Gas Drilling Vs. Drinking Water: New York City Consultant’s Report Sets Stage for Fight With Albany

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

A preliminary report from a consultant hired by New York City warns that "nearly every activity" associated with natural gas drilling could potentially harm the city’s drinking water supply and that while the risk can be reduced with strict regulations, "the likelihood of water quality impairment … cannot be eliminated."

That assessment contrasts sharply with the picture presented by an environmental review released by state officials last week. Aside from clauses that ban some waste pits and promise additional consideration for drilling within 1,000 feet of the city’s reservoirs and water infrastructure in upstate New York, the environmental review does little to respond to New York City’s long-standing concerns that the watershed deserves special environmental consideration and instead paves the way for drilling to proceed throughout the watershed.

The issue appears to be emerging as a point of controversy in New York City’s mayoral election.
City comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson criticized the state’s environmental review in a news release and said Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be more outspoken. "I am also concerned that the City and the Water Board have been extremely lax in responding to this threat," he said.

Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Bloomberg’s office, said the mayor will withhold judgment until he sees the final version of the report the city commissioned from Hazen and Sawyer, a New York City-based environmental engineering firm. The full report isn’t expected to be delivered until December, after the public comment period for the state environmental review has ended.

LaVorgna emphasized that the Bloomberg administration has invested heavily in the city’s water system and would not rule out a protracted fight to protect it.

"This is not a fringe issue for this administration," LaVorgna said. "This is a mayor that adamantly orders tap water every night he dines out."

In one of his few statements on the subject, Bloomberg, who has generally supported the idea of energy development, told WNYC radio Thursday that "if this has the danger of polluting, we will fight it."

The clashing reports seem poised to reignite long-standing tensions between upstate New York and New York City, which depends almost entirely on water delivered from rural, upstate areas.

"The stakes are very high based on the conclusions of this report," Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in an interview with ProPublica. The report, he said, "suggests that city elected officials have a role to play here and a responsibility to step up and say, ‘What does frack drilling mean to New York City residents?’"

Last week Stringer announced he was launching a Kill the Drill campaign.

New York is one of four major cities in the United States with a special permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered. That pristine water comes from a network of upstate reservoirs and rivers spread across 1,600 square miles in five upstate counties. Those reservoirs – which all lie west of the Hudson River – supply 90 percent of the drinking water for 9 million downstate residents, nearly half the state’s population. If the EPA were to rescind the city’s special permit, New York City would have to build a treatment facility that could cost between $10 billion and $30 billion, according to various estimates.

Hazen and Sawyer’s early findings were summarized at a city meeting last week and posted on the city Department of Environmental Protection’s Web site Tuesday evening, after repeated requests for the document by ProPublica over the past several days.

The report, and an accompanying summary PowerPoint presentation, lay out several areas of concern. The consultants found that drilling "introduces hazardous chemicals into the watershed" and that "the well bore, which acts as a conduit between geologic formations, can allow previously isolated contaminants to flow into shallow groundwater or surface water."

The research also warned of "enormous volumes" of wastewater and said there are no treatment plants in the region designed to treat these wastes. It said the disturbance from hydraulic fracturing could cause seismic shifts or otherwise damage the tunnels or aqueducts that bring the water to the city. Hydraulic fracturing shoots millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that it breaks rock and releases pockets of gas.

So far, New York City’s top officials have preferred a behind-the-scenes approach as the public debate over the state’s natural gas drilling policy unfurls in Albany. City DEP officials have protested to the state Department of Environmental Conservation in private letters, but have said little publicly.

In a letter obtained by ProPublica in July 2008, then New York City DEP commissioner Emily Lloyd asked the DEC commissioner to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and to consider a partial ban on drilling near the reservoirs that supply New York City’s water.

Shortly afterward, and following an investigation by ProPublica, Gov. David Paterson ordered the environmental review that was released Sept. 30. Called the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, it supplements gas and oil drilling rules established in 1992.

New York City officials have since sent several additional letters to the state DEC voicing their ongoing concerns.

A spokesman for the state DEC did not return repeated calls for comment.

The state supplemental draft report discloses many of the drilling chemicals, as Lloyd had requested, and it also strengthens several other environmental protections. But it did not recommend a full or partial ban on drilling in the watershed.

The supplementary impact statement is now subject to a 60-day public comment period, after which final guidelines will be issued. But Stringer and others are pressing the state for a 30-day extension, which would allow the findings from the Hazen and Sawyer report to be included.

Read the "Rapid Impact Assessment Report" by consulting firm Hazen and Sawyer.

Read our full coverage of natural gas drilling.

ProPublica reporters Joaquin Sapien and Saprina Shankman contributed to this story.

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Raw Video: First 'Recycled' Water On ISS

Crew members aboard the International Space Station drank "recycled" water for the first time. A newly-inaugurated system captures water from the air and from urine.

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Video: Aussies Work To Save Dying Wetlands

Water is scarce in Australia and there are concerns about the impact of the drought.So conservationists have begun assessing 600 wetlands in parts of New South Wales to decide which are most deserving of water.

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New Water Reclamation System Headed for Duty on Space Station

International Space Station crews soon will have a new water reclamation system that will recycle wastewater, allowing up to six crew members to live aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The latest addition to the station's life support system departs today from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., for final flight preparations, NASA says.

The new Water Recovery System, or WRS, is the second part of a comprehensive life support system for the station. It is scheduled to fly aboard space shuttle Endeavour on STS-126 targeted for later this year. The first part of the system, the Oxygen Generation System, was launched on shuttle Discovery in July 2006. The two systems are part of NASA's Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support System, or ECLSS, for the station.

"Recycling will be an essential part of daily life for future astronauts, whether on board the space station or living on the moon," says Mike Suffredini, the station program manager. "Delivering this hardware is an important step in achieving the station's full potential, allowing for additional crew members and more scientific research."

By recycling, the system reduces the dependence on Earth resupply by cutting the amount of water and consumables needed to be launched by about 15,000 pounds, or 6,800 kilograms, a year.

"As early as the late 1960's we knew sustaining life in space would require recycling water and oxygen," says Bob Bagdigian, ECLSS project manager. "A number of us have experienced the entire lifecycle of this technology, all the way from early ideas to implementation. Knowing that we will soon see this system completed, gives us great pride."

Through a series of chemical treatment processes and filters, the Water Recovery System creates water clean enough to drink. In fact, part of the same process has been used in Third World countries to produce drinkable water.

A distillation process is used to recover water from urine. The process occurs within a rotating distillation assembly that compensates for the absence of gravity, aiding in the separation of liquids and gases in space. Once distilled, the water from the urine processor is combined with other wastewaters and delivered to the water processor for treatment.

The water processor removes free gas and solid materials such as hair and lint, before the water goes through a series of filtration beds for further purification. Any remaining organic contaminants and microorganisms are removed by a high-temperature catalytic reaction. These rigorous treatment processes create water that meets stringent purity standards for
human consumption.

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Liquid Water Found Flowing on Mars? Not Yet

Liquid water has not been found on the Martian surface within the last decade after all, according to new research.

The finding casts doubt on the 2006 report that the bright spots in some Martian gullies indicate that liquid water flowed down those gullies sometime since 1999.

"It rules out pure liquid water," says lead author Jon Pelletier of The University of Arizona in Tucson.

Pelletier and his colleagues used topographic data derived from images of Mars from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Since 2006, HiRISE has been providing the most detailed images of Mars ever taken from orbit.

The researchers applied the basic physics of how fluid flows under Martian conditions to determine how a flow of pure liquid water would look on the HiRISE images versus how an avalanche of dry granular debris such as sand and gravel would look.

"The dry granular case was the winner," says Pelletier, a UA associate professor of geosciences. "I was surprised. I started off thinking we were going to prove it's liquid water."

Finding liquid water on the surface of Mars would indicate the best places to look for current life on Mars, says co-author Alfred McEwen, a UA professor of planetary sciences.

"What we'd hoped to do was rule out the dry flow model -- but that didn't happen," says McEwen, the HiRISE principal investigator and director of UA's Planetary Image Research Laboratory.

An avalanche of dry debris is a much better match for their calculations and also what their computer model predicts, said Pelletier and McEwen.

Pelletier says, "Right now the balance of evidence suggests that the dry granular case is the most probable."

They added that their research does not rule out the possibility that the images show flows of very thick mud containing about 50 percent to 60 percent sediment. Such mud would have a consistency similar to molasses or hot lava. From orbit, the resulting deposit would look similar to that from a dry avalanche.

The team's research article, "Recent bright gully deposits on Mars: wet or dry flow?" is being published in the March issue of Geology.

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Alternative Farming Cleans up Water

Although the addition of nutrients to soil helps to maximize crop production, fertilizer can leach nutrients, polluting the water supply. A recent study by researchers at the University of Minnesota shows alternative cropping practices may help to protect the environment by reducing high nitrate levels in surface and ground water caused by conventional fertilizer use.
The team of scientists reports their findings in the July-August 2007 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality.

Nitrogen is one of the most important elements required in agricultural systems for plant and animal production. While treatment with the correct amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer optimizes crop yield and minimizes environmental damage, too much nitrogen can lead to nitrate loss.

Nitrate, a mobile form of nitrogen, escapes via water that percolates through soils. In regions where subsurface drainage is used to promote crop growth, high levels of nitrates are transported to downstream waters. Nitrate contamination of water can contribute to waters becoming hypoxic and stress aquatic life living downstream.

“The challenge facing industry, farmers, agricultural advisors, and others concerned about the environment is to develop efficient cropping systems that maintain economical production levels while minimizing surface and ground water degradation,” says Jeff Strock, lead author of the study.

In search of ways to reduce agricultural pollution, Strock and others measured tile drainage and nitrate losses under conventional and alternative cropping systems over a three-year period in southwest Minnesota. This study was funded by the USDA-CSREES-National Integrated Water Quality Program.

Researchers categorized conventional farming practices as corn-soybean rotations with inorganic fertilizer application and pesticide usage. Alternative farming practices included organic management practices that incorporated rotation of a variety of crops including corn, soybean, oat, alfalfa, buckwheat, and rye with nutrients supplied from legumes and either fresh or composted manure sources. The study found that alternative cropping systems reduced the amount of water lost in tile drainage by 41 percent compared to a conventional corn-soybean rotation. Alternative farming practices also reduced nitrate-nitrogen losses by between 59 and 62 percent in two out of three years.

“Our data suggests that water quantity and quality could be improved by increasing cropping system biodiversity,” says Strock.

Whether in conventional or organic cropping systems, Strock suggests cropping system biodiversity may be adopted as one of several practices to build a sustainable farm management system that is productive, profitable, and environmentally acceptable.

“There are no silver bullets for solving our water quality problems,” says Strock. “Instead, implementing practices such as cropping system biodiversity, along with refined nitrogen management practices, growing perennial crops in a rotation, cover cropping, and other management practices will help prevent nitrate contamination of our lakes and rivers.”

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Greater Hospital Vigilance Urged Over Water Systems in Summer

Patients who are vulnerable to infection run a greater risk of contracting Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia, during warm, humid weather, according to a study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The infection is caused by Legionella bacteria that can live in hospital water systems and throughout the environment.

Legionella bacteria, while usually not a problem for healthy adults, can be most serious and even fatal for patients who are immune compromised, including those in Intensive Care Units, the very young and the very old, the chronically ill, and post-surgical, cancer and transplant patients. These patients risk becoming infected through a buildup of microbes that can inhabit a hospital’s water system, where they have oftentimes become resistant to traditional methods of cleaning and disinfection.

At-risk patients can become ill through any exposure to hospital water, whether through ingestion, comforting mouth sores with ice cubes, bathing, inhalation of shower mist or being treated with equipment washed in hospital water.

“Many healthcare professionals aren’t aware of what’s lurking in their water in the summer or any season, especially the water used with critically ill and at-risk patients. As a result, countless Legionella and other harmful microorganisms that can cause serious infections go undetected,” says Janet Stout, an international expert on Legionella and other microbes in hospital water.

Stout, director of the Special Pathogens Laboratory and a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, is a strong advocate for reducing the risk of waterborne infection in hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. She is on a mission to get these institutions to test their water and then do something about it.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) in San Jose, California, Stout shared stories that vividly illustrated the problem:

• A hospital’s Burn Unit treated its badly burned patients with a cooling water spray to ease their pain…until it was discovered that the water was loaded with dangerous, infection-causing microbes.
• Another hospital, attempting to prevent the spread of infection, installed non-touch faucets. But a study found that every faucet tested positive for Legionella bacteria, and that 74 percent were also contaminated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, another bacterium associated with serious, often fatal, pneumonia.

Patients, their families and caregivers need to be aware of the potential for waterborne infection any time they are hospitalized, particularly if they are seriously ill or undergoing treatment that affects their immune systems, according to Stout.

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Research May Allow Thirsty Crops to Signal Farmers

Corn and potato crops may soon provide information to farmers about when they need water and how much should be delivered, thanks to a University of Colorado at Boulder invention optioned to AgriHouse Inc., a Berthoud, Colo., high-tech company.

The technology includes a tiny sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves charting their thickness, a key measure of water deficiency and accompanying stress, said Research Associate Hans-Dieter Seelig of CU-Boulder's BioServe Space Technology Center. Data from the leaves could be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment, ensuring timely watering, cutting down on excessive water and energy use and potentially saving farmers in Colorado millions of dollars per year, he said.

"We think this is an exciting technology, and the implications for the agriculture industry are enormous," says Seelig. Based in large part on Seelig's 2005 CU-Boulder doctoral thesis in aerospace engineering sciences, the technology was optioned to AgriHouse in March by the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office, giving AgriHouse the exclusive right to negotiate a license with CU within 12 months.

Richard Stoner, AgriHouse founder and president, said existing technology like soil moisture sensors used to assess a crop's water needs do not always provide an accurate picture of existing plant and field conditions. "What we are developing is a non-intrusive device that gently rests on the plants and lets them interface with the digital world," he says. "Basically, this is a device that will allow plants to talk to humans and communicate their needs, like when to water and apply fertilizer."

Stoner is the principal investigator on a $150,000 Small Business Technology Transfer research grant awarded in May by the National Science Foundation to AgriHouse to develop the new technology. Seelig is an institutional investigator on the effort. In 2006, Seelig was awarded a $10,000 proof-of-concept grant for his research from CU's Technology Transfer Office.

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New Method Predicts High LA Fire Danger Starting July 13

Researchers at the University of Utah and elsewhere have developed a new way to predict when vegetation dries to the point it is most vulnerable to large-scale fires in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles. And this year’s forecast says the highest-risk fire period will begin July 13 – weeks earlier than usual.

Despite that, the new study also shows that unlike other areas of the western United States, global warming has not caused any apparent long-term trend toward early fire seasons in the Santa Monicas.

The scientists eventually hope to expand their unique fire-risk forecasting method to all of Southern California and beyond.

“We developed a way to predict when the time of highest fire danger begins in the Santa Monica Mountains, based on the amount of spring precipitation,” says the study’s principal author, Philip Dennison, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Utah. “We estimate that this year, the highest fire danger will begin July 13.”

The study found the amount of March-April-May precipitation can be used to predict the date at which high fire-risk thresholds are reached.

Dennison says he hopes that “in future years this method can be used to better plan for the start of high fire danger. Fire agencies could use this to help them plan where and when to put their people and equipment. Homeowners may find this useful for knowing when fire danger will be high so they can be better prepared to evacuate, clear brush from around their homes and watch for arsonists.”

Study co-author Max Moritz, a wildland fire specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, adds: “Although large fires still may be associated with autumn Santa Ana winds in Southern California, it appears the stage for these events is set much earlier than usual this year. Being prepared early is thus even more important than usual.”

The study will be published later this year in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. Dennison and Moritz conducted it with Robert Taylor, a fire specialist at the National Park Service’s Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.


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Observatories to Examine Arctic Changes from Under the Ice

Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are venturing this month to the North Pole to deploy instruments that will make year-round observations of the water beneath the Arctic ice cap. Scientists will investigate how the waters in the upper layers of the Arctic Ocean—which insulate surface ice from warmer, deeper waters—are changing from season to season and year to year as global climate fluctuates.

The Arctic expedition is part of a multi-year, multi-institutional program to establish a real-time, autonomous Arctic Observing Network. The WHOI researchers will work out of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, a yearly research camp on the ice that is organized and led by the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center.

Arctic research specialist Rick Krishfield and engineering assistant Kris Newhall will lead the WHOI expedition this spring, deploying two autonomous ice-based observatories between 88° and 90° North. The observatories are similar in design to moored, open-ocean buoys, though they will be anchored to the ice instead of the seafloor.

The instruments will slowly drift with the natural movement of the ice while observing water properties in the top 800 meters of the Arctic Ocean. The buoys are designed to last three years, about the same lifespan as the ice floes that support them.

“The goal of the WHOI observing system is to document and understand annual change through sustained observations of the polar ice pack, the overlying atmosphere, and upper ocean water properties,” says John Toole, principal investigator for the project and a senior scientist in the WHOI Physical Oceanography Department. “Many climate models suggest the Arctic ice cover will melt within 50 years. We want to measure the changes in the water—particularly the layered structure of the ocean—in order to understand what mechanisms might lead the ice cap to melt from below. The impacts for the ecosystem, the regional and global climate, and for commerce would be enormous.”

A key element of WHOI’s contribution to the observing system is the ice-tethered profiler (ITP). Invented by Toole, Krishfield, and colleagues, the ITP climbs up and down a mooring string each day, detecting the temperature, salinity, and oxygen content at various points in the water column. The instrument sends data through the mooring wire to the surface buoy on the ice, which relays the data by satellite phone back to researchers in Woods Hole.

That data is made available to the science community and public within hours via the Internet. In the past, scientists have studied Arctic waters through expeditions on icebreakers and ice-locked ships, or by setting traditional moorings that had to be recovered after months or years of data collection. But few have tried to send Arctic Ocean data back in real time, year-round, for multiple years.

Six WHOI ice-based observatories have been tested in the waters north of Alaska over the past three years, and researchers are confident that they can take the ice-tethered profiler system all the way to the top of the world.

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Bottled Water Industry Sees Growth in 2006

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), in conjunction with Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC), today released bottled water statistics for the year 2006, compiled by BMC. These numbers show that U.S. bottled water sales and consumption continue to rise, with the latest upward trend reflected in 2006 when total bottled water volume exceeded 8.25 billion gallons, a 9.5 percent increase over 2005, and the 2006 bottled water per capita consumption level of 27.6 gallons increased by over two gallons, from 25.4 gallons per capita the previous year.

Additionally, the wholesale dollar sales for bottled water exceeded$10.8 billion in 2006, an 8.5 percent increase over the $10 billion in2005. These statistics demonstrate continued consumer demand and appreciation for the convenience and good taste of bottled water brands consumed on-the-go, during exercise, at restaurants or meetings, and at home or the office, according to the association. However, consumers should also know that bottled watersafety and quality result from multiple layers of regulation and standards at the federal, state and industry levels, the association says.

Bottled water is regulated by the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration (FDA) as a packaged food product, and has issued standards for safety, quality, production, labeling, and identity. Along with the FDA's Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), which are required of all foods, bottled water must comply with several other applicable regulations, including Standards of Identity, Standards of Quality and additional, specific bottled water GMPs. Being a packaged food product,bottled water is also bound by the Nutrition Labeling Education Act (NLEA) and the full range of FDA protective measures designed to enforce productsafety and protect consumers, the water association says. States also regulate bottled waterinspections, sampling, analyzing and approving bottled water sources, it adds.

"While all beverages have their role in a marketplace with an abundance of drink choices," says Stephen Kay, IBWA vice president of communications, "consumers are choosing bottled water as a refreshing, hydrating beverage and as an alternative to others that may contain calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial colors, alcohol or other ingredients,which they wish to moderate or avoid. For instance, during 2006, individual servings of bottled water in sizes of 1.5 liters and smaller accounted for 57.1% of the volume of bottled water sold, indicating that consumers are choosing bottled water in lieu of other bottled drinks."

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USAID, Procter & Gamble Highlight Partnership for Safe Drinking Water in Africa

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and consumer products conglomerate Procter and Gamble are highlighting their partnership to provide safe drinking water at the household level to millions of children in Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda.

"This partnership is a significant step to provide safe drinking water in Africa and elsewhere for millions of people," says Kent Hill, assistant administrator of USAID for global health. "This unique effort demonstrates the power ofpartnership by leveraging the skills and resources of Procter & Gamble and the U.S. government to reduce diarrheal disease, responsible for the deaths of an estimated 4,000 children per day around the globe."

This partnership focuses on provision of two proven, cost-effective, household-level technologies to disinfect drinking water. WaterGuard is a dilute bleach product developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), andPUR Purifier of Water is a powdered water treatment product developed by Procter & Gamble and CDC. These disinfection technologies have been shown to reduce disease and death in numerous health intervention trials.The technologies are now in the process of being promoted using social marketing and other approaches to raise awareness and change behavior in many African countries, the partner organizations say. They are also being used to provide safe drinkingwater for emergency relief, including the recent floods in Kenya and Ethiopia, and to help address cholera outbreaks in the Congo and Malawi.

"We have provided more than 600 million liters of safe drinking water over the last three years," says Charlotte Otto, global external relations officer at P&G. "Our efforts to date have been a drop in the ocean compared to the vast need, and this partnership enables us to scale-up our efforts in order to make a much larger health impact."

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You Still Can't Drink the Water, But Now You Can Touch It

Engineers have developed a system that uses a simple water purification technique that can eliminate 100 percent of the microbes in New Orleans water samples left from Hurricane Katrina. The technique makes use of specialized resins, copper and hydrogen peroxide to purify tainted water.

The system--safer, cheaper and simpler to use than many other methods--breaks down a range of toxic chemicals. While the method cleans the water, it doesn't yet make the water drinkable. However, the method may eventually prove critical for limiting the spread of disease at disaster sites around the world.

National Science Foundation-funded researchers Vishal Shah and Shreya Shah of Dowling College in Long Island, New York, collaborated with Boris Dzikovski of Cornell University and Jose Pinto of New York's Polytechnic University in Brooklyn to develop the technique. They will publish their findings in Environmental Pollution.

"After the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, scientists have had their backs against the wall trying to develop safeguards," says Shah. "No one knows when a similar situation may arise. We need to develop a treatment for decontaminating flood water before it either comes in contact with humans or is pumped into natural reservoirs."

The treatment system that the researchers are developing is simple: a polymer sheet of resins containing copper is immersed in the contaminated flood water. The addition of hydrogen peroxide generates free radicals on the polymer. The free radicals remain bound to the sheet, where they come in contact with bacteria and kill them.

The researchers are working to lower the amount of copper in the treated water end product and improving the system's impact on chemical toxins. Shah believes it could be ready for emergency use within five to seven years.

To develop their process, the researchers built upon a century-old chemical mechanism called the Fenton reaction - a process wherein metal catalysts cause hydrogen peroxide to produce large numbers of free radicals.

Free radicals are atoms or molecules that have an extra electron in dire need of a partner (they obtain the partner by stripping it from a nearby atom, damaging the "victim" in the process). In large quantities, the radicals can destroy toxic chemicals and even bombard bacteria to death or irreparably damage a microorganism's cell membrane.

Applying their technique to water from the Industrial and 17th Street canals in New Orleans, the researchers were able to destroy all of the bacteria within 15 minutes. In tests with laboratory water samples containing even higher bacterial concentrations, the exact same process killed at least 99 percent of the bacteria in 90 minutes.


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