Utility News

U.S. Water News:

A pharmaceutical company will pay more than $20 million for multiple Clean Water Act violations stemming from three chemical spills, one of which killed more than 1,000 fish and forced the city to temporarily shut off drinking water intakes.

Based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., Merck & Co. Inc. will pay $10 million for systems to prevent future hazardous discharges at the facility 15 miles outside Philadelphia, and $9 million for other large-scale environmental protection projects, federal authorities said.

Merck also will pay $750,000 to the federal government, $750,000 to the state and $75,000 to the state Fish and Boat Commission in penalties and civil damages for the three 2006 discharges in the Wissahickon Creek, which is the source of 40 percent of Philadelphia’s drinking water.

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Water Tech Online:

Pharmaceuticals maker Merck, located in West Point, Montgomery County, will pay more than $20 million in a federal remediation settlement agreement for discharging potassium thiocyanate into the Wissahickon Creek in June 2006, according to a December 13 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) press release.

The June 13, 2006, Clean Water Act violation caused extensive fish kills in the creek, a tributary of the Schuylkill River. The incident also caused the Philadelphia Water Department to temporarily close its Schuylkill River drinking water intake on June 14-15.

The settlement, announced by the EPA, US Attorney Pat Meehan and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, calls for the company to pay $10 million to put into place systems that will prevent future dangerous discharges at its facility, which is located 15 miles outside Philadelphia, and $9 million for other comprehensive environmental protection projects.

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Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The State Water Control Board voted unanimously yesterday to try a new approach.

The board approved a program that encourages cities and counties to send wastewater from their sewage plants — water from toilets and similar sources that is treated to reduce germs — to be used for activities that don’t require pure tap water.

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Wall Street Journal (subscription):

The surging environmental movement appears poised to claim a common American pastime: washing the family car…

Across the country, environmental worries are fueling a crackdown on the automotive bucket brigades that have been a staple of American culture. Many towns — particularly those on the eco-friendly West Coast — cite reports showing that soap and grime from home car washes can run into the nearest stream or creek, poisoning the fish and other wildlife.

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The New York Times:

Recycled water, also called reclaimed or gray water, has been used for decades in agriculture, landscaping and by industrial plants.

And for years, treated sewage, known as effluent, has been discharged into oceans and rivers, including the Mississippi and the Colorado, which supply drinking water for millions.

But only about a dozen water agencies in the United States, and several more abroad, recycle treated sewage to replenish drinking water supplies, though none here steer the water directly into household taps. They typically spray or inject the water into the ground and allow it to percolate down to aquifers.

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Newsweek:

There’s something fishy in the nation’s water supply. True, its quality has improved dramatically since passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970s. Toxic substances and pollutants are now routinely filtered out. But across the nation, something’s causing disturbing effects on aquatic wildlife. In a search for culprits, scientists are zeroing in on a group of compounds they call “emerging contaminants,” including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and antibacterial soaps. Although we like to think that these compounds disappear when we wash them down the drain or flush them down the toilet, a lot of them are clearly ending up in water. Could they possibly affect human health? At this point, no one knows for sure. “We have lots of questions, but very few answers,” says environmental chemist Christian Daughton at the Environmental Protection Agency.

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U.S. News & World Report:

Studies by government and utilities agree that cities and towns will need to spend $250 billion to $500 billion more over the next 20 years to maintain the drinking water and waste-water systems we equate with modern living. The only debate is how to pay for it, in a country accustomed to paying about $2.50 per 1,000 gallons—the lowest price for tap water in the developed world.

“There’s a very widespread perception that water is a free good,” says Steve Maxwell, a Boulder, Colo., consultant specializing in water and environmental issues. “It falls out of the sky—why should we pay for it? What’s lost is the fact that we have to treat it, move it around, store it, and distribute it to homes in a process that costs a heck of a lot of money.”

Maxwell is among those who believe it will take a catastrophic infrastructure failure causing widespread illness or death to spur action.

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The New York Times:

New York City officials plan to raise rates 11.5 percent on the water that every New Yorker uses, the largest annual increase in 15 years.

The proposed increase, set to go into effect in July if approved, as expected, by the New York City Water Board, would add $72 to the average water and sewer bill for a single-family home in the city. That would bring the average annual residential water bill to $699. Many apartments have water charges built into the rent, and co-ops and condos generally have them included as part of maintenance fees.

The double-digit increase comes several months after officials who run the water system said the city had more than $610 million in unpaid water bills. Uncollected bills have to be taken into account when new rates are calculated.

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The New York Times:

Residues of birth control pills, antidepressants, painkillers, shampoos and a host of other compounds are finding their way into the nation’s waterways, and they have public health and environmental officials in a regulatory quandary.

On the one hand, there is no evidence the traces of the chemicals found so far are harmful to human beings. On the other hand, it would seem cavalier to ignore them…

So officials who deal with these compounds have the complex task of balancing reassurance that they take the situation seriously with reassurance that there is probably nothing to worry about. As a result, scientists in several government and private agencies are devising new ways to measure and analyze the compounds, determine their prevalence in the environment, figure out where they come from, how they move, where they end up and if they have any effects.

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Water Tech Online:

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the American Pharmacists Association announced March 17 that they have signed an agreement outlining how the two groups will work cooperatively to build consumer awareness of the hazards posed by the improper disposal of unused and expired medications into the nation’s waterways…

Studies by the US Geological Survey have shown that unused medications that are flushed into septic systems survive through wastewater treatment systems and end up in public waterways that may be used as drinking water sources; they impact fish and wildlife dependent on those water sources.

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