Story Archives of 'drinking water'

As New Hampshire grows we’re learning more about the hazards facing water quantity, quality and infrastructure and are exploring new ways to combat them. Hydrologists, environmentalist, inventors, and water groups are working hard on this effort, thinking up new technologies, new ideas and new plans so we’ll have enough clean potable water for our future. We conclude our series by exploring the future of our state’s drinking water and what some in the state are doing about it.

We'll also get an update on the storms that hit New Hampshire yesterday.

Guests

• Harry Stewart, Water Division Director at the Department of Environmental Services
• Brian Goetz, consultant for Weston and Sampson, a Portsmouth-based water treatment and wastewater design and consulting company and current president of New Hampshire’s Water Works Association

We'll also hear from

• Gregg Champlin, Deputy Public Information Officer for the New Hampshire Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
• Dean Kamen, founder and owner of DEKA Research and Development Corporation in Manchester; he has invented a water purification device called the Slingshot that can take any kind of polluted water and transfer it to potable water by using minimal energy
• David Paris, Water Supply Administrator for Manchester Water Works Water Treatment Plant
• John Edgar, Community Development Director for the town of Meredith

Right now most of New Hampshire’s drinking water sources are well protected, but in the future we may need to draw from rivers and lakes that suffer from storm water pollution, run-off problems and the hazards of development. In the next installment of our series on drinking water we look at the quality of our drinking water, threats to water quality and how they're cleaned up before reaching our tap.

Guests

• David Paris, Water Supply Administrator for Manchester Water Works Water Treatment Plant
• Bernie Lucy, Senior Engineer at the Drinking Water and Groundwater Bureau at New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services

We'll also hear from

• Andrew Nelson, owner of Nelson Analytical Labs, a full service water and environmental testing laboratory in Manchester
• Christine Fletcher, owner and president of Secondwind Water Systems in Manchester

The journey is long, starting with raindrops or snowfall, leading to the ground and to rivers and streams. Some soaks into the ground and into aquifers, up long pipes and into the house; other water heads to reservoirs, lakes or public water systems, then through a series of pipes, plants and tanks before it's sent to you. Today we kick off our series exploring New Hampshire’s drinking water with a look at the process of getting water from the sky to the tap.

Guests

• J. Matthew Davis, Associate Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of New Hampshire and consultant for several groundwater consulting companies
• Sarah Pillsbury, administrator for the Drinking Water and Groundwater Bureau of New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services

We'll also hear from

• Kevin McGuire, Assistant Professor of Hydrology at The Center for the Environment at Plymouth State University and Research Hydrologist for the US Forest Service, Northern Research Station

Close to two billion people worldwide now live in water-stressed regions and that number is growing fast, especially true in areas like the Middle East, Australia, large parts of Asia and the midwestern United States. We’ll talk about the state of fresh water in the world and what’s being done so that we’ll all have drinking water in our future.

Guest

• Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, founder of the Blue Planet Project and author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

A new study says bottled water is really not much better than the water we get at home, and can have a big negative impact on the environment.