The News Review:

- Louisville waterline idea to get new look: COUNCILWOMAN ASKS FOR…
- Fish study raises red flag on water supply
- Pass on the salt

Louisville waterline idea to get new look: COUNCILWOMAN ASKS FOR…
Free with registration – Lexington Herald Leader – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jun 21, 2007
At the suggestion of Councilwoman Linda Gorton, the council has invited Greg Heitzman, president-elect of the Louisville company, to make a presentation at its July 10 work session. The invitation comes as Kentucky American Water is trying to persuade the state Public Service Commission to let it build a new treatment plant on the Kentucky River north of Frankfort to augment Lexington’s supply. The company has offered to increase the capacity of the plant and share ownership with towns around Lexington that are part of the Bluegrass Water Supply Commission, if the commission can come up with its share of the cost. A pipeline from Louisville would throw a wrench into those plans. Ironically, Kentucky American had pushed for a pipeline from Louisville in the 1990s. It dropped that plan after the Lexington council.

Fish study raises red flag on water supply
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Pittsburgh Post Gazette – Jun 21, 2007
htm –>Fish study raises red flag on water supplyThursday, June 21, 2007By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteFish caught in the rivers near Allegheny County’s storm sewer overflow pipes contain almost twice as much of certain estrogenic chemicals that can cause cancer, a University of Pittsburgh study has found. The link between sewage plant discharges and fish contaminated with those chemicals has been established by studies in other urban areas around the world, but the finding is particularly significant in Allegheny County, which has more than 400 sanitary and combined sewer overflows. The findings are a concern for public health because of the region’s dependency on the rivers for its drinking water. Conrad Dan Volz, head of the study, said a number of reports have shown a link between high ingestion of estrogens and hormone problems and some cancers, including testicular cancer. Estrogenic chemicals, called xenoestrogens or estrogen-mimicking chemicals, come from garden pesticides, plasticizers, glues, cosmetics and products that dissolve detergents. Pharmaceutical estrogens from female hormone replacement drugs and birth control pills are also found in sewage discharges…
“Pittsburgh has more combined sewer overflows than any other city in the United States,” said Dr. Volz, an assistant professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health. “During the summer such discharges can occur on as much as 75 percent of the days, and the raw sewage has more estrogenic chemicals that do not get broken down at all by the waste treatment process. The latest results of the ongoing study by Dr. Volz, who is also a co-director of the Pitt Cancer Institute’s Center for Environmental Oncology, will be discussed today at an institute retreat in Greensburg. Earlier reports of study results showed that it was difficult to identify the gender of 85 percent of the channel catfish caught on the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers near the Point, and also that chemicals extracted from all 25 randomly sampled fish caused growth of estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells cultured in a laboratory. Eleven of those samples produced very aggressive cancer growth.

Pass on the salt
The Age – Jun 21, 2007
WHY AREN’T WE JUST HARVESTING MORE STORMWATER?Premier Steve Bracks told Victorians this week the $1 billion proposal to harvest stormwater from the Yarra River had been shelved. Investigations had found it was "not economically and environmentally viable for the future", he said. Large-scale stormwater treatment would involve collecting, storing and treating stormwater to drinking water standards and blending it with drinking water sourced from rivers and reservoirs. The Government proposed to harvest the stormwater at Dights Falls after heavy rainfall, then transfer it to Sugarloaf or Yan Yean Reservoir. Originally it was touted as a realistic solution, but the Government admitted this year that a feasibility study into capturing stormwater during floods could not be finished until 2009 and it was only a long-term solution. But environmentalists argue that stormwater harvesting should be pursued in Melbourne. It would not only boost water supplies but aid the health of the Yarra…
Originally it was touted as a realistic solution, but the Government admitted this year that a feasibility study into capturing stormwater during floods could not be finished until 2009 and it was only a long-term solution. But environmentalists argue that stormwater harvesting should be pursued in Melbourne. It would not only boost water supplies but aid the health of the Yarra. HOW DID THE WEST AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT DELIVER DESALINATION?In 2004 the WA Government announced it would be the first state to embrace desalination. WA’s $387 million seawater plant is located at Kwinana, south of Perth, and is a joint venture between the Multiplex Group and French company Degremont, which provided the technical knowledge for the project. The West Australian Water Corporation owns the plant and fully funded its construction.