Water harvesting helps Kenya’s women cope with failing rains

by James Karuga

NGURUBANI, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When Rose Wanjiku first moved to her home in Central Kenya province 14 years ago, the region received four months of rain every year. The rains began in April and again in October, and were sufficient for a small-scale farmer such as herself to grow staples like maize and beans to feed her family and sell the surplus at local markets.

Today the Ngurubani area gets only two months of rain a year. Because of the growing scarcity, Wanjiku has resorted to irrigating her crops with water pumped from the Thiba River when rains fail in mid-season. Even though the river is just a stone’s throw away from her house and fields, the water pump means extra expenses for her household.

“Farming has become very expensive for us these days. We hardly make profits,” said her husband Munene. His wife added that the river water cannot be used for household purposes because it is too muddy.

To counter the water shortages, Wanjiku, 45, has begun harvesting rainwater. Her roof is fitted with gutters and through a loan fromSMEP, a Kenyan microfinance programme, she has bought a 2,300-litre (600-gallon) water tank to store the harvested water.

Rainwater gathered since April has been sustaining her household until the rains are due to begin again next month.

Wanjiku began making loan payments of 1,000 Kenyan shillings (around $11) a month in February, and aims to clear the loan by November.

The frustrations of poor rainfall also have taken a toll on Margaret Njeri Muthee, 38, another farmer and secretary of the 12-member Wendani Women’s Group, which also counts Wanjiku as a member.

Njeri recalls that when she first moved to Ngurubani 15 years ago, rains were regular and she was able to harvest up to two 90kg bags of beans per acre of land.  Today she gets half a bag of beans at most.

“The weather has really changed here – there is a chill I never saw before, destroying our staples,” Njeri said. Because of the unpredictable weather and poor crop yields, Njeri now rears pigs, in addition to chickens and cattle.

“I’m tired of farming maize and beans,” she added.

As a result of increasingly short rainfall, Njeri was spending 400 shillings (nearly $5) every week to pay for a donkey-drawn cart to fetch water from the Thiba River, over a kilometre away from her home. But now she, too, has a water tank, bought on credit from SMEP.

Njeri and Wanjiku are among over 7,000 Kenyan recipients of an ongoing water credit scheme accessed through microfinance institutions such as SMEP. The scheme enables households to buy tanks to capture and store clean rainwater that runs from rooftops along the gutters.

Widespread Water Stress

UNESCO reports that 17 million of Kenya’s 41 million inhabitants lack access to safe water.

Of the loan recipients, 92 percent are women. According to Patrick Alubbe, East Africa regional director of Water.Org, a nongovernmental organisation, it is the women in households who must spend hours searching for water, and this makes them appreciate the scheme, as it saves them time.

SMEP has given 821 water-related loans so far, with repayment rates of more than 90 percent, according to Fridah Njeru, SMEP’s senior programmes coordinator.

Kenya has 29,000 beneficiaries of water-related loans countrywide, with some funds going to building latrines or fix sewer systems to improve sanitation. The scheme also operates in Uganda, Bangladesh and India.

With a tank to harvest rainwater, Wanjiku says she no longer needs to wait for mud in collected river water to settle at the bottom of her containers so that she can use it at home.

Kenya’s average annual rainfall is 630 mm, which qualities it as a water-scarce country, according to a study published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. However, a study by the Southern and Eastern Africa Rainwater Network notes that large groundwater aquifers represents a valuable water resource not directly related to or dependent on rainfall patterns.

Experts are pointing to aquifers as the country’s next important source of water. This comes following the recent discovery of aquifers in the drought-hit Turkana region in Kenya’s north, where rainfall does not exceed 450mm annually.

The aquifers are reported to hold 250 billion cubic metres – enough to supply Kenya’s needs for 70 years at the current rate of consumption of 3 billion cubic metres a year.

Source: Reuters.

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Warning raised about ’emerging contaminants’

by Cynthia McCormick

A new study by the Silent Spring Institute in Newton (MA) shows that sewage treatment plants aren’t any better at removing a new class of contaminants from treated water than septic systems.

Researchers found that antibiotics and chlorinated flame retardants, for instance, pass through both systems relatively unscathed.

The results weren’t surprising because wastewater treatment systems are made to remove pathogens and solid waste, not the chemicals contained in medicine, herbicides, plasticizers and other products, Silent Spring Institute research scientist Laurel Schaider said.

But the study shows that systemsbeing developed to protect the Cape’s coastal waters from nutrient overloading and algae blooms should also take steps to protect drinking water from what scientists call “emerging contaminants,” she said.

Many of the chemicals are considered hormone disrupters that act like estrogen, which has caused breast cancer cells to grow in a laboratory setting.

For the report — available at www.silentspring.org — the Newton-based research institution analyzed 16 already existing studies of wastewater and septic system treatments, including two originating on Cape Cod.

In recent years, Silent Spring has released studies showing the presence of dozens of emerging contaminants in public and private wells on the Cape. The Cape now has “a critical moment” in deciding the future direction of wastewater treatment and how it affects drinking water, Schaider said.

“It is a concern, and the county will be looking at how best to deal with the issue,” Tom Cambareri, water resources program manager for the Cape Cod Commission, said. “We’re evaluating all possible alternatives.”

Bacteria break down some chemicals and use them as a food source, removing them from the water supply, Schaider said. Both sewage treatment systems and septic systems do a good job removing chemicals such as caffeine and acetaminophen, for instance, she said.

Other chemicals such as the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole and TCEP, a chlorinated flame retardant, pass through both systems largely unchanged, Schaider said.

Next, Silent Spring will look at whether ecological toilets of the type being evaluated for use in Falmouth remove the contaminants from treated water, Schaider said.

Source: South Coast Today.

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 Acidic Water

by Pure Water Annie

 Gazette technical wizard Pure Water Annie offers a nutshell view of treating acid water.

Acidic water is, by definition, any water with a pH of less than 7.0.

Water that is low in pH can have undesirable effects on plumbing fixtures and piping. Green staining of fixtures is a common indication of acidic water. Copper pipe can be ruined by water low in pH.

Low pH is also an issue in water treatment. Sometimes it is necessary to raise the pH of acidic water in order for other treatment strategies to apply. For example, oxidizing iron to prepare it for filtration is difficult if the pH of the water is low, so raising the pH of the water is often the first step in removing iron from well water.

Almost all water treatment issues involve pH in some way. Water constituents change in nature as pH changes, so many treatments can be applied only if pH is within the desired range.

Although the sales strategy of a class of drinking water products called “ionizers” is based on raising the pH of acidic water, there is no evidence that drinking water low in pH has any negative effect on health. Taste, of course, can be an issue if the pH is very low.

Treating Acidic Water

The pH value of water decreases as the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, increases, and pH increases as the amount of bicarbonate alkalinity increases. The ratio of carbon dioxide and bicarbonate alkalinity within the ranges of 3.6 to 8.4 is an indication of the pH value of the water.

Acidic water can be corrected by several water treatment strategies. A common treatment is injection of soda ash, and a more aggressive treatment is the injection of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide). This is usually accomplished by injecting a solution of the soda ash or caustic soda directly into the water pipe.

A second strategy is to run the water through a bed of calcite (the most common treatment mineral) or corosex. As the low pH water passes through the bed, the mineral dissolves into the water and raises its pH.

Calcite treatment raises the pH by adding calcium carbonate to the water. This has the sometimes undesirable effect of increasing the hardness of the water slightly. Calcite and corosex are most commonly used in backwashing filters, but calcite alone can be used with simple upflow filters if the water is reasonably clean. Calcite is also commonly used in cartridge form as a postfiltration treatment for undersink reverse osmosis units. RO lowers pH, and calcite filters are used to bring the pH back to neutral.

Go here for more information about calcite filters or soda ash feeders.

Also, more about pH and water.

Dwindling Water Supplies Make Every Drop Count

 Drought and chronic water shortages played a significant role in sparking Syria’s civil war and in unrest throughout much of the Middle East, water experts now believe.

Around the world, water demand already exceeds supply in regions with more than 40 percent of the world’s population. That may climb to 60 percent in the coming decade, a new study has found.

“Water-scarce regions can’t grow enough food to feed their own people,” said co-author Manzoor Qadir of United Nations University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

About 70 percent of the world’s freshwater – and up to 95 percent in some countries – is used for irrigation. There is intense competition for freshwater between municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses. Increasingly, agriculture has been losing out, particularly in water-stressed regions, Qadir told IPS.

Between 2006 and 2011, up to 60 percent of Syria’s land experienced its worst ever drought and a series of crop failures. In 2009, the U.N. reportedthat over 800,000 Syrians lost their livelihoods and fled to cities as result of the drought.

The entire Mediterranean region is undergoing a prolonged drought that has been linked to climate change, according to a recent U.S. study. If climate-altering carbon emissions continue at current rates, droughts in the region will worsen and lengthen.

Drought In Sri Lanka

As water supplies fall, many regions are using urban wastewater, a very valuable resource if it is treated properly, says the study “Global, regional, and country level need for data on wastewater generation, treatment, and use“, published Sep. 5 in the journal Agricultural Water Management.

This is the first study to look at how wastewater is used in 181 countries. One of the key findings is that only 55 countries have good data. Synthesising what data there are, researchers found that high-income countries treat 70 percent of their wastewater while middle-income countries treat 28 to 38 percent. Just eight percent of wastewater generated in low-income countries undergoes any kind of treatment.

“From the earliest of times, most wastewater has truly been wasted. However, it is a vast resource if we reclaim it properly, which includes the separation of municipal from industrial wastewater,” said UNU-INWEH Director Zafar Adeel.

The volume of wastewater potentially available worldwide each year is equivalent to 14 months of outflow from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, Adeel told IPS.

In poor, water-scarce countries, wastewater is widely used to irrigate foodlands – some estimate as much as 300 million hectares producing 10 percent of the world’s food, the study says.

However, there is little data to confirm this. It is often a country’s ‘dirty little secret’ that much of the food consumed in urban areas is grown using untreated wastewater.

Wastewater is valuable because it has very high level of nutrients, including potash, nitrogen and phosphorus, eliminating the need and cost of fertilisers. However, untreated wastewater can transmit diseases such as cholera. Chile experienced cholera outbreaks and banned the use of untreated wastewater in 1992.

“Disease outbreaks from using wastewater do happen but it is rarely cited as the cause,” said Qadir.

One reason is that few studies have been done. A few years ago Qadir and colleagues discovered higher rates of waterborne diseases like gastroenteritis in children in the Mediterranean who were eating food grown using untreated wastewater.

In the 1990s, fruit and vegetable exports from Jordan were banned for similar reasons. Jordan has since implemented an aggressive campaign to rehabilitate and improve wastewater treatment plants and introduced enforceable standards.

“Israel uses nearly every drop of its wastewater with specific uses determined by the quality”, Qadir said.

Many homes in California have separate grey and black water collection systems. Grey water from showers and dishwashing is reused to water lawns and gardens, the report said.

People are generally reluctant to eat food grown using wastewater but it is perfectly safe if treated properly, Qadir stressed.

“Unfortunately, water treatment is not seen as a priority in many countries.”

Source: Inter Press Service

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Choosing a Countertop or Undersink Drinking Water Filter

by Gene Franks

Standard vs . Proprietary

If you purchase a water filter with a “proprietary” design, you won’t have to choose a filter cartridge for it because the filter manufacturer has chosen it for you. In other words, if you purchase an Aquasana, you have only one cartridge choice: the standard Aquasana. If you purchase a Multi-Pure filter, Multi-Pure has already decided which cartridge you will use: the standard Multi-Pure.

Aquasana and Multi-Pure provide you exactly the same cartridge whether you have city water with chlorine or with chloramines or whether your city fluoridates its water or not. If your well water has a rotten egg odor, if it has sand, or silt, or iron, or nitrates, or bacteria, with Multi-Pure and Aquasana it’s all the same: you’ll get the same filter cartridge you would get if you lived in Cleveland or Tucson.

Proprietary Countertop.  Price: $260. Replacement Cartridge Price: $70.  Cartridge Styles Available: 1. 

Standard Sized Countertop.  Price: $77. (With Lifetime Guarantee). Standard Cartridge Replacement Price: $21. Cartridge Styles Available:  Countless.  

If, however, you purchase a water filter that uses a standard-sized 9.75” X 2.5”cartridge, you have literally hundreds of excellent filter cartridges to choose from. Moreover, if you bought your filter from Sterling Springs, you can replace the cartridge with one purchased from Pure Water Products. Or vice versa.

Standard sizes got to be standard for a reason. They are a convenient and practical size that offers good performance in a compact package.

The variety of filter cartridges available in the standard 9.75” X 2.5” format is amazing. Every major filter cartridge manufacturer provides filter cartridges in this size.

In addition, with standard-sized units you have the option of multiple cartridges. Standard-sized housings can be easily joined to form multi-canister units. Multiple housings, of course, allow cartridges to be mixed and matched to created a total filtration unit with much more capacity and treatment range than is possible with a one-size-fits-all proprietary unit.

Here are some examples of the excellent cartridges available for standard sized-filters:

MatriKX CTO Plus carbon block, rated for 20,000 gallons of chlorine reduction, it’s a great filter for chlorine, chloramines, VOCs, chemicals in general, plus excellent taste/odor performance. A very tight nominal 0.6 micron filter.

MatriKX VOC. A tight 0.6 micron coconut shell carbon block. Designed for overall performance on chlorine and chemicalsd, but is especially good at VOC reduction.It’s a great taste/odor enhancer as well.

MatriKX PB1. A great one-cartridge drinking water filter, it is a tight 0.5 micron carbon block (too tight for use in reverse osmosis units) with lead reduction and cyst removal capability.

Doulton Super Sterasyl Imperial. An oversized-Doulton ceramic cartridge with a carbon core, this is one of several Doulton cartridges made to fit standard housings. Its strong point is removal of bacteria and cysts, but it’s also a good all-around chemical filter. While Doulton undersink and countertop units command a premium price, the regular-sized cartridges can fit into any standard housing.

Pentek ChlorPlus 10. A tough Pentek carbon block made with specialty carbon aimed toward removal of chloramines from city water, the cartridge has excellent all around carbon performance for taste/odor and chemical reduction.

In addition to carbon cartridges, there are many standard-sized “media” cartridges that treat nitrates, fluoride, arsenic, iron, rotten-egg odor, low pH, scale buildup, hardness, high TDS and more.

Another important consideration in deciding between standard vs. proprietary units is pricing. Standard sizing, of course, means competition, which keeps pricing fair. It is not uncommon for a high quality 9.75” X 2.5” carbon block cartridge to cost ¼ the price of a propriety cartridge.

Nominal vs. Absolute

If you’re puzzled by what filter makers mean when they call their filters “absolute” or “nominal,” technical wizard Pure Water Annie will clear the matter up for you. 

Water filtration devices are rated by the sizes of particles that will pass through them. The ratings are normally expressed in microns.

Micron ratings are applied to all types of filtration devices, including even granular filters. It is said, for example, that a sand filter is roughly a 10 micron filter, meaning that it filters out particles ten microns and larger in girth. Carbon block filters are also assigned micron sizes, but micron ratings are most meaningful in comparing sediment filters.

The micron is a standard measure of size that is used by filter makers. The diameter of a human hair is about 90 microns. Sediment filters are used to catch particles 1/300 of that.

Most sediment filters are given ratings by their manufacturers that describe their effectiveness at removing particles down to a specified size. The most common of these are”nominal” and “absolute.”

Nominal, according to the Water Quality Association (WQA), means that the filter will filter out at least 85% of the particles of the size it is rated for. In other words, a filter that is rated as a 1 micron nominal can be expected to pick out 85% of the particles that are 1 micron or larger from the water that passes through it.

Absolute, theoretically, means that the filter will reject virtually all of the particles of the given size. The usual expectation is a 3-log rejection–or 99.9%. Absolute ratings are usually used for the tightest filters and for purposes where efficiency really matters. For example, if a filter maker promises removal of E. coli, more or less 85% efficiency isn’t good enough. If you’re going to trust your life to the filter, you expect an absolute 3-log or 4-log rating at the very least.

The problem with the absolute vs. nominal system is that there is really no universal standard that assures uniformity. Some makers of filters for non-critical applications, for example, might consider 70% rejection suitable for a nominal filter. Definitions vary from one manufacturer to another, and there is really no way for the end user to verify the claim. 

For most common filtration issues filters rated as “nominal” are used.  For example, a nominal 5 micron sediment filter is a standard size used in much residential water treatment.

Keep in mind that tighter is not always better.  The lower the micron rating of a filter, the more it restricts flow.  An absolute 1 micron filter is normally not a good choice for a residential sediment filter because there will be too much pressure loss.  If you put in a filter to remove sand, a filter with a low micron rating is not only unnecessary, but it will also become clogged much faster than a looser filter.

Reference:  The Pure Water Occasional.

Eastern rivers ‘on Rolaids’ raise concerns

Study links rising alkalinity to acid rain, urbanization

 by Timothy B. Wheeler

 Baltimore Sun

Fresh water isn’t what it used to be. New research has found that human activity has caused subtle but significant changes in the basic makeup of rivers in Maryland and elsewhere, with potential consequences for public water use and the health of aquatic ecosystems.

In a survey said to be the first of its kind, researchers say two-thirds of nearly 100 rivers and streams checked across the eastern United States, including the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, have become noticeably more alkaline over the past 25 to 60 years. It’s as if they’d been fed a steady dose of antacid medicine, “like rivers on Rolaids,” said Sujay S. Kaushal, a University of Maryland geologist and the study’s lead author.

Several years ago Kaushal and other colleagues documented a gradual increase in salt levels in streams in the Northeast, which at the time they attributed to runoff of road salt. But, Kaushal said, a closer look at stream sampling from the U.S. Geological Survey and other sources found the rising salinity also tied to the rivers’ increasing alkalinity.

“We weren’t expecting it to be this widespread,” he said. “These trends that we’re seeing in the Schuylkill River and Potomac River, these trends are troubling.”

Nor did the scientists expect to find that their leading suspect for changing river chemistry is an environmental menace thought vanquished long ago.

At first, they figured the rising alkalinity seen across the eastern United States came from landscape changes in a river’s watershed, such as mining or urban and suburban development. But the changes in river chemistry were so extensive that they figured something more, and more widespread, was going on.

They concluded it had to be acid rain.

Blamed for killing forests and rendering New England lakes lifeless in the 1970s, acid rain has been reduced dramatically in the decades since by government regulation of coal-burning power plants and motor vehicle exhaust, two leading sources of pollution that turned precipitation acidic.

They concluded it had to be acid rain.

Blamed for killing forests and rendering New England lakes lifeless in the 1970s, acid rain has been reduced dramatically in the decades since by government regulation of coal-burning power plants and motor vehicle exhaust, two leading sources of pollution that turned precipitation acidic.

Rainfall today is much less acidic than it used to be, experts say, but all sources of acid rain haven’t been muzzled. Rain in Maryland and elsewhere is still corrosive enough to dissolve limestone and other rocks.

“Despite the great progress we’ve made in controlling oxides of nitrogen and sulfur from smokestacks and tailpipes, the precipitation is still acidic, unhealthy for us and streams,” said Russell R. Dickerson, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Maryland.

The minerals released when rocks dissolve under acid rainfall tend to be alkaline, Kaushal explained. And those minerals aren’t just neutralizing the acidity in precipitation, but overwhelming it, he added.

The effect is pronounced in urban areas like Baltimore, he said, and even in streams like the Gwynns Falls, where there isn’t much natural limestone in the watershed. But there, he pointed out, “you have pavement, sidewalks and concrete,” with limestone often a major ingredient. They dissolve under acidic rain as well, in a process dubbed “chemical weathering.”

Baltimore’s streams also may get an extra dose of alkalinity antacid from its leaky sewers, Kaushal suggested, because wastewater can be alkaline.

“We think that acid rain is affecting all of them, coupled with mining and land use,” he said. “Basically when you have dissolving either of the limestone or concrete, that’s a kind of universal mechanism contributing to river alkalization.”

Just as some mysteries remain about how rivers’ chemistry is changing, the impacts also are uncertain, but could be problematic. Many streams in the Chesapeake Bay region are suffering from an overdose of nutrients. Increasing alkalinity coupled with an abundance of nitrogen, one of those nutrients, can generate ammonia in the water, which can kill fish. The changes also may accelerate algae growth, already a problem in bay waters.

With the rising salinity of rivers and streams, calcium concentrations are increasing as well, making the water “harder” for human usage, Kaushal said. That can complicate everything from showers to doing laundry, and can lead to “scaling” in water pipes, a buildup of calcium that constricts the flow.

William P. Stack, deputy program director of the Center for Watershed Protection, said he alerted Kaushal to the increasing chloride concentrations in Baltimore’s raw water supply several years ago when he was with the city Department of Public Works. Stack said he also noticed the city’s water was gradually getting harder. While the hardness is not a health threat, and can be treated to counter it, he said he still found it troubling.

“The broader concern is we’re picking up a signature in the ambient concentration or quality of our waters,” Stack said. “What else is going on that we’re not picking up? And do we really fully know what the ramifications are?”

Source: Baltimore Sun

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ANSI/NSF: What’s it all about?

by Gene Franks

Editor’s Note:  This article first appeared in the Pure Water Occasional for April 2010. It has since been expanded.

A standard question about water treatment products these days is to ask if they are “NSF certified.” For our products, the answer isn’t simple. Some of them carry full third-party certification obtained by the manufacturer, some have certification on some of their components, and some aren’t certified at all. And some have certification from third parties that have no affiliation with NSF.

“Is your product NSF certified?”  implies–and most take it to mean–that there is some federally sponsored (N for national) certifying agency, probably a branch of the EPA, that  “certifies” products the way that USDA puts its stamp on the rump of a dead pig making it an officially edible ham.  That isn’t the way it works at all.

Why  would KX Industries not just have its PB1 cartridge NSF/ANSI certified? Well, cost for one thing. It costs literally tens of thousands of dollars to obtain and maintain NSF/ANSI certification on a single product.  But also because it is a “component” rather than a full product, like an RO unit.  Common sense tells you that no matter how good the filter cartridge or the RO membrane, if you put it into a poorly manufactured, defective end product it will not produce a good result.  As a single example, no matter how good a filter cartridge is, if it is put into an inferior undersink water filter with a cheap faucet that leaches lead into the water, the cartridge certification means nothing. Performance certification has to be done for the entire device, not the individual components.

Many manufacturers use certification as a selling tool.  They spend  large amounts maintaining product certification and they advertise their products accordingly, often with the implication that uncertified products are not to be trusted.  Other manufacturers–KX Industries, for example, as well as many other highly respected manufacturers–rely as much on their own reputation and experience as third-party certification to sell their products.  The lower price they are able to charge because of the the money saved on certification gives an added selling advantage.

Certification is important.  It gives the customer confidence that the product meets a certain standard–either in materials it is made from or in its performance.  But if you limit yourself to products that are NSF/ANSI certified you may be depriving yourself of some really superior products as well as spending more than you need to.

“Let the buyer beware” is a two-edged sword.  It isn’t good to buy an inferior product, but no one likes the idea of paying an extra $30 for a filter cartridge to support the manufacturer’s advertising campaign.

Source: Pure Water Occasional.

  Molasses Spill Could Cause Substantial Damage to Marine Life

State officials are rushing to head off an environmental and health disaster in Honolulu Harbor, where nearly a quarter million gallons of molasses from a ruptured pipeline have caused a massive marine die-off.

On Wednesday, colorful surgeonfish, pufferfish and eels were swaying limp or lifeless in the currents.

How much damage the molasses spill has caused was still being assessed. But health officials estimate that it’s killing thousands of fish and damaging coral reefs.

State officials also warn there could be even more problems if they don’t quickly remove as many fish as possible from the contaminated waters. They worry that the dead fish could lure sharks into the harbor and Keehi Lagoon, where the plume of molasses has spread.

And the decaying fish could cause even more harm to the marine ecosystem.

“As fish die, oxygen is further sucked out of the water, leading to a domino effect of environmental impacts,” said Gary Gill, deputy director for environmental health for the state Department of Health.

The massive numbers of dead fish could even cause algae blooms that further deplete the water’s oxygen levels. Algae blooms can sicken or kill fish, as well as create elevated toxins and bacterial growth that can make people ill, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Source: Honolulu Civil Beat

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Avon Park stops water fluoridation

 by Marc Valero

Published: September 5, 2013

Editor’s Note: The piece below illustrates one of the overlooked issues of fluoridation: the lack of “quality control” in dispensing it, especially at small city water plants. Fluoride is a powerful poison. Adding it to a public water system it in a haphazard fashion is beyond irresponsible.  The story below describes the folly of dispensing a power full drug in widely varying dosages strengths to patients who take as little or as much as they choose. Please keep in mind as you read this that fluoride is a much more powerful poison that virtually any drug prescribed in carefully controlled doses by physicians. – Hardly Waite.

AVON PARK – Citing “no quality control,” City Manager Julian Deleon has stopped the injection of fluoride into the city’s drinking water.

Deleon said he contacted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to request permission to discontinue the fluoridation practice. The fluoride injection system has technology problems, he said.

The water demand drops off “drastically” during the very early morning hours such as around 2 a.m., Deleon noted.

The problem is that the fluoride injection pump has a fixed speed so when water demand is low it continues to pump the same amount of fluoride as during the periods of peak demand, he said.

“Based on my evaluation, we have no quality control over fluoride injection into the water,” Deleon said.

Adding fluoride to drinking water to fight tooth decay has been a controversial issue in many parts of the world for years. There have been recent news reports over the fluoride debate from Alberta, Canada (Lethbridge Herald) and New South Wales, Australia (Sydney Morning News).

A “concerned constitute” contacted State Rep. Cary Pigman, R-Avon Park about the Avon Park fluoride issue.

An email from Pigman’s office to Deleon asked if it was true that the water would no longer be fluoridated?

Avon Park’s Fluoride Injection System

Deleon replied to Pigman’s office, “As a professional engineer in the State of Florida, I did not deem the system capable of providing adequate quality control and safeguards in the injection of fluoride into the water supply.”

Deleon’s email included a link to 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoride by the Fluoride Action Network at fluoridealert.org.

The network states that the dose cannot be controlled.

Once fluoride is put in the water it is impossible to control the dose each individual receives because people drink different amounts of water. Being able to control the dose a patient receives is critical, according to the FAC. Some people, such as manual laborers, athletes, diabetics and people with kidney disease, drink substantially more water than others.

Deleon explained to Highlands Today that the city operates three water treatment plants, but only the plant at the airport was injecting fluoride into the water.

It would take a hydraulic modeling study to determine what areas of the city received the fluoride, but based on his “best judgement” it appears that everyone north of Main Street was getting fluoride, Deleon said.

Everyone south of Main Street probably was not getting fluoride because there is no fluoride injection at the Glenwood Avenue nor the Crystal Lake water plants, he said.

Deleon briefed the city council last night on his concerns about the fluoride injection system.

The fluoride issue was added to the Sept. 4 city council agenda for the meeting between the council and the police pension board.

The City of Sebring injects fluoride into the drinking water at five of its seven water plants. Water Production Supervisor Jay Angell said they try to maintain a fluoride level of 0.80 parts per million.

The system has a 100-gallon bulk tank of fluoride, which feeds into a 10-gallon “day tank,” he explained.

“The pump itself feeds out of the day tank so that if there were ever to be a malfunction, the most it could ever pump out in a 24-hour period would be that 10 gallons,” Angell said.

Each of the five water plants uses about 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of fluoride per day, he said. There are no fluoridation facilities at the Highlands Ridge nor the Sebring Regional Airport water plants, which were private facilities the city purchased about a year ago.

“We just haven’t gotten around to incorporating the fluoride into that yet,” Angell said.

The Town of Lake Placid has never added fluoride to its water.

Utility Director Gary Freeman said, “There is no particular reason why we don’t do it, but it has never been done. It hasn’t been pursued.”

No one has suggested that the city should treat the water with fluoride, he said.

Source: Highlands Today.

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