Pee-cycling

You recycle your household waste. You buy locally grown food, fit low-energy light bulbs and try not to use the car unnecessarily. Maybe you even irrigate the garden with your bath water. But you've still got an environmental monster in your house. Your toilet is wrecking the planet.

Before you point to the brick you've put in the cistern, it's not about the water - well, not entirely. The big problem is pee. Your pee. Do you flush it away without a second thought? Tsk, tsk. Lose the green halo.

At first sight urine looks like an unlikely environmental menace. What harm could come from flushing away a fluid that is mostly water, plus a smidge of proteins and salts? Surprisingly, the answer is "a lot".


The problem with urine is that it is the main source of some of the chemical nutrients that have to be removed in sewage treatment plants if they are not to wreck ecosystems downstream. Despite making up only 1 per cent of the volume of waste water, urine contributes about 80 per cent of the nitrogen and 45 per cent of all the phosphate. Peeing into the pan immediately dilutes these chemicals with vast quantities of water, making the removal process unnecessarily inefficient.

To be fair, if you use conventional western plumbing there's not an awful lot you can do about your personal pee-print right now. A lucky few, however, live or work in one of the buildings in continental Europe where you can find a future must-have eco-accessory: the urine separation toilet. These devices divert urine away from the main sewage stream, allowing the nutrients to be recycled rather than treated as waste. They could solve all the environmental problems associated with urine and even turn sewage plants into net producers of green, clean energy.

from the New Scientist

9 nations take control of Nile

After three years of closed-door talks, nine nations are quietly edging toward a deal to jointly oversee the waters of the Nile, an agreement that has eluded lands along the great river since the days of the pharaohs.

An expected meeting of water ministers next month may produce a preliminary accord, officials say. "I hope we'll reach a very good result, but I cannot guarantee it," Egyptian negotiator Abdel Fattah Metawie said in Cairo, the likely site for the session.

Such a pact would right a colonial-era wrong that reserved the world's longest river for irrigation in Egypt and Sudan, effectively denying its waters to Uganda and other upriver countries.

Nature may be pushing political leaders toward compromise, said Gordon Mumbo of the Nile Basin Initiative, an umbrella office here for joint activities among the riverine nations.

from the AP via the Myrtle Beach Sun

Oregon State students create devices to purify water in Katrina-like situations

Mechanical engineering students at Oregon State University have been working to find ways to get potable water in emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina, when human power may be the only resource available to residents.

So, they have been pedaling bicycles and turning hand cranks to power water purification devices created for a design course.

Hundreds gathered in the Kelley Engineering Center atrium to watch 24 teams unveil prototypes and compete to see whose design could produce the largest volume of potable water.

Using only human mechanical power, students had to bring the water to a boil and then condense the steam into purified water, or -- create a still.

from Water News

Ponds, marsh helping keep pollution at bay

Tucked away in a mostly unnoticed corner of Mason Park are a marsh and two ponds too small for recreational use by canoeists or anglers.

But the unassuming Brays Bayou Freshwater Tidal Marsh could provide part of the solution to a monumental problem facing the region: the pollution of Galveston Bay.

They are part of a demonstration project aimed at determining whether man-made wetlands can filter contaminants out of stormwater runoff and reduce the pollution that makes its way into bayous and the bay.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the county and the city of Houston are searching for ways to filter out noxious chemicals because they cause about half the pollution in Galveston Bay, said Andy Sipocz, a biologist and natural resources coordinator with Texas Parks and Wildlife.

from the Houston Chronicle

Rivers still spoiled

Decades after factories that contaminated Woburn soil closed, the city still feels repercussions and cleanup from the chemicals.

“Everything’s been proposed but nothing has been done,” said Mike Raymond, a Woburn Neighborhood Association member. “We don’t have information on what the final plan is going to be. We’re meeting [with the EPA] monthly.”

The two sites in Woburn, Industri-Plex off Commerce Way and Wells G and H near Salem Street, are in varied stages of cleanup, said Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Joseph LeMay. While one portion of the Industriplex site has been cleaned and redeveloped, there is still a lot of work to be done in Woburn.

The EPA is working closely with Woburn officials and residents in the area to clean the sites, said Ward 5 Alderman Darlene Mercer-Bruen.

“They do monitor the process and there are meetings; the city’s involved,” Mercer-Bruen said about the cleanup process. “No one’s reaching out to me to say this isn’t going well.”

The EPA divides Superfund sites into Operable Units, areas that can be cleaned and redeveloped to be usable sites again.

“Anderson Regional Transportation Center is at the heart of the site, the central area,” LeMay said. “That’s where the chemical manufacturing took place. [Operable Unit 1] is a thriving commercial area. [We] capped 110 acres of property at that site.”

from the Woburn Advocate

Majority would drink recycled sewage

AN overwhelming majority of Australians would be prepared to drink recycled sewage to help ease a national crisis in urban water supplies that has forced escalating restrictions on water use.
A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian shows almost seven out of 10 people favour water from sewage treatment plants being supplied to homes for all household uses, including drinking, provided it is treated to the same quality as existing water supplies.

Most of the remainder say they would be prepared to use recycled sewage for non-drinking purposes, such as flushing toilets and watering gardens.

The survey comes ahead of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie's March 17 referendum for southeast Queensland on using recycled water to top up falling dam levels.

Southeast Queensland's dams are down to 24.2 per cent. They were last full in January 2000. If the summer rains fail again, the rapidly growing region will have less than two years' supply left.

from The Australian

Slowing a tide of pollutants

CALL it the slobber stopper.

It looks like an elaborate fountain. Water gurgles through a series of red-tiled pools, spillways and chutes within sight of the pedestrian walkway that connects the bluffs of Santa Monica with the Santa Monica Pier.

The Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility, or SMURRF, is the only thing preventing 350,000 gallons of urban runoff from coursing into the Pacific every day.

The $12-million contraption is at the forefront of efforts to curb the torrent of pollutants that threaten the world's oceans. Sitting near the mouth of the city's largest storm drain, it collects and treats the frothy flow that trickles out of a seaside metropolis day after day from sprinklers, washed cars and drained pools, bearing with it cat and dog waste, spilled engine oil, lawn chemicals, brake dust, bacteria and viruses.

The liquid waste, called "urban slobber," is filtered; sterilized with ultraviolet light; and recycled to irrigate Palisades Park and a city cemetery and to flush the toilets at police headquarters. Styrofoam cups, plastic bags and other solid debris are scooped out and hauled to a landfill.

from the LA Times

Tough water rules not enough

WATER restrictions have cut consumption by Australian households to 1950s levels, but a chronic failure by state governments to invest in infrastructure will force further crackdowns on use in 2007 unless the nation receives significant rain.
Research by national water utilities has found water consumption per head has been driven down to 1950s levels by the tough restrictions.

Up to 20 per cent of the cuts in household consumption were reported since 2001, when severe restrictions were implemented as rainfall in the catchment areas began to drop.

This is despite a doubling in the average size of houses, with more bathrooms and increased numbers of swimming pools.

from The Australian