[Greenbuilding] low flow shower heads

[Don Lush]

Lee- I would agree with you but only if municipalities charged water use
rates which incorporated true life cycle costs. This also implies that the
"used" water when discharged from the waste water treatment plants is as
good or better "quality" (AS AFFECTS ANY SUBSEQUENT USE NOT RELYING ON
DILUTION) as when it was extracted from the source. Unfortunately too many
municipalities have been relying on the "assimilative capacity" (dilution
and natural microbial processes ) of the waters receiving the "treated waste
water" to finish the cleanup. In most cases we have exceeded this
assimilative capacity many years ago and politicians are not willing to
charge and spend what it will take to bring the system back into balance
unless there is an immediate public health crisis in their jurisdiction and
even then the cheapest and fastest bandade solution is often taken -just add
more chlorine! 

 

If we were to make the decision to upgrade our municipal infrastructures in
the US to where they should be in the next decade (and assuming the skilled
people were available) unemployment would virtually disappear and the
country would be bankrupt and the politicians who made the decisions would
be out of office and we would be right back where we started. It is a lot
simpler and politically safer to legislate the size of shower heads! i.e
reduce consumption.

 

Don

 

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of lee
Weaver
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 10:01 PM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] low flow shower heads

 

So then if you are on municipal water systems  and are willing to pay for
the water and sewer you are then helping the economy (providing jobs for the
power, water, and sewer company workers) the water used by the shower will
not be polluted to the point that the sewer system will not be able to
return it to the aquifer.  

I still fail to see why "The planet cannot afford such individuals with
little regard for the rest of us." is a valid stance on this topic when all
it does it remove a portion of water from availability for a time, it is
returned. It even helps a number of people if you take into account all the
people working in the field of supplying the water and energy(if you are on
municipal services).

Lee
On 5/17/2011 6:43 PM, Reuben Deumling wrote: 

Not really that simple.
 
For most of us on municipal water systems there's a lot of
infrastructure, energy, pipes, trucks, pumps, chlorine, filters on
this incoming end, and a similar but even more complicated and
expensive infrastructure on the sewer end. All that costs money and
materials to install and maintain and operate.
 
Back in the seventies Amory Lovins figured out that if you back a kWh
through the appliance, wires, transmission lines to the power plant
and back to the mine, not using that kWh actually translates into a
far greater upstream investment that isn't required. Whether it is a
factor of 4 or 10 isn't really the point. The same holds true for
water except the units and losses are different.
 
The water molecules are still there, but they're always there even
after they are polluted or not recharged in the aquifer from which
they were pumped. Where the water is, whether it is drinkable, all of
this is important.
 
On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 6:36 PM, lee Weaver  <mailto:lgweaver at gmail.com>
<lgweaver at gmail.com> wrote:

Why
 
The water goes right back into the ground.  it's not like that water is
destroyed.
now trying to start a fight I'm truly asking a valid (IMHO) question.

 
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