Small communities violate federal requirements for safe drinking water as much as three times more often than cities. Yet these communities often cannot afford to improve their water service. Safe Water From Every Tap reviews the risks of violating drinking water standards and discusses options for improving water service in small communities. Included are detailed reviews of a wide range of technologies appropriate for treating drinking water in small communities. The book also presents a variety of institutional options for improving the management efficiency and financial stability of water systems.

An in-depth look at the changing approaches that environmentalists, governments, and the open market have taken to water through the lens of world history. When we turn on the tap or twist open a tall plastic bottle, we probably don’t give a second thought about where our drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to the glass is far more convoluted than we might think. In this revised edition of Drinking Water, Duke University professor and environmental policy expert James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time. He adds eye-opening, contemporary examples about our relationship to and consumption of water, and a new chapter about the atrocities that occurred in Flint, Michigan. Provocative, insightful, and engaging, Drinking Water shows just how complex a simple glass of water can be. “A surprising, delightful, fact-filled book.” —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel “Instead of buying your next twelve-pack of bottled water, buy this fascinating account of all the people who spent their lives making sure you’d have clean, safe drinking water every time you turned on the tap.” —Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet “Drinking Water effortlessly guides us through a fascinating world we never consider. Even for people who think they know water, there is a surprise on almost every page.” —Charles Fishman, bestselling author of The Big Thirst and The Wal-Mart Effect “Salzman puts a needed spotlight on an often overlooked but critical social, economic, and political resource.” —Publishers Weekly

More than 20 years ago, when our children were very small, I felt the need for better drinking water quality and I purchased a small counter top appliance that hooked up to the water tap. It didnt take long before I realized that this was just a bandaid and that something more powerful was needed and thus I embarked on a mission to educate myself about home drinking water filtration systems. This was pretty much in the days before I had a computer, so I looked at trade magazines and sent for every drinking water brochure I could find, read them all and compared for quality and price. This convinced me very quickly of the benefits and affordability of solid carbon block technology and I ended up with a company that took the water filtration business very seriously and in my opinion did produce and still produces

The best papers from the three-day conference on Safe Drinking Water from Source to Tap June 2009 in Maastricht are published in this book covering the themes of challenges of the water sector and adaptive strategies, treatment, distribution, risk assessment and risk management, sensors and monitoring, small scale systems, simulation, alternative water supply & sources, consumer involvement, and future drinking water. Worldwide, the water supply sector is facing tremendous challenges. Every new emerging contaminants and pathogens and aging infrastructures that are vulnerable for deliberate contamination pose a threat to the quality of water supplies. Shortage of good quality and readily treatable resources is increasing due to global warming, urbanisation and pollution from agriculture and industry. Regulators and consumers are becoming more demanding. Techneau - the largest European project on drinking water - addresses these challenges by developing adaptive supply system options and new and improved treatment and monitoring technologies. Future system options to be studied are flexible, small scale and multi-source supplies, utilising non conventional resources like brackish ground water, treated wastewater and urban groundwater.

After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years demanding action from their city and state officials. Complaints from the city's predominantly African American residents were ignored until independent researchers confirmed dangerously elevated blood lead levels among Flint children and in the city's tap water. Despite a 2017 federal court ruling in favor of Flint residents who had demanded mitigation, those efforts have been incomplete at best. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts to advocate for improved living conditions, Tainted Tap offers a rich analysis of conditions and constraints that created the Flint water crisis. Katrinell Davis contextualizes the crisis in Flint's long and troubled history of delivering essential services, the consequences of regional water-management politics, and other forms of systemic neglect that impacted the working-class community's health and well-being. Using ethnographic and empirical evidence from a range of sources, Davis also sheds light on the forms of community action that have brought needed changes to this underserved community.

A child washing the dishes wonders where the water goes, and the story follows water drops as they travel to through the city sewer system, treatment plant, and back again. Includes Recycle it Yourself activity and further resources.

The most valuable and illuminating account yet of the Flint water crisis. It took more than a year for the truth to finally, painfully emerge - that Flint, Mich., residents had been drinking lead-poisoned water despite months of complaints about foul smells, discoloration and, worse, ill children. Based on the award-winning journalism of Bridge Magazine, "Poison on Tap" provides a riveting, authoritative, in-depth account of the government blunders, mendacity and arrogance that produced the water crisis in Flint: How state-appointed emergency managers put cost-cutting ahead of public safety. How state experts misinterpreted basic safeguards, while federal regulators dithered for months about warning the public. How a governor missed the many red flags. And how a series of heroes refused to accept the pat dismissals of government agencies, needling and fighting until their voices were heard. "Poison on Tap" is a compelling case study in how government at all levels can go very wrong - and yet shows the power of the human spirit to overcome. "Sometimes truth is stranger and scarier than fiction-such is the case with the Flint Water Crisis. Bridge Magazine staff painstakingly document one of the most significant cases of environmental injustice in U.S. history." -Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech professor whose work helped prove that the regulators were wrong"

"Illuminating." --New York Times WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016 When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. Yet despite decades of headlines warning of mega-droughts, the death of agriculture, and the collapse of cities, the Colorado River basin has thrived in the face of water scarcity. John Fleck shows how western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or U.S. environmentalists and Mexican water managers, actually have a promising record of conservation and cooperation. Rather than perpetuate the myth "Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative--a future where the Colorado continues to flow.