The News Review:

- Police chief warns over flood disorder
- JORDAN: Water parasite leaves hundreds hospitalised
- … Bee, Calif., Peter Schrag column: Delta water dilemma:…
- City is in an unusual fix with its drinking water

Police chief warns over flood disorder
Guardian Unlimited – Jul 25, 2007
The flood peak was forecast to reach Marlow, Cookham, Datchet, Wraysbury, Staines, Laleham and Shepperton later in the week, but with only limited flooding. The towns of Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead will be protected from the floodwaters by the Jubilee and Cookham flood defences, according to the Environment Agency. In Gloucestershire, the task of returning water supplies to 140,000 homes continued as engineers began assessing the flood damage at the deluged Mythe water treatment plant, in Tewkesbury. Many homes near the plant were still inundated with floodwater. But water levels were continuing to recede, with many people hoping to return to their homes and start the process of cleaning up. Shoppers in a Tesco supermarket in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, were being rationed to three loaves of bread and 16 litres of water, in an attempt to stop panic buying. “People should exercise patience and forbearance,” Mr Brain said…
The flood peak was forecast to reach Marlow, Cookham, Datchet, Wraysbury, Staines, Laleham and Shepperton later in the week, but with only limited flooding. The towns of Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead will be protected from the floodwaters by the Jubilee and Cookham flood defences, according to the Environment Agency. In Gloucestershire, the task of returning water supplies to 140,000 homes continued as engineers began assessing the flood damage at the deluged Mythe water treatment plant, in Tewkesbury. Many homes near the plant were still inundated with floodwater. But water levels were continuing to recede, with many people hoping to return to their homes and start the process of cleaning up. Shoppers in a Tesco supermarket in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, were being rationed to three loaves of bread and 16 litres of water, in an attempt to stop panic buying. “People should exercise patience and forbearance,” Mr Brain said.

JORDAN: Water parasite leaves hundreds hospitalised
Reuters AlertNet – Jul 25, 2007
0 article header end –>. Over the past 11 days, at least 800 residents of Bani Hassan village, near Mafraq, including children and the elderly, have been taken to hospital for treatment against the highly resistant parasite, according to medical sources in Amman. The disease is not fatal but causes unpleasant diarrhoea lasting up to two weeks. The parasite, Cryptosporidium, which was first discovered in the late 1970s, infects humans and a wide range of domestic and wild animals, according to a report produced jointly by the Royal Scientific Society, the Jordan University for Science and Technology, and the Amman-based World Health Organization (WHO) Centre for Environmental Health Activities. The report, released on 24 July, did not say how the parasite got into the village’s water supply system…
Residents of the desert village blame the water network. For the past few years they have been urging the government to repair their water network after noticing leaks and a build-up of rust on the pipes. “We sent several letters over the past three years to the government urging it to renew the water network… But we were told to wait because of a lack of financial resources,” said Fayez Shdeifat, a member of parliament from Mafraq. Very resistant Minister of Health Saad Kharabsheh told reporters on 24 July that the waterborne parasite was very resistant to traditional water treatment methods such as chlorine. He advised residents to boil water before using it. The minister said no fatalities occurred as a result of the epidemic but residents of Bani Hassan say tens of people remain hospitalised or bed-ridden in their homes. The government vowed to begin replacing the ageing water network within two weeks.

… Bee, Calif., Peter Schrag column: Delta water dilemma:…
Free with registration – Sacramento Bee – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jul 25, 2007
25–Last week, while Senate Republicans thumbed their noses at their governor and vetoed his budget, he was showing-and-telling new projects for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 738,000-acre region of sloughs, wetlands and farms that many Californians don’t know exists. But of the two, the latter, with its thorny tangle of related water issues is easily the more crucial to the state’s future. Delta restoration work that the governor came to Twitchell Island to announce will be a bare start on a set of problems — shaky levees, endangered wildlife habitat, subsiding land, rising sea levels — that affect not only the Delta, but much of California’s water supply as well. The Delta is the hub of California’s water system. Given the fragile state of the region, the governor’s attention is.

City is in an unusual fix with its drinking water
Corpus Christi Caller Times – Jul 25, 2007
Routine water testing turned up the fact that the level of bacteria-fighting chlorine in the system had dropped low enough that there was some concern for public health. Noe and city water officials quickly went into action and sent out the word that residents should boil the water coming out of the taps as a precaution before consuming the stuff. Jarring as that message undoubtedly was, the point must be made that unsafe bacteria levels were not discovered in the water, or that the water led to any reported illnesses. But Noe and city officials were right to quickly alert the public of their concerns about the water’s safety, as unsettling as the recommendation might have been that less-than-pure water might be coming out of the taps during one of the rainiest seasons on record in Corpus Christi…
City officials did the right thing by quickly alerting the public and deserve commendation on that point. Better to have an abundance of caution than later regrets. But the episode should underscore that a safe water supply should never be taken for granted.