living life by the drop

Energy production and usage is the most water intensive. Let's work together on efficiency, water quality and treatment for better health outcomes everywhere.

[watersavvy]

To get National Sanitation Foundation certification for lead removal nowadays, the filter has to pass tests using both particulate and dissolved lead. When the new improved certified filters came onto the market, we were skeptical and did a lot of testing.  In general, they worked really well. So even though the certification test is only done up to 150 ppb, they worked even at much higher levels. If my family was in Flint, and I had a certified lead filter installed, I would let my family and children drink the filtered water.

VA Tech Flint Water Study FAQ 

[watersavvy]

USA TODAY NETWORK conducted an investigation of drinking water systems and found almost 2000 where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past 4 years.

READ MORE 

[watersavvy]

The lawsuit, filed on Feb. 18, 2016 in the Circuit Court of Cook County Illinois, states that the city’s aging lead water pipes are disturbed by construction or street work, meter installation or replacement, or plumbing repairs – projects that disrupt the polyphosphate coating that protects the service lines and increases the risk of “alarming levels of lead” into nearby residents’ water supply. Nearly 80 percent of the properties in Chicago receive drinking water via outdated, brittle lead pipes that are cut and greatly disturbed by the city’s water and sewer main projects. 

READ MORE

If you live in an older city that laid pipes before using them was made illegal in the early 1920s, this is worth checking into. 

[me-lapislazuli]

Mirror | by nerion | http://ift.tt/1JYZGVm

[watersavvy]

It doesn’t look like there is a graphic like this in the 2015 EIA Report. Within each of these industries, heating and cooling requires the most energy.

[watersavvy]

They're hoping that a focus on water use in the home can spread to other parts of society. "If you look at the statistics, farming and industry consume the most water," Martin says. "But people own the farms and factories. If you want to have an impact on politics and change behavior, we strongly believe that you have to start at home."

Fact Co-exist RE: The Oasys

[upworthy]

See how much the world has physically changed since you were born. Hint: It's more than you realize.

Sometimes it’s hard to see change as it’s happening around us. But let’s take a look at how the world has changed since you were born — like physically changed, in ways beyond strip malls and landfills.

Let’s go back to 1980 and check the view of the polar ice caps from the top.

Back in the day when the Clash was still a band, the “Star Wars” prequels were but a formative inkling in George Lucas’s mind, and … wait did that polar ice cap lose like half its landmass in the last 35 years?!

Then of course there are the children of 1990, who are same age as “The Simpsons” (the show, not the characters).

Compare that 1990 ice cap to the way it looked in 1980, and that’s about as different as the bass line from “Under Pressure” and the one from “Ice Ice Baby.” Oh hey, remember Vanilla Ice? He was something, huh?

And that brings us back to the turn of the millennium. How ‘bout them polar ice caps, 2000 babies?

Oh, you thought all that melting was evenly spread across three long decades? Yeah, not so much. We were all too busy freaking out about the Y2K bug-that-never-was to even notice.

But wait! There’s more! (And also solutions to stop this nonsense, too!)

[watersavvy]

How do you positively impact the severe drought situation in California by leveraging new and exponentially growing technologies to increase water supplies available in California?

The prize for 3 winning teams is a place in the Entrepreneurs in Residence program at the SU Startup Lab on our campus at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley.  Each winning team receives US $5,000, space at the SU Startup Lab, mentoring, and access to the SU Labs community.  The top 3 runners up receive the opportunity to pitch their ideas or solutions at the SU Startup Lab to the SU community.

Entries are due October 23rd. Who wants to team up?

Imagine H20 is also sponsoring a related challenge that is policy driven with entries due on September 30th.

[watersavvy]

In addition to courting Cook as an investor, Nebia's shower heads have also been installed at Apple's corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., according to The New York Times. Nebia is a six-person company based out of San Francisco. The product is said to resemble the base of an iMac, and its unique design reportedly cuts down water use by up to 70 percent. A Nebia shower is said to use six gallons in an average use, while the typical shower consumes 20 gallons.

9 days to go for the Kickstarter and they have surpassed their fundraising goal by a couple million dollars. 

[watersavvy]

The EPA estimates the average household loses more than 10,000 gallons of water every year, from leaks alone. Gilbert Digital goes on the job with a Gilbert, Arizona Water Conservation Specialist to see what they do to help residents conserve water and save money.

[watersavvy]

Of the reno shows, Flip or Flop seems most appropriate for getting the word out about xeriscaping. Cc @TurfTerminators

[watersavvy]

Having a functional water market, in which people with excess water can sell it to those who need it, is an important incentive for getting people to store water because they can profit from their conservation. From the state’s perspective, the market is an important tool to reallocate water to those who most need it now without harming anyone’s long-term water rights.

more on water banking by Erica Gies

[watersavvy]

UWM works with industry on water-monitoring products

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has no fewer than five research teams testing sensors inside everything from wastewater channels to lake buoys.

Along with Badger Meter Inc. and Baker Manufacturing LLC, A.O. Smith is one of three Wisconsin water-tech companies that just licensed sensor technology from each of two UWM-led research teams.

The first is a hand-held sensor that can meter contaminants and heavy metals at low concentrations, using just a single drop of water. The "microfluidic" sensor was developed by UWM assistant professor Woo-Jin Chang, who worked in collaboration with Sundaram Gunasekaran, an agricultural engineer at UW-Madison.

High-performance water sensors are hot technologies. Water Online, a news site for water engineers, calls them the "Holy Grail" of water tech. And Chang's application could compete with a rival sensor technology developed by UWM engineering professor Junhong Chen.

via @TheWaterCouncil

[seekernetwork]

It’s Not Just California: The Whole Southwest Is Experiencing a Drought

Notice California, where a lack of rainfall and record heat have pushed many reservoirs below 50 percent capacity. Farmers in California’s Central Valley have already seen cuts to water deliveries, and the governor has ordered cities to pare back water use.

But then there are those two huge red circles near Arizona: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. These gigantic reservoirs, which help supply water from the Colorado River to farms and cities throughout the Southwest, are also reaching historically low levels.

That’s a huge deal, as Eric Holthaus nicely explains at Slate. If water levels at Lake Mead keep dropping in the months ahead, Arizona could soon face a water crunch of its own.

Most notably, Lake Mead - the lake that provides over 90% of Las Vegas’ water - is reaching record lows. 

Water levels at Lake Mead had already been dropping for years, as more and more users have been overdrawing its water. More recently, drought and extreme heat have been adding to the pressure. With less snow in the mountains, there’s less water flowing into Lake Powell, which in turn is delivering less water downstream to Lake Mead. Read more

[watersavvy]

also WA

[icymirss]

Wal-Mart is facing questions after CBS13 learns the company draws its bottled water from a Sacramento water district during California’s drought…

Sacramento sells water to a bottler, DS Services of America, at 99 cents for every 748 gallons – the same rate as other commercial and residential customers. That water is then bottled and sold at Walmart for 88 cents per gallon, meaning that $1 of water from Sacramento turns into $658.24 for Walmart and DS Services.

[watersavvy]

Have any municipalities considered a convenience bottled beverage tax?

[seriouslyfunnygifs]

This just blows my mind..

Seriously Funny GIfs

[davidcarlton]

But if all the savings from water rationing amounted to 20% of our residential water use, then that equals about 0.5 MAF, which is about 10% of the water used to irrigate alfalfa. The California alfalfa industry makes a total of $860 million worth of alfalfa hay per year. So if you calculate it out, a California resident who wants to spend her fair share of money to solve the water crisis without worrying about cutting back could do it by paying the alfalfa industry $2 to not grow $2 worth of alfalfa, thus saving as much water as if she very carefully rationed her own use. If you were to offer California residents the opportunity to not have to go through the whole gigantic water-rationing rigamarole for $2 a head, I think even the poorest people in the state would be pretty excited about that. My mother just bought and installed a new water-saving toilet – which took quite a bit of her time and money – and furthermore, the government is going to give her a $125 rebate for doing so. Cutting water on the individual level is hard and expensive. But if instead of trying to save water ourselves, we just paid the alfalfa industry not to grow alfalfa, all the citizens of California could do their share for $2. If they also wanted to have a huge lush water-guzzling lawn, their payment to the alfalfa industry would skyrocket all the way to $5 per year.

California, Water You Doing? | Slate Star Codex

(via @JAlbor)

One detail overlooked in the comments is whether or not the alfalfa producers are under contract void only when adequate water supply absolutely cannot be maintained.