Hundreds of Dead Birds Fall from sky in Maryland

Maryland state officials say hundreds of birds were killed on Interstate 95 near Laurel, bringing traffic to a crawl.

Maryland natural resources officials suspect a flock may have flown into a passing truck on Wednesday afternoon. State highway officials say power lines crossing over the highway may also be to blame. The dead starlings slowed traffic for several hours as highway crews used shovels to remove the birds from the roadway.

The Department of Natural Resources says they don't believe the birds were poisoned. However, samples taken from the birds are being analyzed as a precaution.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-dead-birds-20120216,0,6575427.story

Zimbabwe Resevoir workers say Mermans Forbid them from work

Essential work on planned reservoirs in Zimbabwe has stopped because mermaids have been hounding workers away, according to the country's Water Resources Minister.

Samuel Sipepa Nkomo told a Zimbabwean parliamentary committee that terrified workers are refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare.

Minister Nkomo said the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out any rites to appease the spirits.

'All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back there', Minister Nkomo was reported as saying in Zimbabwe's state-approved Herald newspaper.
The senior politician said that mermaids were also present in other reservoirs.

'We even hired whites thinking that our boys did not want to work but they also returned saying they would not return to work there again,' he added.

The two, long overdue reservoirs are considered essential if Zimbabwe is provide adequate water to its population and to boost its agricultural production.

Having once been the 'bread basket' of Southern Africa, the country's farms have been laid low by lack of faith in government policy.

From 2000, President Robert Mugabe expropriated some 4,000 white owned farms and gave them to politically connected blacks.

Partly as a result, agricultural production is this year forecast to be at its second lowest level since Zimbabwe achieved independence from Britain in 1980.

The belief in mermaids and other mythical creatures is widespread in the country, where many people combine a Christian faith with traditional beliefs.

Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ignatius Chombo said the government wants to give the population the water it needs, but cannot do so until the rituals are performed and necessary repairs can be carried out.

Three quarters of Zimbabwe's population live on less than one US dollar a day.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097218/Reason-Zimbabwe-reservoir-delays--mermaids-hounding-workers-away.html#ixzz1m03U0mLM

Underwear Bomber Gets Life in Prison

DETROIT (AP) — Defiantly declaring "a day of victory," a Nigerian man was given a mandatory life sentence Thursday for trying to blow up a packed jetliner with a bomb sewn into his underwear. People aboard the flight testified that the failed attack had disturbed their sleep and travels for more than two years.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the same remorseless man who four months ago pleaded guilty to all charges related to Northwest Airlines Flight 253. He seemed to relish the mandatory sentence and defended his actions as rooted in the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

"Mujahideen are proud to kill in the name of God," he said. "Today is a day of victory."

Had the bomb not fizzled, nearly 300 people aboard the flight would probably have been killed.

The case stirred renewed fears that terrorists could still bring down an American jetliner more than eight years after 9/11, and it accelerated installation of body scanners at the nation's airports.

Before Thursday's sentencing, four passengers and a crew member from the flight told U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds that they have struggled to live and travel normally since the incident on Christmas Day 2009.

During their remarks, Abdulmutallab appeared disinterested, rarely looking up from his seat just a few feet away.

Abdulmutallab "has never expressed doubt or regret or remorse about his mission," Edmunds said. "In contrast, he sees that mission as divinely inspired and a continuing mission."

Life in prison is a "just punishment for what he has done," the judge said. "The defendant poses a significant ongoing threat to the safety of American citizens everywhere."

Abdulmutallab, the 25-year-old, European-educated son of a wealthy banker, tried to set off the bomb minutes before the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight landed.

The government says he first performed a cleansing ritual in the lavatory — brushing his teeth and perfuming himself — then returned to his seat. The device didn't work as planned, but it still produced smoke, flame and panic.

He was subdued by fellow passengers and quickly confessed after getting hauled off the plane. He told authorities that he trained in Yemen under the eye of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric and one of the best-known al-Qaida figures.

The judge allowed prosecutors to show a video of the FBI demonstrating the power of the explosive material called PETN found in Abdulmutallab's underwear. As the video played, Abdulmutallab, who was wearing a white skull cap and oversized prison T-shirt, twice said loudly, "Allahu akbar," or God is great.

Lemare Mason, a Detroit-based flight attendant who helped put out the flames, told the judge that he suffers night sweats and his "dream job" no longer is a "joy."

Passenger Shama Chopra, founder of a Hindu temple in Montreal, left Muslim prayer beads for Abdulmutallab on the defense table after her testimony. She recalled smelling his burning flesh inside the plane's cabin, a moment "that gives me nightmares to this day."

Theophilus Maranga, a New York lawyer who was aboard the plane, said he was disgusted by Abdulmutallab's continued references to religion as justification.

"What kind of God is that? God is peace-loving," Maranga said in court, adding that he prays daily for Abdulmutallab.

Because he was a passenger, Detroit-area lawyer Kurt Haskell was allowed to publicly repeat his wild claim that the U.S. government outfitted Abdulmutallab with a defective bomb partly to force the rollout of body-imaging machines at airports.

Abdulmutallab's mentor, Al-Awlaki, and the bomb maker were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year, just days before Abdulmutallab's trial. At the time, President Barack Obama publicly blamed al-Awlaki for the terrorism plot.

Abdulmutallab is an "unrepentant would-be mass murderer who views his crimes as divinely inspired and blessed, and who views himself as under a continuing obligation to carry out such crimes," prosecutors said in a court filing.

Nine members of Abdulmutallab's family traveled to Detroit but did not attend Thursday's hearing. They said they were grateful that no one else was seriously hurt.

In a statement, the relatives said everyone who knew Abdulmutallab thought of him as the "last person" who would attack an airliner for al-Qaida.

Anthony Chambers, an attorney assigned to help Abdulmutallab, said a mandatory life sentence was cruel and unconstitutional punishment for a crime that didn't physically hurt anyone except Abdulmutallab. The government insisted plenty of harm had been done.

"Unsuccessful terrorist attacks still engender fear in the broader public, which, after all, is one of their main objectives," prosecutors said in a court filing before sentencing.

Indeed, Alain Ghonda, a consultant from Silver Spring, Md., who was a passenger on Flight 253, said he now travels the globe with heightened awareness.

"After having that experience, you do not know who's sitting next to you," Ghonda said before Thursday's hearing. "They may look like passengers, but they might want to harm you."

Abdulmutallab's ability to defeat security in Amsterdam spurred the Transportation Security Administration to make swift changes.

The agency was using body scanners in some American cities at the time, but the attack accelerated their placement. Hundreds of the devices are now in use nationwide.

___

Associated Press Writer Jeff Karoub contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Nigerian-underwear-bomber-gets-life-in-prison-3335127.php#ixzz1m01HDXUb

Officer of 17 yrs Whistle-Blows on Afgan War

WASHINGTON — On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.       

Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, where he sings in the choir. He watched his favorite movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” one more time, drawing inspiration from Jimmy Stewart’s role as the extraordinary ordinary man who takes on a corrupt establishment.

And then, late last month, Colonel Davis, 48, began an unusual one-man campaign of military truth-telling. He wrote two reports, one unclassified and the other classified, summarizing his observations on the candor gap with respect to Afghanistan. He briefed four members of Congress and a dozen staff members, spoke with a reporter for The New York Times, sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general — and only then informed his chain of command that he had done so.

“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?“ Colonel Davis asks in an article summarizing his views titled “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan: How Military Leaders Have Let Us Down.” It was published online Sunday in The Armed Forces Journal, the nation’s oldest independent periodical on military affairs. “No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he says in the article. “But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.”

Colonel Davis says his experience has caused him to doubt reports of progress in the war from numerous military leaders, including David H. Petraeus, who commanded the troops in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in June.

Last March, for example, Mr. Petraeus, then an Army general, testified before the Senate that the Taliban’s momentum had been “arrested in much of the country” and that progress was “significant,” though fragile, and “on the right azimuth” to allow Afghan forces to take the lead in combat by the end of 2014.

Colonel Davis fiercely disputes such assertions and says few of the troops believe them. At the same time, he is acutely aware of the chasm in stature that separates him from those he is criticizing, and he has no illusions about the impact his public stance may have on his career.

“I’m going to get nuked,” he said in an interview last month.

But his bosses’ initial response has been restrained. They told him that while they disagreed with him, he would not face “adverse action,” he said.

Col. James E. Hutton, chief of media relations for the Army, declined to comment specifically about Colonel Davis, but he rejected the idea that military leaders had been anything but truthful about Afghanistan.

“We are a values-based organization, and the integrity of what we publish and what we say is something we take very seriously,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Petraeus, Jennifer Youngblood of the C.I.A., said he “has demonstrated that he speaks truth to power in each of his leadership positions over the past several years. His record should stand on its own, as should LTC Davis’ analysis.”

If the official reaction to Colonel Davis’s campaign has been subdued, it may be partly because he has recruited a few supporters among the war skeptics on Capitol Hill.

“For Colonel Davis to go out on a limb and help us to understand what’s happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him,” said Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina, who has met with Colonel Davis twice and read his reports.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, one of four senators who met with Colonel Davis despite what he called “a lot of resistance from the Pentagon,” said the colonel was a valuable witness because his extensive travels and midlevel rank gave him access to a wide range of soldiers.

Moreover, Colonel Davis’s doubts about reports of progress in the war are widely shared, if not usually voiced in public by officers on duty. Just last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a hearing that she was “concerned by what appears to be a disparity” between public testimony about progress in Afghanistan and “the bleaker description” in a classified National Intelligence Estimate produced in December, which was described in news reports as “sobering” and “dire.”

Those words would also describe Colonel Davis’s account of what he saw in Afghanistan, the latest assignment in a military career that has included clashes with some commanders, but glowing evaluations from others. (“His maturity, tenacity and judgment can be counted on in even the hardest of situations, and his devotion to mission accomplishment is unmatched by his peers,” says an evaluation from May that concludes that he has “unlimited potential.”)

Colonel Davis, a son of a high school football coach in Dallas and who is known as Danny, served two years as an Army private before returning to Texas Tech and completing the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He served in Germany and fought in the first Iraq war before joining the Reserve and working civilian jobs, including a year as a member of the Senate staff.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he returned to active duty, serving a tour in Iraq as well as the two in Afghanistan and spending 15 months working on Future Combat Systems, an ambitious Army program to produce high-tech vehicles linked to drones and sensors. On that program, too, he said, commanders kept promising success despite ample evidence of trouble. The program was shut down in 2009 after an investment of billions of dollars.

In his recent tour in Afghanistan, Colonel Davis represented the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, created to bypass a cumbersome bureaucracy to make sure the troops quickly get the gear they need.

He spoke with about 250 soldiers, from 19-year-old privates to division commanders, as well as Afghan security officials and civilians, he said. From the Americans, he heard contempt for the perceived cowardice and double-dealing of their Afghan counterparts. From Afghans, he learned of unofficial nonaggression pacts between Afghanistan’s security forces and Taliban fighters.

When he was in rugged Kunar Province, an Afghan police officer visiting his parents was kidnapped by the Taliban and killed. “That was in visual range of an American base,” he said. “Their influence didn’t even reach as far as they could see.”

Some of the soldiers he interviewed were later killed, a fact that shook him and that he mentions in videos he shot in Afghanistan and later posted on YouTube. At home, he pored over the statements of military leaders, including General Petraeus. He found them at odds with what he had seen, with classified intelligence reports and with casualty statistics.

“You can spin all kinds of stuff,” Colonel Davis said. “But you can’t spin the fact that more men are getting blown up every year.”

Colonel Davis can come across as strident, labeling as lies what others might call wishful thinking. Matthew M. Aid, a historian who examines Afghanistan in his new book “Intel Wars,” says that while there is a “yawning gap” between Pentagon statements and intelligence assessments, “it’s oversimplified to say the top brass are out-and-out lying. They are just too close to the subject.”

But Martin L. Cook, who teaches military ethics at the Naval War College, says Colonel Davis has identified a hazard that is intrinsic to military culture, in which a can-do optimism can be at odds with the strictest candor when a mission is failing.

“You’ve trained people to try to be successful even when half their buddies are dead and they’re almost out of ammo,” he said. “It’s very hard for them to say, ‘can’t do.’ ”

Mr. Cook said it was rare for an officer of Colonel Davis’s modest rank to “decide that he knows better” and to go to Congress and the news media.

“It may be an act of moral courage,” he said. “But he’s gone outside channels, and he’s taking his chances on what happens to him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/army-colonel-challenges-pentagons-afghanistan-claims.html?pagewanted=all

Nuke Plant in Minnesota Leaks Tritium

Xcel Energy Inc.’s Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota released radioactive water in a leak from its condenser system.

The 27 gallons (102 liters) of condensate was released from a steam system overflow vent Feb. 3 and return pumps failed, causing a spill onto the ground at the plant 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Minneapolis, Mary Sandok, a spokeswoman for Xcel, said in an e-mail. The 551-megawatt Unit 1 and the 545-megawatt Unit 2 are operating at full power.

The release contained 15,000 picocuries per liter of tritium, a low-level radioactive form of hydrogen, according to a filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard for tritium allows 20,000 picocuries per liter, the NRC says on itswebsite.

“Plant management has shut down the steam heating system while it investigates the matter, identifies the cause of the pump failure and corrects the equipment deficiencies,” Sandok said. “The overflow did not impact operations at the plant and there was no risk to the public or employees.”

The condenser system turns steam, which is heated by the reactor to drive turbines that produce electricity, back into water. The incident, which occurred in a warehouse being heating by the steam, follows a leak of sodium hypochlorite and other chemicals at the plant Jan. 1. Bleach is a solution of sodium hypochlorite.

The release also included methoxypropylamine, ammonia and hydrazine, the filing showed. The plant near Red Wing generates enough to power nearly 1 million homes, according to Xcel.

Tritium is produced in the upper atmosphere and falls to the ground in rain water, according to the NRC. It is also a byproduct of nuclear plants, a weak type of radiation that doesn’t penetrate the skin, the federal agency said.

Critics of nuclear energy say tritium causes cancer and gets into drinking water from leaky pipes at nuclear plants.

Bulgaria Greece Battle massive floods

Dozens of homes are underwater in Bulgaria and Greece as Europe continues to battle extreme weather.
Bulgaria's civil defence agency warned that two other, bigger dams were also on the brink of spilling over and residents were urged to prepare for an evacuation. Authorities have started a controlled release of water from the dams to prevent overflow.
Europeans across the continent have been battling more than a week of extreme weather, with thousands still trapped by snow in remote, mountain villages in the Balkans; hundreds - most of them homeless - dead after temperatures hit as low as minus 36 Celsius; and authorities now facing the prospect of flooding caused by melting snow.
A day after the dam burst, the Bulgarian government declared a day of mourning, and streets in the village of Bisser were covered with sticky mud as people returned to their water-logged homes.
At least a dozen houses had collapsed, uprooted trees blocked roads and smashed cars sat abandoned along deserted streets. Veterinary officials were collecting the bodies of dead animals from streets still covered in snow.
Further south, the heavy rain caused the Maritsa River to overflow its banks, leaving dozens of homes under water in the city of Svilengrad near the Greek border. Rescue crews helped transport nearly 100 residents to temporary shelters.
In Greece, rescuers had to help five elderly people escape from their flooded homes after the river Evros burst its banks near the country's northeastern border with Bulgaria. Several elderly residents were also evacuated overnight from another three villages in the area.
Greek civil protection authorities said a 40-year-old woman was drowned by a flash flood on the eastern Aegean Sea island of Symi late on Monday, but no major damage was reported on the island. Heavy snowfall was reported across northern Greece, hampering road traffic and causing some power cuts in remote areas.
The Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday that an incursion of cold polar air from northern Russia brought extremely low temperatures over large parts of Europe.
The cold air was fed with strong moisture from the central Mediterranean Sea, causing heavy snowfall over parts of southeastern Europe.
Snow also caused headaches further north. Serbian emergency officials say the army will use explosives to break up ice on the Danube and Ibar rivers to try to prevent the possibility of flooding.
A 30-year-old woman died when large pieces of ice and snow collapsed on her in a suburb of the capital, Belgrade.
In Poland, meanwhile, the big freeze has killed another six people in the last 24 hours, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Ministry spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said on Tuesday that three other people died of asphyxiation with carbon monoxide from heaters they were using in their homes.
Lithuanian officials said 23 people have died so far this year due to sub-freezing temperatures in the tiny Baltic republic of three million.
Italy remained in the grip of a bitter cold spell, with reports of people freezing to death. Low temperatures have even caused parts of the Grand Canal in the lagoon city of Venice to freeze over, while the south of Italy, which usually enjoys a mild climate, has seen snow that has caused power outages to thousands of people.
In Romania, snow and high winds have cut off 127 communities and blocked 237 county roads, and 1,100 people were stranded overnight in two trains.

http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=716227&vId=

Freezing temperatures in Europe and North Africa Claim 300 Lives

Freezing temperatures claimed more victims in Ukraine, Poland, France and Italy. French authorities on Sunday found the body of a homeless man who had frozen to death, bringing to at least 306 the number of cold-related deaths reported across the continent.

Transport was badly disrupted, with people stuck in cars and trains blocked by snow and ice, amid warnings that the freezing temperatures will continue into the week.

In Ukraine, one of the countries most severely affected, another nine people died from the cold snap, bringing the death toll there to 131.

Many of the victims were homeless people who froze to death on the streets.

Seven people died in Italy, where heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures brought chaos for drivers and rail passengers and prompted runs on supermarkets, with worried shoppers emptying the shelves of food.
Rome was blanketed in white by the heaviest snowfall in 27 years, with children sledging down the slopes of the Circus Maximus, the ancient Roman chariot-racing arena, cross-country skiers taking to the banks of the Tiber and tourists building snowmen in St Peter's Square, in front of the Vatican.
Cars trying to drive in the capital were fixed with snow chains - a rare sight for a city known for its mild winters and scorching summers.
A shipping accident in the port of Civitavecchia near Rome, in which a ferry smashed into a breakwater and gashed an 80ft long hole in its hull, raised fears of a second Costa Concordia disaster.
The incident caused terror among more than 250 passengers and forced the vessel's evacuation, three weeks after 32 people were killed when the Concordia struck a rocky shoal off the Tuscan island of Giglio and had to be grounded. In Venice, parts of the lagoon froze over as temperatures plummeted to minus 10C.
In Polandthe bad weather claimed another eight more lives, bringing the death toll to 53.
In Serbia, around 70,000 people remained cut off in villages enveloped in snow, with police and the army stepping in to provide basic necessities.
In Bosnia, avalanches and strong winds isolated hundreds of villages in remote areas, and a state of emergency was declared.
Greece declared a state of emergency in the Peloponnese peninsula after torrential rain caused widespread flooding.
So far eastern and central Europe have suffered most from the extreme weather, but the cold front was moving west, affecting flights out of France and coating the Eiffel Tower with snow.
The cold weather extended as far south as Algeria, with rare snowfall on several towns and cities. Roads were blocked and villages in mountainous areas were cut off. At least 16 people were reported to have died - five of them from carbon monoxide poisoning linked to gas heating.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9063284/Europe-deep-freeze-reaches-North-Africa-as-it-claims-more-than-300-lives.html

Nuclear Plants Pose threat to Illinois Drinking Water

CHICAGO — The drinking water for 652,000 people in Illinois could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at a local nuclear power plant, says a new study released Jan. 24 by the Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (Illinois PIRG).
Brian Imus, Illinois PIRG state director, explained: “The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Nuclear power plants in Illinois pose a risk to drinking water for more than 600,000 Illinoisans. An accident like the one in Fukushima, Japan, or a leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into our drinking water.”
The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, last year drew a spotlight on the many risks associated with nuclear power. After the disaster, airborne radiation left areas around the plant uninhabitable, and even contaminated drinking water sources near Tokyo, 130 miles from the plant.
According to the new report, “Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water,” the drinking water for 652,00 people in Illinois is within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant — the distance the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to measure risk to food and water supplies.
Dr. Sam Epstein, a medical doctor and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, said: “This is an important study that underscores the dramatic risks nuclear plants pose to our health. Any radiation from a nuclear plant in Illinois would increase the risk of cancer and other serious illnesses.”
Radiation from a disaster like the one in Fukushima can contaminate drinking water and food supplies, as well as harm our health. But disaster or no disaster, a common leak at a nuclear power plant can also threaten the drinking water for millions of people. As our nuclear facilities get older, leaks are more common. In fact, 75 percent of U.S. nuclear plants have leaked tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that can cause cancer and genetic defects.
In December 2005, investigators found tritium in a drinking water well at a home near Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station in Illinois. Levels of tritium above the safe drinking water standard were found near the plant, and much higher levels were detected on the plant grounds. The leak was eventually traced to a pipe carrying normally non-radioactive water away for discharge.
David Kraft, director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, a nuclear power watchdog organization, said: “Tritium should be considered a major problem issue with nuclear plants. Especially among the Great Lakes region’s 33 nuclear reactors, and especially with the Canadian CANDU reactors, which belch out many more times the tritium than do the U.S. reactors.”
Local bodies of water also play a critical role in cooling nuclear reactors and are at risk of contamination. In the case of the Fukushima meltdown, large quantities of seawater were pumped into the plant to cool it, and contaminated seawater then leaked and was dumped back into the ocean, carrying radioactivity from the plant with it. The Mississippi River provides cooling water for the Quad Cities Nuclear Plant in Illinois and could be at risk.
“With nuclear power, there’s too much at risk and the dangers are too close to home,” Imus said. “Illinoisans shouldn’t have to worry about getting cancer from drinking a glass of water.”
The report recommends the United States moves to a future without nuclear power by retiring existing plants, abandoning plans for new plants, and expanding energy efficiency and the production of clean, renewable energy such as wind and solar power.
To reduce the risks nuclear power poses to water supplies immediately, the report recommends completing a thorough safety review of U.S. nuclear power plants, requiring plant operators to implement recommended changes immediately and requiring nuclear plant operators to implement regular groundwater tests to catch tritium leaks, among other actions.
“There are far cleaner, cheaper and less-risky ways to get our energy,” said Max Muller with Environment Illinois. “Illinois and the United States should move away from nuclear power immediately and invest in safer alternatives such as efficiency and wind and solar power.”

http://rockrivertimes.com/2012/01/25/nuclear-plants-pose-risks-to-drinking-water-for-illinois/