Brackish Water: A Slippery Subject 

An exact definition  of what is commonly called “brackish” water is hard to pin down.  Brackish water falls between seawater and fresh water. Brackish water is similar to seawater except the salt content is less, as are the TDS (total dissolved solids).  In another way of classifying, you start with fresh water, then go to brackish water, then to saline water, then to brine.  The specifics of these classifications are often blurred.

Brackish Water Pond

One authority states that brackish water begins at about 1000 ppm TDS and runs upward to around 10,000 or 12,000 ppm TDS.

The basic process of treating brackish water in desalination applications is to pass pressurized water through a membrane. As fresh water passes through the membrane, brine or wastewater is rejected.

Seawater treatment applications differ from brackish mainly in the level of osmotic pressure required to achieve fresh water.

Typically, the pressure needed ranges in brackish water treatment from 5 psi to 75 psi, although the majority of brackish applications fall in the 145 psi to 290 psi range.

Brackish water is generally a surface-type water and as such can be influenced by such environmental factors as rainfall and humidity.

Ion levels and bacteria could be higher in the summer months compared to winter months, and salinity, nitrates, iron, silica and bacteria are a few examples of what is common in untreated brackish water.

Viewed another way, brackish water is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from the Middle Dutch root “brak,” meaning “salten” or “salty”.

Certain human activities can produce brackish water, in particular certain civil engineering projects such as dikes and the flooding of coastal marshland to produce brackish water pools for freshwater prawn farming. Brackish water is also the primary waste product of the salinity gradient power process. Because brackish water is hostile to the growth of most terrestrial plant species, without appropriate management it is damaging to the environment.

Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre—more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (ppt or ‰). Thus, brackish covers a range of salinity regimes and is not considered a precisely defined condition. It is characteristic of many brackish surface waters that their salinity can vary considerably over space and/or time.

Here is a chart from the Wikipedia:

In summary, brackish water lies in definition somewhere between fresh water and sea water and is defined mainly by its salt content.

Treatment is almost exclusively by membrane technology (reverse osmosis) or by distillation.

References:  Water Technology “Technical Feature” (March 2010) by Rich DiPaolo,  Wikipedia, The Pure Water Occasional.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

The Basics of Compression and Pipe Threads Used in Water Filters

Like most professions, the water treatment industry runs on initials. Here are a few more.

There is often confusion about the threads on the fittings and connectors used in water treatment in particular and small-pipe plumbing in general. Things used to be more complicated when undersink plumbing had such exotic creatures as flare, fine flare, and Texas fine flare fittings to contend with.  Now almost everything is done with compression fittings, pipe fittings, or the super convenient plastic push-in fittings.

The push-ins are easy. With threaded fittings,  what confuses people usually is the distinction between a pipe fitting and a compression fitting. The picture below has both threads. It’s hard to see the difference, but there is a difference.

The taper of the threads is what actually distinguishes pipe from compression fittings. On bottom of the fitting in the picture is a male pipe thread; on top is a male compression thread with nut. Pipe threads connect the fitting to another solid component, like a filter housing or a rigid metal pipe. The compression fitting with cap connects a tube to the fitting. The pipe fitting is taped with teflon tape to insure a seal. The compression fitting is not taped.

The real confusion with pipe fittings comes from the fact that they have so many different descriptive names.

MIP stands for Male Iron Pipe, or some would say Male International Pipe. The same pipe size can also be called MPT, for Male Pipe Thread.

FIP means Female Iron (or International) Pipe and can also be called FPT for Female Pipe Thread.

To add confusion, there is NPT, which stands for National Pipe Thread.  The Wikipedia makes this  as confusing as possible:

Sometimes NPT threads are referred to as MPT (‘Male Pipe Thread’), MNPT, or NPT(M) for male (external) threads; and FPT (‘Female Pipe Thread’), FNPT, or NPT(F) for female (internal) threads. An equivalent designation is MIP (Male iron pipe) and FIP (Female iron pipe). Also the terms NPS and NPSM are sometimes used to designate a straight, not tapered, thread. (This should not be confused with NPS meaning Nominal Pipe Size.)

Got it?

I won’t bore you with the actual taper of pipe thread patterns. The main thing you need to know when dealing with water treatment equipment is that compression caps won’t work on pipe threads and you can’t screw male compression thread into a female fitting (like a filter housing port) that’s made for pipe.

See also Pure Water Annie’s Glossary of Water Treatment Terms on the Pure Water Occasional’s website.

China and India ‘water grab’ dams put ecology of Himalayas in danger

More than 400 hydroelectric schemes are planned in the mountain region, which could be a disaster for the environment

by John Vidal 

Gazette Editorial Note: It is ironic that while governments are looking frantically for resources to remove ageing dams, new dams are being built at an alarming rate.  Another of the 10,000 easy to find examples that humans are very bad at learning from our mistakes.–Hardly Waite.

The future of the world’s most famous mountain range could be endangered by a vast dam-building project, as a risky regional race for water resources takes place in Asia.

New academic research shows that India, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan are now engaged in a huge “water grab” in the Himalayas, as they seek new sources of electricity to power their economies. Taken together, the countries have plans for more than 400 hydro dams which, if built, could together provide more than 160,000 MW of electricity – three times more than the UK uses.

In addition, China has plans for around 100 dams to generate a similar amount of power from major rivers rising in Tibet. A further 60 or more dams are being planned for the Mekong river which also rises in Tibet and flows south through south-east Asia.

The Ranganadi hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh, India

Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world’s deepest valleys. Many of the proposed dams would be among the tallest in the world, able to generate more than 4,000MW, as much as the Hoover dam on the Colorado river in the US.

The result, over the next 20 years, “could be that the Himalayas become the most dammed region in the world”, said Ed Grumbine, visiting international scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming. “India aims to construct 292 dams … doubling current hydropower capacity and contributing 6% to projected national energy needs. If all dams are constructed as proposed, in 28 of 32 major river valleys, the Indian Himalayas would have one of the highest average dam densities in the world, with one dam for every 32km of river channel. Every neighbour of India with undeveloped hydropower sites is building or planning to build multiple dams, totalling at minimum 129 projects,” said Grumbine, author of a paper in Science.

China, which is building multiple dams on all the major rivers running off the Tibetan plateau, is likely to emerge as the ultimate controller of water for nearly 40% of the world’s population. “The plateau is the source of the single largest collection of international rivers in the world, including the Mekong, the Brahmaputra, the Yangtse and the Yellow rivers. It is the headwater of rivers on which nearly half the world depends. The net effect of the dam building could be disastrous. We just don’t know the consequences,” said Tashi Tseri, a water resource researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

“China is engaged in the greatest water grab in history. Not only is it damming the rivers on the plateau, it is financing and building mega-dams in Pakistan, Laos, Burma and elsewhere and making agreements to take the power,” said Indian geopolitical analyst Brahma Chellaney.  “China-India disputes have shifted from land to water. Water is the new divide and is going centre stage in politics. Only China has the capacity to build these mega-dams and the power to crush resistance. This is effectively war without a shot being fired.”

According to Chellaney, India is in the weakest position because half its water comes directly from China; however, Bangladesh is fearful of India’s plans for water diversions and hydropower. Bangladeshi government scientists say that even a 10% reduction in the water flow by India could dry out great areas of farmland for much of the year. More than 80% of Bangladesh’s 50 million small farmers depend on water that flows through India.

Engineers and environmentalists say that little work has been done on the human or ecological impact of the dams, which they fear could increase floods and be vulnerable to earthquakes. “We do not have credible environmental and social impact assessments, we have no environmental compliance system, no cumulative impact assessment and no carrying capacity studies. The Indian ministry of environment and forests, developers and consultants are responsible for this mess,” said Himanshu Thakkar, co-ordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

China and India have both displaced tens of millions of people with giant dams such as the Narmada and Three Gorges over the last 30 years, but governments have not published estimates of how many people would have to be relocated or how much land would be drowned by the new dams. “This is being totally ignored. No one knows, either, about the impact of climate change on the rivers. The dams are all being built in rivers that are fed by glaciers and snowfields which are melting at a fast rate,” said Tsering.

Climate models suggest that major rivers running off the Himalayas, after increasing flows as glaciers melt, could lose 10-20% of their flow by 2050. This would not only reduce the rivers’ capacity to produce electricity, but would exacerbate regional political tensions.

The dams have already led to protest movements in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam and other northern states of India and in Tibet. Protests in Uttarakhand, which was devastated by floods last month, were led by Indian professor GD Agarwal, who was taken to hospital after a 50-day fast but who was released this week.

“There is no other way but to continue because the state government is not keen to review the dam policy,” said Mallika Bhanot, a member of Ganga Avahan, a group opposing proposals for a series of dams on the Ganges.

Governments have tried to calm people by saying that many of the dams will not require large reservoirs, but will be “run of the river” constructions which channel water through tunnels to massive turbines. But critics say the damage done can be just as great. “[These] will complete shift the path of the river flow,” said Shripad Dharmadhikary, a leading opponent of the Narmada dams and author of a report into Himalayan dams. “Everyone will be affected because the rivers will dry up between points. The whole hydrology of the rivers will be changed. It is likely to aggravate floods.

“A dam may only need 500 people to move because of submergence, but because the dams stop the river flow it could impact on 20,000 people. They also disrupt the groundwater flows so many people will end up with water running dry. There will be devastation of livelihoods along all the rivers.”

Source: The Guardian.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

The “Sand Trap” — a unique approach to an old problem

The patented “Sand Trap” is a valuable tool for dealing with heavy sand or large sediment in wells. It works by separating out bothersome  sand, shale and oxidized organics found in some water supplies. The Sand Trap system does this not by conventional filtration but by directing the water through an internal swirl chamber then into a diverting plate. The process causes heavier particles to settle to the bottom of the tank for removal via a simple blow down valve.

The Sand Trap can be used independently, if large particles are the only issue, or as a pretreatment for other equipment. It spares treatment devices that follow the heavy burden handling large doses of particulate.  For example, if installed in front of a backwashing sediment filter, it protects the filter from having to deal with more than it can handle and can significantly reduce the frequency of backwash required. When placed in front of a conventional cartridge-style sediment filter, the Sand Trap greatly reduces the bother and expense of frequent cartridge changes.

This “micro” Sand Trap is best at dealing with large sediment flowing at a low flow rate.

The Sand Trap system is virtually maintenance free, with no moving parts and no sophisticated backwash control needed. It does not require electricity and its drain water can be directed anywhere (for lawn irrigation, for example), since no chemicals are added to the water.

Sand trap units come in a variety of sizes,  from a “micro” version that is built from a standard 20-inch “Big Blue” filter housing to a Jumbo model that measures 12″ X 60″. In most cases, with the Sand Trap bigger is better, since larger units allow increased residence time for particles to settle out of water.

10″ X 54″ Sand Trap. This full-sized unit works well at handling heavy sediment for most standard residential situations.

More information about Sand Traps.  

 What’s in Lake Michigan Water?

Many of us like to operate under the assumption that water is water is water.

That is, the water we’re coating ourself in every time we head to a Northern Michigan beach is pure and clean as the driven snow — the driven, non-polluted, bacteria-free snow.

But the truth is we share our water with other mammals and organisms that don’t share our propensity to flush away their waste in a convenient rest room — including other humans who tend to shun toilets or diaper duties.

We also live in a world that has impervious surfaces — concrete parking lots, sidewalks and roads — over which rainwater must run and that rainwater must go somewhere. Often, that’s into other, natural bodies of water such as rivers and lakes.

Luckily, there is enough clean water to wash away and dilute the digested stomach contents of those who walk, crawl or flap the earth. Most of the time.

Still, there’s the natural product of what we might expect from the natural world.

“Anything from cigarette butts to raccoon poop to bird poop,” said Kevin Cronk, monitoring and research coordinator with Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council in Petoskey. “Anything that’s washing off the ground and agricultural fields.”

The Health Department of Northwest Michigan keeps track of the worrisome aspect of fecal material collecting lake water — namely, the E. coli bacteria.

Northern Michigan beaches are closed when E. coli bacteria count exceeds 300 organisms per 100 milliliters, or about a third of a cup, of water, said Scott Kendzierski, director of environmental health services for the health department.

The department tests more than 50 beaches, both inland and Great Lakes, in Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties. By the end of the typical 10-week period, the department will have collected about 1,800 samples. At about $18 a pop, testing each of those samples — including a few that come from counties in the Upper Peninsula — could cost the department as much as $28,800.

Dog’s can not only detect excrement, they can distinguish been human excrement and that of other creatures.

“Because we have a lot more beaches than (the 50 monitored), we select the beaches based on risk and risk factor,” said Kendzierski. “A large one is population. If the beach was widely used, we would select that one over a beach perhaps we never saw bathers at.”

In 2011 and 2012, the beach monitoring program — which is funded by the Clean Water Michigan Initiative and the Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes Beach Act fund — saw an influx of money from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Funds from the initiative allowed the health department to test more beaches over a longer period of time — 16 weeks — and collect data such as wind direction, wind speed, temperature and rain events. The data told the story of a beach: if a beach was situated north-south, and the wind is predominately from the west, water would constantly be blown against the beach.

By contrast, if a beach is oriented east-west with a westward wind, water would continually be flushed away from that beach. Having that data would allow the department to predict how safe beaches may be under certain conditions and cut down on the amount of costly sampling the health department might have to do.

“That’s the goal,” said Kendzierski. “The problem is that each beach is unique in some way. Some are more vulnerable to storm water, some are more vulnerable to prevailing wind direction and speed. We were starting to finally figure out some of the conditions that are really relevant for a particular beach.”

But this year, because of sequestration cuts, the health department lost the funding allowing them to test extra beaches, though workers still record wind speed, direction and other pieces of data.

Looking for storm water management best practices

Contamination from storm water leads many cities to establish “best management practices” for storm water. What runs off city streets during a rain event can end up in water.

A few storm drains run nearly straight into Little Traverse Bay in Petoskey, including the waterfall at Bayfront Park. The waterfall is a stream that forms out of the Winter Sports Park, but picks up drainage from urban areas before reaching the bay front, said Cronk. He calls it “storm water falls.” Other storm water mains drain into the Bear River out of what Cronk calls “out falls” and then into the bay.

A typical ride for rainwater looks like this: the water drains off streets into storm water drains, then into catchments. There, the water slows and solids, such as those cigarette butts, can settle out. There are some controls in place, said Cronk, for sediment pick-up.

“But beyond that, it flows through the system,” said Cronk. “There isn’t something that will filter out any kind of pollutants.”

That means rain can pick up other material such as oil and gas from cars, heavy metals, pesticides and fertilizers.

“The key thing is, everything goes in it,” said Cronk. “If you spit on the sidewalk, if you dump coffee on pavement, whatever, all the bird poop on the roofs, all the stuff ends up untreated and into the river, then into the bay.”

A simple, dog-sniffing solution

A downstate couple, in 2007, was given the idea to create a much cheaper way to test for E. coli — specifically, E. coli that comes from human sewage.

Scott and Karen Reynolds established Environmental Canine Service in Vermontville in 2009. The two have more than 30 years of combined experience in canine scent training, said Scott Reynolds. His supervisor asked him about using dogs to scent human sewage.

“He asked me if I could train a dog to smell poop,” said Reynolds, laughing.

Dogs have an extraordinarily good sense of smell, but what makes that particularly special is that they can filter out background scents and focus in on one smell. In this case, human sewage, over cow or horse material.

“Humans can’t do that, and that’s what makes dogs so superior,” said Reynolds.

The Reynolds’ dogs — the couple has two in Michigan certified for sniffing human sewage and three more in training, as well as five dogs and four handlers in northern California — sniff out sites such as the outfalls that flow into the Bear River to see if any include human sewage. If the dogs get a positive hit, they sniff other places along the sewer line to see where a line might be broken, or where there are cross-connected pipes that might accidentally be putting human sewage into surface waters.

Reynolds says the dogs don’t replace E. coli testing. Rather, they sniff out these places of contamination, so a city might only test a few spots rather than a few hundred.

“Instead of (the source) being a potential of 200 houses on this street, now we know it’s maybe these four,” said Reynolds.

Cronk wants to bring Reynolds to Petoskey.

“It would help us. Hopefully, we would find nothing. It would all be blank samples,” said Cronk.

Even so, Cronk doesn’t get too ruffled about the water quality around Petoskey.

“On the positive side, the metals, the oils, the grease — those numbers are very low, oftentimes not detectable,” said Cronk.

Cronk isn’t even squeamish about drinking the water.

“We all did it as kids, down at streams. I don’t like to stifle that,” he said. “My daughter did it as a kid. I did it as a kid. … It’s safer in this area, fortunately, than most of the rest of the country and world.”

Source:  Petroskeynews.com

Hotter Isn’t Necessarily Better When It Comes To UV Output

Most ultraviolet systems that are used to disinfect water flowing at less than 40 gallons per minute use what are called “low-pressure” UV lamps.  These lamps contain a small amount of mercury, which vaporizes when current flows through the lamp, producing what is considered the ideal “germicidal” UV wavelength of 254 nanometers.

The ideal dosage of 254 nanometers, however, is dependent on some variables, and not the least of these is temperature.

UV designers speak of the “cold spot” on the lamp.  That is the coolest section on the lamp surface.  The “cold spot” should be at about 108 degrees (42 C.) for the UV unit to operate at the optimal 254 nanometers. As the temperature of the lamp changes, so does the dosage from the lamp.

In standard residential UV units the germicidal lamp is enclosed in a transparent tube called a quartz sleeve.  The sleeve is immersed in water.  It surrounds the lamp and protects it from exposure to water.  Although water does not touch the lamp, the temperature of the water affects the lamp temperature since it cools the air between the sleeve and the lamp.  A change in water temperature, therefore, can have a dramatic effect on the temperature of the lamp itself and consequently on the performance of the UV unit.

How Temperature Affects UV Output

There is an assumption that the higher the temperature within the UV treatment chamber, the greater the effectiveness of the UV unit at disarming pathogens. Not so.  In fact, varying in either direction from the ideal cold spot temperature results in diminished performance.  Cold water can lower the cold-spot temperature so that the UV output will drop as much as 50 percent below its maximum. Hot water around the quartz sleeve will also lower the UV output by as much as 50 percent.  Ideal water temperature for operating a UV unit with the lamp inside a quartz sleeve  is about 22 C (71 F).

One factor that is seldom considered in UV planning is that water standing in the UV treatment chamber can become very hot.  In undersink UV units,  the elevated temperature can send aesthetically unpleasing tepid water out of the spigot, but what is worse,  elevated heat can also  reduce the efficiency of the UV lamp.  This could be a problem if a long period of  inactivity is followed by a period of high flow rate.

Some modern UV manufacturers, like Viqua,  offer an optional solenoid-controlled feature that moves water through the system periodically to prevent heat build-up.

A sewage worker has become an unlikely hero after taking three weeks to defeat a toxic 15-tonne ball of congealed fat the size of a bus that came close to turning parts of the London borough of Kingston upon Thames into a cesspit.

The first sign of trouble came when residents in a block of flats near the royal borough’s main sewer reported difficulty flushing their toilets. Gordon Hailwood and his team found a “fatberg” of solidified grease and oil blocking 95% of the 2.4 metre diameter brick sewer pipe. It took three weeks working in foul conditions to clear with high powered water jets.

“Kingston came very close to being flooded with sewage. We have recorded greater volumes of fat in the past but we don’t believe there’s ever been a single congealed lump of lard matching this one”, said Simon Evans, a Thames Water spokesman.

Not a good likeness. 15 ton blobs of grease are not photogenic.

Fatbergs build up on sewer roofs like mushy stalactites. “I have witnessed one. It’s a heaving, sick-smelling, rotting mass of filth and faeces. It hits the back of your throat, it’s gross,” said Evans.

“It’s steaming and it unleashes an unimaginable stink. Hailwood and his team certainly saved Kingston from a terrible fate.”

Water and sewage companies say fatbergs are becoming more common. London, with the highest concentration of food businesses in the country, produces an estimated 32m-44m litres of used cooking oil every year, much of which is poured down drains.

Also, the use of wet wipes as toilet paper is increasing, with potentially disastrous results below ground.

Thames Water says it has to clear nearly 40,000 blockages a year caused by fat and sanitary wipes being wrongly put down drains by restaurants and households. “We have 59,000 miles of sewer and fat and wet wipes are the main partners in ‘sewer abuse’ crime,” said Evans.

“The wipes break down and collect on joints and then the fat congeals. Then more fat builds up. It’s getting worse. More wet wipes are being used and flushed. It took Hailwood and the guys three weeks to flush this one out with high-powered water jets.

“Given we’ve got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest fatberg we’ve encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest such berg in British history,” said Hailwood.

“The sewer was almost completely clogged. If we hadn’t discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston. It was so big it damaged the sewer and repairs will take up to six weeks.”

However – in what environmental groups call a “win-win” development – waste fat is now being used to generate renewable energy. McDonald’s collects more than 600,000 litres of used cooking oil from its London restaurants each year, converting it to biodiesel to run half its fleet of lorries. London mayor Boris Johnson is pressing for waste fat to be used to run London’s buses.

“By capturing it right here in London and turning it into biodiesel we could provide 20% of the fuel needed to power London’s entire bus fleet while saving thousands of tonnes of CO₂ and creating hundreds of new jobs. There is huge potential to unlock the value in used cooking oil and turn it to our economic advantage,” Johnson said last week.

One consortium plans to generate 130 gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable electricity each year – enough to run 39,000 average homes – by burning 30 tonnes a day of fat, oil and grease. The oils will be collected from food outlets and manufacturers, and solidified grease will be harvested from “fat traps” installed in restaurant, hospital, stadium and factory kitchens. Thames Water has agreed to buy half the electricity to run London’s largest sewerage works at Beckton.

Keeping drains clear

• Animal fats and vegetable oil, lard, grease, butter and margarine, food scraps and dairy products all contribute to blocked drains, “fatbergs” and sewer blockages. Waste disposal units do not remove fats.

• Wipes, nappies, sanitary towels, rags and condoms do not break down easily and can snag on pipes, drains and the walls of sewers, leading to blockages.

• Pesticides, battery acids, nail polish, motor oil, chlorine-based and other cleaning products, paints and photographic chemicals are all toxic waste and should be disposed of carefully because they do not break down in sewage systems and can pollute rivers and sea water.

• If you have a septic tank, then be extra careful. Don’t flush medicines, coffee grounds, paper towels or egg shells, or anything that breaks down slowly, down the toilet or sink.

Source: The Guardian.

A Picture Story of the Effects of Drought on a North Texas Lake

Lake Bridgeport was closed for a time just three years ago… because it was too full.

The scenic North Texas lake is now [August of 2013]  down 19 feet in places.  The resort area of the lake, known as Runaway Bay, is the area where the low water level is most apparent. As the water falls in the lake, so do the profits of local business that depend on tourism.

 This floating gas dock which is supposed to be level is held in place now only by its hinged attachment to the shore. Lake Bridgeport is 19 feet below its normal level. It has received nearly 7 inches less rain than the official totals at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, 50 miles to the southeast.

Boat docks that are normally accessible only by footbridge are now well above the lake’s surface. The lake depends on rain for its water, and when it doesn’t rain, the level drops quickly.  During the current drought, the level of the lake is dropping 1/2 inch per day.  That translates to 60 million gallons of water per day lost to evaporation.

Reference Source: WFAA News.

Hot days cause massive evaporation

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

Not all the water disappearing from Lawton area lakes is reappearing as streams pouring out of water faucets.

Summer in Oklahoma means sun and wind, two of the components in an equation that could cost two area lakes 100 million gallons of water a day through evaporation. That’s five times the average amount of water the city treats daily to serve Lawton, Fort Sill and its other water customers, and three times its peak daily water treatment, according to information from the City of Lawton.

Lawton officials have said their two closest sources of raw water  Lake Lawtonka, which feeds the Medicine Park Water Treatment Plant, and Lake Ellsworth  lose an average of 25 million gallons of water a day (mgd) and 50 mgd, respectively, in the summer to evaporation. The potential rates are even higher at Waurika Lake (Lawton’s third and largest source of raw water) and Lake Lugert-Altus. Waurika Lake can lose an average of 100 mgd to 120 mgd in the hot summer months, while Lugert-Altus’ potential loss is 49.2 mgd to 98.4 mgd.

Calculating or even explaining evaporation rates is complicated, because of the variety of factors that influence it.

Dave Taylor, manager of the Waurika Lake Master Conservancy District, said the Corps of Engineers, which controls Waurika Lake, looks at four variables, starting with relative humidity. The lower, the humidity, the easier it is for water to evaporate.

“Higher humidity is good,” Taylor said, admitting the high humidity rates blanketing the area may be miserable for humans, but they are good for lakes. “In most the research I’ve done, the relative humidity is the key.”

Temperature also has an effect, as does the amount of radiant heat from the sun. Another variable is wind speed: The more wind that travels across a lake, the more water it picks up. Taylor said to think of this as the cooling effect of water on your skin when a breeze blows across it.

“That water is evaporation,” he said.
Tom Buchanan, general manager of the Lugert-Altus Irrigation District, agreed wind is a factor, but said evaporation also is based on how high the water level is and how big the surface pool is: The larger the pool, the more exposed the water within is to environmental factors.

“A lake at its highest capacity is the most prone to evaporation,” Buchanan said, noting that has become less of an issue at Lugert-Altus, which is at an historically low elevation because of severe drought.

Buchanan said the evaporation rate varies, even on the same lake, due to weather conditions. But he can make some general statements.

“I really think the average evaporation rate in western Oklahoma is about 60 inches. It varies. We can lose water to evaporation every day of the year, but it escalates when those factors are highest,” he said..

Source: The Lawton Constitution.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Happy Garden Hose Day

If you were unaware that today is National Garden Hose Day you must live under a rock.   The phenomenal rise in popularity of Garden Hose Day is nothing short of amazing, and many experts in holiday marketing believe that National Garden Hose Day will soon rival not just the lesser national holidays like President’s Day, but it may soon eclipse traditional favorites like Father’s Day and Labor Day.

This year’s Garden Hose Day was enthusiastically celebrated in most American cities–from as far south as Brownsville to as far north as Wasilla.  As was the case in 2012, Minneapolis was the unchallenged epicenter of Garden Hose Day activities, with public offices and major businesses closing Monday to allow Twin Cities residents a full three-day weekend for the celebration.  Minneapolis and St. Paul square off each August 3 in the traditional Garden Hose Pull event.  The rivalry is intense and the competition brutal. Minneapolis leads the series by two wins, but St. Paul is a slight favorite in this year’s event  because of the acquisition of All Star puller Paul Browning from the Cleveland Pack Mules.

This bas relief rendering of a garden hose pull from antiquity demonstrates that hoses were in use much earlier than previously believed.  The thick, primitive hose used in this event was quite unlike the sleek but extremely strong hoses used in today’s competition.  Official garden hose pulls actually use specially manufactured hoses that are much stronger than conventional garden variety hoses. The stronger hoses were developed for safety after a St. Paul point puller lost an eye when a tightly stretched hose popped during the 2010 competition.

A new competition that emerged in several cities during this year’s Garden Hose festivities was the so-called Hose Blast. In this event, the player attempts to catch a burst of water from a fire hose in his mouth and squirt it back into the face of the friendly fireman.  The event’s future is uncertain, since several injuries were reported this year,  including a number of loose teeth.

Billy Meredith of Des Moines, Iowa was unable to withstand the jet of water dealt him by fireman Bob Withers in the Hose Blast event held at the Des Moines Civic Center. Although Billy was a favorite with the crowd, he did not qualify for the main competition. 

A Bright Future for Garden Hose Day

According to Esperanza Lopez,   research analyst for the National Federation of Merchant Associations,  holidays sink or swim according to their commercial appeal.  Holidays don’t get popular by accident.  Mother’s Day was a flop, Lopez points out,  until florists caught on that promoting it was an extremely successful way to sell flowers.

Lopez explains that for a holiday to really take off, it needs two things: commercial appeal and a nostalgic hook. Groundhogs are cute, but Groundhog Day comes in only slightly above zero as a national holiday because you can only sell so many stuffed groundhog toys and nobody has any happy childhood memories about groundhogs. Christmas, to the contrary, is the perfect holiday because the “good will toward men” theme is so generalized that almost any product can be associated with it.  Hard as it is to believe, people even give their loved ones guns for Christmas. And as for nostalgia, even a second-rate marketer can whip people into a buying frenzy by evoking happy white Christmas of childhood.  Even people who grew up on the Arizona desert remember blissful white Christmases of their youth when Bing starts to sing.

Garden Hose Day has wide product association plus an easy nostalgic appeal.  Almost everyone has memories of

Happy days of summer. Garden hoses take us back to the Good Old Days.

happy days of summer that involved hose spraying and lawn sprinklers and plastic wading pools filled with cool water from the garden hose.

As for the commercial side,  Esperanza Lopez points out that there are an exceptional number of products that relate to the garden hose.  In addition to the almost limitless array of decorative hoses, there are special nozzles, colorful hose bibs, manual and electrically-powered hose dispenser/retractors,  hose splitters, hose repair kits, hose unions, hose protectors, and more.  Related items include lawn equipment, car wash paraphernalia,  clothing,  books about gardening, patio cooking, landscaping and washing cars, patio furniture, lawn sprinklers,  gardening tools–the list is endless. Yes, even x-rated products that include sex toys and clothing with suggestive phallic mottoes and pictures were on the market this year.

One of the more serious products that has benefited from the popularity of Garden Hose Day is the garden hose filter. According to manager Katey Shannon of Pure Water Products,  a leading seller of garden hose filters, “We sell garden hose filters year around, but sales really take off in the month before Garden Hose Day.”  Shannon points out that garden hose filters enhance the hosing experience, whether you drink water from a garden hose, spray water on your lawn or vegetable garden, wash your car, or fill your horse’s water trough. “Whatever you do with a garden hose,” Shannon says, “you will enjoy it more if your water is filtered.”

So live it up on Garden Hose Day.  August, the hottest month and the last month of summer vacation, needs a great holiday.  Let’s face it.  No one wants to celebrate the day we bombed Hiroshima and no one wants to buy gifts to commemorate LBJ’s Birthday.  Garden Hose Day!  A holiday America can be proud of.

  For the Dog Days of Summer, there’s nothing like a garden hose to make you happy.