Green Eco-FAIL: Low-flow toilets cause a Multi-Million $$$ stink in San Fran

[Soul Crusher]

Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | February 28, 2011 | Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

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San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.

Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.

Not everybody thinks it's a good idea.

A Don't Bleach Our Bay alert has just gone out from eco-blogger Adam Lowry who argues the city would be much better off using a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide - or better yet, a solution that would naturally break down the bacteria.

As for whether the supposedly environmentally friendly, low-flow toilets are worth the trouble? Well, according to Jue, they have helped trim San Francisco's annual water consumption by about 20 million gallons.


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


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Typical liberal WTF policies in action.  

[Soul Crusher]

Low Flow Toilets Equals No-Flow Sewers In San Francisco
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3544 ^ | William M Briggs



If you’re an environmentalist, particularly a San Francisco version of that creature (one of the most virulent of the breed), it must have come as quite a shock for you to learn that your muck stinks just as bad as a Rush Limbaugh fan’s output. The stench from the sewers in that earth-loving city has become overwhelming, “especially during the dry summer months.”

Why? The low-flow toilets insisted upon (by force of law) by enlightened legislators are not saving the San Francisco environment as the science said they would. According to SF Gate, the near water-free commodes have forced city engineers to mix in 27 million pounds of “highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite” with the sewage “before it’s dumped into the bay.”

The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences struck with force when it was discovered that the water which relocated the acts of Congress from toilets was also necessary to shift the Congressional output through the sewer system! Who knew!

Instead of a laminar movement of muck found with the old toilets, low-flow toilets caused stagnation. The acts of Congress left the homes of the benevolent, but when they plopped dry into the sewer, there they sat, festering and bubbling and turning into a giant petri dish. And they stank.

And still stink, hence the plan for dumpling concentrated bleach into the sewers to make up for the lost water. Some of the bleach must also be used to kill critters in the drinking water, too.

In what must be a fascinating sociological experiment, the very forces of benevolence which created the demand for low-flow toilets is now pressuring politicians to eschew chemicals. “Don’t Bleach Our Bay!” is the new environmentalist cry. Activists are claiming that the bleach will cause an “environmental disaster” and is thus not “planet-friendly.” They suggest—I kid you not—using Oxyclean, or it’s sewer equivalent, to scrub clean their effluvia.

[Neurotoxin]

[Option D]

Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | February 28, 2011 | Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

________________________ ______________________


San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.

Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.

Not everybody thinks it's a good idea.

A Don't Bleach Our Bay alert has just gone out from eco-blogger Adam Lowry who argues the city would be much better off using a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide - or better yet, a solution that would naturally break down the bacteria.

As for whether the supposedly environmentally friendly, low-flow toilets are worth the trouble? Well, according to Jue, they have helped trim San Francisco's annual water consumption by about 20 million gallons.


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


________________________ ________________________ _________-


Typical liberal WTF policies in action.  

Obama did it

[Soul Crusher]

Qft. 

[Dos Equis]

Good.  Low-flow toilets suck.

[Soul Crusher]

San Francisco stinks, city admits
Examiner.com ^ | 3/2/2011 | Joe Alfieri




That pungent aroma wafting over the beautiful city by the bay isn’t merely the stench of its leftist political climate, but a tangible result of those wrong-headed policies. A spokesman for the city’s Public Utilities Commission, Tyrone Jue, has said that a rotten egg smell emanating from its sewers has cost taxpayers over $100 million in the past five years, as the city has upgraded its treatment plants and sewer system to eliminate the smell. And the cause of the problem? Sludge backing up in waste pipes left by low-flow environmentally friendly oh-so green toilets forced on the public by local politicians and the federal government.

Having first created a water shortage by refusing to build new reservoirs to meet the needs of a growing population, environmentalists pointed to the shortage as prima facie evidence of the need to cut water consumption, hence toilets that used half as much water. And now, to solve the problem created by toilets that don’t do what Thomas Crapper intended, the city is planning to dump 8.5 million gallons of bleach into its sewers, at an additional cost of $14 million. As the law of unintended consequences continues to roll down the hill, environmental groups have already begun to protest the use of concentrated sodium hypochlorite (bleach).

The city claims, in its defense, that the low flow toilets have saved 20 million gallons of water a year, which sounds impressive until one does some research and puts pencil to paper. According to the Public Utilities Commission, San Franciscans’ residential annual water sales, expressed in Millions of Gallons Per Day, is 45.64. That works out to 16,658,600,000 per year. Over sixteen and a half billion gallons per year. So a savings of twenty million gallons per year is only twelve hundredths of a percent (0.12%). That’s $5.70 per gallon of water saved, even more than the current price of gasoline. Not to worry, though, they’re working on solving that problem, too, as any visit to a gas station will show. But that’s another story.

[Soul Crusher]