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Sunday, October 07, 2007
What’s in the water at the MSD?
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
So what’s in the water at the Metropolitan Sewer District? Cincinnatians seem to be taking an increased interest in the environment, but does that also extend to the water? Recently, Michael Earl Patton posted this item about how some people may actually be paying for water they do not use. But it turns out that might not be the only thing strange at the Metropolitan Sewer District. Upstream chemical companies frequently pollute the water!
First, some background for those who don’t know what happens to all that waste we flush down our toilets. To make a long story short, the waste is eaten by microorganisms, which are then incinerated, and their ashes are taken to Rumpke Mountain. The end result should be clean water. Maybe not clean enough to drink, but definitely clean enough for a swim—and clean enough for putting right back into the Ohio River.
(In fact, if we really wanted to conserve resources, we would pipe this cleaned water right into the process that purifies the stuff for drinking. After all, we get our drinking water from the river, and we put this cleaned sewer water into that same river. Water leaving the MSD is cleaner than river water!)
Occasionally, however, water that comes into the MSD is not the color of water. Sometimes it is green, or purple, or even teal. Why? Illegal chemical dumping from upstream. Check out this photo, taken from a day that a polluter dumped into the water, turning it green.
Photo courtesy of here.
According to an employee from MSD, this is a fairly frequent occurrence. And check out the next photo. This is right as it exits the MSD and heads for the river. Those suds you see are soap suds, and the MSD employee with whom I spoke thought it must come from a soap producing corporation upstream:
Photo courtesy of here.
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07 Oct 2007 at 02:38 pm | #
1. Hard to see, but isn’t the Ohio river pretty much always that color?
2. Are you sure those are soap suds and not foam produced by agitation & proteins in the water
http://www.livescience.com/imageoftheday/siod_061220.html
All of that aside, I do agree that the Ohio river is no where near as clean as it should be. Issues range from citizens dumping chemicals down street sewers (antifreeze, motor oil) to plants employees who are not thinking about the consequences of their dumping something down the pipe, to plant managers who actively control dump times to the middle of the night so that no one catches them.
The EPA just doesn’t have the resources to go after the plants that do illegal dumping. I’ve often thought that at some point it would make sense for private citizen’s to sue the upstream plants for illegal dumping.
from plant employees who
07 Oct 2007 at 03:37 pm | #
This is not the Ohio river. This is water that has been totally processed through the MSD. It is clean. It is supposed to be clear, not green. Other colors, reported to me from the MSD employee, that can sometimes be found include lavender, and even teal. These are, according to my source, a direct result of chemical dumping into the sewer system.
No, I am not sure about the suds. I only know what the MSD employee told me when he showed me those bubbles. He said it was soap dumped into the sewer system from a corporation.