Inside the Reverse Osmosis building for the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County, California. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)
The Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County, California. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)
Water from the Groundwater Replenishment System fills a basin. An inlet pipe can be seen underwater. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)
Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:
Transcript
Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:
You think flush the toilet and it’s gone, right?
Well… that’s not happening in the O.C.
In Orange County California, the water people flush from their homes and businesses will
eventually come back to their taps.
The treated sewage water is sent to a water purification plant. It’s treated some more and
then pumped back into the aquifers where the county gets its water supply.
Mike Wehner is with the Orange County Water District. He says, at first, people kind of
held their nose at the idea:
“The biggest concern is kind of a general yuck-factor. It’s just, ‘You mean sewage? We’re
not going to drink that.’ But after people develop an understanding of the kind of
treatment processes we’re talking about, the yuck-factor diminishes, it goes away.”
Wehner says when the half billion dollar system is at its peak; it will add 70 million
gallons of recycled water a day to the areas drinking water supply.
Some bottling companies, such as Besco, sell water, but keep it in the Great Lakes basin. Some others bottle it and ship it out of the region in great quantities. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture, industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin, but few are more controversial than bottled water:
Transcript
Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water
withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture,
industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are
many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin,
but few are more controversial than bottled water:
(Sound of bottling plant)
I’m watching big clear-blue water bottles, the kind you see on water coolers, are
bouncing along on a conveyer to be washed and then filled with water.
Chuck Swartzle is the President of Besco Water Treatment…
“Uh, we treat it – it’s well water – we treat it, purify it with reverse
osmosis, sanitize it, filter it and bottle it.”
Besco also bottles water in smaller containers, the kind you might buy at
the convenience store.
All of Besco’s customers are within the Great Lakes basin, so the water
will eventually make its way back to the lakes, but some bottlers
distribute water far outside the basin.
One of Pepsico’s Aquafina bottled water plants gets its water from the
Detroit River, which connects the upper Great Lakes to the lower lakes.
Aquafina’s bottled water is distributed inside and outside the basin. That
means Great Lakes water is being trucked away. It’s a net loss of water to the
basin.
That’s not anything new. Water from the Great Lakes basin in the form
of beer from Milwaukee or milk from Minnesota or any of the other
products you can think of that are mostly water are shipped far and wide
and have been for a long time, but some environmentalists say trucking bottled water
away is different. They argue it’s a lot like a recent attempt to take tanker ships
of Lake Superior water to Asia. It’s not like a value-added product that’s made
from water, it’s just water.
Bill Lobenherz is a lobbyist for the Michigan Soft Drink Association.
He says bottled water is a value-added product, just like the many others.
“Indeed, there’s a lot more water in lumber, for example, Christmas
trees, and sometimes a lot less value added to it too. You don’t have to
do that much to cut it and ship it. Cherries, baby food and other non-
consumable products like paint. What about the water we have to put in
the automobile radiators? I really don’t know that there is a distinction
there. It seems to be more of a misplaced perception than it is any kind
of environmental reality.”
“I guess I’m having a hard time getting my head around the difference
shipping water out in a truck-load of bottles and shipping it out by
tanker. What’s the real difference there?”
“I think the difference is that there’s the fear that if it’s by tanker in those
quantities, that it could be abused. If it’s in bottles, it’s really quite
controllable, because there’s so much more value added to put it in small
bottles.”
Not everyone is buying that argument.
Dave Dempsey is the Great Lakes advisor for the environmental group Clean Water Action.
He says the most recent debates about water withdrawals started when that shipping company
planned to take about 156-million gallons a year to Asia. Dempsey says a single new bottled
water plant trucks away even more than that.
“The Nestle’ project, a single project in Michigan that has been sited and
is operating takes 168-million gallons per year. So, the volumes can be
greater in bottles than in tankers.”
But that’s still not that much water compared to other uses.
According to figures in a report by the Great Lakes Commission, the
cities and industries around the Great Lakes withdraw more than 43
billion gallons a day. Much of it is used and returned to the lakes, but
nearly two billion gallons a day is lost. It’s not returned to the lakes
because it evaporates or it’s incorporated into products. Two billion
gallons a day makes the Nestle’ bottled water plant’s 168-million gallons
a year seem minor.
But Dave Dempsey argues there’s a more sinister concern. He believes
if water is treated like any other commodity, large corporations that can
profit from it will begin to horde it, and control it.
“You will hear bottled water companies say that they’re just another user
like a farmer or a manufacturer or even a city water supply, but they’re
not because they’re asserting private ownership of a public resource and
if we essentially allow that by not putting controls on the water-for-sale
industry now, I’m afraid the Great Lakes may become the world’s largest
privately owned reservoir.”
A recent agreement between the states and provinces around the Great
Lakes allows bottled water to be shipped out in bottles as large as five-
gallons, but some environmentalists say that’s a slippery slope. They say
corporations will soon be asking why just five gallons? Why not 55-
gallon barrels? And then, tankers.
The bottling industry says the environmentalists are making a big deal
out of nothing, and would do better spending their time teaching
everyone to conserve water better instead of complaining about someone
in another state quenching their thirst with a bottle of water from the
Great Lakes.
Some consider shipping bottled water to areas outside the Great Lakes basin a form of water diversion. (Photo by Cris Watk)
Governors throughout the region are talking to their constituents about proposed Great Lakes water rules. They hope to have the so-called Annex 2001 rules ready to go by the end of the year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports that bottled water has entered into the diversion debate:
Transcript
Governors throughout the region are talking to their constituents about proposed Great Lakes water rules. They hope to have the so-called Annex 2001 rules ready to go by the end of the year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports that bottled water has entered into the diversion debate:
Michigan just concluded its final public hearing. The state’s grappling with the potential impact of a growing bottled water industry, and the question of whether shipping bottled water should be considered a diversion of Great Lakes water.
Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak’s district touches on three of the Great Lakes. He says the simplest solution would be to simply ban any use that allows significant amounts of water to be moved out of the Great Lakes basin, whether that’s by ship, pipelines, or bottles.
“As we move towards a growing population worldwide, by 2025, water will be the most sought-after commodity in the world. We’d better have our act together, have one standard, and let’s ban the sale or diversion of Great Lakes water.”
But business groups are lobbying for less restrictive rules. They say water bottling has a tiny impact on the Great Lakes, and tight restrictions will hurt business development in the region.
The Kaskaskia River has been low lately because of lack of rain. But nearby power plants also draw a lot of water from the river... making residents who depend on the river nervous. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
"Smitty’s at the Marina." Right on the Kaskaskia River, near New Athens, Illinois. Smitty's been wondering whether a nearby coal-fired power plant has been using too much river water... making it tougher for boats to launch from his marina. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
A train from the Peabody Coal Company. Peabody Coal Co. wants to build a new power plant. It’s a big energy company that used to have a large coal operation near New Athens. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The U.S. will need more electricity in the next few decades. To keep pace with demand, companies plan to build more power plants. Battles over power generation usually involve air quality or even how much fossil fuel is used to generate electricity. But one community’s facing a fight over how much water a new power plant might use. It’s a debate more of us might face in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
The U.S. will need more electricity in the next few decades. To keep pace with demand, companies plan to build more power plants. Battles over power generation usually involve air quality or even how much fossil fuel is used to generate electricity. But one community’s facing a fight over how much water a new power plant might use. It’s a debate more of us might face in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:
(sound of boat motor starting up)
A bearded guy by the name of Smitty is helping fisherman heave off from his riverside marina. On this sweltering afternoon, the marina’s hosting a big fishing tournament. The tournament’s bringing in lots of business, but Smitty’s got a problem. The area’s been hard up for rain recently, and the water’s pretty shallow.
“It makes quite a bit of difference. A lot of the access areas, the small river channels that lead into here aren’t accessible when the water gets low. It’d affect our business, mean a lot less people being able to use it.”
Smitty wonders whether there’s something else keeping this river, the Kaskaskia, shallow. Lately, he’s been asking whether a coal-fired power plant has been using too much river water. The Baldwin power plant, just east of the St. Louis metro area, is owned by Dynegy – a big power company.
Baldwin cools its generators with water from the Kaskaskia. Now another company, Peabody, is building its own power plant nearby. And that new plant will need river water to cool its generators, too.
Several environmental groups and local activists oppose the project. They say the Kaskaskia doesn’t have enough water for a new power plant. They say wildlife, boaters, and city drinking supplies already use the Kaskaskia. The Peabody Company says the plant won’t endanger the river’s water levels. The company will use the latest technology to conserve water.
But, even with hi-tech equipment, Peabody wanted to pump about 30 million gallons each day from the Kaskaskia. State regulators said no, and restricted the plant to 13 million gallons a day. That’s still about as much water as a town of 85,000 people uses, and only 10 percent of the water is ever returned to the river, the rest just evaporates.
Kathy Andria is with a local Sierra Club chapter. She says the project’s water needs are surprising, and worrisome.
“They have water battles out in the West. We haven’t had it before here, but this is really showing what’s in the future for us.”
Andria’s fears could apply not just to this river, but everywhere. The power industry’s already the biggest user of water in the United States, but it’s likely to need even more water soon. In the next few decades, electric companies plan to build at least 100 power plants that will need lots of water.
Right now, no one’s sure what will happen when they start drawing water from lakes, rivers and underground wells. In the meantime, the power industry is looking at ways to better use water.
Robert Goldstein is with the Electrical Power Research Institute, an industry research group. He says the industry’s improving systems that use no water at all, but those are very expensive. In the meantime, though, demands on water continue to rise. And Goldstein says the industry is aware that it has to compete for water.
“It’s not a question of how much water is there. It’s a question of how much water is there, versus what all the various stakeholders want to do with that water, what their aggregate demand is.”
He says even in regions that seem to have a lot of water, communities need to look closely at their future water needs. Goldstein says everyone, not just the power industry, will need to plan water use better.
People outside the industry are also watching how much water power plants use. Dr. Benedykt Dziegielewski is finishing a federal study on the subject. He worries about situations where several power plants draw from the same river or other water source at the same time.
“If you locate another plant, more water will be diverted from the system and at some point it will pre-empt other uses in the future from that same source.”
He says many areas could see more of these kinds of fights over water. Until we know more about demands for water, Dziegielewski says the industry should be as efficient as possible.
“As we go into the future, there is a need to control or reduce the amount of fresh water that is used for electricity generation.”
Environmentalists say that’s the least that can be done. They’re asking why coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants have been allowed to use so much water already. But not all power sources do.
Wind power and other alternatives use little, if any, water. A U.S. Department of Energy report recently made that point.
But given the political clout of the fossil fuel industry, it’s still easier and cheaper to generate power that needs lots of water.
Teflon is best known for making pans similar to this one "non-stick." But in Teflon's production at an Ohio plant, some of the chemical's ingredients have seeped into the groundwater. (Photo by Davide Guglielmo)
The non-stick substance Teflon is made at a DuPont plant near the Ohio-West Virginia border. The groundwater around this area has been contaminated by a chemical used to make Teflon. The chemical is known as C8. Now, 60,000 residents will be tested to find out whether the chemical is harmful to human health. It could end up being the largest public health screening to occur in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports:
Transcript
The non-stick substance Teflon is made at a DuPont plant near the Ohio-West Virginia border. The groundwater around this area has been contaminated by a chemical used to make Teflon. The chemical is known as C8. Now, sixty thousand residents will be tested to find out whether the chemical is harmful to human health. It could end up being the largest public health screening to occur in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports:
The testing is just getting underway on people who have been drinking water contaminated by C8.
It’s being done as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Residents of nearby water districts accuse the company of witholding information about the health threats posed by C8. Project coordinator Art Maher says medical histories, personal information and blood samples will be collected from the test subjects, who will be paid for their participation.
“That information then will be fed into a database that ultimately will be passed on to the next step of the settlement agreement, which would be the science panel who would interpret the data.”
If the experts determine there is a link between C8 and any disease, DuPont will be required to spend as much as 235 million dollars on a medical monitoring program for additional testing.
In order to provide safe drinking water for a community, water pipelines have to be properly maintained. (Photo by Keith Syvinski)
The Environmental Protection Agency says it will cost more than a quarter trillion dollars over the next 20 years to ensure safe drinking water in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Carmody reports:
Transcript
The EPA says it will cost more than a quarter trillion dollars over the next twenty years to ensure safe drinking water in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Carmody reports:
Benjamin Grumbles is the assistant EPA administrator for water. He says
the primary obstacle faced by most communities to providing safe drinking
water is the age of the pipes and other infrastructure through which the water
must pass.
Grumbles says replacing transmission lines and distribution pipes accounts
for two-thirds of the 277 billion dollars the EPA estimates will need to be
spent between now and 2025.
“Sometimes the materials will just break down due to age or other stresses.”
The biggest obstacle communities will face is paying for upgrades of their
existing infrastructure.
The federal government only provides a small amount of seed money for
upgrading local water utilities, amounting to only 850 million dollars this
year.
Federal plans to reduce exposure to lead and copper in drinking water could mean more monitoring of public water supplies. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Federal plans to reduce exposure to lead and copper in drinking water could mean more
monitoring of water from public water supplies. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
The U.S. EPA says a lead contamination problem in the District of Columbia will prompt several
changes to federal rules on lead and copper in the nation’s drinking water supply. David Denig-
Chakroff is on a committee of the American Water Works Association that looks at lead
contamination. He says one of the biggest changes might be more monitoring of water when
local suppliers change water sources or the treatment process.
“They really need to go back and make sure that’s not changing the corrosivity of the water and
potentially increasing lead or copper corrosion.”
More corrosion from the pipes can lead to more lead and copper coming out of the tap. Lead can
build up in the brain, kidneys and red blood cells. The greatest risk is to young children and
pregnant women. The EPA says its formal proposals for updating the lead and copper rule will
be ready next year.
The makers of Teflon could have to pay out more than 440-million dollars as the result of a recently settled water contamination lawsuit. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight has the story:
Transcript
The makers of Teflon could have to pay out more than 440 million dollars as the result of a
recently settled water contamination lawsuit. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight
has the story:
The DuPont company was sued in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 80-thousand residents
whose drinking water contains trace amounts of a chemical known as C8. The chemical is used
to make Teflon… and manufactured at a plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.
DuPont officials say C8 does not pose any health risk but Joe Kiger isn’t so sure. Kiger was the
lead plaintiff in the case. He says the most important part of the settlement is an independent
medical study that will be done to determine if C8 can make people sick…
“I’m concerned about my health as well as my familiy’s health, my wife’s and the people in the
community because this is a major thing.”
DuPont will have to pay 107 million dollars for the study, new treatment equipment for local
water utilities and legal fees and expenses for the residents who sued. It could have to pay
another 235 million for environmental clean up and health monitoring if C8 is found to be toxic.
Heavy rains can overwhelm sewer systems. The EPA's proposed solution, blending, is a topic of debate. (photo by Sarah Griggs)
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing
a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The process is called blending. If too much sewage is coming in to treat completely, this policy allows operators to “blend” mostly untreated sewage with already treated waste water, then release it into the waterways. That saves the federal government money by not having to pay for sewage plant expansions.
Environmentalists don’t like it. Nancy Stoner is with the group Natural Resources Defense Council.
“They’re saying that they’re going to save money by providing less treatment now even though that pushes the cost onto the public by contaminating our drinking water supply, by killing fish, by contaminating shellfish so it cant be sold, by closing beaches.”
The EPA says blending untreated sewage with treated sewage dilutes it so that it meets federal standards. The agency also argues that the policy merely sanctions a practice that already happens every time a sewer system gets swamped by heavy rains.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Researchers from the University of Illinois have discovered a way to remove arsenic from drinking water at its source. (photo by David
Guglielmo)
Researchers believe they have found a way to reduce
arsenic levels in drinking water. They say, for people to drink water from wells or aquifers, the solution starts at the source. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jeff Bossert explains:
Transcript
Researchers believe they have found a way to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water. They say, for people to drink water from wells or aquifers, the solution starts at the source. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jeff Bossert explains:
Chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has been linked to a variety of health concerns, including hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
Researchers from the University of Illinois collected groundwater samples from 21 wells. They found that the wells with almost no arsenic in the water also contained high levels of sulphate-reducing bacteria, which convert the arsenic into a solid, where it drops out of the water. Dr. Craig Bethke led the study.
“What we’re saying is that if there’s sulfate in the water, then there’s probably sulfate-reducing bacteria active in the subsurface, and that means that a simple field test, which is very inexpensive and very rapid to protect sulfate, could identify safe water sources.”
Bethke says places where aresenic levels are high, sulphate salts, such as gypsum and calcium sulphate, can be injected underground to reduce arsenic levels.
Researchers say this information could prove to be invaluable in places where aresenic contamination is a major problem, including parts of the U.S., Australia, and Mongolia. The researchers’ findings were published in the journal Geology.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jeff Bossert.
Inside the Reverse Osmosis building for the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County, California. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)
