Celebrating World Water Day 2018: Nature for Water

World Water Day 2018, an event that is held every year on March 22nd, is about focusing attention on the importance of water. This year’s theme, “Nature for Water,” explores how we can use nature-based solutions (NBS) to help overcome the global water challenges of the 21st century. The 2018 campaign, “The answer is in


Recent Trends in Legionella and Waterborne Disease Outbreaks and Their Causes

Every day, over 50,000 community water systems serve treated (finished) drinking water to over 300 million Americans, while almost 45 million rely on private wells for some or all of their water. The availability of safe drinking water is vital to public health, but contamination can occur and treatment, storage, and distribution systems can fail.


Can Drinking “Raw” Water Make You Sick?

As 2017 came to a close and 2018 began, a growing health fad was reported throughout the news and social media: Americans paying top-dollar to drink bottled “raw” water from a spring. Whether for purported health benefits or a misguided effort to get off the “drinking water grid,” as chair of the Water Quality & Health Council, I felt it imperative to address the very real risks of drinking untreated water.


Silent Beauty: A Holiday Perspective from Aloft

It is truly delightful when the holidays afford us quiet moments in which to contemplate life and home from a different perspective. This season we offer you a captivating NASA video featuring views of planet Earth and space from the International Space Station. Relax and enjoy the mesmerizing perspective of those aloft in near-Earth orbit.

If you would like to view the International Space Station circulating in near-Earth orbit, enter your city and state into this NASA “Sighting Opportunities” interactive website for a schedule of space station sightings near you.


Keeping Iron Bacteria out of Your Well

Are you one of almost 45 million Americans who get their water from a private well?1 If so, you undoubtedly want clean, safe, and clear water. But if unpleasant tastes or smells are coming out of your faucets, and your sinks, tubs, and toilets are stained reddish-brown, your well and water system might be contaminated with iron bacteria. This fall, one of us (RM) noticed a brownish foam in his toilet tank and a distinct iron taste to the drinking water, despite having an on-site water softener…


Water Loss: Challenges, Costs, and Opportunities

I wrote at the end of 2016 about the Future of America’s Drinking Water, and summarized some basic facts about US daily and annual water consumption. For example, Americans consume more than one billion glasses of tap water each day, while just 3% of our nation’s 50,000 community water systems provide safe drinking water for


Autumn: When Leaves Fall, So Can Water Quality

Now that summer is over—and hopefully the record-setting 2017 hurricane season—many of us can turn our attention to the cooler temperatures, shorter days and the colorful splendor of autumn leaves. Of course, all of those red, orange, and yellow leaves are short-lived and fall to the ground, forming truly massive amounts of organic debris. But did you know


If Nothing Changes, It Will Happen Again: New Zealand’s Untreated Drinking Water

Just over a year ago, in August 2016, I wrote about how more than 5,000 of the 14,000 residents of Havelock North—a suburb of the City of Hastings on the North Island of New Zealand—became sickened after drinking untreated groundwater contaminated with Campylobacter bacteria, a common food- and waterborne disease-causing microorganism that is transmitted in the feces of


Stockholm Junior Water Prize Winners Propose Novel Approach to Expanding Safe Water Resources

Striving for a better world by 2030, countries around the globe are beginning to incorporate the new, ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals into their national agendas. Among the 17 bold goals, which include ending poverty and hunger, is the goal of universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. This goal was front and center at last week’s Stockholm


Touring Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System and Celebrating World Water Week 2017

The theme of this year’s World Water Week, which runs from August 27 to September 1, is “Water and Waste: Reduce and Reuse.” World Water Week was established in 1991 and is organized each year by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). To mark World Water Week, we thought it only fitting to share a highlight