The Quench Weekly Water Top 10 recaps the week’s top stories on drinking water issues. Come back each week for the latest news!

• Yay! New Federal Budget Proposes Money For Fracking Research – A proposed $14 million will support research to asses the potential impacts of fracking.

• Boo! EPA Proposes Cuts In Funding For Testing At Beaches  - The EPA’s budget request, sent in earlier in the week, aims to cut $10 million from coastal and Great Lake states. The money would have been used to test the water and make sure it’s safe for swimmers.

• Dirty Waters Run Deep – This just in, it may take decades–yes decades–for Vermont to clean up phosphorus-fed toxic algae blooms in Lake Champlain.

• Georgia Swimmers Still Breathe Easy – Despite the federal funding cut that will roll back federal beach water testing, the state of Georgia will continue to monitor its beaches for gastrointestinal illnesses.

• Minnesota Citizens Speak Their Minds About Water – Minnesota’s Department of Health just released a new report exploring the public’s most common preconceptions about drinking water and contaminants. One big public misconception: well water is much safer than municipal tap.

• The Leaky Wheel Gets The Grease – Three leaky hydrants in the village of Westchester are symptoms of the village’s aging water system, but this time the problem is being dealt with straightaway with long overdue maintenance procedures.

• Boil Your Water, Lynchburg – Due to nine water mains breaking, over two hundred homes are under a boil water advisory.

• Oklahoma’s Water Worries – It’s not natural forces that are jeopardizing the small town of Edmond’s water supplies, it’s people dumping trash. Items found so far include a refrigerator, 55-gallon drums and trash.

• Water Improvement Plans Don’t Cut It – After submitting an unsatisfactory plan to clean up its water quality standards, the EPA mandated a “pollution diet” for Maryland and 5 other states.

• Idaho vs. Greater Yellowstone – The Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed a suit the other day against the state of Idaho, challenging the state’s weak water regulations.

The conclusions drawn from the recent “Future of Water in Southern California” conference may prove to be smart examples for the rest of the nation to follow.

The conference, held at UCLA’s Luskin Center on January 27, revealed a dramatic water trend.

SoCal water leaders decided that focusing on the development of local supplies- through conservation,  groundwater management and water recycling- would be the primary strategy for providing water to the Southland.

On the other end of the spectrum, some water districts have considered shipping in water- by pipeline or manual delivery- to satisfy their growing water demands.

What do you think is better? The more sustainable expansion of local supplies, the instant gratification of importing water or a mix of the two?

The Quench Weekly Water Top 10 recaps the week’s top stories on drinking water issues. Come back each week for the latest news!

• Not To Badger You But… – As you remember we’ve spoken about the tug of war going on between the Environmental Protection Agency and the S.S. Badger (the coal-ash dumping old boat that resides in Lake Michigan). Well this just in: The EPA is allowing the 50-year old vessel to apply for an exemption in order to be allowed to continue its dirty practice.

• New Study Concludes $1 Billion a Reasonable Expense – What would this cash do you ask? Why, raise the dam holding back California’s largest reservoir, increasing storage capacity by 14 percent!

• The “Next Great Frontier in Recycling” Hits a Speedbump – Processing food scraps into composted materials with commercial applications  has grinded to a halt after it was shown that a Maryland company (without a permit no less) that was doing just this was “discharging pollutants” into surrounding groundwater and surface water.

• Power to Permit Wells Remains Unchanged, Residents Pleased – An amendment that would have given the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality the power to cancel and deny well permits was nixed, holding off the consolidation of some rural water associations.

• New Grant Allows Solar Stills to Test Their Desalination Powers – The 2,500 year old technology could, if successful, make desert agricultural viable!

• Making the People Pay  - An average rise of about five dollars will be imposed on the water-loving residents of L.A. in order to pay for $550 million dollars-worth of required repair to meet federal water-quality requirements.

• Renegade Mountain Rebels Left High and Dry – Despite an order issued last week to restore water service to the small mountain community, the property owner’s association that owns the water system cut off the power and keeps it off.

• Trailer Terrace Reports Tainted Water – Arsenic, it seems, has seeped into the 96 homes.

• Henrico County Ponds Becoming Less Toxic – The ponds that became the watery grave to more than 1,000 fish is happy to report that even though its chlorine levels are still illegal, they are coming down.

• South Dakota Childcare and Preschools Contaminated – Thankfully they’re just contaminated with high levels of nitrates and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is on the case.

We here at Quench aren’t just dedicated to ridding the world of bottled water, we’re also dedicated to bringing you the healthiest and highest-quality water available.

We’ve written extensively about Quench’s cutting edge filtration and sanitization technologies, but it’s also worth noting that we use only the best materials in our coolers.

Case in point: the black tubing we use in our machines is UV coated and made from food-grade polyethylene. While other companies may not use the longer-lasting material, we here at Quench use food-grade tubing in every single one of our systems.

Food-grade tubing is far superior to other tubing. Food-grade tubing is easy to clean and has fewer kinks and deformities that give bacteria a place to grow. It lasts longer, it is much more durable than standard tubing and it doesn’t leach.

Slap on that black UV coating and our tubes become even more impervious to bacteria and wear. So next time you come across a bottleless water cooler in your travels just ask, does it use food-grade tubing?

Remember back in October when we reported that New York’s crumbling water delivery system would take $75 billion dollars to fix?

Well you can add another state’s water delivery system to the growing list of systems in need of repair: Louisiana.

Just two weeks ago the home of the Big Easy was declared to have an old and decrepit water and sewage system by the Environmental Protection Agency, but the difference is the EPA granted Louisiana a $470,000 grant to fix their problem.

Following Louisiana’s example, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania also agreed to invest money in his state’s water delivery system, to the tune of $98 million.

Nineteen new coal-ash dumping sites causing groundwater contamination at levels above the Maximum Contamination Level were identified in a new report done by the Environmental Integrity Project.

The sites, spread over ten different states, have been seeping things like arsenic into the local groundwater supplies.

The EIP also found that coal-ash used as an industrial filler to fill in a rail bed was contaminating the soil–important because this kind of “recycling” is totally unregulated.

This newest report brings the Environmental Protection Agency’s number of documented “damage cases” to 157.

The EIP is a non-profit formed by former EPA enforcement attorneys to advocate more effective enforcement of environmental laws. The agency has been collecting evidence of groundwater contamination since 2007.

Never struggle to find the nearest (and best!) water fountain ever again.

For all you Apple users out there, check out this app called Oasis Places that searches out the nearest water fountain to you via GPS.

If you have a Droid phone, the WeTap is your go-to water fountain finder.

And what if along your travels the fountain you’ve found is in a sorry state of disrepair? Rate it! With either of these handy apps you can rate the fountain you found for future drinkers.

What do you think? Do you use a water fountain finding application or would you ever? Let us know!