Water Quality

The Downingtown Borough Council has taken steps to deal with chronic problems with water-quality and parking on Manor Avenue. During its work session Wednesday, the council took preliminary action to ban parking on the busy street and voted to add a chemical to the borough's water that will cut down on a rusty sediment that is especially prevalent in Manor Avenue homes. The vote on water quality came after months of complaints from residents of Manor Avenue that their water often was a rusty brown.

SEA BRIGHT, N.J. - New Jersey had the fourth-best beach water quality in the nation last year, a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council says. The environmental group's annual water quality report found that Tropical Storm Irene took a toll on beachgoers last summer, forcing beaches to be closed or warnings issued at a rate nearly double that of the previous year because of pollution concerns. The report, using government data, found that in New York and New Jersey, there were 1,972 days when beaches were closed or advisories issued to the public, compared with 1,065 in 2010.

LAST WEEK, DUKE University released a study on water quality in the Marcellus Shale region. Many Pennsylvanians concerned about the state's new industry of gas drilling will be interested in the findings of this study. Here's a sampling of headlines from the media coverage: Marcellus Shale study claims gas drilling did not contaminate drinking-water wells; New research shows no Marcellus Shale pollution; Pennsylvania fracking can put water at risk, Duke study finds; Yet another study confirms fracking can pollute groundwater; New study: Fluids from Marcellus Shale likely seeping into Pa. drinking water; Findings are mixed in fracking-water study.

A year after setting up a small laboratory to study the water quality in streams, lakes and ponds here, the township has a verdict: The water is fine. The township's environmental commission, with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Delaware Estuary Program, planted 13 testing stations in half a dozen tiny tributaries such as Mantua Creek, Big Timber Creek and Stevens Run last year. Then it took two readings at each site and analyzed them for levels of dissolved oxygen, iron, sulfate, ammonia and other substances.

It may go down as the Great Gloucester City Water Crisis of 1993. In late June, a sudden outbreak of bacterial growth in the water supply, which manifested itself through foggy water and the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide, turned one of life's simple pleasures - taking a shower - into a nauseating experience. "You smelled . . . because the water had an odor to it," Mayor Walter W. Jost remembered. "There was nothing the matter with drinking it, if you could get it past your nose.

The ocean water quality off the Jersey Shore has been "tremendous" this summer after a season that saw the fewest beach closings in at least a decade, local officials and environmental groups said yesterday. "I believe our ocean and beaches in Atlantic City and throughout New Jersey are cleaner now than at any time that I remember," Atlantic City Mayor James Whelan, a former lifeguard, said at a news conference at the Beach Patrol Headquarters at South Carolina Avenue. Atlantic City has not had a beach closing because of ocean water quality since 1995, officials said.

New Jersey expects to buy out 1,000 properties damaged by Hurricane Sandy, with the focus on purchasing entire streets or neighborhoods, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. With $250 million in federal money allocated for the effort, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin faced repeated questions Monday from the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee during a hearing on the agency's proposed budget for fiscal year 2014. "What we're trying to do is buy out whole streets and whole neighborhoods.

Another shellfish bed damaged by Hurricane Sandy has reopened in New Jersey's Barnegat Bay. The state's Department of Environmental Protection reopened beds in the Little Egg Harbor section at sunrise Friday. DEP is planning to open all of the beds in the Raritan Bay on Monday. The plans are part of an administrative order signed by DEP Commissioner Bob Martin in November that reopened beds from Little Egg Inlet south to Cape May Point. The beds had been closed since Oct. 29 because of concerns over water quality caused by Sandy.

No other state acts more forcefully than New Jersey to protect swimmers from polluted beach waters, according to a study of 10 coastal states released yesterday. "Only New Jersey mandates that beaches close if tests indicate that the bacterial concentration standard has been exceeded," the Natural Resources Defense Council said. More than 228 New Jersey beaches, mainly in the north, were closed last year due to high concentrations of human and animal fecal bacteria in the water, the group said.

He has sailed the South Pacific alone, motorcycled from Alaska to South America, and lived with a primitive tribe he discovered in Ethiopia. He has paddled a kayak hundreds of miles along the United States' East and West Coasts, on rivers in Germany and France, and down dangerous rapids on the Yangtze in China. He has filmed tribes in Guyana, acted in films, and helped save the life of a woman whose car plunged from a bridge into icy waters at the Jersey Shore. And along the way, he was in a 1979 Playgirl magazine photo spread and won five national American Ironman titles with the U.S. Lifesaving Association.

New Jersey expects to buy out 1,000 properties damaged by Hurricane Sandy, with the focus on purchasing entire streets or neighborhoods, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. With $250 million in federal money allocated for the effort, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin faced repeated questions Monday from the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee during a hearing on the agency's proposed budget for fiscal year 2014. "What we're trying to do is buy out whole streets and whole neighborhoods.

Another shellfish bed damaged by Hurricane Sandy has reopened in New Jersey's Barnegat Bay. The state's Department of Environmental Protection reopened beds in the Little Egg Harbor section at sunrise Friday. DEP is planning to open all of the beds in the Raritan Bay on Monday. The plans are part of an administrative order signed by DEP Commissioner Bob Martin in November that reopened beds from Little Egg Inlet south to Cape May Point. The beds had been closed since Oct. 29 because of concerns over water quality caused by Sandy.

Thirty years after the New Jersey Legislature created an independent body to determine limits on pollutants in tap water, there is growing concern about its future. The Drinking Water Quality Institute - whose schedule is determined by the state Department of Environmental Protection - has not met in more than two years following a fight over tightening limits on industrial chemicals. And legislation has been introduced that would add representatives of industrial and chemical companies to the board and press the institute to consider industry-funded research in its decision making.

CAPE MAY - When the agenda was planned for the 2013 Delaware Estuary Science and Environmental Summit - a biannual gathering of scientists, academics, and government officials - Sandy hadn't devastated the New Jersey Shore. But the storm that struck Oct. 29 was at the forefront of conversations and some workshop discussions during the four-day conference, titled "Weathering Change - Shifting Environments, Shifting Policies, Shifting Needs. " "So much has happened within the environment since our last summit in 2011, coming in on the heels of what perhaps is the worst natural disaster in the mid-Atlantic in modern times," said Jennifer Adkins, executive director of the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, which has hosted the event every two years since 2005.

Stand by for increased shelling at a Monmouth County, N.J., naval base. State environmental officials are allowing an experimental oyster colony at a Navy pier in Middletown to expand. The goal of researchers from Rutgers University and the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper is to reestablish the once-plentiful shellfish in the Raritan Bay to help improve its water quality. The state Department of Environmental Protection allowed the groups to use nearly 11 acres off the Earle Naval Weapons Station to grow oysters and expand its research reef.

VOTERS will find four referendum questions on Tuesday's ballot. Here are the questions and our recommendations for how to vote: *  1. Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to allow for the establishment of an independent rate-making body for fixing and regulating water and sewer rates and charges ? Vote: No. Reason: Right now, the water commissioner has the power to establish water and sewer rates. While that suggests that the public or elected officials have no say in the processs, that's not entirely true: The City Council president, the mayor, and the controller appoint a hearing officer and a public advocate to review rate requests in a process that takes at least a year.

By Jim Kenney With all Philadelphia's waterways officially classified as impaired, we need to use every tool we have to protect our drinking water and clean up our rivers and streams. One such tool is a development buffer around the city's waterways. A buffer of at least 50 feet is important to prevent flooding, filter pollution, and manage storm runoff. Why am I writing about this today? Because it's within City Council's power to protect our waterways with a 50-foot buffer, but some in our ranks may be trying to whittle a proposed buffer down to 25 feet.

THAT PLASTIC container you see floating in the Schuylkill? It will probably float away from Philly, but it's hardly gone forever. Along with other junk tossed into local waterways, it ends up in the ocean, where it breaks down into a soupy mush. Remember that next you have a hankering for sushi. Need a visual on this? The 5 Gyres Institute, a California nonprofit, is teaming up with United by Blue, a Philadelphia apparel company that is dedicated to cleaning up waterways around the country, to show people the effects of pollution during a presentation here Monday.

Murky storm-water ponds, ugly waste-water lagoons and threatened wetlands may soon find a friend that helps them look and feel better. The tonic appears in the form of small floating islands filled with beneficial plants that help improve water quality, curtail erosion, and benefit wildlife. In southeastern Virginia, these grant-funded islands have been planted and are being studied and evaluated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point, Virginia Zoo in Norfolk and Elizabeth River sites.

PITTSBURGH - Is natural-gas drilling ruining the air, polluting water, and making people sick? The evidence is inconclusive, but a lack of serious funding is delaying efforts to resolve those questions and creating a vacuum that could lead to a crush of lawsuits, some experts say. A House committee in June turned down an Obama administration request to fund $4.25 million in research on how drilling may affect water quality. In the spring, Pennsylvania stripped $2 million of funding that called for a state health registry to track respiratory problems, skin conditions, stomach ailments, and other illnesses potentially related to gas drilling.