On Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 10:39:50 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 14:59:43 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 5:00:56 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
A guy on the radio saying, If you get 3 1/2 inches of rain in NYork,
that's 3 1/2 inches of rain washing all sorts of things into the
reservoirs in the Catskills, 3 1/2 inches of rain putting pressure on
treatment plants.

Huh.

Isn't everything that would be washed into the reservoirs already in the
reservoirs or there would be no water there either?

???
Those reservoirs are typically fed by streams or have water pumped into
them from rivers. If there is an exceptional, heavy rain, then more
undesirable, unexpected stuff can wash downhill in torrents and go
into the sources that feed the reservoirs.





And NYC doesn't treat rain water, does it? It just goes down the drain
and into the river or the ocean, right? There are septic sewers and
rain sewers and they're separate.

AFAIK, NYC uses a combined system. That's why there have been incidents
over the years where with an exceptional rain, the treatment facility
can't handle it and stuff, eg bags, bottles, plastic that was in the
storm drains winds up going into the rivers. I think that has gotten
better over the years, but again, AFAIK, raw water in exceptional cases
can wind up in the river.





I came in in the middle so I don't know who was saying this stuff.


Answering Trader because his was last.

Well, you all agree. I'm sorry NYC -- where I Lived for 12 years and
had a good time, and moved to Baltimore partly because it was close
enough to NY -- has this problem but I'm glad it wasn't nonsense from
someone on the radio. It's one thing t hat people post nonsense on AHR,
but I like for the radio, especially NPR, to use some judgment about who
they air.

Yes the ducks do terrible things in the reservoir water. They should be
in jail.

I lived in Indianapolis for 7 years and they have two reservoirs, Geiss
or Geist and Morse. The first one had sailboats in it -- you could dock
your sailboat there. And Morse had motor boats. You could dock your
motor boat and they had something like a steam paddleboat giving tours
(I don't know if that exhausts into the water, but all the other boats
did.) Still, people drank the stuff.

If that bothers you, better not live in any of the towns and cities that
pump their water out of rivers, with other towns and cities upstream discharging
their sewage systems into those rivers. Personally, I'd be more worried
about chemicals from all kinds of sources that go into those systems, as
opposed to some boats on a reservoir. The biologicals are probably easier
to neutralize and deal with than arsenic.








There was a tour in Baltimore a couple months ago of the east side water
treatment plant (Dam Jam) and I told one of the managers about Indy and
she was pretty surprised. I think they said it took from 6 to 9 hours
from the time the water (which comes from the Gunpowder or Little
Gunpowder River, for the east side) reached the treatment plant until it
left. Started off with turbidity of 60 iirc and ended with 0.06 or 04.
They added chlorine, then something that made the dirt clump, then they
gave it several hours to settle, and I forget what the final stage was.

The guy running it had started off 40 years ago mowing the lawn.

The woman I mentioned pointed out that bottled water only had to meet
FDA standards, but their water had to meet maybe it was EPA standards,
that are stricter. Bottled water costs thousands of times as much as
water from the tap.