I’m not going to lie to you: I used almost my entire brain writing here the last few days. This is probably going to be my swan song. Because I’m nothing if I’m not a beautiful f*cking swan. Honk.
I know the other day I talked about rivers, but that was a conversation mostly about all the places and ways one can tube on, get drunk on, meet future ex-girlfriends on, and just generally misbehave on, rivers. Which sounds kind of nice actually, everybody click that link.
OK, now that all the godless fornicators are over there, let’s take a second to talk about how nasty American rivers have become. American Rivers, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting and promoting our national rivers as vital assets, warns that nearly 40% of the rivers and streams in the U.S. are too polluted for fishing and swimming. As I understand it, the Southeastern US boasts an even higher percentage than that, due in large part to industrial and agricultural runoff from coal mining and farm waste. In fact, the number one most endangered river in the US lies just south of us, the Catawba-Wateree River through North & South Carolina.
Bringing it closer to home, I was buying a house a few years back, and looked at one in which the home inspector gave me a funny look, pulled me aside, and said, “son, this house drains greywater.” Of course, I thought, greywater… IT SOUNDS DISGUSTING! But what is it? Well, greywater is non-industrial wastewater (dish, sink, bath, clothes washer) that contains a lot of soaps, cleaners, food, etc, and is supposed to go into the sewer. This particular house had a drain out back, which was essentially a pipe pointed down the nearest hill… into Moore’s Creek (which feeds the Rivanna, which feeds the James, and so on). According to the inspector he sees this all the time at area houses, just because they were built before people cared or they were renovated on the cheap. As long as nobody sells it, nobody ever knows.
I used to hash in that creek. I’ve seen people let their kids play in that water. I’m not trying to scare anybody, but… well yes I am. It is terrifying. Rivers were the original roads. Cities formed on them because their resource was absolutely essential to life, and that will never, ever change; we’ll never stop needing to be near clean water. So what can we do?
We can check out the local groups dedicated to local resource conservation. Here in Charlottesville we’re lucky enough that our river originates fairly nearby, so we really have an almost immediate say in how it gets treated. The Rivanna Conservation Society has periodic river cleanups and events to get their word out. If this concerns you, this is a great place to start.
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Environment, rivanna conservation society, river, southeast
Great post parlie. The next time one can volunteer for the Rivanna Conservation Society is in August, but the date has yet to be determined. Bookmarked.
I used to run in that creek too. Are we gonna have deformed kids now?
Parlie the swan. sounds like a sidekick for scowly.
well done, parlie. did it take anyone else forever to realize that the picture was of a black swan?
@2 are we having kids?
5: I was just about to type that. Congratulations, you two!
my question is how did Shen get Parlie pregnant? was a turkey baster involved?
@5: We need to talk…
turns out the godless fornicators did not actually follow my instructions in P.2.
rivers, you guys, rivers. pollution. poisons in your drinking water. the disintegration of your food chain? bioaccumulation?
anyone? bueller?
i’m gonna go drink some windex.
parlie, you can’t just run away after you knock a girl up. I tried twice, and she found me both times.
to the topic at hand, I know a few people who recycle their grey water safely and carefully. The toxic content is low by definition and it can be a good way to reuse precious water during a drought year for things like gardening. The key is to have the drain set up like irrigation instead of as a pipe flowing directly into a stream.
@5, hopefully not, but probably.
I gotta interject, here. Humans are terrible for the planet, this is true. But you can’t expect natural waters to be “clean”. People poop ends up in Rivers. Animal poop ends up in rivers, just ask Girth. Where do you expect the poop to go? Before we piped it all to treatment plants, it went on the ground, where it began it natural return to the earth, being washed into the streams and rivers by rain. Guess what? People survived that, and continued to overpopulate the earth. Now, we just overpopluate the earth with longer life expectancies.
Echo, we need to talk.
That sounds like I’m promoting polution, and I’m not. Recycle your grey water, if you can. Do your part, but don’t drink the water, or expect to not get sick 100% of the time if you do.
Peace Through Extinction.
@13: Not again. I can’t afford this kind of child support.
Just water you talking about?
WAIT A MINUTE. Is this post by the same guy who threw a dead electrocuted squirrel into the sewer?
Gobbler’s right. Animal poop definitely ends up in rivers.
I have a little bit of familiarity with the issue of river pollution and waste water run-off. Several years ago when I was less of a clean & productive hippie, I was a dirty river guide hippie. For a long time, the Chattahoochee had the public stigma of pollution; but that was mostly south of Atlanta where most of the industrial development was. The problem was that a lot of these industrial plants had long been using the river as a waste-water disposal device, and they were grandfathered into it. I would like to think that most, if not all, of those companies have since reformed their disposal methods, but realistically I suspect that the problem still exists to an alarming degree.
Surprisingly, that was not the pollution that eventually ran our company out of business. The immediate threat to our business was the levels of E. Coli bacteria that was present in the water. These volumes of bacteria would always spike after a large rainfall, as it was washing everyone’s waste water downhill and into the river. While animal waste was certainly a contributing factor, the real problem seemed to be sourced in septic run-off and people just generally not disposing of waste materials properly. Unfortunately, people using septic systems do not always have an alternative option to update their systems, so the problem continues.
This spike in E. Coli had almost certainly been around long before it became a media hot topic and the AJC began running what was almost a smear campaign against the rafting company for allowing people on the ‘contaminated river’. I can’t recall what was determined to be a hazardous amount of bacteria for humans, but it was somewhere on the scale of swallowing a gallon of river water or extended exposure of an open wound to the contaminated water. Both feasible, but maybe a little far fetched, considering we had never had any known claims of E. Coli by any customers. Anyway, our real issue with the testing method was that they would take a water sample right after a big rain and send it away to lab. Say that’s Monday… the lab results would come back a day or so later, and Wednesday would feature a big article about how unsafe it is to be on the river. While it was valid that Monday may have had high levels, by Wednesday that water was all in the Gulf of Mexico and bacteria levels were far below the acceptable amount. By that point the damage had been done, and everyone was afraid to go down the river for fear of death.
So, I had started writing this with a point in mind… and it turned into a rant… which I also forgot the point of… so maybe now it’s just more of a story for you. One point that I can still grasp out of this is…. We are a long way out from the necessary reform to clean our rivers. I am 100% for any and all river clean up programs, and I do try to keep my impact as low as possible… as well as nagging my friends about the impact that they are nonchalantly having. However, it is an enormous financial move in both the public and private sector to make the needed changes…. and it just isn’t prevalent enough in the media for John Q. Public to take notice or start making changes. Even at the cost of our river operation down south, I was somewhat glad to see the pollution brought to the public eye, but I felt that it was mishandled and the wrong people were demonized. I would be thrilled to see some media involvement in spreading the word of the river pollution locally, but from my experience it just tends to jade the majority with the river and spurs avoidance instead of change.
/I’ll stop now… DayQuil makes me not so coherent.
And yeah… even working in the river every single day….. fresh rain or not… none of the staff ever had any related health issues. Of course… we had stopped our games of river water chug and how-long-can-you-hold-your-exposed-wound-under-the-water years before.
//really stopping this time.
Ok, hold the phone, Jeromes. Please allow me to drop some science on you guys and clarify a few of the facts getting tossed around. Ok, my lab coat is now on.
Grey water and septic systems: The idea of these tanks is to both store the wastewater and to break it down into simple elemental components (nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon being the heavy hitters). In a non-leaking septic system, you’re going to be getting nitrogen in the form of nitrate eventually getting into the rivers, but typically in much lower concentrations than originally came out of your nether regions. Very rarely do the bacteria that come out of your chute make it into the rivers via septic systems as they tend to remain in the septic tanks themselves. But, the negative effects (water with no oxygen, more algae, etc.) CAN come from increased loads of these nutrients (Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus [this is why so few detergents contain phosphorus anymore]) getting into the rivers in higher than background concentrations.
BUT(T)!
The big flush (pun intended) of nutrients, viruses, and bacteria come as a result of the big flash storms that we tend to get this time of the year. Dog turd, fertilizer, post South Street puke etc. get washed into the rivers during big storm events, with MUCH less filtration than you get from the septic systems. This is why you get a lot of beach closings during the summer time after thunderstorms, as the bacteria levels are usually a LOT higher.
What is important to note is that Parlie is doing a very good service to us all by bringing this to our attention. But having the right knowledge makes our points a lot more efficient and powerful.
I’d like to see how many nutrients get dropped into the James River every summer, assuming the average person pees 5 times during a rafting session…
Dr. Tuff
@20 and 21, Donk you’re right on. We must have been writing at the same time. Didn’t see you post until after mine posted.
@22
I actually traveled back in time 10 minutes to post before you and look like the first smarty man. Your guess would’ve also been a good possibility if I didn’t have this bad ass time machine.
And now we know where the water dorks are.
I’ll water dork you. That’s something really REALLY naystee that only the true water dorks know about. You should be scared, offended, and excited.
@25: In soviet russia, dork waters you.
@26 ewww, a golden shower/soviet russia joke. Someone is going to be pissed.
@27 or pissed on
thanks, donk & tuffy. i was hoping somebody would show up here and drop some knowledge.
i’m going to re-title this post “goldenwater and the dorky russian.”
it’s a james bond-style coming of age movie about a young scat porn actress who finds herself caught up in an international crusade against water pollution (it’s ironic) and subsequently falls in love with a bosnian computer programmer who they both learn, in a twist of fate known only to star-crossed lovers, was the original developer of goldenwater.com, and hence the unwitting architect of her tragic adolescent spiral into pee porn.
the programmer is played by cbob. i haven’t decided who the girl is, but maybe shenanigans.
@29: Did you see 18? POLLUTER! Gah!
That sounds like hte owrst movie ever. Except the part about peeing on cbob. Wait, what?!
And I am hte owrst typer evar.
@31 @18 i didn’t put him in the SEWER, i put him in the woods. he turned into flowers and butterflies… and wonderful, natural aromas.
Liaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
why hasn’t anyone thought of calling Captain Planet?
Earth! Wind! Fire! Water! Heart! Goooooooo PLANET!
One quick fix is just to make sure to not take dumps on your front lawn if you live near a stream or sewer drain. I don’t live near a stream, so my heat spikes end up turning into oak tree food.
@21 i went tubing on the james last september with my dumb friend. eventually she whined about having to pee. as i frequently do, i looked at her incredulously, then explained the solution. now it was her turn to be incredulous: in 23 years, she had NEVER PEED IN HER BATHING SUIT. she worried that it would get dirty. apparently it didn’t occur to her that the 70 drunken frat boys upstream had no such compunctions.
I think I just compucted on the carpet.
@36. YOU ROCK. There’s nothing better than a free flowing bathroom. The James is the perfect spot and I’m glad you knew its potential. Bathing suits… are just to worn… when you gotta to go, you GO!
There’s nothing better than a free flowing bathroom
It’s always fun to play “Is it a Floater or a Sinker?”.
/wait, what?
Dude,
I just read your article, and though I have not posted in some time I feel I have something that may contribute to an “eco” argument from the consumer side. My girlfriend and I are occasionally duped into buying eco-frinedly products. I realize that a lot of this stuff is the proverbial “Lite” of our generation, but I think that consumers can truly vote with our money, and that producers ultimately listen to money if nothing else.
Short Story:
We bought some “Palmolive Eco” dishwasher detergent…..and we have never been able to get the white residue off our dishes. After the tenth wash, I looked online and was surprised to find this is not an isolated story. Some of the people on consumer sites had stories of wedding presents and family heirlooms ruined in the pursuit of trying to live a little “green”, or worse yet, just trying to wash their dishes.
Now I know it’s a blog so naturally………..some asshole is going to give me the big know-it-all speech, so…….. fuck you in advance, get a life, and blow me. All I was trying to do was wash my dishes and I’ve been left in a situation that feels like a bad joke.
Dude,
If you could forward this as a topic on your blog I’d love to know if anyone knows a way to burn Palmolive, or better yet, get them to give me new dishes…………someone litigious, knowledgeable, and vindictive……
aka………a Virginian.
The following is my post on “Epinions.com”:
Step 3: Preview and Publish Your Review
Please proofread your review. If there is anything you would like to change or correct, click the “Edit” button at the bottom left. When you are finished, click the “Publish your review” button.
WHAT IF IT WERE YOUR CAR?????
by madatpalmol, Jun 12 ‘08
Let’s pretend for a moment that you care about the future of our planet. Let’s say you choose to “vote” with your consumer dollar, and that the produce, products, lifestyle you live are indicative of that choice……..
So when a “eco” product ruins your entire set of dishware, silverware, and teflon cookware……….you begin to wonder what else it could have potentially ruined.
The “white stuff” doesn’t come off. Stop scrubbing. I tried.
If this were a product to clean my car and this was the result, I would drive my f’ing car into the lobby of the Palmolive building and offer car washes for all the executives.
Does anyone know how I could get more than a just a refund on this purchase?
Pros:
I don’t own an assault rifle
Cons:
I don’t own an assault rifle
Overall Product Rating:
Avoid It
Recommended:
No
let’s all pause and say welcome to the thumb.
@ [the dishwasher paragraph] my dishwasher makes those for me too, they’re called “inside the glass poison barnacles.” mostly because they’re made of poisonous dish soap.
have you ever dipped your cigarettes in fabric softener? oh man.
I’m officially declaring “oh man” to be parlie’s favorite phrase. I don’t care if there is no Official Phrase Book, I’m making it happen.
/done
sigh*
this is not a dishwasher snafu…….this is one of those rare cases that a consumer product is a total disaster.
this is not quite poisonous Asprin, not quite exploding exploding gas tank on a Gremlin…….but if you could imagine the “Big Red” or “Termite Town”, SNL skits from the early 90’s…….yah, it’s like that, but real.
It looks like I just used every glass, pot, and dish I own to strip and prime my apartment walls.
I can see Palmolive execs chuckling, puffing smoke in the whiskey library, “and the lab reports say it even turns their teeth blue!, hahahaha, and part of the proceeds go to cancer research, hahahahah…”
>nothing against whiskey or cigars, but you know what I mean.
NEW! palmolive dish- and body- wash detergent! dissolves organic matter like food and your skin in seconds!
now with bluetooth!
i know, i’m fired.