permaculture

[Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>]

Despite the claims of some municipal water plant employees, only some of the 
chlorine added to water evaporates.  Whenever chlorine is added to water, it 
combines with whatever organic molecules that are already in the water to 
form some of the most toxic and long-lived anthropogenic substances known 
(such as dioxins).  The EPA now recognizes this form of water treatment as a 
major threat to humun health and ecosystems, but it is still the only 
widespread treatment method.  Whether or not plants uptake these poisons, I 
do not know.  Plants are highly selective about what they uptake.  
 
Chlorinated pool water would have the same problems as above, only magnified 
because of the greater concentration of chlorine.  The best solution is to 
avoid using chlorine in water.  There are biological treatment methods 
(Mollison describes one in the Design Manual) and I've recently heard of 
folks using salt for water treatment (which creates other problems).  
However, if you cannot control the water treatment method and you need to 
dispose of pool water for some reason, it has to go somewhere and you might 
as well use it for irrigation.  Letting it sit for a while would dissipate 
some of the chlorine.  I would treat it like sewage water and avoid using it 
on root crops or other food plants that come in contact with the soil.
 
Good luck,
 
Rain

                
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!