This is a thread about water; where it is, how to get it, and what to do with it once you have it. Up for discussion; existential questions like too much water, not enough water, dirty water, and water behaving badly. I personally like water, because it's all wet and stuff, and while it doesn't really taste like anything, I like to drink it sometimes anyway. Also it's p. cool because there is some kind of law that if one thing becomes clean, something else must become dirty. Water is usually involved in that somehow, so it helps keep the place looking great, ya know?
Anyway, if you guys ever want to talk about water, this is the thread for it.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
The small town in Colorado where used to live had the best tasting water I've ever drank. It came from wells in the Dolores River Canyon some 600 ft below the town. Here in Oklahoma, we have lake water, and tastes like wastewater pond water. It's so bad I miss Salt Lake Shitty water.
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Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
"Water? I never drink the stuff. Fish fuck in it." W.C. Fields (allegedly)
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Here in South Jersey we have good water, not too hard, not too soft, fairly taste free. Across the river in Philly the water has a strong taste of some kind. On the farm there was an old hand dug well with a hand pump and a spring in a pasture. They were both good water. There was another hand dug well right in front of the barn, but we didn't use it because of possible contamination from livestock. It was a really old barn, more than 200 years, so I guess they didn't care if a little cow poop got in there back then. They probably just used it to water the moo cows and what not anyway. Now a pump supplies water from the other well to spigots in the barn and chicken house.
The water I get comes from a host of different sources, some of them fairly distant. We get a report about all the details of water quality and sources every year, it just comes in the mail.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
I have been seeing a lot of the stuff lately. There's floods all over the place.
But it is also kind of cool. I walk Bella in a park here, which is basically a valley carved out by the river Liffey. One path leads right to the top of the valley, where the wall of the valley is really steep. If you climb to the top you can see flat fields beyond.
My favorite spot is a small dip where the valley wall cuts the water level of the fields, high up. When it has been raining, like it has been lately, you can see the water flow out, and it forms a beautiful little waterfall that has eroded away all the dirt and just left rounded rocks.
There is something magical and mysterious about a place where crystal-clear water comes from the earth and cascades down beautifully rounded rocks.
Seems there was quite a lot of rain over your way last month. I saw where there was high water from within and without at the Thames sea barrier at the same time. That would be a conundrum.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
The fact that California is experiencing severe drought conditions has been mentioned quite a bit in the news lately. Less frequently mentioned is that data from analysis of pollen in lake beds and whatnot suggests that for most of the past few thousand years, most of California had a substantially drier climate.
That is, the region has been experiencing unusually high precipitation for the past couple of hundred years, compared to the previous few thousand years. So it appears that, ironically, when California was settled by Europeans, it was experiencing wetter-than-normal climatic conditions. Oops. It may simply be that the drought represents precipitation patterns returning to "normal."
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
It seems like long term precipitation variability in the American West is a natural feature. Centuries long changes in precip are usually mentioned as factors in the ebb and flo of native populations. If the rise and decline of peoples like the Pueblo or Mississipian really were linked to water availability as a contributing factor, you have to wonder what the carrying capacity really is if whatever switch controls it flips back to off... Other possible cause are always discussed, though.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
$100 million in livestock disaster assistance. This program, part of the 2014 Farm Bill, will be fast-tracked.
$15 million in targeted conservation assistance for the most extreme and exceptional drought areas - $5 million in additional assistance to California and $10 million for drought-impacted areas in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico. It will helps farmers and ranchers implement conservation practices that conserve scarce water resources, reduce wind erosion on drought-impacted fields and improve livestock access to water.
$5 million in targeted Emergency Watershed Protection Program assistance to the most drought impacted areas of California to protect vulnerable soils. This funding will help drought-ravaged communities and private landowners address watershed impairments, such as stabilizing stream banks and replanting upland sites
stripped of vegetation.
$60 million for food banks in California to help families that may be economically impacted by the drought through the the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).
600 summer meal sites in California's drought stricken areas.
$3 million in Emergency Water Assistance Grants for rural communities experiencing water shortages. The money will help rural communities that are experiencing a significant decline in the quality or quantity of drinking water due to the drought obtain or maintain water sources of sufficient quantity and quality. California state health officials have identified 17 small community water districts in 10 counties that could run out of water in 60-120 days.
Reduce Federal facilities' water usage: Federal facilities in California must immediately curb water use, building on efforts underway across the country to cut water use 26%.
You would think he would just use HAARP to make it rain. See, this is why Obama hates freedom.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
At the state capitol in Georgia Tuesday, the governor tried something different. On a partly butty warm fall day, hundreds of people from the region came to join Gov. Sonny Perdue in a prayer service for rain.
As a kid in So Cal, I was pretty much taught that we lived in a dry Mediterranean climate area and the apparent fertility (orange groves where we were) was 100% due to irrigation. I remember frequent and prolonged droughts with water rationing for landscaping, and little poems about when to flush, and filling a tiny Dixie cup for the entire toothbrushing process. That was 30+ years ago. Did they forget?
It seems like long term precipitation variability in the American West is a natural feature. Centuries long changes in precip are usually mentioned as factors in the ebb and flo of native populations. If the rise and decline of peoples like the Pueblo or Mississipian really were linked to water availability as a contributing factor, you have to wonder what the carrying capacity really is if whatever switch controls it flips back to off... Other possible cause are always discussed, though.
I highly recommend this reading matter with regards to water and the American West:
In March, after a week of demonstrations, violent clashes erupted in the town of Varzaneh in Iran’s Esfahan province between protesters and security forces. The clashes led to dozens being injured and more being arrested. The cause was the government decision to divert water from Esfahan province to Yazd province. The protesters saw the move as unfair, as Esfahan province is experiencing a drought. Esfahan’s own famous Zayande Roud river has dried up. My father almost drowned swimming in this river during his teenage years in the 1940s. These days, the river is so dry that you can go horseback riding in the very same spot.
The article goes on to show how water inadequacy seems to be a contributing factor in dividing populations in different areas.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
There is a lot of rethinking to be done in water usage. The norm in the US is to use clean, drinkable water to flush toilets for example; it is estimated that's 30-40% of total domestic water use. Grey water reuse, sink-toilet combo re-fits, and rain water capture systems are a good place to start, IMO.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
I noticed my water bill had the amount used creeping up 1000 gallons per quarter, so fixed a leaky shower and a leaky toilet. The use dropped from 9000 to 7000. The bill rounds off to the nearest the 1000 gallons. It didn't make any difference at all in the amount I had to pay. Apparently there is no incentive to save water in our municipality. At any rate, I was surprised to find that relatively small leaks were wasting in the neighborhood of 600 gallons a month. I visualize it as twelve 50 gallon drums per month.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
I believe there are some extraneous zeros in that post.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Average US per person per day water use is estimated at 80 to 100 gallons. At the 7000 gallons per quarter consumption rate, may wife and I use about half that, 40 gallons a day each. Assuming our consumption fell 2000 gallons/quarter because of fixing the two leaks, it works out to about 10 gallons a day per leak!
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
About 4.7 inches of rain fell in a few hours in Brazil this week, the equivalent of two months of rainfall in the region. The flooding was worsened by the fact that northeastern Brazil has been in the grips of its worst drought in at least 50 years, making the dry, hard-packed ground unable to absorb much of the deluge.
Within the last few years I remember both the Delaware and Mississippi rives going from very low to overflowing within a change of seasons.
Quote:
The most recent drought has hit Brazil hard. Parts of the country went over a year without seeing rain during the drought, which has been affecting the region for several years. In one region, about 90 percent of corn crops were lost, and prices for Cassave flour, a Brazilian staple, rose by up to 700 percent.
Brazil is a major exporter of several agricultural products, like orange juice, beef, soy, coffee.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant