Issues

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Campaign Issues

Live Green, Vote Green Campaign

Water Conservation

The less water we consume the less has to be treated and cleaned, the lower the costs passed on to Cook County residents. Utilizing guidelines from the green building industry and upgrading the current building codes new technologies can be implemented for all new construction and building renovations. Water conserving technologies include low-flow bath and kitchen fixtures: toilets, faucets, washers and dishwashers. The implementation of natural landscapes, rain gardens, permeable paving, green roofs and water cachement systems (barrels for residential and larger systems for commercial or industrial development) can be designed on a large or small.

Storm-water Management

The lack of topography in NE Illinois makes the region prone to flooding. In the 1960s the deep tunnel was designed to ameliorate this problem as an underground retention system to accommodate millions of gallons of mixed, untreated storm-water and raw sewerage during major rain events. The seven-treatment facilities were/are unable to handle all the wastewater from these major rain events. Current climate conditions due to global warming has made these severe rain events more frequent and intense. The deep tunnel is not able to retain all the rain and we have even more instances where the county ‘lets’ excess untreated raw sewerage mixed with storm-water out into Lake Michigan along the northshore.

Historically the Chicago region was a vast wetland. Due to 100s of years of draining and development it is now a high-density metropolis. The rain has no way to percolate into the soil with all the buildings and pavement, so it piles up and finds basements to seep into. There are numerous ways to offset this problem.

Roof gardens for all new developments, residential, commercial and industrial no matter the size of the project. Green roofs can even be designed for steep pitched roofs.

Rain cachement systems, barrels in residential development, and large cisterns for commercial/industrial sites

Eliminating grass from public areas, parks, parkways, road mediums and the us of native plants with longer root systems that have higher water retention ability. This will also decrease the amount of fossil fuels needed for mowing.

The creation of new, built wetlands in undeveloped regions inside and outside of Cook County. (Via an intergovernmental commission) These natural systems have a duo-fold purpose. They can successfully ‘treat’ effluence and storm-water and retain excess rainwater to ameliorate local flooding. These can even be incorporated into existing residential developments throughout the county in neighborhood park-like settings. Wetlands also encourage native wildlife and make excellent recreation and educational facilities. They take no tax dollars to maintain once established.

The separation of sewerage and storm-water would make treatment easier and more cost effective. Human waste contains few toxins. Any bacteria or pharmaceuticals could be removed at lower cost. The solid waste from this process could then be safely used as agricultural fertilizer without the fear of heavy metals, chemical toxins or radioisotope going into the food chain. The storm-water would then be treated utilizing new technologies where the elemental substances could also be recovered and put back into the technoshpere for industrial purposes. Any solid waste from storm-water runoff could be used for the production of electric energy. Proven technologies such as methane-gasification and plasma gasification are remarkable processes. The excess power would be used for local consumption.

Precautionary Principle

‘When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.”

This is the policy to follow for the removal of toxins, bacteria, pharmaceuticals or radioisotopes in the MWRD wastewater treatment processes. The allowable amounts of pollutants, today, comes from the research and data generated by manufacturers of these products and not by objective third party scientific organizations or researchers. The public must bear the expense and responsibility to prove they are deleterious to human health. It is not often easy to pinpoint one specific chemical in a wide-ranging cocktail of known and unknown components. When the burden is on manufacturers to make these determinations and bear the cost for long-term health studies, they will make quick changes to less deleterious or benign ingredients in their products.

Studies to test the safety of all known chemicals is now underway in the European Union. When data becomes available unsafe products will be banned for sale in the EU and this information will be available to consumers around the world. The US is far behind in human and product safety as well as energy efficiency standards for our common everyday manufactured products. It is time we started to act with the safety of citizens as the primary function and not merely profit for big business.

Energy Production

Energy is the number one concern of most American voters today. Energy affects the cost of everything in our cupboards, closets, medicine cabinet and the basic transportation to get to our jobs. We cannot live without energy. Energy independence is a catchall phrase used by pols to make the population feel comfortable and think they know the answers to this vast problem. There is no magic formula to provide all the necessary energy at affordable cost.

There are however, many new technologies available today that can begin to ease the burden on the public and make us somewhat more secure in our current life-style. The MWRD is in the perfect situation to begin employing some of these technologies. Methane gas is a bi-product of decomposition of organic matter. This gas can easily be converted to electricity. We are doing this in Illinois at Waste Management facilities today. We can do more of this at MWRD’s seven facilities. Plasma gasification is an even more effective technology. It can extract hydrocarbons that would be available to produce a myriad of fuel types and remove metals and other inorganic elements for further industrial recycling. New, yet unproven technologies that use algae to produce electric power is another technology that could be available down the road, as algae is a ubiquitous organism. The installation of PV to run the MWRD facilities would also cut down on fossil fuel consumption. These and other technologies as they become available would be a baby step to slowing climate change, global warming and a real step toward becoming a sustainable metro region.

Decentralization

The most controversial of the Green campaign issues is decentralization. By putting the power to determine which technology and how best to treat wastewater into the resident’s hands is my last goal. There are technologies that are available to an individual, to a neighborhood or to an entire region that can make wastewater treatment so simple that we would be able to eliminate the treatment of potable water altogether. We can treat wastewater so ‘perfectly’ that it is 100% pure and we can drink the effluence. This technology is quite expensive at this time. If we used it in the metro region with a population center of almost 10 million, it would become so affordable everyone could use it. Z tubes are doing this for industrial plants using some of the most hazardous substances and it works.

Other types of simple decentralization methods are gray water systems, from whole house to whole neighborhood scenarios. Everything except ‘toilet’ water (black water) can be safely treated with plants and gravel and allowed to percolate into the soil or run-off into aquatic systems or used for non-potable functions, like watering the garden, washing the car, flushing the toilet and other uses.

Black water systems are more controversial, but not untried or unproven. Our arcane laws prevent us from even testing this in the US. In Canada however, it has been studied at a residential development with 100 homes. In that cold climate, this technology works safely and efficiently all year long.

Decentralization would, hopefully, end the job of the MWRD. I would allow residents to do the job safely, effectively and for less cost.

These are some of the issues the MWRD faces in the next decade. Our Live Green, Vote Green candidates will work to protect your health and the water supply that makes the region so beautiful and a great place to live.