[Greenbuilding] low flow shower heads

[David Bergman]

I'm not sure that most US systems are combined. 
(I believe it's mostly older cities.) But here in 
NYC where it is indeed combined, any medium 
rainfall results in the system becoming 
overloaded and untreated sewage then has to be 
dumped directly into local waterways. (like today!)

The fairly enlightened response by Mayor 
Bloomberg's office -- in addition to building new 
sewage treatment capacity -- is to emphasize 
storm water retention in new construction and 
begin to implement porous paving areas.

In terms of closed loop water supplies, while NYC 
is definitely not, it has (as I think I've 
mentioned here before) a remarkable upstate 
supply shed that, if it isn't disrupted by 
proposed fracking, should continue to provide us 
with water that's cleaner and tastier than most bottled waters.

David

At 03:06 PM 5/18/2011, Jason Holstine wrote:
>Just google or wikipedia for stormwater and 
>waste water treatment systems. There are 
>separate and combined sewer outflow systems­most 
>US systems are the latter and are treacherous.
>
>Do the same for a simple “Water Cycle 101” 
>introduction -- water is a more-or-less a global 
>closed loop but where water comes from is 
>definitely NOT the same place where it’s used 
>and NOT the same where it ends up. California 
>gets nearly all its water from Rocky and PNW 
>mountains & glaciers for agricultural uses that 
>run-off from the farms ultimately into the 
>Pacific and/or urban treatment systems far from 
>the H2O’s use on the farm, let alone birthplace in the Rockies.

1  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20110518/ec98183d/attachment-0001.html>