Contaminated Water in OH Portends Other Issues
Clipped this
article from a water technology auto emailer that I receive on a daily basis (left over from my days of being a project engineer for a water treatment company). Discusses the details of a mass water-borne sickness that affected a little island in
Lake Erie called
South Bass Island and a little resort town called
Put-In-Bay. The more complete version (gone now from the website) talks about the mass contamination of private wells in 2004, and that hundreds of people were sickened with symptoms such as nausea, headaches, vomiting and diahrrea. Out of 79 wells tested, 78% tested positive for fecal coliform and 31% tested positive for E.coli. Three possible sources were discussed:
- Leaky sewerage pipes allowed untreated sewage to seep into the island's aquifer.
- Water from Lake Erie infiltrated the aquifer, water that was not entirely safe to drink.
- Cross-linking between city water lines and water lines fed from wells on the island itself.
The article described that once authorities asked people to switch to bottled water to drink, the cases of coliform sickness dropped dramatically. The authorities have taken a few steps to alleviate the problem (off the top of my head):
- plugged the cross-linked ports between city water and well-fed lines
- added capacity to the water treatment plant, almost doubling the gallon capacity to 432,000 per day
- wells that were found to be contaminated are to be replaced with city water lines
It seems to me that while these fixes are sensible, there are two things that are very important are the first two points that were hypothesized as possible sources of the contamination - if the sewage lines are leaking, shouldn't they be replaced, or at least lined? There are great, inexpensive solutions to line concrete sewage lines with plastic liners, for example.
The biggest issue not touched on, however, is the infiltration of Lake Erie water into the aquifer. Fundamentally, this means that the people of the island are taking more out than the aquifer is able to recharge with clean, fresh water. This has been an issue for years in places like Florida, which has to fight sinkholes in the central inland areas (like Orlando) and the coast (Tampa) where seawater now infiltrates the local aquifer there. In southern CA, they have the same problem and they fight this with tertiary treated water (meaning physical clarification, then biological treatment followed by some sort of membrane separations before leaving the plant) being re-injected into wells dug near the coast to balance out the osmotic pressure and, essentially, force out the seawater from the aquifer. Fundamentally, when aquifers are infiltrated like this, it means that the land cannot sustain the human popuation. Florida, in 1995, was predicted to have about 10 years before they overreached on capacity to sustaina human population. They are fighting this in Tampa, for example, by building one of the planet's biggest reverse osmosis plants to supply fresh water from seawater.
The Council For National Policy
This so seems like the stuff of the tin foil hat wearers, but it's
true. The
Council For National Policy is an ultra-right org that *is* the vast right-wing conspiracy. Almost everyone that is anyone on the ultra-right is a member. Some, like Grover Nordquist, are ultra capitalists that want the New Deal to be dead and have rampany capitalism. Then there are others that espouse not only gay bashing but want to remake the USA into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy ruled by Old Testament rules. Look at the
1998 members list - the only ones not mentioned there are the Koch's and Scaife. But some who were part of the John Birch Society (a daddy Koch pinko scare org from the 50's) are part of this org. This
org goes hand in hand with the
Right Wing Noise Machine and the
Money Matrix.
This is Why Guckert Is a Big Deal
From dailykos:
Joe Conason:
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart--or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal. Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps--and listen to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now.
Exactly.
Could have not said it better myself.
Of Attack Ads, Democrats, and Carl Rove
An interesting blog whose sole purpose is to find and collect good things to throw at dubya, his neo-con death cult and their zombie brigades. Here's a link to the bots singing about W's Fuzzy Math.
rathergood.com
Just a silly website that has some funny songs...check out "We Like the Moon".
Wal-Mart Negotiates 15 Days Before Labor Dept. Can Investiate
Just un-friggin-believable. Wal-Mart settles child labor law violations in three states, and the Dept of Labor gives up it's right to enforce ANY OTHER labor law in a timely manner...oh wait, they get to enforce, but they have to give Wal-Mart 15 days notice before investigating ANYTHING ELSE. Copied from Kos:
You won't believe this one:
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the agreement, revealed yesterday after it was secretly signed in January, the Labor Department agreed "to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before the Labor Department investigates any other 'wage and hour' accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime."Labor Blog has a screenshot of the email DOJ sent out to district offices informing them of their agreement with Wal-Mart. This is the power of Wal-Mart's corporate contributions at work. Behold as the most unethical administration in history finds yet another way to wallow in the mud. This agreement doesn't just allow Wal-Mart to hide abuses of child labor laws, but any labor laws (and Wal-Mart is legendary for its anti-worker policies).
The 4 children of Sam Walton are each multibillionaires. And they squeeze labor like there's no tomorrow. And now they don't care about children. Just like they support the Chinese government and therefore support abortion. Putting their money where their mouths are...
Top Ten Conservative Idiots @ democraticunderground.com
I had forgotten that this place was hilarious. You want a summary of the RWNM gone awry, check
this out each week, my friends...you're sure to get a smile
CNN: Bunch of Tools for the Neo-Con Agenda
Borrowed from
bradblog.com, this
posting shows that the two pics that CNN used to describe both North Korea's AND Iran's nukular ambitions were actually THE SAME PICTURE.
Does anybody fact check there anymore? And when will they fire tools like
Wolf Blitzer and
Judy Woodruff (look at #8 on the list)? Who's this Eason Jordan character that just
resigned from CNN? And Aaron Brown, for that matter, after his silly debacle in the
conversation with the guy that runs americablog (John Aravosis) on the Gannon/gay military porn/fake name/two feet from the president conflagration last week.
Funny how that died down as Dean took over the
DNC, just as predicted.
From MyDD: Awesome Post Linking All the Dubya Propaganda
Chris Bowers did some serious work
here putting all the pieces together in one place to see all the propagandist, illegal junk that this administration is capable of. I like that it's the mag The American Conservative (partly run by Pat Buchannan, a 'nice' conservative by today's standards - he does despise the neo-con agenda to his credit, and his mag actually endorsed Kerry in the 2004 election b/c they thought that W was
SO bad).
The
F-word that they are both referring to, of course, is
FREEDOM.
MN-Senator Al Franken?
There has been plenty of talk about this for some time, basically lots of rumors for the past two years, but today on
The Al Franken Show on
Air America, he is expected to announce (links
here,
here and
here) that he is running for the newly open seat in 2006.
At least he'll be a funny, hard-core Liberal. Of course, the rumors have it that Garrison Keilor was looking at the 2008 seat. What an interesting pair for the Senate if that were to happen!!
[Update - 2/14/2005 - It appears that the funny man pulled a fast one on people, or someone must have posted something on the internets and it ran like wildfire all the way to the ABC new affiliate in Minnesota. He's not running in 2006. Still sticking to the story that he MAY run in 2008. We'll see. Opens it up for Garrison Keilor to run, tho...]
Microsoft Announces A Dozen Securty Updates
See - I'm not just about politics... :O)
Microsoft
announces 12 security patches,
EIGHT of them being declared critical. Check the update descriptions and plan accordingly for your home system.
As an aside,
Gibson Research Corp is a good place to help check your system vulnerabilities, from internet security thorugh open ports to silly MS-Windows vulnerabilities and things you can do to turn off certain things that the vast majority most home users would never need - like Windows Messaging and DCOM.
John Edwards Putting Job Where Mouth Is
(From Political Wire) Regarding dealing with the Two Americas theme from his primary campaign, John Edwards is going to head up a center at UNC which figure out how to move people out of poverty.
Additionally, Edwards is maintaining his campaign structure and speaking in places, including New Hampshire (also from Taegan Goddard).
All the pundits believe that the former Senator is going to to take another shot in 2008...certainly that would be welcome. And he has relatively little baggage compared to other senators (Kerry, Lieberman).
Sen. Santorum Takes Money From All Over Town, Including From Known Pornographers
Yes, I do a lot of pulling off of other
sites, but, I've got a crapload of work to accomplish and too little time to finish it, let alone blog! Rick Santorum takes a lot of money from Adelphia Communications, who are now the biggest hard-core porn content providers. Wait til they show him LogJammin...
Sleep, Tonight
Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realised.
If the thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain, rain down on he.
So let it be.So let it be.
Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realised.
If the thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain, let it rain
Rain down on he.
(U2, "MLK", from The Unforgettable Fire)
Goodbye, Grammy and Nanny...we'll toast you with kahlua shots & gin and tonics
