The News Review:

- Europeans struggle to keep warm
- Water supply back on after freeze
- Entergy to reduce Vermont Yankee reactor to 40 pct
- Shutting off the water pumps to save delta smelt unwarranted
- Making gulf water drinkable too costly for now
- IDF to help facilitate aid to Gazans
- DEP issues second order to Shadyside owners

Europeans struggle to keep warm
BBC News UK 
nly four schools in town will try using other means of energy. It’s happy days for the kids but not for us. Right now we are it seems on some kind of limited gas supply regime. Yesterday we didn’t have heating and hot water for the whole day. Supply was cut without any warning. The heating started working overnight again without prior information about it. We were only told that there will be a regime but we don’t know when and for how long the heating will be on.

Water supply back on after freeze
BBC News UK 
Water bowsers have been sent to streets with water tankers refilling supplies since problems started on Tuesday. Meanwhile a house and gardens in Carmarthenshire has been forced to close because of the cold weather. Late on Wednesday Welsh Water said a treatment works in the Rhondda was now operating normally. In a statement it said: “Water supplies have now been restored to the great majority of customers in the Rhondda Fach. “The areas where customers are still affected are the upper parts of Tylorstown and Ferndale.

Entergy to reduce Vermont Yankee reactor to 40 pct
Reuters 
N) said itwould reduce the 620-megawatt Vermont Yankee nuclear powerstation from full power to about 40 percent Thursday afternoonto fix a small water leak in the feed water system. The feed water system supplies water to the steamgenerator. Workers discovered the leak of about 60 drops per minutelate Thursday morning on a 24-inch pipe. The company said thewater which is collected in a drain line is only mildlyradioactive. The company did not say when the unit would return to fullservice. Electricity traders guessed the reduction would onlylast a few days.

Shutting off the water pumps to save delta smelt unwarranted
San Francisco Chronicle  USA 
It would have been a pleasant surprise if the Fish and Wildlife Service had taken the above into account when it released its biological opinion. Much is at stake as delta water deliveries help to sustain the state agriculture industry and play a key role in the state’s energy tourism and entertainment industries not to mention everyday human activity. It makes no sense to make the pumps the scapegoat for the delta smelt’s decline at the cost of threatening the water supply for millions of human beings. Craig Manson is a professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and a former U. Department of the Interior assistant secretary. Brandon Middleton is an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation (.

Making gulf water drinkable too costly for now
Houston Chronicle United States 
The lower Rio Grande Valley is expected to face a water shortage by 2050. Purifying sea water for consumption is more expensive than freshwater supplies or even brackish groundwater but the Brownsville Public Utilities Board depends too much on the Rio Grande. The utility draws 78 percent of its water supply from the river a water source susceptible to drought and treaty disputes with Mexico which also takes a share. This made Brownsville a logical site to study the potential of desalination after Gov. Rick Perry challenged the state in 2002 to start working toward a full-scale seawater plant. The pilot project was intentionally placed in one of the most challenging environments for filtering seawater. The steady flow of ships in the channel churned the water stirring up sediments that would have to be removed.

IDF to help facilitate aid to Gazans
Jerusalem Post Israel 
According to the United Nations which is not part of the petition 800000 people in Gaza lack running water and those who are lucky enough to have water have a hard time purifying it. The Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility and the Palestinian Water Authority said the current Gaza Strip water and sanitation situation “indicate a severe public health threat to the population” due to severe shortages of potable water and an “escalating failure of sewage systems” including a potential threat to the structural integrity of Beit Lahiya Sewage Lake that could threaten 10000 residents with the possibility of drowning. They said that nearly all sewage and water pumps are now out of operation due to lack of electricity and diminished fuel supplies to operate backup power generators. The World Health rganization’s representatives said Gaza City hospitals continue to depend on back-up generators but that these “are close to collapse from lack of spare parts. ” They added that some health personnel “are working 24-hour shifts to try and meet needs. ” In addition health personnel are having increasing difficulty reaching their place of work. According to the UN only three out of 56 primary health care clinics in Gaza were open because medical personnel can not reach the clinics.
Related from Tianjigh: Middle East: Israel Halts perations To Allow Aid Shipments

DEP issues second order to Shadyside owners
Leader Times PA 
“We recognize that if the owner can not provide to its tenants safe clean water Shadyside Village residents may be relocated. To prepare for this possibility DEP has alerted the county that residents may require assistance in the coming weeks. KH Real Estate owns and operates the water supply as well as the 40 rental homes in the community to which it supplies water. KH Real Estate had provided water from a well to its tenants as well as to four other privately owned homes. DEP ordered KH Real Estate to shutdown water service to the village and provide a temporary source of water from an approved water hauler on Dec. 12 after determining that the source water was contaminated with fecal coliform possibly from the owner’s failing septic system. Since Thanksgiving week residents carried water from a nearby water buffalo.