The Gun Counter

slowpoke wrote:treatment plants already buys the chemicals to adjust ph, chlorinate, reduce turbidity, etc, and test the water. There are several ways they could treat this, and they can run the test on the end to verify level.
these arent expensive chemicals were talking about either, nd they already have the economies of scale for the purchases. These types of issues are commonly fixed at water plants that use rivers for sources here in the south and we dont pay $5 a glass for tap water either. This really sounds like penny pinching or incompetence.

Which rivers supply the water for >300,000 people, and when was the last time their entire source was contaminated for days by blue-green algae blooms?
I'm not saying no one in Toledo is incompetent, or that the chemicals wouldn't work, but I think you're ignoring the magnitude of the problem when every city contiguous to that end of Lake Erie suddenly can't use any of their primary source of water.
I have no idea how fast the testing works either, but it's not like they can wing it and hope that they managed to get it "mostly" right when deadly toxins are involved.

The fact that the EPA's best advice is "switch sources" should be a clue as to how hard it is to try and solve the problem with brute force and a dumptruck full of cash.

Also, Lake Erie last had an algae bloom like this in 2011, so it's not like they can just order up tons of stuff for "just in case" and leave it sitting around for years until there's a problem, then whip it out and start cooking.




As for drinking distilled water, proper diet and a daily multivitamin should solve that problem.
Most of what we eat is loaded with sodium already, and a decent and balanced diet should account for the other minerals without any trouble.

Aesop wrote: Which rivers supply the water for >300,000 people, and when was the last time their entire source was contaminated for days by blue-green algae blooms?

Big Muddy supplies drinking water for a whole lot of folks, but I don't think moving rivers have algae bloom problems.

I wonder if runoff containing fertilizer is a major contributor to this bloom?

Termite wrote:

Aesop wrote: Which rivers supply the water for >300,000 people, and when was the last time their entire source was contaminated for days by blue-green algae blooms?

Big Muddy supplies drinking water for a whole lot of folks, but I don't think moving rivers have algae bloom problems.

I wonder if runoff containing fertilizer is a major contributor to this bloom?

Yes. Fertilizer runoff, sewage from river-carried effluent of septic tanks in suburban and rural areas, animal wastes from agricultural operations, all these and more, some more, some less. Algae eat it all and prosper. Laundry detergent phosphates are basically banned because of this. (I dunno about how far the ban extends nationally.)

Which is why TSP "painters cleaner" is so popular on Amazon.

HTRN wrote:Which is why TSP "painters cleaner" is so popular on Amazon.

Shhhhhh! We don't want .gov to know something is effective!

Old Grafton wrote:

Termite wrote:

Aesop wrote: Which rivers supply the water for >300,000 people, and when was the last time their entire source was contaminated for days by blue-green algae blooms?

Big Muddy supplies drinking water for a whole lot of folks, but I don't think moving rivers have algae bloom problems.

I wonder if runoff containing fertilizer is a major contributor to this bloom?

Yes. Fertilizer runoff, sewage from river-carried effluent of septic tanks in suburban and rural areas, animal wastes from agricultural operations, all these and more, some more, some less. Algae eat it all and prosper. Laundry detergent phosphates are basically banned because of this. (I dunno about how far the ban extends nationally.)

Lake Erie's problem is pretty much exactly that. Recent spikes in phosphorous and nitrates pretty much ring the dinner bell for the algae in question, causing the blooms in late summer, once the lake temp gets to the optimum for them. When summer rains are heavier/later than normal, they wash a lot of fertilizers off before it's worked into the soils, and suddenly Toledo and 10 other communities are on bottled water. It pisses the farmers off because all that money they poured onto their fields is now washing downstream instead of feeding the crops.

How does eutrophication of fresh water compare to iron fertilization of the oceans? Other than, we don't drink seawater.
In one case phytoplankton good. In the other, bad.