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The following is a transcript of the Aug. 25, 2011, edition of the WaterWorld Weekly newscast.
Hi, I'm Angela Godwin, digital media editor for WaterWorld magazine, bringing you this week's water and wastewater news headlines. Coming up...
• Historic water delivery project gets underway
• Plan to cover Yonkers reservoir on hold
• New database to address aging water infrastructure
• Water leaders convene in Stockholm
[story1]
Earlier this week, southern Colorado officials and community leaders gathered at the base of the Pueblo Dam to celebrate the start of construction on the Southern Delivery System, or SDS.
When completed in 2016, the SDS project will have the capacity to deliver up to 96 million gallons of water per day from the Pueblo Reservoir to the communities of Colorado Springs, Pueblo West, Fountain, and Security, via a 60-mile-long pipeline.
Children from southern Colorado participated in the event by contributing items to a time capsule that will be buried at the new water treatment plant site.
Guests also signed a commemorative section of pipe that will be on display at the plant.
The Southern Delivery System project, which has been in the planning stages for nearly 20 years, will come online in 2016. The first phase of construction is expected to cost about $880 million dollars.
[story2]
A controversial EPA mandate to put a 90-acre concrete cap on the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, New York, has been put on hold.
Local lawmakers, including Congressman Joseph Crowley, Senator Charles Schumer, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have called the $1.6 billion dollar project unnecessary and a waste of money.
The unfunded mandate came out of New York City's Long-Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment plan.
The cover was intended to keep contaminants, such as bird droppings and other impurities, out of the billion-gallon reservoir.
But local officials maintain that the new billion dollar ultraviolet disinfection facility being built nearby will provide sufficient treatment.
EPA has agreed to suspend the mandate while it reviews the plan.
[story3]
Virginia Tech engineering professor Sunil Sinha has created an online national database that could help water and wastewater utilities address the serious issue of aging infrastructure.
Funded through EPA's Aging Water Infrastructure Research Program, the WATER Infrastructure Database, or WATERiD, will serve as a platform for sharing and disseminating relevant water infrastructure information, such as management practices, technologies, tools, and standards, as well as ongoing rehabilitation projects and case studies.
It's designed to serve as a first stop for water infrastructure related information.
Sinha and his graduate students have spent the last year compiling information for the database. But Sinha's hope is that more water and wastewater utilities will add their own experiences.
WATERiD is free to all users and will be available to the public on September 1st.
For more information, visit waterid.org.
[story4]
In international news...
This week, more than 2,000 water leaders, innovators, and delegates from around the globe convened in Stockholm, Sweden, for World Water Week.
The event, organized and hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute, provides a forum for discussing the planet's most urgent water issues.
Our very own Tom Freyberg was there getting a firsthand look at some of the important topics being discussed. Tom?
Also at the event this week, Alison Blick, a student from Short Hills, New Jersey, won the prestigious Stockholm Junior Water Prize for her impressive creation -- a low-cost, portable instrument for testing water quality ...with a cell phone.
Blick's method not only accurately assesses the bacteria content of water but is significantly faster and up to 200 times less expensive than standard testing procedures.
For WaterWorld magazine, I'm Angela Godwin. Thanks for watching.
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