permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

In a message dated 11/29/2003 3:41:35 PM Eastern Standard Time, kfinigan@spots.ca writes: 
> >Count your blessings if you have clean, abundant water. Life gets 
> >desperate and sad when the rains don't come and the well don't perk.
>
> Most of us do(even here with an average of 12-13 inches per year)...we just 
> let it run into the sewer.

Letting it run into the sewer is actually a pretty good strategy. The only way we can provide abundant water to eight million people is to re-use it. Every gallon in an urban system runs through a human digestive system or a dishwasher several times before reaching the Sound. We return all our waste water to the stream from whence it came. 

And I exaggerate in my earlier posts, we're not all total barbarians. We actually have more exacting standards of treatment for the waste water that goes back into the stream  than we do for our potable water-- most of the cleaning comes at the tertiary treatment level, and the water that we put back into into the creek is better drinking than the rest of the creek. Pathogens get killed either in the UV bath or in a chlorination-dechlorination cycle, and we don't let it go out unless it's crystal clear (except during hurricanes).