Gazette Technical Wizard Pure Water Annie Gives a Quick And Easy Explanation of How Water Softeners Work
The softener shown above has a traditional “timer” control. Most modern residential softeners now use more sophisticated electronic controls. but the softening process described below is still the same.
A water softener is an ion exchanger. Hard water—water with a high calcium/magnesium content—enters the softener through the “In” port indicated by the green arrow. It passes through the control valve and into the treatment tank, where it goes from top to bottom through a specially prepared resin that “softens” it.
The resin consists of beads that have been specially manufactured to be saturated with sodium ions. “Softening” occurs as the hardness minerals in the water, mainly calcium and magnesium, attach themselves to the resin and are “exchanged” for sodium. The water is now essentially free of the hardness minerals, but it has a higher sodium content.
The softened water then enters the long center tube, called a riser, via the strainer basket in the bottom of the tank and passes upward through the riser. The water exits the softener via the control valve (blue arrow) and is sent to the home.
When the resin becomes saturated by hardness minerals, the softener automatically goes into regeneration. (The regeneration process is initiated by a timer or a meter, depending on the type of softener you own.) By this process the hardness minerals are washed off of the resin and down the drain (via a drain tube not shown in the diagram), and the resin bed is rinsed, resettled, and recharged with sodium. It is now again ready to soften your water.
The regeneration process is accomplished by passing very salty water from the brine tank through the resin to renew its ability to soften water.
The brine tank must contain softener salt at all times so that it can regenerate the softening resin again and again.
Regeneration in standard softeners involves several distinct steps:
The backwash, where water is run upward through the resin bed to clean it and resettle it.
The brine draw or brine rinse, where the very salty brine is slowly drawn from the brine tank and sent through the resin bed.
The rapid rinse, where the softener runs clean water downward through the resin bed to resettle the bed and remove excessive salt.
The brine refill, where the softener puts clean water into the brine tank to make brine for the next regeneration.
Glossary
Brine. Name given the extremely salty water that is used to regenerate the softener’s resin.
Grain. A standard measure of hardness. A “grain” of hardness is the equivalent of 17.1 parts per million.
Hardness. The concentration of calcium and magnesium salts in the water.
Hard Water. Though not all authorities agree on a precise definition, water with over 7 grains of hardness is considered “hard” by almost everyone. Many would say that hardness begins at a lower number.
Ion Exchange. A chemical reaction in which ions are exchanged in solution. In the case of the water softener, which is a cation exchanger, calcium and magnesium are exchanged for sodium. Many other ion exchange devices exist for different water treatment tasks.
Regeneration. The process by which an ion exchanger (like a water softener) renews its ability to do its job. In the case of the softener, a strong brine solution is passed through the resin bed and sodium is exchanged for calcium and magnesium.
Resin. Specially manufactured polymer beads used in the ion exchange process to remove dissolved salts from water.
My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment
by Julia Scott
Introductory Note: The article below offers a glimpse at a new way of thinking about our relationship with the natural world. Julia Scott’s research supports my own beliefs that much of our reliance on personal care chemicals is actually no more than habit–a habit supported and encouraged by advertising and aggressive marketing. Our addiction to personal care chemicals is part of the overall war on bacteria that has characterized our age. We are, fortunately, learning that this is a very bad idea; but our addiction to personal care items aimed at keeping us squeaky clean and bacteria free will be a hard one to break. Scott’s article will show you, though, that a world without shampoos, harsh soaps, and, yes, even without showering may be possible if we are bold enough to question the wisdom of commercials that tell us that we will be social outcasts if our hair doesn’t glisten. — Gene Franks.
The M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+ has not showered for the past 12 years.
For most of my life, if I’ve thought at all about the bacteria living on my skin, it has been while trying to scrub them away. But recently I spent four weeks rubbing them in. I was Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic, developed by AOBiome, a biotech start-up in Cambridge, Mass. The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing it away with soap and shampoo — acting as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.
In the conference room of the cramped offices that the four-person AOBiome team rents at a start-up incubator, Spiros Jamas, the chief executive, handed me a chilled bottle of the solution from the refrigerator. “These are AOB,” he said. “They’re very innocuous.” Because the N. eutropha are alive, he said, they would need to be kept cold to remain stable. I would be required to mist my face, scalp and body with bacteria twice a day. I would be swabbed every week at a lab, and the samples would be analyzed to detect changes in my invisible microbial community.
In the last few years, the microbiome (sometimes referred to as “the second genome”) has become a focus for the health conscious and for scientists alike. Studies like the Human Microbiome Project, a national enterprise to sequence bacterial DNA taken from 242 healthy Americans, have tagged 19 of our phyla (groupings of bacteria), each with thousands of distinct species. As Michael Pollan wrote in this magazine last year: “As a civilization, we’ve just spent the better part of a century doing our unwitting best to wreck the human-associated microbiota. . . . Whether any cures emerge from the exploration of the second genome, the implications of what has already been learned — for our sense of self, for our definition of health and for our attitude toward bacteria in general — are difficult to overstate.”
While most microbiome studies have focused on the health implications of what’s found deep in the gut, companies like AOBiome are interested in how we can manipulate the hidden universe of organisms (bacteria, viruses and fungi) teeming throughout our glands, hair follicles and epidermis. They see long-term medical possibilities in the idea of adding skin bacteria instead of vanquishing them with antibacterials — the potential to change how we diagnose and treat serious skin ailments. But drug treatments require the approval of the Food and Drug Administration, an onerous and expensive process that can take upward of a decade. Instead, AOBiome’s founders introduced AO+ under the loosely regulated “cosmetics” umbrella as a way to release their skin tonic quickly. With luck, the sales revenue will help to finance their research into drug applications. “The cosmetic route is the quickest,” Jamas said. “The other route is the hardest, the most expensive and the most rewarding.”
AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.
For my part in the AO+ study, I wanted to see what the bacteria could do quickly, and I wanted to cut down on variables, so I decided to sacrifice my own soaps, shampoo and deodorant while participating. I was determined to grow a garden of my own.
The story of AOBiome begins in 2001, in a patch of dirt on the floor of a Boston-area horse stable, where Whitlock was collecting soil samples. A few months before, an equestrienne he was dating asked him to answer a question she had long been curious about: Why did her horse like to roll in the dirt? Whitlock didn’t know, but he saw an opportunity to impress.
Whitlock thought about how much horses sweat in the summer. He wondered whether the animals managed their sweat by engaging in dirt bathing. Could there be a kind of “good” bacteria in the dirt that fed off perspiration? He knew there was a class of bacteria that derive their energy from ammonia rather than from carbon and grew convinced that horses (and possibly other mammals that engage in dirt bathing) would be covered in them. “The only way that horses could evolve this behavior was if they had substantial evolutionary benefits from it,” he told me.
Whitlock gathered his samples and brought them back to his makeshift home laboratory, where he skimmed off the dirt and grew the bacteria in an ammonia solution (to simulate sweat). The strain that emerged as the hardiest was indeed an ammonia oxidizer: N. eutropha. Here was one way to test his “clean dirt” theory: Whitlock put the bacteria in water and dumped them onto his head and body.
Some skin bacteria species double every 20 minutes; ammonia-oxidizing bacteria are much slower, doubling only every 10 hours. They are delicate creatures, so Whitlock decided to avoid showering to simulate a pre-soap living condition. “I wasn’t sure what would happen,” he said, “but I knew it would be good.”
The bacteria thrived on Whitlock. AO+ was created using bacterial cultures from his skin.
And now the bacteria were on my skin.
I had warned my friends and co-workers about my experiment, and while there were plenty of jokes — someone left a stick of deodorant on my desk; people started referring to me as “Teen Spirit” — when I pressed them to sniff me after a few soap-free days, no one could detect a difference. Aside from my increasingly greasy hair, the real changes were invisible. By the end of the week, Jamas was happy to see test results that showed the N. eutropha had begun to settle in, finding a friendly niche within my biome.
AOBiome is not the first company to try to leverage emerging discoveries about the skin microbiome into topical products. The skin-care aisle at my drugstore had a moisturizer with a “probiotic complex,” which contains an extract of Lactobacillus, species unknown. Online, companies offer face masks, creams and cleansers, capitalizing on the booming market in probiotic yogurts and nutritional supplements. There is even a “frozen yogurt” body cleanser whose second ingredient is sodium lauryl sulfate, a potent detergent, so you can remove your healthy bacteria just as fast as you can grow them.
Audrey Gueniche, a project director in L’Oréal’s research and innovation division, said the recent skin microbiome craze “has revolutionized the way we study the skin and the results we look for.” L’Oréal has patented several bacterial treatments for dry and sensitive skin, including Bifidobacterium longum extract, which it uses in a Lancôme product. Clinique sells a foundation with Lactobacillus ferment, and its parent company, Estée Lauder, holds a patent for skin application of Lactobacillus plantarum. But it’s unclear whether the probiotics in any of these products would actually have any effect on skin: Although a few studies have shown that Lactobacillus may reduce symptoms of eczema when taken orally, it does not live on the skin with any abundance, making it “a curious place to start for a skin probiotic,” said Michael Fischbach, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Extracts are not alive, so they won’t be colonizing anything.
To differentiate their product from others on the market, the makers of AO+ use the term “probiotics” sparingly, preferring instead to refer to “microbiomics.” No matter what their marketing approach, at this stage the company is still in the process of defining itself. It doesn’t help that the F.D.A. has no regulatory definition for “probiotic” and has never approved such a product for therapeutic use. “The skin microbiome is the wild frontier,” Fischbach told me. “We know very little about what goes wrong when things go wrong and whether fixing the bacterial community is going to fix any real problems.”
I didn’t really grasp how much was yet unknown until I received my skin swab results from Week 2. My overall bacterial landscape was consistent with the majority of Americans’: Most of my bacteria fell into the genera Propionibacterium, Corynebacterium and Staphylococcus, which are among the most common groups. (S. epidermidis is one of several Staphylococcus species that reside on the skin without harming it.) But my test results also showed hundreds of unknown bacterial strains that simply haven’t been classified yet.
Meanwhile, I began to regret my decision to use AO+ as a replacement for soap and shampoo. People began asking if I’d “done something new” with my hair, which turned a full shade darker for being coated in oil that my scalp wouldn’t stop producing. I slept with a towel over my pillow and found myself avoiding parties and public events. Mortified by my body odor, I kept my arms pinned to my sides, unless someone volunteered to smell my armpit. One friend detected the smell of onions. Another caught a whiff of “pleasant pot.”
When I visited the gym, I followed AOBiome’s instructions, misting myself before leaving the house and again when I came home. The results: After letting the spray dry on my skin, I smelled better. Not odorless, but not as bad as I would have ordinarily. And, oddly, my feet didn’t smell at all.
My skin began to change for the better. It actually became softer and smoother, rather than dry and flaky, as though a sauna’s worth of humidity had penetrated my winter-hardened shell. And my complexion, prone to hormone-related breakouts, was clear. For the first time ever, my pores seemed to shrink. As I took my morning “shower” — a three-minute rinse in a bathroom devoid of hygiene products — I remembered all the antibiotics I took as a teenager to quell my acne. How funny it would be if adding bacteria were the answer all along.
Dr. Elizabeth Grice, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the role of microbiota in wound healing and inflammatory skin disease, said she believed that discoveries about the second genome might one day not only revolutionize treatments for acne but also — as AOBiome and its biotech peers hope — help us diagnose and cure disease, heal severe lesions and more. Those with wounds that fail to respond to antibiotics could receive a probiotic cocktail adapted to fight the specific strain of infecting bacteria. Body odor could be altered to repel insects and thereby fight malaria and dengue fever. And eczema and other chronic inflammatory disorders could be ameliorated.
According to Julie Segre, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute and a specialist on the skin microbiome, there is a strong correlation between eczema flare-ups and the colonization of Staphylococcus aureus on the skin. Segre told me that scientists don’t know what triggers the bacterial bloom. But if an eczema patient could monitor their microbes in real time, they could lessen flare-ups. “Just like someone who has diabetes is checking their blood-sugar levels, a kid who had eczema would be checking their microbial-diversity levels by swabbing their skin,” Segre said.
AOBiome says its early research seems to hold promise. In-house lab results show that AOB activates enough acidified nitrite to diminish the dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). A regime of concentrated AO+ caused a hundredfold decrease of Propionibacterium acnes, often blamed for acne breakouts. And the company says that diabetic mice with skin wounds heal more quickly after two weeks of treatment with a formulation of AOB.
Soon, AOBiome will file an Investigational New Drug Application with the F.D.A. to request permission to test more concentrated forms of AOB for the treatment of diabetic ulcers and other dermatologic conditions. “It’s very, very easy to make a quack therapy; to put together a bunch of biological links to convince someone that something’s true,” Heywood said. “What would hurt us is trying to sell anything ahead of the data.”
As my experiment drew to a close, I found myself reluctant to return to my old routine of daily shampooing and face treatments. A month earlier, I packed all my hygiene products into a cooler and hid it away. On the last day of the experiment, I opened it up, wrinkling my nose at the chemical odor. Almost everything in the cooler was a synthesized liquid surfactant, with lab-manufactured ingredients engineered to smell good and add moisture to replace the oils they washed away. I asked AOBiome which of my products was the biggest threat to the “good” bacteria on my skin. The answer was equivocal: Sodium lauryl sulfate, the first ingredient in many shampoos, may be the deadliest to N. eutropha, but nearly all common liquid cleansers remove at least some of the bacteria. Antibacterial soaps are most likely the worst culprits, but even soaps made with only vegetable oils or animal fats strip the skin of AOB.
Bar soaps don’t need bacteria-killing preservatives the way liquid soaps do, but they are more concentrated and more alkaline, whereas liquid soaps are often milder and closer to the natural pH of skin. Which is better for our bacteria? “The short answer is, we don’t know,” said Dr. Larry Weiss, founder of CleanWell, a botanical-cleanser manufacturer. Weiss is helping AOBiome put together a list of “bacteria-safe” cleansers based on lab testing. In the end, I tipped most of my products into the trash and purchased a basic soap and a fragrance-free shampoo with a short list of easily pronounceable ingredients. Then I enjoyed a very long shower, hoping my robust biofilm would hang on tight.
One week after the end of the experiment, though, a final skin swab found almost no evidence of N. eutropha anywhere on my skin. It had taken me a month to coax a new colony of bacteria onto my body. It took me three showers to extirpate it. Billions of bacteria, and they had disappeared as invisibly as they arrived. I had come to think of them as “mine,” and yet I had evicted them.
Study: Mississippi River Overwhelmed by Agricultural Chemicals
Dead Fish on the Mississippi
Gazette’s Introductory Note: A new study shows what we already knew: farmers are trashing the nation’s water with an overload of fertilizers and other chemicals and we need to find a better way to grow things. –Hardly Waite.
Every spring a so-called “dead zone” develops in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Spreading up to 13,600 square kilometers and extending all the way to the eastern Texas shoreline, the zone results from nitrogen-heavy river water pouring into the gulf, where it promotes the growth of algae. As the algae dies, it sinks to the bottom where it decomposes and depletes oxygen from the water, a condition called hypoxia that is deadly to fish and shrimp.
While scientists know what causes a hypoxic zone, a recently published study by two Austin-based hydrogeologists shows the solution may prove a hard sell for those landlocked to the north.
According to Dr. Bayani Cardenas, Associate Professor at the University of Texas’s Jackson School of Geosciences, river bank sediments naturally filter water-borne contaminants, typically removing nitrates that otherwise create dead zones downstream.
“You can think of it as a spiraling flow back around the bank of the river,” said Cardenas, the study’s lead author. “A water molecule goes into the bank and then comes back out into the river at some downstream point, and it does that repeatedly as it travels downstream.”
And yet nitrate-heavy waters of the Mississippi River have been pouring into the gulf each spring. Determined to find out why, Cardenas, his recent study shows, found that although more than 99 percent of the river’s water does pass through sediment on its way south, the system is overwhelmed by sheer the amount of nitrogen it carries.
The Mississippi river system carries water to the gulf from 33 states and two Canadian provinces where chemicals like nitrogen are used extensively in agriculture. Farmers say the use of such chemicals is essential to produce food for a growing world population.
But Cardenas says his research shows that something needs to be done.
“If you want to curtail this process it has to be at the source, just less inputs from the start,” he said, explaining that the majority of contaminants wreaking havoc on Louisiana’s gulf fishermen are introduced to the water system in states farther to the north.
Aaron Packman, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, agrees. He says farmers may be able to better control the amount of nitrate fertilizer they put on fields.
“How much fertilizer do you need to give you good yields and then how much is maybe a marginal gain from adding lots more fertilizer?” he said. “There is really a question here: can you maybe [reduce the amount] and get close to the same level of yield without having such a negative impact?”
Packman also says solutions need to be implemented upstream from Louisiana, which has a relatively small section of the river.
“The Mississippi river system is 40 percent of the surface area of the continental United States,” he said. “I think it takes some further work in the distributive areas upstream that are the source of a lot of the nutrient.”
Filtration by the river system has been weakened by human-made “improvements” such as levees and canals that aid transportation and help control floods. But Cardenas says filtration works better when the river meanders through twists and turns, forcing the water to spend more time in the sediment that cleans it.
“A straight channel won’t offer this buffering,” he said. “A very sinuous channel provides a lot of the contact of the river water with the sediment.”
While Louisiana has embarked on a project to divert more river water through wetlands to filter it and increase coastal silt deposits, this will have only a limited effect if states farther upstream do not take action as well.
In coming months, storms will stir the gulf waters and diminish the oxygen-depleted zone, but it will return next year and grow larger in years ahead if something isn’t done to reduce the flow of nitrogen in the Mississippi.
Cardenas’s study appears in a recent issue of Nature Geosciences.
To combat salinity in waste water systems and to save water, cities are adopting regulations that range from outright bans on conventional softeners to laws rewarding customers for obtaining high efficiency units or getting rid of their softener altogether.
The following is from the Water Quality Association’s newsletter (May 21, 2014):
Water Softeners Remain a Prominent Issue in Arizona
The Water Quality Association and Arizona Water Quality Association continue to monitor several issues in Arizona, where water softeners are very much the topic of legislative and regulatory focus.
Arizona’s Legislative Salinity Committee issued its report to the legislature, making several recommendations, including an education outreach program for both water treatment installers and the general public about the effects of salinity in the Valley of the Sun. It also recommended the State adopt the California Water Softener Performance Standard: that a water softener must remove at least 4,000 grains of hardness per pound of salt used and a maximum of five gallons of water per 1,000 grains of hardness removed. HB 2117, which included the language for water softener performance standard, was introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives earlier this year. Despite passing in the House, the bill failed to be taken up by the Arizona Senate.
In March, the City of Scottsdale approved a two-year pilot program to begin using rebates to encourage consumers to change their water softening practices. These are not cash rebates, but would be credited to the applicant’s water bill. Scottsdale is offering three different rebates, including:
A $50 one-time rebate available to the first 300 customers each year who replace their existing water softener with a new high-efficiency device.
A $100 one-time rebate available to the first 100 customers per year who subscribe to a portable exchange service.
A $250 total rebate ($125 up front $125 after one year) to the first 100 customers who remove their water softener completely.
Exactly how the city would enforce the “4,000 grains of hardness per pound of salt” rule isn’t explained and is hard to imagine. Perhaps by adding more code enforcement officers with flow meters, test kits, and scales for weighing salt. But the point that bothers me is paying someone to remove his softener altogether. Does the softener have to be working, or can the homeowner just get rid of an old softener that’s stored in his garage? It reminds me of a plan that our city had to give special price breaks to people who turned off their air conditioners at peak usage times. I complained (bitterly) that there was no provision in the law to reward me for not having an air conditioner to turn off. Once our city government gave awards to people who stopped bagging their grass clippings. There was no award for me who have never in my life bagged a single blade of grass. Nor have I ever been given an award for not watering my lawn or for not mowing it, though these save water and energy and reduce pollution.
The dilemma that city officials are in with the air conditioner and the water softener is that they they want you to save water but not too much water, and they want you to save electricity, but not too much electricity. City utilities companies, after all, get paid by selling water and electricity, and if too many people save too much, there’s a budget shortfall. So we are trained that to be good Americans we should water our lawns, but not too much, and that we should have an air conditioner, but we should turn it off at times when we need it most.
Dr. Joseph Mercola is one of the most respected “internet” doctors and certainly the most popular. His newsletter is read by millions. Below I’ve extracted from his newsletter issues and website some of his views on the popular pH-altering devices sold as “alkalizers” or “ionizers” which purport to promote optimal health and cure disease by turning tap water into a highly alkaline liquid by use of electrolysis. –Gene Franks
Many alkaline water enthusiasts are convinced its powers are unparalleled and will vehemently defend it. I am also certain that many will post vigorous objections to my position, and that is their choice. It is also my choice and responsibility to provide information on a system that many people are relying on to provide health benefits that I feel are unjustified.
There are a plethora of testimonials and so-called scientific studies on the Internet claiming alkaline water will cure your every ill. Many consumers, struggling to make sense of the scientific jargon, eventually throw up their hands in frustration. The reality is, most of the circulating information is distributed by clever marketers, with very little scientific validity to back up their claims.
Complicating matters is the fact that most water alkalizers are being marketed by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies with less-than-stellar ethics. They sell you a very expensive machine, for which you get a good discount if you sign up as a rep, and once you’re part of the MLM, you can’t very well change your mind about its benefits (especially if you’re going to sell the units) – even if you realize that the alkaline water is no longer “working” for you.
I have been personally approached many times and encouraged to sell these systems and there would have been large revenue streams had I chosen to do so, but I would never promote anything that I would never use personally, and I can assure you that I would never use most of the machines on the market that produce alkaline water as a regular source of water.
Some people experience an initial “high” when they start drinking alkaline water. This can easily be attributed to detoxification, and the fact that they are likely just becoming better hydrated.
Detoxification is about the only benefit of this type of water, and this benefit is limited to very SHORT TERM USE (no more than a week or two). I will elaborate on what is known about alkaline water, but first you’ll need a basic understanding of the properties of water and a few definitions.
pH
The pH scale goes from 0 to 14, and a pH of 7 is neutral. Anything with a pH below 7 is considered acidic, with battery acid being the most extreme example, around 1. Anything with a pH above 7 is alkaline (or basic), with lye at the top of the scale, around 13. [iii] Natural water on our planet ranges in pH from 6.5 to 9.0, depending on surrounding soil and vegetation, seasonal variations and weather, and even time of day responses to sunlight. Human activities further influence the pH of our water, from the barrage of toxic industrial pollutants. According to an educational website called Water on the Web:
“Pollutants in water can cause it to have higher algal and plant growth, as a result of increased temperature or excess nutrients, causing pH levels to rise. Although these small changes in pH are not likely to have a direct impact on aquatic life, they greatly influence the availability and solubility of all chemical forms in the lake and may aggravate nutrient problems. For example, a change in pH may increase the solubility of phosphorus, making it more available for plant growth and resulting in a greater long-term demand for dissolved oxygen.”
So, what are the recommendations for optimal drinking water pH? The WHO has published a nearly-600 page document called “Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality.” [v] In this voluminous tome, you would expect to find everything you’d ever want to know about your drinking water, right? Well, everything EXCEPT a pH recommendation – there are no health-based guidelines for pH! They state that pH usually has “no direct impact on consumers,” yet they also write pH is one of the “most important operational water quality parameters.” They do recommend your water pH be in the range of 6.5 to 8.0 so as not to corrode your pipes – and they’re NOT talking about your body’s plumbing:
“Alkalinity and calcium management also contribute to the stability of water and control its aggressiveness to pipe and appliance. Failure to minimize corrosion can result in the contamination of drinking water and in adverse effects on its taste and appearance. Failure to minimize corrosion can result in the contamination of drinking water and in adverse effects on its taste and appearance.”
It appears that the WHO is more concerned about the pipes in your house than the pipes in your body. Most likely the optimal pH of the water you were designed to drink is somewhere between 6.5 and 8. Above or below this level may have other purposes, such as disinfection, but I would be careful drinking water outside of these ranges.
Alkalinity Research I: Flora and Fauna
Although the research is clear that highly alkaline water has detrimental effects on plants and animals, there are not many studies with humans. A review of the literature turns up a variety of anecdotal evidence about the importance of pH to various living organisms, however, and as you might expect, optimal pH varies, depending on the organism. The scientific literature indicates pH is important for nutrition and vitality. For example:
Michigan State University studied greenhouse growth media (including the pH of that media), finding it is extremely important for the media pH to be properly adjusted prior to planting. Too high of a pH (greater than 6.5) increases the chances of micronutrient deficiencies. Too low of a pH (less than 5.3) results in calcium and/or magnesium and/or manganese toxicity. [vi]
Ohio State University Extension Service reports that alkaline water affects a plant’s ability to obtain nutrients from the soil and can alter the soil’s pH over time.[vii]
Fish chronically exposed to alkaline soft water exhibit signs of stress (sometimes fatal), while fish in alkaline hard water experienced no such adverse effects, according to a study at the University of British Columbia. [ix]
If you are a gardener, you can view a helpful illustration of the environmental effects of pH in your own garden. If your pH is low, your hydrangea produces pink flowers, but if your pH is high, you’ll get blue flowers. But what about us bipeds?
Alkalinity Research II: Humans
There has been a great deal of debate about battling cancer by making your body alkaline. This has become a focus of interest as cancer rates have skyrocketed (along with many other chronic, debilitating diseases), while our bodies have become more acidic from our processed-food diets. The scientific research about the benefits of alkalinity is by no means conclusive. PH appears to have a major influence on cell mitochondria:
Normal cells die under extremely alkaline conditions. A study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that alkalosis (rising cellular pH) causes alkaline-induced cell death as a result of altering mitochondrial function. [x]
Another study out of Cornell University states that antioxidants have not proven to be effective against many neurodegenerative diseases, and they state it may be a result of how the mitochondria operate within the cell in certain pH conditions.[xi]
There are some scientific studies that really argue against alkalinity, at least with respect to preventing or treating cancer. Consider the research by Robert Gilles, who has studied tumor formation and acidity.[xii] According to Gilles, tumors, by their very nature, make themselves acidic – even in an alkaline cellular structure. In other words, they make their own acidity. Scientists who are in the process of developing prototypes for potential new anticancer agents that selectively kill tumor cells by interfering with the regulation of intracellular pH, have found that alkaline treatments do NOT have the desired effect – but strongly acidic treatments do.[xiii]
Talk about fighting fire with fire – they are fighting acid-loving cancer cells with acid! LESS alkalinity inside a cancer cell seems to be what you want, not more. So, all of those salesmen promising alkaline water will lower your cancer risk are completely clueless when it comes to what the scientific research actually shows. Even more interesting is a 2005 study by the National Cancer Institute, which revisits the use of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to treat cancer. They found that, in pharmacologic doses administered intravenously, ascorbic acid successfully killed cancer cells without harming normal cells.[xiv] This is yet another example of cancer cells being vulnerable to acidity, as opposed to alkalinity. It’s clear that the relationship between alkalinity and cancer has been grossly oversimplified by those jumping to premature conclusions – and of course by those trying to profit off your fear. The bottom line is that alkaline water isn’t cancer’s magic bullet.
Balance Is Key
As is true with many things, in the end it’s a matter of balance. Water that is too acidic or too alkaline can be detrimental to human health and lead to nutritional disequilibrium. This was demonstrated in a Swedish well water study [xv], which found both pH extremes to be problematic. Your body simply was not designed to drink highly alkaline water all the time. So I believe it’s best to be VERY careful when it comes to something as foundational as the water you drink on a daily basis. If you get it wrong, you could really cause yourself some major damage. It makes sense that you are designed to drink water that occurs naturally, which excludes alkaline water with pH levels of 8 and above.
And if you drink alkaline water all the time, you’re going to raise the alkalinity of your stomach, which will buffer your stomach’s acidity and impair your ability to digest food, as low stomach acid is one of the most common causes of ulcers. This can open the door for parasites in your small intestine, and your protein digestion may suffer. It also means you’ll get less minerals and nutrients over time – in fact, some of these health effects can already be seen in hardcore alkaline water drinkers. Alkalinity is also potentially a problem because it is antibacterial, so it could potentially disrupt the balance of your body’s beneficial bacteria.
No Joke: Most Drinking Supplies Flush With “Potty Water”
by Neena Satija
Poor old Wichita Falls.
The city of about 105,000 people has become the butt of late-night jokes and the subject of shocked headlines since officials decided to turn to treated sewer water to fill residents’ drinking glasses.
Turns out, though, the joke is on just about everybody else. Because for the large chunk of population that lives downstream from a big city and whose water supply flows through a river, more than a few drops of the water in their glasses was probably once in someone else’s toilet.
Click image to enlarge.
Let’s start with Houston, which, as Texas State University professor Andy Sansom says, “has been drinking Dallas’ crap for decades.” Wastewater from Dallas and Fort Worth is deposited into the Trinity River, where it flows down into the lakes that supply Houston residents. The wastewater is so clean that it’s credited with helping the Trinity River stay strong during recent years of severe drought.
San Antonio’s wastewater — which flows through the city’s famed Riverwalk in times of drought — is considered valuable, too. Recently, the San Antonio Water System applied for a permit to ensure complete ownership over that wastewater, which is currently deposited into the San Antonio River and is so clean that it helped bring back species some thought were gone from the area forever.
The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority balked at the application, saying its own customers — farmers, manufacturers and, you guessed it, South Texas city residents — rely on that wastewater. It is so important to the authority that it’s taking legal action against the San Antonio Water System’s permit.
No one involved in the brewing court battle over who owns San Antonio’s wastewater is calling it “potty water,” as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram did in a recent story about the Wichita Falls plan.
There are a few other things to be clear about regarding the multimillion-dollar project planned in Wichita Falls. Wastewater reuse in Wichita Falls has been in the works for yearsand would have happened with or without the drought. It was fast-tracked as the city deals with reservoirs that are only 25 percent full today. In addition, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — not known for being a particularly strict regulating agency — is currently on the defensive for delaying the city’s project by asking for more testing.
Several other Texas cities — San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth among them — have been looking at such water reuse projects for decades, and some are hoping the plans might come to fruition in the coming years. Across Texas, treated wastewater is being used for everything from watering golf courses to making silicon chips.
Yet judging by the headlines on news reports about the Wichita Falls project,the city’s residents could be in for some sort of disgusting surprise.
“Brushing Teeth With Sewer Water Next Step as Texas Faces Drought,” read a Bloomberg News headline. National Public Radio wrote, “Drought-Stricken Texas Town Turns To Toilets For Water.” Most recently, NBC’s Today Show tackled the topic, with a reporter noting, “Some residents think it’s just plain gross.”
Bloomberg News noted that many people are concerned about water contamination, comparing the Wichita Falls project to the example of Oregon water officials flushing 38 million gallons from a reservoir after a teenager urinated into it. “We’re not drought-stricken Texas,” an official there noted.
On that note, remember all the people guzzling beer and floating in the water out on Lakes Travis and Buchanan, which supply Austin’s drinking water. No one is suggesting flushing those bodies of water or implying that residents of the capital city are brushing their teeth with sewer water.
When talking about the yuck factor associated with water reuse projects, people seem to be distraught over the fact that the water would go directly from a sewer treatment plant to the tap. That’s the short-term plan in Wichita Falls during this extreme drought. Eventually, the city plans to blend treated sewer water with reservoir water before anyone drinks it — not unlike what happens in other cities.
And the fact is, some of the lakes and rivers that supply water here in the United States can get pretty dirty. The recent horrific spill in the Elk River from the chemical manufacturing company Freedom Industries that had 300,000 West Virginians afraid to take showers is just one example.
A recent New York Times investigation showed that public water supplies nationwide contain everything from arsenic to radium at higher-than-safe levels. In the Rio Grande, which supplies millions of South Texans and farmers with drinking and irrigation water, raw sewage is dumped in the river from Mexico every day — and water treatment plants either deal with it or they don’t, as was demonstrated in a small town near Laredo last fall when residents were forced to boil their water for three weeks after getting sick from taking showers.
In fact, an exhaustive National Academy of Sciences study of wastewater reuse concludedthat when it comes to potential pathogens that may be in the water, “the risk from potable reuse does not appear to be any higher, and may be orders of magnitude lower, than currently experienced in at least some current (and approved) drinking water treatment systems.”
No wonder so many cities — not just in Texas — are considering direct water reuse as a water supply strategy to quench their thirst.
On The Tonight Show recently, host Jimmy Fallon made a joke that a lot of environmental advocates, water engineers and city planners across the state have said they think asks a good question.
“A town in Texas just announced a controversial plan to recycle toilet water and use it for drinking water. Dog said, ‘How are you only thinking of this now?’”
Legionellosis–America’s “most important waterborne disease.”
by Dr. Joseph Cotruvo
Editor’s Note: The piece below is excerpted from a Water Technology column by Dr. Joseph Cotruvo. It appeared the WT‘s “Professor POU/POE” series, which is the trade journal’s version of the Gazette‘s own ongoing series by technical wizard Pure Water Annie. —Hardly Waite.
The most important waterborne diseease risk in the United States is legionellosis, and it can be fatal. Distribution and plumbing system deficiencies are the most significant sources of waterborne disease in the U.S. and probably in all developed countries. In the past, source water contamination and inadequate water treatment or treatment breakdowns were the major sources of traditional waterborne diseases.
Since the passage in 1974 and implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act after about 1978, however, new EPA regulations were implemented. Public water systems have undertaken major improvements in installations and operations of treatment technologies and water quality monitoring, and the traditional waterborne diseases have been reduced significantly. However, the types of illnesses have changed to water distribution-related causes that can’t be entirely eliminated at the central municipal water treatment plant. This calls for a radically different approach to protect public health by regulators and the public.
Legionellosis has been a reportable disease only since 2001. The disease is not caused by ingestion of the water, but rather by inhalation of aerosols such as during showering or from inhaling blow down from cooling system heat exchangers, or probably even humidifiers. Those at particular risk are the elderly and especially people with impaired immune systems such as those who are hospitalized and in extended care facilities, but they are everywhere in the community. It is well known that legionella are detectable in a high percentage of plumbing systems, including in homes, hotels and other buildings, and a substantial number of people in the general population are susceptible because of their ages or health or immune status. Several hospital-related outbreaks of legionella related diseases are reported annually around the world, but undoubtedly most are not identified or attributed to the water system. CDC has estimated that between 8,000 and 18,000 people are hospitalized with Legionnaires’-related disease each year in the U.S. It is not known how many of those are attributable to exposure from the plumbing or cooling systems.
Treatment technologies for managing Legionella and other regrowth microorganisms
Treatment is a real challenge and a cookie cutter approach is not likely to be widely successful. The problem of controlling microorganisms colonizing plumbing and distribution systems is not trivial because many of them are associated with biofilms or protozoa such as amoebas. Thus, even though they may be susceptible to disinfection in suspension, the disinfectants may not have ready access to them in biofilms so that they can be killed. Disinfectants that have been employed have had limited success. They include chlorine, chloramine, chlorine dioxide, ozone, UV light, copper/silver ionization and shock thermal and steam treatments. Each of them has its benefits and weaknesses, and often a combination of treatments must be applied on a regular basis supported by monitoring to indicate the conditions of the system and the time to re-treat. Chlorine is a powerful disinfectant, but even when applied in a temporary hyperchlorination mode (e.g., 50 ppm for several hours) total eradication may not be achieved. Chloramines, which are far less potent than free chlorine, have demonstrated considerable success in reducing legionella counts in some water plumbing systems. This could be due to the lower chemical reactivity of chloramine and greater hydrophobicity that allows greater penetration into biofilms. Chlorine dioxide is a potent disinfectant that also has had mixed success. On-site generation and survival of a residual in far plumbing reaches and in hot water systems can be a problem. Ozone and UV might have some efficacy in recirculating systems, but they will be primarily effective against organisms in the water column. Copper/silver in combination and individually have shown successes when they are properly managed and maintained. Shock thermal treatment for several hours at temperatures above 70oC have shown temporary success, but a complete strategy would require a combination of initial biofilm cleanout with a disinfectant system that will retard regeneration of the biofilm.
The concept of final barrier protection has value in situations where sufficient risk exists. For example, instant hot water delivery systems leave a smaller volume of water to stagnate and provide a growth environment. Temperature control valves at faucets and showerheads allow maintaining hot water lines at temperatures above the ~55oC upper legionella growth temperature, and then blending with cold water at the point-of-use to prevent scalding risk.
One of the things I’ve come to believe in very strongly after more than 25 years in the water treatment business is water testing.
Water plays such an important role in our lives that it only makes sense to know as much as possible about the water we use.
A high quality water test is worth many times its cost. Whether you have a private water source or get water from a city supplier, an independent water test will give you extremely valuable information about your water.
It you find out that you have great water with no significant treatment issues, that is the most valuable information of all, and the test pays for itself many times over, both in peace of mind and in avoidance of purchasing unneeded equipment.
If you learn that you have an unsafe level of a health-threatening substance like lead, arsenic, E.coli, chromium, or fluoride that needs immediate treatment, the test pays for itself many times over.
If you are planning to treat a known water issue, like hardness, iron, or an unpleasant odor, a reliable, easy-to-understand independent test will give you precise information about the issue in question and provide a full picture of your water so you can select the most appropriate and cost-effective treatment. The test, again, pays for itself many times over.
When you consider the total cost of providing water for a home, a good water test is a minor expense, and the information you receive always pays for the test.
Pure Water Products offers free testing for the most basic water issues like hardness, pH, and total dissolved solids, and we also offer comprehensive water test packages from National Testing Laboratories that provide a complete picture of your water. We’ve been offering the NTL WaterCheck and WaterCheck with added pesticides packages for a number of years, and we have recently added specialty test packs for city water users and specific well water issues.
NTL tests are reported in an easy-to-understand format, color coded for quick reference. See a sample test report. Upon request, we at Pure Water Products will help with interpretation of NTL tests and recommendation of equipment to remedy problems identified by the tests. (We’ll help with test interpretation whether you buy the test itself through us or not.)
The WaterCheck Test Kit has everything you need to overnight the samples to the test lab. The test kit price includes both the kit and the testing itself.
Our own free test is much less extensive, and, we are the first to point out, much less expertly done. He have some very good test equipment, but we aren’t a certified laboratory and we make no guarantee of absolute accuracy. Our test is designed for well water, not city water, although we test city samples if they are sent to us. It concentrates on the five most significant well water issues (not counting, of course, bacterial contamination that must go at the top of the list). Knowing these can save much of the guess work of treating well water issues. Here’s a rundown of what I call the “big five”:
Turbidity measures the general clarity of the water The lower the number, the cleaner and clearer the water. The measurement is in FTU. (Most testing for turbidity reports in NTU, but our LaMotte equipment calls it FTU. In either case, it’s an an arbitrary scale designed to measure turbidity.) Above 1 FTU can be considered an issue of concern, although water often measures considerably higher. Turbidity not only can be an aesthetic nuisance; its presence also can offer a breeding ground for bacteria. The test is done by shining a light through the water and recording how much is blocked by particles in the water.
Hardness is a measurement of the calcium and magnesium content. These minerals form scale in pipes, keep soap from lathering, and ruin appliances. The measurement is given in grains per gallon. A grain of hardness represents 17.1 parts per million. Water is usually considered hard enough to require treatment at about 7 grains per gallon.
pH is a measurement of the relative acidity/alkalinity of water. Seven is a neutral pH and anything lower is acidic and anything higher is alkaline. Mildly alkaline is usually viewed as the ideal pH. While 6.0 doesn’t seem a lot under 7, it is actually quite acidic– enough to cause sever damage to plumbing, creating pinhole leaks in copper pipes, and causing water to pick up bad tastes from metals it comes in contact with. pH is a very important factor that influences many water treatment strategies. For example, iron and manganese are much more easily removed by filtration at a high pH. Sometimes it is necessary to raise the pH of the water as part of the iron treatment procedure.
Iron, which along with hydrogen sulfide odor, is the most common well water complaint. Iron content is measured in parts per million, and problems with iron usually begin at about 0.3 ppm. Iron causes staining of fixtures, laundry, and even sidewalks and driveways. Iron and iron removal are among the more complicated issues in water treatment. Iron exists in several forms: ferric (red water iron), ferrous (clear water iron), colloidal, and more. There are also iron bacteria which constitute a separate problem. Our test is mainly for clear water iron. Ferric iron may constitute part of the turbidity reading. Iron bacteria must be tested separately by a professional tester. (Our NTL test program offers a separate test for iron bacteria.)
TDS, or Total Dissolved Solids, is a measurement of the total mineral content of the water. It consists mainly of calcium and magnesium (hardness) and sodium. Although we do not test for sodium, you can usually take an educated guess at the sodium content by subtracting the hardness from the TDS. [This is an over-simplification, but it’s a useful rule to apply. If your water has 450 parts per million Total Dissolved Solids and only 2 grains (34 parts per million) hardness, you can be fairly certain that it has a lot of sodium.]
Diagnosis of Water Problems by Taking an Educated Guess
Hydrogen sulfide must be tested on site and its rotten egg odor is usually obvious enough that a test is not needed. Treatment of 2 or 4 or 6 parts per million hydrogen sulfide would be essentially the same, so self-diagnosis is usually practiced. To treat it, however, it is very helpful to know if there is also iron present, the pH of the water, a whether or not dangerous bacteria like e Coli are also present. The presence of iron, on the other hand, is easy to detect by red staining on fixtures and clothing, but it should never be treated unless testing has been done to determine pH and hardness. Finding a treatment strategy that works with iron (e. g. a water softener, an “iron filter” with or without an added oxidizer like air or chlorine) is just a guess unless you know at least the basic characteristics of your well water.
Editor’s Note: This piece illustrates the eternal dilemma of “who owns water” and the complexities of the laws that define the right to the use of water. It underlines the urgency of the issue. It also puts water use in perspective when we consider the dripping faucet that we are taught to worry about in the context of an irrigation well that pumps out 1,500 gallons per minute to water a corn field. To conserve water, should we not be worrying more about what we eat and how much we drive our cars than about dripping faucets? –Hardly Waite.
The battle over water is being played out in Haskell County District Court.
Fifth-generation farmer Jay Garetson says if nothing changes in a few years his area of western Kansas will run out of irrigation water.
So Garetson, his brother, Jarvis, and their families made an unpopular decision several years ago: They are testing the state’s water law.
“The Ogallala has been massively over-drafted,” Garetson said. “If we don’t make changes and large changes and make them soon, we might not have anything left to talk about other than what part of the country we are moving to.”
First in time
With water law, one rule is the cornerstone – first in time, first in right. The longtime law gives senior water rights priority over junior rights. Thus, if a senior right is impaired, then the owner of the junior right could be ordered to reduce irrigation from their well or be shut off completely.
Such a law hasn’t been tested often among groundwater users, especially in the Ogallala Aquifer of western Kansas.
But state leaders, including Gov. Sam Brownback, aren’t hiding the fact that the Ogallala Aquifer is waning due to an overabundance of irrigation wells – largely drilled in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, water by the hundreds of gallons per minute is being pumped out of the ground in some places, with recharge not coming close to refilling it.
A longtime proponent of preserving the Ogallala, Garetson has his own junior rights. His hope in filing an impairment claim on his family’s oldest water right would prove that action is needed to save the Ogallala.
“Water is precious, and it is required for life,” he said. “It shouldn’t surprise us it is heated and passionate – it needs to be engaged by a broad of section of Kansans.”
Making a case for water
The case originally goes back to 2005 when the Garetson family first filed impairment on their vested water right – one of the oldest water rights in Haskell County. Vested rights are the most senior rights in the state – rights developed before the Kansas Water Appropriations Act of 1945.
Jay Garetson said the Moore family, some of the county’s early pioneers as well as close family friends, first drilled vested right HS003 – the third water right granted by the state in Haskell County – in the 1930s. The Garetsons, whose great-grandfather come to Haskell County in 1902, purchased the Moore land and the water right in 1977.
As more wells continued to dot the farmland around them, Garetson said they had to drill the well deeper twice because of the water table’s decline. The last time, they drilled down to 450 feet deep and, mostly likely, as deep as they will be able to go.
When he was growing up on the farm 30 years ago, the well pumped 1,500 gallons per minute.
“Now we are struggling to pump 300 gpm,” he said, adding the well varies from 300 to 450 gallons per minute and the water level in the area continues to drop five to six feet a year.
But the issue sat idle for several years. After backlash and threats from the community, the Garetsons dropped the charge in 2007.
“Our goal has been to bring attention to the urgent state of decline of the Ogallala Aquifer in GMD No. 3,” the Garetsons wrote in their withdrawal letter. “Rather than being a positive catalyst for change in the effort to extend the useful life of the aquifer as a whole, we have been perceived as selfishly damaging our neighbors for our own gain.”
In 2012, the brothers decided to file impairment again.
“There is not enough water to go around. We’ve known that for 40 years now,” he said. “It is getting bad enough something needs to happen.”
Whose water is it?
It could be months before any outcome in the case, Garetson Brothers v. American Warrior, an oil company owned by Cecil O’Brate, Garden City, is reached, said Mark Rude, director of southwest Kansas’ Groundwater Management District No. 3.
However, on May 5, the judge in the case issued a temporary injunction, meaning the oil company can’t pump water from its junior wells in question in the case to irrigate crops this summer. The judge also issued a temporary injunction from pumping in May 2013.
The Kansas Division of Water Resources study also noted impairment in a study released earlier this year.
According to the court document regarding the injunction, it was noted that DWR had determined half the water draw-down at the location is caused by the Garetson well, while the other half is due to the pumping of five nearby wells. DWR attributed 25 percent of the draw-down to American Warrior’s two wells that are in the lawsuit.
With the case still pending in court, O’Brate, who has farm and ranchland, declined to comment at this time. The Kansas Department of Agriculture also did not comment on the case or on questions regarding water right laws.
Rude, who was called to testify for the defendant, said while it is not the first time water law has been tested, he does think it is the first time the prior appropriations doctrine has gone to court with injunctions issued on junior water rights.
“What this injunction suggests, you have a solid case to go to court,” he said, adding it could change the status quo.
He added that not all water decline battles have come to the court. Irrigators in Sheridan County came together a few years ago to implement a mandatory cuts in usage. Meanwhile, Groundwater Management District No. 1 in west-central Kansas is preparing to put a similar savings measure – a 20 percent cut for all but vested rights – to the vote of members.
Rude noted that the “first in time” law was originally created for surface water rights. Over time, the Ogallala developed as a groundwater source and those same water laws applied.
“The question is, under the court of law, who is entitled to the water that remains?” said Rude.
Vision for water
For now, the issue of depletion is a top priority for the state. Last fall, Brownback unveiled his vision for water, saying the state must move forward to preserve its natural resource. He made it clear that the issue is one he wants answered – and soon.
If Kansans continue down the current path, the state’s water resources could be nearly spent in 50 years, according to the Brownback administration. Moreover, roughly 70 percent of Kansas’ Ogallala – the lifeblood of the region’s economy – would be depleted by 2064. About 40 percent of the area being irrigated now wouldn’t even be able to support a 400-gallon-a-minute well to pump water to a corn crop.
Garteson, however, thinks those changes could happen even sooner.
“There is a lot of fear – we are talking about millions and millions of dollars of livelihood that are at stake here,” Garetson said. “We in southwest Kansas have been blessed for so long. Some of us have grown up second, third and fourth generation in a lifestyle that is unsustainable without some major changes. We have had so much water for so long, we really thought the desert would bloom for an eternity.
“I think the western Kansas desert could continue to bloom for a long time forward, but we have to buy time to learn new ways to use water more effectively and in small quantities to make it a long-term proposition.”
TUCSON – The green tree python on display at the Reid Park Zoo’s Lee H. Brown Family Conservation Learning Center coils to collect rain.
Visitors who come to this building to learn how such animals adapt to their surroundings, some by conserving water, may not know they are doing the same when they use the center’s sinks and water fountains.
In addition to cisterns that collect rain that hits the roof, channeling it to be used for irrigation, the center, which opened in 2008, features a gray-water system that sends water through underground pipes to water plants outside.
To Les McMullin, Reid Park’s supervisor, the benefits involve more than helping the environment.
“It costs us a lot less, and the city a lot less, to use reclaimed water rather than potable,” he said.
Since 2008, Tucson has required plumbing in new homes to allow homeowners to set up gray-water systems to reuse water from bathroom sinks, showers and tubs as well as washing machines to water plants and lawns. Noting that a third of household wastewater typically can be reused as gray water, the city also offers a $1,000 rebate to homeowners installing permanent gray-water systems.
Since 2008, Tucson has required plumbing in new homes to allow homeowners to set up gray-water systems to reuse water from bathroom sinks, showers and tubs as well as washing machines to water plants and lawns.
Tucson Water has helped fund gray-water demonstration sites at the zoo as well as some businesses, social-service agencies and government offices.
Brad Lancaster, Tucson-based author of the book “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond,” said a gray-water system can reduce an average household’s water bill by 30 percent to 70 percent.
“If they redirected their gray water to the landscape instead of the sewer, they could meet easily over half of their landscape-irrigation needs just with the gray water,” he said.
Lancaster said that Tucson’s population and water consumption are growing but that its water resources are fixed.
“We need to become much more efficient and creative at how we reuse,” he said. “We need to recycle what we have multiple times and do it in the lowest-energy, highest-productive way.”
At his home in Tucson, Lancaster has a multipipe drain system, connected to his outdoor washing machine, that uses gravity to send the water down to his citrus trees. He also has a branched gray-water system that sends water from his bathroom sink and shower outside for irrigation. At any point, he is able to turn a valve and the water is redirected to the sewer.
“It reconnects you with where things come from and where things go,” he said.
Vice Mayor Paul Cunningham said Tucson changed its gray-water regulations a year and a half ago because so few people were installing systems. The city added the rebate and removed a requirement that homeowners obtain permits. Instead of permits, the city requires homeowners to follow a list of best management practices established by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
“I feel Tucson’s long-term sustainability is incumbent on its ability to preserve water,” Cunningham said.
David Arthur Sampson, senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability, researched gray water through simulations in 2012 and found that an average household can save 18 to 35 gallons per day by using a gray-water system.
“If you count just the water that’s coming out of washing clothes, showers and baths, that can be almost 80 percent of the water you use in your house,” he said. “If you were able to use that water for irrigation, that would provide a substantial amount of water savings.”
Sampson said gray water hasn’t caught on in the Phoenix area like it has in Tucson, in large part because water rates generally are lower in the Valley.
“Water is too cheap right now,” he said.
The gray-water system at Reid Park Zoo’s Conservation Learning Center complements a catchment system through which rain that hits the roof is used in its toilets, reducing the use of potable water inside by about half. Both systems tie into the zoo’s overall conservation efforts, said Vivian VanPeenen, a zoo spokeswoman.
“The practice of conserving water and other natural resources is definitely effective for the zoo and the species we care for,” she said.
