The Stream, August 23: First Chromium Water Standard in U.S.

“Five hundred times higher than safe levels is not protective of public health,” said Avinash Kar, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, in review of a proposal for a drinking water standard in California, Los Angeles Times reported. The carcinogen hexavalent chromium standard, which will be the first of its kind in the nation, still sits around 500 times greater than non-enforced public health goals from two years ago largely due to economic limitations.

Energy
Shell’s Nigeria unit has begun containing an oil spill in the Nigerian Delta after a leak was discovered by a military joint task force operating there, Reuters reported. Multiple spills each year have cut into the finances of both oil majors and the national industry, in addition to destroying fishing communities and poisoning potable water sources.

Deterred by the ongoing water crisis in India’s coal industry, Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (LT), the country’s largest engineering company, is becoming more selective in lending to coal power projects for fear of water shortage shutdowns, Bloomberg News reported. With industrial demand for water predicted to surge by 57 percent by 2025 and nearly $US 80 billion in investments stalled by disputes with farmers over irrigation rights, the company is “quite happy to look at any projects in [clean-energy],” according to Suneet K. Maheshwari, chief executive officer of the LT financial unit.

Water Management
By 2030, capital expenditures of more than $US 300 billion will be needed to safeguard drinking water in the United States, a new analysis by Ceres reported. In a time when American water use habits are changing, there is no cure-all for the right water pricing by utilities, and the report recommends companies to adopt flexibility in designing pricing structures.