[SustainableTompkins] why save water?

[Joel and Sarah Gagnon]

The city water source issue is more complicated than implied. Six Mile 
Creek water is often turbid. The chemicals used to clear the water have an 
associated environmental impact from their production and then disposal. 
That needs to be weighed against the energy cost of pumping lake water 
uphill to storage. Either way, conservation reduces environmental impact.

Joel

At 07:15 PM 2/27/08 -0500, you wrote:
>Margaret McCasland wrote:
>  > But we are very lucky here in the city of Ithaca; most of the city's
>  > water is surface water on its way to the lake via gravity, all it
>  > does is take a detour through our houses. (However it is getting
>  > contaminated on the way.)  So water per se isn't the issue.
>
>It will be if the proponents of growth in the county are
>successful in the effort to shut down the City's water treatment
>plant and expand Bolton Point so that all the City's water comes
>from the lake.  There are energy aspects to this, too; see the
>position paper prepared by TCLocal last year:
>
>     http://www.ibiblio.org/tcrp/policy/wtp/
>
>  > But effects on the lake do matter.  All those chemicals add up
>  > once they get to the lake, where they concentrate over time.
>
>Yup.  But it's not clear that Common Council understands this.
>
>Jon
>
>
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