US - Water

submitted by Albert Gomez

miamiherald.com - by Julie Dick - December 14, 2015

Miami-Dade County leaders have a number of decisions to make in the coming days, months and years that will define how we prepare for a changing Miami. If unsustainable developments are approved and move forward — be it a landfill expansion, a highway running through the Everglades ecosystem or new commercial and industrial development in currently undeveloped low-lying areas — they will create future liabilities and sprawling urban areas that will require expensive, though not necessarily effective, flood control. This will put the region’s water resources at risk.

On Tuesday, the County Commission is scheduled to consider whether to approve an application from the Neighborhood Planning Company for an industrial and commercial development on more than 60 acres of agricultural land and wetlands outside of the Urban Development Boundary (UDB).

The development would sit entirely on top of the West Wellfield Protection Area, in which certain land uses and activities are regulated or prohibited to protect the potable water supply from contamination and to provide recharge of the aquifer. Industrial development on this site puts our drinking-water supply at risk. This proposal should not move forward.

submitted by Denis Gilhooly

CLICK HERE - LA Office of Public Health - July 22, 2015 - St. Bernard Parish

CLICK HERE - LA Office of Public Health - July 28, 2015 - Ascension Parish

bbc.com - July 30, 2015

US health officials have confirmed the presence of a 'brain-eating' bacteria in the water supply of several communities near New Orleans.

Ascension Parish and St Bernard Parish have each discovered Naegleria fowleri amoeba, a bacteria that enters through the nose and attacks the brain.

Officials have begun a 60 day "chlorine burn" to kill off the deadly pathogen.

Water from the tap is safe to drink, officials say, but should be prevented from entering the nose.

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Image: A smallmouth bass with confirmed malignant tumor was caught by an angler in the Susquehanna River near Duncannon, Pa., on Nov. 3, 2014. John Arway/Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission

npr.org - May 7th, 2015 - Krishnadev Calamur

Late last year, an angler caught a smallmouth bass in the Susquehanna River near Duncannon, Pa. That fish, officials from the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission said this week, had a malignant tumor. It's the first time this type of tumor has been found on a smallmouth bass in the river, the agency says.

Cancerous growths and tumors on fish are "very, very infrequent," John Arway, the agency's executive director, said in an interview.

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CLICK HERE - The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

CLICK HERE - REPORT - The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015 (139 page .PDF report)

phys.org - by Hillel Italie - March 20, 2015

The world could suffer a 40 percent shortfall in water in just 15 years unless countries dramatically change their use of the resource, a U.N. report warned Friday.

The report predicts global water demand will increase 55 percent by 2050, while reserves dwindle. If current usage trends don't change, the world will have only 60 percent of the water it needs in 2030, it said.

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