Josh Fox and Mark Ruffalo join with Joe Levine and Richard Murdock; they endeavor to protect and preserve America’s water sources today and for future generations.

Check out their site : http://www.citizensforwater.org/

Source : WHSV

WV Professor Offers Advice to Track Drilling’s Effects on Water

WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) A professor and a team of students at Wheeling Jesuit University have advice for West Virginians worried that natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale field could hurt their water supplies.

A professor and a team of students at Wheeling Jesuit University have advice for West Virginians worried that natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale field could hurt their water supplies.

Biology professor Ben Stout tells West Virginia Public Broadcasting that people should test their water daily with a conductivity pen they can buy online for $80 to $150. It measures the ability of dissolved materials to conduct electricity.

A kit from a federally certified lab can create a baseline for water quality by identifying those materials. He says people then must keep detailed records about conductivity, color, taste and odor.

Companies are rushing to tap the deposits underlying West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio.

Meanwhile, legislators are struggling with how to regulate the water-intensive hydraulic fracturing technologies the wells require.

Source : EPA.gov

As hydraulic fracturing expands across the U.S. to recover gas reserves in hard to reach rock formations, there is a growing concern about the health and environmental impacts of this practice. EPA is undertaking a scientific study at the request of Congress to investigate the impacts that hydraulic fracturing may have on drinking water. EPA will use a transparent, peer-reviewed process and independent sources of information. The results of the study will be announced in 2012 and will be used to inform the public of identified risks and to contribute to evaluating the need for legislative or regulatory reforms.

As part of the study’s information gathering process, EPA has issued voluntary requests for information to help the Agency examine the potential impacts that hydraulic fracturing may have on drinking water. This request will help both provide data where there is a lack of adequate information and contribute to resolving any scientific uncertainties surrounding hydraulic fracturing. The information requested in the voluntary letters includes the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluid, data on the impacts of the chemicals on human health and the environment, and substances released from natural gas wells into the environment after hydraulic fracturing.

Go here to read the press release.

For information on hydraulic fracturing: http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing

Source : Charleston Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia regulators plan to propose a new water quality standard aimed at least in part at protecting state rivers and streams from pollution created by large-scale natural gas drilling.

State Department of Environmental Protection officials unveiled their proposal during a meeting Wednesday in Charleston, and plan to issue it formally for public comment early next month.

The DEP proposal would set a legal limit for “total dissolved solids,” or TDS, of 500 milligrams per liter. It would apply in-stream to waterways statewide, making it more stringent than the existing standard in Pennsylvania, which applies a 500-milligram-per-liter standard only at the intake pipes for public drinking water systems.

“This is proactive to keep West Virginia waters suitable for consumption by our citizens and use by our industries,” said Pat Campbell, an assistant director in the DEP Division of Water and Waste Management.

DEP officials have been considering the proposal for more than a year already. Their studies were prompted by TDS problems that brought complaints about unpleasant odors and tastes in drinking water drawn from the Monongahela River in the fall of 2008. Then last fall, a massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek along the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border was blamed at least in part on TDS pollution.

Read more >>

Source : Charleston Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Recently a friend moved to Tucson, Az. Tucson is a fast-growing city with a gigantic problem. Water is scarce and feuds are on going about supply, much of which arrives through viaducts from outside the region. I advised my friend to make sure that any purchased home includes an allocation of viaduct water in the contract, an acceptable provision in that area.

Not long ago, basic economics included a discussion of “free goods” — water, oxygen, and similar commodities essential for life. That situation has changed dramatically. Oxygen is dispensed by vending machines in places as varied as Cusco, Peru, and Toyko, Japan. In a similar manner, water has become an extremely valuable commodity as well and is increasingly dispensed in bottles. Public drinking fountains will likely disappear as rapidly as payphones.

We all know that water is essential for life. As a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, I saw first hand the problems such as dehydration caused by a lack of water, and problems such as river blindness caused by bad water. The evening television news showed people in Haiti fighting each other for access to drinking water as they dealt with the devastating earthquake on Jan. 12 that made one in seven homeless and cost 300,000 lives.

We may not know that the cost of water is about to explode as fresh and clean water becomes scarcer. Since water is also the core ingredient for basic drinks and food products, scarcer water supplies will have an expensive impact throughout the chain of consumer goods. Contributing to the rising costs are changing climatic conditions such as drought as well as the purification techniques needed to clean the water of contaminants.

West Virginia is in a unique situation. West Virginia owns the waterways that touch the state’s boundaries, such as the Ohio River, as well as all creeks, rivers and streams within the state. Wise conservation and careful use of that extremely valuable resource will permit West Virginia to have a competitive edge for future growth, development and quality of life.

Read more >>

Since Monroe County does not have streams with the capacity to provide for public water supply sources, almost all residents rely on groundwater for their water consumption needs.  The public supplies available, which provide for about half of the county usage, primarily rely on springs or wells for their intake.

Due to the karst topography which underlies much of the county, underground streams, as indicated by numerous dye tracing activities conducted over the years, may travel for several miles.  Further, unlike in other subsurface environments such as sandstone wherein natural filtration takes place, karst aquifers do not receive this benefit.  This lack of filtration and substantial migration is, in the opinions of most authorities, the primary reason that about half of the water samples taken by the Monroe County Health Department over the last decade have been found unsatisfactory due to bacteriological contamination.  Thus a localized contamination event, such as might occur from a drilling error, has the potential to effect a hundred or more wells over a large area.

Although, as mentioned above, a number of dye tests have been undertaken at various locales throughout the county, there is still a substantial lack of information related to our underground aquifer system.  Much more testing and cataloging of results into a coordinated framework is needed to establish flow patterns and contamination potentials before we may understand the full potential of a contamination event.

Dale McCutcheon | Registered Sanitarian, Masters Degree-Environmental Science | Monroe County Health Department

Source : Aspen Institute

America’s drinking water and wastewater systems face increasing challenges in maintaining and replacing their pipes, treatment plants, and other critical infrastructure. Prolonging and renewing the nation’s high-quality water services requires a clear sense of what is a sustainable water infrastructure, the amount of investment needed to create and preserve it, where investments should be made, and by whom. In 2008 and 2009 the Aspen Institute convened a multi-stakeholder dialogue to help provide clarity and promote leadership on these issues.

. . .

For more information on the Dialogue on Sustainable Water Infrastructure in the United States, or to request a printed copy of the report, contact Regan Nelson, Project Manager, at regan.nelson@aspeninstitute.org or (202) 736-2916.

Read more and watch video >>