Drinking Water Educational Booklet Private Water Wells and Tapwater Know Your H20

Drinking Water Educational Booklet Know Your H20 (Water) – Part of the Healthy Home and Healthy Water Outreach Effort.  The Booklet is a resource for private water well owners and customers of community and non-community water supply sources

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Contact: Rick Grant, 570-497-5850

B.F. Environmental Updates Popular Drinking Water Guide

The 2024 KnowYourH2O guide includes updated and expanded content.

WILKES-BARRE, PA—August 12, 2024—B.F. Environmental Consultants, an environmental consulting firm providing a range of services throughout the Northeast, announced today that company consultants working with the Keystone Clean Water Team, a Pennsylvania-based non-profit, have released an updated version of their popular KnowYourH2O Drinking Water Guide. The new version covers both Private Water systems and Public Water supplies. It includes updated content, new graphics related to water well systems and lead service lines, and information about forever chemicals and PFAS.

“When we wrote the first version of this guide, people needed to know how to determine the quality of the water their families were drinking,” said Brian Oram, a professional geologist, soil scientist, and founder of B.F. Environmental Consultants. “A lot has changed since then, including new testing methodologies and new risks to our groundwater and drinkable water. What hasn’t changed is the vital importance of clean water. The 5th edition booklet provides a readily available fact-based source of information related to drinking water quality, contaminants, water treatment, and a means to easily understand your drinking water quality and identify problems.”

The new drinking water educational booklet is for private well owners, city water users, water professionals, and educators. It provides general information explaining certified water testing, chain-of-custody, and drinking water regulations and standards. It provides information related to the health (primary standards) or aesthetic (secondary standards) concerns for each parameter and provides information on water quality parameters that do not specifically have a drinking water limit.

Oram and the team at B.F. Environmental are key contributors to the Know Your H2O website, which includes basic water testing and water quality information, as well as educational resources designed to help better understand the complexities of water quality through a review of the basics of physics, chemistry, and biology that impact our water.

Oram was also instrumental in the development of a free Surface Water Quality Index Calculator, which is available to the public through the “Know Your H20” his company supports. The new online WQI Calculator provides a user-friendly website interface, allowing users to add a GPS location to the database or locate the unique sampling site, using an online mapping tool.

Using the tool, users input basic information about the surface water test site as well as other field data they have collected. The calculator then completes the necessary interpretations and generates the customized report. The online calculator provides the individual ranking or score for each parameter, calculates the weighted average ranking for the test site, and allows the user to generate a customized report for each sampling site.

For more information about any of these programs or to preorder your copy of the new booklet, visit the website. Get a copy of the booklet signed by Brian Oram here. If you are looking to order 1 copy of this booklet, please use the form below.  If you are looking to order multiple copies, please contact Mr. Brian Oram at brian.oram@knowyourh2o.com or use this link.

About B.F. Environmental Consultants, Inc.

B.F. Environmental Consultants, based in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Poconos, has been providing professional geological, soils, hydrogeological, and environmental consulting services and professional, professional and environmental training courses, and environmental outreach and education, since 1985.

For more information about B.F. Environmental Consultants, visit www.bfenvironmental.com and https://www.knowyourh2o.com

Earth Science Week’s 2018 Contest American Geosciences Institute

Participate in Earth Science Week’s 2018 Contests

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – For this year’s Earth Science Week (October 14-20, 2018), the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is sponsoring four contests honoring this year’s theme, “Earth as Inspiration.” This year’s competitions will feature the traditional video, photography, visual arts, and essay contests:

  • Teams and individuals of any age are invited to submit brief videos that tell viewers about artistic expression that stems from the natural world for the video contest, “Earth Expressions.”
  • The photography contest, also open to all ages, explores how people are “Inspired by Earth.”
  • Open to students in grades K-5, the visual arts contest is titled “Earth and Art.”
  • Finally, students in grades 6-9 are eligible to enter the essay contest, “Finding ‘Art’ in Earth.”

For all contests, entries may be submitted any time up to the Friday of Earth Science Week, October 19, 2018. These contests allow both students and the general public to participate in the celebration, learn about Earth science, and compete for prizes. The first-place prize for each contest is $300 and a copy of AGI’s Geoscience Handbook.

To learn more about these contests, including how to enter, visit http://www.earthsciweek.org/contests.

Reaching over 50 million people annually, AGI leads Earth Science Week in cooperation with its sponsors and the geoscience community as a service to the public. Each October, community groups, educators, and interested citizens organize celebratory events. Earth Science Week offers opportunities to discover the Earth sciences and engage in responsible stewardship of the Earth. Learn more at http://www.earthsciweek.org.

About AGI
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is a nonprofit federation of 52 scientific and professional associations that represents more than 260,000 geoscientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society’s use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.

AGI is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to serving the geoscience community and addressing the needs of society. AGI headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia.

The American Geosciences Institute represents and serves the geoscience community by providing collaborative leadership and information to connect Earth, science, and people.

More Student Project Options

Valley View Holds First High School Energy Fair Archbald Pennsylvania

Northeastern Pennsylvania gas companies went to Valley View High School in Lackawanna County to sponsor an energy fair introducing youth to energy careers.

The growth and dedication that has been displayed between the natural gas industry and educational institutions over the years has been staggering. While much of that relationship has been amongst local area colleges, high schools have been becoming closely involved too, as evidenced by the Energy Education Program offered at Valley View High School in Archbald.”

As this blog has noted before, the Energy Education Program offered by Valley View is the first of its kind in the state, as it brings energy-specific curriculum to the high school level and was developed as a collaboration between industry experts and school officials. The course covers nine different types of energy and regularly features speakers from the various industries.

But on Friday, Dec. 18, Valley View took the next big step in its program and hosted its first Energy Fair, which was planned and organized by the Energy Education Program class.

Read More about the Event and Program

We were planning to go to the event, but the presenter became ill.  Prior to the event, we did conduct training and educational course on energy conservation and Geothermal Energy.

Presentation on Sustainability Training (pdf)
Our Presentation on Careers in Energy – The Great Earth Engine (pdf)

More training Opportunities in Energy and the Environment

 How you can help the Water Science Basics ! Trying to encourage a positive change in Pennsylvania.

Pike-Wayne Earth Day Festival

The Carbon County Groundwater Guardians can not attend this event, but we are providing approximately 100 copies of the new booklet on drinking water quality in Pennsylvania. If you can, you should stop at this this great community event.

Pike-Wayne Earth Day Festival
Date: Saturday, April 20, 2013
Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Location: PPL’s Wallenpaupack Environmental Learning Center
Contact: PPL at 570-253-7001 or pplpreserves@pplweb.com

Please check the website for updates and more details at www.pikewayneearthday.org.

Rain or Shine!

Activities and exhibits include:

•Arts & craft activities for kids
•Bring an old t-shirt and give it a new life! Cub Scout Pack #229 will be turning them into bags.
•Bring old tennis shoes for recycling! Girl Scout Troop #50151 is recycling them with Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe campaign.
•Bird walks
•Door Prizes
•Live music
•Face painting and Species Celebration
•Yummy, healthy food and local maple syrup for sale
•Kayak demos on Lake Wallenpaupack

Other Partners that Should be at the event
◦Delaware Highlands Conservancy
◦Delaware Highlands Mushroom Society
◦Lacawac Sanctuary
◦Lacawanna College Lake Region Center
◦Lake Wallenpaupack Watershed Management District
◦National Park Service – Upper Delaware
◦Northeast PA Audubon Society
◦Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
◦PPL Lake Wallenpaupack Environmental Preserve
◦Pike County Conservation District
◦Pike-Wayne Conservation Partnership
◦Promised Land State Park
◦SEEDS
◦U.S. Forest Service: Grey Towers
◦Wallenpaupack Area High School
◦Wallenpaupack Historical Society
◦Wayne Conservation District