Green Options

If hexavalent chromium doesn’t ring a bell, think chrome, the stuff that puts the shine on everything from bathroom faucets to motorcycles.

If that still doesn’t help, maybe Erin Brockovich does.  In the 1990’s, the former legal clerk fought to expose hexavalent chromium contamination in drinking water, in the small California town of Hinkley.  The result was a record-breaking settlement and a major motion picture.  Fast forward to April 2009, and the U.S. military is adding a new chapter to the Brockovich book.  The Department of Defense has issued a formal memo requiring an aggressive across-the-board reduction in the military’s use of hexavalent chromium, otherwise known as chromium 6.

Residents of Centerville, Virginia have sued Dominion Virginia Power to the tune of $1 billion for supplying 1.5 million tons of toxic fly ash to fill the hills of a nearby golf course.

The attorneys representing 400 Centerville residents claim that Dominion knew that the substance they supplied to the Battlefield Golf Club would eventually seep into the water supply. The suit also names the golf course’s developer and Dominion’s ‘coal-ash management consultant.’

Research from the University of Gothenburg has revealed that 31% of antibiotics sold in Sweden contain drugs manufactured near Hyderabad, India, where porous wastewater treatment has led to widespread contamination.

The questionable water treatment facilities were found to release levels of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin which were 5 times higher than the daily consumption of the entire country of Sweden. At levels that high, there is an increased risk of breeding “super germs”, drug-resistant bacteria which have evolved an immunity to antibiotics.

Combined Water Issues Map from WaterCAMPWS

In reporting about our current and impending national freshwater issues I have occassionally received criticism/feedback along the lines of “water conservation may be important in places like Africa, but we live in the U.S…so quit the scare tactics!”.

I find this ‘we-invented-water!’ attitude troubling considering the myriad of water issues facing our country today. Issues that, if not dealt with soon, will become a crisis making the oil problem look like a bad hair day.

So how best do I illustrate our current water woes to the folks who do not appreciate my water conservation tips?

…I got it! How about I get some leading minds in the field together to impart their focused wisdom? And accompany said wisdom with PICTURES!

Great idea me!

WaterCAMPWS, help!…

WaterCAMPWS (Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems) consists of university faculty, research scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, and municipal practitioners in fields related to water purity from University of California Berkeley, MWRDG-Chicago, Clark Atlanta University, Howard University, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NRMRL-EPA, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Sandia National Laboratories, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Yale University.

WaterCAMPWS has listed the threats to our water supply as:

The U.S. Geological Survey says it’s getting closer to understanding why so many male smallmouth bass in the Potomoc River basin show female egg cells in their testes. The phenomenon is greatest in areas with the highest concentration of people and intensive agricultural development. Researchers are checking if hormones in wastewater and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in farm run-off are to blame.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [...]