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What is also sad is that water purification should be nailed down by the US governments...
by awqrre 11y ago
What is also sad is that water purification should be nailed down by the US governments...
- zymhan 11y agoIt is, the technology to cheaply filter water on a massive scale exists across the US and is employed by various levels of government very effectively. Only one of the "US governments" failed at purification - that of the state of Michigan.
- awqrre 11y agoI bet if the same investigation happened at every public water plants across the country that they would not be the only ones to have major issues...
- jcranmer 11y agoThe problem with water treatment is that maintenance is quite expensive. The water company I worked for replaced all of its filters every other year and opened up as many fire hydrants as they could in the spring to try to flush the entire pipe system (while switching from chloramines to free chlorine during this period). Then again, said water system also has the benefit of operating a system which was constructed almost entirely in the late 20th century. Considering that maintenance ultimately boils down to looking at things that are currently working and throwing them away so they don't stop working, it's easy for a manager looking to cut costs to decide to try to avoid ("defer") maintenance and gamble that things don't break down.
- refurb 11y agoProviding quality water is a solved problem, but only if you can count on the humans involved. Hell, seven people died in Canada when the local purification plant was run by a couple incompetent brothers [1]. "The Walkerton Public Utilities Commission operators engaged in a host of improper operating practices, including failing to use adequate doses of chlorine, failing to monitor chlorine residuals daily, making false entries about residuals in daily operating records, and misstating the locations at which microbiological samples were taken." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak
- tim333 11y agoMaybe in these days of the internet of things we need some things to check the water in case the humans screw up
- awqrre 11y agoDefinitely should do that at some random locations across counties everywhere in the country. My county has many ground water monitoring stations but I think that those only check for water levels (I have a well)... not sure what they do for county provided water but many times a year I hear about water quality problems from residents that have county water. The county then flush the system to remove sediments from the pipes and I hear no complaints for a few months (on the city's Facebook page)...
- yousifa 11y agoWe do that at AquaCloud