Children In India Bring Fresh Water To Their Poor Neighborhood

Not certain when this will be rebroadcast. Check with local PBS schedule. 

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365006100/

The Revolutionary Optimists
55:26Aired: 03/03/15Expires: 03/09/15Rating: TV-PG
Children in the slums of Calcutta are starting a revolution. Called to action by visionary former attorney Amlan Ganguly, the 'Daredevils' have already made radical health and sanitation improvements in one of the city's poorest slums - awakening a neglected populace to the real possibility of change.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/revolutionary-optimists/

Massachusetts State Senator Warns of Flooded Cities and Towns

Is this the future of Cambridge, MA?

Is now the time for accelerated survival of the fittest? Not to worry. Humans who develop gills and adapt to living under water will survive. Others will perish. One solution is soon available from cutting edge genetic editors. Alterations of the genetic structure of humans, allows adding genes from other species. Would you like a gill on your left side, right side or both?

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20160218/NEWS/160216480/?Start=1

Guest column: Planning for more flooding in Cambridge, Allston, Belmont
By Sen. Will Brownsberger
Posted Feb. 18, 2016 at 7:31 AM
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Massachusetts Water Facility Underground Fire

MWRA error. The good news--unlike Flint, Michigan, the MWRA does not provide leaded water for Massachusetts children. The bad news--their efficiency achievement scores are second to the MBTA. Not bad.

[From article]
Five Massachusetts Water Resources Authority maintenance workers were taken to Boston Medical Center yesterday for smoke-related complaints after escaping a two-alarm underground fire at the Nut Island sewage treatment plant in Quincy.
MWRA spokeswoman Ria Convery said the fire broke out at the Sea Street facility shortly after 1 p.m. in an area of a building that is three stories underground.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/01/five_injured_in_treatment_plant_blaze

Five injured in treatment plant blaze
Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Migration of 120 Million Red Crabs on Christmas Island

Millions of ruby-red crustaceans have started their annual trek towards the sea, bringing traffic to a standstill across Christmas Island as swarms of the tiny crabs mark the world's biggest land crab migration.

[From article]

Millions of ruby-red crustaceans have started their annual trek towards the ocean, bringing traffic to a standstill across Christmas Island as swarms of the tiny creatures mark the world's biggest land crab migration.
The scarlett procession is world renown, with tourists and locals alike flocking to see the mass migration as the crabs set off to lay their eggs near the Pacific Ocean.
The colourful migration started a little late this year as the rains which trigger the movement didn't hit the island until last week.

However, in recent years a network of specially adapted crab bridges, tunnels and crossing places were added to much of the road network to reduce casualties.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3349527/It-s-crustacean-invasion-Incredible-photos-capture-annual-migration-120-million-crimson-coloured-crabs-emerge-jungle-scuttle-ocean.html

It's a crustacean invasion! Incredible photos capture the annual migration of 120 million crimson-coloured crabs as they emerge from the jungle and scuttle towards the ocean
Millions of colourful red crabs have started to migrate to towards the Pacific ocean on Christmas Island
The mass migration usually starts in October however a delay in rainfall meant the procession started a little later
The National Parks team works to close some roads on Christmas Island as the crabs can cause car accidents
A network of specially adapted crab bridges, tunnels and crossing places were added recently to reduce casualties
By BELINDA GRANT GEARY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
PUBLISHED: 10:32 EST, 7 December 2015 | UPDATED: 19:16 EST, 7 December 2015

EPA Dumps Toxic Waste Water Into Colorado River. Your Tax Dollars At Work

Colorado River, Painted Orange By the EPA

[From article]

The Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency committed to protecting “human health and the environment,” jeopardized both Wednesday by accidentally releasing one million gallons of wastewater into Colorado’s Animas River.
EPA bureaucrats were using heavy machinery to nose around the Gold King Mine near Durango, Colorado, when they triggered the release of wastewater containing heavy metals like zinc, iron, and copper.
The Denver Post reported that residents of Durango “gathered along the Animas River to watch as the blue waters turned a thick, radiant orange and yellow just after 8 p.m., nearly 34 hours after the spill started.”
“The river looks pretty nasty,” Deputy Stephen Lowrance of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office told the Post. “It doesn’t look like water; it just looks like sludge.”

http://freebeacon.com/issues/epa-dumps-one-million-gallons-of-wastewater-into-colorado-river/

EPA Dumps One Million Gallons of Wastewater Into Colorado River
BY: Blake Seitz
August 7, 2015 1:44 pm

Alligator Turtle Found In Russia

With its shell covered in spikes and its sharp beak, the creature looks more dinosaur than turtle.

[More images embedded]

[From article]
With its shell covered in spikes and its sharp beak, the creature looks more dinosaur than turtle.
Found in Russia, a picture of the mysterious creature was posted on social media by Anastasia Steshina with the comment: 'When we saw it, we did not even realize that it was a turtle. It reminded us of a dinosaur.'
Now the bizarre creature has been identified as an alligator snapping turtle, the heaviest freshwater turtle in the world.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3145103/What-shell-Dinosaur-like-turtle-terrifying-spikes-ferocious-beak-emerges-Russia-river-thousands-miles-native-home.html

What the shell is that? Dinosaur-like turtle with terrifying spikes and a ferocious beak emerges from Russia river – thousands of miles from its native home
The giant turtle was discovered on the banks of the Amur river in Russia
It's a mystery how reptile ended up so far from home in American south
Bizarre-looking creature has been identified as an alligator snapping turtle
By WILL STEWART IN MOSCOW and TOM WYKE and HANNAH PARRY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 15:52 EST, 30 June 2015 | UPDATED: 03:19 EST, 1 July 2015

California Marijuana Industry, Grows More Than Mexico, Depleting Water During Drought

[From article]
a San Francisco-based author with a PhD in Nutritional Ethnomedicine floated an interesting theory regarding those water shortages earlier this week. Speaking on the radio, he suggested that California’s huge crop of marijuana plants is “depleting the water table,” and is partially responsible for the massive shortfalls in water that the state is now facing.
It may sound outlandish, but it turns out that there may be something to the good doctor’s theory.
As anyone who has ever had the misfortune to visit, say, Santa Cruz can attest, there’s a lot of marijuana in California. (This despite the fact that it’s only legal for medicinal use in the state.) Indeed, by some estimates, California now produces more marijuana than Mexico.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, one outdoor marijuana plant requires approximately six gallons of water per day during its roughly 150-day growing season. That means that, over California’s four-year drought, outdoor marijuana plants -- based on the six-gallon a day estimate, and the 2006 figure -- have used roughly 63 billion gallons of California water. (Indoor growing is also rough on the environment; roughly 9 percent of household electricity use in the state is used for marijuana cultivation, reports Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Library.)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/marijuana-plants-soak-billions-gallons-water-california_913101.html

Marijuana Plants Soak Up Billions of Gallons of Water in California
High times are dry times.
7:01 AM, APR 9, 2015 • BY ETHAN EPSTEIN

Harvard University Invests in California Wine Country Land

[From article]

Harvard University has quietly become one of the biggest grape growers in California’s drought-stricken Paso Robles wine region, securing water well drilling permits to feed its vineyards days before lawmakers banned new pumping, according to records reviewed by Reuters.
The investment, which began as a bet on the grape market, has turned into a smart water play as the wells boosted the value of its land in the up-and-coming wine region of Paso Robles. But it has also raised questions about the role of big investors in agriculture in the midst of a water crisis.
“It remains to be seen what commitment they have to the business of agriculture,” said Susan Harvey of environmental advocacy group North County Watch, which has been following the drought closely. “Is Harvard going to keep pumping ground water, or cut back on returns to protect water quality and quantity?”
Brodiaea Inc, wholly owned by the secretive $36 billion Harvard endowment fund, has spent more than $60 million to purchase about 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties since 2012, making it one of the top 20 growers in Paso Robles.

[. . .]

The company got permits for seven 800-foot wells on Aug. 21, 2013, six days before a ban on new pumping from the hardest-hit part of the basin took effect, according to previously unreported data from the records.
[. . .]
Harvard’s investment arm, often a pioneer in new asset classes, has faced criticism in the past for some of its timber and energy investments and last year the school signed on to U.N.-backed principles for responsible investment.

http://www.cornucopia.org/2015/01/harvard-buys-water-rights-drought-hit-wine-country

Harvard Buys Up Water Rights in Drought-Hit Wine Country
January 27th, 2015
[NOTE: The Harvard’s endowment fund has also been a key owner of Aurora Dairy, the nation’s largest factory farm producer of “organic milk.”]
Reuters
by Richard Valdmanis

US Treasury Department Purchasing Emergency Supplies For Employees, Bankers

[From article]
Survival kits will be delivered to every major bank in the United States including Bank of America, American Express Bank, BMO Financial Corp., Capitol One Financial Corporation, Citigroup, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Company, and Wells Fargo.
Items will also be delivered to OCC offices across the country, from Champaign, Ill. to Billings, Mont. The agency also has offices in Sioux City, Iowa; Joplin, Mo.; and Fargo, N.D.
The mission of the OCC is to “ensure that national banks and federal savings associations operate in a safe and sound manner, provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations.”
The agency has roughly 3,814 employees, each of which would receive a survival kit. The staff includes “bank examiners” who provide “sustained supervision” of major banks in the United States.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/treasury-department-seeking-survival-kits-for-bank-employees/

Treasury Department Seeking Survival Kits For Bank Employees
Emergency masks, solar blankets to be delivered to every major bank in the U.S.
BY: Elizabeth Harrington
AP
December 10, 2014 1:00 pm

Will Arriving Illegal Aliens Help Alleviate the Drought?

The White House and the CA Governor are high ranking members of the Church of Global Warming, and the need for more illegal aliens. What will be the effects on the water needs of California and the southwestern United States of these highest priorities of the Democratic Party leaders? Are they intentionally implementing policies which will destroy the tranquility of the nation?



[From article]
The study by Cornell, University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey researchers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.
'For the southwestern U.S., I'm not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts,' said Toby Ault, Cornell assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead author of the paper.
'As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven't put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought.'
As of Aug. 12, most of California sits in a D4 'exceptional drought,' which is in the most severe category. Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas loiter in a substantially less severe D1 moderate drought.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2736281/California-drought-preview-warn-scientists-Fears-megadrought-35-YEARS-lead-mass-population-migrations-way-southernwest-US.html

Think California's drought is bad? Scientists issue dire warning of US megadrought that could last 35 YEARS and lead to mass population migrations
Southwestern United States has fifty percent change of suffering a 'megadrought' that lasts 35 years
Say California drought is 'a preview of our future'
Drought could be worst seen for 2,000 years
Could lead to mass population migration on a scale never before seen in this country
By MARK PRIGG FOR MAILONLINE
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 18:34 EST, 27 August 2014 | UPDATED: 14:10 EST, 28 August 2014

Ice Bucket Water Wasting Campaign, In The Name of Good

One more indication of the dumbed down population in the United States. It helps explain how voters could elect twice Barack Obama. And what about other countries where people walk miles each day for fresh water? 



[From article]
Of course, they've got a point: The campaign, according to The Washington Post, has used an estimated 5 million gallons of water so far. (Jason Ruiz for the Long Beach Post says it's used about 6 million gallons and The Grist... doesn't reach an estimate.) The ubiquity of the videos has even led to satirical posts about California fining those participating in the challenge.
"Fresh water is one of our nation's most precious resources," Jim Gulliford, executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, told The Wire in an email interview. "It is a resource that should never be undervalued or wasted. This becomes even more important when areas of our country are suffering from drought."

http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/08/the-california-drought-versus-the-ice-bucket-challenge/378776/

AUG 19, 2014 8:16PM ET

The California Drought Versus the Ice Bucket Challenge

SHIRLEY LI
* * *

[From article] But patients and doctors, like those who care for Mohr, say that any attention given to this disease is welcome.
http://www.indystar.com/story/life/diet-fitness/2014/08/19/ice-bucket-challenge-help-als-wet/14312699/

Ice Bucket Challenge: Does it help battle ALS or is it all wet? Shari Rudavsky shari.rudavsky (at) indystar.com 3:28 p.m. EDT August 20, 2014

Las Vegas Running Out of Clean Water

[From article]
But, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion. America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.
“The situation is as bad as you can imagine,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.”
[. . .]
“The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It’s not like a tornado or a tsunami, bang. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people (from Las Vegas).”
Mr Mrowka cited Lake Las Vegas, a mega-resort where stars including Celine Dion live, as one of the “most egregious examples” of wasting water.
[. . .]
But Mr Mrowka said: “The Colorado is essentially a dying river. Ultimately, Las Vegas and our civilisation in the American South West is going to disappear, like the Indians did before us.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10932785/The-race-to-stop-Las-Vegas-from-running-dry.html

The race to stop Las Vegas from running dry
Amid a brutal drought the reservoir that supplies 90 per cent of Las Vegas’s water is fast disappearing and desperate attempts to save Sin City are under way

By Nick Allen

Las Vegas
4:11PM BST 28 Jun 2014

California Tries The Idiocracy

[From article]
Apparently, Pacific-corridor residents from San Diego to Berkeley had acquired the affluence not to worry so much about the old Neanderthal concerns like keeping up freeways and airports — and their parents’ brilliantly designed system of canals, reservoirs, and dams that had turned their state from a natural desert into a man-made paradise. They have become similar to the rarified Eloi of science-fiction writer H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, who live dreamy existences without any clue how to supply their own daily necessities.
[. . .]
In the last five years, they have successfully gone to court to force millions of acre-feet of contracted irrigation water to be diverted from farms to flow freely out to sea.
[. . .]
Unless it rains or snows in biblical fashion in the next 60 days, we could see surreal things in California — towns without water, farms reverting to scrub, majestic parks with dead landscaping — fit for Hollywood’s disaster movies.
Instead of an adult state with millions of acre-feet stored in new reservoirs, California is still an adolescent culture that believes that it has the right to live as if this were the age of the romantic 19th-century naturalist John Muir — amid a teeming 40-million-person 21st-century megalopolis.
[. . .]
In 2014, nature yet again reminded California just how fragile — and often pretentious — a place it has become.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370425/californias-two-droughts-victor-davis-hanson

FEBRUARY 6, 2014 12:00 AM

California’s Two Droughts
An affluent society didn’t bother to add to the inherited system of canals and reservoirs that made it thrive.
By Victor Davis Hanson

Drinking Water Polluted By Drugs

[From article]
A report on drinking water carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency has found samples of at least 25 different drugs, including medication to treat heart conditions, in supplies coming out of wastewater treatment plants.
[. . .]
'We're not trying to scare anyone, but we need to know what these chemical compounds will do to the environment and what are the long term effects for humans.'
The study will be published in the Environmental Pollution journal in the New Year.
[. . .]
The drugs find their way into the water system when our bodies release them when we urinate or if old drugs are flushed down the toilet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522555/Disturbing-levels-HEART-DRUGS-drinking-water-concern-long-term-health-effects-grows.html

Disturbing levels of HEART DRUGS found in drinking water, says study, as concern for long term health effects grows
At least 25 different drugs found in samples from 50 wastewater plants
Drugs for high blood pressure were the most common of those found
By STEVE NOLAN
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 08:21 EST, 12 December 2013 | UPDATED: 12:11 EST, 12 December 2013

Water Dance Celebration June 15, 2103, Concord MA

2013 Global Water Dances

“Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere”

June 15, 2013

4:00 PM

The Old Manse 

269 Monument Street

Concord, MA

Free Admission

“Global Water Dances” is a bold visionary and artistic initiative focused on the critical need for safe drinking water.  There are an estimated 5 million deaths per year globally from polluted water. 

Four dance groups are participating with Sufi circle dances for everyone. Dances start in countries around the Pacific Rim and roll westward through time zones.

Some of last year’s spectacular dances may be found at  HYPERLINK "http://www.globalwaterdances.org" www.globalwaterdances.org and YouTube.

www.skyloom.org < HYPERLINK "http://www.skyloom.org" http://www.skyloom.org>
 

 HYPERLINK "https://www.facebook.com/CreationDanceCompany" https://www.facebook.com/CreationDanceCompany

www.intimationsdance.com < HYPERLINK "http://www.intimationsdance.com" http://www.intimationsdance.com>
 

Please join us as we bring awareness to the blessing of clean water for all!

Foreign Students, Graduates, Arrested at Greater Boston Reservoir

Michelle McPhee reported on May 15, 2013, WRKO radio, Howie Carr Show, that the seven arrested had no valid IDs, and were driving rented cars. State police said they do not release the names of persons issued summonses, which is what they did. Huh? How different from what local police did to me. After I complained about police harassment they arrested me and held me in a mental hospital for 78 days for a competency evaluation. Later Harvard University campus police stalked me for three years, arrested me twice and lied about why. Curious how respectfully foreigners get treated by police even those without licenses when they are stopped driving illegally. But citizens like myself get the full force of any and all laws in order to punish me for speaking out about government abuses. This is how the nation's most prominent university led by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, and its host city which claims to be concerned with the most vulnerable persons in the city treat victims of government criminal abuses. How charming the way they show their intolerance in the name of tolerance. How they indicate their support for diversity by censoring diverse speech they dislike. 

[From article]
State police alerted the Springfield office of the FBI, which is investigating the five men and two women, who are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.
[. . .]
the individuals live in Amherst, Cambridge, Sunderland, Northampton and New York City.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/05/authorities_quabbin_reservoir_tests_normal_after_trespassing

Authorities: Quabbin reservoir tests normal after trespassing arrests
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
By: Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald

Fish Behavior Influenced by Psychiatric Drugs in Waterways

[From article]
Psychiatric drugs taken by humans to cope with anxiety are being excreted and flushed into waterways where they are probably affecting fish behaviour.
This is the conclusion of a new Swedish study reported in Science magazine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21437404

14 February 2013 Last updated at 14:13 ET
Drug residues 'alter fish behaviour'
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent,
BBC News, Boston

Chaos As NYC People Seek Food, Water

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227307/Hurricane-Sandy-Lawlessness-outer-boroughs-New-York-enter-sixth-day-power.html

'It's like the Wild West': Lawlessness and fear take over the outer
boroughs as millions in misery endure a sixth day without power
Residents claim they are the 'forgotten victims' of Sandy
Also say that lack of power and law enforcement means more looting and
violent crime
Those in stricken areas stockpiling weapons like kitchen knives,
machetes, and bats to protect themselves
Coney Island residents say they are forced to 'scavenge for food like animals'
Power unlikely to be returned to Brooklyn, Queen's and Staten Island
until sometime next week
By RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS and SNEJANA FARBEROV
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 09:38 EST, 3 November 2012 | UPDATED: 17:23 EST, 3 November 2012

Flow, Film Review

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149583/

2008 documentary about water. Lots to learn.
"In Texas toxicologists find high levels of Prozac in tissues of every fish they sample."
Atrazine, banned in European countries, is used in US, said to emasculate frogs and fish. EPA approved its use in 2006.
Private international water companies: Thames Water, Vivendi, Suez.
$30 billion is needed to bring clean drinking water to the entire world. We spend $100 billion each year on bottled water.
Water is third largest industry after oil and electricity.
Dams create methane gas. Main film does not mention that it can be captured and used to run devices.
40-80 million people displaced creating large dams in 20th Century.
Corporations want to put a dam on the Ganges River in India.
World bank funds dam construction. It is immune from lawsuits.
Two vice presidents of water companies are advisors to World Bank president.
Planet is on verge of major extinction due to scarcity of water.
Nestle Company owns 70 brands of bottled water, including but not limited to Perrier, Poland Spring, Ice Mountain, Pellegrino and Deer Park. Pepsi and Coca Cola also sell bottle water. In Michigan Nestle earns about $1.8 million each day with no cost for the water they extract from the land. There are wells in Framingham MA, and Greenwich CT.
Quote: "Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed its the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"It is not an issue of lack of knowledge. There's a lack of political will. We have to collectively find the political will to do what needs to be done to save the world's water resources." Maud Barlow.
From DVD jacket:
On average bottled water costs 900 times the amount of tap water.
This year [2008] Americans will spend $40 billion on bottled water.
25% of all bottled water is re-packaged tap[ water. One scene in the film shows a couple at a restaurant ordering bottled water from a fake menu for a lot of money. They think it tastes better than the tap water it is.
Tap water has more stringent governmental standards than that of bottled water regulation.
The amount of oil required to put one bottle of water in your hand would fill 1/4 of that same bottle.
90% of used bottles are not recycled.
Right now,  millions of pounds of trash are floating in the Pacific Ocean to form an island at least the size of Texas - 90% of that trash is discarded plastic.

Psychiatrists Want to Add Lithium to Water Supply

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/22/052211-news-lithium-1-5/

Liquid Medicine
Katie Drummond
The Daily
May 22, 2011