A fix for a drinking water shortage in Longview may come sooner than expected.
The city’s public works director, Jeff Cameron, says the system could be back to full strength by early August. “During hot weather when demand goes up it’s pushing the limits of our ability to maintain capacity and meet demand,” says Cameron.
One of the eight water treatment filters broke in May when there was an upheaval in the cement floor of the filter for some unknown reason.
The city put out a conservation request to residents before the 100 degree weather in June. “It was not as much as a conservation effort as I hoped,” says Cameron. “Normally we don’t run the plant 24 hours, on that day we did run 24 hours.”
Longview homeowner Steve Stuart is taking steps to conserve water. He’s letting his lawn grow longer, “It doesn’t brown as fast”, says Stuart, “the dew in the morning or something like that keeps it wetter.”
The parts to fix the filter don’t come off the hardware store shelf, and they must be manufactured. The wait for the parts to arrive still means weeks more of conservation.
Source and more info: katu
For a couple of years, I’ve been carrying a Pur pump water filter on fishing, hiking and kayak trips because it was easier to get drinking water by 50 strokes of the pump than by carrying gallons of water or boiling it.
Now I’ll reserve the pump filter for providing water for cooking, because the Sawyer water filter bottle is as easy to fill and use as any other container from which you drink through a straw, and no pumping is needed.
The Sawyer system has a 34-ounce polycarbonate bottle with a screw-on cap. The filter dangles from the cap at the bottom of a plastic tube. Sawyer says it will remove 99.9999% of bacteria and protozoa, and the filter is good for 500 gallons (about 2,000 fills).
What it doesn’t remove is viruses, and though viral diseases are rare in American waters, I take the precaution of adding iodine to all of the water I take from natural sources.
Source and more info: freep
