San Clemente residents can expect wastewater sewage rates to rise by 30 percent over the next five years after the San Clemente City Council voted 4–1 July 18 in favor of the rate hikes, with Mayor Pro Tem Steve Knoblock abstaining. Such rates will increase by 9.5 percent as soon as October. Going forward, rates…

Castle Rock, Colo.—When Eric Seufert brewed a test batch of beer in 2017 with water from recycled sewage, he wasn’t too concerned about the outcome. The engineering firm that approached him about the test explained the process, and together they sipped samples of recycled water. Seufert quickly understood it wasn’t too different from how water…

Canada’s chief public health officer says plans are underway to sift through Canadian sewage to test for and measure new health threats like monkeypox and polio. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic wastewater detection became a key way to track the spread of the virus. Dr. Theresa Tam says the experts at the National…

WASHINGTON—The polio virus was present in wastewater in a New York City suburb a month before health officials there announced a confirmed case of the disease last month, state health officials said on Monday. The discovery of the disease from wastewater samples collected in June means the virus was present in the community before the…

Australians have consumed an estimated 15.7 tonnes of methylamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA (ecstasy), and heroin in 2020–21, with a street value of around $10.3 billion (US$7.4 billion), the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) revealed. ACIC Chief Executive Officer Michael Phelan said this figure was up by $1.4 billion (just over $1 billion) from the previous year, primarily…

Aging, decaying sewer infrastructure can cause wastewater to escape system pipes allowing untreated water to flow into streams. In Bucks County Pennsylvania, an overwhelmed system will cost the operators, and likely the users who depend on the system, a sizable fine. The Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority owns and operates hundreds of miles of…

Four new cases of COVID-19 were detected in Australia’s Northern Territory over the weekend, three of whom caught the virus while in quarantine at the Howard Springs facility on the outskirts of Darwin. Chief Minister Michael Gunner said via a Facebook post on Sunday that all three cases, a man in his forties from Katherine,…

Four new cases of COVID-19 were detected in Australia’s Northern Territory over the weekend, three of whom caught the virus while in quarantine at the Howard Springs facility on the outskirts of Darwin. Chief Minister Michael Gunner said via a Facebook post on Sunday that all three cases, a man in his forties from Katherine,…

TOKYO—Japan’s new prime minister on Sunday said the planned mass disposal of wastewater stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant cannot be delayed, despite concerns from local residents. Speaking at his first visit to the facility since taking office, Fumio Kishida said his government would work to reassure residents nearby the plant about the technical…