Dishwashing machines need phosphates

Pumps would be the answer to your question.

If you have indoor plumbing the chances are good that the water coming out of the faucet was pumped from somewhere much lower down

I didn't record most of them. The one mentioned above was the most useful, but the most entertaining was the Appliance Samuri at .

Joe Gwinn

Yes. A lot depends on the composition of the local water. People with water softeners seem to have far less trouble.

Is the Delaware Estuary News that heavy?

I thought you lived in New Jersey.

Are these measurable effects also significant? We can measure such things to parts per billion, orders of magnitude below anything worth worrying about.

Really? Given the considerable effort and cost yielding trivial impact, perhaps the same effort would yield far greater return elsewhere.

This is the proof that the EPA doesn't know when to stop.

Joe Gwinn

It's not the weight. It's the weirdness. Aside from people I've met at meetings of the group, I've known only one other person who subscribes.

The mailman probably thinks I'm a card-carrying Green Peacer. Actually, I'm just a fisherman and a boater who's watched the effects of pollution on my favorite waters for about 58 years, up close and personal. It's gotten a LOT better.

I do. I'm between the middle Delaware and the lower Hudson. The mouth of the Hudson estuary is about fifteen miles from where I'm sitting right now.

I don't know. I'm sure you could find out. As I said, I was remarking about a couple of reports published years ago about eutrification of the lower Delaware. They were measuring oxygen levels.

Maybe. If you're interested enough, there's plenty of information around. I'm mostly interested in the marine life in the local estuaries, and the rivers above them. I don't follow the issues closely. I've only read a couple of reports about local efforts to keep phosphates out of the Delaware.

I don't think that this one example is "proof" of anything about the EPA. The proof I'm most interested in is how effective they are, and there's plenty of that. You can find people, I'm sure, who can discuss their efficiency. You might even find one who knows enough to talk about it, but don't count on that happening on Usenet. d8-)

My general take on the EPA is that they have a very big job, with pathetically meager resources to do it. So they paint a lot of things with a broad brush, out of necessity, and they're constrained in every direction by our principles of equal treatment and so on. I don't envy their position. I do admire many of their results.

Apparently, you have shit for brains.

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

Ah, so the sewer plant is upstream of the water plant?

Is that the best you can do is to act like a moron in a conversation? Why do you bother even posting?

I can't say I wasn't warned... geeeeesh

----------------- On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:51:39 -0400, "Josepi" wrote: Apparently, you wouldn't remember anyway.

Classis "Forte Agent" user example again!

Nothing but confusion.

-----------

That way I dont have to try to puzzle out your posts

Gunner

You pay them good money for a reason.

We can't be right all the time.

My general take on the EPA is that they have a very big job, with pathetically meager resources to do it. So they paint a lot of things with a broad brush, out of necessity, and they're constrained in every direction by our principles of equal treatment and so on. I don't envy their position. I do admire many of their results.

You will probably need to subscribe to Chemical Industry News, printed with petroleum ink (the stuff with the perfect color rendition) on glossy paper made from virgin-forest wood (I assume that such must exist) just to redeem yourself.

In New Jersey, I bet the problem was largely due to effluents from the chemical industry. I lived in NJ in the 1950s, and still remember the smell of the refineries.

Two rivers to mind.

Spending all that effort and causing all that disruption for a measly

0.5% is a telling example. If the shareholders found out, a company president doing such a grossly inefficient thing would soon be gone.

And this only buttresses my point. If one has too little money, one does not usually bother with efforts with such an astoundingly low cost/benefit ratio. There are better ways to use the resources.

Joe Gwinn

It may be a matter of the responsibilities that Congress has charged them with. I'd have to look carefully at that, and at what EPA has done with it, before I'd be critical.

Congress almost never gives that level of detail, expecting the EPA (in this case) to write the relevant rules. And EPA could have adopted some kind of de minimis rule, and would have been well advised to do so, because cases like this do their larger agenda no good.

But certainly Congress has ultimate responsibility.

Joe Gwinn

Before I address that, I found the studies I had read several years ago. One reports that the Delaware Estuary has the highest concentration of phosphorus of any river or estuary in the United States, and one of the highest in the world. What might be of more interest to you is that the point-source phosphorus load is 4 times higher than the non-point-source load. In other words, municipal outflows (treated wastewater) introduce 4 times as much phosphorus as the agricultural and residential use of fertilizers, plus animal waste.

And this is one of the quotes I remembered, from "Marsh sediments as records of sedimentation, eutrophication and metal pollution in the urban Delaware Estuary," 2006:

"Recorded in the freshwater marsh sediment upstream is a dramatic increase in total phosphorus (TP) starting in 1950 - 1960, and, as in the Delaware River water, tracks the introduction of P detergent use. Although this might include increased use of P fertilizers, there is a substantial decrease after removal of the P detergent source in the mid-1970s."

And this:

"Starting in the second half of the century, there were coordinated studies and a commission that resulted in stricter point source pollution, particularly the institution of secondary sewage treatment. These improvements in pollution and sewage control have expanded in recent decades. The result is that since approximately 1980, there has been an 86% reduction in both municipal and industrial chemical oxygen demand. Phosphorus levels have dropped by a factor of five during this same period, presumably from reduction in P detergent use, as tertiary treatment has not been implemented."

So phosphate detergent is indeed a big issue here in the Delaware, regardless of statistics on fertilizer and non-fertilizer sources in general.

Now, about EPA overreach and the dishwasher detergent regulations: They aren't from EPA at all. It's 16 individual states that enacted the near-ban in 2009 and 2010.

This would be for clothes washing detergent, although the cited articles don't seem to make the distinction. And, Delaware is the outlier.

The question is what prompted them.

And if the EPA had declared dishwasher detergent phosphate use as de minimus, the states would not have argued. Actually, they could not have argued, by federal preemption. So, we are back in Washington.

Joe Gwinn

My front load tilt drum washer works very well, no problems getting clothes clean. The high speed spin cycle sounds like the machine is trying to go into orbit, but it gets the laundry quite dry before the dryer and saves more energy.

Well, they COULDN'T make a distinction then, by testing the river itself. Washington State has measured specific phosphorus loads before and after phosphates were removed from dishwasher detergent, and it appears to be on the order of 10% to 12% of the total detergent load.

Or it was, back then. Now, it's nearer to 100% of what's left.

Yes, which I have repeated several times. Although I don't know if it's actually an "outlier." More likely, is just an extreme, but just the end of a continuous range of phosphorus levels.

Uh, I'm not sure where preemption enters this. EPA did not dictate to the states what they had to do. They supplied research and analysis.

That's not correct. They removed the P from clothes-washing detergent first. Also, double-checking, that Washington State report apparently is of *total* P load in treated wastewater, with secondary but no tertiary sequestration.

So the other 88% - 90% could be from a variety of things, including human waste. That is, if I was reading it right.

[snip]

There was a recent Supreme Court case on just this. If the Feds have entered an area, the states have to back off.

For instance .

There may be others, but I wasn't paying attention at the time.

Joe Gwinn

As someone that cleans metal really clean from time to time for evil 2nd Amendment decorative purposes, I know about TSP not being TSP. TSP is an awesome cleaner/degreaser.

Government is working hard to make everything you use crap. I *wish* I had some original tapmagic, that stuff almost make the tap screw itself into the hole on it's own.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller