Free Republic

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder responded Monday to criticism from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Democratic debates for his handling of Flint's water emergency, saying Clinton is making it a political issue. During Sunday's debate, Clinton said "every single American should be outraged" by the water crisis, adding that "if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would have been action." Following a speaking engagement at a Martin Luther King Day event in Flint, the Republican governor said her tactic doesn't help solve the problem. "We're going to...

County General Services Director Heidi Petito said in a news release Monday that someone opened 20 water lines in a largely undeveloped area known as Plantation Reserve Estates. Petito says the sudden drop in water pressure requires a precautionary boil water notice to be issued. About 1,700 people are affected. It wasn't immediately clear how long they would have to boil water.

Public officials are in the process of eliminating Naegleria Fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba, from two drinking water supplies in Louisiana. Naegleria Fowleri was detected during routine tests last week at a utility district in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, roughly 25 miles from Baton Rouge. The water system serves roughly 1,800 throughout the rural town. Three other systems in the area were tested with negative results, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH). While officials say the water is safe for drinking, residents are urged to use caution with the water, not letting it get into their nose. Humans...

No one seems to know how worms got in the tap water, but residents in Old River-Winfree, a town of about 1,400 just 25 miles east of Houston, are drinking from bottles this week. On Monday evening, the first residents of the Woodlands Acres Subdivision showed up at city offices with containers full of water and small red worms they say came out of their faucets, sprinklers and shower heads. Three days and dozens of reports later, Mayor Joe Landry said "people are not taking chances." ... She said this type of contamination can occur from backflow into pipes or...

One of the world’s most popular weed killers—and the most widely used kind in the U.S.—has been labeled a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The decision was made by IARC, the France-based cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, which considered the status of five insect and weed killers including glyphosate, which is used globally in industrial farming. […] The new classification is aimed mainly at industrial use of glyphosate. Its use by home gardeners is not considered a risk. Glyphosate is in the same category of risk as things like anabolic steroids and...

Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide • Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned. The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. Pictures taken by the hunters, which...

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

The body of an aspiring actress has been found in the water tank in the Mexico City apartment block where she lived, one year after she disappeared. Psychology graduate Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza, 27, vanished in February last year, and friends and family feared she had been kidnapped by human traffickers and sold as a sex slave. Ms Esparza's severely decayed body was discovered in the tank after residents in the building complained that the drinking water tasted funny.

United Nations human rights experts described Detroit’s mass water shut-offs as “a man-made perfect storm” Monday and called on city officials to restore water to those unable to pay, including those with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Meanwhile, Detroit’s officials said the two lawyers’ actions and conclusions were agenda-driven and not based on “facts” about the city’s progress in helping residents keep or regain service. Leilani Farha and Catarina de Albuquerque, who were in town to observe the effect of water service shut-offs, said they affect the poorest and most vulnerable—and particularly discriminate against Detroit’s majority black population. …

Anaheim is literally pulling the plug on pot shops that keep popping up despite a law forbidding the businesses. Officials have used its operation of utilities to cut off water and power to dispensaries in the city that’s home to Disneyland, the Orange County Register reported Tuesday. …

The obesity epidemic in men could be fueled by the female sex hormone estrogen, scientists claim. Experts believe the hormone could also be causing the well-documented drop in sperm count among Western men. They said men in affluent countries are becoming “feminized” as they come into contact with products containing the female sex hormone. Compounds found in some plastic items, including drain pipes, and soy food products can mimic the effects of estrogen, scientists said. Secreted by the ovaries in premenstrual women, estrogen is known to cause weight gain, inhibiting the thyroid gland and affecting other areas of the brain....

The situation is very bad. It seems that water in the area is contaminated due to algae in the area, mostly in Lake Erie, which releases a toxin called microcystin when it decays. The algae grows best in warm, shallow waters like those of Lake Erie. It can’t be boiled, boiling only concentrates the toxin. What about filters? Even filters such as Berkey filters have their limitations. They are capable of filtering pathogens and microorganisms, but getting rid of a cyanotoxins is a different story. The way I would deal with the situation would be this: I’d drink the water...

PAULSBORO — Standing in the shadow of the Paulsboro Refining Company and right next to the Delaware River, representatives from Environment New Jersey and Mom's Clean Air Force released a report showing millions of pounds of chemicals have been released into the state's waterways. Approximately 206 million pounds of toxic chemicals, from ammonia and phenol to zinc, sodium nitrate and hydrogen sulfide, were released into waterways in the United States in 2012, according to the report, with 5.862 million of those pounds being in New Jersey — making it the 14th highest in the country. Maureen Cervantes, a lifelong Paulsboro...

Portland administrators will flush 38 million gallons of water from Mt. Tabor Reservoir 5 after a 19-year-old man urinated in the city’s drinking supply. “Even though there is very minimal public health risk, the bottom line is that our commitment is to serve water that’s clean, cold and constant,” said Water Bureau administrator David Shaff. “That doesn’t include pee. Not from people, at least.”

The Arizona Senate has approved a bill that would allow cities and towns to enter restricted federal land without permission in emergencies. ... Republican bill sponsor Rep. Kelly Townsend of Mesa says she was inspired by the battle between the city of Tombstone and the federal government over access to repair its water supply system in the Coronado National Forest. She says local authorities should have the right to go in where needed without being granted approval first in cases of emergency.

Shocking statistics surfacing about record busting, low water levels in America’s Great Lakes make no mention of the sale of fresh water supplies by private companies to China, or of President Obama’s executive order and the legal loophole which is allowing these sales. “Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels EVER RECORDED” the US Army Corps of Engineers reported early this year. (1) Corps measurements taken in January of 2013 “show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918.” The chief watershed hydrology expert warns Americans, “We’re in...

Reuters reports that the FBI and other agencies are in the process of investigating multiple threats to Midwest Water Supply Systems. Specifically, the FBI has named Wichita, Kansas as a target, but utility facilities have also been put on alert in other Midwestern cities. (Reuters) The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation learned of the threats in the past two days and has contacted the water supply facilities and law enforcement offices for the municipalities, said Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman for the FBI office in Kansas City, Missouri. Patton declined to discuss the nature of the threats or the number of...

The city insists the water is safe, but people can't get over the colorResidents on Manhattan's East Side are staying far away from their tap water after it started flowing with an unusual color, despite the city's insistence the water is safe. On Thursday, residents and businesses began noticing brown water from their sinks and taps. Nearly a dozen hydrants in the area were also unlocked and gushing discolored water. The city's Department of Environmental Protection said the discoloration happened when construction of new water mains forced them to reverse flow, stirring up sediment. The DEP said the brown in...

A deadly brain amoeba that’s killed two boys this year has been found in a U.S. drinking water supply system for the first time, officials said Monday -- in a New Orleans-area system. The Naegleria fowleri parasite killed a 4-year-old Mississippi boy who likely got it playing on a back yard Slip 'N Slide, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say. Tests show it’s present throughout the water supply system in St. Bernard Parish, directly southeast of New Orleans. “We have never seen Naegleria colonizing a treated water supply before,” said Dr. Michael Beach, head of water safety for...

Tensions are rising in Japan over radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a breach that has defied the plant operator's effort to gain control. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday called the matter “an urgent issue” and ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up, following an admission by Tokyo Electric Power Company that water is seeping past an underground barrier it attempted to create in the soil. The head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force told Reuters the situation was an "emergency."