On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:39:05 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:11:03 +0000 (UTC), wrote:

On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:38:36 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

snip


You got me going on this again. Darn you. g It was too hot to take my
usual walk after lunch so I made some calls. First I called the company
that
makes Finish dishwasher detergent. They said they pulled the phosphate
out
on July 1, 2010, along with all of the other major producers. And the
reason
was, indeed, the 16 states who suddenly outlawed it, combined with the
fact
that they didn't want to make and market two different products. That's
similar to what happened years ago with laundry detergent.

The other call was to the NJ office of USGS, who monitors navigable
waters
here. The key researcher in this area is supposed to call me back; the
one I
talked to didn't know the issues with dishwasher detergent, or what the
basis was for those states (which does not include NJ) to ban TSP. We'll
see
if I can get an answer.

This could prove interesting.

Joe Gwinn

Ok, I got the story from a guy who sat on legislative committee meetings
while the state laws were being hashed out. It was an hour-long
conversation, so I won't try to tell the whole thing, but the discussion
did involve a lot about Pflueger cane fly rods and fishing for cutthroat
trout in Montana, lake trout in Canada's N.W.T., oysters in the Raritan
Bay, and so on. g

Blame Washington State. And the EPA. It started with tightening of
national point-source effluent standards from EPA. That's industrial and
municipal waste discharges.

Many states were able to meet them with old-style (alum flocculent)
tertiary treatment, and new-style tertiary treatment (microbes), but
Washington allowed the overbuilding of residences around the Spokane
River, and the phosphates were filtering down through a porous geological
cap, getting into drinking water, and overloading the sewage treatment.
The stage beyond tertiary is a microfiltering screen process and it costs
like hell.

So it was a cost issue for the State of Washington -- and many others. The
Washington legislators sat down with the industry association, the
American Cleaning Institute (ACI) and told them how much cheaper it would
be to just pull the phosphates out of dishwasher detergent (remember, this
is a point-source regulation). That was in 2006. They wanted it done in
two years. The industry said they couldn't do it that fast. They asked for
4-1/2 years. The legislators said Ok.

The industry in Europe had tried non-phosphate dishwasher detergents back
in the '90s, but they didn't work well and customers stayed away in
droves. In 2006, they still didn't have a solution. By 2010, the whole
industry did, and it worked very well. There are now 17 states that have
blocked the manufacture and sale -- but not the use -- of phosphate
dishwasher detergents. The ACI and its members, once they had a solution
that works, supported the legislation in the other 16 states.

I didn't ask him about the stink - time was short and I was more
interested in his choices of fly rods for cutthroats g -- but that's
where the change came from.

--
Ed Huntress

Oh, one thing I didn't explain: Many, or most, of those newer houses near
Spokane have septic systems, which is how the phosphate is getting into the
aquifer. But the drinking water supplies municipal areas where they have
municipal sewers. Some big engineering firm figured out the route.

The ACI says that detergent phosphates, which now is mostly dishwasher
detergent, can be up to 25% of the phosphate load from municipal
point-source discharges.
Greetings Ed,
I live on an island in the Salish Sea (formerly Puget Sound) and used
to live on one of the beaches. There were several houses on the beach
that were originally only accessible by boat. These old houses had
small septic systems. Many of them had drain fields that were back
from the beach and the sea wall and were below mean high tide. Others
had drain fields that were between the houses and the beach. Now most
of these houses can be driven to and are occupied full time instead of
just summers. And they have been remodeled into large homes. The
septic systems are all grandfathered in. When walking down the beach
at low tide you can smell some of the failing systems. And the beach
in front of many homes has lots of extra sea weed. Especially the ones
with failing drain fields. This sea weed crowds out some types of sea
grasses that protect baby salmon when they come down the streams. So
Island County really wants these septic systems to stop leaching
nutrients into the water.
Eric
That's an easy fix. No weeping tiles. Holding tanks only - pumped on a
regular basis and deliverd to municipal water treatment plants - and
taxed accordingly.
The problem is basically political. If allowed, the county would
change the laws. There are many places where the liquid is pumped into
a sewer system and the solids collected in septic tanks. This solution
requires much smaller pipes and is way cheaper to install. Having just
one holding tank that is pumped regularly would mean a huge tank or
very frequent pumping. A better solution would be a sand filter mound
system. Cheaper too over the long run. The county would like all new
systems to be pressurised sand filter mound systems. But once again
there is not the support of the citizens for this. And I'm one of 'em.
I live far away from the water and have a standard gravity fed system.
From the research I did before I installed the system a standard
gravity fed system with the new infiltrator type drain field does not
pose a pollution hazard at farther than a 100 foot radius. However, I
don't know about the phosphate problem because I didn't look into it
as I don't use detergents with phosphates. Phosphates may well leach
out of infiltrator type systems and travel in ground water for miles.
I just don't know, which is one of the reasons I avoid them.
Eric