according to state Department of Environmental Protection data.

Area Rivers are filthy with common ingredients found in plastics, detergents and contraceptives, says Professor Conrad Dan Volz of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute’s Center for Environmental Oncology. Those chemicals have caused male channel catfish in the Allegheny River to develop eggs in their testes, Volz said.

“It’s no different than the smoking controversy,” Volz said. “For years and years, we counted bodies until we had enough data that we could say smoking causes lung cancer. With wildlife, we can tell right away.”

What those catfish tell Volz is that women could be at higher risk for breast cancer and men for testicular cancer from exposure to those chemicals.

“We need to act quickly,” Volz said.