Free Republic

In the first installment of this two part series, we examine the factors that are influencing how individuals, major corporations, and other countries, are rethinking the most basic, yet vital resource all, water. In part two, we take a detailed look at an increasingly popular alternative to the municipal water system, Rainwater Harvesting. Part two further explores the pros and cons, basic components, and key factors to consider in designing a rain water harvesting system...

Sixty-five years ago, on January 25, 1945, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, added fluoride to its municipal water system and community water fluoridation began. Since that day, this simple, safe, and inexpensive public health intervention has contributed to a remarkable decline in tooth decay in the United States, with each generation enjoying better oral health than the previous generation. After fluoride’s oral health benefits were discovered in the 1930s, the next step was to achieve optimal levels in community water supplies. Four communities had agreed to undertake community studies, but Grand Rapids was the first to begin implementation. After...

No Electricity, No Water, No Patience By Choi Song Min [2012-01-13 18:01 ] Many of the residents of luxury apartments in Pyongyang are leaving their homes for the heated homes of relatives or other warmer locations. An inside source who visited Pyongyang at the end of last month said in a phone interview with the Daily NK today, “People previously had no supplies of water so didn't have drinking water and could not go to the bathroom without difficulty, but now that there are heating problems too the people are inevitably leaving their homes. This year, many people are locking...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a natural gas driller has been accused of tainting water wells with methane and possibly hazardous chemicals say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is promising to deliver fresh water. Homeowners in Dimock Township have been without a reliable supply of clean water since Houston-based driller Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. stopped making daily deliveries more than a month ago. Three Dimock residents say the EPA told them Friday it's hiring a private contractor to deliver water to their homes about 20 miles south of the New York state line....

Robert Kennedy, Jr., recently urged Canadians not to sell or share water with the USA. Nick Lees wrote this article for the 18 January 2008 edition of the Edmonton Journal. Kennedy and Hollywood gliterati were in Banff to raise funds for the Waterkeeper Alliance. Along with Kennedy were such luminaries as Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Jason Priestly, Christie Brinkley, Daryl Hannah, and Kelsey Grammer. Here are some excerpts from Lees' article: "The U.S. southwest is already experiencing a water crisis, with lots of people moving there and development increasing exponentially," said Kennedy. "They have already run out of water....

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

Revisiting the resilient lifestyle… Things finally collapse, and you go to the basement, start digging out survival gear and freeze dry food. You gather the family around the radio, shotgun in hand and begin worrying about how long the “stuff” will last. OR You get up at six AM as usual, open a bag of your favorite coffee, mixing it 50/50 with the chickory root you gathered in the summer. Opening the spout on the Big Berkey water filter, you fill the percolator you picked up at a yard sale, for 2 bucks. You set the coffee on the woodstove...

Foreign hackers broke into a water plant control system in Illinois last week and damaged a water pump in what appears to be the first reported case of a malicious cyber attack damaging a critical computer system in the United States, according to an industry expert. On Nov. 8, a municipal water district employee in Illinois noticed problems with the city’s water pump control system, and a technician determined the system had been remotely hacked into from a computer located in Russia, said Joe Weiss, an industry security expert who obtained a copy of an Illinois state fusion center report...

One of the main things that gets talked about Prepper-wise is the availability of drinkable water. We've all heard the old adages over and over about being able to live weeks without food, but only days without water and minutes without air. Turns out there is a DIRT CHEAP (as in FREE!!!!) way to disinfect enough water for daily use and all it takes is BEING PREPARED and having some nice weather. SODIS. Stands for Solar Disinfecting. I guess the little cooties that live in the water really don't like to get a tan! In fact, the UV in sunlight...

José Benítez, the mayor of Huarmey, a town on the coast of central Peru, claims that the high levels of strontium in the local tap water is reducing male hormones and causing an increase in the homosexual population, reported Peruvian newspaper, La Republica. Benitez made the comments at the launch of a local water access project, it was reported. The mayor's audience was surprised by his comments, and he is being criticized by some for his "ignorance." Dr. Robert Castro Rodriguez, dean of the College of Pharmaceutical Chemistry of Lima, said Benitez's claims were off the mark, telling a Peruvian...

SAN DIEGO -- A landmark accord that ended decades of acrimony over how Southern California gets its water is in jeopardy. A California appeals court is considering whether to overturn a 2003 pact that created the nation's largest farm-to-city water transfer and set new rules for dividing the state's share of the Colorado River. If a lower court ruling stands, consequences could ripple to six other Western states and Mexico, which also rely on the 1,450-mile river that flows from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. ... In January 2010, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee gutted the...

"EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact."

"In a scarcely believable ­ruling, a panel of experts threw out a claim that regular water consumption is the best way to rehydrate the body. The bizarre diktat from Brussels has far-reaching implications..."

President Obama wants to control all the land and all the water in the United States. Legislation that would have deleted the word "navigable" from the federal Clean Water Act and given the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over every drop of moisture in the country crashed and burned last Congress. But Obama's EPA, as usual, won't take no for an answer, and is now attempting to ignore two Supreme Court decisions, commonsense, and the American people and vastly expand federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction via guidance document. AFP activists put more than 21,000 comments into the regulatory...

Texas needs rain — and needs it quickly — to keep farmers and ranchers from suffering even bigger losses next year from the drought that already has left them with record-breaking losses this year, producers said Friday while in San Antonio. Corn growers in Texas could encounter even bigger losses in 2012 after seeing output fall by 40 percent this year; and rice plantings, which fell by only 2 percent this year, could be cut nearly in half if more water does not become available soon, officials said. “It could drive us to acreage levels we've probably not seen in...

Utility company PROHIBITING illegal immigrants from obtaining electric, gas, water or sewer service in Alabama... A major utilities company in Alabama is now prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving electricity, gas, water or wastewater services to heated reactions on both sides, but they're just following the law. The Decatur Utilities company is now one of many in the state that follows the newly signed immigration law which prohibits business with illegal immigrants in the state or its subdivisions. 'We did not [originally] document or confirm whether or not they were citizens or aliens here legally,' Stephen Pirkle, Decatur business manager and...

...The orders do tremendous harm to the economy as well as to people’s lives by preventing them from using their property the way they had intended. This is one reason that the Physical Property Rights ranking by the International Property Rights Index (IPRI) has shown a decline in recent years for the United States. The great harm that each and everyone one of these “administrative compliance orders” causes has recently been brought home by a couple from Idaho. Mike and Chantell Sackett purchased .63 acres of land for $23,000 in 2005 to build their dream home. Despite being 500 feet...

In recent times, the world has witnessed a major surge in regional unrests caused primarily by the shortage of water. Tension builds up between two or more countries when an effort is made by any upper riparian country to control the waterways of transboundary rivers. Factors like population surge, industrialization and other development activities compel a country to control waterways. When such activities begin to affect the livelihood, ecology and growth of the lower riparian countries, they become a source of dispute. As in other parts of the world, tension has also been growing both in South Asia and Southeast...

A grain of salt or two may be all that microbial electrolysis cells need to produce hydrogen from wastewater or organic byproducts, without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or using grid electricity, according to Penn State engineers. "This system could produce hydrogen anyplace that there is wastewater near sea water," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering. "It uses no grid electricity and is completely carbon neutral. It is an inexhaustible source of energy." Microbial electrolysis cells that produce hydrogen are the basis of this recent work, but previously, to produce hydrogen, the fuel cells required some...

Congressman Tom McClintock (CA-04), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Water and Power, today made the following remarks on the House floor in opposition to administration plans for removal of Klamath dams. Mr. Speaker: This generation is facing spiraling electricity prices and increasingly scarce supplies. Californians have had to cut back to the point that their per capita electricity consumption is now lower than that of Guam, Luxembourg and Aruba. What is the administration’s solution? Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced yesterday that the administration is moving forward with a plan to destroy four perfectly good hydroelectric dams on the Klamath...

The safe bet remains that Sarah Palin is simply engaged in a long and tiresome tease. Every few weeks comes some new sign of her supposedly imminent entry into the GOP presidential race, but nothing ever seems to happen. For the latest flurry of speculation, we can thank Karl Rove, who used several television appearances last weekend to argue that "I think she gets in" and to suggest that Palin's scheduled appearance at a Sept. 3 Tea Party event in Iowa might double as a campaign launch. Like each one that's come before it, chances are that this eruption will...

The world will recognize the Depression we have tried to cover up. This is not a US-centric story. The Eurozone will get the unemployment and tax consequences too. Germany will be forced to choose between propping up the entire rest of the Euro (which it can't) and detonating it and going back to the Deutsche Mark (which it will be forced to.) There is a very high probability of war that comes out of this, although the exact trigger is not something I can forecast. War is the classical solution to these problems, and it is unlikely to be different...

MUSLIMS in Bolton are being urged to consider avoiding drinking sacred water during Ramadan — due to dangerous ingredients including arsenic and nitrates. Zam Zam water comes from a special source in Saudi Arabia and under law cannot not be exported for sale. But liquid labelled Zam Zam is on offer in the UK, or has been brought here, and tests have shown it may contain high levels of the poisonous substances, including almost three times the legal limit of arsenic. There have been no reports of anyone in Bolton becoming ill but health chiefs are issuing a warning as...

BEIJING—When Luo Yiqi visited the Inner Mongolia region of northern China 3 years ago, he was in for a surprise. In recent years, overgrazed grasslands had withered and turned to desert. Luo had been expecting that. But what stunned the ecologist from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, were the rice fields along a desiccated riverbed. Farmers were pumping water from deep aquifers to cultivate one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. “Apparently, farmers did not get enough scientific guidance,” says Luo. Of all China's environmental woes, the biggest threat to livelihoods and food security may be looming water shortages....

Peshawar 13 August 2011, Drinking water of two union council of district Peshawar was found polluted. This was found in survey which conducted by an international organization in 92 union councils of Peshawar. Report has also submitted to district coordination officer Peshawar about unhygienic water. International organization has tested the drinking water of 92 UC in laboratory, in which they found drinking water were not safe for drinking. According to Report two Union Council of Peshawar district Shaheen Muslim Town and Larama UC water were not safe for the human. The water which supplied to these union councils was totally...

KEMP, Texas - The taps were turned off in the city of Kemp Sunday. It moved from simply asking folks to conserve water to not allowing it to flow from their faucets for 48 hours. "We're out of water," said Kemp Mayor Donald Kile.

Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old cloud harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. The cloud of water vapor surrounds a supermassive black hole called a quasar located 12 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery shows that water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence, researchers said. "Because the light we are seeing left this quasar more than 12 billion years ago, we are seeing water that was present only some 1.6 billion years after the beginning of...

A man was shot dead after being accused by his killer of intentionally pouring water over his sister. Jimmy Parker from Chicago was confronted by Charles Sims, and shot eight times after denying any wrongdoing. Sims' sister had claimed that Parker had targeted her, however police investigations revealed that a faulty air conditioning unit was to blame for the spill. Upon learning of his sister's plight, Sims approached Parker, who having rejected the accusation, was punched and then shot repeatedly with a 9mm handgun. Chicago Police Detective Anthony Noradin said that Sims allegedly stood over Parker to 'finish him off.'...

The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked...

"They overdrink because they're thirsty." It seems like everyone is feeling the heat this summer. Human, canine, feline, or even bovine, we're all at the mercy of high temperatures.

THE GREAT DROUGHT OF 2011 Is America's Worst Since The Dust Bowl Robert Johnson Jul. 12, 2011, 6:32 AM Fourteen states are suffering from a drought so early and severe that it's already causing comparisons with the dust bowl years of the 1930's. According to a story in The New York Times, farmers are running wells dry, crops aren't growing and livestock can't be fed. “It’s horrible so far,” said Mike Newberry, a Georgia farmer who is trying grow cotton, corn and peanuts on a thousand acres. “There is no description for what we’ve been through since we started planting...

FALL RIVER (CBS) — There’s another strange twist after a woman’s body was found floating in a public pool in Fall River, possibly going unnoticed for days. The mayor of Fall River says “that health inspectors from the City visited the pool on Monday and on Tuesday and inspected the facilities,” which was during the time that body was believed to be in the water. Marie Joseph was at the pool on Sunday and hadn’t been seen since. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, when some kids broke into the Veteran’s Memorial swimming pool and found Joseph’s body floating in the...

The healthy growth of mankind depends on continuously decreasing the cost and increasing the availability of water and energy everywhere. Nice thought. Why mention it? Its a mission statement. For who? Microsoft founder Bill Gates and through him America's billionaires. Why Bill Gates? His passion; According to a recent interview Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied. What I’m doing now involves understanding maths, risk-taking. The first half of my life was good preparation for the second half.’ Now in the context of the interview he was talking about the development of a...

Resumption of decontamination system not in sight The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has still not resumed operations of a system to decontaminate highly radioactive water. Tokyo Electric Power Company had planned to start decontaminating and recycling the water by July 17th to cool the reactors. Water is being injected continuously into the reactors and the resulting contaminated water is starting to fill up the storage facilities, raising fears that it will start overflowing around July 5th. So far 4,500 tons of contaminated water has been treated in a test run, and work to remove salt...

Stellar sprinklers may help irrigate cosmos, study suggests.Seven hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a young, sunlike star has been found with jets that blast epic quantities of water into interstellar space, shooting out droplets that move faster than a speeding bullet. The discovery suggests that protostars may be seeding the universe with water. These stellar embryos shoot jets of material from their north and south poles as their growth is fed by infalling dust that circles the bodies in vast disks. "If we picture these jets as giant hoses and the water droplets as bullets, the amount shooting out...

Where sea meets sky, there are lots of water molecules with an identity crisis. About a quarter of the H2O in water’s uppermost layer can’t decide whether to be liquid or gas: One hydrogen atom stays in the drink while the other pokes up, vibrating in the air. This layer of molecular ambiguity is extremely thin and has little or no effect on the water below it, new data reported June 9 in Nature show. Right beneath the liquid’s surface, water molecules go about their business just as if the air weren’t there. That may seem like a dull discovery,...

China's Drought: A Game Changer? Also Sprach Analyst Jun. 6, 2011, 6:26 AM Earlier, I pointed out that the drought in China along the Yangtze River region is now becoming the worst in many years. Some people blamed the Three Gorges Dam, noting some correlation between building large dams and droughts in neighbouring regions, although it is too hard to say with absolute certainty that it is the case. Whatever causes the drought, some people raised concerns on the China drought situation and its impact on the economy. At the moment, quite frankly, I have very little idea on how...

BANGOR, Maine — For the third straight year — and four of the last five — a Bangor High School student has been chosen Maine state winner for the annual U.S. Stockholm Junior Water Prize. Leila Musavi, a 16-year-old graduating senior, will be one of 51 — Puerto Rico is included — high school students attending the national competition in Chicago June 23-25. “I’ve always liked the sciences from an early age,” said Musavi. “Both my parents have careers in science, and it’s cool to research topics no one has studied before. I like the unknown part of it and...

An analysis of sediments brought back by the Apollo 17 mission has shown that the Moon's interior holds far more water than previously thought.The analysis, reported in Science, has looked at pockets of volcanic material locked within tiny glass beads. It found 100 times more water in the beads than has been measured before, and suggests that the Moon once held a Caribbean Sea-sized volume of water. The find also casts doubt on aspects of theories of how the Moon first formed. A series of studies in recent years has only served to increase the amount of water thought to...

It is close to an article of faith on the left that any hydrocarbon-based source of energy must cause severe pollution problems. The extraordinary benefits to America from cheap natural gas released by the fracking technique have been fought with ginned-up propaganda about purported water pollution. But yesterday, under oath, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson admitted that there have been no (as in zero) instances of ground water contamination from fracking, despite the propaganda that has convinced many progressives that fracking is a devil's bargain. Watch the video in which Jackson states: "I'm not aware of any proven case where the...

TEPCO says contaminated water may be leaking at Fukushima plant Thursday 26th May, 04:30 PM JST TOKYO — The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Thursday it has been looking into a possible leak of radioactive water from a temporary storage building after finding the water level had dropped. Tokyo Electric Power Co said it had not detected unusual levels of radioactive substances in nearby groundwater, but if the leak is confirmed, it could affect the overall plan to remove contaminated water from reactor-related facilities to enable work inside them. The utility will also check if the...

Tokyo Electric to Halt Toxic Water Transfer for Weeks Fukushima, May 23 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> will suspend for weeks the transfer of highly radioactive water from two nuclear reactors to waste disposal facilities at the Fukushima No. 1 plant. The disposal facilities will reach their storage limits within days, but equipment to clean up the contaminated water will not start operating until mid-June, company officials said. Tokyo Electric has been collecting highly radioactive water that leaked from the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors into nearby facilities including the basements of the reactor turbine buildings. At present,...

I'm old enough to have a vague memory of clothes so white that they were called bright. This happened despite the absence of additives — the ridiculous varieties of sprays and bottles and packets that festoon our cabinets today and that we throw into the wash to try to boost the cleaning power of our pathetic machines and increasingly useless laundry soap. Then, the other night, I experienced an amazing blast from the past. I added a quarter cup of trisodium phosphate (TSP) and otherwise "treated" nothing. The results were nothing short of mind-boggling. Everything was clean — clean in...

LEMOORE, Calif. — In what often sounded like a stump speech, Sarah Palin tailored a searing critique of big government to an audience in California’s Central Valley on Sunday, telling supporters the region’s woes could be blamed on politicians picking "a 3-inch fish" over jobs. The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, speaking at a community college arena here, was referring to the delta smelt, a dwindling local species, protections for which have cut water shipments to the region and turned fertile land fallow. "This faceless government takes away their lifeline, which is water, and they did it, they turned off...

TUCSON — A lawyer for environmental activists wants a federal judge to order two U.S. agencies — The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army — to renegotiate a biological opinion concerning the San Pedro River and its environs contending the two entities have failed to follow the Endangered Species Act. The plaintiff’s attorney, McCrystie Adams, said the continuing growth in the Sierra Vista area is caused by the existence of Fort Huachuca and as more people come to the area, they “are draining the aquifer year after year.” However, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney contends all the requirements...

We’ve seen plenty of concepts designed to lessen the physical burden of being a member of the military — Marines using portable renewable power stations, clothing that charges radios and GPS devices. But there’s not much being done to address drinking water, one of the heaviest yet most critical battlefield necessities. Now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory might have a solution that can help lessen the weight of water. A new condensation process captures water from burning diesel fuel, and is so efficient that it could theoretically produce a gallon of water from a gallon of diesel, using lightweight materials....

The next time you go to the vending machine for a bottle of water (costing 6 cents an ounce) or, instead, sip from the drinking fountain (free), you will be taking part in another debate that touches on the fate of humankind. Because the next time you grab a bottle from a case in the fridge (costing a penny an ounce) or fill a glass from the tap (a penny for 5 gallons) you will be choosing between dollars and cents, essential hydration and environmental waste, and personal health and public health. Let your wallet be your first guide, opponents...

Spaceships powered primarily by water could open up the solar system to exploration, making flights to Mars and other far-flung locales far cheaper, a recent study has found. A journey to Mars and back in a water-fueled vehicle could cost as little as one space shuttle launch costs today, researchers said. And the idea is to keep these "space coaches" in orbit between trips, so their relative value would grow over time, as the vehicles reduce the need for expensive one-off missions that launch from Earth. The water-powered space coach is just a concept at the moment, but it could...

Many of us know the warnings that have been put out regarding second hand smoke. We know that if you are in the same room with a smoker that youÂ’re being exposed to the risks of lung cancer just like the smoker.This is also true with the water supply. Water filtration systems are effective in many regards but they are not filtering all dangers from our water.An article in a last yearÂ’s National Catholic Register discussed what is happening to the fish in our waterways because of the birth controls being used are then seeping into our water.With all the...

Shops across Tokyo began rationing goods -- milk, toilet paper, rice and water -- as a run on bottled water coupled with delivery disruptions left shelves bare Thursday nearly two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami. The unusual sights of scarcity in one of the world's richest, most modern capitals came a day after city officials reported that radioactive iodine in the Tokyo's tap water measured more than twice the level considered safe for babies.