This'll quench the thirst right outta ya

So this post is about pollution and doesn't really have anything to do with Mormon-ness directly, but I was so darn impressed by this link I had to post it anyway. Wait- it sort-of relates to self-sufficiency, because: While daydreaming about the setup we're going to have on the farm, I think it would be a good idea to have a cistern/pond filled by roof runoff. A very do-it-yourselfy, self-reliant sort of thing to do. But then sometimes I think "Ew! Cisterns are prone to getting full of tadpoles and tadpole pee! Do I really want to make that kind of open-ended commitment to ecology? Even parasitologists have their limits, said limit usually being their mouth." But once I read some of these case studies on crazy sewer/potable water system mixups that have happened, living the unplugged life swillin' tadpole pee starts to look pretty good. Some are sort of boring (#21, the nickel-plating plant). Some are good for eliciting giggles from engineers (#7, the one where an air compressor at a dentist's office got confused and tried to keep the entire city's potable water supply at 80 psi... of air). Some are just... WOW (the hospital, the mortuary, and the poultry plant).

One entry of note is #28, where it appears that a line connecting "reclaimed water" (either greywater or mostly-but-not-completely-treated sewage water, I'm not quite sure which) to somebody's irrigation system got crossed and ended up pumping about 50,000 gallons of said reclaimed water into the town's drinking water pipes. Oops! Doesn't sound like anyone got hurt though. Go greywater! And #30 happened to me while working as a waitress at, we'll say the big Mexican restaurant in Provo that's not Beto's. The water out of the taps was salty for about 10 minutes... I'd wondered what kind of sinister forces could have been at work there, and this is not making me feel any better about it.

Without any further ado, here's the link. Things to think about: http://www.treeo.ufl.edu/backflow/casehist.aspx#6