New Scientist reports water crisis

Today, New Scientist.com reports that one-third of the world’s population is short of water – a situation we were not predicted to arrive at until 2025. That's the result of a new report on the state of the world’s water supplies.

The report by the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, was released on Monday in Stockholm at the start of World Water Week. It paints a bleak picture of global access to fresh water and warns that the world cannot carry on complacently using water as if it will never run out.

The reason for the discrepancy is that earlier predictions were based on a country-by-country analysis. The latest figures stem from a more detailed analysis of natural water basins, according to the article.

Read more here.

Survey for Well Owners

Pennsylvania is home to over one million private water wells that provide drinking water to over three million rural residents, with an additional 20,000 new water wells drilled each year. Pennsylvania, however, is one of the few states that have no guidelines on how to construct and maintain private water wells, and many fail at least one drinking water standard.

Since all aspects of private well location, construction and management are voluntary, little is known about them and how they perform for homeowners. This makes it difficult to create educational programs to meet the needs of existing and future well owners. The purpose of this research study is to learn about the characteristics and management of private wells in the state along with homeowner opinions.

Penn State University in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Water Resources Research Center is offering you an opportunity to contribute through an online survey regarding your private water well. Your knowledge and opinions are important to us as we develop programs for existing and future well owners. You must be a Pennsylvania resident and at least 18 years old to complete the online survey, which will take less than 10 minutes of your time. Please do not fill out the survey if your water comes from a public (city) water supply or from a spring or cistern. Your knowledge and opinions will help shape Penn State programs in the next five years for existing and future well owners.

Access the survey by surfing to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=71482275593.

2006 Carbon County Fair is underway

Join us at the Carbon County Fair through this Sunday. We have a booth in the nonprofit/bunny tent and would love to have you stop by and learn more about what we do.

CCGG Members: If you have time to volunteer to help man the booth, contact me via e-mail and I'll get you an exibitor's pass into the fair.

Rick.