Water Fowl Foul Water

This is the June challenge from the Love Your Rivers Campaign, which happens to speak to an issue dear to my heart.  Hmm, I wonder what this says about me... Anyway, I have long been a loud complainer about poop of all kinds, so this really toots my horn, dog poop, bird poop, people poop:

June 2011 Challenge Craptastic!

People and our furry and feathered friends contribute to the ickiest form of river pollution: number two. Many of Oregon's most common river problems—from unsafe bacteria levels to wildlife-choking algae blooms—are caused in part by poorly managed poo-lution. Ducks and dogs can’t help it, but you can: Take this month’s pledge. Your challenge Always pick up after your pet Don’t feed the ducks If your home has a septic tank, maintain it regularly Take this challenge and you’ll be entered to win a a two-person basic skills kayak class from Alder Creek Kayak ($130 value). Take at least six monthly challenges before October 2011, and you’ll have a chance to win the grand Love Your River prize.

Free Webinar on Nitrate in Groundwater - Focus on Oregon's Southern Willamette Valley Groundwater Management Area

This is very short notice, but perhaps someone can take advantage out there?

There is a joint presentation on the issue of nitrate in groundwater – here is a fantastic opportunity to hear the latest information on the Southern Willamette Valley Groundwater Management Area - as well as views from Wisconsin’s Public Drinking Water Program and an update from USGS on their NAWQA project including national data on nitrate in groundwater.

Here is the EPA website information – and there is a link to register for this Webinar below.

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EPA's Watershed Academy is pleased to sponsor its 57th free Webcast Seminar.

Webcast on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 10 AM PT

"Nitrogen and Phosphorus Pollution Series: Nitrate in Ground Water"
by Jill Jonas, Director, Bureau of Drinking Water and Groundwater, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources,
Audrey Eldridge, Coordinator for the Southern Willamette Valley Groundwater Management Area, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and
Neil M. Dubrovsky, PhD, Chief, Nutrients and Trace Elements National Synthesis Project, National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA), U.S. Geological Survey



Please use this link to register

http://water.epa.gov/learn/training/wacademy/webcasts_index.cfm

So much for the water they drink

Last week was National Groundwater Awareness Week and while I exhort anyone out there reading to take a look at the website related to this event and do what they can, I have to bring the sorry news that a local jurisdiction in Central Oregon (Deschutes County) decided last week to roll back the clock on groundwater/drinking water protection for a portion of its population by rescinding a rule specifying that people need to clean up the sewage they are pumping into the ground. While I say this was "decided" last week, the vote of the three person commission is still to come, but based on the decisions last week, the deed is fait accompli. Lovely way to celebrate National Groundwater Awareness Week, Central Oregon! Rah, Rah, Go Team! ("Groundwater protection ordinance to be scrapped," Bend Bulletin, Thursday, March 10, 2011)

My local sources say that one of the three votes needed to rescind this rule is a mole in the Republican party installed by the local tea party ideologues and the other comes from a pushover posing as a Democrat. Good old boys to the core. The third vote, and I actually have not heard how this vote will go, is a good new girl that actually seems to think about issues rather than vote according to election statistics.

So, while I like to bring positive exhortations of how we can make a difference in this world, my first posting after a bit of hiatus is a look into short-sightedness and essential greed.

World Toilet Day 2010!

Did you know that November 19 is World Toilet Day?

World Toilet Day is designed to acknowledge the life-saving power of the toilet and appreciate the toilets in our lives. Believe it or not, more people on earth have cell phones than have access to a toilet! Which may be a sad commentary on where our priorities are - but maybe this is a call to use that ubiquitous communication device to get the word out.

Not long ago, New York, London, and Paris were centers of infectious disease, facing the same water problems that cities like Mumbai, Lagos, and Rio de Janeiro face today. Life expectancy was low and child death rates were as high then as they are now in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was sweeping reforms in water and sanitation that enabled human progress to leap forward.

This also ties into my post a couple days ago about the Paul Simon Water for the World Act that you can learn about here.

Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection and a big cause of water pollution. This means people must relieve themselves in open streets, fields, or dangerous back alleys. In India alone, the number of people who practice open defecation is double the population of the U.S. You can imagine how this affects health not only because of direct contact with diseases from sewage but also from pollution of water supplies used for drinking, cooking and washing. And, it is sad to say, but there are still people in the United States that are not hooked to a sewer system or septic system that will help protect water quality or their health.

The purpose of World Toilet Day is to raise a stink about this lack of sanitation that causes not only embarrassment, concerns for safety, and lack of dignity, but preventable disease, illness, and all too often, death.

Water.org is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries. Learn more by visiting their website at www.water.org.

Outside the Box - 2

As promised, here is the next chapter in the story of blindered thinking and greed to follow up on "Outside the Box - 1."

To sum, my previous post presented the City of Bend's position on proposals by citizens or developers, or in this case, public entities, trying to make their dollars work for the general good. The City is opposed to having individual systems within reach of their sewer system because then they don't get their new cash cow. In this particular case we have a public entity that found out how much the city would charge to connect to sewer and is opting to do an individual system because they are actually in a location that allows them to avoid the duplicative fees the city would charge if they were in the city limits/service area. End of story, right?

Nope, this is just where it starts to get interesting because the state representative of the Oregon DEQ's Onsite Program (this is the program that issues permits and oversees individual wastewater treatment systems) is putting the heat on the public entity to connect to sewer.

What's wrong with this picture? DEQ is a state agency facing potentially significant budget cuts, along with all the other state agencies in Oregon, that is telling another public entity to pay permit fees and service fees (forever) to the city of Bend. I wish my budget were so healthy that I have the luxury to send business away. But I must say that I have a healthier belief in my own capabilities than this DEQ person. If this person is working in a job in which they so little belief in that program's capability to (in DEQ's case) protect public health and the environment, then that person is taking the public's money for doing work they either don't have the expertise to do or that they believe is work is not worth doing. In the first case, this person should be reassigned to a position for which they are qualified (perhaps this is the Peter Principle at work?), in the second case, they should be fired for ethics violations for taking public money under false pretenses.

Outside the Box - 1

I've gotten a few heads' ups over the last few weeks that I've been turning around in my head (as opposed to getting things posted in cyberspace). One came from a professional venting a spleen about institutional stupidity, another from a resident venting along similar lines, and a third from a newspaper article that seemed remarkably well timed considering the first two events. Also coincidentally, each of these comes from Central Oregon, which makes me wonder what's in the wind. Or perhaps the folks that care about what I say are concentrated there. Dunno.

The first that I'll talk about comes from a citizen that had a conversation about a commercial development in Bend that often suffers from sewage overflows because the development was approved in an area that does not have the sewage line capacity to take what this commercial area doles out. This person asked why the city doesn't require that the commercial development treat its wastewater and reuse it on the landscaping that is required for all commercial developments. This approach has been taken in other places in the country and has the effect of reducing demand on an overloaded collection system and increasing capacity at the treatment plant to serve other areas that perhaps are more easily served.

Here is the City of Bend's response:

The City Engineer said that the City would allow alternate sewage treatment systems for these types of facilities, provided they met DEQ and EPA standards. However, the City would require a hookup to the City's system as a backup in the event of failure of the on-site system. The City does not want to be put into the position of having to take over these systems if they fail -- it would not be an efficient use of resources.

Any alternative system would have to meet standards. The water has to be treated to an appropriate level so that it meets the standards of wherever it will be discharged/applied. There will be solids that will have to be applied in a permitted location.

The City's existing treatment plant currently treats wastewater to a high level, and the solids and liquid are disposed of with minimal environmental impact. One concern the City has is whether any alternative system would meet the same standards as the City's treatment system. However, if the City is satisfied that the alternate system meets applicable standards, the City would cooperate in reviewing and approving the system.

In essence the City requires that the developer of such a system obtain the appropriate permits to operate a wastewater treatment system (perhaps under the same permit system that the city itself operates under) AND pay to hook up to the city system. Firstly, it appears that the city is assuming DEQ/EPA authority in specifying permits and permit requirements, which I would be curious if they in fact have that authority. That would take some more research on my part to figure out. Secondly, the city is requiring a hook up immediately, rather than waiting for a potential problem to manifest itself. This smacks of greed because they want the hook up fee now rather than later. Not surprising from a city that has exhibited similar greed in the past. Thirdly, there is a bald statement that a separate system would not be efficient if the city had to take over its operation. Why would the city ever have to take over operation of a private facility if the DEQ were doing its job? Why is this necessarily inefficient? I, for one, would be interested in seeing a cost-benefit analysis of operating a separate system versus blasting big holes for miles in bed rock to increase collection system capacity.

Stay tuned for part 2...

Take Back the Power!

Or, How We Can Really Make the Power Companies Even More Dependent on We the Ratepayers

This posting is ostensibly about power generation, so why am I, Oregon Water Thorn, tackling this topic?  Because the issue of distribution and big utilities can, naturally, be translated to water or sewage distribution/collection.  Think about the parallels:

I have a friend that lives over in Bend that was griping the other day about the local electric utility raising rates. A normal response, in fact, a great response, because the rate hike prompted a declaration that the family would lower their electricity use to avoid paying more. Assuming that the electric utility's goal was to cover the increasing costs of electricity generation, then this family's response is perfect. After all, conservation is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to increase system capacity regardless of whether a given distribution system delivers electricity or water services. In short, these kinds of homeowners end up working towards the utility's goal of maximizing the resource in the cheapest way possible.

But I know that most homeowners don't understand the real power that comes with distributed power generation. And I use the dualistic word "power" in this context in the "We the People" sense because without we the ratepayers, utilities would not exist.

Given this fundamental linkage between paying rates and the big utility (to draw the obvious comparison for you, paying taxes and the big guv'mint), I don't understand why Tea Party types don't all have grid- or non-grid-tied photovoltaic, or wind, systems on their land. This is the common person's arena where they can jump in to free themselves of the big utility. Free themselves of rate increases. Become independent in that true American homesteading fashion. And, with grid-tied systems, an individual property becomes part of the electric production network which makes the utility just that little bit beholden to you for their stock in trade.

Power to the people, by the people, for the people.

The photovoltaic, or PV, system on the roof of our state capitol building is a most elegant representation of this concept and, in my opinion, one of the best investments Oregon has ever made. And it makes me wonder, why aren't more of us free of monthly power bills?

I suspect it is because of the upfront investment that's needed to take back the power. In a sense, it is the very corporate concept that it takes money to make money that prevents a lot of cash-strapped folks I know from making the investment. But I also know a lot of non-cash-strapped folks that could easily make the investment and that are the classic Tea Party type complainers.

So I have to ask, what is freedom worth? What is it worth to a nation of so-called rugged individualists to be truly independent in such a fundamental part of their lives? Apparently it is not worth much if the ever increasing complaints about rates are any measure.

So to return to my by-line, do I need to draw the parallel with water and wastewater? What is it worth to the folks that want small government to reduce the capacity of our water and wastewater systems? What is it worth to get off the grid of our municipal water and wastewater plants by using less, by harvesting rainwater, by reusing wastewater or greywater on our land? What is it worth to be free of that tie? Again, apparently not much, given the number of people I know that want to tie themselves to the big wastewater treatment system.

Greywater research from Colorado State

I noticed that the Oregon Onsite Wastewater Association was holding its annual conference in Portland this year. On the agenda were many things related to wastewater (perhaps a "duh" statement) but one item that caught my eye was a couple of presentations by Sybil Sharvell, Ph.D., and Larry Roesner, Ph.D. Dr. Sharvell's talk in particular was interesting because there was some data about cost savings for households in avoided sewer charges and some water quality data. The other interesting thing was that they avoided the use of kitchen sink wastewater altogether. Kitchen sinks were not included in their definition of greywater because greywater that includes kitchen sink water contained organics, nutrients and pathogens at levels that rival blackwater. Therefore, their thinking was, a wastewater stream that would meet the definition of residential strength wastewater should be treated in a full-service wastewater treatment system. The corollary being that the resulting greywater from this approach could be reused on a property with minimal treatment.

DEQ's failure to regulate - 2

I saw the article over in the Bend Bulletin the other day about a meeting the DEQ* was to hold in Central Oregon on February 4th, 2010.  The headline read:  DEQ to form committee for exploring nitrate issue and solutions.  How classic.  Like so many other actions to improve our society, here is a water protection effort that seems destined to die in committee.  


What I thought was particularly interesting about the article was the timeline that the Bulletin provided for what has happened already in the region.  Nitrates in groundwater are found first in a concentrated area in 1982 and then elsewhere in 1994.  I had to look at that twice and make sure I had my reading glasses on because I was dumbfounded.  That's a total of 28, yes, twenty-eight, years.  The DEQ has documented increasing levels of groundwater contamination in a large (125 square mile area according to the article) area over nearly three decades and they are going to form a committee!?!?


This is an area where one in ten of the wells sampled by the US Geological Survey shows signs of contamination?  Pick your favorite comedian and just imagine what they could do with material like this.  


The sad ending to the article is the series of people saying that it's good to take time to do these things right, that there's no emergency.  No, there is no emergency.  It is obviously too late to save the groundwater, the time for preventing pollution is obviously passed.  I must refer to an earlier post where I talked about delusional people.  This is a region's drinking water supply and yet the environmental protection agency for the state of Oregon is allowing protection actions to be waylaid by rhetoric. 


Three decades is an awfully long time to consider what to do about a groundwater contamination problem.  And to initiate a committee at the end of the three decades to decide what to do next is a pitiful excuse for environmental protection from our state environmental protection agency.  


The thorn is in Oregon DEQ's side for failure to act in accordance with it's own rules.  Duh.


*note the big red blob almost in the middle of the state on the map on this site, this is the region they're talking about in this case.

DEQ's failure to regulate

I noticed a while back that Jackson County is seeking an exception to one of Oregon's statewide land use planning goals in order to extend sewer services to rural properties where there is a demonstrated public health hazard.  Nothing extraordinary in that.  After all, if the public will be harmed by the failure of existing sewage treatment facilities to perform and there is no other way to fix the problem, then by all means, expand society's indebtedness* and put in sewers.  My bigger concern is the reason why this sewer extension is needed at all.  When you read the staff report from Jackson County, there is much discussion of how severely limited the soils are for septic systems and that is why they are failing and that is why they cannot be upgraded.  Here is an excerpt from page 10 of the staff report: 

"Figures 1 through 7 in Exhibit A presented in the background section of this document demonstrate: 1) How most of the soils in the Rogue Valley (Bear Creek Sub-Basin Area) are severely limited with respect to septic treatment and have other soil limitations such as severe shrink-swell characteristics and high water tables; 2) How dense rural and urban land uses, reliant on septic systems for sewage treatment, currently exist in many of these areas..."

The WTF moment in this is that no where in the country and certainly not in Oregon, could anyone have allowed a septic system on these types of soils for at least the last 20 years, if not longer.  These approvals are a clear violation of Oregon rule and provide an extraordinary example of how government can fall down on the job at taxpayer expense.  What motivates a government agency to violate its own rules?  I don't know the specific answer in this specific case but I'm sure we can speculate a little bit in the interest of once again highlighting motivations for action or inaction.

1. Button pushers on the outside:  Pressure that comes from outside of a regulatory agency is a potent motivator for public officials to approve something that ought not be approved in light of what the rules (which are just codified political winds) say.  This might be a motivation coming from elected types wanting to increase revenues to tax coffers or property rights activists threatening lawsuits or the nice older couple that just want to retire to the home they've been dreaming of all their lives.  
2. Rubber stampers on the inside:  Pressure that comes from within the regulatory agency is also a potent motivator and can be a lot more damaging and insidious.  This is pressure that comes from employees who want to look good to those folks higher in the food chain by avoiding controversy or property rights activists that are on staff and that tend to exert their own political will on their job or employees that don't have the huevos to stand up for what's right or worse, that don't care (For example, "One little house isn't going to make a difference."  A hundred houses and twenty years later, what have you got?)

So, in short, having septic systems located in soils that are severely limited for septic systems represents years and years of shoddy decision making that are now going to cost society (in this case residents of Jackson County) a huge amount of money.  WTF?   No wonder public employees have such a bad reputation.  The thorn is definitely in Oregon DEQ's side on this issue and this is not the only case of such short sighted decision making in Oregon.

*  My concern here is that we cannot, as a society, keep up with maintenance and scheduled upgrades to existing facilities, so why continue to add to society's financial burdens to install even more infrastructure that we can't afford to maintain (see the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card at:  http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/).

Comments on a Graywater Reuse Demonstration in Bangalore

I stole this link from the Rainbow Water Coalition site (thanks to Todd Jarvis).  It is a great little demonstration of how easily kitchen sink water can be reused.  If my math is correct this will treat up to about 30 gallons per day, easily accommodating what comes from a typical single family residence.  How many of you know people with water features in the back yard?

Bangalore graywater reuse video

There are a couple of things to think about here depending on if you are in a big municipal sewer context or in the little septic system context.  The big municipal sewer might really like these diversions because in the sense of total volume these kinds of installations will "buy" them sewer treatment plant capacity, probably at no cost to the municipality (assuming that homeowners install them on their own dime).  The other issue that municipalities may face if there is a very large proportion of graywater flow being redirected is a change in the quality of the sewage reaching the plant.  Depending on the proportion of commercial/industrial/residential contributions in the community waste stream, changes in the sewage quality may cause a change in the treatment process.  Not necessarily in all cases, and the change may be so gradual that little tweaks to the system can accommodate the change in incoming quality to still meet discharge standards.

In terms of small septic systems, particularly those that serve one house, the change in water quantity through the system can have a significant impact, positive and negative, depending on the kind of system in use.  A simple septic tank and trench kind of system will probably benefit from having graywater removed from the flow going to the septic tank because the remaining blackwater will be retained in the septic tank (primary digester) for a longer period, allowing more anaerobic digestion to take place.  In addition, the flow going to the trenches that distribute the water to the environment have to take less water and therefore, the life of the trenches is prolonged.  And that leads to lower costs to the homeowner, etc. etc.

With more mechanized (i.e. pumped) systems, you would hope and pray that the homeowner is working with a professional to make sure that the pumping cycles are lowered in this system to account for the lowered flow to the septic system because the septic tank will have a higher concentration of solids that could start moving towards the trenches.  These kinds of systems are supposed to have water levels sensors and alarms on them that help protect the system and alert the homeowner to the presence of a problem, but homeowners have been known to quietly cut the electrical connection to the alarm.  If this is done before the graywater diversion is installed or if the mechanized system is otherwise malfunctioning, then the effects on the treatment systems could be bad.

There are new kinds of septic systems permitted by the DEQ currently and some of these produce very high quality effluent, which is worthy of its own reuse discussion.  In these cases, why take only part of the water when all of it is potentially reusable?  This presents another opportunity to "buy" municipal treatment system capacity:  allow homes in urban areas to install an individual system and reuse the water on site.  Each home taken off the grid in this manner means treatment capacity to the city treatment works.

Land use equals water use

I was thinking, yes, a dangerous thing for someone who has more questions than knowledge or answers, about a comment I heard Todd Jarvis give a long time ago about land use planning being water use planning.  I know enough to be dangerous about our land use system but from my personal history in Oregon I am aware of how my family's farms in the Hillsboro area were gobbled up by the tech industry when Tektronix moved in.  My childhood memories of berry field and fruit orchards are just that, memories.  I still grieve when I have the misfortune to travel those roads these days...but living in another part of Oregon now, I can move on.  I don't live a traditional agrarian lifestyle, I am very much an urbanite and relish the opportunities provided by that environment.  But, true to my forebears, I grow my tomatoes, potatoes and carrots...I have my laying hens...and I really enjoy my urban farmsteading and find that, pardon the pun, it grounds me.  So what does all this have to do with water?  I keep thinking about the environmental impacts of paving our farmlands and about providing all the things that development in suburban areas needs to continue...electricity, sewage management, trash (or more hopefully recycling) service, roads, schools, police, fire, and water.  While I list water last, so many of the previous things need water to exist or affect water: 

• sewage wouldn't exist if we didn't have flush toilets, although I think that having indoor running water at sinks and showers is probably a really good public health deal ... so we need at least some kind of sewage management
• a lot of our electricity comes from hydroelectric sources ... how different would it be if all the big boxes had solar arrays covering their flat tops?
• trash maybe doesn't take a lot of water to deal with but I have read that there can be nasty stuff leaching out of landfills
• recycling probably takes water to clean materials or reprocess them - I posted the little report from DEQ of the lifecycle costs of recycling vs. reusing water bottles.  Interesting stuff and it makes you wonder if that is a good example of other parts of the recycling industry.  The gut says it probably is...
• roads are interesting to think about - not knowing a whole lot about how they are constructed I will hazard a guess that the water related impacts come after they are there - rain runs off them and picks up whatever cars, animals or leaking trash trucks leave behind.  I've heard of roads causing local changes to groundwater flow by creating an underground dam - all of a sudden, someone floods that never flooded before... 
• schools and police equal people in my mind and people are, to pull a quote from a Star Trek episode "bags of mostly water."  We need water to survive, duh.  But do we take more than we need?
• fire services are also people but the service, by definition, uses water but probably not something I begrudge.

I think the bone I'm picking is the "bags of mostly water" part of the equation.  People have to live somewhere and work somewhere and here, in the opulent, plush, US of A, people always assume they will have water when they turn on the tap or flush the toilet.  And because of that assumption, yes, land uses that support people, homes, businesses, roads, schools, sewage services, electricity services, ad nauseum, are water uses...farms are water uses....but what's the life cycle cost of paving farmland and growing people instead of berries?  I don't know.  Yet again, I think about things and am left with more questions than ever.