Yet Another of Water’s Weird Ways Remains to Be Explained

According to one scientist’s count, water exhibits  more than 80 unusual properties, one of the strangest of which is that it can  exist in all three states of matter (solid, liquid,gas) at the same time. Another example–it’s surface tension allows insects to walk on its surface and the property called “capillarity”   makes it possible for water to rise up from the roots into the leaves of trees and other plants.

In another strange turn, scientists have recently proposed that water can go from being one type of liquid into another in a so-called “liquid-liquid” phase transition.  It is impossible to test this with today’s laboratory equipment because these things happen so fast, but it has been tested by computer simulations.

Here’s Science Daily’s description of the experiment:

[The researchers] found that when they chilled liquid water in their simulation, its propensity to conduct heat decreases, as expected for an ordinary liquid. But, when they lowered the temperature to about 54 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the liquid water started to conduct heat even better in the simulation. Their studies suggest that below this temperature, liquid water undergoes sharp but continuous structural changes whereas the local structure of liquid becomes extremely ordered — very much like ice. These structural changes in liquid water lead to increase of heat conduction at lower temperatures.

The researchers say that this surprising result supports the idea that water has a liquid-liquid phase transition.

Actually, water’s weirdness isn’t just a parlor game.  As Gene Franks wrote in “The Gazette’s Great Water Article,”

It is water’s perverse and consistent refusal to go along with science’s laws that makes our lives possible. The awesome fact that water expands when it freezes in a world where things are supposed to contract as they get colder allows life to flourish beneath the frozen surface of lakes and rivers: if ice sank, many bodies of water would never thaw. This is virtually a unique property of water, an entity that follows its own design and dances to its own tune.

See “The Gazette’s Great Water Article” for a lot more about water’s strange behavior.

Switching Either to Chloramine or Chlorine Draws Taste Complaints

One of the headaches of water treatment is that whenever there is change, there is complaint.
When cities switch from chlorine to chloramine disinfection, taste complaints are usually numerous and loud.
The irony is that when there is a temporary switch back to chlorine, which regulatory agencies recommend periodically, there are equally strong complaints about the taste of chlorine in the water.

When chloramine is used as the primary disinfectant,  the ammonia and nitrogen in chloramine can cause a biofilm buildup in pipes. A periodic, short-term change back to free chlorine, a much stronger disinfectant than chloramine, clears out some of the buidup. Cities often refer to the temporary change back to chlorine as “chlorine burns.”

Another item that affects taste is TDS, or Total Dissolved Solids, the mineral makeup of the water. That’s why when people become used to high TDS water (as in some bottled spring waters or some well water), they describe low TDS water, like reverse osmosis water or distilled water, as “tasteless.”  Reverse osmosis water drinkers, by contrast, are often shocked by the heavy mineral taste of tap water when they get a drink from a water fountain or restaurant.

With water, as with many things, people tend to like what they’re used to.  They may complain about the way things are, but when there’s a change,they complain twice as loudly.

 

 

Many Brands of Bottled Water Are Nothing More than Filtered City Tap Water.  So What?

by Hardly Waite

An article in the current Harold Sun of Sydney makes some fairly common complaints about bottled water.

The reader is warned in a headline:
TAKE a closer look at your bottle of “pure” water: it’s probably sourced from the tap. Millions of unsuspecting customers are buying filtered tap water and boiled rainwater at massive mark-ups of more than 180,000 per cent.

While the Pure Water Gazette has been a consistent critic of bottled water because of the environmental costs of draining aquifers, energy intensive transportation, and the creation of mountains of throw-away bottles, we feel that accusing bottlers of overcharging for an inferior product is unfair.

As long as the source of the water is clearly and honestly placed on the label, there is absolutely nothing wrong with purifying and reselling Waxahatchie TX tap water.  Fraud is one thing, but if the bottler is processing his water as described on the label (by carbon filtration, ozonation, reverse osmosis, for example), he is actually delivering a superior product regardless of its source.

Waxahatchie water that has been through a reverse osmosis system is better water–with disinfectants, fluoride, heavy metals and extraneous chemicals (if any) removed–than the water that comes from the tap.

Also, the seller isn’t just selling water.  He’s selling  convenience.  The consumer is actually paying the 180,000 percent markup to a large degree for the convenience of having the water in a bottle.  That’s no small thing.  A bottle, when you think about it, though the cost is low, is a marvelous convenience, one of the true wonders of the world.  Plastic bottles are an environmental disaster, but they are also wonderful from user’s perspective.

All water is recycled water.  There is nothing magic about “spring water” that makes it inherently superior to well-processed tap water.

If criticism is in order, it probably should go to consumers who buy the water, not to the businesses who sell it.

Bottled water is simply another example of the throw-away world we have created.  It’s fairly simple to resuse bottles and fill them with water from a home water purifier, thus reducing the markup by thousands of percentage points and making the environmental impact only a fraction larger than drinking straight tap water.  Anyone can do this.  Buying an expensive product when you could have something as good or better at a fraction of the cost doesn’t make the seller a crook, as the Harold Sun and other bottled water critics have implied, but it certainly does say something about the consumer.

 

More information from Sydney.

Vintage 1938 Cooling System at Disney Studio Is Blamed for Hexavalent Chromium in Area Waters

Walt Disney Studios in Burbank CA is being investigated as the possible source of groundwater contamination with the cancer causing heavy metal
Chromium 6.

Area groundwater has been contaminated for some time with Chromium 6, and aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. paid $60 million to settle claims with some 1,300 residents in 1996 who charged that exposure to Chromium 6 and other toxins at its former aircraft manufacturing plant left them with cancer and other maladies.

The suspicion is that an ancient cooling tower at Disney, built originally in 1938, is involved in the contamination of water in the area. The plant originally  used groundwater pumped from wells to pre-cool and pre-heat buildings on the site. At one point the plant circulated up to 1.7 million gallons of water a day. The wastewater was discharged into settling basins and then to the Los Angeles River as well as to Burbank’s storm system. In 1993, Disney replaced the system with cooling towers that relied on water supplied by the city of Burbank.

Chromium 6, also known as hexavalent chromium, has many industrial uses, including preventing corrosion of pipes in air conditioning systems and eliminating microbes in cooling towers.

Chromium 6 captured wide public attention in 2000 with the release of the Academy Award-winning movie Erin Brockovich about residents sickened by a Pacific Gas & Electric plant in the Mojave Desert city of Hinkley, CA. PG&E had used Chromium 6 as an anti-rusting agent to prevent corrosion in cooling towers, and has paid more than $600 million to settle lawsuits.

The Disney site has recently come under scrutiny by state and federal officials as part of a broader investigation into groundwater contamination. Citing community concerns about contamination, the California Department of Public Health in 2010 tested soil in a nearby park that historically had received discharges of water from Disney’s cooling system and found Chromium 6.

Disney denies that its cooling system is responsible for hexavalent chromium contamination in the area.

More information from the LA Times.

More about hexavalent chromium.

If You Think Signing a Sierra Club Petition Will Stop Fracking, Think Again

by Gene Franks

As a water treatment professional, I just got a brochure inviting me to attend the 3rd “Water Management for Shale Plays” conference and training in Pittsburgh in late October 2012. The conference, which costs $1295 to attend, will “assess water management” in specific shale plays like Marcellus, Utica, Bakken, Niobrara, and Texas.

The brochure tells me also that such corporate giants as BASF, GE, Halliburton, and Veolia Water have been represented at the 2 previous events; and an ad in the brochure offers the services of an energy law firm that specializes in Environmental Litigation and Oil and Gas Title work, employing “120 lawyers” knowledgeable in “10 major shale plays.

The consulting firm almost salivates as it explains the purpose of the training:

Water–in massive quantities–is essential to the hydraulic fracturing process as it releases gas and oil from shale. A typical deep drilled shale well can take up to 4 or 5 million gallons. but as the proliferation of drilling continues, effective water management for shale plasys has become a matter of increasing urgency–since water supplies are progressively more scarce in some locations and drilling sites are more remote from any quality water source, pipeline, or remediation structure.

In fact, managing water in the context of fracking has become a large, expensive, secondary industry wherever significant amounts of hydraulic fracturing are occurring–because the cost of re-treating, re-using, transporting and disposing of water are so enormous and such an essential part of fracking.

In other words, there are tons of money being made from hydraulic fracturing and more tons to be made from providing and processing the water used in fracking and getting rid of the wastewater that results from fracking.

So, by all means,  sign the petitions and write your congress person.  You’ll get nice letters from computers congratulating you for taking a stand and asking for money to circulate more petitions to stop fracking.  You’ll get a nice letter from your congressman’s computer telling you that he shares your concern and lies awake nights worrying.

But you must realize that when the oil companies, the water treatment companies, the well service companies, the pipe makers, the truckers, and the politicians whom they support pick up the scent of the piles of cash on the table,  letters and petitions aren’t going to matter.

A New Pacific Institute Research Tool Predicts A Large Increase In California’s Water Needs Because of Global Warming

It should come as no surprise that as the world gets warmer, the demand for water will increase.

The Pacific Institute has developed a new, free tool to help California water managers and others forecast urban water demand with four separate climate change models and compare possible outcomes as far out as the year 2100. The tool allows for such variables as greenhouse gas emissions, conservation, population changes, and more.

The report, called Urban Water Demand in California to 2100: Incorporating Climate Change,  describes how warming due to climate change is causing increases in water demand for landscapes, and will continue to drive up future water demand particularly as more Californians settle in warmer, drier inland areas.

According to a press release:

The Pacific Institute ran a number of scenarios through 2100. The analysis finds that climate change alone could increase urban water demand in 2100 by 8% percent, or around 1 million acre-feet, under a medium-high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. That is the amount of water needed to satisfy the current household needs of 6.7 million Californians or the amount of water produced by 18 large desalination plants (the size of the proposed Carlsbad plant).

To read the Pacific Institute’s press release, go here.

 

 

 

Cities Are Using Depleted Aquifers for Water Storage Areas

Because of the drought, water use in Wichita, KS is running 40% above normal.  The city has devised a plan to store excess water in times of plenty for use when things are dry.

Wichita gets much of its water from the Little Arkansas River, which because of the drought is bone dry.

The plan for the future, which will cost half a billion dollars, is to remove water from the Little Arkansas when it has plenty of water and pump the water to a treatment facility, clean it up, then dump it into the aquifer from which the city draws water. The water is then pumped from aquifer and sent to Wichita water customers.

Pumping back into the aquifer, which currently supplies 40% of Wichita’s water,  is considered a very cheap alternative as compared with building an above-ground reservoir. Apparently, no consideration has been made of how drawing water from the Little Arkansas will affect downstream users.

Aquifer recharging is actually becoming a popular strategy for water management.  The great advantage is that the aquifer becomes a natural storage area for water without the expense of reservoir construction.

Other benefits of Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) programs include: reduced overall operation costs, increased water yields by minimizing evaporation losses, improved water quality, and reducing impacts from long-term drought.  ASR programs can also arrest subsidence and saltwater intrusion problems, and revive springs and river beds for human enjoyment and wildlife habitat.

Here is a larger view of a recharge system (click the picture for a larger version):

 

More information about Wichita

Colorado River ARS Projects.

 

 

Bacteria In Tap Water Can Be Traced to the Water Treatment Process

 Editor’s Note: This interesting article from ENews Park Forest brings up topics that are long overdue for discussion regarding the nature of microbes in water and their relationship to water treatment devices.  In my opinion,  an irrational fear of microbes has lead us to overreact and adopt water treatment strategies of questionable merit.  Bacteria free water should not be confused with healthful water. Bacteria are everywhere.  When we take a short-sighted “kill ’em all” position, we run the risk of killing ourselves. –Hardly Waite,  Gazette Senior Editor.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.–(ENEWSPF)–August 17, 2012. Most of the bacteria that remain in drinking water when it gets to the tap can be traced to filters used in the water treatment process, rather than to the aquifers or rivers where it originated, University of Michigan researchers discovered.

Their study—a unique, broad-based look at Ann Arbor’s water supply from source to tap—could open the door to more sustainable water treatment processes that use fewer chemicals and, as a result, produce lower levels of byproducts that may pose health risks. Eventually, the work could enable engineers to control the types of microbes in drinking water to improve human health like “live and active cultures” in yogurt, the researchers say.

The research, led by Lutgarde Raskin, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, is published online in Environmental Science & Technology and will appear in a forthcoming print edition. Over six months, the researchers sampled water at 20 points along its path from groundwater and Barton Pond sources to residents’ faucets and several more places in the water treatment plant. They harvested bacteria from each sample and sequenced their DNA.

Tap water is teeming with bacteria despite the intensive filtering and disinfection that occur in most of the developed world. That’s not necessarily a problem, the U-M researchers say. It could be an opportunity.

“A major goal right now in drinking water treatment is to kill all bacteria because there’s the perception that all bacteria are bad. But there’s a good bit of scientific literature that says there are good bacteria, innocuous bacteria and bad bacteria. If we can better understand the types of bacteria in the microbial community from source to tap and what processes control it, perhaps we can be more effective at controlling which ones get through,” said Ameet Pinto, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow who worked on this project as a postdoctoral researcher in Raskin’s lab.

Most previous drinking water studies have focused more narrowly on disease-causing pathogens, Pinto said. But bacteria such as Legionella, Salmonella, and E. coli don’t exist in isolation. Their fate is influenced by the microbial community around them.

“The more critical questions are ‘Where do they come from?’ and ‘What determines which ones survive treatment and end up in our drinking water?’ These questions have not been systematically asked until now,” Pinto said.

The study found that the “activated carbon filters” commonly used to remove suspended particles play a significant role in determining which bacteria are most prevalent in treated drinking water.

The relative abundance of Alphaproteobacteria, for example, was found to be around 6 percent in source water, but 38 percent on the filters, and 23 percent of the bacterial community at the tap. This pattern occurred despite regular filter cleaning. These mostly harmless bacteria were able to form biofilms on the filters, slough off into the water and survive the disinfection process.

Water suppliers typically add chemicals such as chlorine to drinking water, but these disinfectants can react with naturally-occurring substances in the water to form potentially harmful byproducts, according to the EPA. Many of these byproducts themselves are regulated.

“Disinfection can form harmful chemicals in drinking water,” said Chuanwu Xi, associate professor of environmental health sciences in the School of Public Health, who participated in this study. “If we can get away with not using so many chemicals and prevent the formation of these byproducts, we should think about limiting their use.”

The researchers suggest that these filters could serve as early indicators of the presence of beneficial and disease-causing bacteria. They could be regularly tested, and pathogens might be contained there to prevent them from reaching the distribution system. The filters also could potentially be re-engineered to support the growth of beneficial or neutral bacteria.

“We hope to begin research to explore how to improve public health by engineering drinking water treatment plants to impact the drinking water microbiome, perhaps by promoting growth of beneficial microbes that outcompete pathogenic microbes,” Raskin said. “We think it is feasible to do this in the long run.”

“Current regulations and engineering practices focus on removing chemical and microbial contaminants from the source water to provide safe and clean water and protect the public from waterborne diseases,” Xi said. “In addition to the protection we have already, there is potential to add benefits to the water we consume everyday for improving our health, for example, by having a positive impact on the microbial community in the human gut. More research is needed to evaluate this potential beneficial impact when we move in that direction.”

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation. The paper is titled “Bacterial Community Structure in the Drinking Water Microbiome Is Governed by Filtration Processes.”

Related Links:

ENews Park Forest

Bacteria in Water

Bacteria Rights

Thousands of Unwanted Horses Are Dying of Drought-Related Causes

Horses require lots of water, and growing the food they eat requires lots of water.  It is, therefore, no wonder that as the drought progresses, the plight of horses is getting worse by the day.

Horses are among the hardest hit victims of the drought.  Although a number of private aid agencies for horses are working to save them, the outlook isn’t good.

While precise figures are hard to come by, rough estimates from the Unwanted Horse Coalition, an alliance of equine organizations based in Washington, puts the number of unwanted horses — those given up on by their owners for whatever reasons — at 170,000 to 180,000 nationwide. This figure is at best a guess because in areas where large populations of wild horses roam, such as on tribal lands,  it is simply too costly to do a head count.

Hay, the mainstay for feeding a horse, costs many times what it did a few years ago, so many people who have managed in the past to feed a horse or two are now unable to because of hay prices.  A 60 lb. bale of hay, which feeds a horse for about 3 days, now costs $8 to $12 a pound.

 

 

Full Report of Horses and the Drought from the New York Times.

Associated Press Research Yields More Information About PPCPs in Drinking Water

The presence of  PPCPs (Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products) in water supplies have been studied by US governmental agencies and also by the World Health Organization, but a considerable amount of research has been conducted as well by the Associated Press. The AP did an extensive 5-month research project on PPCPs in 2008.

Here are the ten most common PPCPs in US drinking water, according to the AP.  Note that results are in tinier amounts than those possible with most conventional testing.  Results are reported in ppt (parts per trillion).

The UL report also went into some detail in its study of possible treatments.  It identified the best treatment strategies as

• Activated carbon
• Biologically activated carbon
• Ozone/advanced oxidation processes
• Ultraviolet (UV) treatments
• Nanofiltration
• Reverse osmosis.

Here are more specific observations about treatments for PPCPs:

• Over 90 percent of steroids can be removed from drinking water using activated sludge, activated carbon, biologically activated carbon, ozone/advanced oxidation processes, UV treatments and reverse osmosis.
• Over 90 percent of antibiotics, antidepressants and antimicrobials can be removed using activated carbon, biologically activated carbon, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.
• Over 90 percent of anti-inflammatories can be removed using activated carbon, biologically activated carbon, ozone/ advanced oxidation processes, UV treatments, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.
• Over 90 percent of lipid regulators can be removed using activated carbon, biologically activated carbon, ozone/advanced oxidation processes, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.
• Under 40 percent of listed PPCPs can be removed through the use of coagulation/flocculation and softening/metal oxides.

The Pure Water Gazette’s  observation:  Of common point of use treatments available to homeowners, activated carbon and reverse osmosis rank in the 90 percent reduction area in all categories.  The obvious conclusion is that a high quality carbon drinking water unit is excellent protection against PPCPs,  and a reverse osmosis unit (reverse osmosis units normally contain at least two high quality activated carbon filters in addition to the reverse osmosis element) is even better.

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