WaterWired

My Ten Cents: @CaptDocMike's 'The Chlorine Revolution - Water Disinfection and the Fight to Save Lives'

A few days ago it was fluoride. Now it's chlorine! What is happening? Halogen addiction on the verge of my 65th birthday? Maybe I have a thing for poisons added to drinking water!

It's all in honor of Drinking Water Week.

Read on, dear reader.

@CaptDocMike is the Twitter handle for Dr. Michael J. McGuire, drinking water expert extraordinaire and member of the National Academy of Engineering, who just penned, The Chlorine Revolution: Water Disinfection and the Fight to Save Lives. It's published by the American Water Works Assoication (AWWA).

Read more at Mike's blog/website.

So what's the deal? Is there another review in the offing? Not really. I am just going to provide my foreword, which Mike asked me to write.

Here is a PDF:  Download Foreword_Chlorine_Rev_Campana_21Jan2013

Foreword

Many years ago, an engineer colleague told me that if I ever wanted to thank one person for the excellent state of public health in the USA, make sure I thanked an engineer. When I presented a puzzled mien, he proceeded to explain the role of the engineering profession in developing methods for treating wastewater and disinfecting drinking water. I certainly understood the difficulty in, and importance of, treating wastewater, but I scoffed at the disinfection aspect, especially the difficulty. ‘What’s the big deal with disinfecting the drinking water? Just add some chlorine,’ I replied. He responded with a glare that I suspect I’d given to some of my students over the years, and proceeded to lecture me on drinking water disinfection with chlorine. Little did I realize that, lo these many years later, I would be penning the foreword to a book titled, The Chlorine Revolution: Water Disinfection

and the Fight to Save Lives, and being amazed at and enthralled by the wealth of information in Dr. Michael J. McGuire’s book. Suffice it to say that in writing this book, Mike added two more hats to his engineering one – those of historian and detective. The book is meticulously researched and documented and well-written.

Even I, as a non-engineer (hydrogeologist), have known Mike by reputation for a number of years. After all, he is a fellow ‘water wonk’ and (unlike me) a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an organization that does not suffer fools.  I first met him several years ago when we both served on a National Research Council committee, and that in-person experience did nothing but enhance his reputation and my perception of his expertise.

 Whence the origins of this book?  It is an outgrowth of a paper Mike published in the Journal of the American Water Works Association in 2006, “Eight Revolutions in the History of U.S. Drinking Water Disinfection”. The title reminded me of my aforementioned comment disparaging the difficulty of drinking water disinfection. If a person like Mike sees ‘eight revolutions’ then I must be missing something. For once, my hunch was right. I had missed something about disinfection.

 As Mike states in his Preface, the article was well-received, but he was not satisfied:  

The first revolution fascinated me. What was the decision-making process behind the first continuous use of chlorine in the United States? Why was chlorination of a water supply first accomplished in Jersey City, New Jersey? Who were the people primarily responsible for implementing chlorination? What in their experience led them to take such extraordinary steps? What were the consequences of their actions? These questions led me to begin research for this book and to explore in depth this historic era in drinking water disinfection.

After reading the above, I was hooked. I wanted to learn what the ‘big deal’ was. After all, I knew enough about drinking water chlorination to know that it entails adding a poison to something about to be ingested by humans. You’d better have the biology, chemistry, and engineering right.

 Now comes the surprising part. Despite the first sentence of my foreword, it was two men not trained as engineers who played the key roles in the struggle to chlorinate drinking water supplies: Dr. John L. Leal, a medical doctor turned public health and water expert, and George Warren Fuller, an MIT-trained chemist who became the foremost U.S. sanitary engineer before his 40^th birthday. Leal was the one who speculated upon the health benefits of chlorinating public water supplies on a continuous basis.  His research into bacteriology and the development of germ theory of disease led him to the works of Pasteur, Koch, and others to posit that chlorine dose to drinking water would be the key to drastically reducing or eliminating health threats from typhoid and other waterborne diseases. Fuller’s prodigious engineering skills would implement Leal’s theories; all he had to do was develop a continuous feed system that would safely chlorinate 40 million gallons per day!

 Mike’s book goes into incredible detail. The court trials. The ‘chemophobia’ that was prevalent at the turn of the last century. The pioneering bacteriologists.  John Snow and his ‘cholera map’. The understanding of what caused disease (no, not ‘miasmas’). Even the improvements to the microscope that led to advances in bacteriology do not escape Mike’s sleuthing.

 Recalling the first sentence of this foreword, I must now confess that for years I have been telling my students whom to thank. But now I know a lot more: the whole story and exactly whom to thank.  And I know exactly what I will tell the students in my US Water Management class tomorrow morning.

 The Chlorine Revolution: Water Disinfection and the Fight to Save Lives is an extraordinary book telling a remarkable story. Engineer, water wonk, or not, you’ll be glad you read it.

 I am.

 Michael E. Campana, PhD

Past President, American Water Resources Association
Professor of Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR, USA
21 January 2013 

If the above is not a review, I don't know what is. Great book!

Enjoy!

"It's the drinking water, stupid." - Michael J. McGuire, The Chlorine Revolution, p. 41 (apologies to James Carville) 

Bureaucracy Kills: Is An Open Letter to @UNICEF Unfair?

I was perusing the TheWaterChannel website when I encountered a provocative post (29 April 2013) by Frank van Steenbergen on TheWaterBlog. If the name sounds familiar to you, he is the co-founder and co-manager of TheWaterChannel. 

Van Steenbergen pulls no punches. He begins:

If you would head an organization whose mandate is to protect of the rights of children, help meet their basic needs and raise resources to achieve this.

And if that same organization, upon receiving funds from donors would take between six to eighteen months to get the paper work ready for things to roll out, mainly because of internal procedures and compliance mechanisms (that is what I observed, if it is an odd exception I stand corrected and humbly apologize but I am led to believe it is not exceptional)…

And if you would charge between 7-13% as handling fee on these funds for providing this belated service…

How would you feel?

So what's next? Here goes:

I for one would not feel good. The reason is that by delaying implementation with say one year several thousand mothers and children have no access to clean water for that one year. This means more diarrhea, more morbidity, more retarded development. I would then not feel proud of receiving a salary upwards of what some heads of state make.

The name of the organization is UNICEF (but it is not the only one) and this open letter is based on several water and sanitation programs [emboldening mine] I have seen it is entrusted to manage in Africa.  Not only are delays common, what is worse, no one seems be bothered or angry. Obviously it is a much larger crime to break unwieldy rules than to speed up and deliver development to needy people.  It is not unusual that not only starting dates of programs are postponed but also that the time to implement is shortened because first fiduciary (who invented that word!) had to be fulfilled. Here is an issue of leadership and priorities. There is an expression in my country: ‘throwing away the baby with the washing water’, and this is what it is.

Bureaucracy kills.

I checked the U.S. Fund for UNICEF's website and the expenditures look pretty reasonable. But this is the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has to file 990 forms with the IRS. But I am sure van Steenbergen is talking about UNICEF itself.

These could be serious allegations. But I have to say that a 7-13% 'handling fee' is not outrageous. If that is the overhead, that is certainly not high; in fact, it strikes me as low. For a US nonprofit such a rate for administrative expenses is not outlandish. And just several programs? Delays? You mean van Steenbergen has not run into delays and other snafus, esepcially when working on WatSan projects in emerging regions? It's a tragedy that the delays led to the consequences he indicated. 

There is no indication that van Steenbergen has sought an explanation from UNICEF for the cases he cites. Was UNICEF given an opportunity to reply?

In any case, van Steenbergen needs to be more specific.

I am curious to see if there are any comments; there are none so far. I have left one - a link to this post.

Is this letter unfair? Judge for yourself. Based on the content provided, I think it is.

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please." - Mark Twain

Memo to Mulroy: Transboundary Cooperation Begins at Home

Imagine my surprise when I saw this Twitter feed from the Singapore International Water Week last week:

'Conversation with Water Leaders: Pat Mulroy on urban water conservation and transboundary cooperation'

I had to drop everything and read it, since 'cooperation' and 'Pat Mulroy' in the same sentence struck me as contradictory, although she has become more conciliatory in recent years. In fact, my initial reaction was 'WTF'? So I found what she meant by 'transboundary cooperation' - US-Mexico.

From the interview:

What are some examples of stakeholders who can be obstructive?

There are [US] states where the culture is much more combative and whose leadership wants to pontificate more than they want to find answers. The same holds true in the environmental community.  You have environmental groups that have a business model of going to court.  That’s how they pay their people, because judges will award legal fees every single time. That’s not the environmental group you can put at the table to find common solutions. [Note: I didn't know you 'put' groups at the table. I guess that is how they do it in Las Vegas.]

The world has changed.  It’s changed economically; it’s tied together climatically.  What the US recognized [was] that Mexico has no ability to prepare for cutbacks on the Colorado River delivery level.  And so the exchange was – Mexico, we know that you need a place to store water.  If you will conserve water early, through on-farm improvements, through lining canals, through conservation efforts, then we will let you store that water in Lake Mead and use it as a cushion when you start taking cutbacks.

What are the benefits to the parties in this transboundary water cooperation between the US and Mexico?
The US benefits in two ways.  One in that Mexico will now take shortages at the same elevations that we the US take shortages.  Second, during this period when the drought is deepening, all of us are buying water and sticking it in Lake Mead, so today Lake Mead is ten feet higher than it would normally be.  The other advantage goes to the environment.

What are the environment benefits that will arise from the extra water stored in Lake Mead?
There are a couple of environmental groups, most notably the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund and Sonoran Institute, that are going to help pay for those on-farm improvements in Mexico.  Now the water in Lake Mead will be used for experimental releases to the delta.  So when you look at the entirety of this, it was a pretty amazing combination of benefits that accrued to everybody. 

It is unclear to me whether this 'cooperation with Mexico' will cost Las Vegas/Nevada anything. If it costs you little or nothing, then 'cooperation' is easy.

I love it that Mulroy talks about the 'combative culture' of some US states. Terrible! And those environmental groups that don't want to find solutions? Perhaps they are combative and obstructive because they don't fall into line behind the Southern Nevada Water Authority's approach to water supply - that of constructing a pipeline to bring rural groundwater to Las Vegas.

But I could not help but wonder at the narrow view of the term 'transboundary cooperation' shared by Mulroy (and likely the SIWW and many other water people). 'Transboundary' does not always equal 'transnational' but can refer to cooperation across all political boundaries, whether they be international, interstate, or intrastate. It can even refer to non-geographic or non-political boundaries, such as those between different cultures, ways of life, etc.

Given that more expansive definition of 'transboundary' I would say that Mulroy fails when it comes to 'transboundary cooperation'. If you don't think so, you might ask the rural Nevada residents who don't fancy the groundwater in their valleys being pumped to fuel Las Vegas' growth, or the state of Utah, which takes umbrage at the possibility some of its Snake Valley groundwater heading to Utah.

As Emily Green reported:

As negotiations took months, then years, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy became so incensed by what she regarded as an Utahan “veto” on the Las Vegas pipeline that in 2006 she threatened the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune. The longer Utah delayed approval of Las Vegas’ water withdrawals from Snake Valley, she said, “the more uncomfortable it will become for Utah. If they can do it to another state, they can have it done to them, too.”

Mulroy proceeded to file protests  with the Utah Department of Natural Resources on Utahan groundwater applications within Beaver and Iron counties. 

 Cooperation? With Mexico, perhaps . Other Nevadans and Utah? Not so much.

And the spin machine rolls on...

“...singularly most stupid idea anyone ever had...” - Pat Mulroy, talking about the pipeline to bring rural groundwater to Las Vegas (High Country News, 1994; see this article)

“People don’t understand water.” -- Pat Mulroy, quoted in The Big Thirst

Lifeline and Affordable Water Rates for Locals Hit Close to Home

I received an interesting email today from a woman in a town on the Oregon coast. She and her husband, both in their late sixties and on Social Security, were having trouble paying their water bill. Seems their rates had recently gone up dramatically to fund a new wastewater treatment plant. 

She told me the city manager had been sympathetic to their plight but was unable to help any further. The state of Oregon could not help. A local charity was helping them with their power bills but had no money for their water bill (I thought water would be more important than water). Now they are being threatened with service discontinuation and are at wits' end. She asked for my help to write a proposal to someone or something to obtain support not just for them, but also for all low income people in the town.

I felt badly but couldn't think of anything to do, except for proposing lifeline rates and/or a fund to which ratepayers could contribute help low income people.

She had never heard of such things, and I sent her links to the City of Olympia's program and the City of Tumwater's program. I also found a link to an EPA publication that does not deal exclusively with lifeline water and sewer rates but does have some information on utilities with lifeline rates/programs.

Here is some affordability information from EPA with a link to a report:

Download Water_Affordability_4004

And here is a 2002 paper prepared by EPA for DC:

Download 2009_05_26_waterinfrastructure_pricings_AffordOptions

She was enthusiastic but thought that the very conservative City Council might not go for such a plan.

My curiosity has been piqued now. I told her to keep me informed.

Stay tuned. 

“I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.” - Dr. Jonas Salk

After 155 Years, The Lancet Sets Dr. John Snow's Record Straight

The Lancet, arguably the world's leading general medical journal, finally deigned to set Dr. John Snow's record straight lo these 155 years.

Who's Dr. John Snow? Only the guy who made the connection between epidemic cholera transmission and water from a contaminated well in London.

The Lancet wishes to correct, after an unduly prolonged period of reflection, an impression that it may have given in its obituary of Dr John Snow on June 26, 1858. The obituary briefly stated:

“Dr John Snow: This well-known physician died at noon, on the 16th instant, at his house in Sackville Street, from an attack of apoplexy. His researches on chloroform and other anaesthetics were appreciated by the profession.”

The journal accepts that some readers may wrongly have inferred that The Lancet failed to recognise Dr Snow's remarkable achievements in the field of epidemiology and, in particular, his visionary work in deducing the mode of transmission of epidemic cholera. The Editor would also like to add that comments such as “In riding his hobby very hard, he has fallen down through a gully-hole and has never since been able to get out again” and “Has he any facts to show in proof? No!”, published in an Editorial on Dr Snow's theories in 1855, were perhaps somewhat overly negative in tone.

Even allowing for Lancet founding Editor Thomas Wakley's surprising contempt for Snow, the obituary was extraordinary in its brevity and its failure even to mention cholera. The excoriating Editorial 3 years earlier had been provoked by Snow's support for what were known as the “nuisance traders”. Snow told Members of Parliament that the foul smells from processes such as tanning and soap boiling were not capable of producing acute fever or epidemic disease in an individual. Wakley, incensed at what he saw as an attempt to block important public health reforms, accused Snow of unscientific thinking.

Read more here.

Way to go, guys!

Thanks to Peter Gleick for bringing this to my attention.

"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error." - Marcus Tullius Cicero