Hey, there! Log in / Register
Ladies and gentlemen: Start your taps!
By ShaneCurcuru on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 6:53am
Ban lifted at 3 a.m. But officials say: Let your cold water run for a minute and your hot water run for 15 minutes (if you have a 40-gallon water heater) or 30 minutes (80 gallons) before drinking deeply of the local tap water.
Since Monday morning, more than 800 water samples at 482 locations have been taken in affected communities, with those samples tested by MWRA under protocols agreed-upon with the Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). Those tests have shown no contamination that could threaten public health. As a result, the boil water order can be lifted, and normal use of water can be resumed in the 30 affected communities, following certain steps to ensure than any less-than-fully treated water is purged from the water supply system in homes, businesses, and institutions.
So, everyone ready to trust the Gov. and start drinking from the tap again instead of screwing off yet one more of those little white plastic caps?
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
mwra page is updated...
with instructions on post boil water bans, and how to flush your systems.
i am guessing they just sleep a little later than the governor. or at least their web person probably does.
Clearing pipes
They had to flush their brains before updating.
Or were exhausted
So I'm getting ready to take a shower when my cell rings. It's Carol Johnson, Boston school superintendent, calling with the news.
exactly...
i'm honestly impressed that *anybody* was up hours ago spreading the news. kudos to all who did.
For those who bought endless...
...storehouses of bottled water, will it keep 'till the end of days, or 2012, or whenever?
Souls?
So, do you figure the hoarders feel silly for panicking, nasty for not leaving enough to go around, or content in their better-save-than-sorry mindlessness?
But on a more serious note...
...if Aquapocalypse 2010 was a dry run (heh) for some greater, more serious shortage, some of this behavior was not a healthy sign of things to come. What we saw underscored the need for some quick rationing provisions in the event a shortage is real and extended.
Hoard first, ration second
If you have the space, put in a supply. I feel really idiotic that I had lapsed on this and I'm going to start it again - a couple gallons for each family member at least. I used to rotate mine out when people needed donations for picnics and field days or when we went camping. It isn't hard to do and I'm just grateful that we could boil water until the order was lifted - you don't always get that chance if the supply is completely shut down.
Gone bad?
So, how long can you keep water? I have a 2.5-gallon plastic container of Poland Springs that I bought, uh, 10 years ago? I didn't tap into it this week, because I didn't need to.
expiration dates?
The two Poland Springs containers I had on hand did have expiration dates.
Perhaps yours...uh...predated expiration dates. :)
Storage Container Issue
Mine had expiration dates and I trade them out accordingly. I think it has to do with the plastic taste the water gets if it is stored too long, as well as the shelf life of the seals.
I have occasion to use or donate them once or twice a year, so I just use the oldest ones and shelve the new ones. Or I will again now that I've been caught out.
Yes, stock up! Medford might
Yes, stock up! Medford might invade Somerville for its parking meetings and sources of illegal cheap labor!
Were the hoarders that off the mark?
I know a lot of people got a lot more water than I did, but I went through what I bought on Saturday easily which was about 10 liters. Now, some of what I went through was boiled water or water smuggled back from Cambridge, but if the power went out, I couldn't have boiled water. That was just two people using, too. And this could have gone on longer. A family could justifiably need many gallons of water.
Water Smuggling
Can you imagine what this would have been like, if it had lasted weeks...?
"In other news, today, a running gun battle occurred along Route 2, as the self-styled vigilante "Water Boy" made another daring run on the Cambridge water supply. Cambridge Police thought they'd caught the water-smuggler, when he made a daring jump onto a passing speed boat, and escaped across the Charles River."
Thank you Adam!
For rewriting this story far better than I attempted. You must have worked in the news business at some point, eh?
(And where the heck did that Indiana Driver's License test spam come from?)
Thanks for posting!
Now to take that shower I was about to when Carol Johnson called :-).
Spammers pay people in India (not Indiana) to log into sites like this and post by hand. First time they've "attacked" the poll module like that; guess it's time to lock that down now, sigh.
I'm from Indiana...
...and wondered if some of my boyhood friends somehow followed me to UHub.
Partly-heard victrola record
My husband swore this woke him up - a partly heard recording, incorporating bird sounds and not decipherable. I thought he dreamed it.
Now I know: it was the cops coming around the neighborhoods with their public address systems declaring the water boiling time was over!
Two good things
In retrospect, there were two things that we should be fortunate for.
First, the break happened at a very good location. The water flowed downhill right into the Charles instead of flooding a neighborhood (again...), businesses, etc. I think we've had enough floods for the year. ;-)
Second, we had a backup. Sure, it wasn't perfect and it was advised to boil the water first, but people had water. OK, so it was inconvenient - deal with it. If I sympathized with anybody, it was the small businesses that had to close. A real crisis would have been NO water at all. Getting something to drink would have been secondary. Dealing with the, uh, excrement of 2 million people would have been challenging. In addition to bottled water price gouging, Port-a-Potty rental prices would have skyrocketed. ;-)
Never screwed off a plastic cap...
... but we did put the OXO kettle through its paces. I refilled my old 3-gal tank (purchased back in the "replacing the mains in West Somerville" days) with the boiled-n-cooled water, and closed all of the bathroom doors to keep WarriorBabyGirl from playing in the sink. The biggest hardship was digging out plastic ice trays (cause we turned off the icemaker when Watertown PD called, before Chestnut Hill was added); those things do NOT freeze quickly. Bleah.
My apt bldg has central water heating -- what should I do?
The MWRA pages doesn't give any instructions for my situation -- a 50-unit apartment building with a central water heater that serves all units. Do I need to run my hot water for 15 minutes or 30 minutes or not at all? Does my landlord need to do something?
Run hot water for 30 minutes
According to the Boston Public Health Commission - which adds you shouldn't be drinking hot tap water regardless (more because of the metals, I'm betting).
Over-boiled...
So now I have an extra lobster-pot of boiled water. There are worse problems to have!
Someone get Lecil some lobsters, stat! <>
And the nay-sayers can all stand in line to beg for some of us hoarder's water just like everyone else will have to do when the zombies come. The real zombies, not the annual marching ones, I mean. They're usually pretty easy to avoid.
JP - Water looks nasty
I have been running my water (both hot and cold) for over an hour and the water is still rust colored. I would rather be drinking yesterdays 'Grey Water' than today's 'Rust Water'.
most likely because of increase in water flow?
I'd be willing to bet it is mostly due to everyone flushing, causing increased flow which stirred up some sediment in the mains.
Or, they decided to flush a couple of main lines to get sediment out. They do it periodically- someone from the city comes along and opens up a fire hydrant for a few minutes and then shuts it again.
Either way...no, you wouldn't rather be drinking yesterday's grey water. Microbes don't settle out, and a little iron/dirt doesn't make you sick.
Are we paying for all this water to flush through the system?
Adam,
Boston.com reports:
"Massachusetts Water Resources Authority reported its flow rate was 150 million gallons per day. After Patrick's 6:45 a.m. press conference, the rate skyrocketed to 284 million gallons per day, said Ria Convery, MWRA spokeswoman. "
My question is - are we paying for all the water we are forced to use to flush our in-house systems? Meaning, is our city water bill going to skyrocket as well?
Personally, I have been running all taps, toilet and tub and washing machine for about an hour and a half on my apartment in a 3 apartment house and I *still* have rust colored water. (Jamaica Plain)
Is this a question that you can get answered as a journalist?
brown in 02132 too
The water coming into my house is brown too in 02132.
It wasn't brown during the "dirty water" aqueduct failure but it is now.
Re: Are we paying for all this "water flushing"?
I wondered the exact same thing today. In reality, if they needed 18 hours to test the water samples to determine whether or not the water was safe for drinking, then the water supply was unofficially "safe" 18 hours ago. And if the MWRA expects 2 million people to pick up the "small cost" of "turning the hot water on for 30 minutes to flush out your system", isn't it to some extent just a big money grab?
That being said, water flushing is indeed the safe thing to do. Especially if you are seeing opaque or brown water coming out of your faucets. Yet, at the same time, I've got a sinking feeling most of cities and towns affected by the MWRA outage are still going to charge people for the "small cost" of "water flushing", even though it is a necessary safety precaution. Maybe some communities will actually reimburse people affected by the "boil water" order, but the majority of us are going to be fleeced and see it on our water bills.
Answer from the BWSC
This only applies to Boston residents: I just spoke to somebody there who said they are not doing anything to adjust bills because of flushing today, so you'll just have to pay for all that extra flushing.
He also said the commission hasn't gotten any complaints about brown or rusty water. 617-989-7800 is the customer-service line if you want to report issues.
Thank you for the info
Thanks - I am going to call and ask for an adjustment. Or get my landlord to if he cares enough. I probably flushed my system with at least 300 gallons, probably a hell of a more and still have brown rusty water.
Who else would pay?
I get feeling like this is something someone else should pay for, but we're talking about a public authority here, not a corporation. There isn't someone else to pay. No one is profiting off the water used to flush the system. The only option would be for the state to step in and pay, but that's still YOU paying.