New Yorkers Have Been Illicitly Cracking Open Fire Hydrants For Centuries
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
>Since 2007, the New York City DEP has multiple programs to combat the illicit opening of the city’s hydrants. With very few exceptions, you can go to pretty much any firehouse in the five boroughs and ask for a spray cap. The fire department will come to the hydrant of your choosing, open it up for about 12 hours, and install a cap that creates several thinner streams of water, like a giant lawn sprinkler. This cap uses only about 25 gallons of water per minute
> And the DEP has a team called the Hydrant Education Action Team (HEAT), arrays of volunteer teens who go around their neighborhoods telling people about the dangers of opening hydrants and the benefits of spray caps.
This seems like a pretty good way of making sure people are happy and healthy.
...Read TFA, nope. OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.
It's only a "waste" if the water is scarce. People rarely talk about wasting air (except to call someone dumb) because the air is virtually unlimited.
For example in the UK it's damn near impossible to waste water because it rains so consistently. Water isn't scarce. You can't really waste it, because there's always plenty more.
Even if you could pipe the water from NYC all the way to CA it'd be prohibitively expensive.
So the only way this is "waste" is if it's depleting the aquifer faster than it replenishes. That's possible of course. But unlikely, because NYC has been huge for hundreds of years now. If they're depleting aquifers it's only very slowly.
It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.
I visited Scotland in the spring and there was water trickling everywhere. I should have qualified my statement much better.
The other error I made was extrapolation from Scotland to the whole of the UK. Here in the US it takes a lot of travel to go from one "region" to another, and the conditions change slowly. But I could see that the whole of the UK doesn't necessarily have uniform conditions either.
This is exactly the case. NY/NJ are depleting the groundwater faster than it comes back, but not at a great rate and it is nowhere near a problem yet.
The current water rate for NYC is $3.81/hcf. For sewage, $6.06/hcf.
The current water rate for LA is $5.23/hcf. For sewage, about $4.23/hcf.
One "hcf" is 100 cubic feet, or about 748 gallons.
Hopefully, the water sprayed from the hydrant is treated before being released. Most groundwater in LA is treated unless the rain overwhelms the treatment facility. This implies that in either case, the cost is about $10/hcf.
This would be one way to put a price on running water -- and to me, it implies that this counts as "waste".
Sources:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/rate_schedule/ind...
https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-financesan...
People who use hydrants without paying for them are technically stealing that water, but they are not "wasting" it in any sense that actually matters to New York. Unlike in California, there is no risk of one day turning on your tap and having nothing come out. They, unlike California, are not running out of water.
> "Hopefully, the water sprayed from the hydrant is treated before being released. Most groundwater in LA is treated"
1) NYC does not use groundwater. The vast majority of their water comes from an extensive system of reservoirs, tunnels and aqueducts, gravity fed straight into the city.
2) Because their water comes reservoirs located in wilderness regions of New York, their water is naturally filtered and is pure enough to drink with next to no treatment. They only add chlorine to that water.
3) The water you get from a legally tapped fire hydrant is no different from the water you get from an illegally tapped fire hydrant.
Your other points regarding the origins of NYC water don't affect my argument: despite the apparent effortlessness of getting the water to that Bronx hydrant, said water has a price which is substantially the same in NY as in other areas like CA.
Perhaps that value is of interest when deciding whether there is any significance to spraying loads of it out through a hydrant, versus being parsimonious (i.e., "waste").
> "despite the apparent effortlessness of getting the water to that Bronx hydrant, said water has a price which is substantially the same in NY as in other areas like CA."
That's just all the more proof of Californian's absolute insanity when it comes to distributing water.
Here (in WA state) on the other hand, no sprinkler caps, and no real need for them. Indeed our biggest issue is special security on them and FDC connectors because people will steal the caps for scrap metal.
[1]http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wi...
The hubris of the people who built up the southwest United States in particular astounds me.
As an experiment I dumped a half gallon of water into it and it flushed. Of course the bowl didn't fill up after but this makes me think that my loo would work with one of those reduced water flush mechanisms for when the waste is liquid. I've seen some retrofit kits but they won't fit my loo.
I've heard there's an active trade in bootleg Canadian toilets in the Pacific Northwest.
A Toto Drake isn't that much more than even a cheap builder-grade unit. I've been through a number of different ones and I am a stingy tightwad; and I'd still buy a Toto. There are cheaper ones that will flush the same amount of debris, but Totos wash the bowl better; and I appreciate that as someone who doesn't like to spend a lot of time scrubbing ahem "debris". I think their flush is quieter too, but I haven't measured it.
Calcium deposits are what toilet bowl cleaners are for.
According to my local Home Depot, a utility-grade toilet is $79, and the cheapest Toto Drake is $189. That's more than twice as much.
If you estimate that there's roughly one toilet per person in the United States, an extra hundred bucks per person comes out to 30 billion dollars wasted for each replacement cycle (except in the very limited areas, like California, where these things actually make sense).
And no, the water passages in my 60 year old toilet weren't "constricted". It flushed fine. Likely still does.
Of course, your claim that toilets last only a few years only means more money wasted on these gizmos, not less.
But hey, you enjoy whatever sense of satisfaction you get out of spending money to solve a "problem" that is largely nonexistent, other than in California.
Also as having grown up in the sticks in Alaska, with an electric well and significant power outs, let me just say: walking half a mile to break open some ice, draw 3.5 gallons of water and walking back is some bullshit. I love me some low flow toilets.
The comment you're replying to said "California", and there is not much California population in the desert climate. For example, Palm Springs in the Sonora Desert has a population of about 50K, and Palmdale/Lancaster/Victorville in the Mojave Desert has a combined population of about 400K).
LA and SF may not be "deserts" in some technical sense, but it'll do for practical purposes.
http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2013/10/myth-of-a-desert-metro...
http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/los-angel...
LA is in the Mediterranean climate zone.
If you are willing to entertain the idea that not just Los Angeles, but San Francisco is in a desert -- I have no words. Have you been there?
People, typically not very well-informed about California geography and the Southwest, do sometimes lazily refer to LA as a desert. They seem to do this because they have heard other people do it. If you have lived here, you will see how evidently wrong this is. It's July and I can take my dog to a creek that has flowing water. This is not something you can do in a desert.
Have you been to an actual desert, such as the Mojave, the Sonora, or the Anza-Borrego?
As I said, "not in a technical sense", but that's irrelevant to the actual point under discussion, which is that cities have been built in areas that don't have anything like the amount of natural water resources necessary to sustain them.
I've had Californians accuse me of contributing to their drought by leaving the sink running while washing my dishes in Seattle. Seriously California, not everyone has to share your misery.
(yeah, there are exceptions in regions where they're using "fossil" water, but that's not the general case)
Dibs. Going for YC '16, "Poseidon".
Forgive me, pure pet peeve: it's a tiny bit more than one century - the 1st reported issue is from 1906.
Anyway, it's great to see an example of looking for a solution instead of penalizing people.
The earliest “hydrants” in New York City (dating back to the early 1700s but lasting until the late 1800s) were simply buckets of water scattered around the five boroughs, left locked by the fire department so as to keep out thieves and vandals.
But for serious, those open pumps are so much a part of city life. You get families out barbecuing on the sidewalk, the kids playing in the water, people stopping to douse their heads or wash their hands. Cars slowing down as they pass to get a half-assed wash. That sort of stuff.
It's like UBER for cracking open fire hydrants.
See you all at the next YC pitch-day