Posts Tagged ‘EPA’
HARRISBURG, Pa. – A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor.
With fortunes, water quality and cheap energy hanging in the balance, exploration companies, scientists and entrepreneurs are scrambling for an economical way to recycle the wastewater.
“Everybody and his brother is trying to come up with the 11 herbs and spices,” said Nicholas DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.
Vampires and mummies, witches and wolf men. You know what else is scary: when a 10,000-gallon rainwater system starts emitting an odor so foul it’s enough to raise the dead. Reflecting on such thoughts this fine Halloween morning, I was curious, what are the EPA’s regulations on rainwater systems?
It turns out that the EPA has no single stance on rainwater harvesting. Instead, the EPA encourages municipalities to establish their own system of codes and regulations. The result is that rainwater harvesting guidelines vary from county to county and city to city.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its first WaterSense specification for a commercial building product. WaterSense labeled flushing urinals will use 50 percent less water than standard urinals, saving businesses 4,000 gallons of water per year for every model installed.
While current federal standards set the maximum allowable flush volume at one gallon per flush, an estimated 7.8 million urinals in use today are older inefficient models. In addition to using no more than a half gallon per flush, urinals bearing the WaterSense label must meet EPA’s performance requirements, ensuring they work as well or better than standard models.
