The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes the Green Movement once again:
Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF
The background: Northern Californians feel guilty using water, thinking it better to let the state’s rivers flow free to support endangered fish species. Local greenies endlessly whine about human over-consumption of our water resources. One solution pushed by environmentalists is for everyone to install low-flow toilets, which use just enough water to flush away any excreta, but no more. San Francisco adopted this initiative, not only putting low-flow toilets at all city facilities, and requiring them in all new commercial buildings, but encouraging homeowners to install them as well with rebates and credits. Fast forward a few years: Success! Now the city uses 20 millions fewer gallons of water annually.
But then, as always, yet another green fantasy backfires spectacularly:
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.
So, cutting way back on the water flushing out the municipal excretions has caused massive sewage backups in the pipes, stinking up the city. Who could have predicted that? Spending $100 million on repairs didn’t solve the problem. Thus, as a solution, the city pours 8.5 million pounds of chemical contaminants into the ecosystem.
Move along, folks — nothing to see here.
20 million gallons sounds like a lot, but is it? What is the total water consumption of the city? Is this a 10% reduction or a .001% reduction?
Volume doesn’t matter.
What matters is that this proves two things:
1. As I’ve said many times before, if the “solution” comes from a leftist, it will ALWAYS be worse than the problem, which they also created or just made up, most of the time.
2. Democrats really ARE full of crap and they smell awful.
Answered my own question. According to a SF Public Utilities Commission Report from 2009, projected retail water demand in 2010 was forecast to be 91.81 million gallons PER DAY. The savings from the low-flow toilets, therefore, represents a .05% reduction in usage causing $100 million to fix the sewers and another $14 million to stockpile bleach. This doesn’t count the cost of the toilets, of course, because expenditures by mere citizens are unworthy of consideration….
Thanks for the calculations — adds extra info to the post.
All for the purpose of what — so that an inch-long grey indistinguishable fish can swim around in water that is 1% less salinated in the Delta?
Adding to the eco-irony: “Climate change” means we’ve been having torrential rains in Northern California for the last three winters in a row, with catastrophists predicting that this will become “normal.” So we actually have plenty of water, if we choose to use it.
Hey, watch it there, pal!
You’re using facts and those are big, scary, racist assault weapons where California moonbats are concerned.
I don’t understand how the smell could due to the new toilets. Doesn’t water from showers, hand washing, laundry machines, dishwashers, etc etc go through the same sewers? The change in flow from the toilets would be a small percentage of the total waste water.
Good question. All I know is what gets reported by the city and in the press. Apparently, the decrease in water flow through the sewage system as a result of the toilets is just enough to cause a problem. Perhaps, like most ecosystems, the underground “sewage ecosystem” of SF was perfectly balanced — the amount of water flowing through it was exactly sufficient to wash out the feces. Even a small diminuation in the water flow was enough to start to cause a backup — which became a self-reinforcing feedback loop as previous unwashed poop blocked flow of new poop, which would have required extra water, etc.
Cost benefit analysis:
1000 gal water costs $1.50
1 gal bleach costs $6.00
0.0015 x 20 million = $30,000 Water in Pacific Ocean – Not Bad
6 x 8.5 million = $51,000,000 Bleach in Pacific Ocean – Bad
Pockets of nasty, human defecated germ bombs festering within the underground arteries of San Francisco – Bad
These fools know not what they do.
Low-flow toilets… you have to flush three times to get all the chunks to go down. (Explain how that’s saving water then?)
Logic.
Reason.
Facts.
Math.
These are a few of the many things moonbats don’t understand, and therefore fear and hate.
I really love of hubris of the folks who decided that the low-flow toilets would work just fine. They had to begin by assuming that the people who designed the original flushers didn’t know what they were doing and were just being wasteful. Not a moment spent considering that there might be something to be learned from more than a century’s experience.
There’s no accountability when it comes to leftists, Bill. They’re overgrown children and want their nutjob “solutions” implemented immediately. Any request for proof is met with character assassination and lies. It was the moonbat Californians who demanded that an additive for gasoline be implemented nationwide, IMMEDIATELY!, because there was “a CRISIS!” Turned out that the additive didn’t do anything but leach out of underground tanks and cause cancer. Global Warming is a CRISIS! and their “solutions” must be adopted IMMEDIATELY! and without oversight or even due consideration.
Hydrogen peroxide is better for the environment, and it’s quite effective. You may have heard of a product called “oxygen bleach”- it’s sodium percarbonate (NaCO3*H2O2). The hydrogen peroxide acts as an oxidizer while the sodium carbonate neutralizes acids.