DailyDirt: Don't Drink The Water
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Water is abundant in most places, and it's generally free -- except for folks who only drink bottled water. So people tend to take water for granted, but there are plenty of reasons to conserve water. Here are just a few reminders.- About 60% of people (surveyed by the WateReuse Research Foundation) don't want to drink water that has ever had direct contact with sewage. The other 40% are wastewater engineers. [url]
- Manufacturing plants are apparently releasing lots of pharmaceuticals into wastewater streams. And wastewater processing facilities aren't catching the drugs before releasing them into rivers... [url]
- Oklahoma is responding to its ongoing drought after seeing more than its fair share of triple digit temperatures. Unfortunately, some predictions say this "exceptional drought" could last a bit longer, maybe until autumn. [url]
- To discover more related links on stuff we eat or drink, check out what's brewing on StumbleUpon. [url]
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Filed Under: dirty, drought, pharmaceuticals, wastewater, water
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This has benefits for the entire community since part of the filtering is done at the homes(cells of cities) there is less waste water to be treated elsewhere so less cost for the city and in cases of disasters people will have clean water no matter what.
This is a process. Kids who grow up will probably be the first ones that will learn that that water is not dangerous and barriers will start to fall.
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Re:
So you don't really have to make people participate in treatment to understand this, they just need to be educated about how it all works. This is probably part of the general apathy (or even downright hostility in some quarters) to science and science education that the US is dealing with.
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water...
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Re: Re:
People are distrustful of others, they need to find out things for themselves.
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Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
A toilet uses water basically as a source of power, and, given the way it is constructed, it can only use water at a "effective head" of about six inches or a foot. In a way, that is as if you insisted on running your house on three-volt electric current, all the way back to the generator. You can design a toilet which runs on vacuum from an electric-powered pump, and uses very little water. Of course, this may require a certain amount of rebuilding of the sewage plumbing as a whole. It was necessary to separate sanitary sewers from storm sewers, so that the wastewater treatment plants would not be overwhelmed by storms. If you wanted to save water beyond a certain point, it might be necessary to build additional classes of sewers and water supply lines.
The same principle applies for washing. You can combine water and compressed air in a single stream, to get much more effective washing action than that obtained by water alone. You may at some time or another have tried to fill a glass from the sink when there was an air bubble in the water line. In that case, you may remember that the glass was slammed out of your hand, and smashed into the bottom of the sink. Air is a compressible fluid, and and it can store a good deal of energy.
Of course, one has to understand the limits of application much of this material. In most populated parts of the country, we have run-off and flooding issues, not drought issues, except for crop irrigation at the peak of summer. The water discussion is framed by people living in either California or Arizona.
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Seriously
That was funny, but it was an interesting article presenting a real problem and the comedy of techdirt was not helping any.
..so I will take it upon myself to distill some useful information from the sea of waste:
Distilling is probably something many people can get comfortable with.
When water evaporates, it turns into pure steam. If the temperature is just right, it leaves behind everything impure and only the water molecules (pure H2O) turn into a gas. An enclosure then diverts this gas into a clean waiting area, where it cools and once again becomes liquid, except that all the impurities stayed behind.
If that description is not enough, perhaps the audience will appreciate an "x-ray" or other setup to measure some property of samples of the distilled water and show on a chart how this measurement almost exactly matches that of pure water and completely disagrees with the values for all sorts of other impure water examples.
A video showing a tour of the processing site with animations of the molecules moving along and the testing done on the clean samples afterward should convince just about anyone.
If more, then have the processing site bottle that very water under a given brand that many locals might recognize at the store. If they come across the water that way first, they will realize they really have always had little choice but to trust the engineers.. and everything is gonna be alright.
..
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Re: Seriously
The point remains that no water out there is 100.000000000% pure. But then the air isn't pure either and we open our mouths all the time and likely collect many molecules of many impurities that dissolve in our mouth, skin, etc.
Ewww yuck
.. but this brings up another idea that may help calm people. We can test the distilled water against the purity of the typical glass used to drink the water. Hopefully the water would come out sparkling.
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We have no water shortage.
The problem is a lack of energy and the money system hampering our efficient use of resources - if we just scrapped the money system first, we could use the resources of the planet to build literally as many desalinization plants we needed. We could turn the Sahara into a garden, if we so wanted - sure, it would be quite the project, but nothing that is beyond us as a race. But obviously, as long as we do bone-headed things like calculating it on the basis of money, profit and the like it's not going to happen.
That said of course, water pollution isn't something we should accept; if we mix in crap into it, it should get taken right back out before we let it back out into the world.
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Re: Re: Seriously
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope
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Re: Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
You cannot ever say that water has never been sewage, or a part of flesh, or a part of a ancient animial.
Water that has be reclaimed from sewage is CLEANER that natural fresh water that you might find in a mountain stream.
How do you think those aquaducts got filled up in the first place ? by RAIN..
Yes, just like the oceans, and the rivers, and yes, recyled sewage is more clean (pure) that untreated river water.
But it's all the same water, it's ALL been sewage at some stage.
And ofcourse everyone know fish fuck in water, yes the water you drink !!!
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Re: Re: Re: Seriously
They use microbes, and bacteria, that consume the nasties in the water, then they place the water in settling tanks (after airation tanks) and settle the microbes to the bottom and take the clean water off the top of the tank.
The water is samples and tested in a lab for microbs, torbidity, and purity, then it has other chemical added to it, (like clorine and flouride, and lime) to finish the cleaning and purification process.
yes, all rain water is distilled water, but when it falls on the ground it becomes essentually sewage, and dirty, and polluted.
If you had a full lab for of water testing equipment you would not be able to measure any different between recyled sewage and river water, except the sewage would be cleaner.
Put river water and sewage through the same process and you cannot tell the difference between the two.
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Re: We have a FRESH WATER shortage
Fresh water is RARE, the percentage of fresh water on the planet is NOT constant, here in Australia we get some droughts, and we are surrounded by LOTS of water.
But it requires far too much energy to purify sea water for crops or animals.
Yes, same amount of total water, but the ratio of sea water to fresh water can change a great deal.
Try it, trying living on sea water !!! see how you go.
Why do you think people die of thirst when on the ocean ?
You sound a bit like homer simpson "water water everywhere, so lets all have a drink".
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Re: Re: Re: Seriously
Then you can have "powdered water" just add water !!!
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Re: Re: Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
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Re: Re: Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
Upland water supply reservoirs are usually protected by incorporating the lands around them into a wilderness park of one kind or other (typically a National Forest in the United States, though the State of New York has two huge state wilderness parks, the Adirondacks and the Catskills). In these upland areas of steep hillsides, machine cultivation never really took hold. The farmers mostly went bankrupt during the Great Depression of the 1930's, and were only too glad to be bought out by the state. If a large bear in Yosemite National Park should relieve himself in waters which ultimately flow to San Francisco's water supply, that does not involve mercury, or cyanide, or dioxin. No such assurances can be made for heavy industry. Inspecting a map, I find that in Australia, you have water reservoirs in the mountains above both Sydney and Melbourne. You can probably tell me how the land above them is protected.
I suspect you have no practical experience with massive inland river systems such as the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri system in America, or the Volga in Russia. I do not wish to cast aspersions on the Fraser River. I am sure it is a very nice little river in its way. However, you will appreciate that it is not in the same class as the great American and Russian rivers. Such rivers accommodate barge tows the size of ships.
Here are some links relating to the condition of the Ohio River. People do fish in it, but many of them are of the "catch-and-release" school. It is not recommended to actually eat fish from the Ohio River more than once a month.
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http://www.environmentohio.org/newsroom/clean-water-news/clean-water-n ews/ohio-river-designated-waterway-most-polluted-by-industrial-sources-in-new-report
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http://www.wvrivers.org/news2007/OhioRiverStandards.html
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Dan Klepal, "Ohio's waters more polluted Bacteria, heavy metals are main culprits," The Cincinnati Enquirer, Friday, January 23, 2004
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/01/23/loc_ohiorivers.html
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http: //www.bassmaster.com/news/ohio-river-pollution
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Re: Re: Re: Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
And no matter if it on the top of a mountain, or the bottom of a lake, animals live in catchment area's, and as they say "bear's shit in the forest", animals crap on the ground, it then rains, that rain (and sewage) ends up in the Dams, and those dams have fish in them that also crap in the water.
The water that comes out of the dams have to be treated before it can be used as drinking water.
Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri system
Mississippi River, the second longest river in the United States, and Jefferson River combine to form this system at a total length of 3,979 miles (6,352 km). (The Mississippi-Missouri River combined is 3,709 miles or 5,969 km).
The Murray-Darling is the longest river system in Australia.
The total length of the rivers in the Murray-Darling system is 6,695km
"I suspect you have no practical experience with massive inland river systems such as the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri system in America, or the Volga in Russia"
I might have a bit !!
If you looked up Australia on a map, you would see water is a very valuable item here, as it is in your country.
The water supply "snowy river scheme" was put there to generate electricity, it does not supply Sydney with drinking water.
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Re: Re: Re: Seriously
If you don't trust the ol' good activated carbon you could use reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, membrane filtration chemical precipitation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-liquid_extraction
More to the point if somebody is dumping something that can't be filtered by normal means there is something wrong and it is not with the filtration system.
Most drinking water today comes out from simple sand filters in water treatment plants and they don't use any of that fancy stuff because it is costly to install and it gets costly to maintain.
So in fact most people are already drinking sewer water when they use the tap water.
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Re: Re: water...-- Qualities of Water
So no there is no difference, not to mention that many water treatment facilities will also add minerals, fluoride and chlorine to the water, maybe that is what you perceive as being different.
ps: Most water treatment facilities use a simple sand filter to clean the water coupled chemical purification to precipitate solubles and disinfect the water.
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Re: We have no water shortage.
That is why everybody is talking about water conservation, there is not enough for everybody, not when every year at a rate of 0.5 positive growth(that is 350 million people a year today with a population of 7 billion).
If people don't stop breeding like rabbits, we all gonna die in our own crap, not to mention that nothing healthy for us can survive on sewer so food supplies will dwindle too, we are not like vegetation that uses water and have a symbiotic relation with their surroundings, our waste kills everything else that we depend on.
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Water Savings in Agriculture.
LED Grow-lamps are becoming cheap and efficient enough that they can be used in place of natural sunlight, in a windowless greenhouse, in which growing beds are stacked many layers high. The practice which was traditionally used for growing cannabis has been extended to tomatoes. The building is of course temperature-controlled, and any water which is evaporated from the plants can be readily recovered by condensation against the walls, floor, etc. The article cites a four-fold reduction in water usage compared to that in Israel. Savings in California's Imperial Valley would probably be about the same, or possibly better. The cited article does not refer to carbon dioxide, but carbon dioxide operates on plants like growth hormone on animals.
http://techcentral.my/news/story.aspx?file=/2011/4/12/it_news/20110412104445&sec=it_ news
At any rate, the case for growing vegetables in California diminishes. Once you have a full controlled artificial environment, you may as well grow vegetables in Iowa, closer to most markets. The traditional rationale for farming fruits and vegetables in California was the absence of frost, and the consistent daily availability of sunshine.
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Re: We have no water shortage.
http://www.saharaforestproject.com/#/
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