SALTY WORDS

Salt always has had importance in the United States. At the beginning of the 1800s, a prime source of salt in the fledgling new country was at the bottom of Illinois, along the Ohio River near the boundary with Indiana. Originally discovered and used by the native Indians, these salt deposits fell under the control of advancing frontiersmen. Indeed, mining the salt became quite profitable.* Thus, there is Saline County in Illinois, presumably named after salt. (As a sidebar, in the 1830s, a group of men from northern Illinois approached the bank in Shawneetown, then a bustling city in the salt area, for a loan to organize a city called Chicago. The bank turned down the loan request saying that Chicago would never amount to anything and had no future. In the 1930s, the Ohio River flooded and wiped out Shawneetown. The whole city moved up a hill and left behind what is now Old Shawneetown and the crumbling walls of a bank building.)

Today, the health effects of use of salt to flavor food continues to be controversial. However, quite a different controversy involves the use of salt in residential self-regenerating water softeners that discharge salty waste brine into the wastewater system.

This concern particularly exists in drought prone areas of the United States, such as California. Because of the scarcity of fresh water sources, utilities are under pressure to reuse or recycle treated wastewater. Obviously, salty recycled wastewater is not feasible for most purposes. However, conventional wastewater treatment plants are not able to adequately treat high salinity influent without installing costly advanced treatment technology.

Accordingly, in California, some municipalities enacted ordinances banning use of self-regenerating water softeners. Courts, however, rejected such ordinances on the ground that state law pre-empted local action. While there is no state ban, the legislature did enact a protocol that enables local bans when necessary to enable wastewater systems to comply with state effluent discharge standards (Assembly Bill 1366).**

Some cities now offer financial incentives to homeowners to remove their water softeners altogether or to replace them with so-called demand-initiated regeneration ion exchange softeners.

Interestingly, one method to reduce salinity levels in brine is through use of the reverse-osmosis process. A recent report states that salty water which does not pass through the membrane may be able to be harvested to run an electricity generation turbine. So, salt have have power.***

Obviously, not all sources of water--particularly well water--are of the same quality or of good quality. Often they contain high levels of naturally-occuring minerals that adversely affect taste, odor and color, producing scale in pipes and discoloring in appliances and laundered clothing. Accordingly, residential water softeners can be expected to remain in demand.

Over the years, some water utilities that tied to operate central softening equipment at their treatment plants found that the process could be unreliable, resulting in customer complaints, and removed such equipment from service.

From time to time, some have asserted that water softeners can have a negative impact on septic tanks. It has been reported that Texas has imposed a ban on water softeners that discharge to septic tanks, asserting that high salt brine can destroy beneficial bacteria. However, recent scientific reports have disputed this assumption and even have suggested that salt can be beneficial for the septic tank process.

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*Owens, "Isaac White And Manliness In Early Illinois,
Journal of Illinois History, Spring, 2014

**See"Stopping A Problem At Its Source",
WE&T Magazine, July, 2014, p.22

***"The New Power Of Salt Water", Wall Street Journal,
August 30-31, 2014, p.C-4

QUENCHING SUMMER HEAT

Some of my prior posts have mentioned my spending summers as a young boy at our family's modest lake cottage in Indiana. In particular, I have fondly recalled the cold, fresh well water that flowed from the old green hand pump hanging over the kitchen sink.

On hot August days, when the sun roasted all who ventured outdoors, more intensely when it reflected off the sandy ground, the old green hand pump yielded refreshing, cold water. It restored our energy while we hibernated indoors to thumb through pages of old issues of Life and Saturday Evening Post magazines or to snooze to a crackling radio buzzing country music about forsaken love from some forsaken station.

But, when temperatures soared to 95 degrees, there were times when cold, fresh water and indoors captivity really did not seem do it for me. Those were the times when I had to convince my mother that we needed to walk about 2 miles, in the heat, to the local grocery store for provisions. So, then I would pull my radio flyer red wagon and we would walk.

The store was perched on the main highway, a two lane pavement with limited traffic, mostly Studebakers made in South Bend. The grocery sported a large blue and white metal sign reading "Royal Blue", which covered much of the peeling paint side of the small frame building. Thus, we always referred to "going to the Royal Blue" when grocery hunting was the mission of the day. One entered through a screen door that squeaked loudly and slammed shut with such a loud thunder that elderly customers would palpitate. Across the middle of the screen door was a metal push plate that read "Rainbow Bread" with a picture of a loaf of white bread in a colorful wrapper. I always remarked to myself that I had never heard of that brand, but then we were in Indiana.

As my mother busied herself among the small aisles of canned goods, I beelined to the low freezer chest near the door bulging with tempting frozen treats. Yes, there were the twin popsicles(R) in different flavors waiting to be grabbed by thirsty hands. They were actually two popsicles(R) on separate sticks, but stuck together. However, experience taught that I should avoid these, as they always would melt prematurely in the hot walk home, drizzling over my face and shirt and producing sticky hands--leaving me hot and thirsty all over again after a few short steps.

Instead, I reached for the prize, the ultimate thirst quencher and heat remedy--a fudgsicle(R). This treat is chocolatey, thick, and most important, melts more slowly on the tongue--making for a more satisfying and cleaner walk home in the heat.

The irony, of course, is that any delicious frozen sweet treat generally seems to provide only temporary relief from 95 degree summer sunshine. When we arrived back at the cottage, I was hot and sweaty all over again from the long walk and pulling a much heavier wagon. The first thing I did was to beeline to the old, green hand pump and gulp a large glass of cold, fresh--and quenching--water.

GOOD BUGS BEING DEBUGGED?

My wife is an antiques dealer. So, it is inevitable that I become involved in her hunting activities from time to time. A couple of days ago, I was scanning a listing for a farm auction. In addition to the typical farm items--such as chicken feeders, manure spreaders and tractor parts--was an outhouse. Now, there must be a story there, such as the owners were retiring and did not want to take their outhouse with them to their new apartment. However, I am not sure how marketable an outhouse is as a collectible antique.

But, I got to thinking how simple a concept an outhouse is for wastewater disposal. Modern wastewater collection, treatment and effluent disposal can be rather complicated, and of course, is highly regulated.

For example, hand sanitizers have become popular, not only in hospitals but in homes, in stores and even at gas stations. A recent report suggests that triclosan, an antimicrobial commonly found in products such as soaps, sanitizers and toothpaste, may interfere with the biological actions by microbes necessary to break down solids in wastewater treatment plant processes.* The report also suggests that antimicrobials may facilitate growth of microbes immune to drugs.

Is regulation of antimicrobials in wastewater coming soon? How would that be accomplished? The only apparent methodology to reduce levels in wastewater is to cause users to use less of sanitizers and sanitized soaps and other products. How the federal government may think it can do that will be interesting to see. Perhaps EPA could give grants to everyone to build outhouses, in which case I might want to attend that farm auction and bid on one. But, even outhouses depend on biological action by good bugs.

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*"Triclosan May Spoil Wastewater Treatment".
Science News, July 26, 2014, p.9

GOING PLACES WITH WATER

According to a recent report, astronauts' urination may enable them to go boldly where no human has gone before.* As space travel pushes toward new frontiers, researchers on earth are exploring potential new uses for the travelers' human waste, such as urine.

In particular, research is focusing on the urea bioelectrochemical system which uses "forward osmosis" to treat urine. According to the research, this system removes urea and converts it to ammonia. In turn, the ammonia is used as fuel in a direct solid alkaline fuel cell system to generate electrical energy.

The report indicates that this process has the potential for recycling urine into drinking water (with the addition of reverse osmosis) as well as electricity. Research is ongoing, and one of the issues yet to be resolved is developing a system that works under zero-gravity conditions found in space.

Who knows--maybe at some point in the distant future people on the go will travel in space in ships propelled by electricity generated by their own urine, illustrating another beneficial use, and need, for water.

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*"Waste Not, Want Not",WE&T Magazine
July,2014, p. 21