Two water tanks adjacent Horace Mann El. were repainted inside and out, retrofitted for safety and seismically upgraded for a total cost of $2.8 million.- The City has spent millions of dollars retrofitting wellheads to improve treatment and safety standards. ~$11.5 million was recently spent by the City just to upgrade the two wellheads at Anderson Park. Expensive land had to be purchased to save Anderson Park during the wellhead upgrades.
- The City plans to build a Regional Stormwater Treatment Center in SE Redmond to treat industrial stormwater before it infiltrates into the shallow aquifer (underground lake). A $40 million regional treatment plant is already underway for the downtown. Overlake Regional Facilty is next. Treating dirty stormwater is expensive, as you see on your utility bill, but the regional systems will reduce costs over time.
- Redmond is a member city of the Cascade Water Alliance. Growing eastside cities would eventually run out of drinking water without a new water source. The Alliance is raising millions of dollars to build a pipeline from the Mt. Ranier watershed to the Eastside. **Emmons glacier on Mt. Ranier is receding but plans are proceeding. Lake Tapps has been secured to store the glacial mountain water before it's piped to the Eastside.
- Redmond spends a lot of money monitoring for spills and hazardous waste. The City has it's own geologist to oversee groundwater water quality and monitor the protection zones for our wells. Recently, a potential diesel spillage was discovered and quickly addressed with funding from Council for qualified inspection services.
Some great news came out of the the City Water Quality Report, Summer 2009. Did you see it? With all the talk about the safety of our groundwater supply it appears all is well - no pun intended. Did you read that four (4) fewer "compounds" were detected in our groundwater as compared to the Tolt River watershed that supplies residents west of the river? The city's investment in our groundwater supply definitively appears to be paying off.
One of the more significant contaminants now entering our water supply are pharmaceuticals. Councilmember Margeson brought this up at the last Council meeting and handed me the information. When pills and pharmaceuticals are flushed down the toilet or thrown in the garbage they NEVER get treated. And, we could be drinking them. Low levels of pharmaceuticals in drinking water have been found in 24 cities. Get this, pharmaceutical chemicals have been found in about 80% of our nation's urban streams. Please don't flush or trash 'em! Take your unused pills to a pharmacy for disposal. Group Health, Bartell and others participate.
Cascade Water Alliance informational video clip.
Cascade Water Alliance website.
Bob's poston water quality is a serious call to action, and is on the mind of our elected officials.
ReplyDeleteRecently PBS showed Frontline: Poisoned Waters. The documentary showed the Chaesapeake Watershed and our Puget Sound Watershed (showing the Duwamish River and Puget Sound).
Poised Waters begins with this warning: A far-reaching investigation into America's Great Waterways. They are in peril. There's a new wave of pollution that's killing fish, causing mutations in frogs -- and threatening human health.
More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, iconic American waterways like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound are in perilous condition and facing new sources of contamination.
With polluted runoff still flowing in from industry, agriculture and massive suburban development, scientists note that many new pollutants and toxins from modern everyday life are already being found in the drinking water of millions of people across the country and pose a threat to fish, wildlife and, potentially, human health.
In Poisoned Waters, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith examines the growing hazards to human health and the ecosystem.
If you are new to this area, the Sammamish Watershed flows into Lake Washington, and in turn, Puget Sound. When you fly into Sea-Tac you can see these wide-spread water ways, that are in great danger. Many years, our oyster beds must be shut down because of pollution in Puget Sound. Governor Gregoire and the Dept of Ecology have intiatives on-going to clean up Puget Sound.
More about Poisoned Waters and the entire video here.
At the last council meeting an utility expert said water consumption was decreasing, not increasing in Puget Sound. 70% of the cities in US has decreasing consumption, they say. This information doesn't do much to encourage water conservation.
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