San Fran is full of it!

Jstas

Literally!

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/01/low-flow-toilets-cause-stink-in-san-francisco/?hpt=T2

The city of San Francisco's push for low-flow toilets is saving water ? at a smelly price.

Use of the low-flow toilets has cut city water consumption by 20 million gallons a year, Public Utilities Commission spokesman Tyrone Jue told the San Francisco Chronicle.

But the cost is both monetary and olfactory.

Because water flow isn't pushing the waste through the system fast enough, a stinky sludge is building up in the sewers, the Chronicle reports. It's blamed for a rotten-egg smell wafting through areas of the city, especially during summer, according to the report.

So the city is spending $14 million to buy a three-year supply of concentrated bleach to combat the sewer odor, disinfect treated water before it's pumped into San Francisco Bay and sanitize tap water.

The plan is drawing criticism from environmental advocates.

"Using sodium hypochlorite, commonly known as bleach, is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack an egg; it's the wrong tool, and it will cause irreversible collateral damage," San Francisco chemical engineer Adam Lowry and German chemist Michael Braungart wrote in a Chronicle op-ed.

Their solution to the stink: either dumping hydrogen peroxide into the sewers or "a pro-biotic solution, that is, enzymes or bacteria that would simply 'eat' the smell then degrade harmlessly."

That's stupidest thing I've ever heard.

thuffman03

I guess I will not be making any plans to go to SF any time soon.

Joe08867

And they talk about Jersey City NJ smelling bad. At least we aren't full of S**T.

steveinaz

Maybe the "bleach huggers" will protest.

mhardy6647

Back in the late 1980s when I lived in the Sillycon Valley, San Francisco used to smell good in the summertime. The scent of flowers hung in the air. Not no' mo', I guess :-(

Theheadsn

I do commercial plumbing and i can totally agree with that. Loflow toilets are horrible for the most part, and what makes things worse is that you cant even BUY higher capacity toilets. So your pretty much SOL.

This whole "go green" movement is the biggest crock of **** ever, and it just makes things worse in the long run.

steveinaz

Now they'll **** because caustic chemicals will have to be used clear up the problem---and they saved what exactly? Gotta love those Kali politics.

Danny Tse

Come on, these morons are politicians....they don't think things through.

I know because I work with them and have interviewed many of them on my radio chat show (not my choice of guest since they always have their "handlers" there to screen questions). If it's logical, those politicians will not like it.

pdxfj

Living in Portland, Oregon I'm stuck in the middle of the whole "green" thing and the people are so damn stupid you can't have any kind of a dialogue with them. As soon as you disagree with their point of view in any way all of the sudden you find yourself being insulted, yelled at, etc.

What the "green" people fail to see is that for each of their "green" actions there is an opposite reaction that must be dealt with in a "non-green" way as others have stated is usually worse than if they hadn't changed anything at all.

They are getting really big on wind power up here.. What happens when the wind doesn't blow? No power.. ok.. so build another fossil fuel power plant to use as a backup for when the wind isn't blowing. Although the green people had a victory and forced the closure of our only coal fired power plant in the next few years. Hopefully I can be out of this cesspool before it gets really bad.

bobman1235

I've seen the toilets that have two different flushes - one for liquids and one for solids. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

Theheadsn

bobman1235 wrote: »

I've seen the toilets that have two different flushes - one for liquids and one for solids. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

Yea but they still are loflow. Gov regulations wont allow over a certain amount per flush, so even with the 2 different flush types, they still dont use anything. They lighter flush just REALLY doesnt use anything. Think of dumping a glass of water in your toilet.

On a side note, im tired of people saying were "running out of water" theres still the same exact amount of water thats on this planet as there was 100million years ago.

We just need to build more desalination plants and catch basins, especially here in ca where it doesnt rain hard but 1 or 2 a year

carpenter

it's the strativarius of toilets and my dad could play it like a violin...

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IL2YRDzpTL4&quot; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

scottyboy76

san franciscans and californians in general are not only ignorant, but evil, yeah i said it, EVIL.

If you arent typical of them, then you arent who i am writing about.

Just like socialists and communists everywhere, they count on others to provide them with all that their hearts desire, by infiltrating the political system, as well as the legislative.

Their billions of state debt, paid for with i.o.u.s, for things most of us would be embarrased to even think of asking others to do for us, will eventually be assumed by the imperial federal govt, who gets their money from farmers who work from day to dark, denying themselves luxurys in order to try to do for themselves and hang on to their land and way of life.

Small business people face unbelievable hurdles, regulations and voluminous tax laws rigged to make them cash machines for the tax man, to pay for a never ending list of demands from the professional protestors and kids of orthodontists, who have never had to work a day, who show up at these phony protests at a moments notice, not even knowing the realitys of their stance.

This is the kind of decadence that has brought low every great society.

Make no mistake, we have lived through the best times in this country, we all know it, whether we admit it to ourselves.

Oh by the way, if you buy a 300 dollar or better kohler toilet, the half flush alone works flawlessly, even for what is referred to, in polite company, as solids.

Trust me years of research in the back of our house have gone into this conclusion, i welcome peer review.

steveinaz

True stuff. People need to learn to get off the ****, and make their own success. The state this country is in is going to be a serious (long overdue) wake up call. Cuts WILL happen, and they will be deep.

bobman1235

Evil implies motive. I don't think MOST people in SF and places like it have an evil motive -- quite the opposite, they THINK they are doing something GOOD -- just an ignorant / ill-informed / irrational one.

Danny Tse

I think some of the Californian and San Franciscan politicians have good intentions. However, most don't think about the "what if ?" or know "when to say when" regarding staying out of people's lives. You can't blame them completely either since these politicians depend on their "advisors", who in turn have their own agendas, political or otherwise....not to mention being "gatekeepers" for what information is filtered to policymakers.

cnh

I'm not sure this is 'typically' San Franciscan or Californian. It's certainly 'shortsighted'. But not taking LONG TERM effects into consideration is something we Americans specialize in. We've been doing it for decades.

This is SIMPLY the GREEN VERSION of a failure to account for the LONG time horizon of 'causes and effects' but it's the same logic. One has only to look at what masters we are of planning 'budgets' and our economy. Real geniuses we are!

cnh

agfrost

scottyboy76 wrote: »

Oh by the way, if you buy a 300 dollar or better kohler toilet, the half flush alone works flawlessly, even for what is referred to, in polite company, as solids.

Trust me years of research in the back of our house have gone into this conclusion, i welcome peer review.

I am not flying out to Georgia to flush your "solids."

Jay

mhardy6647

bobman1235 wrote: »

I've seen the toilets that have two different flushes - one for liquids and one for solids. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

Back in the late 80s, the rule of thumb in CA used to be "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down"

Ron-P

Theheadsn wrote: »

This whole "go green" movement is the biggest crock of **** ever, and it just makes things worse in the long run.

You got that right. My only green movements are the ones I blow outta my nose when I have a head cold.