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Tag:

water quality

Industrial-Sized Rain Barrel Research in Washington State

Industrial-Sized Rain Barrel Research in Washington State

written by Environmental News Network

In an effort to reduce the amount of polluted runoff reaching Puget Sound, the Port of Seattle is hosting a two-year study site for two unique metal boxes, which will bloom into rain gardens and help reduce pollutants.

“The Port of Seattle is working with many partners to restore Puget Sound.” said Commissioner Bill Bryant. “There is no single solution to saving Puget Sound, no silver bullet, but there are hundreds of different things we can do and this is one of them.”

Moving Green Infrastructure (MGIF) is a research/demonstration project to test the water quality performance of two innovative stormwater treatment techniques, a large “rain garden in a box” and a special soil mix with local, volcanic sands. Water quality from a roof in an industrial port area will be tested before and after going through the boxes to see how these two techniques perform. This research/demonstration project is part of growing efforts to reduce the amount of polluted runoff reaching Puget Sound, which is estimated to receive between 14 and 94 million pounds of toxic pollutants every year. Two large steel boxes, called Splash Boxxes, are being installed at Terminal 91. These boxes are a blend of rain garden and cistern, two practices referred to as low impact development, or LID.

“LID works,” said Amy Waterman of Gealogica, “resulting in 98-99% reduction in runoff volume and 83-99% reduction in key pollutants.”

The information from this study will help shed light on the potential for these bioretention planter boxes to improve water quality of polluted runoff in commercial/industrial areas and whether soil mixes used in rain gardens and bioswales could be improved. One box is going to have a unique soil mix with volcanic sands and the other will be a typical rain garden soil mix.

“We developed Splash Boxx for just this type of industrial application,” said David Hymel of Splash Boxx LLC. “We are very pleased to be able to provide the delivery system that tests an exciting new bio retention soil mix design.”

“King Conservation District in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities supported this project with a grant for $49,700 because we think it is important to explore innovative solutions for our stormwater issues,” said Sara Hemphill, Executive Director, King Conservation District.

The water going into each box from the roof runoff will be tested once a month during the rainy seasons for phosphorus, nitrogen, bacteria, zinc, and copper. Splash Boxxes are part of an innovative stormwater research and demonstration project funded by King Conservation District and managed by Sustainable Seattle through a contract with Gealogica LLC.  The Port of Seattle is providing the site for two years.



May 13, 2014 1 comment
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In Search of Safe Drinking Water

In Search of Safe Drinking Water

written by Environmental News Network

Access to safe drinking water is a fundamental requirement for good health and is also a human right. WHO and UNICEF’s indicator is based upon the “use of an improved source”. The authors of a recent study into water contamination postulated that this did not account for water quality measurements or monitor global access to safe drinking water. Researchers Robert Bain and Jamie Bartram from The Water Institute at University of North Carolina sought to determine whether water from “improved” sources is less likely to contain fecal contamination than “unimproved” sources and to assess the extent to which contamination varies by source type and setting.

Studies from online databases published between 1990 and August 2013 in Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish were identified, including PubMed and Web of Science, and grey literature. Using this data, the researchers investigated the risk factors and settings where fecal contamination of water sources was most common.

Studies in low and middle income countries that assessed drinking water for the presence of Escherichia coli or thermotolerant coliforms (TTC) were included provided they associated results with a particular source type. In total 319 studies were included, reporting on 96,737 water samples. The odds of contamination within a given study were considerably lower for “improved” sources than “unimproved” sources.

However over a quarter of samples from improved sources contained fecal contamination in 38% of 191 studies. Water sources in low-income countries and rural areas were more likely to be contaminated.  Thus, safety may be overestimated due to infrequent water sampling and deterioration in quality prior to consumption, having profound implications for public health policy.

These findings are important as WHO and UNICEF track progress towards the Millennium Development Goals water target using the indicator “use of an improved source”: this study shows that assuming that “improved” water sources are safe greatly overestimates the number of people thought to have access to water from a safe source, suggesting that a large proportion of the world’s population still use unsafe water.

Access to an “improved source”, such as piped water and bore holes provides a measure of sanitary protection but does not ensure water is free of fecal contamination nor is it consistent between source types or settings. International estimates therefore greatly overstate use of safe drinking water and do not fully reflect disparities in access. An enhanced monitoring strategy would combine indicators of sanitary protection with measures of water quality.

Read more from PLOS Medicine.

Article by Robin Blackstone.



May 8, 2014 1 comment
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New Study on Corn Waste Biofuel’s Emissions: Worthy Topic, Flawed Conclusion

New Study on Corn Waste Biofuel’s Emissions: Worthy Topic, Flawed Conclusion

written by

A recent study in Nature Climate Change is attracting a lot of attention because of its headline grabbing claim that cellulosic ethanol made from crop residues produces higher carbon emissions than gasoline. (See related blog post: “Corn Waste for Biofuel Could Boost Emissions, Study Says.”)

Professor Adam Liska of the University of Nebraska Lincoln, who led the study, is absolutely right to focus on soil carbon in the lifecycle of corn based biofuels (taking crop residues off the ground, Liska concluded, keeps them from trapping carbon in the soil and allows that carbon to escape into the atmosphere).  (Take the quiz: “What You Don’t Know About Biofuel.”)

Regrettably, the narrow framing of his analysis set the debate up as a choice between pursuing cellulosic biofuels or calling off the whole project and driving home in our gasoline-powered cars.  The real solution is biofuels that reduce carbon in the atmosphere while protecting the carbon in soils.

eXtension-stover-pic-medium-590x442

 

Oil remains the problem, not the solution

As Peter Frumhoff’s blog last year makes clear, oil is the primary climate problem in the transportation sector.  So just because we find that oil-saving solutions are not easy does not mean we can afford to stick with the status quo. Instead of writing (yet another) obituary for cellulosic biofuels, we should use this new research to improve and refine our quest for clean fuels.

Based on our analysis, there are real opportunities to make low carbon biofuel from agricultural residues such as corn stalks (also called corn stover and shown in the image).  These non-food-based biofuels are a key element of our overall strategy to cut oil use through efficiency, electrification, better biofuels and other oil saving solutions described in our Half the Oil plan. When we assessed the scale of the opportunity to use agricultural residues as fuel we paid very careful attention to protecting soil carbon, excluding residue sources that would lead to losses in soil carbon or increases in erosion. (See related story: “Squeezing Gasoline from Plants.”)

Preserving soil carbon: An agricultural issue not limited to biofuels

There are a lot of problems caused by the way corn is grown, not least of which are the problems corn farming causes for water quality.  If the future of biofuels is just growing ever more corn, and harvesting not just the grain, but the whole stalk as well, we are going to make bad problems even worse.

In the near-term, use of residues must be accompanied by changes in crop rotations and incorporation of cover crops (some of these practices are discussed in this fact sheet).  To their credit, Liska and his team mention this crucial opportunity to replace lost soil carbon, though it is not getting much attention in the press. (Share your thoughts: “What Breakthroughs Do Biofuels Need Now?“)

While agricultural residues raise concerns about soil carbon, other cellulosic feedstocks are major soil-carbon winners. Perennial bioenergy crops store a great deal of carbon in the soil. The emphasis Liska’s work places on soil carbon points to the other large potential opportunity for bioenergy to play a productive role in agriculture, which is to shift from an emphasis on corn to perennial grasses and other crops that build soil carbon, improve water quality and deliver other benefits even as they can provide a low carbon source of biofuel.

Residues do address the food versus fuel and land use issues

Much of the enthusiasm for using crop residues for fuel is to limit competition between biofuel uses of corn and other uses (primarily as animal feed) and also to avoid expanding the global footprint of agriculture at the expense of forests.  Nothing in this analysis refutes that crucial motivation.  That’s why it’s important to take the lesson of Liska’s analysis that a status quo approach to corn farming is not sustainable, and to make sure we avoid the soil carbon loss his analysis describes.

The fine print

As I mentioned, it’s important to be mindful of the narrow focus of this study. Two key factors that fell outside the study boundaries have a major bearing on the final implications:

  1. The paper neglects the lifecycle impact of an important electricity coproduct. By Liska’s own admission, a portion of the crop residue used for biofuel can be burned to produce electricity, saving emissions that would otherwise be generated, in some cases, by coal. The effect of this electricity offset, according to Liska’s calculations, could be enough to reverse the conclusion that corn stover biofuel can’t meet the 60 percent reduction in carbon pollution required by the U.S. government’s standard.
  2. Time is another crucial factor, and the five or ten year period examined in the study is pretty short.. I have had a long-running argument (beginning on this blog, and continued in the letters and replies in the International Journal of Lifecycle Assessment) ) with some other experts on the need to be transparent in choosing a time interval for biofuels lifecycle analysis.  In that case I was arguing that using a 100-year timeframe obscured the real magnitude of land use emissions, particularly when making comparisons with other studies that were based on a 30-year timeframe.  In this case Liska made a controversial choice to focus on just a five- and ten-year timeframe, which amplifies the impact of soil carbon emissions changes.  There may be good reasons to focus on five to ten years, but the paper would have been stronger if it had included a discussion of how the results changed over 30 years or even a century, together with whatever argument the authors have for considering five to ten years the right timeframe to consider.

After making these two technical corrections I doubt that the emissions from soil carbon would disqualify corn stover-based cellulosic ethanol from qualifying as a cellulosic biofuel under the Renewable Fuels Standard, and the overall  emissions would certainly be lower than gasoline.  However, that doesn’t make protecting soil carbon any less important.  The broader point is that when studies like these highlight challenges on the road to cutting oil use, we need to meet the challenges rather than turn back, because the status quo is not a smart option for either transportation or agriculture.

Article by Jeremy Martin for National Geographic, appearing courtesy 3BL Media.



April 28, 2014 0 comment
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Delaware River Watershed is Focus of Large Scale Restoration Project

Delaware River Watershed is Focus of Large Scale Restoration Project

written by Yale Environment 360

A Philadelphia foundation is providing $35 million to launch a host of programs aimed at better protecting the Delaware River, which flows through the heart of the populous U.S. eastern seaboard and provides drinking water for 15 million people. The William Penn Foundation, working with nonprofit groups such as The Open Space Institute, says its Delaware River Initiative will protect more than 30,000 acres of land, launch 40 restoration projects, create incentives for businesses and landowners to protect the watershed, and set up a comprehensive program of water quality monitoring that will enable the foundation and its partners to measure the success of their programs and the overall health of the river. A cornerstone of the foundation’s initiative will be its restoration and protection work in eight so-called “sub-watersheds” that feed into the Delaware River.

“We wanted to go to places where the water quality was best but threatened, or the worst but had potential for a turnaround,” said Andrew Johnson, senior officer in the foundation’s watershed protection program.

The William Penn Foundation is a family-held philanthropy with roughly $2 billion in assets. The 388-mile Delaware River rises out of New York’s Catskill mountains and then flows through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. Foundation officials said that while the federal Clean Water Act has significantly improved the river’s water quality since the 1970s, the Delaware now faces intensifying threats, many from so-called “non-point sources.” Johnson said these include logging and development in the river’s headwaters, polluted runoff from farms and urban and suburban areas, aquifer depletion, and the looming prospect of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and natural gas.

The Delaware River Basin Commission, a regional body that manages the river, has issued a temporary ban on fracking. But oil and gas development could move ahead at some point in portions of the basin, and Johnson noted that pipelines and other energy infrastructure is already being built in the watershed. “Energy development in upstream headwaters is obviously going to be accelerating,” said Johnson. “That is a threat that we’re very interested in.”

Working with 40 national and regional partners, the William Penn Foundation has designed pilot projects to protect the watershed from the banks of numerous creeks and tributaries to lands miles away from the river itself. “We are consciously making the connection between land protection and water quality,” said Johnson.

He said the initiative’s goal is to work with universities, conservation groups, local land trusts, citizens’ groups, and government agencies to establish successful pilot projects that could then be replicated across the region. Claire Billett, an officer in the foundation’s watershed program, said the initiative was seeking to encourage “cumulative impacts that wouldn’t be achieved if people were acting on their own in a more spread-out, disparate manner across the watershed.”

The “sub-watershed” program, which will involve projects in roughly 25 percent of the 13,500 square miles that make up the Delaware River watershed, will focus on areas where restoration and protection projects will have a high impact on water quality, the foundation said. The work in the eight sub-watersheds will be closely coordinated and the results will be monitored by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

In the Brandywine/Christina sub-watershed, scientists and conservationists from the University of Delaware and The Nature Conservancy will investigate the creation of a water fund in which key parties — such as the water utility for Wilmington, Delaware — would help purchase or restore valuable forested headwaters. Such water funds are being created worldwide, in places such as Quito, Ecuador.

In the New Jersey Highlands sub-watershed, scientists will be using advanced methods, such as identification of pathogens through their DNA signature, to track sources of pollution. In the upstream suburban Philadelphia sub-watershed, streams that have been buried or covered by roads or other development will be opened up, restoring habitat and connections to wetlands. In addition, scientists from Villanova University will launch projects to control storm water runoff, including the construction of rainwater gardens and rainwater trenches to keep polluted storm water from rushing into the Delaware River and its tributaries.

Foundation officials said the program will also work closely with the region’s many land trusts to ensure that farmland and other land conservation programs incorporate measures to reduce runoff of farm animal waste and other pollutants into waterways. One group, the Stroud Water Research Center, will create 100-foot buffers along long stretches of a stream. Other projects will work with farmers farther from waterways but whose practices can nevertheless pollute the watershed.

“We’ve been very concentrated along the stream corridor, but we think there are a lot of innovative things we can do uphill,” said Nathan Boon, an associate in the foundation’s watershed program.

As for one of the biggest potential threats facing the river — fracking for natural gas and associated pipelines and other infrastructure — Johnson said the $35 million program will include funds to monitor the expansion of pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure. The initiative will also study the potential impact of proposed fracking projects on the forested headlands of the Delaware, which he said are essential to the health of river.



April 2, 2014 1 comment
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How to Install a Green Roof

written by Walter Wang

A green roof is a special type of roof that is covered with certain types of vegetation. This vegetation can cover either all or parts of the roofing. Green roofs have many advantages and can be installed with relative ease.

Installing a Green Roof

The first step in installing a green roof is to place a

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April 19, 2013 0 comment
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Blue I Water Technologies Expanding Global Operations in China

written by Walter Wang

China’s Guangdong Province water company is currently in the process of installing 75 water analyzing and control units supplied by global water quality control systems provider Blue I Water Technologies, BlueI informed Israel NewTech. The units will accurately measure a range of parameters for municipal potable water, to ensure drinking water

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April 4, 2013 0 comment
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Blue I Raises $3m, Prepares to Expand

written by Walter Wang

Israeli water analysis and control company Blue I Technologies is in the advanced stages of a number of tenders around the world, including in India, China, South and North America, the company informed Israel NewTech. The tenders are estimated to be in the millions of dollars. The company has also recently raised $3 million, which it will use to enter new markets in South

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January 31, 2013 0 comment
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