This has nothing to do with parking, but I couldn’t resist. The city of San Francisco has a smelly problem. Read about it here. As in many municipalities, the extremely green folks in Baghdad by the Bay have mandated low water consuming toilets. The toilet designers have come up with special commodes that sweep away sewage with less and less water. They also have low flow showers, saving the environment. So far so good. What could possibly go wrong?
“Unintended Consequences” strikes again. Since the amount of water flowing through the sewers is now lower (low flow toilets and showers) sludge is building up in the sewers. And it smells, particularly on warm summer days. The solution: pour bleach down the sewers to clear out the sludge (just like you clear balky drains at home.
SF is pouring 4250 tons of the stuff down the drains each year at a cost of almost $5 million. Of course that bleach has to go somewhere. Yep, into the bay.
On one hand the low flush toilets saves 27 gallons of water per person per year,(20 million gallons in a city of 750,000 people) but at what environmental cost? My guess is that if they simply ran a campaign to take one less shower a year, or shower with a friend, or don’t flush when you get up in the middle of the night to pee, they would save more water and the bay at the same time.
Just saying
JVH
