water pollution

Let's not forget about the FUDS (Formerly Used Defense Sites), especially those here in Canada. You can easily find an exciting mixture of mercury, cadmium, other heavy metals, and decades of leaks from the POL (Petroleum, Oils, Lubricants) tank farms

 

As a youngster, I had gerbils that died from blood poisoning because they peed and pooped in their water dish. I should have known better and given them a bottle with a spout instead of an open dish, but my point is that we're really no smarter. We've used our life-sustaining bodies of water as toilets for far too long. If humans were the first on the food chain to suffer, instead of the last, we might have wised up by now.

 

When you think about it, you have to be pretty stupid to have the waste from your toilet emptying into the same lake you pump your drinking water from. No city would do that would they?

 

No, but the city upstream probably does.

 

Is there an upstream in a lake?

 

If the lake is big enough, absolutely. There are lakes that have strong currently too. I'm thinking great lakes and the like. I was really thinking about rivers. There are a shocking number of municipalities in the States that dump all sorts of shite (literally) into rivers untreated. Then they get in a row with their downstream neighbors and eventually one of them gets the K-mart that they've both been vying for.

 

A lake without a current, however slight, would be a pond. Everything's either upstream or downstream. Even at the base of a glacier where the trickle starts, fresh snow removing particulates from the atmosphere is 'upstream' in the water cycle.

We put septic fields near aquifers, dam lakes and use them as tailing ponds, dump toxic chlorine in the drinking water, and flush it all 'away'...beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life here.

 

What about the Great Salt Lake? There aren't any out flows so there can't be a current... except perhaps tidal or wind driven.

 

Maybe you've got me on that one. Is there an inflow? Could evaporation be considered the outflow? Perhaps it should be renamed "Great Salt Pond"

 

Plenty of inflows, it's not just an intersection of the atmosphere and the water table. "Great Salt Pond" doesn't have the same ring though, does it. It sounds like a kiddie pool filled with water from a hose and a bag of Morten's salt. Who the hell would wanna play in that?

 

Anyone downstream from neighbors on the Colorado is probably getting toilet water right now, to my way of understanding. In some cities of the arid west they are also contemplating more direct "toilet to tap" programs to recycle water. I guess at some point, all water is recycled, but yuck.

Anyway, the state of the world's water supply is pretty disgraceful, as the OP noted.

 

Useless fact: It takes 7 years for water to flow through Lake Geneva

 

The growing trend here is to reuse water from treatment works to irrigate crops such as tomatoes, lettuce, Cabbage, potatoes etc. I'm not sure the percentage but it is high. I believe solids are used to make soil conditioners.

It takes 3 years to dry out sewerage.

 

I don't have any links to back this up, but about six months ago, I caught a program on NPR that spoke about a (proposed?) plant in southern California that would treat sewage/water to the point that it could be used as drinking water when finished. Does anyone else have a recollection about that? I was in the car at the time and found it fascinating. Like Pat above, it makes sense in these ultra dry climates to get the maximum use out of our water. We have the technology.

 

You can use membrane bioreactors to dramatically clean up sewage to the point of it being perfectly suited for irrigation. It takes extra steps - ozonation, UV disinfection (Induction lamps), extra flocculation and coagulation, and clarifying, - to have the water suitable for potable use

Sludge dewatering is much faster than 2-3 years. An ideal treatment plan would use sludge/sewage digesters to capture methane, use the methane to produce on-site power to run the process, and end up with an irrigation water solution that is a net energy producer. ROI is typically under 5 years

 

Water treatment plants seem to be an untapped energy resource. All of that nutrient rich water in one spot. It seems like a no brainer for the plant operators. Make the initial investment and bye bye power bill. Cities should be all over this, esp if the plant is a net producer... that's free money.

 

water is a very stinky issue we have to deal with and i agree the urgency cannot be overstated. i live in an area that probably has one of the best fresh water sources in the world, the Pacific Northwest. our underground aquifers have supplied us with the highest quality untreated water found anywhere in the world, but even that situation is now changing.

in the past 10 years there have been a dozen contamination alerts taken from wells drilled into the aquifer (underground river formed when rains from mountain streams filter thru several thousand feet of sand and rock resulting in the very purest of healthy water with just the right dissolved mineral content) which is caused by man-made surface pollution.

main source of this pollution is leakage from AUTOMOBILES that eventually get washed down the storm drains then flushed out to Puget Sound untreated. what is the magnitude of this?? a study in 2006 concluded that the Puget Sound basin discharged oil and other fluids on a level equal to the Exxon Valdez spill every 3-5 years!!

unfortunately, around here, we have not paved over the entire area, so a lot of this pollution does not get to the ocean, it soaks right into the ground. now the aquifer is usually protected by an impenetrable layer of rock, but holes drilled into this layer to access water has introduced the ability to ruin this water supply.

now, why is this a stinky issue?? well for years, we were able to access the aquifer from only a few areas and still supply water for the entire area. growth in the area has

1) created more ground pollution caused by converting wetlands and forrests into housing developments which increases the likelihood that it could reach the aquifer

2) global climate change has changed rain patterns to where the flow of the aquifer (which only 15 years ago was widely regarded as "endless") has been significantly reduced. introduction of pollution is enhanced by lower flow rates.

failure to use alternatives like low flow toilets or even waterless urinals (which should have been REQUIRED for every public building in the state of WA... #1 reason why it fails?? slight smell of urine... its a BATHROOM for petes sake (sorry pete!@!) what the HELL do you expect?!!)

so when you say that driving an EV is too inconvenient for you because of range, speed, cost or whatever else your excuse (and for the estimated 35% of you who simply cannot use a NEV due to where you live, FRICKING MOVE!!) is,

weigh that excuse with paying $4 a gallon for gas AND $2 a gallon for WATER

 

Ny numbers come direct from the Bolivar treatment works web site that the sludge is dried for up to 3 years and that is in Adelaide with very low rainfall.

The Bolivar Treatment Works is almost self powering but one wonders if there are efficiency gains they might explore?

I also wonder why there is waste gas to flare? Wouldn't it be better to have excess generation capacity and use all the gas? For that matter they could supliment the gas with natural gas to create a co-generation plant and supliment the grid! There is a natural gas pipe right out front.