Green Options

Chemical treatment is becoming a less desirable way to provide safe drinking water, and water professionals have been searching for a less expensive, more reliable and more sustainable method of killing pathogens.  Cavitation Technologies, Inc. has come up with one solution.  The company’s new process uses mechanical and electrical systems to blow the little bugs to smithereens.

The company’s CaviGulation reactor sounds like a piece of equipment that would be at home in Frankenstein’s lab.  It delivers up a complex set of reactions based on kinetic energy, chemical, electro-chemical, and hydrodynamic principles.  The result: a water disinfection process that’s 1,000 times more effective than conventional systems.

New York City is fighting to save its drinking water supply from potential contamination by new natural gas drilling operations, and some unlikely heroes may be ambling to the rescue.  Dairy cows are being recruited to provide sustainable manure-derived methane biogas to power homes in New York State.  Along with other alternative energies, renewable methane could reduce the demand for natural gas, and forestall the potential danger to water supplies posed by unsafe natural gas drilling operations.

The statewide methane biogas project was kick-started this fall at New York State’s Dairy Power Summit.  The initial goal is somewhat modest: by 2020, the state’s dairy farmers hope to produce enough methane to power about 32,000 homes.  The real punch is in the involvement of future thinking GE Energy with other innovative dairy industry partners in the effort, which promises to transform the humble dairy farm into the central feature of hundreds of bioenergy communities across the state and elsewhere in the U.S.

In its search for more fuel efficient ways to provide drinking water for long sea voyages and remote bases, the U.S. Navy has developed a second-generation desalination unit that use 65% less energy than conventional technology.  It’s only in the prototype stage but the Navy is already looking beyond seagoing use, and has deployed an earlier version of the technology to provide emergency water supply to disaster areas.

Called the EUWP (Expeditionary Unit Water Purification Program) Gen 2, the new unit also offers a significant secondary benefit that applies to land operations.  By providing an on-site source for potable water, it eliminates the need to run convoys of tanker trucks.  The generators that power the EUWP units still use conventional fuel, but that could change.  If they could be adapted to run cost-effectively on solar power and other sustainable energy, the door is open to desalination on a mass scale.

GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with Sabrina Walasek of Blue Planet Run Foundation, which has a vision of a world where everyone has access to safe drinking water and healthy human beings have a chance to live up [...]

Recognized as one of the US’s 100 best gold courses (Golf Digest), the ‘Sanctuary’ will once again host the 5th annual Water For People Golf Classic on August 19, 2009. Situated in Sedalia, Colorado, and adjacent to over 12, 000 acres of protected open space, the Sanctuary was carefully designed and “placed” within one of the most fragile and beautiful ecosystems in the State, if not the entire country.

The world is not such a magical place when chemicals, including the carcinogen chromium 6, are being dumped into groundwater.

A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles alleges that Disney has been dumping the waste from their on-site cooling systems since 1998. According to the suit, brought by Environmental Worldwatch, Inc and local residents, the company,

supplied, dumped, released and deposited and continues to supply, dump, release and deposit vast amounts of chromium 6, air cooling water and residues, and other various toxic waste materials.

The Disney corporation has so far declined to comment on the specifics of the case but are denying any wrongdoing.

Right now, there’s no wind in the Great Lakes, but lots of talk.

There’s a bit of money, too, totaling about $100,000 from the federal stimulus package, aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The Great Lakes Commission has been granted $99,740 to develop a set of “Best Practices to Accelerate Wind Power in the Great Lakes and Beyond.”

The end result will be a guide to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to protecting the environment, being sensitive to community concerns and … building wind turbines in the water.

In Illinois, Tricia Krause isn’t the most popular mom in the neighborhood. But she couldn’t care less. She’s fighting against the town of Crestwood, claiming its water made her family ill.

The single mom of 3 has 2 kids with health problems and a small business to run. Her son had leukemia and her daughter had a brain tumor. She’s got her hands full, but she’s still fighting against her former hometown, where all three kids were born.

I’m so sad and angry and disappointed about this.

The Chicago Tribune reported on the Crestwood problem just the day before Earth Day. Their story claims that the village, population 11,000, served residents tainted water for 20 years. While Crestwood officials boasted that they had the cheapest water in the county–”Good to taste but not to waste!”–they were giving residents a “taste” of carcinogens.

Krause says her kids were directly affected by the cost-saving measures. She’s now suing the city of Crestwood.

We’ve all heard stories of how US soldiers in Iraq have been forced to travel in Humvees lacking armor protection; however, the shortage in military supplies includes basic necessities. Many soldiers stationed all over Iraq lack adequate supplies of drinking water. Commanders have been forced to steal water from the private contractors to meet the basic needs of their troops.

Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas’ Editor-In-Chief, discusses health tips and dangers about drinking water with Colin Ingram, Author of The Drinking Water Book.

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