Overkill from the environmental perfection folks

[ej510]

Environmental perfection will be the death of the Middle Class.

If you doubt that, take a look at your city utility bill. A large chunk of what you’re paying for sewer and water is the direct result of state and federal overkill with environmental regulations.

Manteca’s treated wastewater for years exceeded state quality standards. The water the city returned to the San Joaquin River was - and still is - substantially cleaner than what floats by on any given day. The city hired a chemist over 10 years ago to prove it.

But the state wasn’t interested. They had switched test fish for ammonia content in treated wastewater from a native species found in the Delta to minnow fingerlings that are super sensitive to ammonia. The result is Manteca - and a host of other nearby cities - failed the tests. The result was at least a $20 million tab to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant or about a third of the bill for the retrofit and expansion project.

Cont'd at the link: http://www.mantecabulletin.com/section/38/article/25403/

Fuck this writer. Our goal should be to eliminate all poisons out of our water. Standards should increase.

[Zoeisright]

1. No shit standards should increase.

What kind of mindless dumbfuck fool thinks that water is too clean?

[zipplewrath]

2. Actually, it can be

Not with respect to ammonia of course. The standards should become more strict over time. But you don't really want to be dumping "distilled" water or any equivalent into a river. River water has all manners of nutrients in them and you want them to be there, along with appropriate levels of oxygen.

[ej510]

3. True, but with our science there has to be a way to put back the nutrients.

[quaker bill]

11. It could be

but generally sewage effluent does not suffer a problem with being too clean.

Every source of nutrients, even dilute nutrients, contributes to the total daily maximum load. Naturally, rivers do not have treated sewage effluent flowing into them. The fact that a waterbody is already eutrophied by cultural non-point sources should not be used as an excuse to contribute to the problem, even at low levels. That said, there are reasonable and practicable standards. Thermodynamics makes removing concentrated pollutants relatively inexpensive, but very dilute pollutants are at a high entropy state and thus expensive to remove. The challenge grows as the entropy factor in the equation becomes quite large and therefore removal requires vastly more energy input.

[GKirk]

4. There is a point of diminishing returns...

...should the water from a waste water treatment plant come out as clean as tap water?
I don't think so.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Why not?

Too expensive?

[mitchtv]

6. maybe not like tap water, but as clean as the

water at the intake valve before treatment

[GKirk]

7. Exactly...

...what would be the point of cleaning it cleaner than the body of water
that you are discharging it into?

[BeFree]

8. Ammonia

Is there ammonia in the feed water? Chlorine? Toilet Turds? Drugs?

Clean up your crap, is what the laws says.
If those up stream of you are dumping, then get them to stop, too.

[Shagbark Hickory]

9. Hmm. If only sewage could be used for something practical.

[GKirk]

10. Politicians seem to fling it pretty good n/t

[jmowreader]

12. It is, but only inside the Beltway

Republicans are so full of shit they have to be getting it from somewhere.