Camp Lejeune’s Water Was Poisoned by Cancer-Causing Chemicals for Three Decades

In response to the decades-long efforts of Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, a retired U.S. marine drill sergeant of 24 years, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill that will provide medical care for the estimated 200,000 people who lived on the military base Camp Lejeune during the three decades when water on the base was poisoned by cancer-causing chemicals. His popular campaign on Change.org gained more than 135,000 signatures in less a month.

Ensminger’s petition called on the U.S. Congress to provide medical care for the families who were stationed at Camp Lejeune between 1957-1987, a 30-year period when water on the base was contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. The contamination at the base has been well-documented through the years, though Ensminger says the U.S. government has been slow to respond to calls for medical help for affected veterans and their families.

Ensminger’s daughter, Janey, was one of the victims.

More details.

 Evidence of a Tool Using Fish Was Photographed in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

A professional diver swimming in the ocean off Australia snapped the picture below at a depth of sixty feet.

The fish, a blackspot tuskfish, is carrying a cockle in its mouth.  The fish swam to a nearby rock and repeatedly bashed the shellfish again the rock to get at the edibles inside.

A recent study in the journal Coral Reefs says the picture—snapped  in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2006—is the first ever taken of a tool-using fish in the wild.

It took six years to publish this research, because reviewers argued  about whether it was a true example of tool use or not. At issue is whether the tuskfish behavior fits the classic definition of tool use, which requires an animal to actually hold or carry the tool and use it to manipulate another object.

Cracked and empty shells lie in heaps on the seafloor at the site of the smashing incident, indicating that the practice is common.

More Pictures, More Details from National Geographic.

 Texas Land Commissioner Has Plans to Desalinate Brackish Water

Thirsty for new water sources,  Texas has stepped up plans to tap into abundant supplies of brackish groundwater. Brackish water is water with a high level of dissolved solids that is normally considered unusable.  But as conventional water sources become harder to find, the possibility of treating brackish water to make it usable becomes more and more feasible.  Treatment of brackish water is commonly called desalination.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson believes that harvesting and treating the large amounts of brackish water under Central Texas may be the solution to the water shortage.    “We can’t plan on taking any more fresh water from the Edwards Aquifer. It takes 30 years to get a new lake permitted and filled. Pipelines cost a fortune,” Patterson said. “If we want to keep growing, we need water and I think [desalination of brackish water]  is a common-sense part of that solution.”

More details from the Texas General Land Office.

More about brackish water.

Saltier Than the Pacific, California’s Inland Sea’s Salinity Increases by About 1% Per Year

Deep in the desert of southern California sits one of the worst environmental sites in America, a former tourist destination that has turned into a toxic soup: the Salton Sea. The sea is one of the most unique bodies of water on earth.

Located directly on the San Andreas Fault, the Sea was created by a flood in 1905 in which water from the Colorado River flowed into the area. While it varies in dimensions and area with fluctuations in agricultural runoff and rainfall, the Salton Sea averages 15 mi (24 km) by 35 mi (56 km). It is the largest lake in California.

The lake’s salinity, about 44 g/L, is greater than that of the waters of the Pacific Ocean (35 g/L), but less than that of the Great Salt Lake (which ranges from 50 to 270 g/L). The concentration increases by about 1 percent annually.^[1]

The sea was born by accident 100 years ago when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal.  Then,  for the next two years the entire volume of the river flowed into the Salton Sink, one of the lowest places on Earth. The new lake became a major tourist attraction, with resort towns springing up along its shores. Yet with no outflow, and with agricultural runoff serving as its only inflow, the sea’s waters grew increasingly toxic. Farm chemicals and ever-increasing salinity caused massive fish and bird die-offs. Use of the sea for recreational activities plummeted, and by the 1980s its tourist towns were all but abandoned.

The skeletons of abandoned structures are still there; ghost towns encrusted in salt. California officials acknowledge that if billions of dollars are not spent to save it, the sea could shrink another 60 percent in the next 20 years, exposing soil contaminated with arsenic and other cancerous chemicals to strong winds. Should that dust become airborne, it would blow across much of southern California, creating an environmental calamity.

In the picture below, dead tilapia float in the Salton Sea near Salton Sea Beach, California, in January 2011. Erosion and high toxicity levels from farm runoff has left the Salton Sea increasingly contaminated, causing massive fish die-offs, and lake-side towns to become all but deserted.

 Pennsylvania City is Carrying Out an Ambitious Plan to Remove Acid Wastes from Water Draining into Creeks

In the 1950s the mining industry was booming in northern Pennsylvania, but when the industry moved out of the area it left behind abandoned mines that have caused a variety of water problems.  In Sykesville, PA, an abandoned mine has been discharging acid mine drainage into local streams for years.

There was no wildlife in the streams because of the drainage and water from the creeks receiving the discharge was unusable.

County officials are now planning an ambitious water treatment facility that will not only clean up the pollution but will also make the water usable.  Proposed uses include drinking water for the town of Sykesville and possible sales of water to the fracking industry.

For more details on the Jefferson County water reclamation plan.

 “Stop the Frack Attack” Rally Scheduled

for Washington D. C.

What is expected to be the largest demonstration against fracking to date will take place on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on July 28th.

The organizers, Concerned Citizens,  are issuing a call to action “to demand an end to putting oil and gas drilling profits ahead of public health, clean water and air and the safety of our communities.”

Labeled “Stop the Frack Attack,” the rally will bring thousands to the nation’s capitol to demand greater government responsibility and corporate accountability for harm that existing oil and gas development causes.

For details.

Subsequent Post–07/31/12

The Anti-Fracking Demonstration Took Place as Scheduled

Anti-Fracking Rally, White House, July 28, 2012

On Saturday, July 28th, more than 5,000 people rallied on the West Lawn of the Capitol in Washington, DC, and then marched through the streets of DC as part of the Stop the Frack Attack Rally.

This was the first-ever national rally on fracking. “Fracking,” a violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations, is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes.

“Our call to action, in concert with over 130 other organizations, was to demand that no more drilling harm our public health, water and air,” said Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Natural Gas Campaign. “Elected officials and public agencies must put communities and the environment first, starting with removing special exemptions and subsidies for the oil and gas industry, while ushering in clean, renewable energy.

More Details

A Report from the Environmental Group  American Rivers Advises Communities to Approach Reservoir Proposals with Caution

Southeast U.S. communities should think twice before building new water supply reservoirs, according to a report released  by American Rivers.

The report, Money Pit: The High Cost and High Risk of Water Supply Reservoirs in the Southeast, documents the financial risks and water resource risks tied to the development of new reservoirs. The report comes at a time when many local governments throughout Georgia, the Carolinas and neighboring states are considering significant spending of public taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to build new water supply reservoirs. Collectively, current reservoir proposals in Georgia alone could cost at least $10 billion in taxpayer and ratepayer dollars.

New reservoir pitfalls are many.  Among them:

• Reservoirs are highly expensive, racking up debt for ratepayers and taxpayers.
• A reservoir’s price tag is typically a moving target.
• Reservoir financing plans often rely on inflated population growth projections, ultimately leaving existing residents holding the bag.
• In order to remain full, a reservoir depends on increasingly uncertain rainfall. And, a reservoir loses water when high temperatures cause evaporation.
• Reservoir water is a contested resource subject to competing demands in the river system.

More details about the American Rivers report.

Bee B. Sharper on the Price of Bottled Water

Pure Water Gazette Numerical Wizard B. Bee Sharper Fills in the Blanks That Harper’s Misses

Daily cost of the often recommended 8 glasses of water per day if consumed as tap water–$0.00135.

Yearly cost of the often recommended 8 glasses of water per day if consumed as tap water–$0.49.

Yearly cost of the often recommended 8 glasses of water per day if consumed as bottled water–$1400.

Factor by which the cost of bottled water exceeds the cost of tap water–2900 to 1.

Yearly cost of tap water processed by a Pure Water Products Model 77 countertop water filter  (first year)–$77.49.

Yearly cost of tap water processed by a Pure Water Products Model 77 countertop water filter (subsequent years)–$21.49.

New York Times on Bottled Water Cost

More B. Bea Sharper

 The Coral Reefs in Our Oceans Are Mere Zombies That Will Be Gone Within a Human Generation

Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. Each of those forces alone is fully capable of causing the global collapse of coral reefs; together, they assure it. The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion — that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem.

What we hear instead is an airbrushed view of the crisis — a view endorsed by coral reef scientists, amplified by environmentalists and accepted by governments. Coral reefs, like rain forests, are a symbol of biodiversity. And, like rain forests, they are portrayed as existentially threatened — but salvageable. The message is: “There is yet hope.” —Roger Bradbury

This is the opinion of Australian Roger Bradbury, expressed in a New York Times op ed piece.  According to Mr. Bradbury, coral reefs now are living only a zombie existence and within a human generation, “There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem — with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor — will cease to be.”

Bradbury’s description of the ocean of the future isn’t appealing:

What we will be left with is an algal-dominated hard ocean bottom, as the remains of the limestone reefs slowly break up, with lots of microbial life soaking up the sun’s energy by photosynthesis, few fish but lots of jellyfish grazing on the microbes. It will be slimy and look a lot like the ecosystems of the Precambrian era, which ended more than 500 million years ago and well before fish evolved.

Bradbury believes that we are wasting valuable time and resources in an effort to save a corpse and that we should instead be focusing on how to live without coral reefs.

Please read The full article from the New York Times.

See also “Are Coral Reefs on the Slippery Slope to Slime?”

Global Water Treatment Chemicals Market to Cross US$ 31 Billion by 2017 Says TechSci Research

According to a recently published report by TechSci Research “Global Water Treatment Chemicals Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2017,” the water treatment chemicals market will surpass $31 billion by 2017,

According to the report, the demand for treatment chemicals is certain to grow enormously in the near future.

The research firm divides treatment chemicals into six very profitable segments:  “Coagulants and Flocculants which accounts for maximum demand globally followed by Biocides and Disinfectant. These two segments alone accounts for more than 60% revenues from water treatment chemicals business. The other segments in water treatment chemicals market are Inhibitors, Defoamers & Defoaming agents, pH adjusters & softeners. By 2017, it is anticipated that highest growth will be witnessed in pH adjusters and softeners market which will growth with compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 4%.”