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May 06, 2008
Sewage Plant
A joke started in a bar in San Francisco will likely become reality if 10,000 registered San Francisco voters sign a petition by July 4 to place the following question on the local San Francisco ballot in November:
"Should The City And County of San Francsico Rename The Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W Bush Sewage Plant?
Ballot proponents, under the auspices of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, are making the following ironic case:
"As we near the end of George W Bush’s presidency, we think it is important to select a fitting monument to this president’s work. On matters ranging from foreign relations to fiscal and environmental stewardship, no other president in American history has accomplished so much in such a short time. To honor George W Bush for his eight years of honorable public service, the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is sponsoring a ballot initiative this November."
While the idea started as a joke, I hear this is a serious petition gathering effort.
If the petition is approved via valid signatures, then the name change only requires a simple majority vote in November. I think voters in San Francisco will approve this measure if given the opportunity.
At the very least, I anticipate the ballot arguments for and against this initiative will be very amusing.
Chico's wastewater treatment plant, which features a 1.1 megawatt solar system, is simply called the Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP).
Today's Scrabble word is midi, a skirt or coat that extends to the middle of the calf.
Posted by dan_nt at May 6, 2008 09:51 AM
Comments
Some may consider this a joke, but most people trust those in charge that sewage is properly treated. However, sewage treatment technologies are more then a century old, with the purpose to control the nuisances, such as odors and visual pollution. There hasn’t be much change in all those years, especially since an essential pollution test was incorrect used, so we could and still can not evaluate how treatment plants really treat their sewage and what their effluent waste loadings are on receiving water bodies. This faulty applied essential water pollution test caused the failure of the second largest federally funded public works project: the Clean Water Act.
Although EPA (and Utah State's Science Council) in 1984 acknowledged the problems with the test, instead of correcting the test, EPA allowed an alternate test, which now officially ignores the pollution caused by nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste in sewage and thus allows cities to use rivers as giant urinals.
Nitrogenous waste, like fecal waste, exerts an oxygen demand, but also in all its forms is a fertilizer for algae and aquatic plants, and thus also responsible for the eutrophication of our open water, in some cases causes 'dead zones', as in the Gulf of Mexico.
For more information visit www.petermaier.net and read in the Technical PDF section a description of the essential (BOD) test. Without correcting this essential test, we keep spinning our wheels, spending billions, without improving our open water, as already acknowledged in EPA’s 1991 report to Congress.
Posted by: Peter Maier at May 6, 2008 02:42 PM
Hi Peter,
There is no doubt that a sewage treatment plant is absolutely critical to maintain public health and the environment.
The joke is not the importance of sewage treatment as an essential public service, but that the name George W Bush may become synonymous with a facility dealing with sewage.
Posted by: dan_nt at May 6, 2008 02:59 PM