SkyPigeon123
51306
1430
4
Oct 17, 2024 2:09 PM
SkyPigeon123
51306
1430
4
MrStealUrChange
Wait until they hear about oceans
Zeeall
And yet 8 million(!) people die yearly from dirty water water. Why? There is no profit in selling clean water to poor people.
colderfish
My dad was a civil engineer and he used to travel around visiting sewage treatment plants. Some had tours where you were given a glass of water at the end. My dad would always point out that it was cleaner than tap water, because it hasnt been sitting in pipes all around the city for who -knows-how-long.
Pelican3
For the first time Miami-Dade County is recommending homeowners filter their drinking water because of their inability to remove microplastics.
otamolot
Another reason stay away from Ohio.
sherlockhooves
My town gets its water from mountain stream fed lakes, and we filter it through a giant slab of limestone. There are the other chemical treatments of course. But our tap water is some of the best I've ever had. I was hosting drink with some friends at my place once, one friend brought a couple traveling from the Midwest. I asked what they wanted and they said water, so I got them glasses from the tap. They were apprehensive at first, but said later it was the best tasting water they had ever had
guitarfourtysix
Astronauts' urine and sweat are almost entirely recycled into drinking water with the latest system. The end result, says NASA, is that the crew is drinking water that is even cleaner than Earth's.
duffman3335
The NE Ohio Regional Sewer District really got their SHIT together!
TheEvenPrez
The ultimate shitpost
skyhoshi
Someone once said. In all of life's existence on this planet. You are not the first to consume that water you are drinking.
daverbeans
Safe and clean until Bob forgets to change his damn gloves again.. Bob!
ActuallyMadeOfCheese
Bear Grylls is offended.
AceJohnny
In California, and I believe Texas, they are legally forbidden from cycling cleaned water from sewage source back into the drinking water system.
IIRC this is because of old laws not updated with advances in water treatment. (Modern reverse-osmosis can make cleaner water than you can get anywhere else!)
Where i live, you will sometimes see purple pipes around the city, for transporting said cleaned water, which is often used for landscaping.
jridley
Hot showers and flush toilets are really significant achievements in civilization.
Smidge204
Literally all water has been sewage at some point. All of it.
ElbowDeepInAHeadlessHorseman
fimbl
Very cool. Now please do that to Ohio Republicans.
spinballwizardmtg
laner7112000
ChloeRed
"What do you do with the stuff you can't clean?" "Elect it, normally"
Volpe42
The plant in my town puts out water that's cleaner than the tap water in town. And the tap water is clean. Just what they put out from the plant would make Water Boy proud
Anthedon
We should be setting up renewable energy systems entirely dedicated to purifying/desalinating incomprehensible amounts of water. It's 1/
GriffinMann41
The issue is desalination just...doesn't work well. Like you can't economically scale it. The largest desalination plants in the world don't produce that much water in comparison to how much the areas they're in consume, and it's in large part due to just how incredibly energy inefficient they are.
Anthedon
going to become a very real issue for agriculture/livelihoods worldwide soon enough. A very large national security issue we can solve. /2
salunatics
When I stated in water/wastewater treatment design I was amazed to learn that wastewater has twice the electrical redundancy of water. Surely, (I mistakenly thought) drinking water is more critical! The multi-facet why does not fit into a comment box.
gir2195
The To-Do List is a gem
Tarmaccian
Uneducated guess: Much more of the treatment process is time-sensitive, so losing power means losing a whole process, which means more backlog, stored waste, and chance of leaks. Since treatment feeds water supplies, a treatment stoppage means a subsequent loss of clean water, too, regardless of electrical availability.
Meanwhile, clean water has towers ensuring pressure and supply even during brief pumping outages, so it can avoid disaster with less redundancy.
How'd I do?
EclipseHorizon
PFAS has entered the chat...
Mynamedoesntmatteronlylifematters
*Devils piss has entered the chat
rrlyrae
PFAS have always been in the chat. they are also in every other chat as well.
EclipseHorizon
Because PFAS are in all of us now. Like inside cuddles. Just, you know, in your organs.
gordy77
And steroids, pharmaceuticals, EDCS...
neuronicle
Well, in the UK under 14 years of Tory privatization of state water companies it kind of went the other way around...
Volpe42
You mean the country that used to have a giant open sewer running through the capital?
HankScorpioCEOofGlobexCorporation
There's a Ted Lasso episode about that.
BlatantlyThrowaway
fenlander
It was on the news today that they turned lake Windemere into poop. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrj70dynk1o#:~:text=More%20than%20140%20million%20litres,to%20report%20most%20of%20it.
daguq
"very literal" ... so now there are degrees of literalness?
manystripes
There shouldn't have to be but once people started misusing the word regularly it became important to distinguish between a literal use of literal and a hyperbolic use of literal
WilliamKeith
Yes. Just like things can be very unique. I am unique. You are unique. Leonardo da Vinci was *very* unique.
WilliamKeith
Storm water has sewage in it, and thus is literal sewage. Stuff you scoop out of a sewer is actual literal sewage.
Larktonguesinadicecup
The ocean has sewage in it, and thus is literal sewage. Yeah, that doesn't check out.
depressedscientist
I’m still unsatisfied with the amount of ionized mercury in the tap water. With an average half-life in the body of 60-90 days and my city’s report of being “just at the legal limit” of 2ug/L. Consuming your normal amount of water everyday of tap water will give you a constant supply of mercury that stabilizes around 1-2mg in the body after a year.
gordy77
Where do you live?
AuthGaeuvyen
I wonder how many medical centers around your area have reports of children experiencing symptoms that are suspiciously similar to those of acute mercury poisoning.
comeonjointhejoyride
Whats bad about high ionized mercury in the body(?), my stupid friend asks as i clean my monocle.
Volpe42
Mad Hatter's disease. It's a real thing because back in the day they used mercury to process the felt for hats.
greentights
Mercury makes your brain go crazy. And other health problems.
MaximusUltima
Mercury causes damage to neurons, most commonly by preventing nerve sheaths from forming properly, by interfering with systems that prevent or repair oxidation-stress (something neurons are particularly vulnerable to), or by triggering an autoimmune response against neurons.
UltimaDoge
It’s wild to me that there’s places in the western democratic world, where drinking tap water can actually make you sick…
Meanwhile, the Tapwater here in my region (Southwest Germany) has a higher quality than bottled water like Evian, Volvic and shit. Super thankful for this!
allyouneedtodoisbreathe
Same in Netherlands. Tap water is so filtered, it doesn't even need chlorine.
WhatTheFrog
Are you sure about how good it is, though? Don't get me wrong: I'm 100% for drinking tap water when it's considered safe, and I have no doubt that it is (like in most of Western Europe), but there's got to be plenty of pesticides' residues as well as PFAS, just like everywhere else. In France, what they do in the most affected areas is that they raise safety levels so that they can match the actual quality of the water, which is pretty fucking terrible.
Volpe42
In the town I grew up in in the US the sewage plant output water that was cleaner than that bottled water.
pixelbat
Get a reverse osmosis system?
depressedscientist
Of course. But what about all the citizens who don’t know about it. Or can’t afford additional filtration?
Yakeshinu
EDTA is pretty cheap...
CommunCreator
Or an H-OH resin filter
pixelsnader
Wtf do pokemon got to do wit it?
CommunCreator
Hydrogen/hydroxide, not some cartoon.
Larktonguesinadicecup
Answer the question
arumunus
Anybody else see that Ho-Oh fly overhead?
Kyzyl
Municipal sewage treatment plants are marvels of engineering. I strongly recommend you find one nearby and arrange for a school or youth group tour of the place (tag along as a responsible adult!) - to show the kids the necessity and utility of such allocation of public funds - and to inspire them for potential lucrative careers.
HansWurstinger
How about the John Oliver Memorial Sewage Plant?
Smidge204
I've been to a few as part of my job and while they are fascinating places there isn't much that school kids will be able to safely see...
stayingalive4life
Using public funds for what they’re actually supposed to be used for?! That socialism! /s
HeadJamistan
Flocculation everywhere!
OhIfIMust
Seriously, I don't give a damn what *used* to be in my water, I only care about what's in it *now.*
Larktonguesinadicecup
Fellas, is it gay to drink water that used to be in a dude?
kydn
Went to one in my first school as a field trip (35+ years ago). I still have the little fluffy logo bug gift.
Ejegod
A couple of colleagues of mine told me I was mad for suggesting such things exist. Then I looked it up, they rarely have ANYTHING to promote the work, so I had to gesture from pictures on Google maps from when I went to a local one as a kid. I remember being interested even as a kid.
StormSaxon
I'm curious of where they think the sanitary sewer goes then.
Ejegod
I didn't ask, but yeah I assume their answer would be "the sewer" and fighting it long enough they'd ever go "the ground" or "the ocean".
Which... to be fair, isn't always wrong. Sometimes when having excessive waste, city will dump it into a nearby pier and into the ocean. That's why you sometimes have warnings like "No swimming on the beach today"
InDubiousBattle
My high school was across the street from one. I think we went over as freshmen or sophomores
CreepyPhlox
My parents went on a tour of their local one recently. It was like a city community day where the city invited community members to tour different departments that help the city run. They did the sewer treatment plant and the public water works.
BlatantlyThrowaway
Almost all of our improvement in lifespan, population density, etc. since antiquity has been thanks to providing clean water and removing waste. But plenty of people still guess, "Medicine?"
Kyzyl
Soap and basic hand-washing too. Which requires clean water of course.
Darklinkinfinite
AimingForAdorkable
Serious question— does it smell bad?
Since it’s a sewage treatment plant, I’d imagine there’s some sewage fumes from the before-treatment section…?
Larktonguesinadicecup
Yes, it does. But not like fresh shit, like... A sewage treatment plant.
AimingForAdorkable
So helpful. A sewage treatment plant, smells like a sewage treatment plant.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Lol.
JustABookworm
Probably they meant like chemicals? I know they use chemicals to treat water
Larktonguesinadicecup
You're welcome. I love to help!
yuukaikara
I work for a sewerage agency and have toured multiple facilities. At the very beginning of the treatment process, where they remove solids and grit, can smell the worst, but not really like poo because it's not just poo in the sewer,. It's all water that leaves your house through your drains. So water from your shower, dishwasher, and washing machine and such offset that smell. It's the same when you pop open manholes. Not as smelly as you'd think.
HogWashDiddler
Cleaning poop from water isnt that hard actually. The real challenge comes when dealing with idustrial/commercial waste. And for clarity, im not bashing anything, almost everything generates waste of some kind. The important thing is we generate waste that can be controlled, even if controlling it is harder than cleaning poop.
gir2195
I get you. This is a "yes, and here's more to think about," and not a "let's not celebrate the win."
LooseyGooseyBrett
As an environmental professional and former industrial wastewater treatment manager, what industrial wastes do you thing get into our wastewater?
woodintunoit
Yes chemical filtration is harder and messy as filters have to be unclogged and replaced, and technical as the input has to be analyzed so
woodintunoit
that toxins are identified and accounted for by selecting the right filters and process.
wseslar
My poop may very well be classified as hazardous
Industrial waste
Chais
Maybe you need to eat better.
Hammerdiddlestrokemyfiddle
Exactly. It's absolutely wonderful we can do this! It doesn't take away from companies claiming to be recycling their plastic for example while systematically generating more virgin plastic than they ever have or otherwise companies allowed to empty a percent of their run off into public water. It's abhorrent.
Soggybathroomsock
Lots of things love eating poop! Hence, it's not hard to clean poopy water.
sortofkindamadbutnotreally
This. Its also still much easier to keep the mercury/arsenic/whatever other awful stuff out of a water supply at the source rather than trying to catch and remove it further on.
yngkmd3
i work for a water utility company on the GIS side of things but one of your company mottos that we impress on the users (not customers cos we are government funded, yay socialism) is to only flush the 3 Ps, Pee Poo and Paper, but do people listen? not a chance, theres all sorts of nonsense get sent down sewers, storm drains and CSOs, i prefer working with my hands over using a computer but im glad im not out on the ground and have a cushy office job in this company
Mynamedoesntmatteronlylifematters
Tampons and condoms are always crazy. They should NOT be flushed.
majortool
#teambidet
bardman135
+1 "for clarity"
SinStar87
You trying to tell folks they can't have taco bell?
astromancer
Thatwhichisforbidden
Burn it out can we turn it into fertilizer
Idontneedrealfacts
You can shine a turd, but it's still shitty
SaintSleepyWeasel
Your point is super valid. Chemical and plastic waste are nightmares for purification treatments.
VaultGirl69
I do not drink from the tap in Oklahoma. I also don't let my dogs drink it. It looks fine, but we let other states pay to dump here. Also all the fracking and increased earthquakes.
NotSinceTheAccidend
That’s incredibly sad
VaultGirl69
Don't forget gross. Sad and gross.
VodkaReindeer
You'd be surprised how easy dealing with industrial waste is! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease#Wastewater_treatment
chainmaille
Yep, and the same treatment plants are typically where things like landfill leachate(garbage juice) get taken, though with a pre-treatment to make it within certain bounds. Got to see some of the new anti-PFAS infrastructure over the summer, crazy how they can monitor in parts per trillion now.
DocBeeblebrox
Yes it's not that hard by modern standards, but cholera would like an important word when it does not work out.
(the word is shityourselftodeath and it happened a LOT)
Hammerwell
[Wilhelm Berkefeld enters the chat]
HogWashDiddler
Just because something is relatively easy doesnt mean its not vitally important.
YummyBubb1es
Typhoid Marie has entered the chatroom
RealRaceRiotsAreAboutGettingBlueshelledInMarioKart
It's so weird something that once ravaged our society can basically be handled with Gatorade.
haroldmann
Electrolytes baby
KiddR78
I’ve played Oregon Trail.
pdarkfred
You aren't kidding
Mxlespxles
I how have the phrase "rice water diarrhea " in my brain forever.
So thanks for that, I guess?
pdarkfred