Category Archives: water

Beavers, some of the best dam builders

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I ran for water commissioner in 2016 (Oakland county, Michigan; I’ll be running again in 2020), and one of my big issues was improving our rivers. Many are dirty and “flashy”. Shortly after a rain they rise too high and move dangerously fast. At other times, they become, low, smelly, and almost disappear. There are flash floods in these rivers, few fish or frogs, and a major problem with erosion. A big part of a solution, I thought, would be to add few small dams, and to refurbish a few others by adding over-flow or underflow weirs. We had a small dam in the middle of campus at Michigan State University where I’d taught, and I’d seen that it did wonders for river control, fishing, and erosion. The fellow I was running against had been removing small dams in the belief that this made the rivers “more natural”. The Sierra Club thought he was right doing this; the fishing community and some homeowners and MSU alumni thought I was. My problem was that I was a Republican running in a Democratic district. Besides, the county executive, L. Brooks Patterson (also a Republican) was a tightwad. Among my the first stops on my campaign trail was to his office, and while he liked many of my ideas, and promised to support me, he didn’t like the idea of spending money on dams. I suggested, somewhat facetiously, using beavers, and idea that’s grown on me since. I’m still not totally convinced it’s a good idea, but bear with me as I walk you through it.

Red Cedar River dam as seen from behind the Michigan State University Administration Building.

Small dam on the Red Cedar River at Michigan State University behind the Administration Building. The dam provided good fishing and canoeing, and cleaned the water somewhat.

The picture at right shows the dam on the Red Cedar River right behind the Administration building at Michigan State University, looking south. During normal times the dam slows the river flow and raises the water level high enough to proved a good canoe trail, 2 1/2 miles to Okemos. Kids would fish behind the dam, and found it a very good fishing spot. The slow flow meant less erosion, and some pollution control. The speed of flow and the height of the river are related; see calculation here. After a big rain, a standing wave (a “jump”) would set up at the dam, raising its effective height by three or four feet. Students would surf the standing wave. More importantly, the three or four feet of river rise provided retention so that the Red Cedar did little damage. Some picnic area got flooded, but that was a lot better than having a destructive torrent. Here’s some more on the benefits of dams.

Between July 31 and Aug 1 the Clinton River rose nine feet in 3 hours, sending 130,000,000 cubic feet of water and sewage to lake St Clair.

Between July 31 and Aug 1 the Clinton River rose nine feet in 3 hours, sending 130,000,000 cubic feet of water to lake St Clair.

The Sierra club supported (supports) my opponent, in part because he supports natural rivers, without dams. I think they are wrong about this, and about their political support in general. Last night, following a 1 1/2 inch rain, the Clinton River flash flooded, going from 5.2 feet depth to 14 feet depth in just two hours. My sense is that the natural state of our rivers had included beavers and beaver dams until at least the mid 1700s. I figured that a few well-designed dams, similar to those at Michigan State would do wonders to stop this. Among the key locations were Birmingham, on the Rouge, Rochester, near Oakland University, Auburn Hills, and the Clinton River gorge, and near Lawrence Technical University. If we could not afford to build man-made dams, I figured we could seed some beaver into nearby nature areas, and let the beavers dam the rivers for free. It would bring back the natural look of these areas, as in the picture below. And engineers at Lawrence Tech and Oakland University might benefit from seeing the original dam engineers at work.

Beaver dam on a branch of the Huron River. Beavers are some of the best dam builders.

Beaver dam on a branch of the Huron River. A rather professional and attractive job at a bargain price.

Beavers are remarkably diligent. Once they set about a task, they build the basics of a dam in a few days, then slowly improve it like any good craftsman. As with modern dams, beaver dams begin with vertical piles set into the river bottom. Beavers then fill in the dam with cross-pieces, moving as much as 1000 lbs of wood in a night to add to the structure and slow the flow. They then add mud. They use their hearing to detect leaks, and slowly plug the leaks till the dam is suitably tight. Most of the streams I identified are narrow and pass through wooded areas. I think a beaver might dam them in a few days. Based on the amount of wood beavers move, and the fact that beavers are shaped like big woodchucks, I was able to answer the age-old question: how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood — see my calculation here.

Me, visiting the DNR to talk beavers

Me, visiting the DNR to talk beavers

There are a few things to check out before I start hiring beavers to take care of Oakland county flooding, and I have not checked them all out yet. Beavers don’t necessarily build where you want or as solidly, and sometimes they don’t build at all. If there are no predators, beavers can get lazy and just build a low-water lodge and a high water lodge, moving from one to the other as the river rises and falls. Hiring a beaver is like hiring an artistic contractor, it seems: you don’t necessarily get what you ask for, and sometimes you get more. Given the flash flooding we have, it’s hard to picture they’d make things worse, but what do I know? In some cases, e.g. the Red Run near the 12 towns drain, the need is for more than a beaver can deliver. Still, without beavers, the need would be for a billion gallons of retention on the Clinton alone, a 10 billion dollar project if carried out as my opponent likes to build. So, with no budget to work with, my next stop was at the Department of Natural Resources Customer Service Center (Lansing). I had some nice chats with beaver experts, and I’m happy to say they liked the idea, or at least they were not opposed. I’ve yet to talk to the Michigan director of dams, and will have to see what he has to say, but so far it seems like, if I get elected in 2020, I’ll be looking for some hard-working beavers, willing to relocate. I’d like to leave it to Beaver.

Robert E. Buxbaum, August 2, 2018. I still don’t get the Sierra Club’s idea of what a natural river would look like, or their commitment to Democrats. In my opinion, a river should include beavers, fish, and fishermen, and drainage should be done by whoever can do it best. Sierra club folks are welcomed to comment below.

What drives the gulf stream?

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I’m not much of a fan of todays’ kids’ science books because they don’t teach science IMHO. They have nice pictures and a few numbers; almost no equations, and lots of words. You can’t do science that way. On the odd occasion that they give the right answer to some problem, the lack of math means the kid has no way of understanding the reasoning, and no reason to believe the answer. Professional science articles on the web are bad in the opposite direction: too many numbers and for math, hey rely on supercomputers. No human can understand the outcome. I like to use my blog to offer science with insight, the type you’d get in an old “everyman science” book.

In previous posts, I gave answers to why the sky is blue, why it’s cold at the poles, why it’s cold on mountains, how tornadoes pick stuff up, and why hurricanes blow the way they do. In this post, we’ll try to figure out what drives the gulf-stream. The main argument will be deduction — disproving things that are not driving the gulf stream to leave us with one or two that could. Deduction is a classic method of science, well presented by Sherlock Holmes.

The gulf stream. The speed in the white area is ≥ 0.5 m/s (1.1 mph.).

The gulf stream. The speed in the white area is ≥ 0.5 m/s (1.1 mph.).

For those who don’t know, the Gulf stream is a massive river of water that runs within the Atlantic ocean. As shown at right, it starts roughly at the end of Florida, runs north to the Carolinas, and then turns dramatically east towards Spain. Flowing east, It’s about 150 miles wide, but only about 62 miles (100 km) when flowing along the US coast. According to some of the science books of my youth this massive flow was driven by temperature according to others, by salinity (whatever that means), and yet other books of my youth wind. My conclusion: they had no clue.

As a start to doing the science here, it’s important to fill in the numerical information that the science books left out. The Gulf stream is roughly 1000 meters deep, with a typical speed of 1 m/s (2.3 mph). The maximum speed is the surface water as the stream flows along the US coast. It is about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mph), see map above.

From the size and the speed of the Gulf Stream, we conclude that land rivers are not driving the flow. The Mississippi is a big river with an outflow point near the head waters of the gulf stream, but the volume of flow is vastly too small. The volume of the gulf stream is roughly

Q=wdv = 100,000 x 1000 x .5 =  50 million m3/s = 1.5 billion cubic feet/s.

This is about 2000 times more flow than the volume flow of the Mississippi, 18,000 m3/s. The great difference in flow suggests the Mississippi could not be the driving force. The map of flow speeds (above) also suggest rivers do not drive the flow. The Gulf Stream does not flow at its maximum speed near the mouth of any river.  We now look for another driver.

Moving on to temperature. Temperature drives the whirl of hurricanes. The logic for temperature driving the gulf stream is as follows: it’s warm by the equator and cold at the poles; warm things expand and as water flows downhill, the polls will always be downhill from the equator. Lets put some math in here or my explanation will be lacking. First lets consider how much hight difference we might expect to see. The thermal expansivity of water is about 2x 10-4 m/m°C (.0002/°C) in the desired temperature range). To calculate the amount of expansion we multiply this by the depth of the stream, 1000m, and the temperature difference between two points, eg. the end of Florida to the Carolina coast. This is 5°C (9°F) I estimate. I calculate the temperature-induced seawater height as:

∆h (thermal) ≈ 5° x .0002/° x 1000m = 1 m (3.3 feet).

This is a fair amount of height. It’s only about 1/100 the height driving the Mississippi river, but it’s something. To see if 1 m is enough to drive the Gulf flow, I’ll compare it to the velocity-head. Velocity-head is a concept that’s useful in plumbing (I ran for water commissioner). It’s the potential energy height equivalent of any kinetic energy — typically of a fluid flow. The kinetic energy for any velocity v and mass of water, m is 1/2 mv2 . The potential energy equivalent is mgh. Combine the above and remove the mass terms, and we have:

∆h (velocity) = v2/2g.

Where g is the acceleration of gravity. Let’s consider  v = 1 m/s and g= 9.8 m/s2.≤ 0.05 m ≈ 2 inches. This is far less than the driving force calculated above. We have 5x more driving force than we need, but there is a problem: why isn’t the flow faster? Why does the Mississippi move so slowly when it has 100 times more head.

To answer the above questions, and to check if heat could really drive the Gulf Stream, we’ll check if the flow is turbulent — it is. A measure of how turbulent is based on something called the Reynolds number, Re#, it’s the ratio of kinetic energy and viscous loss in a fluid flow. Flows are turbulent if this ratio is more than 3000, or so;

Re# = vdρ/µ.

In the above, v is velocity, say 1 m/s, d is depth, 1000m, ρ = density, 1000 kg/m3 for water, and  0.00133 Pa∙s is the viscosity of water. Plug in these numbers, and we find a RE# = 750 million: this flow will be highly turbulent. Assuming a friction factor of 1/20 (.05), e find that we’d expect complete mixing 20 depths or 20 km. We find we need the above 0.05 m of velocity height to drive every 20 km of flow up the US coast. If the distance to the Carolina coast is 1000 km we need 1000*.05m/20 = 1 meter, that’s just about the velocity-head that the temperature difference would suggest. Temperature is thus a plausible driving force for 0.5 m/s, though not likely for the faster 2.5 m/s flow seen in the center of the stream. Turbulent flow is a big part of figuring the mpg of an automobile; it becomes rapidly more important at high speeds.

World sea salinity

World sea salinity. The maximum and minimum are in the wrong places.

What about salinity? For salinity to work, the salinity would have to be higher at the end of the flow. As a model of the flow, we might imagine that we freeze arctic seawater, and thus we concentrate salt in the seawater just below the ice. The heavy, saline water would flow down to the bottom of the sea, and then flow south to an area of low salinity and low pressure. Somewhere in the south, the salinity would be reduced by rains. If evaporation were to exceed the rains, the flow would go in the other direction. Sorry to say, I see no evidence of any of this. For one the end of the Gulf Stream is not that far north; there is no freezing, For two other problems: there are major rains in the Caribbean, and rains too in the North Atlantic. Finally, while the salinity head is too small. Each pen of salinity adds about 0.0001g/cc, and the salinity difference in this case is less than 1 ppm, lets say 0.5ppm.

h = .0001 x 0.5 x 1000 = 0.05m

I don’t see a case for northern-driven Gulf-stream flow caused by salinity.

Surface level winds in the Atlantic.

Surface level winds in the Atlantic. Trade winds in purple, 15-20 mph.

Now consider winds. The wind velocities are certainly enough to produce 5+ miles per hour flows, and the path of flows is appropriate. Consider, for example, the trade winds. In the southern Caribbean, they blow steadily from east to west slightly above the equator at 15 -20 mph. This could certainly drive a circulation flow of 4.5 mph north. Out of the Caribbean basin and along the eastern US coat the trade winds blow at 15-50 mph north and east. This too would easily drive a 4.5 mph flow.  I conclude that a combination of winds and temperature are the most likely drivers of the gulf stream flow. To quote Holmes, once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Robert E. Buxbaum, March 25, 2018. I used the thermal argument above to figure out how cold it had to be to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey.

Activated sludge sewage treatment bioreactors

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I ran for water commissioner of Oakland county in 2016, a county with 1.3 million people and eight sewage treatment plants. One of these plants uses the rotating disk contractor, described previously, but the others process sewage by bubbling air through it in a large tank — the so-called, activated sludge process. A description is found here in Wikipedia, but with no math, and thus, far less satisfying than it could be. I thought I might describe this process relevant mathematics, for my understanding and those interested: what happens to your stuff after you flush the toilet or turn on the garbage disposal.

Simplified sewage plant: a plug-flow reactor with a 90+% solids recycle used to maintain a high concentration of bio-catalyst material.

Simplified sewage plant: a bubbling, plug-flow bio-reactor with 90% solids recycle and a settler used to extract floc solids and bio-catalyst material.

In most of the USA, sanitary sewage, the stuff from your toilet, sink, etc. flows separately from storm water to a treatment plant. At the plant, the sewage is first screened (rough filtered) and given a quick settle to remove grit etc. then sent to a bubbling flow, plug-flow bioreactor like the one shown at right. Not all cities use this type of sludge processes, but virtually every plant I’ve seen does, and I’ve come to believe this is the main technology in use today.

The sewage flows by gravity, typically, a choice that provides reliability and saves on operating costs, but necessitates that the sewage plant is located at the lowest point in the town, typically on a river. The liquid effluent of the sewage, after bio-treatment is typically dumped in the river, a flow that is so great more than, during dry season, more than half the flow of several rivers is this liquid effluent of our plants – an interesting factoid. For pollution reasons, it is mandated that the liquid effluent leaves the plant with less than 2 ppm organics; that is, it leaves the plant purer than normal river water. After settling and screening, the incoming flow to the bio-reactor typically contains about 400 ppm of biomaterial (0.04%), half of it soluble, and half as suspended colloidal stuff (turd bits, vegetable matter, toilet paper, etc). Between the activated sludge bio-reactor and the settler following it manage to reduce this concentration to 2 ppm or less. Soluble organics, about 200 ppm, are removed by this cellular oxidation (metabolism), while the colloidal material, the other 200 ppm, is removed by adsorption on the sticky flocular material in the tank (the plug-flow tank is called an oxidation ditch, BTW). The sticky floc is a product of the cells. The rate of oxidation and of absorption processes are proportional to floc concentration, F and to organic concentration, C. Mathematically we can say that

dC/dt = -kFC

where C and F are the concentration of organic material and floc respectively; t is time, and k is a reaction constant. It’s not totally a constant, since it is proportional to oxygen concentration and somewhat temperature dependent, but I’ll consider it constant for now.

As shown in the figure above, the process relies on a high recycle of floc (solids) to increase the concentration of cells, and speed the process. Because of this high recycle, we can consider the floc concentration F to be a constant, independent of position along the reactor length.

The volume of the reactor-ditch, V, is fixed -it’s a concrete ditch — but the flow rate into the ditch, Q, is not fixed. Q is high in the morning when folks take showers, and low at night. It’s also higher — typically about twice as high — during rain storms, the result of leakage and illegal connections. For any flow rate, Q, there is a residence time for a bit of sewage flowing through a tank, τ = V/Q. We can now solve the above equation for the value of τ for an incoming concentration C° = 400 ppm, an outgoing concentration Co of 2 ppm. We integrate the equation above and find that:

ln (C°/Co) = kFτ

Where τ equals the residence time, τ = V/Q. Thus,

ln (C°/Co) = kFV/Q.

The required volume of reactor, V, is related to the flow rate, Q, as follows for typical feed and exit concentrations:

V = Q/kF ln( 400/2) = 5.3 Q/kF.

The volume is seen to be dependent on F. In Oakland county, tank volume V is chosen to be one or two times the maximum expected value of Q. To keep the output organic content to less than 2 ppm, F is maintained so that kF≥ 5.3 per day. Thus, in Oakland county, a 2 million gallon per day sewage plant is built with a 2-4 million gallon oxidation ditch. The extra space allows for growth of the populations and for heavy rains, and insures that most of the time, the effluent contains less than 2 ppm organics.

Bob Martin by the South Lyon, MI, Activated Sludge reactor

Bob Martin chief engineer the South Lyon, MI, Activated Sludge plant, 2016. His innovation was to control the air bubblers according to measurements of the oxygen content. The O2 sensor is at bottom; the controller is at right. When I was there, some bubblers were acting up.

As you may guess, the activated sludge process requires a lot of operator control, far more than the rotating disk contractor we described. There is a need for constant monitoring and tweaking. The operator deals with some of the variations in Q by adjusting the recycle amount, with other problems by adjusting the air flow, or through the use of retention tanks upstream or downstream of the reactor, or by adding components — sticky polymer, FeCl3, etc. Finally, in have rains, the settler-bottom fraction itself is adjusted (increased). Because of all the complexity. sewer treatment engineer is a high-pay, in demand, skilled trade. If you are interested, contact me or the county. You’ll do yourself and the county a service.

I’d mentioned that the effluent water goes to the rivers in Oakland county. In some counties it goes to the fields, a good idea, I think. As for the solids, in Oakland county, the solid floc is concentrated to a goo containing about 5% solids. (The goo is called unconsolidated sludge) It is shipped free to farmer fields, or sometimes concentrated to more than 5% (consolidated sludge), and provided with additional treatment, anaerobic digestion to improve the quality and extract some energy. If you’d like to start a company to do more with our solids, that would be very welcome. In Detroit the solids are burned, a very wasteful, energy-consuming process, IMHO. In Wisconsin, the consolidated sludge is dried, pelletized, and sold as a popular fertilizer, Milorganite.

Dr. Robert Buxbaum, August 1, 2017. A colleague of mine owned (owns?) a company that consulted on sewage-treatment and manufactured a popular belt-filter. The name of his company: Consolidated Sludge. Here are some sewer jokes and my campaign song.

A rotating disk bio-reactor for sewage treatment

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One of the most effective designs for sewage treatment is the rotating disk bio-reactor, shown below. It is typically used in small-throughput sewage plants, but it performs quite well in larger plants too. I’d like to present an analysis of the reactor, and an explanation of why it works so well.

A rotating disc sewage reactor.

A rotating disk sewage reactor; ∂ is the thickness of the biofilm. It’s related to W the rotation rate in radians per sec, and to D the limiting diffusivity.

As shown, the reactor is fairly simple-looking, nothing more than a train of troughs filled with sewage-water, typically 3-6 feet deep, with a stack of discs rotating within. The discs are typically 7 to 14 feet in diameter (2-4 meters) and 1 cm apart. The shaft is typically close to the water level, but slightly above, and the rotation speed is adjustable. The device works because appropriate bio-organisms attach themselves to the disk, and the rotation insures that they are fully (or reasonably) oxygenated.

How do we know the cells on the disc will be oxygenated? The key is the solubility of oxygen in water, and the fact that these discs are only used on the low biological oxygen demand part of the sewage treatment process, only where the sewage contains 40 ppm of soluble organics or less. The main reaction on the rotating disc is bio oxidation of soluble carbohydrate (sugar) in a layer of wet slime attached to the disc.

H-O-C-H + O2 –> CO2 + H2O.

As it happens, the solubility of pure oxygen in water is about 40 ppm at 1 atm. As air contains 21% oxygen, we expect an 8 ppm concentration of oxygen on the slime surface: 21% of 40 ppm = 8 ppm. Given the reaction above and the fact that oxygen will diffuse five times more readily than sugar at least, we expect that one disc rotation will easily provide enough oxygen to remove 40 ppm sugar in the slime at every speed of rotation so long as the wheel is in the air at least half of the time, as shown above.

Let’s now pick a rotation speed of 1/3 rpm (3 minutes per rotation) and see where that gets us in terms of speed of organic removal. Since the disc is always in an area of low organic concentration, it becomes covered mostly with “rotifers”, a fungus that does well in low nutrient (low BOD) sewage. Let’s now assume that mass transfer (diffusion) of sugar in the rotifer slime determines the thickness of the rotifera layer, and thus the rate of organic removal. We can calculate the diffusion depth of sugar, ∂ via the following equation, derived in my PhD thesis.

∂ = √πDt

Here, D is the diffusivity (cm2/s) for sugar in the rotifera slime attached to the disk, π = 3.1415.. and t is the contact time, 90 seconds in the above assumption. My expectation is that D in the rotifer slime will be similar to the diffusivity sugar in water, about 3 x 10-6 cm2/s. Based on the above, we find the rotifer thickness will be ∂ = √.00085 cm2 = .03 cm, and the oxygen depth will be about 2.5 times that, 0.07 cm. If the discs are 1 cm apart, we find that, about 14% of the fluid volume of the reactor will be filled with slime, with 2/5 of this rotifer-filled. This is as much as 1000 times more rotifers than you would get in an ordinary constantly stirred tank reactor, a CSTR to use a common acronym. We might now imagine that the volume of this sewage-treatment reactor can be as small as 1000 gallons, 1/1000 the size of a CSTR. Unfortunately it is not so; we’ll have to consider another limiting effect, diffusion of nutrients.

Consider the diffusive mass transfer of sugar from a 1,000,000 gal/day flow (43 liters/sec). Assume that at some point in the extraction you have a concentration C(g/cc) of sugar in the liquid where C is between 40 ppm and 1 ppm. Let’s pick a volume of the reactor that is 1/20 the normal size for this flow (not 1/1000 the size, you’ll see why). That is to say a trough whose volume is 50,000 gallons (200,000 liters, 200 m3). If the discs are 1 cm apart, this trough (or section of a trough) will have about  4×10^8 cm2 of submerged surface, and about 9×10^8 total surface including wetted disc in the air. The mass of organic that enters this section of trough is 44,000 C g/second, but this mass of sugar can only reach the rotifers by diffusion through a water-like diffusion layer of about .06 cm thickness, twice the thickness calculated above. The thickness is twice that calculated above because it includes the supernatant liquid beyond the slime layer. We now calculate the rate of mass diffusing into the disc: AxDxc/z = 8×10^8 x 3×10-6 x C/.06 cm = 40,000 C g/sec, and find that, for this tank size and rotation speed, the transfer rate of organic to the discs is 2/3 as much as needed to absorb the incoming sugar. This is to say that a 50,000 gallon section is too small to reduce the concentration to ln (1) at this speed of disc rotation.

Based on the above calculation, I’m inclined to increase the speed of rotation to .75 rpm. At this speed, the rotifer-slime layer will be 2/3 as thin 0.2 mm, and we expect an equally thinner diffusion barrier in the supernatant. At this faster speed, there is now 3/2 as much diffusion transfer per area because the thinner diffusion barrier, and we can expect a 50,000 liter reactor section to reduce the initial concentration by a fraction of 1/2.718 or C/e. Note that the mass transfer rate to the discs is always proportional to C. If we find that 50,000 gallons of tank reduces the concentration to 1/e, we find that we need 150,000 gallons of reactor to reduce the concentration of sugar from 40 ppm to 2 ppm, the legal target, ln (40/2) = 3. This 150,000 gallons is a remarkably small volume to reduce the sBOD concentration from 40 ppm to 2 ppm (sBOD = soluble biological oxygen demand), and the energy use is small too if the disc bearings are good.

The Holly sewage treatment plant is the only one in Oakland county, MI using the rotating disc contacted technology. It has a flow of 1,000,000 gallons per day, and has a contactor trough that is 215,000 gallons, about what we’d expect though their speed is somewhat higher, over 1 rpm and their input concentration is likely lower than 40 ppm. For the first stage of sewage treatment, the Holly plant use a vertical-draft, trickle-bed reactor. That is they drizzle the sewage-liquids over a slime-coated packing to reduce the sBOD concentration from 200 ppm to before feeding the flow to the rotating discs. My sense of the reason they don’t do the entire extraction with a trickle bed is that the discs use far less energy.

I should also add that the back-part of the disc isn’t totally useless oxygen storage, as it seems from my analysis. Some non-sugar reactions take place in the relatively anoxic environment there and in the liquid at the bottom of the trough. In these regions, iron reacts with phosphate, and nitrate removal takes place. These are other important requirements of sewage treatment.

Robert E. Buxbaum, July 18, 2017. As an exercise, find the volume necessary for a plug flow reactor or a stirred tank reactor (CSTR) to reduce the concentration of sugar from 40 ppm to 2 ppm. Assume 1,000,000 gal per day, an excess of oxygen in these reactors, and a first order reaction with a rate constant of dC/dt = -(0.4/hr)C. At some point in the future I plan to analyze these options, and the trickle bed reactor, too.

Nestle pays 1/4,000 what you pay for water

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When you turn on your tap or water your lawn, you are billed about 1.5¢ for every gallon of water you use. In south-east Michigan, this is water that comes from the Detroit river, chlorinated to remove bacteria, e.g. from sewage, and delivered to you by pipe. When Nestle’s Absopure division buys water, it pays about 1/4000 as much — $200/ year for 218 gallons per minute, and they get their water from a purer source, a pure glacial aquifer that has no sewage and needs no chlorine. They get a far better deal than you do, in part because they provide the pipes, but it’s mostly because they have the financial clout to negotiate the deal. They sell the Michigan water at an average price around $1/gallon, netting roughly $100,000,000 per year (gross). This allows them to buy politicians — something you and I can not afford.

Absopure advertises that I t will match case-for-case water donations to Flint. Isn't that white of them.

Absopure advertises that I t will match case-for-case water donations to Flint. That’s awfully white of them.

We in Michigan are among the better customers for the Absopure water. We like the flavor, and that it’s local. Several charities purchase it for the folks of nearby Flint because their water is near undrinkable, and because the Absopure folks have been matching the charitable purchases bottle-for bottle. It’s a good deal for Nestle, even at 50¢/gallon, but not so-much for us, and I think we should renegotiate to do better. Nestle has asked to double their pumping rate, so this might be a good time to ask to increase our payback per gallon. So far, our state legislators have neither said yes or no to the proposal to pump more, but are “researching the matter.” I take this to mean they’re asking Nestle for campaign donations — the time-honored Tammany method. Here’s a Detroit Free Press article.

I strongly suspect we should use this opportunity to raise the price by a factor of 400 to 4000, to 0.15¢ to 1.5¢ per gallon, and I would like to require Absopure to supply a free 1 million gallons per year. We’d raise $300,000 to $3,000,000 per year and the folks of Flint would have clean water (some other cities need too). And Nestle’s Absopure would still make $200,000,000 off of Michigan’s, clean, glacial water.

Robert Buxbaum, May 15, 2017. I ran for water commissioner, 2016, and have occasionally blogged about water, E.g. fluoridation, hidden rivers, and how you would drain a swamp, literally.

May 1, St. Tammany day

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May 1 is St. Tammany day, a day to rejoice in the achievements of Tammany Hall, and of St Tammany, the guardian of crooked politicians everywhere. The Sons of St. Tammany started in 1773 as a charitable club of notable revolutionary-era individuals including Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and John Dickenson, but evolved into perhaps the most corrupt, and American, of political organizations. The picture of a US politician – the cartoon version at least — is the Tammany Democrat: a loud, drunken, womanizer, willing to do or promise whatever the people seem to want at the moment. Tammany and its bosses helped form this image. They helped new immigrants, but did so by creating needless government jobs, by filling them often with incompetent loyalists, and by overcharging on government contracts. Today, these Tammany ways rule in every major American city; the other clubs of the day are gone or influence-less.

John Hancock leads a meeting of the St. Tammany (Columbian) society. Note the "Appeal to Heaven flag and the Indian, real or imagined. Indians participated in several, early St. Tammany meetings.

John Hancock leads a meeting of the St. Tammany society. Note the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. While Indians participated in some, early meetings, the one here is, I suspect, a ghost: St. Tammany.

In revolutionary-era America, the Sons of St. Tammany was just one of many social-charitable clubs (Americans like to form clubs), in many ways it was similar to the Masons and the Cincinnati, but those clubs were international and elitist. The sons of Tammany was purely American, and anti-elitist. It was open to anyone born on this side of the Atlantic, and had Indian customs. The Cincinnati society, for comparison, started with members who were as notable (Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Marie, Marquis de Lafayette, Henry Knox, etc.) but was originally open only to high officers of the regular army, including foreigners like Lafayette, but not ordinary soldiers, minutemen (militia), or the general public. The symbols of the Tammanies were American: the liberty-cap and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, now a popular symbol of the Tea Party; the leader was called by an Indian name: Sachem. By contrast, the Cincinnati society symbol was the Imperial Eagle (Washington’s was gold with diamonds), and the leader was called “general”. The Tammany society began admitting immigrants in 1810 or so, while the Cincinnati society remains closed to this day, except to descendants of Revolutionary officers — an aristocratic affectation in the eyes of some.

It was Aaron Burr who first saw the opportunity to use the Tammany organization as a for-profit, political machine. In the years 1795-9, New York was suffering from yellow fever and a variety of other diseases that were taken to be caused by a lack of clean water. Burr proposed, with Tammany support, the creation of a corporation to build a new water system to bring fresh, clean water from the Bronx River to lower Manhattan via iron pipes. The Manhattan company was duly chartered, with directors who were primarily Tammany men, Republican-Democrats, and not Federalists. Federalists (Hamilton, primarily) controlled the only NY banks at the time and controlled the directorate of every chartered company in the city. The Manhattan company requested a $2,000,000 perpetual charter, twice as big as the charter of Hamilton’s Bank of New York, and a monopoly on water distribution. These were reasonable requests given the task, but unusual in the lack of Federalist or governmental oversight. But the Manhattan company was a water company, and water was needed. But Burr’s intent, all along, it seems was to build a bank, not a water company. After the charter was approved, but before signing, he amended it to allow any excess funds to be used for any legal purpose. 

In this cartoon by Dr. Seuss, The Tammany Tiger says, "Today is the Big Day Folks. Vote Early and Often."

In this cartoon by Dr. Seuss, The Tammany Tiger says, “Today is the Big Day Folks. Vote Early and Often.”

Money was raised, but only $100,000 used for the water system. The remaining 95% of the charter funds, $1,900,000, went to found “The Bank of The Manhattan company” — later to be known as “The Chase Manhattan Bank” or “The Manhattan Bank of Cholera.” Instead of building the reservoir in upper Manhattan and filling it with clean water as originally proposed, Burr’s Tammany trustees voted to dig wells in lower Manhattan, and placed its reservoir in lower Manhattan too, near Chamber’s St,  next to a cemetery where Cholera victims were buried. New York suffered with Cholera, Typhoid, and leaky, wooden pipes until 1842 when Peter Cooper brought clean water to lower Manhattan from the Groton River via iron pipes. To this day, crooked water contracts are a staple of Tammany politics. 

The Bank of the Manhattan company opened at 40 Wall St on September 1, 1799, a mere four months after the water company’s incorporation. Hamilton was furious. The company continues today as The JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan Bank, one of the largest banking institutions in the world. Burr used the money and power of his company to reward supporters and to run for vice president with Thomas Jefferson’s tacit support. Except for his Tammany candidacy, John Adams would have won New York and a second term as president. Burr’s career pretty-well died after the Hamilton duel, but Tammany did well without him. By 1812, the Society built its first Tammany Hall, officially called the Wigwam, a $55,000, five-story building with a meeting hall for 2000. New York Democratic politics would center on Tammany Hall for the next century at least.

Following disappointment with John Quincy Adams, “the bitter branch of the bitter tree,” Tammy leaders went national. They recruited Andrew Jackson, a war hero and early recruit of Burr’s. They’d support Jackson if he’d hand over spoils, control of government jobs. He agreed and, as president, fired perfectly good, long-standing government employees He replaced them with Democratic loyalists. When Jackson stepped down in 1833, Tammany elected an equally corrupt New Yorker, Martin van Buren. Though there were periodic Whig and Republican reforms, Tammany learned they could wait those out. They always re-emerged like mushrooms after a rain.

Boss Tweed and other Tammany leaders: who stole the money?

Boss Tweed and other Tammany leaders in a cartoon by Nast, Tammany Ring. “Who stole the money? He did.”  

A key vote-getter in the Tammany system is to provide Thanksgiving dinners and other charitable giveaways for the poor, as well as promises of jobs. By the late 1800s, William J. Brian added promises of soft money and wealth redistribution, cornerstones of the Democratic platform to this day. Tammany also tends to be for low tariffs as opposed to the high tariff ideas of Hamilton and many Whigs and 19th century Republicans. A case can be made for either view.

Tammany helped New York immigrants, particularly the Irish to get citizenship and avoid legal troubles in return for votes and occasional muscle. In other cities, Democratic clubs were less open to Catholics, reflecting the views of the common voter in each state. In the North they were pro-union, in the South anti, electing Klu Kluxers like George Wallace, Sam Ervin, and Robert Byrd. This lead to a famous split in the Democratic party about the 1968 convention. Famous Tammany leaders include William M. “Boss” Tweed, “Big” Tim Sullivan, and “Gentleman” Jimmy Walker. Sullivan famously authored the first anti-gun law, the Sullivan act; it was designed to protect his thugs against private citizens shooting them. It didn’t always work.

Edwin Edwards, Democratic Governor of Louisiana. 1972-1996. Who would not trust this man?

Hon. (?) Edwin Edwards, Governor of Louisiana. 1972-1996. Tammany lives

If you want to see Tammany politics in action, visit almost any large US city, or read its newspaper. In Chicago, the dead vote, and 4 of the last 6 governors have gone to jail. Mayor Daily famously told Kennedy that 90 percent of the registered voters of Cook County would vote for him. They did (sort of); because of this, JFK won Illinois and the presidency. In New York, voters discovered only in the 1960s that Tammany’s leader, Carmine DeSapio had been working for 30 years with known gangland murderer, Charles “Lucky” Luciano. In Detroit, where I live and corruption in the water department is legendary. Race-based job handouts, unemployment is high along with high minimum (living) wages. We’re now in the process of a $70,000,000 project to replace 100 feet of sewer pipe, and we’re building a $140 million, 3.3 mile trolley. Tammany loves all public works.

Then there is Louisiana, home to St Tammany parish. Louisiana Democrats like Huey Long and Edwin Edwards (shown at left) are unusual in that they’re proud to say that their corrupt methods are corrupt. Edwards has had two long runs as governor despite several convictions for doing illegal things he admits to doing. When Edwards was asked why he did favors for his friends. He responded: “Who should I do them for? My enemies?” Or, to quote one of Edwin Edwards campaign ads. Vote Edwin EdwardsPeople seem to love it, or did until the levy broke. There is a particularly American grandeur to all this. As Will Rodgers said, “America has the best politicians money can buy.” Today is the day to be proud of that uniquely American tradition. You too can grow up to buy a president.

Robert Buxbaum, April 28, 2017. I ran for water commissioner, and have written about sewage treatment, flood avoidance, and fluoride, as well as the plusses and minuses of trade unionization, and the difference between Republicans and Conservatives.

pee in the shower and other water savers

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Do you want to save the planet and save money at the same time? Here are some simple tips:

The first money and planet saver, is to pee in the shower. For those who don’t have a lawn, or who don’t water, your single biggest water cost is likely the toilet. Each person in your household will use it several times per day, at roughly 1.6 gallons per flush. In Oak Park, Michigan the cost of water is 1.5¢/gallon, so each flush costs you, roughly 2.5¢. If you pee in the shower every morning, you’ll save yourself about one flush per day, or 2.5¢. Over the course of a year you’ll have used about 500 gallons less, and will have saved yourself somewhere between $5 and $10. Feel good about yourself every morning; the effort involved is truly minimal.

Related to peeing in the shower, I should mention that many toilets leak. A significant part of your water bill can often be cut by replacing the “flapper valve on the inside of your toilet tank, and/or by cleaning the needle fill valve. To see if you need this sort of help, put a few drops of food dye in the toilet when you leave in the morning. If the color is largely gone by the time you get back, the toilet is leaking the equivalent of a few volumes per day, that is at least as much water as is flushed. If the color goes faster, or you hear the tank refill when no one used it, you’re leaking more. Check the flapper and replace it if it’s worn — it’ll cost about $3 — and check the needle-fill valve. They don’t work forever. Cleanliness is near godliness.

Mulch is good, this is too much concentrated by the tree trunk. Use only 2 inches and spread it out to save water and weeding.

Mulch is good, this is too much concentrated by the tree trunk. Use only 2-3 inches and spread it out from the trunk to save water and weeding without attracting bugs.

If your valve is leaking and you decide to replace it, you may want to replace with a variable flush valve. Typically, there are two options: a big vale for big flush (1.6 gal) and a small valve for small flush (1 gal or less). These are widely used in Europe. You can make up for this cost rather quickly at 1.5¢/gallon.

The next big issue is lawn-care. If you water your lawn and flowers daily, you’ve likely noticed that you pay about $300/month for water in the summer: a lot more than in the winter, or than your lazes-faire neighbor in the summer. Every $150 of summer-excess, water bill you pay represents about 10,000 gallons applied to your lawn. That’s a cubic foot, or 1¢ to 2¢ of water applied per ft2 per month for typical watering. While many sites advise that you can save by adding a rain barrel, I disagree. Rain barrels are costly, ugly, and are a lot of work ago plumb in. And each barrel only holds 55 gallons of water, 82¢ worth when full. You do a lot better, IMHO by putting down an inch or two of mulch around your flowers and vegetables. This mulch requires no work and will keep you from needing to water these areas for the 3-4 days after every rainfall. A layer of 1″ to 2″ will help your soil hold 0.5 to 1 gallon of water per square foot. At typical prices of mulch and water, this will pay for itself in 1-2 years and will help you avoid weeding. Mulch is a far better return than the rain-barrels that are often touted, and there’s far less effort involved. Buy the mulch, not the barrel, but don’t put down too more than 2″ on flowers and vegetable. Trees can take 3 -4″; don’t use more. Avoid a mulch mountain right next to a tree, it causes the roots to grow weird, and provides a home for bugs and undesirable anaerobic molds.

A little more work than the above is to add a complete rain garden or bioswale. Build it at the bottom of any large incline on your property, where the water runs off (It’s likely a soggy swamp already). Dig the area deeper and put, at the bottom of the hole, a several-inch layer of mulch and gravel. Top it off with the soil you just removed, ideally raising the top high enough that, if the rain garden should fill, the water will run off to the street. Plant in the soil at the top long-rooted grasses, or flowers, vegetables, or water-tolerant trees. You may want to direct the water from your home’s sump pump here too (It can help to put a porous pipe at the bottom to distribute this water). If you do this right, you’ll get vegetables or trees and you won’t have to water the garden, ever. Also, you’ll add value to your property by removing the swampy eyesore. You’ll protect your home too, since a major part of home flooding comes from the water surge of sump water to the sanitary sewer.

Robert E. Buxbaum, April 14, 2017. I ran for water commissioner, Oakland County, MI, Nov. 2016. Among my other thoughts: increased retention to avoid flooding, daylighting rivers, and separating the sanitary from the storm sewers. As things stand, the best way to save money on water– get the same deal the state gave to Nestle/ Absopure: they pay only $200/year to pump 200 gal/minute. That is, they pay only 1/3000 of what you and I pay. It helps to have friends in government.

Rethinking fluoride in drinking water

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Fluoride is a poison, toxic tor a small child in doses of 500 mg, and toxic to an adult in doses of a few thousand mg. It is a commonly used rat poison that kills by robbing the brain of the ability to absorb oxygen. In the form of hydrofluoric acid, it is responsible for the deaths of more famous chemists than any other single compound: Humphrey Davy died trying to isolate fluorine; Paul Louyet and Jerome Nickles, too. Thomas Knox nearly died, and Henri Moissan’s life was shortened. Louis-Joseph Gay Lussac, George Knox, and Louis- Jacques Thenard suffered burns and similar, George Knox was bedridden for three years. Among the symptoms of fluoride poisoning is severe joint pain and that your brain turns blue.

In low doses, though, fluoride is thought to be safe and beneficial. This is a phenomenon known as hormesis. Many things that are toxic at high doses are beneficial at low. Most drugs fall into this category, and chemotherapy works this way. Diseased cells are usually less-heartythan healthy ones. Fluoride is associated with strong teeth, and few cavities. It is found at ppm levels many well water systems, and has shown no sign of toxicity, either for humans or animals at these ppm levels. Following guidelines set by the AMA, we’ve been putting fluoride in drinking water since the 1960s at concentrations between 0.7 and 1.2 ppm. We have seen no deaths or clear evidence of any injury from this, but there has been controversy. Much of the controversy stems from a Chinese study that links fluoride to diminished brain function, and passivity (Anti-fluoriders falsely attribute this finding to a Harvard researcher, but the Harvard study merely cites the Chinese). The American dental association strongly maintains that worries based on this study are groundless, and that the advantage in lower cavities more than off-sets any other risks. Notwithstanding, I thought I’d take another look. The typical US adult consumes 1-3 mg/day the result of drinking 1-3 liters of fluoridated water (1 ppm = 1 mg/liter). This < 1/1000 the toxic dose,

While there is no evidence that people who drink high-fluoride well water are any less-healthy than those who drink city water, or distilled / filtered water, that does not mean that our city levels are ideal. Two months ago, while running for water commissioner, I was asked about fluoride, and said I would look into it. Things have changed since the 1960s: our nutrition has changed, we have vitamin D milk, and our toothpastes now contain fluoride. My sense is we can reduce the water concentration. One indication that this concentration could be reduced is shown below. Many industrial countries that don’t add fluoride have similar tooth decay rates to the US.

World Health Organization data on tooth decay and fluoridation.

World Health Organization data on tooth decay and fluoridation.

This chart should not be read to suggest that fluoride doesn’t help; all the countries shown use fluoride toothpaste, and some give out fluoride pills, too. And some countries that don’t add fluoride have higher levels of cavities. Norway and Japan, for example, don’t add fluoride and have 50% more cavities than we do. Germany doesn’t add fluoride, and has fewer cavities, but they hand out fluoride pills, To me, the chart suggests that our levels should go down, though not to zero. In 2015, the Department of Health recommend lowering the fluoride level to 0.7 ppm, the lower end of the previous range, but my sense from the experience of Europe is that we should go lower still. If I were to pick, I’d choose 1/2 the original dose: 0.6 to 0.35 ppm. I’d then revisit in another 15 years.

Having picked my target fluoride concentration, I checked to see the levels in use in Oakland county, MI, the county I was running in. I was happy to discover that most of the water the county drinks, that provided by Detroit Water and Sewage, NOCWA and SOCWA already have decreased levels of 0.43-0.55 ppm. These are just in the range I would have picked, Fluoride concentrations are higher in towns that use well water, about  0.65-0.85 ppm. I do not know if this is because the well water comes from the ground with these fluoride concentrations or if the towns add, aiming at the Department of Health target. In either case, I don’t find these levels alarming. If you live none of these town, or outside of Oakland county, check your fluoride levels. If they seem high, write to your water commissioner. You can also try switching from fluoride toothpaste to non-fluoride, or baking soda. In any case, remember to brush. That does make a difference, and it’s completely non-toxic.

Robert Buxbaum, January 9, 2017. I discuss chloride addition a bit in this essay. As a side issue, a main mechanism of sewer pipe decay seems related to tooth decay. That is the roofs of pipe attract acid-producing, cavity causing bacteria that live off of the foul sewer gas. The remedies for pipe erosion include cleaning your pipes regularly, having them checked by a professional once per year, and repairing cavities early. Here too, it seems high fluoride cement resists cavities better.

How do you drain a swamp, literally

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The Trump campaign has been claiming it wants to “drain the swamp,” that is to dispossess Washington’s inbred army of academic consultants, lobbyists, and reporter-spin doctors, but the motto got me to think, how would you drain a swamp literally? First some technical definitions. Technically speaking, a swamp is a type of wetland distinct from a marsh in that it has no significant flow. The water just, sort-of sits there. A swamp is also unlike a fen or a bog in that swamp water contains enough oxygen to support life: frogs, mosquitos, alligators,., while a fen or bog does not. Common speech ignores these distinctions, and so will I.report__jaguars_running_back_denard_robi_0_5329357_ver1-0_640_360

If you want to drain a large swamp, such as The Great Dismal Swamp that covered the south-east US, or the smaller, but still large, Hubbard Swamp that covered south-eastern Oakland county, MI, the classic way is to dig a system of open channel ditches that serve as artificial rivers. These ditches are called drains, and I suppose the phrase, “drain the swamp comes” from them. As late as the 1956 drain code, the width of these ditch-drains was specified in units of rods. A rod is 16.5 feet, or 1/4 of a chain, that is 1/4 the length of the 66′ surveyor’s chains used in the 1700’s to 1800’s. Go here for the why these odd engineering units exist and persist. Typically, 1/4 rod wide ditches are still used for roadside drainage, but to drain a swamp, the still-used, 1956 code calls for a minimum of a 1 rod width at the top and a minimum of 1/4 rod, 4 feet, at the bottom. The sides are to slope no more than 1:1. This geometry is needed. experience shows, to slow the flow, avoid soil erosion and help keep the sides from caving in. It is not unusual to add one or more weirs to control and slow the flow. These weirs also help you measure the flow.

The main drain for Royal Oak and Warren townships, about 50 square miles, is the Red Run drain. For its underground length, it is 66 foot wide, a full chain, and 25 feet deep (1.5 rods). When it emerges from under ground at Dequindre rd, it expands to a 2 chain wide, open ditch. The Red Run ditch has no weirs resulting in regular erosion and a regular need for dredging; I suspect the walls are too steep too. Our county needs more and more drainage as more and more housing and asphalt is put in. Asphalt reduces rain absorption and makes for flash floods following any rain of more than 1″. The red run should be improved, and more drains are needed, or Oakland county will become a flood-prone, asphalt swamp.

Classic ditch drain, Bloomfiled MI. Notice the culverts used to convey water from the ditch under the road.

Small ditch drain, Bloomfield, MI. The ditches connect to others and to the rivers via the culvert pipes in the left and center of the picture. A cheap solution to flooding.

Ditch drains are among the cheapest ways to drain a swamp. Standard sizes cost only about $10/lineal foot, but they are pretty ugly in my opinion, they fill up with garbage, and they tend to be unsafe. Jaguars running back Denard Robinson was lucky to have survived running into one in his car (above) earlier this year. Ditches can become mosquito breeding grounds, too and many communities have opted for a more expensive option: buried, concrete or metal culverts. These are safer for the motorist, but reduce ground absorption and flow. In many places, we’ve buried whole rivers. We’ve no obvious swamps but instead we get regular basement and road flooding, as the culverts still have combined storm and sanitary (toilet) sewage, and as more and more storm water is sent through the same old culverts.

Given my choice I would separate the sewers, add weirs to some of our ditch drains, weirs, daylight some of the hidden rivers, and put in French drains and bioswales, where appropriate. These are safer and better looking than ditches but they tend to cost about $100 per lineal foot, about 10x more than ditch drains. This is still 70x cheaper than the $7000/ft, combined sewage tunnel cisterns that our current Oakland water commissioner has been putting in. His tunnel cisterns cost about $13/gallon of water retention, and continue to cause traffic blockage.

Bald cypress swamp

Bald cypress in a bog-swamp with tree knees in foreground.

Another solution is trees, perhaps the cheapest solution to drain a small swamp or retention pond, A full-grown tree will transpire hundreds of gallons per day into the air, and they require no conduit connecting the groundwater to a river. Trees look nice and can complement French drains and bioswales where there is drainage to river. You want a species that is water tolerant, low maintenance, and has exceptional transpiration. Options include the river birch, the red maple, and my favorite, the bald cypress (picture). Bald cypress trees can live over 1000 years and can grow over 150 feet tall — generally straight up. When grown in low-oxygen, bog water, they develop knees — bits of root-wood that extend above the water. These aid oxygen absorption and improve tree-stability. Cypress trees were used extensively to drain the swamps of Israel, and hollowed-out cypress logs were the first pipes used to carry Detroit drinking water. Some of these pipes remain; they are remarkably rot-resistant.

Robert E Buxbaum, December 2, 2016. I ran for water commissioner of Oakland county, MI 2016, and lost. I’m an engineer. While teaching at Michigan State, I got an appreciation for what you could do with trees, grasses, and drains.

The straight flush

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I’m not the wildest libertarian, but I’d like to see states rights extended to Michigan’s toilets and showers. Some twenty years ago, the federal government mandated that the maximum toilet flush volume could be only 1.6 gallons, the same as Canada. They also mandated a maximum shower-flow law, memorialized in this Seinfeld episode. Like the characters in those shows, I think this is government over-reach of states rights covered by the 10th amendment. As I understand it, the only powers of the federal government over states are in areas specifically in the constitution, in areas of civil rights (the 13th Amendment), or in areas of restraint of trade (the 14th Amendment). None of that applies here, IMHO. It seems to me that the states should be able to determine their own flush and shower volumes.

If this happen to you often, you might want to use more water for each flush, or at least a different brand of toilet paper.

If your toilet clogs often, you might want to use more flush water, or at least a different brand of toilet paper.

There is a good reason for allowing larger flushes, too in a state with lots of water. People whose toilets have long, older pipe runs find that there is insufficient flow to carry their stuff to the city mains. Their older pipes were designed to work with 3.5 gallon flushes. When you flush with only 1.6 gallons, the waste only goes part way down and eventually you get a clog. It’s an issue known to every plumber – one that goes away with more flush volume.

Given my choice, I’d like to change the flush law through the legislature, perhaps following a test case in the Supreme court. Similar legislation is in progress with marijuana decriminalization, but perhaps it’s too much to ask folks to risk imprisonment for a better shower or flush. Unless one of my readers feels like violating the federal law to become the test case, I can suggest some things you can do immediately. When it comes to your shower, you’ll find you can modify the flow by buying a model with a flow restrictor and “ahem” accidentally losing the restrictor. When it comes to your toilet, I don’t recommend buying an older, larger tank. Those old tanks look old. A simpler method is to find a new flush cistern with a larger drain hole and flapper. The drain hole and flapper in most toilet tanks is only 2″ in diameter, but some have a full 3″ hole and valve. Bigger hole, more flush power. Perfectly legal. And then there’s the poor-man solution: keep a bucket or washing cup nearby. If the flush looks problematic, pour the extra water in to help the stuff go down. It works.

A washing cup.

A washing cup. An extra liter for those difficult flushes.

Aside from these suggestions, if you have clog trouble, you should make sure to use only toilet paper, and not facial tissues or flushable wipes. If you do use these alternatives, only use one sheet at a flush, and the rest TP, and make sure your brand of wipe is really flushable. Given my choice, I would like see folks in Michigan have freedom of the flush. Let them install a larger tank if they like: 2 gallons, or 2.5; and I’d like to see them able to use Newman’s Serbian shower heads too, if it suits them. What do you folks think?

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, November 3, 2016. I’m running for Oakland county MI water resources commissioner. I’m for protecting our water supply, for better sewage treatment, and small wetlands for flood control. Among my less-normative views, I’ve also suggested changing the state bird to the turkey, and ending daylight savings time.