Here's another one of those -"Uh Oh, Hmmm, salt seems to be a problem here.." articles. This one is from Texas, in a paper called the Community Impact Newspaper, which serves 8 communities in the central Texas area, north of Austin.
The article states that the water source changed for many residents and the new source is not as hard. Now residents need to be told to dial down the amount of salt spewed out from their water softeners, because the TDS (total dissolved solids) content of the water released back into the Colorado River is too high. For TDS read sodium, potassium and chloride - all 3 involved in water softening.
The city’s new wastewater treatment plant, expected to be complete by the end of the summer, lacks a reverse osmosis system to remove salt from treated water before it is released into Gilleland Creek, which feeds the Colorado River. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regulates levels of dissolved solids, including salt, which can be present in treated water because high levels of those substances are harmful to water plants and animals.To remove the extra salt, the city would need a large-scale version of RO units many homes employ to treat drinking water. Its price: $15 million.
The expense is unnecessary, Wills said, if the city can successfully lower wastewater sodium levels by educating residents about the correct programming of water softeners. The deadline is 2009, when the city must renew its permits with the state and prove its wastewater has acceptable levels of dissolved solids.
The city has an ongoing information campaign to alert residents to check their water softeners, and it appears to be working, Wills said. In two months, the sodium content of wastewater has dropped 33 percent to 800 parts per million. The goal is 450 parts per million.
“This is something we can control with the citizens’ help, and that way we can use that money for something else,” Wills said.
Wish I could wave a magic wand and let them all know that, actually, salt and potassium are not the only solution to hard water issues - that ECOsmarte has one that works like a charm. And that rather than considering a $15 million RO plant, if they got ahead of the game and started banning brine discharge softeners, they could avoid not only that expense, but other significant environmental problems.
How do I know? Because Santa Clarita Valley in California has faced this same issue. One of the realizations they came to was that native plants that could not tolerate the high chloride content were dying off, and other non-native species that were chloride tolerant were thriving, basically changing the entire ecosystem. Another issue is that crops are grown using water from the river these chlorides end up in, and suffering. Some crops are more sensitive than others, and strawberries (grown here a lot) are touchy when it comes to chlorides.
Why not get a head start to the time when everyone wakes up to the problem of chlorides in waste water? Rather than limiting the amount of chlorides - if you have a solution that eliminates chlorides altogether, why allow a slow poisoning of the earth? Because all that salt has to go somewhere. And if you don't live near the ocean, then it will go to places that harm crops, native plants and wildlife. No matter what the salt industry says, or the water softener peddlers say - salt and potassium are not necessary to prevent hard water scaling. It's only a matter of time before the domino effect happens and all brine discharge is banned. Be part of the solution, Pflugerville!
Besides, why take those healthy minerals out of the water? Your body needs them!
But that's for another post...
