What's in the stormwater?

“If everybody did what Grand Rapids is doing, our waterways would be in a lot better shape.”

How clean is the water in the river, lake, or stream near you? It may be more contaminated than you realize. via WZZM-TV Grand Rapids

[jtphantom]

Grand Rapids knows this is an issue and has supposedly been dealing with it for years.

I had inquired to the DEQ about two years ago and that was basically the answer I received.

If they had chosen to create a separate storm water system from that of the sewer this could be averted. Maybe.

[Gentle Taz]

When Grand Rapids put in the combined sewer system it was state of the art, one of the first cities to even have a sewer system. Now, having been progressive at the time is costing them. Replacing it with a separated sewer system has not been easy or cheap. Correcting it has meant digging up and removing the old combined system and then installing new separate storm and sanitary sewers while continuing to provide sewer service.

[Gentle Taz]

nyscof wrote:

A very easy way to stop the flow of chemicals into the water ways is for Grand Rapids to stop adding unnecessary hydrofluosilicic acid into the water supplies in the first place.
Often this acid has to be neutralized with yet another chemical such as sodium hydroxide. Grand Rapids adds hydrofluosilicic acid (fluoride )into the water supply in a failed effort to reduce tooth decay. Only 1% of the water supply is consumed. 99% of this hydrofluosilicic acid, which also contains trace amounts of lead, arsenic, mercury and other toxins, gets back into your environment.
It's a no brainer to stop fluoridation. It saves money, health and has no down side as studies show when fluoridation ends, cavities actually go down.
However, the politics of fluoridation and the power of the American Dental Association, funded by corporations who benefit by keeping fluoride as the protected pollutant, is a hard force to beat down.
Good Luck

What does this political rant have to do with stormwater? Incidentally, flouride occurs naturally in our water.

[BR Bean Counter]

I'm thinking that real quickly, a whole lot more cigarette b.utts once the ban kicks in.

[Gentle Taz]

BR Bean Counter wrote:

I'm thinking that real quickly, a whole lot more cigarette b.utts once the ban kicks in.

The screen at the wastewater plant will catch many, if not most of them along with the used kotex.

[BR Bean Counter]

Gentle Taz wrote:

<quoted text>
The screen at the wastewater plant will catch many, if not most of them along with the used kotex.

Not after an inch of rain!

[Gentle Taz]

BR Bean Counter wrote:

<quoted text>
Not after an inch of rain!

Then it will most likely end up in the overflow basin! Or, if that inch comes down fast enough, into the Grand.

[Gentle Taz]

nyscof wrote:

<quoted text>
The fluoride that's added to your water is
NOT there naturally. Silicofluorides are toxin-laced waste scrubbed from the smokestacks of phosphate fertilizer plants and dumped unpurified into your drinking water. This you pay for both in dollars and adverse health effects.

If you do a test on raw Lake Michigan water, you will find that it contains about 3/10 of a part per million flouride. Well water, in many places contains even more. The city of Grand Rapids only feeds enough flouride to bring the level up to the recommended 1 part per million, as do all water departments that feed flouride.

[Gentle Taz]

nyscof wrote:

<quoted text>
The fluoride that's added to your water is
NOT there naturally. Silicofluorides are toxin-laced waste scrubbed from the smokestacks of phosphate fertilizer plants and dumped unpurified into your drinking water. This you pay for both in dollars and adverse health effects.

By the way, what does that have to do with storm water? Storm water is what comes out of the sky, commonly known as rain. I don't know of any way to add flouride to the rain as it falls.