The latest tests show the trihalomethane (THM) count at 40 micrograms per litre, well below the standard of 100.

Before the construction of the town’s new $2.6 million water treatment plant, which went on line last summer, the THM count was sometimes over 200.

Mayor Joe Feeney says it’s a big relief.

“It’s nice to get a positive report and it says the money was well worth spending,” Mayor Joe Feeney said Tuesday.

THMs are chemical compounds that can be formed when water is disinfected with chlorine. Studies have linked high THM levels with stillbirths or miscarriages and bladder cancer.

The province now requires municipal water supplies to also test for haloacetic acids (HAAs), another by-product of the chlorination process. There is concern that long-term exposure to elevated levels of HAAs may pose a risk in the development of cancer.

Mahone Bay’s water is testing at 36 micrograms per litre. The standard for HAAs is 80.

source: SouthShoreNow.ca

In his recent review of the battle over bottled water, Roger Taylor appears to state the case against the move to ban bottled water in municipal buildings. His column, “Battle brewing over bottled water,” quotes Brenda Hurlburt, the manager of Pure Choice Water Shop in Yarmouth, saying, “If the government wants to look at it as if municipal water will do, let’s go to the government offices and the people who are making these decisions and let’s make them drink the town water that’s not purified, or that isn’t treated, and see how long they like it.”

In fact, this is exactly what the ban is asking municipal offices and municipal officers to do: choose safe, clean, healthy and affordable municipal water.

Recently, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (an organization that represents the interests of municipalities on policy and program matters that fall within federal jurisdiction) encouraged its members to phase out the sale and distribution of bottled water in municipal buildings. In Halifax, a coalition of local groups – including the Council of Canadians, Ecology Action Centre and the Polaris Institute – has provided three simple steps to phase out bottled water and turn on the taps. They suggest that municipalities:

•Assess the availability of bottled water and potable tap water in city facilities;

•Where drinking water is readily available, stop selling and providing bottled water;

•Where drinking water is not available, commit to reinvesting in water fountains and taps over a specified time period.

These suggestions are far from radical, and yet the bottled water industry continues to work at undermining people’s trust in municipal water. The bottled water industry would like us to believe that municipal water is not safe and that it is inconvenient. This perception generates a profit of more than $35 billion in annual sales worldwide, and does so at great economic and environmental expense.

Canada has some of the safest, cleanest and most accessible drinking water in the world. Not only is potable tap water available in most communities across the country, but it is also far more regulated than bottled water. Bottled water is an environmentally disastrous product in terms of the energy required to make the bottles and transport them, and is also expensive at an average cost 3,000 times that of tap water.

It is important that Halifax regional council has the opportunity to consider all facts, and it is important that people have access to safe water. Equally important, however, are the actions Ottawa should be taking on behalf of the public interest to rein in the bottled water industry by legislating health and environmental standards for bottled water production in this country.

In Canada, 33 municipalities from seven provinces have already acted to phase out the provision and sale of bottled water on city/town property and to promote public municipal water. I will personally look forward to many more bans on bottled water to come.

Andrea Cleland lives in the Town of Lunenburg.

source:Chronicle Herald
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Search/1116861.html

LUNENBURG – A group of Lunenburg high school students, concerned over the effect that bottled water has on the economy, our health and the environment, has taken their plight to town council.

Last week five students, four from West Island College Class Afloat and one from Lunenburg High School, made a presentation to council outlining the ecological and financial implications of selling water in plastic bottles, and asking them to consider implementing a ban on the practice in town limits.

The students, who were accompanied by Class Afloat teacher Andrea Cleland, took turns presenting their case, which they called “Drop the Habit,” to council.

They told council that access to safe water is a fundamental human need, and as such, should be a basic human right.

Quoting former United Nations secretary Kofi Annan, they said that “contaminated water jeopardizes both the physical and social health of all people and is an affront to human dignity.”

According to statistics provided by the students, a nine-ounce bottle of water on average costs $1.50, meaning a gallon of water purchased in containers of that volume would cost about $20.

That means Americans are currently spending $10 billion annually on bottled water, a figure that is increasing with each passing year.

Statistics also show that tests carried out comparing tap water to bottled water show there is no guarantee the bottled product is any purer, or safer, than what comes out of a tap.

In fact, one-third of the brands of bottled water tested showed “significant contaminations that would exceed the regulated laws that are enforced upon tap water.”

Studies also show that water bottled in a container made from a plastic known as PET can contain toxic chemicals which result when the plastic in the container starts to break down.

One is a carcinogen that causes liver damage and reproductive problems.

The students are so intent on their mission they have formed a group called Drop The Habit. The five students from Class Afloat and one Lunenburg high school student have made T-shirts, established a blog and gave a PowerPoint presentation at town council this week.

“The movement is already a success in many places,” said Clare Buchanan, of Class Afloat. “It can be effective if you just put some effort into it.”

(Class Afloat is a private college in Lunenburg for grades 11 and 12 and first year university. Students spend at least one semester learning seamanship on a tall ship.)

Nicole Boyance Uribe told town councillors the group’s goal is to increase awareness of the environmental impact of bottled water, and to encourage the town to adopt a policy banning plastic bottles in facilities it owns or operates. The ban would include drinks sold in vending machines. The students already have a petition with 100 signatures.

Ms. Buchanan said everyone has a basic right to potable water and to assume otherwise is “an affront to human dignity.”

A nine-ounce bottle of water costs, on average, $1.50, said Ricarda Heagar, which would amount to $20 a gallon. “Would you pay that for gas? That’s a pretty high price.”

She said Americans spend up to 10,000 times more money on bottled water than tap water.

The Natural Resources Defence Council tested 103 brands and Ms. Buchanan said it found “there is no guarantee it is cleaner or safer than tap water.”

Indeed, a study at the University of Calgary found toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing agents, leak into liquids when plastic bottles are reused.

And then there’s the environmental impact. The students said 80 per cent of the 28 billion plastic bottles bought in the U.S. in 2004 ended up in a landfill. And they said it takes 1.5 million tonnes of plastic to make those bottles each year — plastic that is made from enough barrels of oil to power 250,000 homes.

According to the social action think-tank Polaris Institute, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued 29 recalls of bottled water between 2000 and 2008 and seven public warnings because of pathogens or arsenic in the water.

Mayor Laurence Mawhinney believes the town only sells plastic bottles from the canteen and vending machine at the town-owned rink. At the behest of the school board, the town had replaced soft drinks at the arena with water and juice, but they are still sold in plastic bottles.

The Canadian Federation of Municipalities has asked its members to consider such a ban, which Mr. Mawhinney said makes the request timely. Metropolitan Toronto has already implemented a policy.

“It’s on our agenda. We think we need to look at it more closely,” the mayor said. Council will discuss it next month.

In the meantime, the students say they will consider taking their message to other Lunenburg County municipalities if they get a favourable response from Lunenburg.

( bware@herald.ca)

Lack of hard and fast rules on what requires notification gives consumers a misleading impression, public-interest group says

ENVIRONMENT REPORTER

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency often finds problems with bottled water, but doesn’t tell the public about them.

Canada’s federal food watchdog issued 29 recall notices for bottled water products between 2000 and early 2008, citing deficiencies such as contamination by bacteria, moulds, glass chips and trace amounts of arsenic.

Of the recalls, affecting 49 different products, it issued a public warning in only seven cases, two of which came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made public its recall orders.

The total number of recalls was obtained through an Access to Information Act request by the Polaris Institute, an Ottawa-based public-interest group that wants to curb bottled water use. The group compared the recall notices on the government list with those made public on the agency’s website, and found no record for most of them.

The institute contends the CFIA, by not revealing the extent of its recall activity, is giving consumers a misleading impression about the quality of bottled water.

“Recalls are happening and coupled with that they’re not widely publicized,” said Joe Cressy, a spokesman for the institute.

The “occasional Web entry is not showing the full scale” of the problems in bottled water, he said.

The group sought help from the CFIA to determine whether there were online recall orders it missed, but wasn’t given a response pointing to any.

The agency defended its disclosure practices, saying it conducts health-risk assessments and issues public recall notices based on the degree of danger an item poses.

CFIA food safety and recall specialist Garfield Balsom said in an interview that other countries follow the same approach and don’t automatically issue notices because consumers would be soon be overwhelmed by publicity over recalls, most of which would pose low risks. Sometimes products deemed dangerous enough to recall are still in warehouses and not on store shelves, for example. “There are downsides to publicizing everything,” he said.

Although bottled water has an image as being clean and pristine, the CFIA’s list of 29 recalls indicates most of the products yanked from the market were for microbiological contamination, quality problems termed “pathogenic” in the access document.

The findings included that of Bacillus cereus, which can cause vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps and pain, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that is a potential risk to those who are ill or have weakened immune systems. Most of the recalls were at smaller water bottlers, although the Perrier Group of Canada, a major company in the industry, had one in 2002 for bacteriological contamination for which the institute was unable to locate any public notification by the CFIA.

Perrier, now known as Nestle Waters Canada, said it voluntarily undertook the recall of the bottled water, which received limited distribution in Western Canada. “The actual number of affected bottles was very small,” the company said in a statement, adding that it removed the products “as a precaution.”

According to Mr. Balsom, there are no hard and fast rules on what requires public notification. “There is nothing indicating what is to be made public or what’s not,” he said. He admitted that under the current disclosure system there is a possibility that consumers might unknowingly use products for which recalls have taken place.

The agency has an internal hazard ranking system, known as class one, class two and class three, for products that respectively pose high, moderate and low risk.

Mr. Balsom said class one products have a serious health danger and would generally have the recall notices made public. There were no class one recalls for bottled water.

But the access records show that there was no consistency in the agency’s approach. There were cases of the same bacteria and same hazard ratings being treated differently, with some having public recalls and others not. One of the cases in which the FDA was involved – a spearmint flavoured water sold in 2007 and contaminated by bacteria – was deemed a low risk class three hazard by the CFIA, but it was issued a public recall notice.

The access records indicate that the agency made public recalls in 2000, 2001 and then resumed again in 2007, when the FDA also issued its notices.

The Polaris Institute is issuing the access findings in a report on bottled water being released today.

Bottled water, from chic to taboo

The University of Winnipeg said this week it will phase out bottled water sales starting in the fall,

the first university in the country to have a campus-wide ban.

About 30 other universities and colleges have established bottled-water-free zones.

Earlier this month, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities voted to urge local governments

to ban the product from their buildings, citing the extra trash from throwaway bottles.

A total of 30 municipalities in seven provinces have voted to introduce restrictions on bottled water,

including Toronto, London and Niagara Falls. Not all municipalities are adopting the anti-bottled-water

crusade. Winnipeg, Saint John, N.B., and Cambridge, Ont., voted against restrictions.

Some restaurants are cooling to bottled water. Last month, Toronto’s Bloor Street Diner said it

would offer customers filtered tap water instead, eliminating the transport of 12,000 bottles a year.

Arguing that water is a “sacred gift,” the United Church has been urging its congregations

to discourage bottled water use since 2006.

Eliminating bottled water is being touted as a way to save big bucks during the current economic crisis. One estimate in the United States found that a person who switched from only drinking bottled water

to only drinking tap water would save about $1,400 a year.

Source: Staff, Polaris Institute, Canadian Bottled Water Association

*****

Don’t drink the water

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued 29 recall notices for bottled water between 2000 and early 2008. Public warnings were issued in only seven cases, two of which came only after the United States issued a public recall for the same product.

ALL RECALLS, BY REASON

OTHER; (one non-harmful; the other was glass); 2

CHEMICAL; 4

MICROBIAL

Pathogen; 18

Quality; 1

Mould; 4

THE SEVEN PUBLIC WARNINGS

*USFDA alerts issued

TONIA COWAN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL; SOURCE: POLARIS INSTITUTE

Water Footprinting

Climate change, financial turmoil, energy supplies, biodiversity loss, food scarcity – all are competing for the attention of world leaders, but this week the focus is on the one resource essential for life – water. Participants from 192 countries are in Istanbul for the world’s largest water event, the World Water Forum, which drew three princes, three presidents, five prime ministers, over 90 ministers, 63 mayors and more than 23,000 attendees.

Conflict over scarce shared water resources is increasingly likely as the planet’s population grows and freshwater resources shrink, the International Union for Conservation of Nature told Forum delegates today.

But the world’s largest environmental group advised that better cooperation over shared rivers can help governments avoid water crises.

“We cannot understate the importance of water for life on this planet; it’s as necessary as the air we breathe,” says Julia Marton Lefevre, IUCN’s director general. “Governments must realize that river basins, not national borders, are the boundaries around which effective water management must be drawn.”

“We have alternatives to oil but there is no alternative to water,” said Marton-Lefevre. “During these times of financial crisis we cannot lose sight of the fundamental economic importance of water for life and commerce.”

Waters from the Beas River in the Indian state of Punjab are allocated to India under the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan. (Photo by Randoment)

Rivers shared by neighboring countries provide an estimated 60 percent of the world’s freshwater. There are 260 international river basins in the world, which cover nearly half of the Earth’s surface and are home to 40 percent of the world’s population.

Traditionally, the focus in negotiations over shared rivers has been the apportioning of water. Once the water is divided, each country tries to optimize management within its borders rather than across the shared basin. Yet, the new IUCN report released ahead of World Water Day on March 22, advocates that the focus should be not on the volume of water parceled out between competing consumers, but on basin-wide benefit sharing.

“The problem with shared rivers is that if nations don’t cooperate; they can all end up trying to use the same water more than once,” says Mark Smith, head of IUCN’s Water Program. “When they do, the environment loses out on the water it needs, and development fails while tensions rise. Cooperation on rivers means the reverse; the benefits of a healthy environment and development can be shared, while promoting peace.”

“A clear message is needed from governments in Istanbul as water users will only share water cooperatively when they believe it’s their best option,” said Marton Lefevre.

Held once every three years, the 5th World Water Forum will issue a ministerial declaration when it concludes on March 22.

From left: UN Under-Secretary-General Sha Zukang; Prince of Orange Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands; the Crown Prince of Japan Naruhito Kotaishi at the World Water Forum (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

Crown Prince of Japan Naruhito Kotaishi, Prime Minister of Morocco Abbas Al Fassi, United Nations Assistant Secretary General Sha Zukang, the President of the World Water Council Loic Fauchon, Prince Albert II of Monaco, William Alexander of Orange and Turkish President Abdullah Gul are among the high profile participants.

On Tuesday, delegates heard a keynote address by Prince Naruhito, who said that water has the ability “to unite civilizations.” The prince called on the international community to prevent global warming as all water issues are affected by a rising planetary temperature.

In his speech, Fauchon underlined the importance of a holistic and united approach to water management by the international community. “We need to recognize that technical solutions are not enough to face global water challenges and we need political agreement and consensus among stakeholders,” he said.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul told delegates, “Humanity has entered a new era of challenges. Water is no longer considered to be an issue of the environmentalists as it used to be in the near past. Now it is everybody’s concern. In this critical age, water should be a bridging force for the nations of the world.”

Noting that one billion people lack access to water and 2.4 billion lack access to sanitation, Zukang said it is a “moral imperative” to provide these services, which must be mainstreamed into negotiations on financing for development.

Angel Gurria of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, emphasized the need to encourage governments to incorporate water projects into fiscal stimulus packages.

A world Forum Places Water High on Global Priority List is posing a new category of risk to business that many have not even begun to appreciate, World Water Forum delegates were told today.

The global conservation organization WWF and the Pacific Institute, a U.S. water research group, warned that disruptions in supply and increases in price are increasingly frequent, but have not been factored into the calculations of many businesses.

“If you are an efficient business sitting in a poorly managed river basin you are still exposed to extremely high water risk,” said Stuart Orr, freshwater manager at WWF International.

“The companies that will best shield themselves from the unexpected will be those that have assessed water requirements and risks in both their direct and indirect operations and in an integrated way with other emerging risk categories such as with climate and energy,” said Jason Morrison, program director at the Pacific Institute.

A Nigerian boy enjoys a drink of clean water. (Photo by Edward Obi-Akpere)

Business involvement in improved water management can include advocacy and lobbying for better policies in company with civil society and communities, infrastructure and other partnerships with governments and water authorities, and financial support for infrastructure and capacity building, a key factor in the developing world.

The World Water Youth Forum today called for global collective action on water issues. As water stakeholders of the future, about 200 young people from around the world called for concerted action of governments, local authorities, civic groups and individuals to protect and conserve the essential resource.

Global water statistics show dirty water kills more children than war, malaria, HIV/AIDS and traffic accidents combined. Every eight seconds a child dies from drinking dirty water.

Some 100 representatives of people’s movements, civil society organizations and concerned individuals from India condemned the arrest, deportation and repression of two protestors at the World Water Forum opening day on Monday.

Two activists from International Rivers were arrested, detained and deported for unfurling a banner reading “No Risky Dams” at the opening ceremony.

The police detained Payal Parekh and Ann-Kathrin Schneider, and held them at an Istanbul police station until Tuesday, when Payal was deported to the United States, and Schneider was deported to Germany. They have been banned from re-entering Turkey for two years.

In a joint statement released today the groups from India said, “We condemn the undemocratic nature of the World Water Forum and urge the World Water Council to respect and support the rights of all people to speak freely and protest peacefully.”

“We call on the participants of the World Water Forum to embrace democratic, smarter and cleaner solutions and recognize Right to Water as a fundamental right and not to advance the agenda of privatization and commercialization, with huge social and environmental costs,” the groups from India stated. They are demanding that the World Water Forum should not be organized by the World Water Council, but by the United Nations.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2009. All rights reserved.