What we See

In the future, water is going to be everything....

This is the first year that I've grown a garden, and I'm in danger of losing it, due to the summer heat.

It's not the heat that is killing my plants, it's the lack of water.  Since they guzzle it so fast, it's hard to find enough time to supply my plants with enough water. I went from manually watering them with bucket to using a hose. Now, I'm thinking that next year I'm going to make an irrigation system for the plants.

A couple weeks ago, I visited the South King Water Treatment Plant. I know that as an industry, water treatment is going to grow. Our future is going to be dictated by those who control water, and right now, before things get dicey, we got to pay attention to who is bucking for that power. Our very lives depend on it.

Anyways, keeping water clean is going to become essential. I don't think most people realize how medieval our water reclamation systems are. In a good system, when you pour oil on the street, it's going to end up in the river. In a outdated system, when you pour oil on the street, and it rains heavily, it'll end up at the treatment plant and swamp the whole facility, forcing it to release excess pressure. When those facilities release extra pressure to stop system wide flooding, they dump pure shit in the ocean. They do this to prevent the flooding of sewage in the cities.

As you can see, there are bad choices everywhere.

A lot of our problems with our water treatment  system is that it is outdated. Pipes, that were installed 100 years ago, are in a desperate need of repair/ redesign. There are enough holes in the system, that when it floods, ground water leaks into those pipes floods the treatment plant.

Not many people know this, but our water treatment plants only filter so much. They remove trash and shit, but that's about it. When you put a pharmaceutical, a chemical (a cleaner/ shampoo) or a tiny pellet of plastic into the shower or toilet, those things reach the ocean.  

The water treatment plants are really designed to prevent an outbreak of disease. They don't so much else.

This is my tour.

This is where they remove trash from the facility. 

 The shit, which is removed from the water, is digested in a tank for about a month, and then it is trucked to further facilities to turn that product into soil. At these facilities, the shit is further fermented and mixed with mulches. Then is is bagged and open for select soil distribution.

This is the shit digestions. It produces an excessive amount of methane. 

Particles are removed from the surface of the water with a spray hose system. A lot of the facilities at water treatment plants are just an industrialized version of the treatment technology that you will find in nature. You have tanks that will mimic a river and a wetland, this portion of the plant acts more like a river. 

A\ lot of what a treatment plant does is that it manages the bacteria. The bacteria is what cleans the water. A treatment plant, it makes sure that the conditions are right for the proper bacteria to thrive. They have a lab, just to make sure everything is in balance. 

This is the control room for a plant operator. A lot of what they do there is that they monitor flow levels and make decisions impacting the health of everyone. 

This part, I don't know what it does. It just that all the pipes and caution signs make it look cool. 

Anyways, water is our future. Our ability to survive is going to be dependent on our ability to clean water. It's a basic concept. 

 In our industrial society, there is a shield that covers the inner workings of how we manage our lives. Ever since I worked in HVAC controls, HVAC systems have been an obsession of mine. They are everywhere. The are costly, dirty, gross and they give us the convenience of controlled temperature at a high energy cost. No one ever sees them. People don't understand how their lives work. I didn't.

I guess, I want to spread the news.