Posted on 03/02/2011 5:11:31 AM PST by mattstat
If you’re an environmentalist, particularly a San Francisco version of that creature (one of the most virulent of the breed), it must have come as quite a shock for you to learn that your muck stinks just as bad as a Rush Limbaugh fan’s output. The stench from the sewers in that earth-loving city has become overwhelming, “especially during the dry summer months.”
Why? The low-flow toilets insisted upon (by force of law) by enlightened legislators are not saving the San Francisco environment as the science said they would. According to SF Gate, the near water-free commodes have forced city engineers to mix in 27 million pounds of “highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite” with the sewage “before it’s dumped into the bay.”
The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences struck with force when it was discovered that the water which relocated the acts of Congress from toilets was also necessary to shift the Congressional output through the sewer system! Who knew!
Instead of a laminar movement of muck found with the old toilets, low-flow toilets caused stagnation. The acts of Congress left the homes of the benevolent, but when they plopped dry into the sewer, there they sat, festering and bubbling and turning into a giant petri dish. And they stank.
And still stink, hence the plan for dumpling concentrated bleach into the sewers to make up for the lost water. Some of the bleach must also be used to kill critters in the drinking water, too.
In what must be a fascinating sociological experiment, the very forces of benevolence which created the demand for low-flow toilets is now pressuring politicians to eschew chemicals. “Don’t Bleach Our Bay!” is the new environmentalist cry. Activists are claiming that the bleach will cause an “environmental disaster” and is thus not “planet-friendly.” They suggest—I kid you not—using Oxyclean, or it’s sewer equivalent, to scrub clean their effluvia.
The Road to Smell is paved with the best intentions.
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