National Pipeline Mapping System – National Gas and other Hazardous Liquids Pipeline

The U.S. Department of Transportation offers the public access to their National Pipeline Mapping System via a free online, interactive map and an iPhone app.  It displays general information for pipelines carrying gas and hazardous liquids, liquefied natural gas plants, and breakout tanks within a county-wide zone.

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While the mapping system is not to be used as a precise identifier of pipelines in a location, the public can access general knowledge about potential sources of contamination in their area.  By turning on the visual indicators for accidents and incidents in the area, it’s possible to judge remediation efforts based on past events.  Watershed organizations can submit a data request report or find the companies that are operating pipelines in your area.  The system is also a useful tool for community outreach and education efforts, whether you’re simply identifying topics for public forums and workshops or looking critically at local remediation efforts.

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Fracking Environmental Consequences

Your Water Appliances Have a Warranty – Does Your Drinking Water Quality Violate this Warranty?

Have you read your warranty on that $ 1500.00 appliance, GUESS WHAT?   If your drinking water quality is not appropriate your warranty may be invalid.    The same goes for the water heater, other heat exchange devices, dishwashers, clothes washers, and other water related appliances.   At the Eastern Regional Water Quality Conference in September 2017, I meet Kris Toomey from LH Brubaker Water Conditioning.  He told me a bit about his business.

“Appliances and water treatment go hand in hand. The benefits of soft water for appliances are plentiful.  It is a perfect marriage between providing an appliance that improves the quality of life for a family and offering  water treatment equipment to ensure the long-term reliability of the state-of-the-art appliances and at the same time providing a barrier to protect the family.  Providing the appropriate water quality treatment of the household water is like offering an additional “insurance policy” for the house, family, and the appliance.  Not only are you protecting their investment, but you are helping with soap savings, skin and hair benefits as well as protecting the plumbing system, water heater, and plumbing fixtures.   In many cases, this action is necessary to protect the warranty on the new equipment.  There is no better feeling than ensuring that the family walking through your door making an investment in their home is given the right information to ensure the reliability of the appliances. Every fridge that leaves the store has an opportunity for an RO system to provide the highest available purified water option and this additional barrier protects not only the appliance, but also the family.”

For example:  Depending on the hardness of your drinking water, the concentration of the total hardness or  hard water  or the corrosiveness of the water may void or invalidate the manufacturers warranty, the HOME Warranty,  and any extended warranty of your water related appliances, such as: dishwasher, refrigerator, washing machine or water heater due to its corrosive nature.  A typical water heater warranty, for example, could state that the heater is covered for anywhere between 6 -12 years. If you actually read the warranty, it may actually list specific water quality parameters that should not be exceed or conditions, such as scale formation due to water quality or corrosive water conditions.  Therefore, if you buying a water appliance from a business that does not recommend getting your water tested and you are on a private well or on city water that has occasional problems, you should ask about the terms of the warranty and get your drinking water tested.  At a minimum, the Know Your H20 Team recommends the installation of a whole house particle filter (Well Water or City Water (basic approach / advanced approach)) to protect home water appliance from corrosion related to the presence of particles in the water that could damage piping.

Kris Toomey CWS-1
Director of Water Sales
LH Brubaker Water Conditioning

ktoomey@lhbrubakers.com
717-945-5851 ext. 206
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Impact of Water Quality on Water Heating Equipment

“The local water quality is one of the factors that contributes most significantly to the long-term  performance and longevity of water heating equipment. Specifically, highly alkaline water will lead to the accumulation of scale, which will impact the efficiency of tankless and gas storage water heaters and can lead to decreased equipment life.”

and

“Hard water cut that efficiency by 48% due to scale build up and shortened the life of the heating elements. In some test instances, tankless water heaters failed after 1.6 years of use.” (Source)

Note:

Learn about the warranty when purchasing a water related appliance and Get Your Water Tested (Well Water or City Water) Requires Different Testing!   You may not need a whole house filtration system just a water treatment system on the water going to the on-demand water system or a POU Water device, especially on city water that may contain water treatment chemicals that create chemical scales.

Your Drinking Water and Your Health – You are Not an Observer !

Even though 60% of the human body is water, water is a resource that is often taken for granted.  The primary concerns with water relate to having adequate quantity of the proper quality.  In terms of hydration, drinking water is probably one of the best ways to keep your body healthy.  Water is used in your body to help maintain your temperature and ensures the proper operation of your circulatory, digestive, and neurological systems.   Water is one of the pathways that potential contaminants and disease causing agents can enter the body, so the quality is also important.   Therefore, we need drinking water of adequate quantity of the proper quality.

When the body is not properly hydrated, our body’s response is to make us feel thirsty, but if you miss this clue watch out for dry mouth, swollen tongue, weakness, dizziness, confusion, palpitations, and fainting.   If over hydrated, you can become water intoxicated or hyperhydration.  If hyperhydration occurs, the kidneys can not process all the water and the system becomes overwhelmed.   There are phone apps and other tools to help you to remember to drink enough water, but our general recommendation is if you feel thirsty it is time to get a drink and given a choice pick water.

Water comes in many forms, which can include premium bottled water, tap water, spring water, carbonated water, soda, coffee, tap water, nutrient infused water, juices, and purified water.   Of all these, it is my professional opinion that we just need to drink water.   The two most common sources of drinking water for a community is either public water or a private water source.  A public water source is always regulated by both the federal and state governments and many may call this city water or tapwater, but well or spring water may be from a public or private source.   If you get your water directly from a well or spring, this is a private source and this is not commonly regulated.

If you get your water from city water, the most common health concerns are related to the presence of chlorine-by-products or corrosive by-product in the United States, the public water supply systems are disinfected using various forms of chlorine and phosphate is added to attempt to control corrosion.  The chlorine is used to disinfect the water, but it can react with naturally occurring organics to form trihalomethanes, i.e., a potential carcinogen; while phosphate will react with the metals in the water to form a scale or coating on the inside of the piping, see “Flint, Michigan”.    If you are on well water, the most common problems are the presence of bacteria and elevated levels of salts in the water, like nitrate, chloride, and sulfate, or corrosive water.   In some cases, the water may contain elevated levels of radionuclides and trace metals, like arsenic, iron, lead, and manganese.      The quality of the drinking water depends on type of water, location, level of treatment, the condition of your plumbing, and your home or house.   In some areas, the community is concerned about pipelines and natural gas development, but a hidden problem may be the existing quality of their drinking water.

For citizens, our general recommendations related to drinking water are:

1. City Water Customers– Review any annual “Consumer Confident Reports” produced by your water supplier and act accordingly.
2. Private Water Sources -Get your water tested, at least annually, and have the results review by an expert (our Mail order program) or maybe conduct a in-home screening test yourself and calculate your Water Quality Rank.
3. Look out for potential problems with your drinking water, based on what you can see, taste, smell, or otherwise detect with your senses or problems that may be caused by the water.
4. Review our Drinking Water Diagnostic Web Application.

A few short phrases we should try to remember.

We ALL Live Downstream !
Groundwater and Surface water are Connected!
We are Part of the Water Cycle – Not just an Observer!

Websites of Interest

Consumer Confidence Reports
https://www.epa.gov/ccr/ccr-information-consumers

Neighborhood Hazardous Reports and Water Testing
http://www.knowyourh2o.com

 

Well Water City Drinking Water Quality Screening Test – DIY at Home

Complete Water Testing Kit – Because it is important to KnowYourH20 

Whether you have well water or municipal water, you won’t know what you’re drinking unless you test it.  Crystal clear water can contain a number of contaminants from chemicals to metals and even bacteria.  Many of the contaminants that are cause for concern can easily go undetected. They are colorless, odorless, and tasteless.

Safe Home Complete Water Analysis Test Kit includes 10 tests that are easy to administer and give you results within 10 minutes with the exception of the bacteria test which takes 48 hours. This single kit includes all of the following water tests:

  • NEXT GENERATION of drinking water test kits for 2024, with patented technologies for testing any drinking water supply (City Water or Well Water).
  • INCLUDES 27-testing mechanisms that provide testing for 14-different parameters (302 Total Tests/Kit). See attached image of package-back, for a complete list of parameters to be tested.
  • EXCLUSIVE BRAND of water test kits to earn the Good Housekeeping Seal. Named one of the Top-10 New Products at the National Hardware Show. Includes trilingual instructions. Made in the USA!
  • YOU GET MORE BENEFITS for your dollar with Safe Home – Our team guides you before, during, and after testing. See details on attached image with this listing.
  • YOUR PURCHASE MAKES A DIFFERENCE in people’s lives. Safe Home donates a portion of every test kit sale to clean water initiatives around the globe. See attached video to learn more!

These tests allow you to quickly and accurately analyze your drinking water and are compatible with well water, city/municipal water, tap water, residential drinking water, ground water, spring water sources, and bottled water. The results are fast and easy to read by following along with the color-coded charts and instruction manual. Testing can easily be done in your home, classroom, school, office, or anyplace else where you would need to test water quality.

If you looking for more information on water quality and drinking water, please visit the Water Research Center.

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How to Detect Water Contamination New Approach

“How to Detect Water Contamination In-Situ?
Scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University have developed a device for the rapid analysis of liquids on the content of hazardous substances such as heavy metals. Polytechnicers use a method based on polymer optodes—very small plastic matrices that can be made sensitive to specific substances by means of special reagents. The matrices change color and intensity depending on the concentration of the substance. The device is mobile, can carry out analysis in situ even at low temperatures, and its cost is many times less than the price of a spectrophotometer—the most frequently used device for chemical analysis. The device is based on polymethacrylate sensors—transparent pieces of plastic with thickness of 1 mm and a size of 3×3 mm. The pores of matrices serve as receptacles, where various chemical reactions can undergo.
If a matrix is handled with a special reagent it becomes an optode sensitive to a particular substance. The researchers plunge this optode into the water to test it or simply drip a few drops on it, and it changes its color. Hence, there is a required element. Sergey Muravyov, the scientific supervisor of the project, head of the TPU International Laboratory Advanced Measurements, says: “The more intense the color is, the higher is the concentration of the substance.”

For example, if water contains silver optode, it turns purple-red. According to the scientist, the method can detect substances even at very low concentrations in water.
“You dip optode into the water and then load it into the device analyzer. There, a special electronic device receives optical signal and converts it into an electric three-channel RGB-signal. After this signal processing the device outputs the data in digital form on the concentration of the searched substance. The analysis takes place immediately,” the project manager says.
This method allows the detection of almost all metals, organic materials and various pharmacological agents in water.
“Our method works with those substances with which interaction leads to color change. Indeed, this is not the whole range of substances. But universal methods do not exist. Today, the most widely used method for chemical analysis is spectrophotometry. A modern spectrophotometer costs about 500 thousand rubles, and it is a bulky stationary device. Our device can achieve the same quality of measurements, but it is compact and can cost about 30 thousand rubles at the market placement,” he says.
Such a device for rapid analysis is useful for environmental and related personnel of industrial enterprises. For example, oil companies can use the device for the determination of the tracers in the drilling fluid.
“To date, we have prepared a prototype device. Now we have set ourselves the task to use this method for a multi-component analysis. The fact is that the reagents that configure optode to a definite substance are sensitive to a few substances,” says Sergey Muravyov.”

Source: Phys.org

New Arsenic Test -Using Bacteria?

AquiSense POU POE Treatment System with UV Disinfection Multiple Barriers

AquiSense can help provide families with the purest water available.  The PearlAqua harnesses the power of ultraviolet (UV) light to destroy pathogens in the most natural way possible, without adding any harmful chemicals.  The PearlAqua has been compactly designed to be a Point-of-Entry (POE) or Point-of-Use (POU) system.  Physical filtration of the water is required before UV disinfection so a PearlAqua is a great addition to any existing water treatment system.

The PearlAqua was designed to work with any water treatment system so installation of the unit is easy and retrofitting is simple.  Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems remove dissolved inorganic solids from water, but not organic materials or pathogens.  This may lead to algae growing in the holding tank, but recirculating the water through a PearlAqua will prevent algae from ever growing. Traditional UV disinfection systems use a large amount of electricity and heat the water while they disinfect.  These systems also use mercury gas-filled lamps to create their UV light. Mercury lamps are very fragile and release mercury into the water stream when they break.

The LEDs inside the PearlAqua last for 10,000 hours.  A mercury lamp will have a similar lifespan, but a mercury lamp can only be turned off/on a few times per day.  This limitation leads to the lamp remaining on, even when there is no water flow – hence annual replacement.  The PearlAqua LED system can be turned on/off an infinite number of times per day, so the unit only runs when water is flowing through it, greatly extending the lamp replacement interval. For example, a PearlAqua unit that is on for 2 hours a day will only need a lamp replacement every 14 years!

 The Units provide  “The Home Concept

1 .DC input power means solar power is possible
2. After hot water tank as pathogen barrier
3. Point of use legionella control
4. Disinfect rain water after storage
5. Post septic tank for environmental protection
6. Reuse grey water without concern of infection
7. RO/filter system final polishing and/or bio-film control

For more news and information – Go to News Page

A few steps

Step 1 – Get your water tested.
Step 2 – Get the water properly treated.

Installing a Rain Garden

Install a rain garden in your community  – Possible ROAs for a Groundwater Guardian Project

Spring is just around the corner, and a great time to think about installing a rain garden.  A rain garden is a garden of native shrubs, perennials, and flowers planted in a small depression, which is generally formed on a natural slope.  It is designed to temporarily hold and soak in rain water runoff.  Rain gardens help filter out pollutants such as fertilizers, chemicals, bacteria, and others contained in runoff.  They also incorporate native vegetation, reducing the need for fertilizers and after the first year, maintenance is usually minimal.

Rain gardens are effective in:

  • removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals
  • removing up to 80% of sediments from rainwater runoff
  • allowing for 30% more water to soak into the ground than a conventional lawn

Consider installing a rain garden as one of your team’s 2016 Result-Oriented Activities.  Remember, you can add an ROA at any time during the year.  Involve the public and make it an educational event!  Read more about how rain gardens benefit a community and how to get started.

 Rain Gardens

Stormwater Management for Homeowners
Some examples of water features – Dallas, PA

Glyphosate Herbicide in Drinking Water Roundup

“Glyphosate is an herbicide that is regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It is an ingredient in Roundup, a widely used herbicide, as well as more than 700 other products for sale in the United States.  Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide used on many food and non-food crops as well as non-crop areas such as roadsides. When applied at lower rates, it serves as a plant growth regulator. The most common uses include control of broadleaf weeds and grasses hay/pasture, soybeans, field corn; ornamental, lawns, turf, forest plantings, greenhouses, and rights-of-way.

Some people who drink water containing glyphosate well in excess of the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for many years could experience problems with their kidneys or reproductive difficulties.  This health effects language is not intended to catalog all possible health effects for glyphosate. Rather, it is intended to inform consumers of some of the possible health effects associated with glyphosate in drinking water when the rule was finalized. In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. This law requires EPA to determine the level of contaminants in drinking water at which no adverse health effects are likely to occur. These non-enforceable health goals, based solely on possible health risks and exposure over a lifetime with an adequate margin of safety, are called maximum contaminant level goals (MCLG). Contaminants are any physical, chemical, biological or radiological substances or matter in water.

The MCLG for glyphosate is 0.7 mg/L or 700 ppb. EPA has set this level of protection based on the best available science to prevent potential health problems. EPA has set an enforceable regulation for glyphosate, called a maximum contaminant level (MCL), at 0.7 mg/L or 700 ppb. MCLs are set as close to the health goals as possible, considering cost, benefits and the ability of public water systems to detect and remove contaminants using suitable treatment technologies. In this case, the MCL equals the MCLG, because analytical methods or treatment technology do not pose any limitation.

The Phase V Rule, the regulation for glyphosate, became effective in 1994. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to periodically review the national primary drinking water regulation for each contaminant and revise the regulation, if appropriate. EPA reviewed glyphosate as part of the Six Year Review and determined that the 0.7 mg/L or 700 ppb MCLG and 0.7 mg/L or 700 ppb MCL for glyphosate are still protective of human health.” (EPA 2015)

While the United States classified glyphosate as non-carcinogenic when it was last reviewed in 1993, the World Health Organization published a study in March 2015 that indicates glyphosate is a probable carcinogen. Since the new study was released, there have been many questions asked regarding the safety of glyphosate. According to The Ecologist (June 12, 2015), several countries have banned or restricted use of the weed killer, including France, Columbia, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. In addition, many garden centers across the globe are pulling products that contain glyphosate off their shelves as a precautionary measure to protect customers. However, Roundup remains a staple herbicide in the United States.

Testing for glyphosate previously may have been cost prohibitive for many homeowners.  We have partnered with a national testing laboratory to provide a cost-effective alternative that also includes trace metals, volatile organics, and other organic chemicals.   For more information, please visit our Testing Testing and Evalatuion Protal but National Testing Laboratories (NTL) now offers a lower-cost test for detecting glyphosate in drinking water. Typical analysis by EPA-approved methods can cost $200 to $400, but the new package offers a much lower price to both water treatment professionals and homeowners.

Easy Ways to Help Protect Groundwater Quality in Your Community

Here are a few easy ways to help protect Groundwater Quality in Your Community ” Remember We ALL Live Downstream”:

1. Implement Water Conservation Practices and Take the First Step use less and Install a Rain Barrel or Water Garden.

2. Apply fertilizers and other herbicides and pesticides as per the manufacturers specifications or seek out “Green” or Native Alternatives and test the soil before adding fertilizers.

3. Compost  – Do not burn or put leaves or other organic yard waste in plastic bags.

4. Check your Well Water Quality – Get Your Water Tested (Annually) or order a self-screening test.

5. If on a septic system – the septic system should be maintained, cleaned, and inspected approximately once every three years.

6. Run a Community Hazard Report – Keystone Clean Water Team?

7. Switch to more Eco-Friendly Cleaners.

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Use Social Media

1. You do not need to be an advocate – but when you find a good story or information -Like Us,  JUST Share Our Posts, Or Submit a Post – let us know.

2. Like our Facebook Sites

A. Keystone Clean Water Team
B. Know Your H20?
C. Water Research Center

3.  Consider Following Us on Twitter- @KeystoneWater or @KnowYourH2o

3.Share our videos

4. Share Our Educational Booklet

Donation/ Support

1. Send a Donation

2. Recycle Old Cell Phones 

3. Order a “Water Screening Test Kit” as low as $ 1.00 per parameter.

4. Order the “PA Guide to Drinking Water Quality