Bridge Over Troubled Water

knickerbocker village

Friday, March 13, 2009

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Annadale Staten Island Sewer Construction

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Annadale Residents To Be Hooked Up To City's Sewer System
October 24, 2007

A few hundred Staten Island homes and businesses are on their way to being a little more connected with the rest of the city – or at least with the part of the city that handles their waste water. Borough Reporter Amanda Farinacci has details on a project that will rid them of one dirty job.

Nearly 40 blocks of homes and businesses in the Annadale neighborhood will say goodbye to antiquated septic systems and connect to the city sewer system for the first time ever, thanks to a $35 million project announced Wednesday.

“New Yorkers whose residences are already connected to sewers do take this convenience for granted, but to anyone who has had to pump out a septic tank, the benefits of a sewer system are immediately clear,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The project, which actually began this summer, will install larger and more reliable water mains, improved catch basins and enhanced sanitary sewers in a triangular 40 block section of this South Shore community.

For 220 homes and 30 businesses it means an end to septic systems, which can pose health and safety dangers, and an improvement to storm drainage to prevent flooding after heavy rains.

It also means lots of construction, something resident Andrea Gulotta, who recently switched from septic to sewer, says is not a lot of fun.

“It’s a big mess. It’s still a big mess in front of my house, because, like I said, I just got it done,” said Gulotta. “It's just, you know, messy. Chopping up the streets, the sidewalks keep getting cracked, and they keep having to come and repair them.”

The Annadale Merchants Association has a plan to quell the fears of residents and local businesses about the impact of the project and plans to educate the neighborhood by using posters about the timeline and continue its involvement with the city by trying to form a business improvement district.

“It’s a two-year project, so does that mean we're gonna lose customers for two years? I don't think so. I think most people are gonna drive by and see what's really going on, and see it's really not that bad, however the scare is there,” said Frank Arlia of the Annadale Merchants Association.

The businesses and homes will have to pay to hook up to the sewer system and they'll have to pay annual sewer charges, but at least they won't have to deal with the messy and sometimes expensive job of clearing out a septic tank.

Sewer Floods In Queens

Comptroller: Queens Home To Most Sewer Floods In The City
August 19, 2007

The city comptroller’s office says Queens – which is already known for flooding when rainy weather hits – is now also home to the most sewer floods in the city.

The comptroller's office says the borough received 1,089 claims for damage caused by the sewer system overflowing from July 1998 to June 2007.

So far, only 297 of the claims have been settled for a total of $1.3 million.

Queens has more than twice the claims of any other borough. Staten Island comes in second with 536 claims. Brooklyn had 485; the Bronx had 416 and Manhattan had 193.

The city's Department of Environmental protection says the sewers of Queens are still trying to keep up with the borough's rapid development.

In the last five years, almost $1 billion has been spent on sewer improvements citywide and approximately $250 million per year will be spent over the next ten years on city sewer systems.

China's Yellow River Pollution

from HowStuffWorks. The Yellow River, cradle of China's thousands-year-old civilization, is shrinking and polluted so badly that nearly 70% of the river is not safe for drinking or swimming. Industrial waste and sewage, agricultural pollution and shipping discharges are to blame for the river's declining health. See how sewer and septic systems work in this news video from Reuters.

How Sewage Is Treated In A Filtration Plant

The Water Is Wide

James Taylor singing one of the best songs about "Water"

The water is wide I cant cross over
And neither have I wings to fly
Build me a boat That can carry two
And both shall row My love and I
There is a ship And she sails the sea
Shes loaded deep As deep can be
But not so deep As the love I'm in
I know not how I sink or swim
Oh love is handsome And love is fine
The sweetest flower When first its new
But love grows old And waxes cold
And fades away Like summer dew
Build me a boat That can carry two
And both shall row My love and I
And both shall row My love and I

Exploring India

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Lyrics (see accompanying video at bottom of page)

(Simon and Garfunkel Version)
When you're weary, feeling small,
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all;
I'm on your side. When times get rough
And friends just cant be found,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.
When you're down and out,
When you're on the street,
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you.
I'll take your part.
When darkness comes
And pains is all around,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.
Sail on silver girl,
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine.
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.

Water For Life

The world’s water crisis has many faces. A girl in Africa walks three miles before school to fetch water from a distant well. A teenage boy in China is afflicted with terrible skin lesions because his village well is contaminated with arsenic. Impoverished slum dwellers in Angola draw drinking water from the local river where their sewage is dumped. Farmers on the lower reaches of the Colorado River struggle because water has been diverted to cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

According to the United Nations, every day 4,400 children under the age of 5 die around the world, having fallen sick because of unclean water and sanitation. In fact, five times as many children die each year of diarrhea as of HIV/AIDS. A third of the world’s population is enduring some form of water scarcity. One in every six human beings has no access to clean water within a kilometer of their homes. Half of all people in developing countries have no access to proper sanitation. Water is critical for life and for livelihoods. Yet billions of people suffer from disease, poverty and a lack of dignity and opportunity because they have no access to this basic resource.

Why is this so? Access to water is mainly a crisis for the poor. More than two-thirds of those without clean water survive on less than $2 a day. Either poor people are excluded because of a lack of legal rights to claim adequate water, or they fall outside the scope of limited water infrastructure that serves largely the rich.

The problem of water provision severely affects slums and shantytowns. Over the next few years a majority of the world’s population will live in cities — for the first time in human history. In large parts of Africa, more than 60 percent of city dwellers are in fact slum dwellers. For many of them, water comes not from faucets inside their shacks but from water tankers or standpipes, neither of which is reliable as a water source. Open sewers increase the risk of water-borne diseases.

Water is also a crisis for women and children, because they bear the burden of collecting water. In some places, women have to walk nearly 10 kilometers to reach a water source. Girls drop out of school either because they have to help fetch water or because there aren’t adequate sanitary facilities in school toilets. Millions of school days are lost as a result.

Water scarcity affects some parts of the world more than others. Today, 800 million people live under a threshold of “water stress.” As rivers dry up, lakes shrink and groundwater reserves get depleted, that figure will rise to 3 billion in 2025, especially in parts of Asia and Africa. There is an urgent need to reduce waste and invest in infrastructure to “harvest” rainwater or increase storage.

Most water use is in agriculture. Farming uses up to 70 times more water than is used for cooking and washing. Many countries have to import more than half their food needs because they do not have enough water to grow more food. If we do not change the way we use water, the amount needed for a rapidly growing world population will double in the next 50 years.

Corruption makes responding to the problem of scarcity more difficult. Up to 40 percent of water is lost to water leakages in pipes and canals, one of the main causes of which is illegal tapping. The increase in the cost of water, as a result, affects the poor more than others.

But the water crisis hits cities in the rich world as well — Houston and Sydney, for example, are using more water than is replenished. Australia is the world’s driest continent, where increasing salinity in water is threatening agriculture. Large parts of Europe are affected by recurring droughts.

Global warming is another threat. It will be responsible for declining rainfall in some regions, glacial melt in others, and rising sea levels. Other natural disasters occur with more sudden intensity. The floods that affect the Yangtze River in China every year, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans or the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 200,000 people are all examples of the threats that natural events continue to pose for millions around the world.

Water is ultimately a shared resource. Two-fifths of humanity lives in river and lake basins that lie within two or more countries. Tied together in a web of interdependence, these societies can either suffer from increasing political conflicts or benefit from cooperation. Shared management of river basins has the potential for yielding large benefits in terms of the quantity, quality and predictability of water flows.

The United Nations declared has 2005-2015 as the ‘Water for Life’ decade. The goal is to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 and to stop unsustainable exploitation of water resources. Governments pledged to do this when they adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

knickerbocker village

Annadale Staten Island Sewer Construction

Sewer Floods In Queens

China's Yellow River Pollution

How Sewage Is Treated In A Filtration Plant

The Water Is Wide

Exploring India

Troubled Water Links

Lyrics (see accompanying video at bottom of page)

Water For Life

Blog Archive

NYC Water Supply

Link To Larger Image of NYC Water Supply

Aretha

Jay Z's Water For Life

Melbourne, Australia Water Levels

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