Utility News

The New York Times:

When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

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Times Union (NY):

The gas in the Marcellus is held like bubbles in a brick of Swiss cheese. To extract it, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is shot into the earth with such force it fractures the rock, releasing the bubbles to the surface. When the gas surfaces, so does the water - laden with natural toxins from the shale, including suspected cancer-causing compounds.

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David Zetland on Forbes:

The real problem is that the price of water in California, as in most of America, has virtually nothing to do with supply and demand. Although water is distributed by public and private monopolies that could easily charge high prices, municipalities and regulators set prices that are as low as possible. Underpriced water sends the wrong signal to the people using it: It tells them not to worry about how much they use.

Low prices lead to shortages. Water managers respond to them with calls for conservation. But this often fails… When voluntary conservation fails, water agencies impose mandatory rationing, which is unfair and inefficient because people who have historically been water misers are cut back by the same percentage as water hogs.

If water was priced to reflect scarcity, a decrease in supply would lead to an increase in price, and people would demand less…

In a sensible water pricing system, everyone would be guaranteed a base quantity of water at a low price. Those who used more would face a steep price hike.

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AP via WCAX TV:

A bill increasing penalties for contaminating public drinking water supplies has received final legislative approval.

If signed into law by Governor Paterson, the legislation would set fines of up to $200 per day for each violation. It also would allow courts to impose a thousand-dollar criminal penalty and up to a year in jail.

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The New York Times:

Faced with a persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies, Los Angeles plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies, joining a growing number of cities considering similar measures.

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Virginia Water Resource Research Center:

The conventional production of energy and power requires a huge amount of water. Without water, our energy and power generation systems will come to an abrupt stop. In the United States, for example, thermoelectric power plants consume 136 billion gallons/day of fresh water (Hutson et al. 2004; US DOE 2006), a number that translates to an average of 25 gallons of water to produce one kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. Energy and power plants require water to scrub pollutants (generated from burning coal, for example), to cool and clean machinery (USDOE 2006) as well as to produce the steam necessary to turn huge turbines and generators. Production of other energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, often relies on re-injection of water into wells. Furthermore, some alternative energy sources, such as ethanol and hydrogen, require large volumes of water. As electricity demand rises, perhaps as much as 50% in the next twenty-five years (EIA 2006a; US DOE 2006) energy production will demand more water (Hightower et al. 2007).

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AP via Forbes:

Water and wastewater utility company American Water Works Co. expects its planned initial public offering to total 64 million shares and price between $24 and $26 per share, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday.

Voorhees, N.J.-based American Water is a subsidiary of RWE, a European electricity and gas company. RWE first announced it would exit its water activities in the U.S. and the U.K. in 2005. The parent company plans to sell American Water in more than one offering through its subsidiary Thames Water Aqua Holdings GmbH.

After the initial offering, RWE will continue to own up to about 60 percent of the American Water’s common stock.

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CNNMoney:

Wall Street has given scant attention to companies that rely directly on water for their survival, even as the world’s supply of the liquid is threatened by mismanagement and pollution, a JPMorgan report said Monday.

“In many regions demand for water now outstrips renewable supplies. It is likely this gap will widen,” analyst Marc Levinson said in a note to clients. “Water pollution is getting worse in many developing economies, which exacerbates the challenge of delivering sufficient water of the required quality.”

Yet many companies provide only “general” information on water that neither qualifies nor quantifies the potential financial risks from a sudden supply disruption, said Levinson in the report, which was cowritten by six analysts.

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Water Tech Online:

The Waters Corp., a laboratory analytical instrument and software company headquartered here, announced in a March 31 press release on Environment News Service that it is offering complimentary tests for common over-the-counter and antidepressant pharmaceuticals to any water authority that serves more than 100,000 customers.

The company said in the press release this move is in response to the recent report from The Associated Press that 41 million Americans receive drinking water tainted with trace levels of pharmaceuticals.

Water authorities can apply for the free testing until April 19. “Requests will only be honored from authorized water officials and the results will be held in strict confidence,” the company said in a statement, noting that no third party requests will be accepted.

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The New York Times:

It takes a lot of water to produce electricity, both to mine and to process coal and other fuels and to cool power plants. Production of gasoline uses water, too, but in an analysis in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Carey W. King and Michael E. Webber of the University of Texas found that adding more plug-in vehicles would result in a significant increase in water use because of the additional electricity that would have to be generated.

For every mile driven by a gas-powered vehicle that is displaced by one driven by an electric vehicle, the researchers report, about three times as much water is consumed (that is, lost to evaporation) and about 17 times as much is withdrawn (used and returned to its source).

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