East Side Water Supply project – The Madison Water Utility (MWU) and CitizensAdvisory Panel (CAP) members invite you to attend a  Listening and Learning Event to learn about the East Side Water Supply (ESWS) project and share with us your ideas for ensuring that the east side has safe, reliable and sufficient water. The meeting will be an open house, so stop by whenever you have time and stay as long as you’d like.

Drop in anytime :  Monday, June 27, 2011   4:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m.Madison East High  OR  Thursday, June 30, 2011   4:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m.Warner Park Community Recreation Center, 1625 Northport Drive

similar to the situation with other drinking water contaminants, the ability to detect trace concentrations of one part per billion, which is equivalent to one second in 32 years, or less,  has outpaced the science that can provide meaning to the significance of chronic exposures to these minute levels in drinking water.  Measuring total chromium levels below 1 ppb was not standard until the mid-1990s.  Previously, the detection ability was in parts per million, not billion.  Furthermore, few analytical labs are capable of measuring chromium 6 down to the proposed California public health goal.

Total chromium levels have been measured at Madison wells since at least the early 1970s, and the levels are relatively unchanged since that time.  The techniques and the methods for measuring chromium may have changed, but the concentrations have not.

Read more:  http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/ChromiuminWater.cfm

A typical bathtub holds 40 gallons or so of water. That is 330 pounds. A cubic yard of it, filling what at first glance seems a modest volume of 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet, weighs nearly 1,700 pounds, as much as the Smart micro car.And when water is moving at 30 or 40 miles an hour, like the tsunami that inundated northern Japan on Friday, the heaviness of water turns deadly. Imagine 1,700 pounds hitting you at that speed, and each cubic yard of water as another 1,700 pounds bearing down on you. The destructiveness of a tsunami is not just one runaway car, but a fleet of them.     More

Click here to go to a  global hub for sharing International Women’s Day news, events and resources.

IWD is now an official holiday in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal (for women only), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

Watch for ripple effects coming to products, homes and building codes near you.

CalGreen

Carbon monoxide detector law starts February 1, 2011

All homes and duplexes in Wisconsin will be required to have carbon monoxide detectors as a safety precaustion starting Feb. 1. The measure was passed and signed into law last year. There is no penalty for not complying. The law requires every level of the home to have a carbon monoxide detector, including the basement, but no th attic or storage areas.

Any dwelling that requires a building permit will be required to have detectors directly wired to the electrical service with a backup battery. Exisiting buildings can use stand-alone battery-powered detectors.

Is Madison tap water safe to drink?

Yes.   Madison water is routinely tested for more than 130 potential contaminants, including both regulated and unregulated substances.  The Madison Water Utility does extensive testing and confirms that we meet all current federal and state drinking water standards.

To read more and get on a city mailing list, go to:  http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/ChromiuminWater.cfm

United States EPA – Chromium in Drinking Water

California EPA – Public Health Goal for Hexavalent Chromium

Easy-to-fix household leaks waste 1.2 trillion gallons of water each year across the United States.

How much water does the average household waste from leaks?

A. Enough to fill a bathtub.

B. Enough to do 100 loads of laundry.

C. Enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.

D. Enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

See this issue of the WaterSense Current for the correct answer!

Vi Hart calls herself “a recreational mathemusician currently living on Long Island.” She talks faster than a machine gun, loves math, and draws like a dream. Her newest video: “Doodling in Math Class: Snakes + Graphs” is eye-popping.

Literally.

Dubbed “Toirettsu” (トイレッツ), the game’s title is a word play on “toy”, “let’s” and “toilets”. As the Sega Toys website points out, “You’re able to game with pee!”

This is a teched out version of those little targets commonly found in urinals. Not surprising that Toirettsu is intended for restaurants’ and retailers’ toilets in the hopes that pissing mini-games will result with more customer pee in the urinal and less on the floor.