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Enviro Infra Engineers, which is involved in the development of turnkey projects of <keyword id="19979438" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sewage-treatment-plants" source="keywords">sewage treatment plants</keyword> and sewerage systems, on Monday fixed a price band of ₹140-148 per share for its ₹650 crore <keyword id="19913114" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Initial-Public-Offering" source="keywords">Initial Public Offering</keyword> (IPO). The initial share sale will open for public subscription on November 22 and conclude on November 26. The bidding for anchor investors will open for a day on November 21, the company announced. The city-based company's proposed IPO is a combination of a fresh issue of 3.87 crore equity shares and an Offer For Sale (OFS) component of 52.68 lakh shares by promoters. Currently, promoters hold over 93 per cent stake in Enviro Infra Engineers. At the higher end of the price band, the IPO is valued at ₹650 crore, placing the company's market capitalization at approximately ₹2,600 crore. Proceeds from the fresh issue to the tune of ₹181 crore will be used to meet the working capital requirements, ₹100 crore will be used for payment of debt, ₹30 crore will be infused into the company's subsidiary, EIEL Mathura Infra Engineers, to build 60 million litres per day Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) at Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. Besides, a portion will be used for general corporate purposes. Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 35 per cent for retail investors and the remaining 15 per cent for non-institutional investors. Enviro Infra Engineers is engaged in designing, construction, operation and maintenance of water and wastewater treatment plants and water supply scheme projects for government authorities/bodies. The treatment process installed by the company at most of the STPs is zero liquid discharge-compliant and the treated water can be used for horticulture, washing, refrigeration, and other process industries. Hem Securities is the sole book-running lead manager of the public issue. The equity shares of the company are expected to be listed on the BSE and NSE on November 29. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/webstories/ntpc-green-energy-ipo-gmp-risk-factors-and-all-you-need-to-know/slidelist/115403791.cms">NTPC Green Energy IPO – GMP, risk factors and all you need to know</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/webstories/kawasaki-ninja-zx-4rr-launched-in-india-priced-at-9-42-lakh/slidelist/115332842.cms" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/webstories/kawasaki-ninja-zx-4rr-launched-in-india-priced-at-9-42-lakh/slidelist/115332842.cms" target="_blank">Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4RR launched in India priced at ₹9.42 lakh</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/indian-smartphone-shipments-grow-5-6-in-q3-2024-vivo-leads-the-market/articleshow/115329847.cms" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/indian-smartphone-shipments-grow-5-6-in-q3-2024-vivo-leads-the-market/articleshow/115329847.cms" target="_blank">Indian smartphone shipments grow 5.6% in Q3 2024, Vivo leads the market</a>

Enviro Infra Engineers IPO to open on Nov 22; eyes ₹650 crore

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Suffolk County, Long Island's heavy reliance on septic tanks is contaminating its groundwater.</li><li>It's also restricting the construction of dense housing as home prices and rents soar.</li></ul>When you flush the toilet, you probably don't consider where its contents go. The people of Suffolk County, Long Island, need to start considering it. That’s because the county — which encompasses the eastern portion of the island, including the Hamptons — relies overwhelmingly on septic tanks and cesspools, rather than a public sewer system, and those outdated systems are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.savethesound.org/2023/07/14/suffolk-county-faces-crossroads-moment-for-clean-water/#:~:text=In%20the%20first%20paragraph%20of,problem%3A%20%E2%80%9CNitrogen%2C%20which%20primarily">contaminating its groundwater aquifers</a>.And the sewer issue is also making another, much more politicized, problem worse: housing affordability.Like most of the suburbs surrounding New York City, Suffolk County is suffering from a major shortage of homes. The county makes it illegal to build anything but single-family homes in the vast majority of its residential neighborhoods, keeping supply low and prices inflated. Its inadequate sewer system makes it difficult or impossible to build denser housing in much the same way that its restrictive zoning laws do.Some housing advocates believe local officials are using the county's sewer issues as an excuse to prevent new and denser housing construction. Hunter Gross, president of a nonprofit pro-housing group in the town of Huntington on the county’s western edge, said local elected officials hide behind wastewater issues in order to dodge the housing debate.“They realize that if they do build the needed sewer system, then they would have to build the needed housing,” Gross said.<h2>No upzoning without sewers — and vice versa</h2>Long Island has public sewer lines, on-site sewage treatment plants, and individual septic tanks. But about 75% of Suffolk County properties rely on outdated septic systems that don’t remove nitrogen from the water, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/suffolk-sewer-tax-pqshdpq1">Newsday reported</a>. Excess nitrogen in the water supply — which also comes from fertilizer runoff — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/nitrogen-and-water#:~:text=Too%20much%20nitrogen%2C%20as%20nitrate,oxygen%20transport%20in%20the%20bloodstream.">can be dangerous to consume</a> and disrupts ecological systems, causing harmful phenomena like algae blooms that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/new-york/stories-in-new-york/long-island-water-quality/what-is-nitrogen-pollution-/">poison wildlife, plants, and people</a>.The county's traditional septic systems and cesspits are designed to allow treated sewage to safely seep into the ground soil, but when tanks aren't regularly emptied, the water table is high, or the system floods, untreated sewage pollutes nearby water.The most common reason local elected officials cite for not upgrading their wastewater management is cost. Even in a county where the median household income is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/suffolkcountynewyork/PST045223">almost $50,000 more</a> than the national average, policymakers say they simply can’t afford it. Last summer, the Republican members of the county’s legislature <a target="_blank" href="https://www.eastendbeacon.com/suffolk-legislature-doesnt-act-on-water-quality-referendum/">squashed an effort</a> to slightly increase the county’s sales tax to pay for sewer upgrades.But there's still hope for the effort. Earlier this month, Suffolk County’s recently elected executive, Ed Romaine, backed <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/suffolk-sewer-tax-crwu1gkt?utm_source=pocket_saves">a similar measure</a> raising the sales tax to fund the sewer system and individual septic tanks. In December, New York Governor Kathy Hochul <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/hochul-sewer-water-contamination-xj3qxmd3">announced</a> she'll send $59 million to Long Island to deal with water contamination and sewer upgrades.Romaine, a Republican, made housing affordability central to his agenda while campaigning and says he needs more state and federal funding to pay for the sewer and other infrastructure projects.“The governor has said she wants to see more housing on Long Island. Great, governor, you’ve got to give us money for sewage because the type of housing you want, we can't build,” he said, adding that he supported President Joe Biden’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-signs-infrastructure-law-social-spending-plan-struggles-2021-11">bipartisan infrastructure bill</a>. “How about some of that money? Why should Long Island get shortchanged?”Edmund Smyth, the town supervisor of Huntington, Suffolk County, said he’d like to see the federal government commit billions of dollars to expanding and upgrading sewer lines and treatment plants across the US to protect the water supply and boost development.“If the governor's plan requires the town to adopt certain housing policies, and that doesn't come with a very large infrastructure check along with it,” Smyth said, “there's nothing to talk about.”<h2>Long Islanders can't afford to live where they grew up</h2>Anti-development NIMBYism is rampant across Long Island, and its eastern half is no exception. Suffolk County has allowed <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-15/nassau-county-in-new-york-and-florida-show-importance-of-housing-costs?embedded-checkout=true">less new housing to be built</a> over the last 10 years than almost any other county in the US. It also has a higher proportion of single-family homes than nearly any other county — more than 80% of its homes are detached, single-family houses.Last year, Long Island public officials led the charge against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s effort to boost housing construction around transit hubs, end single-family zoning, and other measures to encourage development, particularly in the New York City suburbs. Last summer, opponents of allowing accessory dwelling units, like basement apartments, in Huntington <a target="_blank" href="https://nysfocus.com/2023/07/27/huntington-long-island-housing-new-york">warned against</a> “changing the complexion of this beautiful community” and bringing in “migrants, pedophiles, or criminals.”But many residents, including homeowners who’ve benefited from soaring home values, are feeling the pain of the housing affordability crisis and want change. Businesses are <a target="_blank" href="https://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2022/03/the-north-forks-affordable-housing-crisis-has-reached-new-extremes/">struggling to attract workers</a>, who can’t find decent housing. Baby boomers <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/long-island-housing.html">are concerned</a> their own children and grandchildren can’t afford to live in the communities they grew up in.“We're creating a lot of jobs here, but that's not going to continue if we don't have places to live for the people who have those jobs,” said Ian Wilder, executive director of the nonprofit group Long Island Housing Services. “The only thing we're creating is a market in illegal and, some of it, dangerous housing because people have no choice about where to live.”<h2>Sewers tie into a long history of exclusionary housing policy</h2>Like many similar suburban regions, Long Island has a long history of enforcing racial segregation through housing policies. Levittown, the famous master-planned 1950s suburb designed for WWII veterans, <a target="_blank" href="https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/levittown-demographics-real-estate/#:~:text=Levittown's%20restrictive%20racial%20covenant%20read,domestic%20servants%20shall%20be%20permitted.%E2%80%9D">excluded Black residents</a>. In 1988, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/08/nyregion/li-town-focus-of-housing-bias-ruling-reflects-many-in-the-new-york-region.html">Supreme Court found</a> in a landmark case that the town of Huntington perpetuated racial discrimination with zoning laws that prohibited multi-family housing construction in largely white neighborhoods. While civil rights laws have since changed, the county is still one of the most segregated in the US. In 2019, Newsday published <a target="_blank" href="https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-investigation/#open-paywall-message">a three-year investigation</a> finding that residential real estate brokers and agents regularly discriminated against Black, Hispanic, and Asian clients. Infrastructure is just as key to expanding the housing stock as land-use laws are. Sewers and zoning are “two sides of the same coin,” said Nathan Cummings, a law clerk who <a target="_blank" href="https://yalelawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/YLPR/4_cummings_pe_11.28.22.pdf">published a paper</a> in the Yale Law &amp; Policy Review in 2022 on wastewater treatment and urban development. You can’t change land-use laws to allow for more density when the sewer capacity isn’t there, and you can’t build out the sewer system when the land-use laws don’t allow for more density.“It's very easy for local policymakers to fall into a trap where they say we can't upzone because we don't have infrastructure and we can’t build infrastructure because our zoning doesn't permit anything above a certain level of development,” Cummings said. “If you want to build more densely, it's a two-step process where you do both and ultimately what it takes is the political will.”The connection between anti-sewer and anti-housing activism isn’t limited to Long Island. Similar communities, like Old Lyme, Connecticut, have been accused of <a target="_blank" href="https://insideinvestigator.org/everything-flows-downhill/">blocking wastewater projects</a> in order to stymie denser housing construction and prevent lower-income people or people of color from moving into a community.Alarm bells go off for Cummings in cases where a community’s water is being contaminated by waste and it refuses both to build out its sewer system or install an alternative wastewater treatment system. “If you don't want either of those things, even as your groundwater is getting polluted, and you're having to pay the upkeep cost for your septic system, it just starts to look a little bit less rational,” he said.<h2></h2>

A fight over sewage is preventing Long Island from solving its crippling housing crisis

Stockholm, May 5 (AP) A Swedish newspaper said Tuesday that a technology institute in Sweden has found large concentrations of the coronavirus in Stockholm's sewage system. The analysis by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology was made in the purification plant in Bromma, west of the capital. The institute told Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's largest newspapers, that the test that can predict a second virus wave. Since the beginning of April samples have been taken from two treatment plants in Stockholm with the purpose of monitoring how the amount of virus residues develop over time, the newspaper reported. Initial results showed the highest virus concentration at the Bromma waste water treatment plant, which handles wastewater from northern Stockholm suburbs. At another treatment plant, an increase in the content between the first and second samples was seen. The institute told Dagens Nyheter that the survey had quickly grown into an international research project involving six countries. No one at the institute was immediately available for comments. There are no known cases of infection spreading through wastewater or drinking water. (AP) INDIND

Large concentrations of coronavirus found in Stockholm's sewage system

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Researchers at the <keyword id="230278" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="University-of-Arizona">University of Arizona</keyword> say they may have prevented a <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> outbreak on campus by using wastewater analysis to track down students with COVID-19.</li><li>Wastewater-based <keyword id="172940" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Epidemiology">epidemiology</keyword> relies on measuring viral particles in <keyword id="6371879" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="sewage">sewage</keyword> to assess the <keyword id="6354750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="health">health</keyword> of a community. </li><li>The scientists hope other campuses and communities might be able to use the technique to contain outbreaks. </li></ul>Dr. Ian Pepper has spent years studying other people's <keyword id="6700510" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="poop">poop</keyword>. His lab, the University of Arizona's Water &amp; Energy Sustainable Technology Center, uses chemical tests to analyze pollutants, viruses, and other particles in sewage.Recently, Pepper and his colleagues have been trying to trace and prevent coronavirus outbreaks using this method of wastewater-based epidemiology. They've been tracking coronavirus particles in Arizonans' sewage since March.This week, their poop testing seems to have helped to contain a coronavirus outbreak in their own backyard: at the University of Arizona. The university began in-person classes on Monday. Before students arrived, Pepper and his team set up a system to test the wastewater coming from about 20 buildings on campus, including dorms.<div type="image" title="university of arizona college student moves in during pandemic" height="1430" width="2048" msid="77822142" hostid="261"></div>By Tuesday, Pepper's wastewater-testing system had delivered troubling <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">news</keyword>: It detected elevated levels of coronavirus in campus sewage, stemming from one dorm in particular.The following day, the team tested the 311 individuals living in that dorm. Two tested positive; both were asymptomatic. Those two students were quarantined, and now the campus is conducting <keyword id="7313056" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Contact-tracing">contact tracing</keyword> to find any additional cases. "With this early detection, we jumped on it right away, tested those youngsters, and got them the appropriate isolation where they needed to be," Richard Carmona, a director of the university's reentry task force and the former US Surgeon General, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id92jnAP6cw">said in a Thursday press conference.</a>Pepper said the sewage tests can detect elevated levels of coronavirus up to seven days before individuals start showing symptoms. Those are "precious days in which you can undergo intervention," he said in a follow-up press conference on Friday.Campus officials said that without the wastewater-testing system, the two asymptomatic students could easily have spread coronavirus through the university, infecting countless others. <div type="image" title="arizona_classroom" height="1365" width="2048" msid="77822151" hostid="261"></div><h2>A potential game-changer? </h2>Unlike other coronavirus tests, Pepper's poop-analysis system monitors COVID-19 across an entire region. Researchers (wearing gloves, of course) <a href="https://west.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/FACT%20SHEET%20-%20SEWAGE%20SURVEILLANCE%20FOR%20CORONAVIRUS_05-18-2020.pdf">collect samples</a> of wastewater from treatment plants around the area and send them to the Pepper's center for analysis. They then run a test developed by the CDC that detects the presence of coronavirus molecules, similar to the <a href="https://www.molecular.abbott/us/en/products/infectious-disease/RealTime-SARS-CoV-2-Assay">tests involving nasal swabs</a>.The test is relatively cheap and low-tech: The cost of all the reagents involved in running one test is about $150, Pepper said, though that doesn't count other costs, like labor and sample gathering. Researchers must also test sites multiple times to ensure results are reliable — for instance, they tested the University of Arizona dorm site five times.This type of mass testing can offer a way to identifying coronavirus outbreaks at the community level. But it's most promising for use among a large group of people living under a defined set of rules in one location, like a university.More challenges might arise in, say, a large city neighborhood, where it would be hard to track down and get in touch with every resident, and not all would agree to an individual diagnostic test.Still, Pepper said, he and his colleagues are "incredibly excited" about their results and believe other communities could adopt their approach effectively. "Poop doesn't lie. Poop is your friend, and poop can tell you the truth about yourself and about the community," Pepper explained to <a href="https://radio.azpm.org/p/radio-azscience/2020/8/14/178533-episode-245-how-investigating-wastewater-can-help-solve-the-covid-19-crisis/">Arizona Science</a>, a local radio show, earlier this month.

Researchers at the University of Arizona say they stopped a coronavirus outbreak before it spread by testing students' poop

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Carlos Barria/ReutersChinese authorities want to start sifting through sewage wastewater to catch illegal drug users. Stock photo used for illustrative purposes.</div></div></div><ul><li>China has been going hard in its war on drugs.</li><li>Its efforts are so intense that some cities have started analyzing sewage for traces of drugs to root out users and dealers.</li><li>That work has helped catch at least one drug manufacturer, and the country plans to expand the program in the future.</li><li>This raises the question: Does a person's sewage belong to them, or to the Chinese state?</li></ul> China is so desperate to crack down on illegal drug use that some of its cities are analyzing people's sewage in the hope of finding drug users by analyzing their waste.Officials have been chemically examining sewage for traces of drugs or metabolites - bodily substances created after the human body interacts with certain drugs - in people's urine, according to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05728-3">a report in Nature magazine</a>, which cites a Chinese environmental chemist involved in the efforts.It's not clear exactly how many cities have rolled out the operation, but it appears to be working already in the southern city of Zhongshan, where drug use is reportedly rife. The waste-analysis program has already helped police in the city track down and arrest a drug manufacturer, said Li Xiqing, the chemist involved in the efforts.The program appears to be seen as a success, and city authorities across China are now planning to use the data to set targets for police arrests of drug users next year, Nature reported.Local governments also plan to invest at least 10 million yuan ($1.5 million/£1.1 million) on the wastewater-monitoring program this year, Li said.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C04WN5ADZK3P&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1631&amp;RH=896#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C04WN5ADZK3P&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1631&amp;RH=896&amp;PN=1">Reuters</a>Xi Jinping has stepped up China's war on drugs.</div></div></div><h2>The <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> of finding drugs in your pee</h2>This method of rooting out specific substances in a large pool of matter is known as wastewater-based epidemiology, or WBE.Samples are typically collected at a wastewater treatment plant and analyzed for atypical excretions - in China's case, those formed by the body's reaction to drugs.But because these treatment plants typically service thousands to tens of millions of people, it's difficult to single out specific people, as China hopes to do in its search for drug dealers.Daniel Burgard, a chemistry professor at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, told Business Insider: "If the city is large, there is no way to single out a specific person by using a sample from a treatment plant. However, if the sampling occurs further up the sewer line from the treatment plant, neighborhoods can start to be compared to each other."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">VCG/GettyScientists may find it difficult to single out specific people from analyzing an entire municipal area's wastewater. Shanghai, China's largest city, is home to more than 24 million people.</div></div></div>Wastewater-based epidemiology is not a particularly new science. Scientists first analyzed wastewater in the 1990s to measure the impact of liquid household waste, <a href="http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/2757/POD_Wastewater%20analysis.pdf">according to the EU's drug monitoring agency</a>. That effort expanded to analyze human consumption of other substances, including drugs, alcohol, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135417304086">pesticide</a> in later years.But WBE has never found its way into real-life policy before. As Burgard told Nature, "the noteworthy part is that China seems to be actually acting on the technique."Zhang Lei, an environmental policy researcher in Beijing, told Nature that WBE is a more objective way of measuring whether the government's anti-drug policies are working in a particular area. In other words, testing human waste is a more efficient indicator of drug use than police arrests and seizures.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"> REUTERS/Enrique Castro-MendivilPolice officers carry seized cocaine in Lima, Peru, in 2014. A large amount of Peruvian cocaine flowed through China between 2011 and 2015.</div></div></div><h2>China's war on drugs</h2>China's growing investment in WBE-based drug monitoring demonstrates the country's commitment to its war on drugs.There were more than 2.5 million known drug addicts in China as of the end of 2017, more than half of whom were between 18 and 35, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world/china-watch/society/drug-abuse-in-china/">according to China Daily</a>. Police arrested 168,000 suspected drug users, seized 82.1 tons of drugs, and destroyed more than 400 labs in 2016, the paper added.China was a main recipient of Myanmar- and Laos-made heroin, and Central and Latin America-made cocaine between 2011 and 2015, <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/field/WDR17_Fact_sheet.pdf">the UN reported last year</a>. It was also cited as a country of origin, transit, or destination in the international flow of methamphetamine and ecstasy between 2012 and 2015.Drug control was a matter of national security, the "rise and fall of a the nation," state-run <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201806/25/WS5b30b762a3103349141dea6c.html">China Daily reported in June</a>, paraphrasing President Xi Jinping. Xi called on authorities to destroy drug-production gangs, trafficking networks, and dealer syndicates."Xi requires that the soil that breeds drug problems be eradicated," the newspaper added.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Feng Li / Getty ImagesChinese police are watching.</div></div></div><h2>Does a person's waste belong to them, or to the Chinese Communist Party?</h2>China's use of WBE will likely raise questions about privacy and human rights. It's not clear whether local authorities sought residents' permissions before analyzing their waste.Theoretically, if Chinese authorities want to further narrow their search for drug users and dealers, they could place samplers at points in sewage systems where waste leaves a home before entering the municipal sewer line, Burgard said."But sampling at this level would bring up some privacy/ethical questions and be expensive and not very efficient to measure a lot of homes that way," he said. "It does bring up an interesting question of when a person's waste is no longer their property."As Carsten Prasse, an environmental health researcher at Johns Hopkins University, told Nature: "In China, the general population is used to following the directions given by the government, and privacy related issues don't seem to be a major concern - the situation is totally different in the United States." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-west-point-united-states-military-academy-army-cadets-reception-day-2018-7">INSIDE WEST POINT: What it's really like for new Army cadets on their first day</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

China is so desperate to win its war on drugs, it's started analyzing people's sewage for contaminated pee

<div class="image-container display-table cite"><div><div class="image"><a>REUTERS/Mohammed SalemA Palestinian man holds a boy on a street flooded with sewage water from a sewage treatment facility in Gaza City November 14, 2013.</a></div></div></div><keyword id="39746" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gaza">GAZA</keyword> (Reuters) - Children waded through sewage submerging the streets of a central <a>Gaza</a> neighborhood on Thursday, a day after one of the blockaded Palestinian enclave's largest waste water treatment plants stopped for lack of fuel.
Fetid muck, which bubbles up from manholes and overflows from the idle plant when waste goes untreated, could soon spill into the homes of tens of thousands more residents in downtown <a class="cite">Gaza City</a>, officials and residents said.
<a class="cite">Egypt</a>'s months-long crackdown on cross-border smuggling tunnels that used to bring fuel in cheaply has already forced <a class="cite">Gaza</a>'s only power plant to stop, meaning two weeks of daily 12-hour blackouts for the territory's 1.8 million residents.
"This is the start of a catastrophe and unless the world listens to our cries, a real disaster may hit <a class="cite">Gaza</a> and its people," <a class="cite">Gaza</a> municipality's Sa'ad El-Deen Al-Tbash said.
"This is a humanitarian, not a political issue. <a class="cite">Gaza</a>'s children did nothing to deserve being stuck in sewage," he told Reuters.
<a class="cite">Gazan</a> municipality officials said the treatment plant served 120,000 residents. They warned that other waste water facilities may soon run out of petrol to fuel generators.
Along one street, passersby covered their noses, and some residents driving donkey carts helped those slogging through pools of waste.
<a class="cite">Egypt</a>'s closure of most of the estimated 1,200 tunnels run by the Islamist <a class="cite">Hamas</a> group has virtually stopped Egyptian fuel coming into <a class="cite">Gaza</a>, forcing Palestinians to buy Israeli imported petrol at double the price - 6.7 shekels ($1.9) a liter.
<a class="cite">Egypt's military</a> backed government fear the tunnels are used to take weapons into the Sinai Peninsula, and accuse <a class="cite">Hamas</a> of backing the <a class="cite">Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood</a>, which was ousted by the security forces in July.
<a class="cite">Israel</a> has imposed its own blockade on <a class="cite">Gaza</a>, allowing in fuel and a restricted list of imports since <a class="cite">Hamas</a> took control in 2007. <a class="cite">Hamas</a> has spurned Western calls to recognize <a class="cite">Israel</a> and renounce violence.
<h3>MIXING FUEL</h3>
Unable to buy the expensive Israeli petrol, some <a class="cite">Gaza</a> taxi drivers have looked for alternatives in their kitchens, using gas from domestic tanks or mixing cooking oil with diesel.
"I can't fill my car with Israeli petrol ... I couldn't make a living if I did," said a <a class="cite">Gaza</a> taxi driver who installed a bottle of cooking gas in his vehicle.
He asked not to give his name to avoid hefty police fines for using the fuels, which are deemed a health hazard.
Despite the risks, the practice is widespread.
"Passing through some <a class="cite">Gaza</a> streets, it smells like a big pot of french fries," quipped one <a class="cite">Gaza</a> Facebook user.
<a class="cite">Gaza</a> economist Maher Al-Tabbaa' said the shortages of fuel and power meant that many businesses could not afford to run a generator, which costs about 100 shekels ($28.5) an hour.
"The continuing stoppage of the <a class="cite">Gaza power plant</a> for 18 hours a day foreshadows a real catastrophe that might affect the basic food security of the people as well as the health and education sectors," Tabbaa' said.
The fuel shortage is affecting life at every level.
Residents have taken to planning their social lives around the power cuts. Many make sure not to leave homes in the evening without a torch.
"The first question someone asks when invited over by a friend is 'will there be electricity? I don't want to climb the stairs'," said Ali Mohammed, an electrician.
"I blame the whole world," he said.
(Editing by Noah Browining and Louise Ireland)

Sewage Is Spilling Into Gaza Streets As Egypt Tunnel Closures Cut Off Power

The <keyword id="146133" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="National-Green-Tribunal">National Green Tribunal</keyword> has issued notice to beverages major <keyword id="6369745" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Coca-Cola">Coca Cola</keyword> after finding "alarming facts" in an inspection report of apex <keyword id="13001" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="pollution">pollution</keyword> monitoring body. 
 
The green panel has directed Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd (HCCBPL) to submit a drainage map of its plant at Mussoorie Gulawati Road industrial area in Hapur district citing details of sewage and trade effluents generated from the factory. 
 "We have the reports of inspections conducted by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and <keyword id="52446" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Uttar-Pradesh-Pollution-Control-Board">Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board</keyword> (UPPCB) on October 19 and July 30, 2015 respectively. Alarming facts as regards the situation obtaining in the factory of Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd are disclosed in the report of CPCB. 
 
"Before we pass any direction against the company it will be just necessary to seek the response of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd to this report in context with the UPPCB's report," a bench headed by Justice UD Salvi said. 
 
It also directed CPCB to clarify as to whether the effluent discharged from Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) number 2 was flowing out of the factory or not and directed it to take note of the observations made in the report. 
 
The matter is listed for next hearing on January 14, 2016. 
 The Tribunal was hearing a plea by advocate Sanjay Kumar seeking restraint on the alleged illegal discharge of untreated <keyword id="6357188" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="waste-water">waste water</keyword> into the pond situated behind the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd's plant in Hapur district of Uttar Pradesh. 
 
In his plea, Kumar has also sought restoration of the environment damaged because of it.

NGT notice to Coca-Cola's
bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="21868010" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Victoria-Ou" source="keywords">Victoria Ou</keyword> and <keyword id="21868011" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Justin-Huang" source="keywords">Justin Huang</keyword>, both 17, won $50,000 for their <keyword id="21868009" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="microplastic-filtration-device" source="Orion">microplastic filtration device</keyword>.</li><li>They tested a new technique using <keyword id="21403320" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ultrasound" source="keywords">ultrasound</keyword> to filter <keyword id="19970180" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="microplastics" source="keywords">microplastics</keyword> from water.</li></ul>Two teenagers from Woodlands, Texas invented a device that could help address one of the most pervasive and challenging forms of pollution on Earth: microplastics. These microscopic plastic particles show up in the deepest parts of the ocean, at the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mount-everest-summit-microplastics-study-national-geographic-2020-11">top of Mount Everest</a>, and are in everything from the dust in your home to your food and water. By some estimates, we each inhale and ingest a credit card's worth of plastic per week. Thenit can end up in our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microplastics-found-in-living-human-lungs-for-the-first-time-2022-4">lungs</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microplastics-discovered-in-human-blood-for-the-first-time-2022-3">blood</a>, breastmilk, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microplastics-found-in-human-testicles-what-to-do-2024-5">testicles</a>. Victoria Ou and Justin Huang, both 17, hope to prevent that one day with their award-winning device that removes microplastics from water using ultrasonic — or high-frequency — sound waves. Ou and Huang presented their work at last week's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-wins-isef-science-fair-grand-prize-discovery-biomedical-devices-2024-5">Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair</a> (ISEF) in Los Angeles, where top competitors from science fairs worldwide congregated to share their projects and compete for $9 million in prizes. The Texas duo received first place in their Google-sponsored category, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and they also snagged the $50,000 prize from the Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations. <div type="image" title="Victoria Ou and Justin Huang stand with their arms raised wearing giant gold medals around their necks" height="839" width="1259" msid="110377857" hostid="261"></div>Though the ultrasonic technique is in its very early stages, the high schoolers hope that one day it could filter the plastic out of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nanoplastics-water-bottle-micro-plastics-bloodsteam-tiny-pieces-plastic-2024-1">your drinking water</a> and from the industrial and wastewater that humans dump into the environment. "This is the first year we've done this," Huang told Business Insider backstage after receiving their award. "If we could refine this — maybe use more professional equipment, maybe go to a lab instead of testing from our home — we could really improve our device and get it ready for large-scale manufacturing." While it's unclear how <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/you-are-consuming-microplastics-how-much-what-to-know-risks-2022-4">microplastics affect human health</a>, many common chemicals in plastic have been linked to increased risk of cancer, fertility and development issues, and hormone disruption. And we're still a long way from getting rid of microplastics. <h2>The challenge of filtering microplastics</h2> <div type="image" title="White microplastic beads inside a black container under a microscope" height="683" width="1024" msid="110377858" hostid="261"></div>Last fall, while <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/isef-science-fair-parents-mistake-pressure-2024-5">brainstorming ideas</a> for their ISEF project, Ou and Huang visited a water treatment plant. They wanted to find out whether this type of facility already had tools that could remove microplastics from wastewater. The answer, they discovered, was no. The EPA doesn't regulate microplastics, the employees told Huang and Ou, so they don't remove them from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microplastics-carry-stomach-viruses-in-fresh-water-for-days-study-2022-6">wastewater</a>. "We knew, from then, to focus on this issue," Huang told BI. Even if the EPA began regulating these pernicious plastic particles tomorrow, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microplastics-water-pollution-solution-from-google-2019-8">existing removal methods</a> have problems, Huang said. One solution is to use chemical coagulants, such as aluminum hydroxide, that — when added to water — clump microplastics together into larger, more easily filtered chunks. However, chemical coagulants can also pollute the environment and mess with the PH of purified water. Plus, they're expensive. There are also some physical filters available, but they clog easily. And biological solutions, like using enzymes to break down plastics, aren't efficient enough to tackle this problem at scale. "We wanted to find a solution to this because current solutions aren't really effective," Huang said. So, Ou and Huang — who have been friends since elementary school and connected over their shared interest in the environment — set out to invent their own environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and efficient solution. <h2>How it works</h2> <div type="image" title="Victoria Ou and Justin Huang stand in front of their science fair poster holding a small device in their hands that they invented" height="667" width="1000" msid="110377861" hostid="261"></div>Huang and Ou's device is remarkably small, about the size of a pen. It's essentially a long tube with two stations of electric transducers that use ultrasound to act as a two-step filter. As water flows through the device, the ultrasound waves generate pressure, which pushes microplastics back while allowing the water to continue flowing forward, Ou explained. What comes out the other end is clean, microplastic-free water. The two teens tested their device on three common types of microplastics: polyurethane, polystyrene, and polyethylene. In a single pass, their device can remove between 84% and 94% of <keyword id="7791833" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="microplastics-in-water" source="Orion">microplastics in water</keyword>, according to a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.societyforscience.org/press-release/high-schoolers-win-more-than-9-million-at-regeneron-isef-2024/">press release</a>. <h2>Future work</h2> <div type="image" title="Victoria Ou and Justin Huang stand back to back wearing a black and blue suit" height="1667" width="2500" msid="110377862" hostid="261"></div> Ou and Huang believe their technology could be used in wastewater treatment plants, industrial textile plants, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-chicago-cleans-billion-gallons-wastewater-every-day-2024-4" target="_blank">sewage treatment plants</a>, and rural water sources. On a smaller scale, it could filter microplastics in laundry machines and even fish tanks. But first, there's more work to be done. "To reach that stage, I think we need a lot more processing," Ou said. "This is a pretty new approach. We only found one study that was trying to use ultrasound to predict the flow of particles in water, but it didn't completely filter them out yet." The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S138358662200209X" target="_blank">study</a> that inspired the two teens was by New Mexico Tech researchers and published in the peer-reviewed journal Separation and Purification Technology in 2022. In another 2023 <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1383586623006056?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">study</a>, researchers at Shinshu University tested a similar ultrasound-filtering method to remove microplastics from water. But Ou and Huang say their device is simpler, more efficient, and the first to use ultrasound to block and filter microplastics directly. Their technique uses ultrasonic waves to create a pressure wall that blocks microplastics and allows water to flow through, whereas the Shinshu study focused the microplastics into a beam that must then be collected separately, which requires more steps, more infrastructure, and didn't filter as much water. "I hope we just are able to be able to scale this up, but first we have to refine it because this technology is still at its infancy," Huang said. Their $50,000 prize could help them get there. In the meantime, though, they're enjoying the moment. "We were just happy being able to go to ISEF. Originally, we weren't expecting too much, but getting first place and the top award is much more than we ever expected," Ou said. "This is something that I've been dreaming of my whole life, so I'm still pinching myself trying to figure out if this is real or not," Huang said. Correction — May 29, 2024: An earlier version of this story misstated the novelty of Ou and Huang's invention. Ou and Huang are not the first to successfully use ultrasound to separate microplastics from water. Previous studies have tested similar methods.

2 teens won $50,000 for inventing a device that can filter toxic microplastics from water

Prime Minister Shri <keyword id="6354477" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi" source="Orion">Narendra Modi</keyword> participated in the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of Shri Ramlalla in the newly-built Shri <keyword id="412432" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ram-Janmbhoomi" source="Orion">Ram Janmbhoomi</keyword> Mandir in <keyword id="6354931" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ayodhya" source="Orion">Ayodhya</keyword> on Monday. The Prime Minister reached Ayodhya earlier in the day to take part in the auspicious ceremony. "The divine moment of Pran Prathishta of Shri Ram Lala in Ayodhya Dham is an emotional moment for everyone. It is my good fortune to be part of this unique programme. Jai Siyaram," PM Modi said in a tweet. RSS Chief <keyword id="42702" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mohan-Bhagwat" source="Orion">Mohan Bhagwat</keyword>, Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel and state Chief Minister <keyword id="19898780" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="yogi-adityanath" source="keywords">Yogi Adityanath</keyword> are also attending the ceremony being held at the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. Over 8,000 guests have been invited for the ceremony at the grand temple. Representatives of all major spiritual and religious sects of the country are attending the historic Pran Pratishtha ceremony. People from all walks of life including representatives of various tribal communities are also attending the ceremony. Prime Minister will address this distinguished gathering on the occasion. Prime Minister will interact with shramjeevis associated with the construction of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir. He will also visit the Kuber Tila, where the ancient Mandir of Bhagwan Shiv has been restored. The magnificent Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir is constructed in traditional Nagara style. Its length (east-west) is 380 feet; width 250 feet and height is 161 feet; and is supported by a total of 392 pillars and 44 doors. The pillars and walls of the temple showcase intricately sculpted depictions of Hindu deities, gods, and goddesses. In the main sanctum sanctorum at ground floor, the childhood form of Bhagwan Shri Ram (the idol of Shri Ramlalla) has been placed. The main entrance to the Mandir is situated on the eastern side, which can be approached by ascending 32 stairs through the Singh Dwar. There are a total of five Mandaps (Halls) in the Mandir - Nritya Mandap, Rang Mandap, Sabha Mandap, Prathana Mandap and Kirtan Mandap. Near the Mandir is a historic Well (Sita koop), dating back to the ancient era. In the southwestern part of the Mandir complex, at Kuber Tila, the ancient Mandir of Bhagwan Shiv has been restored, along with the installation of a statue of Jatayu. The foundation of the Mandir has been constructed with a 14-meter- thick layer of roller-compacted concrete (RCC), giving it the appearance of artificial rock. No iron is used anywhere in the Mandir. For protection against ground moisture, a 21-foot-high plinth has been constructed using granite. The Mandir complex has a sewage treatment plant, water treatment plant, water supply for fire safety and an independent power station. The Mandir has been constructed employing the country's traditional and indigenous technology.

PM Modi participates in Pran Pratishtha ceremony at Ram Temple in Ayodhya

If you step out into <keyword id="19895037" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="bengaluru" source="keywords">Bengaluru</keyword> traffic these days, there’s a good chance you’ll discover a bulky water tanker spearheading the all-too-familiar clog in traffic. Amidst the ongoing <keyword id="6355836" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="water-crisis" source="Orion">water crisis</keyword>, India’s Silicon City has mobilised thousands of tankers that zip, almost heroically, across the city, rescuing parched residences from the metro’s urban planning crisis. Bidding to reduce their reliance on the exorb<keyword id="6354185" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="it" source="Orion">it</keyword>ant tankers — a necessary step after the exhaustion of half the city’s groundwater-fed borewells — many residential societies have begun innovating water-saving techniques, with varying degrees of success. However, for the several businesses and industries littering the metropolitan town, it seems like dark days are looming. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="IT in turmoil" comment="subhead" text="IT in turmoil">IT in turmoil</cmsannotation> Hosting over 1,400 tech companies that employ tens of lakhs of employees, Bengaluru has certainly earned its title as India’s ‘Silicon Valley’. Not only has this driven a rapid boom in economic, infrastructural and industrial development, the city has acted as a magnet for people looking for attractive employment opportunities. Unfortunately, this success has also resulted in <a href="https://bpac.in/bangalore-population-growth-consequences-and-possible-solutions/" data-type="tilCustomLink">population levels haphazardly spiking</a> from 2,900 people per square kilometre in 2001 to 4,300 within a single decade. Estimates suggest that this figure may have breached 8,000 by now! In addition to deterring water-cooler conversations, the lack of water in their workplaces have led to several companies already urging employees to work from home. Echoing a growing sentiment among the city’s techies, <a href="https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/it-companies-in-bengaluru-urged-to-give-15-lakh-employees-wfh-option-as-city-grapples-with-water-crisis/articleshow/108761390.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">ex-Chief Justice K Sreedhar Rao also pleaded</a> for temporary remote arrangements for migrant IT workers to depopulate Bengaluru till the water crisis is dealt with. However, many such multinational employees have already begun to preemptively take matters into their own hands by temporarily or permanently moving to other cities, such as the nearby Mysuru. Needless to say, this has disrupted operations for many companies, including some of the top IT firms in Bengaluru. In a surprising turn of tragic events, senior personnel at <keyword id="19969515" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="dell" source="keywords">Dell</keyword> have begun skipping meetings to prioritise their procurement of water, reported the Deccan Herald. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Real estate rates to fall; restaurants forced to adapt" comment="subhead" text="Real estate rates to fall; restaurants forced to adapt"><keyword id="6354553" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="real-estate" source="Orion">Real estate</keyword> rates to fall; restaurants forced to adapt</cmsannotation> With pleasant weather the year round, Bengaluru has proven itself time and again as an excellent place to settle down and relax. The city’s diverse population is a testament to its uncanny ability to draw people from all over India, even before the city’s notable IT boom. Real estate has now hit an all-time high, with high demand and attractive financial options helping the sector grow exponentially in the past few decades, reportedly recording a staggering nine-year-high 54,000 housing units sold in 2023. However, the city’s recent water woes have left potential property investors second-guessing. According to a recent Deccan Herald poll, around 60% of the respondents noted that they have postponed their move to Bengaluru due to the ongoing shortage, while a similar number of people have also begun evaluating investment options in other cities. Homebuyers have also begun to diligently inquire into <keyword id="55273" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="groundwater" source="Orion">groundwater</keyword> borewell depths and water-saving technologies when consulting developers. While <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/business/bengaluru-water-crisis-alarms-property-investors-dh-poll-2930539" data-type="tilCustomLink">many contractors remain firm</a> that these reactions are not representative of a long-term trend, some experts have predicted that a fall in property prices may become inevitable. A <a href="https://www.republicworld.com/business/real-estate/bengaluru-water-crisis-property-prices-in-peenya-hsr-layout-marathahalli-to-fall-15-say-experts/" data-type="tilCustomLink">Republic report</a> explains that house rates could fall up to 10-15% in the most water-stressed regions of East and Central Bengaluru, including HSR Layout, Marathahalli, Rajaji Nagar and Peenya. Needless to say, the crisis has also taken a toll on Bengaluru’s various hotels and eateries, many of which are severely dependent on tanker water for cooking, cleaning and drinking purposes. Krishna Raj, owner of the popular <keyword id="21126683" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nisarg-grand-hotel" source="keywords">Nisarg Grand Hotel</keyword>, <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/india/bengaluru-water-crisis-news-hotels-disposable-utensils-shortage-lok-sabha-polls-karnataka-dk-shivakumar-congress-bjp-11710055127680.html" data-type="tilCustomLink">explained</a> that they might have to begin serving food in disposable utensils if the trend continues into the summer months. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Industrial district parched" comment="subhead" text="Industrial district parched">Industrial district parched</cmsannotation> Located in Northwest Bengaluru, Peenya is home to thousands of industries of varying sizes, producing a host of electronics, textiles, packaging, machines and other consumer items. However, being one of the largest industrial areas in Asia hasn’t protected its businesses from the ongoing crisis. In an <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/industry/news/bengaluru-water-crisis-to-impact-local-industries-in-coming-weeks-experts-124030601026_1.html" data-type="tilCustomLink">interview with Business Standard</a>, <keyword id="21126682" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="peenya-industries-association" source="keywords">Peenya Industries Association</keyword> President H. M. Arif explained that the area’s micro-industries are strained to the point that many could be forced to close soon if the water crisis continues unmitigated. Many such sectors have also become hopelessly reliant on tanker water, and the associated rising costs have begun to bottleneck the manufacturing process. Prices of several commercial products could go up soon if this trend continues. “Many from the hosiery or garment sector need water for processing,” Arif explains. “You need water for workers as well as other needs. The government is saying it will source recycled water for the industry. But for that, there is a tendering process and at this rate, we will not get water this season.” <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Solutions and cautious optimism" comment="subhead" text="Solutions and cautious optimism">Solutions and cautious optimism</cmsannotation> This is not to say that the government isn’t taking measures to tackle the crisis. After ordaining centralised control over water tankers and actively regulating prices to ensure the city’s water isn’t hoarded solely by the rich, officials also placed bans on recreational water use. In addition, initiatives are underway to “inject” 1,300 million litres of purified water into the city’s drying lakes per day, which the officials allege will help restore local groundwater levels. <keyword id="19927086" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="bwssb" source="keywords">BWSSB</keyword> has also announced plans to build an array of next-gen water treatment plants near restored lake beds to purify and deliver water wherever required. Addressing the harsh summers ahead, Karnataka government officials have expressed optimism that the completion of the Cauvery Five — a massive array of treatment plants that will treat sewage to produce 100 million litres of water a day — will help make up for any deficits by July. Meanwhile, many large corporations, including Microsoft, have begun utilising water-saving tap aerators to control water flow in the Bagmane Business Park offices. The city’s water board, the BWSSB, has also launched four mobile apps to help tackle the city’s water crisis. Attempting to bridge a gap between the water department and the citizens it serves, these apps will help residents book water online, apply for borewell permissions, report water misuse and more. At 24% of its total capacity, reservoirs across Karnataka are also drying up. Despite growing shortages, the state government has assured that the Cauvery River reservoir that supplies water to Bengaluru holds sufficient water levels to last at least until June. After that, the pre-monsoon and monsoon rains are expected to replenish the water resources. However, the supply remains much lower compared to the demand, and the only way to survive this summer could be to adopt drastic water-saving measures and a few good spells of pre-monsoon showers.

Water crisis affects businesses across Bengaluru; Is there room for cautious optimism?

<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-planet"></a><div type="image" title="An illustrated gif of a human figure in red, orange and yellow tones mimicking thermal imaging. The background is animated to have the colors appear to radiate heat." height="500" width="1000" msid="101764553" hostid="261"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/life-in-death-valley-one-of-hottest-places-on-earth-2020-8">Heat</a> is an unused <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-electricity-prices-flip-negative-after-glut-of-hydroelectric-power-2023-5">energy source</a> that's all around us, from our bodies to our infrastructure.</li><li>Recycling waste heat to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/energy-crisis-europe-france-jackets-school-children-heating-cold-report-2022-10">warm homes</a> and businesses could save money and reduce fossil-fuel use.</li><li>Projects in Europe and Canada are learning to use heat from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/this-fuel-burns-like-coal-but-emits-no-co2-and-its-made-of-sewage-2018-10">sewage</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-running-out-of-water-data-centers-blame-microsoft-google-2023-6">data centers</a>, and underground.</li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/heat-waves-are-dominating-summer-and-its-not-abnormal-anymore-2022-7">Heat</a> is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/blackouts-power-outages-more-common-climate-change-electric-grid-infrastructure-2023-3">energy</a>, and we waste a lot of it every day. As our machines, buildings, and bodies burn fuel to function, they emit heat into the atmosphere.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/phoenixs-chief-heat-officer-affordable-housing-key-preventing-heat-deaths-2023-4">Cities</a> are throbbing with this thermal byproduct; they get up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the surrounding countryside, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The so-called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-investing-green-infrastructure-manage-climate-change-2022-3">urban-heat-island effect</a> can aggravate health issues and lead to mechanical failures as the world gets hotter.On top of the dangers, all that heat is unused energy. The EPA has <a href="https://www.epa.gov/chp/chp-benefits" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> that more than 60% of energy in the US is lost as heat. By recovering those losses, businesses and governments could secure a reliable, local source of energy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-energy-strategy-oil-companies-switch-to-clean-energy-2023-4">that doesn't require fossil fuels</a>.Projects in Europe and Canada are already capturing and using what's known as waste heat. In a Glasgow nightclub, sweaty partiers' body heat gets funneled to colder rooms. A London district is capturing heat from subway tunnels and channeling it to nearby homes. Pipes beneath a German road circulate fluid that absorbs the asphalt's heat in summer, which then warms and deices the road in winter.Meanwhile, scientists are surveying the heat that escapes underground for possible future use.These projects are small, but they're paving the way for other governments and businesses to tap into the heat all around us.<h2>A Vancouver neighborhood recycles heat from the sewers</h2><div type="image" title="white tubing beneath a green metal bridge in a concrete room underground" height="1297" width="1730" msid="101764554" hostid="261"></div>When you wash dishes, shower, or do laundry, hot water flows down the drain and into the sewers. If you live in the False Creek neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, the heat in that water may eventually come back to warm your home.In most neighborhoods, sewage goes to a pumping station that pushes it to a wastewater-treatment plant. But in False Creek, the pumping station is also a heat-recovery plant.<div type="image" title="white and green tubing wall to wall in a concrete room" height="631" width="1201" msid="101764555" hostid="261"></div>Some sewage gets diverted to heat pumps that extract heat, transfer it to water in another system of pipes, and concentrate it to raise the water temperature as high as 80 degrees Celsius. The pipes then carry that hot water to homes in the area, where the heat is transferred once more through a device called a heat exchanger, which distributes it to the building's space-heating and hot-water systems.The project, called the Neighbourhood Energy Utility, began in 2010 when the city built a sustainability-centric village for the Winter Olympics. To heat new homes with minimal fossil fuels, the city turned to the sewage system."That was a bold decision, and one that turned out to be a very good decision," Derek Pope, who manages the NEU project, told Insider.The project started out heating nine residential buildings. Today NEU delivers recycled sewer heat to 44 buildings including more than 6,000 residential units, a university campus, a science museum, and commercial facilities.Pope said the heat pumps have 300% efficiency: For every unit of electricity that powers them, the utility gets three units of thermal energy. By contrast, Pope said, when the system has to top off the heating supply with natural gas in periods of high demand, that has efficiency below 100%.<div type="image" title="tall stacks with rectangle purple lights on top glow in the night beside a highway" height="1050" width="1400" msid="101764557" hostid="261"></div>The system delivers a "modest return on the city's investment," Pope said, because it's run like a public utility for a slight profit.In a 2022 report to the City Council, the utility found that for customers the cost of the recycled heat was in line with that of other local energy and heating options.NEU's upgrades have expanded its customer base, adding buildings to its network. Now the utility is tripling its heat-recycling capacity by installing two more heat pumps.<div type="image" title="a large heat pump covered in white wrapping hangs from an outdoor blue scaffolding over a rectangular hole in concrete ground" height="1500" width="2000" msid="101764558" hostid="261"></div>NEU's success indicates that sewage-heat recovery may be a sustainable and cost-effective option when building new urban areas, like an Olympic Village.<h2>Data centers can heat homes too</h2>Across the ocean, Stockholm is tapping into a major heat source: data centers.The world needs more and more of these warehouses of computer servers to process and store information. All that computing, concentrated in one building, gets hot."It seems very strange that we should let out excess heat when we can actually buy it," Johanna Nerell, a project manager at the utility Stockholm Exergi, told Insider. "We can make money for the company who delivers it."The company buys captured waste heat from nearby data centers and funnels it to homes. It's part of what Exergi calls an "open district heating" system, which draws waste heat from different businesses in the city, including a yeast-production plant and a supermarket, as well as sewage. Data centers contribute the lion's share, accounting for 90% of open district heat, Nerell said. <div type="image" title="infographic shows pink lines flowing out of a data center underground and through a home with a shower and space heater an purple lines flowing back" height="1500" width="1125" msid="101764559" hostid="261"></div>All in all, Nerell said, this heat-recycling network accounts for 1.5% of the heat Exergi delivers throughout Stockholm."Most likely we will never get much higher than that," Nerell said. "That would've been different if we had industries surrounding Stockholm that produce a lot of excess heat."Without heavy industries, only a few types of businesses can make the up-front investment to install the heat pumps and pipes needed to sell their heat, she said, adding, "That's where data centers are ideal."<h2>There's more untapped heat underground</h2>The urban heat island — the churn of activity that makes cities hotter — extends underground too.<div type="image" title="A man uses a newspaper to cool himself while on the tube." height="1665" width="2220" msid="101764560" hostid="261"></div>Excess heat can harm river ecosystems fed by groundwater, since fish and other life-forms there generally prefer cool water flowing from underground.Overheated groundwater also affects drinking-water quality, since the warmth can breed bacteria or cause more heavy metals to leach from the surrounding soil.But it's possible to cool the underground and cut fossil-fuel use by capturing the heat beneath the surface, researchers found in a <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=c8855f14c0a6faa38393b17da416ceaede06ff6d6f3b91b2f610a89af384b97d&amp;postID=64765d768c8a4f7ad11eaf43&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41467-022-31624-6">study</a> published in Nature Communications in 2022."It's like two birds with one stone," Susanne Benz, an author of the study who researches subsurface heat, told Insider. "Carbon-free energy, and at the same time we get to reduce the impact of climate change and urbanization on our environment."Benz and her colleagues assessed over 8,000 locations where measurements of groundwater temperature were available, mostly in Europe. They found that in about 25% of those places there was enough heat underground to recycle for energy.That percentage will surely increase as the planet's average temperature rises, heating up the underground even more. The study's authors estimated that by the end of the century, 73% of the locations could fulfill all their heating needs with underground heat.<div type="image" title="worker in neon green vest hardhat and respirator mask stands at the side of a long tall dark tunnel deep underground" height="1500" width="1999" msid="101764561" hostid="261"></div>Tapping into flowing groundwater would allow municipalities to access that heat. Regions without flowing groundwater would have to lay pipes underground and cycle fluid through them to absorb the heat and bring it to the surface.Benz says it's worth considering adding those underground pipes as part of new construction, especially building new streets, which absorb extra heat. Subway tunnels could also be an easy place to start. In 2020, the Islington neighborhood of London built a system in its subway to funnel heat from those underground tunnels to homes.Of course, underground heat builds up the most in summer, when people don't need to heat their homes. But Benz said the ground would hold on to the heat until it's needed."Heat takes a little bit to travel in the underground. So if you time it right and put your heat pump or your pipes at exactly the right depth, all the heat from the summer reaches it in winter, when you actually need the heating," she said. "The ground is the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/northvolt-trying-fix-electric-vehicle-supply-chain-battery-recycling-2023-4">battery</a> in this case."Correction: July 17, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the process that transfers sewage heat from NEU's systems to homes. This is done by a heat exchanger, not furnaces and boilers.This story has been updated. It was originally published on July 14, 2023.

Our bodies, buildings, and computers give off a lot of waste heat. Cities and scientists are learning to harness it for energy.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Recent research has found potentially harmful chemicals in 21 brands of toilet paper.</li><li>The brands were tested for PFAS, nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they don't break down.</li></ul>Chemical-laden toilet paper may be a major source of water pollution, according to <a href="https://wsvn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/PFAS-in-Toilet-paper-and-impact-on-wastewater-systems.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent research from the University of Florida.</a>Researchers tested 21 major toilet paper brands for PFAS, a class of manufactured chemicals that are notoriously difficult to break down and <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">may cause health issues</a> like an increased risk for certain types of cancer.PFAS have been found in <a href="https://www.insider.com/forever-chemicals-pfas-drinking-water-pose-health-risks-small-amounts-2022-6">drinking water</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/forever-chemicals-found-in-sweetgreen-mcdonalds-packaging-report-2022-3">takeout containers</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/cancer-linked-chemicals-found-in-mascara-liquid-lipsticks-foundation-2021-6">makeup</a>, and a <a href="https://www.insider.com/how-to-avoid-household-products-that-contain-toxic-pfas-chemicals-2021-7">variety of home items including carpets and cookware</a>. They've also been found in menstrual products, <a href="https://www.insider.com/whats-in-pads-tampons-toxic-chemicals-not-only-alleged-in-thinx-2023-1">including period underwear</a>, tampons, and pads.The group includes <a href="https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/chemical-lists/PFASSTRUCT" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as many as 14,000 chemicals</a>, according to the latest count from the US Environmental Protection Agency.All of the brands of toilet paper tested, which were unnamed in the study, contained some level of the compounds. There was no difference between brands that used recycled paper and those that did not, at least in terms of PFAS content.Because the PFAS levels detected in toilet paper are relatively low, the study authors concluded that the chemicals were likely used in the manufacturing process and not intentionally added to toilet paper.However, the chemicals in toilet paper have the potential to contaminate waterways, as the waste flushed down toilets is sent to sewage treatment plants that may not pull out PFAS. "Toilet paper should be considered as a potentially major source of PFAS entering wastewater treatment systems," the study authors wrote.<h2>PFAS in toilet paper could affect waterways and food</h2>Certain chemicals in the PFAS class have been linked to <a href="https://dceg.cancer.gov/research/what-we-study/pfas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">multiple cancers</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/pfas-forever-chemicals-takeout-boxes-linked-to-liver-disease-risk-2022-5">liver disease</a>, thyroid disease, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pfas/our-current-understanding-human-health-and-environmental-risks-pfas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">high cholesterol</a>, and problems with fertility and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8529509/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">child development</a>.Fortunately, coming into contact with PFAS on the skin is not a major risk factor, according to the <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/exposure.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>. Most assessments show food and water are the primary sources of PFAS exposure for humans.But keep in mind that whatever you flush down the toilet will soon make its way into sewage sludge, the study authors warned, which will eventually be dumped in waterways, according to the study. Sewage sludge is also often used as garden fertilizer, according to <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/PFA-Garden-Sludge-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a 2021 report from the Sierra Club and the Ecology Center</a>, which found PFAS in nine home fertilizer products. More research is needed to determine how much PFAS ends up in crops grown in contaminated soil, and whether that means that we'll be eating PFAS for dinner. The Environmental Protection Agency is currently conducting <a href="https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/risk-assessment-pollutants-biosolids" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a risk assessment of PFAS found in sewage sludge</a>, and the results are set to be released by the end of 2024.

You Searched For "sewage treatment plants" and got 12 results

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