Low-flow toilets cause a stink in San Francisco

[cowcommander]

Source: SFGate

San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink. Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem. Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year. Not everybody thinks it's a good idea. A Don't Bleach Our Bay alert has just gone out from eco-blogger Adam Lowry who argues the city would be much better off using a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide - or better yet, a solution that would naturally break down the bacteria.

As for whether the supposedly environmentally friendly, low-flow toilets are worth the trouble? Well, according to Jue, they have helped trim San Francisco's annual water consumption by about 20 million gallons.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F02%2F28%2FBAVP1HUSUD.DTL

[XemaSab]

1. We've had chronic plumbing problems

and I have suspected that the problem is that we're not pushing enough water out through the pipes. :o

[truthisfreedom]

2. What are you gonna do? So many humans were never meant to live so close together

where there's no fresh water.

[Auggie]

6. +1

And I guess we can expect more of these types of surprise problems to surface in the future

[jberryhill]

3. "big push for low-flow toilets"

Maybe some mineral oil would help?

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

4. Rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park is really just .... AT&T!

[DesertDiamond]

8. LOL!

[KamaAina]

13. And all year I thought it was opposing teams' pathetic lineups

about to be squashed by the World Champion San Francisco Giants. :P

[WatsonT]

5. Better investment than low flow toilets: high flow toilets

that use salt water pumped in directly from the ocean. Filter out the big chunks but don't make it potable.

It makes zero sense to me that we feel the water we defecate in must also be good enough to drink.

[On the Road]

9. That is Fine if You're on the Beach

but for a city you're talking about creating an entirely separate water distribution system.

[WatsonT]

10. Yep, that would be that green infrastructure

saving money and the environment and creating decent well paying jobs that the stimulus was supposed to be about.

California ships water in from other states, surely they could pump in water from the ocean to flush their toilets? Most of their population lives along the coast anyway.

[On the Road]

11. Bringing in Water is Not the Hard Part

It's constructing a separate water distribution in an urban area -- not only the water mains under the streets but separate entries into each business and residence. Then the plumbing in each building has to be expanded to run hot, cold, and salt water.

That by itself is a daunting task. Then there is the question of the effects of the 3% salt solution on the system -- whether there are any long-term effects and how the system would need to be adapted for that.

[WatsonT]

12. I imagine salt will be less devastating than

bleach.

If we have the option of dumping dirty sea-water in to the ocean versus dumping bleach in the ocean I'm going to go with the former.

And it isn't science fiction, other nations have already started such a program, particularly china with fewer resources to cover far more people.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009summerdavos/2009-09/10/content_8675129.htm

And apparently the town of Avalon in California already does this.

It's easy enough to point out difficulties with any project but I think if we can build an interstate highway system, and put a man on the moon, the refurbishing the plumbing for some coastal towns shouldn't break us. Likewise we can't go on shitting in our clean drinking water forever. We have more and more people every year and every one of them expects water on a regular basis.

[On the Road]

14. Actually, I Don't Know That Salt Would be Less Devastating

Look at the hulls of oceangoing ships that have been corroded by the same saltwater. Now extend that to the city's or the nation's plumbing systems.

We can build the interstate system and put a man on the moon. We can also create a parallel water distribution system just for toilets and retrofit the infrastructure, but it makes sense only in places where water is very scarce. It can be done, but in most places it is disproportionate to the lower cost of simply treating and conserving available fresh water.

[inwiththenew]

7. That seems like a lot of bleach to be dumping down the drain

Is that safe?

[msongs]

15. it's safe for the Clorox Corporation lol nt