China - Clean Water for the Elite

In a disturbing article about the milk scare in China, InsideBayArea.com reports:

BEIJING—While China grapples with its latest tainted food crisis, the political elite are served the choicest, safest delicacies. They get hormone-free beef from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, organic tea from the foothills of Tibet and rice watered by melted mountain snow.

Polluted water for the people's agriculture, clean water for the elite. Those with money and power usually can access better products, but water is sacred.

Massive Moosehead Lake Real Estate Development

The Kennebec Journal reports:

State regulators on Wednesday endorsed Plum Creek's historic development plan for nearly 1,000 house lots, two large resorts and hundreds of thousands of acres of land conservation in the Moosehead Lake region.

Beyond water for drinking, bottling, agriculture and industry, there is water for recreation and there is an entire industry of recreational boat makers who want to keep it that way. This battle is probably not over, I'll follow closely.

Plum Creek began this project 4 years ago. We were at the height of the real estate boom and gas was $1.80 a gallon. Will they still have the stomach for this? Will their backers?



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"$700-million-plus cleanup that could last decades"

A great retrospective from the Berkshire Eagle on the long term financial and environmental cost of severe river pollution:

Nine years into an estimated $700-million-plus cleanup that could last decades, the river is both adored and dreaded: Anglers catch fish that they dare not eat; boaters canoe and kayak in the water but never swim; and farmers raise crops and animals near it, just outside the polluted floodplain.

This is a part of the legacy of industrial western Mass. How are China's rivers doing? How much will they cost to clean? Can experience here become a business there?

AP Report "How the health care industry dumps unused drugs into our water"

From Foster's Daily Democrat:

EDITOR'S NOTE — The health care industry is contributing to the contamination of our nation's drinking water supplies by dumping tons of unused drugs annually, an Associated Press investigation finds. First of a two-part series.
By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Associated Press Writers

U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.