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Water Issues in PA

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

What’s the water like in Pennsylvania?

Water quality can no longer be taken for granted — its quality varies from place to place and even house to house. A variety of factors can affect how your water tastes, smells, feels and works in and around your home. Well water quality, possible contamination, an aging water distribution system, violations of federal drinking water standards and a home’s plumbing are examples of things that can affect a home’s water supply. Some water problems may not be as obvious as others. Below, we’ve listed the water problems we commonly see in Lancaster, Harrisburg, Myerstown, and State College, Pennsylvania, But we need to test your water to determine if water treatment is necessary and which option is right for you.

 

 

HARD WATER

Hard water contains dissolved calcium, magnesium and in many cases, iron. Most homes in Pennsylvania have hard water, whether it is supplied by a private well or a municipality. In many cases, homeowners don’t realize they have hard water or the constant and expensive harm it causes.

Dry skin and hair, bathtub ring, spots on glass, silverware and fixtures, dull, dingy clothing, disappointing performance and a shortened life expectancy of water-using appliances are all problems frequently caused by hard water.

Kinetico Water Softener will solve your hard water problems.

 

 

IRON AND MANGANESE STAINING

Water is a natural solvent and given the needed time and conditions, it will dissolve anything it comes in contact with. That’s why, depending on where you live, your water can contain iron or manganese which can cause rusty-orange or black staining. You’ll see the stains on clothes, fixtures, sinks, tubs, water-using appliances and toilets.

Kinetico Water Softener or a Kinetico Water Filter will eliminate water staining problems.

 

 

BLUE-GREEN STAINING

If water has a low pH, you can see the tell-tale, blue-green stains. These stains are most noticeable on white surfaces that your water comes in contact with such as sinks, tubs and showers, toilets and even white clothing.

Crystal Clear Acid Neutralizer will treat your water and eliminate these unsightly stains.

 

 

CHLORINE TASTE AND SMELL

Since the 1850s, chlorine has been used as a disinfectant to kill harmful bacteria in water itself or the pipes that transport it. Although it has helped end a number of major threats to public health and is essential at the treatment plant and in the water distribution system, it is no longer necessary once the water reaches your home.

Though chlorine is vital in PA for stopping the spread of disease, its benefits come at a price. Chlorine tastes and smells bad. It dries skin and hair, fades clothes (bleach is made of chlorine), and can dry out the rubber seals in appliances, shortening their lives.

Remove chlorine from your water with a Kinetico Water Filter or a Kinetico Drinking Water System.

 

CLOUDY WATER

Cloudy, murky or grayish water is usually caused by dissolved or suspended solids. This is also known as “turbidity.” Water can become turbid naturally or from land disturbances such as construction, storms and urban runoff.

The turbidity of your water can range from low to high. But even if your water looks clear, it could still contain a high level of dissolved solids. That’s why, whether your water is turbid or not, we recommend you have it tested.

There are a few options to treat this type of water, depending on if you want to treat all the water in your home or just your drinking water.

 

 

BACTERIA AND VIRUSES

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there could be as many as 12 million cases of waterborne acute gastrointestinal illness annually in the United States alone. These illnesses are frequently caused by bacteria, viruses and protozoa that make their way into the water supply. Even well operated, state-of-the-art treatment plants cannot ensure that drinking water is entirely free of microbial pathogens. Learn more about safe drinking water.

Kinetico Drinking Water System or a Kinetico Specialty Water Treatment Systemwill rid your water of troublesome contaminants.

 

 

TASTES AND ODORS

In its pristine state, water is colorless, tasteless and odorless. So, if your Pennsylvania water tastes or smells funny, you owe it to yourself to find out why.

  • Earthy or musty taste and odor: These types of complaints are generally the result of compounds released due to decayed vegetation and are typically associated with different forms of algae. While not toxic, they are nonetheless unpleasant and can be offensive at very low concentrations.
  • “Rotten egg” smell: Another common source of smelly water is hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a colorless corrosive gas which has the characteristic odor of rotten eggs. If present in high enough concentrations, it can leave an unpleasant odor on hair and clothing. It can also accelerate corrosion of metal parts in appliances. Find out how much sulfur is safe to drink.
  • Metallic taste: As the name implies, a metallic taste to your water indicates the presence of metals such as iron, copper, manganese or zinc. Iron and manganese are often naturally occurring and are predominately found in groundwater. Copper and zinc can come from an aging water distribution system or the corrosion of copper plumbing and brass fittings. Learn about the permissible amounts of trace elements.

New study: Fluids from Marcellus Shale likely seeping into Pennsylvania drinking water

Friday, February 8th, 2013

By Abrahm Lustgarten

 

 

 

 

Editor’s note: Research similar to that described below has not been conducted in Boulder or Weld counties as far as we can determine. But in our effort to continue to provide our readers with the most pertinent information regarding oil and gas drilling and fracking, we believe it is important to present these recent findings that we believe may affect the current debate in our region and nationally.

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.

Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in ways previously thought to be impossible.

The study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested drinking water wells and aquifers across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers found that, in some cases, the water had mixed with brine that closely matched brine thought to be from the Marcellus Shale or areas close to it.

No drilling chemicals were detected in the water, and there was no correlation between where the natural brine was detected and where drilling takes place.

Still, the brine’s presence — and the finding that it moved over thousands of vertical feet — contradicts the oft-repeated notion that deeply buried rock layers will always seal in material injected underground through drilling, mining or underground disposal.

“The biggest implication is the apparent presence of connections from deep underground to the surface,” said Robert Jackson, a biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the study’s authors. “It’s a suggestion based on good evidence that there are places that may be more at risk.”

The study is the second in recent months to find that the geology surrounding the Marcellus Shale could allow contaminants to move more freely than expected. A paper published by the journal Ground Water in April used modeling to predict that contaminants could reach the surface within 100 years — or fewer if the ground is fracked.

Last year, some of the same Duke researchers found that methane gas was far more likely to leak into water supplies in places adjacent to drilling.

Today’s research swiftly drew criticism from both the oil and gas industry and a scientist on the National Academy of Science’s peer review panel. They called the science flawed, in part because the researchers do not know how long it may have taken for the brine to leak. The National Academy of Sciences should not have published the article without an accompanying rebuttal, they said.

“What you have here is another case of a paper whose actual findings are pretty benign, but one that, in the current environment, may be vulnerable to distortion among those who oppose this industry,” said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the gas industry trade group Energy In Depth. “What’s controversial is attempting to argue that these migrations occur as a result of industry activities, and on a time scale that actually matters to humanity.”

Another critic, Penn State University geologist Terry Engelder, took the unusual step of disclosing details of his review of the paper for the National Academy of Sciences, normally a private process.

In a letter written to the researchers and provided to ProPublica, Engelder said the study had the appearance of “science-based advocacy” and said it was “unwittingly written to enflame the anti-drilling crowd.”

In emails, Engelder told ProPublica that he did not dispute the basic premise of the article — that fluids seemed to have migrated thousands of feet upward. But he said that they had likely come from even deeper than the Marcellus — a layer 15,000 feet below the surface — and that there was no research to determine what pathways the fluids travelled or how long they took to migrate. He also said the Marcellus was an unlikely source of the brine because it does not contain much water.

“There is a question of time scale and what length of time matters,” Engelder wrote in his review. In a subsequent letter to the Academy’s editors protesting the study, he wrote that “the implication is that the Marcellus is leaking now, naturally, without any human assistance, and that if water-based fluid is injected into these cross-formational pathways, that leakage, which is already ‘contaminating’ the aquifers with salt, could be made much worse.”

Indeed, while the study did not explicitly focus on fracking, the article acknowledged the implications. “The coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater … suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations,” the paper states.

For their research, the scientists collected 426 recent and historical water samples — combining their own testing with government records from the 1980s — from shallow water wells and analyzed them for brine, comparing their chemical makeup to that of 83 brine samples unearthed as waste water from drilling sites in the Marcellus Shale.

Nearly one out of six recent water samples contained brine near-identical to Marcellus-layer brine water.

Nevertheless, Jackson, one of the study’s authors, said he still considers it unlikely that frack fluids and injected man-made waste are migrating into drinking water supplies. If that were happening, those contaminants would be more likely to appear in his groundwater samples, he said. His group is continuing its research into how the natural brine might have traveled, and how long it took to rise to the surface.

“There is a real time uncertainty,” he said. “We don’t know if this happens over a couple of years, or over millennia.”

—ProPublica – Source Boulder Weekly