Waiting for water: Myanmar villages left behind

By Esther Htusan

DALA, Myanmar (AP) — Every afternoon, the long lines start to form, hundreds of men, women and children waiting to dip their plastic buckets into the lotus-filled reservoir just outside Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. It’s their only source of clean drinking water, they say, and during the dry season, April and May, there is only so much to go around.

“It wasn’t always this way,” says 72-year-old Tin Shwe, one of the village elders, as he looks at the queue, some boys as young as 8 waiting their turn, yokes at their side. “It used to be only paddy fields. Only a few houses. There was enough water for all of us.”

Myanmar only recently emerged from a half-century of military rule. Nascent democratic reforms implemented by the new civilian government since 2011 have resulted in a development boom, with the World Bank and others pouring billions of dollars into the country of 60 million as it starts to open up to the world. But so far, it is the big cities that are seeing the benefits.

Even places like Dala township — just a 20-minute boat ride from Yangon — have so far been left out. Authorities tell residents that maybe next year the government will start installing pipes so that water can be delivered straight to their homes.

The water shortages began with a population boom in the 1980s, with the number of inhabitants jumping from a few dozen to more than a thousand in part because they wanted to be close to the big city.

With no restrictions on how much water each family could take, the natural, fresh-water pond started running low. Eventually, just a decade ago, it dried up entirely. With no offers of help from the government, men like Tin Shwe decided to step in, devising a rationing system as water started seeping back so that residents could rely on it year-round.

Villagers have only one hour — between 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. — to get their water during dry season to limit its use. They are charged a tiny sum — 10 kyat for each bucket, or 10 U.S. cents. With so many takers it’s enough money for small upkeeps, like fixing the fence that surrounds the reservoir or stringing up electricity for lights.

People walk for up to five kilometers (three miles) with their empty buckets. They are allowed to fill up two each. If they need more, they can get back in line. When they are ready they begin the long, hard trek home.

“I usually get three buckets,” said 19-year-old Aye Thu Zar as she neared the front of the line. “There are seven in my family, so that’s enough for drinking and cooking. But the walk home hurts my shoulders. My legs, too. I can barely sleep at night the pain is so bad.”

She and others hope the new Myanmar will eventually reach Dala.

But for now, says Ko Ko, one of the villagers waiting his turn, “we are like water shortage refugees.”

Source: Seattle Pi.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Drink Water Early in the Morning 

Editor’s Note: There are bushels of articles telling you how much water to drink and what kind of water to drink, but not a lot like the one below that tells you when to drink.  In fact, according to the unnamed source of the article, early morning water drinking can cure most human ailments.  FYI: We don’t believe a word of it. 

It is accustomed in Japan to drink water after waking up early in the morning. Furthermore, scientific tests have proven its value. For many illnesses the water treatment had been found successful by a Japanese medical society as a 100% cure for the following diseases:

Headache, body ache, heart system, arthritis, fast heart beat, epilepsy, excess fatness, bronchitis asthma, TB , meningitis, kidney and urine diseases, vomiting, gastritis, diarrhea, piles, diabetes, constipation, all eye diseases, womb, cancer and menstrual disorders, ear nose and throat diseases.

METHOD OF TREATMENT

1. As you wake up in the morning before brushing teeth, drink 4 x 160 ml glasses of water

2. Brush and clean the mouth but do not eat or drink anything for 45 minute

3. After 45 minutes you may eat and drink as normal.

4. After 15 minutes of breakfast, lunch and dinner do not eat or drink anything for 2 hours

5. Those who are old or sick and are unable to drink 4 glasses of water at the beginning may commence by taking little water and gradually increase it to 4 glasses per day.

6. The above method of treatment will cure diseases of the sick and others can enjoy a healthy life.

The following list gives the number of days of treatment required to cure/control/reduce main diseases:

1. High Blood Pressure (30 days)

2. Gastric (10 days)

3. Diabetes (30 days)

4. Constipation (10 days)

5. Cancer (180 days)

6. TB (90 days)

7. Arthritis patients should follow the above treatment only for 3 days in the 1st week, and from 2nd week onwards – daily.

This treatment method has no side effects, however at the commencement of treatment you may have to urinate a few times. It is better if we continue this and make this procedure as a routine work in our life.

The Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals not cold water. Maybe it is time we adopt their drinking habit while eating!!!

For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion.

Once this ‘sludge’ reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.

Source:  News.Am

Over the years, the Gazette has published several dozen articles on the topic of water and health.  See them here.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Do coffee and tea really dehydrate us?

by Claudia Hammond

 Gazette’s Introductory Note:  Without a research grant or even giving the matter more than a couple of minutes thought I dismissed a long time ago the idea that the water that’s in coffee and tea somehow doesn’t “count” toward the body’s requirement for water.  If the human body can extract micro nutrients from foods why in heaven’s name would it not be able to find and use water that is mixed with a bit of tannins and caffeine?  Obviously, the water that’s in fresh fruit or a bowl of oatmeal is water that’s available for use by the body.  And as for coffee’s apparent diuretic properties, my view is that it’s mainly the water in the beverage that makes you pee a lot, not something special about the tea or coffee.  The research presented in the article below would seem to bear me out.–Hardly Waite.

Every day people around the globe drink 1.6 billion cups of coffee and around twice as many cups of tea.

They enjoy the taste and the fact that the caffeine wakes them up. But when we’re exhorted to drink six or eight glasses of water a day (a disputed figure that I’ve discussed previously), it’s usually emphasised that drinks like coffee and tea don’t count towards your daily liquid total because they’re dehydrating. Or so we’re told. What’s the evidence?

Although tea and coffee contain many different substances the one on which most research focuses is caffeine. Even then there is so little research on the topic, that one of the most frequently mentioned studies was conducted way back in 1928 with a sample of just three people. The three men were studied over the course of two winters. Sometimes they were required to drink four cups of coffee a day; sometimes they drank mainly tea and at other times they abstained or drank water laced with pure caffeine. Meanwhile the volume of their urine was measured regularly. The authors concluded that if the men consumed caffeine-laced water after a two month period of abstinence from both coffee and tea, the volume of their urine increased by 50%, but when they drank coffee regularly again they became inured to its diuretic effects.

Very large doses of caffeine are known to increase the blood flow to the kidneys and to inhibit the absorption of sodium which explains why it could act as a diuretic, dealing with the sodium which hasn’t been absorbed. But the exact mechanism is still a matter of debate.

But when you look at the studies of more realistic quantities of caffeine, the diuretic effect is not nearly so clear. A review of 10 studies by Lawrence Armstrong from the University of Connecticut concluded thatcaffeine is a mild diuretic at most, with 12 out of 15 comparisons showing that people urinated the same amount, regardless of whether the water they drank contained added caffeine or not.

So why do so many people think they need the loo more often when they’ve been drinking tea or coffee? As the review indicates, most studies give people pure caffeine added to water, rather than cups of actual tea or coffee as you might drink at home. Is there something about the combination of substances contained in coffee and tea that make the difference?

In a rare study where people drank nothing but tea for the 12 hour duration of the trial, there was no difference in hydration levels between them and the people who drank the same quantity of boiled water. When it comes to the consumption of coffee, one study did find a 41% increase in urine, along with a rise in the excretion of sodium and potassium. But these participants had abstained from caffeine before the study, so this doesn’t tell us what would happen in people who are accustomed to drinking coffee.

A second study found no difference in hydration between those drinking water or coffee, leaving us with conflicting findings. Then came new research earlier this year from Sophie Killer at Birmingham University in the UK, who not only measured the volume of urine, but tested their blood for signs of kidney function as well as calculating the total amount of water in the body. The men in the study drank four cups of coffee a day, far more than the average coffee-drinker. Yet there was no evidence they were any more dehydrated than those who drank water alone. This research was funded by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, whose members are coffee companies, but it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and the authors confirm that the Institute played no role in gathering or analysing the data or writing up the research.

So although we might notice needing the loo more when we’ve been drinking coffee, the mistake is basing our observations on a comparison with the time we’ve drunk nothing, not with a similar amount of water. If you chose a glass of water instead of a cup of tea, you’d probably see the same effect.

Source:  BBC.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Sebago water receives ultraviolet treatment 

by Ezra Silk

In response to Environmental Protection Agency regulations, the Portland  [OR] Water District is treating the water that it supplies to the Greater Portland area for cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite that typically derives from animal waste and can cause severe gastrointestinal illness.

Beating a federally imposed deadline of April 1, the district has been operating two 14-foot, 84-lamp ultraviolet units for the past several months. The devices sterilize any cryptosporidium pathogens that may pass through, according to Joel Anderson, the chief operator of the Sebago Lake Water Treatment Facility.

“When UV attacks (pathogen) DNA, it actually breaks those cells and short-circuits them, and then renders them incapable of replicating,” said Anderson. “One cell in your system is not going to make you sick. When it gets into your system and begins to multiply is when you run into problems.”

According to Anderson, the district completed two years of monthly testing and never detected any cryptosporidium organisms in the water.

Joel Anderson, chief operator of the Sebago Lake Water Treatment Facility, said that one of the benefits of a new UV treatment system is that it does not add any new chemicals to the water supply. The average 21.5 million gallons of water that travel through the water treatment facility every day are treated with zinc orthophosphate, sodium hydroxide, sodium hypochlorite, aqua ammonia and hydroflourosilicic acid. 

“The good news is Portland Water District is of very low susceptibility to it,” Anderson said. “We don’t have a lot of farmland in our watershed. We have a natural filtration system that takes place at Sebago Lake.”

In 1993, a cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee’s drinking water supply system made 400,000 people ill, and killed more than 100 people. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency began to draft the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, which was adopted in 2006. The rule requires public water systems that use surface water to treat for cryptosporidium.

The average 21.5 million gallons of water that travel through the water treatment facility every day are treated with zinc orthophosphate, sodium hydroxide, sodium hypochlorite, aqua ammonia and hydroflourosilicic acid. Anderson said that one of the benefits of the UV treatment is that it does not add any other chemicals to the water supply.

“One of the reasons the Portland Water District chose to go with UV as opposed to a chemical process is because there are no known disinfection byproducts,” Anderson said. “It’s a physical process. People should not notice any taste. They should not notice any odor. It subjects it to a light. It’s a quick process.”

The facility’s ozone disinfection system, which kills viruses and giardia parasites, was also updated during the 17-month, $12 million project. The district received a $300,000 grant from Efficiency Maine to complete the project, and expects to save $150,000 on annual electric costs as a result of the upgrades. The program was primarily funded through the state Department of Health and Human Services’ Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, cryptosporidium can lead to stomach pain, dehydration, nausea, vomiting, fever and weight loss. It generally affects the small intestine, and can cause people with weak immune systems to succumb to chronic or fatal illnesses. Symptoms tend to set in two to 10 days after infection.

Michelle Clements, the water district’s spokeswoman, said that the improvements provide an additional safeguard to protect the quality of Greater Portland’s water supply.

“The project has added an additional barrier to potential contamination for our customers,” she said. “It’s just another way we provide safe, clean drinking water to our customers.”

Source: Lakes Region Weekly.

Water rates aimed at keeping precious commodity

by Gordon D. Fielder, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This piece explains a sensible approach to water pricing  that should be the practice of all water utilities: to charge more for increased water use rather than giving a discount to those who over-consume.  The article explains the rationale and the practice well. — Hardly Waite.

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Salina’s water rates designed to help decrease consumption of a precious commodity

City water customers who are unsure if Salina is serious about conservation need only to become profligate with the garden hose this summer to clear up any doubts.

Salina abandoned its declining rate structure, which rewarded high use with lower cost, in favor of charging more for excess consumption.

“It used to be, the more you used the less it cost you,” said Martha Tasker, director of utilities. “In 2008 we changed that. Now we have a water conservation rate. Many would give it a much fouler name.”

The level of usage above which the conservation rate kicks in depends on a household’s base consumption.

Here’s how it works:

The city records a household’s winter quarter consumption rate — the amount of water used in January through March. That amount might be anywhere from 5,000 gallons a month to 10,000 gallons, depending on the size of household and personal water use.

The customer then is allowed to use 120 percent more than that each month before breaching the conservation threshold. This applies only to users who consume at least 6,000 gallons a month. The city spots all customers 6,000 gallons, so those who may use, say, 1,000 gallons, won’t reach the excess fee limit until they go over 6,000 gallons, not 1,200 gallons.

However, a household that averages 10,000 gallons a month during the three-month winter quarter would be able to use 12,000 gallons a month without paying the higher rate.

“Any water you use over that you pay an excess use rate for,” Tasker said.

For that first 12,000 gallons, the city charges $4.20 per 1,000 gallons. That comes to $50.40 a month, plus meter fees and taxes. Each 1,000 gallons over that, however, soaks the user for $8.40. So if the user instead consumes 13,000 gallons, that extra 1,000 gallons adds $8.40 to the bill, or $58.80.

The change attempts to encourage customers to be water misers.

“It doesn’t make sense if the more you use the less it costs. You’re not going to be very careful with how much you use,” she said.

The city draws its water from groundwater and from the Smoky Hill River. Tasker said river water costs less to treat, once it silts out, because it’s naturally soft. The water from the 15 wells is hard and must undergo treatment by chemicals, the cost of which keeps rising.

In winter, the city goes through about 5 million gallons a day, a rate that easily doubles in summer.

The conservation rate is intended to reduce the reliance on the more costly well water.

Water customers in Hutchinson and Manhattan pay less than Salina, in part because they still have a declining rate structure.

A 12,000-gallon monthly use in Hutchinson would cost $35.20 and in Manhattan, $37.29.

But an extra 1,000 gallons a month would bring the bill to $38.05 in Hutchinson and $46.17 in Manhattan.

Tasker said most Salinans shouldn’t expect conservation charges.

“Eighty to 85 percent never see excess use rates,” Tasker said.

In fact, many hover around the 6,000-gallon-a-month level.

“That’s 200 gallons a day,” she said.

To help customers with their water savings, the city has installed wireless metering that can track water usage by the hour. Before, water department employees had to eyeball each meter all over town.

“Nobody reads meters anymore,” Tasker said.

Small antennas in the meters bounce flow rates off a couple of water towers to city hall.

Leak detection software, once it’s fully up and running, can alert Tasker’s staff to unusual water use and who then can contact the homeowner.

For instance, the software might show water flowing 24 hours a day.

“That’s not normal,” Tasker said.

This will be especially useful for snowbirds who fly south for the winter.

“You could be gone and the water’s running into your basement and nobody would know (for a month),” she said.

“It’s about being accurate so people are paying for the actual water they are using,” she said.

Source: MySA.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

A Few Things You Should Know about Water Wells

by Pure Water Annie

If you get your water from a private water well, like it or not, you’re a water plant superintendent.

Most well pumps are of two types: jet pumps, which are used only on relatively shallow wells, and submersible pumps.

Since submersible pumps are most common, that’s what I’m going to concentrate on

A typical submersible pump is a long cylindrical shape that fits inside the well casing. The bottom half is made up of a sealed pump motor that is connected to the above-ground power source and controlled by electrical wires.

In modern installations, the well casing outside the home is connected to the plumbing system by a pipe that runs beneath the ground to the basement (if there is one).. This horizontal pipe joins the well pipe at a connector called apitless adapter. The function of the adapter is to permit access to the pump and well piping through the top of the well casing, while routing water from the pump into the plumbing system.

While submersible pumps are more efficient than jet pumps in delivering more water for the same size motor, pump or motor problems will necessitate pulling the unit from the well casing–a job that’s best left to a pro. However, submersibles are known for their reliability and often perform their role 20 to 25 years without servicing. Submersible pumps may also be used in shallow wells. However, silt, sand, algae and other contaminants can shorten the pump’s life.

No matter what kind of system you have, the components on the output side of all pumps are similar.

Pumps are not intended to run continuously, and they don’t start each time you open a tap or flush the toilet. In order to provide consistent water pressure at the fixtures, the pump first moves water to a storage tank. Inside a modern tank is an air bladder that becomes compressed as the water is pumped in. The air pressure in the tank is what moves the water through the household plumbing system.

When the pressure reaches a preset level, which can be anywhere from 40 to 60 psi, a switch stops the pump. As water is used in the home, pressure begins to decrease until, after a drop of about 20 psi, the switch turns on the pump and the cycle is repeated. You’ll find the pressure gauge mounted on the tank with wires leading to the switch that controls the pump.

The picture above is from a Popular Mechanics article on well pumps. You can see jet pump illustrations there as well.

Typical air pressure settings for well tanks are 30 to 50 or 40 to 60. What this means is that with a 30/50 setting, for example, the pump comes on to refill the tank when tank pressure drops to 30 psi, and the pump shuts off when the pressure in the tank reaches 50 psi.

In most cases, tank pressure is adjustable and can be controlled with the Pressure Switch in the picture.

If you’re installing a water treatment device such as a softener or backwashing filter, it always goes downstream of the well’s pressure tank. There are a few exceptions. Chemical feed pumps and venturi air injection devices, for example, are installed between the well and the pressure tank.

Although many wells produce excellent water which requires little if any treatment, most well water requires some modification. Some of the most common problems are iron, manganese, hardness, hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg odor), excessive sediment, low pH, and bacteria. Among the most commonly used treatment devices are ultraviolet lamps (bacteria and cysts), sediment filters (sand and other sediment), granular carbon (taste/odor/color improvement, hydrogen sulfide reduction), backwashing media filters (iron, manganese, excessive sediment), aeration, chlorination, hydrogen peroxide, ozonation (pretreatment for iron and sulfide reducing filters), and chemical feed pumps (to control bacteria, raise pH, pretreat for iron removal). These, of course, are only a few of the many devices that can be used to treat well water problems.

What You Need to Know About Your Well

First, every well owner should have a reasonably comprehensive water test to determine the nature of the water. Many problems, like hardness, odor, and iron, are apparent, but a high quality test is needed to confirm and quantify such issues. Two parts per million iron can be treated quite differently from 12 parts per million. And the most urgent problems of all, like bacteria or high levels of arsenic or pesticides, are not apparent but must be discovered by testing.

If you’re going to purchase treatment equipment, especially a backwashing filter or a water softener, for your well, you also need to know how many gallons per minute your well pump is capable of producing. Backwash runs require a sustained flow of several gallons per minute. For example, a typical residential-sized iron filter may require a ten minute backwash and a ten minute rinse at the rate of five to seven gallons per minute. If your well pump will produce only 4, the filter with become overloaded with iron and fail. You can’t rely on the GPM rating of the well pump. You need to know the actual gallons per minute that the well will put out.

Here’s a simple method to find out your well’s output capacity.

Determining the GPM Output of a Water Well

Turn off all taps and water-using appliances in the home.

Find an outdoor spigot in a place that will allow you to observe your well pump’s activity. You’ll need to know when the pump turns on and off. The output capacity of the spigot itself doesn’t matter.

Run water from the spigot until the pump comes on, then close the faucet and let the pump fill the tank and shut off.

With the tank now full, find a container, or multiple containers (e. g. 5-gallon buckets) that will allow you to measure the content of your well tank. Turn on the spigot and catch the water until the pump comes on.

When the pump comes on, immediately close the faucet and time the seconds it takes for the pump to turn off. (This means that the tank is full.)

Now you know the amount of water the tank holds and the number of seconds it takes to refill it. You can determine the well pump’s gallon-per-minute capacity by using the following formula:

Gallons collected, divided by seconds it took to refill the tank, multiplied by 60. (You multiply by sixty to convent the seconds to minutes, because your answer needs to be in gallons per minute.)

For example, if you collected 15 gallons and it took 75 seconds for your pump to refill the tank, your equation would look like this: (15/75)X60 = 12 GPM.

If you collected 18 gallons and it took 55 seconds for your pump to shut off, the formula would be: (18/55) X 60 = 19.6 GPM.

Pure Water Annie’s article was originally published in the Pure Water Occasional’s December 2011 issue.

Aeration Overview

Aeration is an effective chemical-free method of preparing water containing iron and hydrogen sulfide for filtration. Exposure to air “oxidizes” the contaminant to a filterable form (ferric iron or elemental sulfur), then an appropriate filter removes the contaminant from the water.

Closed tank aeration for residential treatment is available in several formats. The least expensive, though not necessarily the simplest, uses a small venturi that is installed in the water line itself in front of the well’s pressure tank. As water fills the tank, air is literally sucked into the water stream via the venturi. A small treatment tank where “oxidation” occurs follows the pressure tank. The water then goes to a free-standing filter for final filtration.

A much more aggressive treatment uses a small air compressor, or “air pump,” that injects air into a treatment tank. When water enters the tank it falls through a pocket of compressed air where rapid oxidation occurs. The water then passes on to a filter tank for final removal of the contaminant.

A Small Compressor Powers the “AerMax” System

Single tank units are the simplest form of aeration treatment. Single tank systems perform the aeration and filtration in a single tank. Water enters the tank, falls through a pocket of compressed air, then is filtered by the media contained in the lower 2/3 of the tank. Single tank units need no pump; they bring in air during the nightly regeneration performed automatically by the control unit.

More Information

Simple Venturi Systems and Parts

AerMax: Top Quality Compressor-Powered Aeration

Single Tank Aeration Units: Filtration and Aeration in One Convenient Vessel

Aeration Parts from Pure Water Products

How Aeration Works

PWO0721