What about water

More than 1.3 million people across over 200 counties in Texas still had issues with their water supply by Wednesday (Feb 24), but that was down sharply from recent days, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) said. That figure compared with Tuesday's 3.4 million, Monday's 8 million and Sunday's 9 million, or about a third of the state's population. A deadly winter storm caused widespread blackouts last week across Texas, a state unaccustomed to extreme cold, killing at least two dozen people and knocking out power to more than 4 million at its peak. READ: Commentary: Meltdown in Texas’ power and water supply was a long time coming As of Wednesday evening, "33 Public Water Systems are non-operational, affecting 20,689 Texans," the spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement, adding that 204 counties were reporting issues with their public water systems. He said around 853 public water systems were on a "boil water notice", meaning people … [Read more...] about More than 1.3 million Texans still grappling with water supply disruptions

AUSTIN, Texas: Harvard Kennedy School’s William Hogan is credited with designing the Texas energy market. As Texans froze and their water pipes burst, he reportedly remarked that the state’s energy market has functioned as designed. Hogan is right, which says a lot about how some economists think. For years, electric utilities were a stable, dull business. To counter the effects of monopoly, utility commissions set and stabilized prices, and companies got a rate of return on their investment that was (in principle) enough to cover construction, maintenance, and a fair profit. But economists complained: Utilities had an incentive to over-invest. The bigger their operations and the higher their total costs, the more they could extract from the rate-setters. READ: Biden approves Texas disaster declaration following deadly freeze READ: Commentary: Biden needs to build bridges, literally, in the US A FREE MARKET FOR ELECTRICITY Electricity is the ultimate standard … [Read more...] about Commentary: Meltdown in Texas’ power and water supply was a long time coming

WASHINGTON: An unknown hacker broke into a Florida city's water supply and briefly pushed levels of a potentially dangerous additive up 100-fold, local law enforcement said on Monday (Feb 8). The hack was noticed quickly and reversed immediately, so no one in the Tampa suburb of Oldsmar was ever in danger, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. But it underscored the broader threat of cyberattacks to US infrastructure, he added. A computer operator for the Oldsmar water treatment system noticed on Friday afternoon someone remotely accessing the plant's controls, Gualtieri said. The operator watched the mouse pointer move between various functions for several minutes before opening the controls for adding sodium hydroxide to the water. The chemical, also known as lye and used in drain cleaners, is added in very small amounts to control acidity and remove metals from the water before it goes to consumers. But the hacker raised the input level from 100 parts per … [Read more...] about Hacker tries to dump chemical into Florida city’s water

CHINA - As local authorities in Lanzhou, Gansu province, continued to investigate the city's tap water contamination on Sunday, experts and local residents have raised questions over the delayed response and lack of timely information from authorities and the water supplier. The contamination was caused by a residual oil leak stemming from an oil tank explosion in 1987 and a fire in the residual oil pipeline, according to a preliminary investigation by the city government. Authorities suspect the residual oil contaminated the underground water near a duct between two water works, bringing hazardous levels of benzene into the city's tap water, the city government said on Sunday. The local authorities have pumped more than 800 metric tons of water containing the residual oil from 26 pits that were dug near the tap water channel, it said. High levels of benzene, which reached 118 micrograms per liter, were first detected in the city's tap water at 5 pm on Thursday, and the levels … [Read more...] about Response to tainted water raises concerns

To encourage water conservation, national water agency PUB will phase out the sale of less efficient taps and mixers as well as introduce new ratings for washing machines. A new "four-tick" rating will be introduced next year for washing machines under the Mandatory Water Efficiency Labelling Scheme. The scheme enables consumers to make informed decisions by choosing more water-efficient water fittings and appliances such as taps and mixers, and flushing cisterns. The more ticks a product has, the more water-efficient it is. Currently, washing machines sold have either two- or three-tick water efficiency ratings. The sale and supply of taps and mixers with "zero ticks" will also be disallowed from early next year. These measures are all part of the Government's plan to manage water demand. Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli said that extreme weather patterns due to climate change will pose a challenge to … [Read more...] about Tightening the tap on water wastage: Measures ticking along