Is that a Jewish Space Lazer?
3 Likes
If you get it from a well, there are no plants involved.
5 Likes
Oh, I bet there are a lot of rotting plants and other stuff seasoning the water on that well and even a Swamp Thing or two down there. I was talking about the Florida system in general, going straight to chemical looks expensive.
I actually lived in a house (on a third city lol) where we had to get water from a well, got fed up with carrying buckets to wash laundry and the dishes and drilled an artesian well with a pump.
4 Likes
My childhood home had well water, but electric, no buckets involved.
8 Likes
Same; our well was electric and just pumped the water into our plumbing system.
8 Likes
Mine was a… Complicated situation involving trying to reform the old abandoned maybe haunted childhood house of my ex-husband. 0/0 wouldn’t recommend it.
15 Likes
That’s from that tumblr link, and so is this:
ETA: I got both heat stroke and sun poisoning one day when I was 4 or 5. My clueless neighbor’s kids had already built up some resistance and were tanned, but not I, and it didn’t occur to her that I needed protecting. I was naturally sick AF for days and burnt to a crisp - agonized, as you can imagine. I’d get great tans before that happened to my FFFFFF-white skin, but since then I go straight from white to red. (When I’d take really good care of a sunburn, it would turn into a tan.)
When we took riding lessons, we’d be outside during warm and hot weather. I eventually realized I had to wear long sleeved, thin cotton dress shirts, and turn up the collar against the Sun, too. One hot sunny day a woman who worked at the stables yelled at me to at least roll up my sleeves, b/c I was making her feel even hotter. I am normally a civilized individual, but I yelled back, “NO!” and obviously meant it. She quickly realized why not, and said so. I told her I hate sunscreen - it’s greasy and always makes me break out.
16 Likes
I don’t understand why they need to water lawns right now anyway. It’s that time of year where it rains every afternoon at five, like clockwork.
5 Likes
…and the humidity is around 135% so no water’s evaporating.
6 Likes
I do think they need more data for Dasani, but in general, I’d expect it to come from wherever your nearest Coca-Cola bottling plant is located. It’s basically Coke that has had everything taken out except the water. 
The one that grinds my gears is Nestlé and Ice Mountain. In spite of its name, it’s pumped from Central Michigan on an industrial scale for a pittance in state license fees.
10 Likes
They do the same thing in San Bernardino
10 Likes
Agreed.
PFOAS/PFAS have been big in the news these past few years as the notable contaminant in water meant for human consumption.
And not just in groundwater either:
Thanks to the oil industry, Texas has rather a lot of VOCs in its air and water, and depending on whether you live close to a petroleum refinery or are merely downwind of one, breathing and drinking water may not be risk-free.
Here (ish) in central Texas, there are some statistically significant cancer clusters that are yet to be fully studied–often at the landowners’ own insistence because: property values–but quiet talk among local hydrogeologists typically brings up glyphosates and among other things, insecticides that target livestock (cattle esp.) parasites…
BUT
… the subject at hand was water sanitation, not water quality or purity per se…
Me too.
Using most consumer-grade T/O filters (for taste and odor) will at least remove chloramines (aka the stinkier part of “chlorine”).
Bingo.
Constituents in the water supply, constituents in and integrity of the supply infrastructure, the budget of the water supply corporation, temperature, distance, (contact) (and other) time… lots of variables.
Get 'em wrong and people get sick.
Flint Water Crisis: Everything You Need to Know
More problems with Flint water
Flint’s water supply was plagued by more than lead. The city’s switch from Detroit water to the Flint River coincided with an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease (a severe form of pneumonia) that killed 12 and sickened at least 87 people between June 2014 and October 2015. The third-largest outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease recorded in U.S. history—as well as the discovery in 2014 of fecal coliform bacteria in city water—was likely a result of the city’s failure to maintain sufficient chlorine in its water mains to disinfect the water. Ironically, the city’s corrective measure—adding more chlorine without addressing other underlying issues—created a new problem: elevated levels of total trihalomethanes (TTHM), cancer-causing chemicals that are by-products of the chlorination of water.
Chemistry. Pitiless, merciless, often ignored and poorly understood: chemistry. It’ll bite back and hard. And for Flint, Detroit children who survive all that lead ingestion, the consequences with be with them for their entire lifetimes.
Ye gods.
I’m citing Texas data here only because so much of my engineering office worklife is based on Texas projects. YMMV.
9 Likes
Yes… and…
That first figure showing the 800,000 gal/day water budget for a golf course can be a bit misleading. Depends on the reasons why that golf course is there.
A common practice by septic engineers is to design a system that will minimally treat graywater and/or blackwater just enough to legally qualify the resulting liquid for non-potable irrigation use. So developers create a big ol’ “amenity” like a golf course, on which the problematic treated effluent becomes nutrient-rich irrigation water that can be gotten rid of through land application:
United States Environmental Protection, Office of Research and Development Agency. Washington, DC. Process Design Manual: Land Application of Sewage Sludge and Domestic Septage. EPA/625/R-95/001. September 1995.
I dunno about the rules re water quality requirements for creating snow.
I can definitely tell you that treated effluent of any kind is not suitable for swimming pools or supplying a family home for a day! 
10 Likes
So much better than a shady parkland with sports fields for the young’uns and wildlife habitats for critters. /s
8 Likes
There is talk here in our semi-arid area of irrigating sports fields with treated effluent, aka purple pipe (non-potable, treated, reclaimed water).
The concept is not new:
https://www.cstx.gov/departments___city_hall/csu/water/reclaimed_water
Devil is in the details–the water would have to be treated to a specific standard so it’d be ok for human [skin, etc.] contact.
The shady parkland would have been “in the way” of all those big earth-moving machines, and would have had to been treated respectfully, cordoned or fenced off, etc. so it’s just way easier–read: faster and cheaper–for developers to scalp it all, let the machines and pavement go everywhere on the parcel, then backfill later on the super-compacted soils with Red Death1 or similar soil devoid of biota and extremely cheap, slap in some (typically) non-native landscaping that looks right to out-of-towners and new residents from out of state, and irrigate the hell out of it until the last homesite is sold.
(That last part is sometimes called “the taillight warranty” as in “we warranty our work for as long as you can still see the taillights on our construction vehicles.”)
Step 3. Profit!
Yes.
But the Austin, Texas bubble is ground zero for a metasized real estate frenzy, so it’s an especially fraught battle even before we factor in the yeehaw attitude Texas developers have ‘bout th’ envirrrrnmint.
9 Likes
if by better, you mean more profitable, then oh wait, you’re trying to make a critique of late stage capitalism…
2 Likes
Pretty much, yeah. Why put effort into something nice that would benefit the community when you can lay down a green backdrop for McMansions?
Public parks? That sounds like socialism /s
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
