mcgyver5: The True Cost of Water

Even Car Talk is about Sewage these days

Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:00:55 GMT

On car talk this morning, they read a letter from a guy who tried to drive through a flooded street. He stalled and his car got flooded with some raw sewage. As they were consoling the guy on the air, I was thinking that no one questions why, when it floods, we get to take a big bath in our own feces. It has to be some combination of the following:

It has been happening since the beginning of time and people just accept it, as I should, and learn to appreciate the non-fecal days better.
It has been happening more recently because municipal stormwater systems have reached their capacity, but people view them as isolated incidents because they don't know any better.
People don't like to talk about the larger picture because it might make their taxes go up.
It has always been happening but people are more sensitive to it now because they know a little more about feces than they used to.

Desalinization Plants Planned Near Boston

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 14:41:05 GMT

I once had an argument with my housemate when I lived in Boston about her view that water was never an issue in Boston. She was from California. I pointed out to her that they had to build the Quabbin Resevoir and flood 4 towns in western Massachusetts to supply water to Boston. Now I can point to planned desalinization plants in eastern Massachusetts.

The Water Element is not under control

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:16:53 GMT

Why so much about water all of a sudden? Those who have known me for a long time know I have an inherited tendency to lurch into new subjects with great energy from time to time and water has been popping up a lot lately. There are lots of interesting water-related issues to write about and I have a special blog category about water. A recent two part NPR Morning edition story captures some of the issues that come into play.

Way too huge of a subject: Fishing to plumbing to sewage to mercury to bonding bills to drought.

thirsty businesses look back to the rust belt

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:04:44 GMT

Milwaukee has plenty of water, however, and that rust belt city is using low water and sewer rates to lure companies to set up shop there and keep the ones that are already there happy.

via an NPR Morning edition story

Nebraska Drought affects Grand Island Drinking Water

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 01:18:29 GMT

Grand Island Nebraska is finding that nitrate levels in drinking water go up when the Platte river runs dry (as it probably will this year) . Agricultural run-off contributes nitrates to ground water in rural areas. The people of Grand Island have their well fields right in the zone where if there is enough water in the river, the river water presses the nitrate laden water back, but if there is not enough water, the nitrate laden water flows into the well field.

Mon, 19 Apr 2004 23:54:11 GMT

Dr. Peter Gleick is an internationally recognized water expert, a
"visionary" as a matter of fact.

He will speak tomorrw about "A vision for water in the 21st century"
at the Bell Museum auditorium

reception and book signing: 4:30 pm talk: 5:15

Free and open to public

link:
http://wrc.coafes.umn.edu/Gleick_flier_bl.pdf

Zen and the Art of Stupid Bullshit Plumbing

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:34:05 GMT

I had one more day to fix the leak in the shower before the plumber is called in. It should be a simple case of replace the washer and screw the stem back in. But it is never that simple, is it? After two trips to the hardware store and heating up the stem on the electric stove to get the pieces apart, I gave up for the night. That plumber really has his work cut out for him now.

Denver is Running Dry

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 04:03:36 GMT

Running Dry is an amazing 3 part story in the Rocky Mountain News about Denver's water problems and the billions of dollars it will take to sustain our civilization there. I found it because the guy who did the graphics won a journalism award.

The articles provide insight into the physics of wells, the price of ignorance, the power of developers and the cost of water. Imagine buying a your dream home and finding out a month later that you have to pay $15,000 for a new well.

The article mentions a hotel in Denver that powered its elevator off of the water pressure in the newly discovered aquifers under Denver at the turn of the century. That is true steampunk material.

Seabrook, NH

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:09:21 GMT

Seabrook, NH has some really troubling water problems. Troubling for people with pools to fill and lawns to water, that is. 7,000 people must pay $6 million for water upgrades. Cry me a river.

DNR Trout Stream Easement GIS Layer

Wed, 07 Apr 2004 21:23:59 GMT

My cube neighbor is creating a database of all the easements owned by the state along trout streams. It will soon be available in GIS format. That is, you can download the data and make pictures like this, which is the new data layed over arial photos. This particular selection is Lower Gavin Brook in Stockton, MN:

Trapping Turtles

Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:13:33 GMT

This is a turtle tag. If you are a turtle seller or recreational turtle trapper, all of your traps require one. The DNR sells about 50 turtle licenses each year. Three people here have told me they taste like chicken. If not prepared properly they can be very high in contaminants because their fatty tissues store contaminants from their scavenger diet.

To prepare a snapping turtle, you chop the head off and let it bleed out for 24 hours because the involuntary movements last that long. If you don't hang them up while they are bleeding, they can crawl away without a head and get lost. Turtle is a popular item on the menu of area restaurants west of St. Cloud. I want to find out where I can try some.

the bill is due

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 14:10:17 GMT

When the budget worry beads come out, it is usually about medicare and social security, but another 500 pound gorilla is infrastructure needs, few more pressing and costly than water treatment. It looks like Atlanta is going first:

A federal judge's ruling that Atlanta's sewer system violates the Federal Clean Water Act prompts the city to begin replacing thousands of miles of sewer pipes. Replacing the pipes, many of which are nearly 100 years old, is expected to cost over $3 billion -- a price to be absorbed primarily by local citizens and businesses.

Yow. Listen to the All Things Considered piece.

ice fishing

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 02:29:32 GMT

I just came back from ice fishing on the St. Croix river. It is beautiful beyond imagining down there, but I froze my flesh to the point of morbidity and didn't catch any fish.

The people I was with all work for DNR fisheries and were kind of suprised at how slow it was. Walleye usually migrate there by now to get ready for spawning. We had two fish finders along and the guy who lives near there said that usually you can watch schools of fish swim by. Today there was nothing. We just saw our lures on there. Perhaps they are a little slow to make it up there this year.

Anyways, I had three hours to contemplate a hole in the ice. Jack caught two walleyes that were a little too small to keep. Then, right as we were getting ready to leave, he caught this bizarre thing with legs and gills called a mud puppy. It crawled around on the ice for a few seconds before freezing to a stop and then got pushed back down the hole. As they say, on a river, you never know what you'll catch.

New Stormwater Runoff Program

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:27:28 GMT

A half hour television special called After the Storm, co-produced by EPA and The Weather Channel, will air on The Weather Channel on Wednesday, February 4, 2004 at 8 pm and 11 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST). Additional showings are set for Sunday, May 9th at 8:30 and 11:30 pm EST and Saturday, June 26th at 8:30 and 11:30 pm EST.

After the Storm shows the connection between weather and watersheds. The program reminds viewers that a finite amount of fresh water exists on the planet, and that everyone needs to take steps to protect water resources.

The show highlights three case studies -- Santa Monica Bay, the Mississippi River Basin/Gulf of Mexico, and New York City -- where polluted runoff threatens watersheds highly valued for recreation, commercial fisheries and navigation, and drinking water. Key scientists, water quality experts, and citizens involved in local and national watershed protection efforts provide insight into the problems as well as solutions to water quality crisis.

After the Storm explains simple things people can do to protect their local watershed, such as picking up after one's dog and recycling household hazardous wastes. It also shows how some communities and private companies are getting involved through low impact development -- utilizing rain gardens and green roofs to minimize stormwater runoff. (Visit the EPA web site at for more information)

The Agency intends to make After the Storm available to other television stations and educational organizations interested in broadcasting the show.

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:57:10 GMT

I am looking for web sites relating to wastewater and found this nugget, a blogger who is posting his Experiences as a water and sanitation engineer in Guatemala....

But I can't find anyone talking about what I think is a huge sleeping budget issue: At some point, we as a society are going to have to fork over huge amounts of money to address water issues. Two big areas are immediately apparent to me: Projects that get water to people that have used theirs up and upgrades to our wastewater treatment infrastructure.

Wastewater:

It was more than 30 years ago that huge amounts of money were ploughed into building municipal wastewater plants. I remember when one of these was built outside of Springfield Mass. Bondi's Island. It made some neighborhoods of Springfield unbearable for a while and we could smell it up on the hill in Longmeadow on summer nights. We used to call a guy Bondi's because he let out a vicous fart one day at lunch.

When the wind is right, I can smell the Pig's Eye treatment plant outside of the DNR. Security guards refer to it as the shit factory. One of the security guards at the DNR told me that she was stationed there for two days, but refused to go back because the smell made her sick. Another guard told me it is where they station you if you make too many mistakes at another place.

I work to keep the daylight world of work and family and recreation completely seperate from the subject of "what happens after I flush the toilet, but stories like "Minnehaha creek hit with 300,000 gallons of spilled sewage" remind me of the existence of an infrastructure that wisks away my defamation.

I am expecting this hidden world to inch its way into our attention. The decay is real. Pipes and pumps need replacing. Spills due to broken equipment are real. It will be interesting to see how communities, especially the ones who don't even want to pay for sidewalks, will deal with it. And it will be interesting to watch politicians, especially the ones who have bullshitted their way into office by promising lower taxes and smaller government avoid the issue.