Are these guys stupid or what

Listen to this.

About 3 weeks ago a main sewage line burst in the city of Tel-Aviv, on the shores of the Med (in Israel). In order not to flodd the southren part of the city, It was decided to drop 200,000 cubic meters of raw sewage into the Med each day, untill the line is rebuilt.

As a result, the beaches are closed for bathing, diving, fishing and basically anything else from Netanya in the north to about Ashdod in the south (probably something like 50 miles).

The long term damage to the shores is great. Some of the stuff that is being poured into the sea is industrial sewage, containing poisons, heavy metals and so on. It will take the sea years, wntill the stuff is finally washed away.

As we in Israel have some other worries, the public outcry is minimal. In any case the damage is already done.

We must be very stupid.

Ari

Most all sewage treatment plants have bypasses so they can dump direct in an emergency, it's still sad to see it when it happens.

Maybe if it was re-routed to dump directly into your politicians homes things would get fixed faster.

They don't care. Nobody lost his job over this one, although out of the 100M$ budget they had for the past few year, only 300,000 (!!!) went for maintenance. Naturally 10 times more went to salaries.

Ari

Stupid...yes. Very short sighted and probably taking up my valuable space in the shallow end of the gene pool!

Only 300K on maintenance? I hate reading about this stuff....

That is pretty bad, but the only alternative is to have it flow into the streets, where it would be much worse.

I am sure the sea life would say otherwise though...

Very short sighted and probably taking up my valuable space in the shallow end of the gene pool!

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...look on the bright side, narcT: you'll have new and interesting dating opportunities. Not to mention that they might be able to arrange an increase in the pool depth with their sewage.

Ari once bubbled...
They don't care. Nobody lost his job over this one, although out of the 100M$ budget they had for the past few year, only 300,000 (!!!) went for maintenance. Naturally 10 times more went to salaries.

Ari

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Well, with all due respect I think some other things happening in Israel rate much higher on the stupid-scale than this.....

R..

The same thing happened a few years ago in San Diego, I believe. It's a mess, but unfortunately you've got to put the stuff someplace when this happens. I'm not condoning the lack of maintenance, but stuff happens.

Diver0001 once bubbled...


Well, with all due respect I think some other things happening in Israel rate much higher on the stupid-scale than this.....

R..

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But these I don't discuss on the scuba board.

Ari

Happened in Winterpeg (sorry, Winnipeg) this past year. Hope no-one went diving in Lake Winnipeg too soon after this...

From the City of Winnipeg web site archive (my highlighting):
"At about 1:15 pm on Monday, September 16, 2002, the failure shut down the wastewater treatment processes at the North End Water Pollution Control Centre. At about 5:00 pm, sewage began flowing directly into the Red River at a rate of about 185,000 cubic metres per day, or approximately 1% – 1.5% of the river flow . Repairs to the plant progressed quickly, and 57 hours later at approximately 2:00 am on September 19, full wastewater treatment resumed and all flows to the river had ceased."

The failure turned out to be a broken guide inside a large suction valve that forced the valve to stay open by about a foot. Had to drive past Winnipeg a few days later on a trip East - and didn't drink any water from sources between Moose Jaw and Kenora...


Incidentally, as far as I know, the City of Victoria (B.C.) STILL doesn't do even primary sewage treatment - it goes through coarse filtration then out a looong pipe into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Last thing I heard was that they were finally budgeting for a plant...

pretty sad, eh?