BIS Certification Mandatory for Packaged Drinking Water

No person is authorised to manufacture, sell or exhibit for sale, packaged drinking water and packaged mineral water except under Bureau of Indian Standards Certification Mark.

As per the Quality Control Order issued under Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Rules, 1955, Bureau of Indian Standards has formulated the following Indian Standards which provide quality norms for packaged water:

i) IS 14543:2004 Packaged drinking water (other than natural mineral water) (First Revision)
ii) IS 13428: 2005 Packaged natural mineral water (Second Revision)

There are 18 BIS licensees engaged in production of Packaged Natural Mineral Water, 2354 licensees producing Packaged Drinking Water through Reverse Osmosis, and 633 licensees bottling Packaged Drinking Water drawing water from natural resources.

Implementation of the PFA Act and Rules framed under the Act is the responsibility of State Governments and Union Territory Administrations. BIS also undertakes periodic surveillance inspection and testing of samples from the market for maintaining the quality of the products of its licensees as per the prescribed Indian Standards.

MP:SB:CP: mineral water (23.9.2010)

Indiana Meeting to Highlight Need for Great Lakes Compact
Three public meetings on the Great Lakes Compact are scheduled for Sept. 26 and 27 in Indiana, as lawmakers there prepare to consider ratification. As Indiana gears up to consider adopting the Great Lakes Compact, the public is urged to attend a Sept. 27 public meeting in South Bend to learn how the compact will secure the waters and health of the Great Lakes. The meeting is one of three scheduled around the state next week as the Indiana Legislature prepares to consider a ratification proposal by the state Department of Natural Resources in 2008. Minnesota and Illinois were the first states to adopt the compact earlier this year, and legislatures in the other Great Lakes states are now in varying stages of taking up the legislation. Full Story

New group meant to protect river

By SETH STRATTON
The Dispatch
On Sunday, the Yadkin River will finally be able to talk.

Well, not literally, but through a new group that will focus on keeping the river clean and educating people on how to do that. Over the past several months, Clean Water for North Carolina has sponsored informational meetings up and down the Yadkin River basin to help facilitate recruitment of residents in the basin to join the as-yet-unnamed group and speak "as a voice for the river," CWFNC Executive Director Hope Taylor said.

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St. Croix pollution built up over decades

Phosphorous contamination of the southern part of the river began years ago, and some officials say it shouldn't delay new bridge.

By Kevin Giles, Star Tribune

Last update: September 17, 2007 – 9:31 PM

Phosphorous contamination that landed the federally protected St. Croix River on Minnesota's impaired-waters list for the first time has been building for decades, several experts familiar with the river said Monday.

One of them, Craig Affeldt of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said that large algae blooms in Lake St. Croix -- the portion of the St. Croix River between Stillwater and Prescott, Wis. -- have resulted from excessive phosphorus, which can alter a river's ecosystem.

"Whether that's runoff from streets, parking lots, livestock or fertilizers, this is what people introduce to the landscape because that's how we live," said Affeldt, a specialist on St. Croix basin matters.

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Safety concern over water

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 15: Water of at least six major rivers in Orissa are unsafe for drinking, the Orissa State Pollution Control Board has said in its report on river water quality status. The survey, done over a period of five years, tested the quality of water in stretches of the Mahanadi, Brahmani, Baitarani, Rushikulya, Nagavali and Subernarekha near major towns and industrial areas. “The water is very polluted in areas like Cuttack, Paradip and Brajarajnagar. It’s unfit for drinking and can’t be purified by conventional methods,” said board chairman L.N. Patnaik. The board has divided water into five categories — A, B, C, D and E. While water in the A category can be used for drinking without conventional treatment but after disinfection, the B grade water may be used for outdoor bathing. The C grade water can be used with conventional treatment and disinfection while D is used for aqua-culture and fisheries purposes. E category is used for irrigation and industrial cooling purposes and has a pH level between 6 and 8.5. The board’s findings for towns located near this rivers found that the water quality in none of the rivers conformed to C standard. The board monitored the water quality on parameters such as colour, odour, visible effluent discharge, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand, total coliform, faecal coliform, turbidity, presence of chloride/sulphate/phosphate/cadmium/copper/lead/zinc/mercury and pesticides like BHC, DDT, endosulfan, dieldrin, aldrin, carboryl 2-4-D, malathion, parathion and chloropyrophos. Board sources said that the presence of micropollutants were found to be high in places like Cuttack situated on the bank of Kathjodi, a subsidiary of Mahanadi, and Rourkela, situated on the bank of the Brahmani. Environmentalists said that the report indicated the government as well as the pollution control board have failed to check deterioration of water quality in major rivers of the state. “The board should be disbanded as it has become a toothless body of servile government officials. Since the board has closed its ears, the industries and municipal bodies are using the rivers as sinks,” said environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty. Patnaik said that the government should address to the pollution concerns of these rivers quickly. “We have to stop the pollution sources. The board can only suggest appropriate maintenance measures, but the government has to take action,” he said

Sukinda Valley of Orissa one of most polluted places	RSS

KalingaTimes Correspondent Bhubaneswar, Sep 14: Orissa has been in news time and again for wrong reasons. Here is one more. Sukinda Valley in Jajpur district of the state has figured among the Top Ten worst polluted places in the world. US-based Blacksmith Institute, an independent environmental group, in partnership with Green Cross Switzerland, issued their To

p Ten list of the world's most severely polluted places on Wednesday. According to the report of the Blacksmith Institute, Sukinda Valley contains 97 percent of India's chromite ore deposits and one of the largest open cast chromite ore mines in the world. “Twelve mines continue to operate without any environmental management plans and over 30 million tonnes of waste rock are spread over the surrounding areas and the Brahmani riverbanks. “Untreated water is discharged by the mines into the river. This area is also flood-prone, resulting in further contamination of the waterways. “Approximately 70 percent of the surface water and 60 percent of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at more than double national and international standards and levels of over 20 times the standard have been recorded. Full Story

CRBI to host State Water Plan public meeting

09/13/07 Email this story to a friend From the Coosa River Basin Initiative The Coosa River Basin Initiative (CRBI) and Environment Georgia will host a public meeting Sept. 20 at the Rome-Floyd County Library designed to inform and empower citizens to take part in Georgia’s statewide water planning process. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. with an overview of Georgia’s first-ever Statewide Comprehensive Water Management Plan (the Plan) and its potential impacts on Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama. This overview will be followed with information about what individuals can do to ensure that the Plan provides enough clean water for this and future generations of the Coosa Valley. Full Story

Watershed plan 14 years in the making
By DAVID LESTER
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver recalls a meeting in Prosser 14 years ago where the germ of an idea took root during an extended drought.

The idea involved developing a plan that would meet future water needs for farmers, fish, and communities in the Yakima River Basin.

The watershed plan, approved by the counties two years ago, calls for measures to improve water quality, help irrigators use water more efficiently, expand fish habitat, and add storage

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Georgia's water plan has broad implications

By S. Heather Duncan - hduncan@macon.com

Some homeowners could pay higher rates for watering their big, green lawns. Cities and factories could pay each other for the right to dump more wastewater into one stretch of river. The state could ban building new reservoirs for generating electricity or tourism.

These are all possibilities suggested in the state water plan unveiled earlier this year by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. The agency wrote the plan on behalf of the Georgia Water Council, and it expects to release a second draft Thursday.

In a broad sense, the water plan will affect everything from which Georgia cities grow to which species survive in state rivers.

When the water planning process started two years ago, the state was emerging from a drought that had heightened public awareness of the power of water. After a few wetter years and a temporary lull in regional "water wars," this year a Florida lawsuit heated up tensions and a new drought heated up Georgia - bringing greater urgency to the water planning effort.

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British undergrad students get research opportunity of a lifetime at Grenfell College
British students conduct environmental research
Pine marten, soil respiration, agricultural impacts on the Humber River and environmental attitudes in children were the research topics explored by four undergrad students from the University of York this past summer under the Humber River Basin Project, a comprehensive and integrated approach to monitoring, assessing, and predictive modeling of the Humber River Basin.

British students Holly Edwards, Becky Strickland, Jenny Calder and Aura Piha spent several weeks at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College studying four very different areas of research this summer, and returned to the UK last week.

Edwards' research focused on determining the levels and forms of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Humber River basin to see if agricultural activities are affecting nutrient levels in the Humber River.

"If the levels are too high, the nutrients create an increase in algae, which blocks out light and depletes oxygen, which chokes other life in the stream," she said. While she found some increase in nutrients, it appears the levels are low enough not to cause a dangerous effect.

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World Bank to deepen engagement with poor states in India

Washington, Sept. 6 (PTI): The World Bank has said it will deepen its engagement in poor states such as Orissa and Bihar in India, the country which borrowed the biggest sum of 3.75 billion dollars globally during 2006-07.

The bank said it will focus on cross-cutting reforms such as governance and fiscal management, and continue addressing deficiencies in the South Asian region's investment climate, such as weak infrastructure, red tape and corruption.

"We will also deepen our engagement in states where poverty is increasingly concentrated, such as Orissa and Bihar in India and Sindh in Pakistan," it said in a media release.

The World Bank's programme in India focuses on providing basic services such as access to clean water and education, improving infrastructure for rural areas, and employment.

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Zambia: Efforts to Halt the Strangulation of Kafue

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

31 August 2007
Posted to the web 1 September 2007

Newton Sibanda
Lusaka

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an international conservation organisation, has launched an initiative to protect Zambia's Kafue River from pollution: the 'Save the Kafue River Campaign'. At present, the river provides potable water to over 40 percent of people in the Southern African country.

Rising in the northern parts of Zambia, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the 960 kilometre Kafue is the longest river wholly contained within the borders of the country.

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New plan to promote protection of water quality

By Rob Alexander - Bow Basin

Aug 30 2007

Regulators and municipalities will have a new tool to use this fall in the quest to preserve and enhance water quality in the Bow River basin.

Calgary-based Bow River Basin Council, a multi-stakeholder organization dedicated to protecting and improving water in the region, is preparing to release a draft Bow Basin Watershed Management Plan this fall.

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Beetles, climate change reducing water quality, supply

By Mike Lawrence (Contact)

Steamboat Springs — This spring, in the Yampa/White river basin, snowpack peaked on March 13 at a level that was 72 percent of average for that date.

According to statistics compiled throughout decades by the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, the snowpack’s peak — when snow contains its highest amount of water — came 31 days before the average peak date of April 13.

Gary Severson, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, said bark beetles, which infest weak trees and essentially strangle them by cutting off nutrient channels, could impact about 1 million acres in 15 Western Slope counties — killing up to 90 percent of the lodgepole pine trees in that area.

“We are the epicenter of the mountain pine beetle epidemic that’s going on,” Severson said. “Most of these forests are the headwaters for our rivers and streams … we’re in the process of seeing an entire lodgepole pine forest die, right before our very eyes.”

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WATER LEASES

Long-term pacts carry long-term consequences

Jeff Chostner, a lawyer and former city councilman, is a Pueblo County commissioner.

The water issues confronting Colorado’s Front Range, and Pueblo County in particular, are complex and subtly intertwined. The Preferred Storage Option Plan (PSOP), the Fountain Creek Visioning Task Force, the “Crown Jewel” concept and various other initiatives and organizations can be bewildering to the casual observer.

Even those intimately involved with the issue of preserving and enhancing Pueblo’s water resources can find the intricacies of water law to be confusing.

Issues of water quality, quantity and land use matters dominate discussion each Friday at Fountain City Hall as representatives of 28 entities struggle to solve these problems. How these entities may find a mechanism to fund measures addressing each of these subjects will go under discussion at the end of this month.

However, one issue of great importance, intimately tied to the preservation of Pueblo’s water resources, concerns water leases and the propriety of long-term agreements. The Pueblo Board of Water Works and the Pueblo West Metro District have been leasing water to the city of Aurora.

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Denitrification in cypress swamp within the Atchafalaya River Basin, Louisiana

C.W. Lindau^{a, ,} , R.D. Delaune^b, A.E. Scaroni^c and J.A. Nyman^c
aDepartment of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
^bWetland Biogeochemistry Institute, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
^cSchool of Renewable Natural Resources, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
Received 27 April 2007; revised 27 June 2007; accepted 30 June 2007. Available online 17 August 2007.

Abstract

Nitrogen has been implicated as a major cause of hypoxia in shallow water along the Louisiana/Texas, USA coasts. Excess nitrogen (mainly nitrate) from Mississippi and Atchafalaya River drainage basins may drive the onset and duration of hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Restoring and enhancing denitrification have been proposed to reduce and control coastal hypoxia and improve water quality in the Mississippi River Basin.

Sediments were collected from six baldcypress restoration sites within the Atchafalaya River Basin, Louisiana, USA. The acetylene blockage technique was used to measure background and potential sediment denitrification rates. Denitrification fluxes were measured before nitrate addition (background rates) and after nitrate addition of 100 mg N l⁻¹ (potential denitrification) at three seasonal temperatures. Background denitrification was low across all cypress swamp sites ranging from 0.9 to 8.8, 0.6 to 28.5 and 8.8 to 47.5 g N evolved ha⁻¹ d⁻¹ at water/sediment column temperatures of 8, 22 and 30 °C, respectively. After nitrate addition, temperature had a significant effect on sediment denitrification potential. Maximum rates measured at 8, 22 and 30 °C were approximately 250–260, 550 and 970 g N ha⁻¹ d⁻¹, respectively. Most of the added nitrate in water columns, incubated at 8 °C, was removed after 65 d compared to 32 d and 17 d at 22 and 30 °C, respectively. These results indicate cypress swamps have the potential to assimilate and process elevated levels of floodwater nitrate with denitrification being a major removal mechanism.

Keywords: Cypress swamp; Nitrification/denitrification; Nitrate loading; Temperature; Restoration; Mississippi River

The 2nd United Nations World Water Development Report: 'Water, a Shared Responsibility'

The triennial UN World Water Development Report is a joint undertaking of 24 UN agencies comprising UN-Water in partnership with governments and other stakeholders, and coordinated by WWAP. It presents a comprehensive picture of freshwater resources in all regions and most countries of the world as it tracks progress towards the water-related targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals and examines a range of key issues including population growth and increasing urbanization, changing ecosystems, food production, health, industry and energy, as well as risk management, valuing and paying for water and increasing knowledge and capacity. Sixteen case studies look at typical water resource challenges and provide valuable insights into different facets of the water crisis and management responses. Finally, the report outlines a set of conclusions and recommendations to guide future action and encourage sustainable use, productivity and management of our increasingly scarce freshwater resources. WWDR2 is aimed at a wide audience, including all those interested or directly involved in the formulation and implementation of water-related policies, as well as managers, researchers, teachers, students and, of course, water users themselves.

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Asia Pacific Water Forum

Water is crucial to life and all forms of social, economic, and environmental development. According to the UN Task Force on Water and Sanitation (2005), safe water and sanitation is a prerequisite for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and for sustaining good health and quality of life. At Fourth World Water Forum (4th WWF), regional documents coordinated by Japan Water Forum (JWF) and 5 sub-regional coordinators (Korea Water Forum, Global Water Partnership (GWP) South East Asia, GWP South Asia, GWP CACENA and the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC)) together with regional water stakeholders reported on the Asia-Pacific region’s formidable water related challenges. These include the need for increased access to improved water supplies and sanitation(*1) through investments in infrastructure and capacity building, the protection and restoration of river basins as the fundamental provider of freshwater resources through Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), and the need to drastically reduce the vulnerability of human populations to water-related disasters(*2). There are already a large number of stakeholders, from international institutions to local NGO’s, who are spearheading important activities and have achieved significant results throughout the Asia-Pacific region. For example, between 1990 and 2002, 35% of the total urban population (representing over 368 million people) gained access to improved drinking water. As recognised during the participatory regional consultation process that preceded the 4th WWF, such improvements can be further enhanced by harnessing the knowledge and experience of these stakeholders and creating a cooperative platform through which this growing knowledge base can be disseminated. Why an APWF? The Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) was initially proposed by the participants during the 4WWF Regional Preparatory Process that was coordinated by the Japan Water Forum (JWF). During the Ministerial Meeting that lead to the Joint Declaration, the establishment of the APWF was supported by several agencies in the region, including ADB, UNESCAP, GWP, KWF, SOPAC, JBIC, MRC, FAO, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNISDR and IUCN.

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Purpose and Scope of the 2007 World Water Week in Stockholm

Living in a changing world presents both challenges and opportunities. The performance of policies and programmes in meeting challenges and capitalising on opportunities for progress will be examined during the World Water Week. Readiness to meet a turbulent future will be assessed. The contribution of all stakeholders, who should play a constructive role in governance towards sustainability, will be highlighted. Scrutinising progress on water-related development - At summits and other meetings, pledges are routinely made to improve livelihoods and alleviate the evils associated with poverty, water scarcity and resource degradation, and political and other oppression. Sadly, commitments made are not borne out in practice. In international contexts the commitments may be sanctioned by national governments, but few are legally binding. In an ambiguous formal status, ambitious and well-meaning commitments often lack ownership at the national level. The lines of responsibility necessary and the means required to fulfil commitments and implement policies to reach targets effectively are lacking. Global targets focus on specific issues, but the contexts in which problems exist tend to be overlooked. With sanitation, for instance, the cultural and social situation is paramount, but poorly understood. Similarly, conflicts between goals within and between sectors often jeopardise progress. Laudable initiatives try to address these chal-lenges, through for instance management reforms and the promotion of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Reality, however, is invariably more complex than envisaged in political rhetoric.

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China's waterways face frequent pollution crises. Although they are often dealt with promptly, the solutions need to go beyond quick fixes, writes Ma Jun.

Since May there have been very frequent water pollution incidents in China’s rivers and lakes; and they have all been closely followed by good news about the release of clean water to improve the situation. First Taihu Lake started to stink and the nearby city of Wuxi had its water supply rudely interrupted. At that time, the Ministry of Water Resources promptly ordered hundreds of millions of tonnes of clean water from the Yangtze River to be diverted into the lake, resulting in a rapid improvement in water quality.

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