Watching Our Water Ways

UPDATE, Friday, 4-3-2013, 12:55 p.m.
It appears that Bremerton was the only Washington city to make it into the top 10 in any of the population categories, according to the final list. (PDF 127 kb).
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Bremerton residents pushed their city into the top spot among hundreds of cities competing in the National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation.

Residents from cities across the country were asked to “take the pledge” and do things to save water around their house. Bremerton took first place among cities with populations from 30,000 to 100,000.

I don’t believe any other city in Washington state made it into the top 10 for their populations, although Seattle came close. We may know more later today, when the winners are announced on the website My Water Pledge.

“Water is Bremerton’s remarkable resource,” said Mayor Patty Lent in a news release (PDF 53 kb). “I appreciate the support of our residents during this contest and encourage everyone to learn more about their water and energy use at home. This contest was a fun opportunity to learn about water-wise habits and create a more sustainable environment.”

By being from one of the five winning cities, Bremerton residents will be eligible for hundreds of prizes to be awarded in the competition, sponsored by the nonprofit Wyland Foundation. Prizes include a Toyota Prius, custom-designed lawn sprinkler systems, low-flow shower heads and Lowe’s gift cards. Anyone who submitted a pledge will be eligible for a separate drawing for a $1,000 shopping spree at Lowe’s.

“The Mayor’s Challenge highlights the impact of each person’s environmental efforts,” said Water Resources Manager Kathleen Cahall in the news release. “The city’s prize for participating in this contest is increased awareness about the importance of our water resources.”

Last year, the first year of competition, Bremerton finished in the top spot among medium-sized cities in Washington and third among cities in the West.

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In the National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation, Bremerton is leading all U.S. cities with populations between 30,000 and 100,000.

The water challenge, sponsored by the Wyland Foundation, asks people to take a pledge to work for water conservation. Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent has embraced the national competition by talking about it often when she meets with community groups.

To take the pledge and boost your own city’s ranking in the competition, go to www.mywaterpledge.com and fill out a brief form.

Last year, Bremerton came in first among medium-sized cities in Washington state and third among those in the West.

“Water is Bremerton’s remarkable resource,” the mayor said in a news release. “I encourage all Bremerton residents to pledge to learn more about their water and energy use at home. This challenge, which runs through April, is an exciting opportunity to learn about water wise habits as we engage in a friendly competition with other cities across the nation to create a more sustainable environment.”

Kathleen Cahall, Bremerton’s water resources manager, noted that this year’s competition pits all like-sized cities in the country against each other. Last year, the first competition was regional. Now, there are five nationwide population categories instead of three for each region.

Bremerton has not done as much personal outreach on the project as last year, Kathleen told me, but the city has placed messages on city utility bills and in electronic news letters; on BKAT, the community access television station; and with flyers for students to take home at schools within Bremerton’s water service area.

“It really takes no effort for us to be involved,” Kathleen said, “and it is easy for our residents to learn about water-wise habits and pollution-prevention.”

A federal water-quality permit requires the city to do public education, and people can learn from the water challenge, she said.

As an added incentive, the contest awards prizes to random people who take the pledge.

The only other Washington cities currently in the top 10 are Seattle, which is eighth among cities with more than 600,000 people, and Sequim, which is tenth among cities with populations from 5,000 to 30,000.

Port Orchard is 14th among the 5,000-30,000 cities. Poulsbo is 119th and Bainbridge Island is 291st in that same population category.

Cities in Washington that ranked within the top 100 in their own population categories include Lacey, 15th; Bellevue, 19th; Tacoma, 42nd; Spokane, 48th; North Bend, 50th; Vancouver, 53rd; and Bellingham, 62nd.

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We hear a lot about personal electronics and the move toward a paperless society. This idea only goes so far, however, as you’ll see in the video below. It comes from a television commercial by Leo Burnett, a French ad agency.

While we’re on the theme of paper, check out this episode of “Prank vs. Prank,” a long-running series on the Internet that involves a couple playing pranks on each other from 2007 right up to the present.

I’m not sure how their relationship survives, but Jesse Wellens and Jennifer “Jeana” Smith are still going strong with their pranks. Some are funny and some seem a little cruel. But people keep watching their videos on Prank vs. Prank. As of today, their channel has been viewed more than 376 million times.

I was also amused by the funny toilet paper rolls brought together in a blog by Rhonda Ablom, a.k.a. Pukeko, on the website Cozy.

Rhonda points toward a survey that asked people what things they would least want to wipe their bottoms with. Glass shards and barbed wire led the list, and Rhonda was able to find some soft bathroom tissue with a picture of barbed wire on each sheet. This could be a good conversation starter.

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Sharing water resources over a wide region is an idea that goes hand-in-hand with the Growth Management Act’s strategy of concentrating population in urban areas while protecting rural areas.

Of course, the first level of action is water conservation. But the ability to take water from one aquifer with an adequate water supply while protecting an overtaxed aquifer somewhere else makes a lot of sense.

That’s the idea behind building new pipelines to connect numerous water systems across a good portion of Kitsap County, including Silverdale. I described the latest steps in this plan in a story published in Monday’s Kitsap Sun.

Thirty years ago — before the Growth Management Act was passed — I recall talking to folks at the Kitsap Public Utility District, who declared that they were not in the land-use business and had no intention of getting involved in land-use battles. It was the job of the Kitsap County commissioners to decide where to put the growth, they said. The PUD staff and commissioners believed their role was to provide water for the growing population, wherever it goes. Check out this Kitsap Sun story from Feb. 25, 2001.

The state’s Municipal Water Law of 2003 clarified that the KPUD could deliver water from one place to another throughout its service area — which is all of Kitsap County. That allows water to be brought to developed areas in North Kitsap, where annual rainfall is half of what we see in the forested areas of Southwest Kitsap, where the Seabeck aquifer is located. (See annual precipitation map on this page.)

Many environmentalists have objected to certain portions of the Municipal Water Law, especially sections that included developers as municipal water suppliers — a move they say opens the door for abuse by financial interests.

One of the big concerns in water management is that pumping too much from an aquifer — especially a shallow aquifer — could disrupt the subsurface flows and springs that maintain stream levels in the summer and early fall. Adequate streamflows are needed for many species, not the least of which are salmon.

With adequate monitoring, as needed for planning, experts can track groundwater levels and streamflows to avoid such problems. Pipelines allow aquifers to be “rested” when needed. And elected PUD commissioners can be held accountable for their decisions regarding the regional management of water.

Future water supplies and the right to use the water constitute one of the most complicated issues in environmental law. A 2003 paper by the Washington Department of Ecology, called “Mitigation Measures Used in Water Rights Permitting” outlines some of the methods being used to protect natural systems and competing water rights. Mitigation for use of the Seabeck aquifer, which is an important water supply in Kitsap County, is described briefly on pages 19 and 20.

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Just about everyone has a special trick or hint for washing dishes, or so it seems. Search for “washing dishes” on YouTube and you’ll find about 21,000 videos. Increase that to more than 34,000 if you remove the quotation marks.

As a society, I guess we have been washing dishes for a very long time. At some point, we even decided that washing dishes in soap and hot water can help keep people from getting sick.

I’m amused by the 1950s promotional film, made for salesmen, showing off the new marvel of an automatic dishwasher, said to bring housewives a better way of living. At the same time, according to the film, dishes are sanitized to a state of sparkling cleanliness.

The woman in the film for the Youngstown Kitchens Automatic Dishwasher asks, “Why do your dishes the old-fashioned way when you do your other household work the modern way?”

More than 60 years later, many people are still washing their dishes in the sink by hand. Many simply don’t like to leave food-caked dishes lying around, even if the dishes are hiding inside a dishwasher. Others go to the opposite extreme, filling their sinks with dirty dishes and battling over who will take care of the problem. (Here’s one video: “The Hardest Thing for a Man to do.”)

The idea of saving water may have sparked a movement back to hand-washing, even though some experts say an automatic dishwasher can save on water. By hand is the way to go, says Paul Wheaton, who demonstrates how he gets his dishes clean with less water and uses his dishwasher as a drying rack.

Other amusing videos include Pete the monkey, who learned to wash dishes by copying a man involved in reintroducing monkeys to the wild in a sanctuary in Bolivia. Check out the second video on this page and read the full story in “Amazing Stuff.”

Although it’s not a video, I got a kick out of a series of photos called “Simple bachelor trick — How to use your dishes without having to wash them.” The trick involves a plastic bag. Check out the “bachelor trick” on 22 Words.

From the series How to Clean Your House (7 pics) by Pleated-Jeans.

I’m sure people would be happy if dishes could wash themselves. (See this time lapse video.) If they could do that, wouldn’t you think they could also rinse themselves and maybe put themselves away?

Let me also share with you a six-minute cartoon featuring Goofy, the old buddy of Mickey Mouse. Goofy, a professional dishwasher, decides to take a vacation on a new credit card. The twist comes at the end when he reaches his credit limit.

I can’t imagine anyone wanting to wash dishes in the virtual world, but I found an online puzzle involving Mickey Mouse on the site Funny Games. The goal is to wipe the dishes clean — including a few heavily soiled spots — as quickly as you can.

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While much of the country suffered through record heat and extreme drought in 2012, Washington state was doing its own thing up in the corner of the map, according to an annual report from the National Climatic Data Center.

Source: National Climatic Data Center

Across the contiguous United States, the average temperature last year was the highest ever recorded, with records going back to 1895. The yearly average of 55.3 degrees was 3.3 degrees above the 20th-Century average and 1 degree warmer than the previous high record set in 1998.

A map issued by NCDA, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows 19 states with all-time high temperatures for the year and 28 states with temperatures far above normal. Only Washington state came through the year with an average temperature “above normal,” as shown on the map.

Specifically, only 29 of the past 118 years were warmer than 2012 in this state, so conditions were by no means cool from a historical perspective. Check out historical temperature data for each state on the NCDA website.

When it came to rainfall, things were a little more mixed across the country, but again Washington — along with Oregon — stand out as anomalies, having some of the wettest conditions ever experienced.

Source: National Climatic Data Center

Across the contiguous United States, precipitation averaged 26.57 inches, some 2.57 inches below the 20th-Century average. Overall, 2012 is considered the 15th driest year on record.

Nebraska and Wyoming broke their all-time record for lowest precipitation. Nebraska’s annual precipitation of 13.04 inches in 2012 was nearly 10 inches below average. Eight states experienced drought that placed 2012 among the ten driest years on record.

Overall, the footprint of summer drought across the midsection of the country was on par with the drought of the 1950s, in which 60 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate to exceptionally dry conditions, according to the new report. As in the 1950s, farmers living in the Midwest, Plains and Mountain West states experienced severe problems, including crop failures.

On the other hand, Washington state nearly broke the record for heavy precipitation during the calendar year, according to the report. Only four out of the past 118 years were wetter. The statewide precipitation of 47.24 inches was 10.40 inches above average. For the spring season (March-May), only two years in recorded history were wetter.

Oregon also experienced precipitation well above average, with only 11 wetter years in the record book. Meanwhile, surrounding states — California, Nevada and Idaho — came in close to their annual average.

The full annual report, with lots of links to additional data, can be viewed on the page called “State of the Climate National Overview Annual 2012.”

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Last year, actor Matt Damon dressed as Santa Claus and allowed children to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. All the while, he kept trying to convince them that what they really wanted was a stainless-steel or plastic water bottle.

I found the video amusing, but there is a serious message behind his charity, which is raising money to bring clean water to impoverished parts of the world.

After Matt Damon did this video, reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today wrote about his effort and other charitable connections between water and Christmas. It was called “Charities give Christmas gift of water.”

In September of this year, Charlie Rose, the PBS interviewer, conducted an extended conversation with Matt Damon and Gary White, founders of Water.org, with offices in the U.S., India and Kenya.

A totally different connection between water and Christmas was provided by a bunch of water-sports enthusiasts who got together on the Potomac River on Christmas Eve last year to do their thing dressed as Santa, his reindeer and the Grinch. AFP provides the video on YouTube.

Some of you will enjoy this video of a dog who received an unusual Christmas gift. His owners piled up plastic water bottles to form a large triangle on the floor and let the dog go at it. In typical form, the energetic dog quickly demolished the structure and began chewing on one of the bottles.

As an added bonus, I’ve reprieved some silly Christmas riddles from a Water Ways entry posted three years ago. I hope they can bring you a smile. If you know a good Christmas riddle (a clean one, please) feel free to add it in the comment section below.

What do you get if Santa goes down the chimney when a fire is lit?
Crisp Kringle

What do you have in December that’s not in any other month?
The letter “D”

Where do snowmen go to dance?
A snow ball

What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?
Claustrophobic

What do you call an old snowman?
Water!

Did Rudolph go to a regular school?
No, he was elf-taught

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
Frostbite!

Why was Santa’s little helper depressed?
He had low elf esteem

Why does Scrooge love all of the reindeer?
Because every buck is dear to him

What do you call Santa when he has no money?
Saint “Nickel”-less

What do you sing at a snowman’s birthday party?
Freeze a jolly good fellow!

What happened when the snowgirl broke up with the snowboy ?
She gave him the cold shoulder

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Puns have been called the lowest form of humor, I think, because there are so many bad puns hanging around.

Some puns, however, are at least as good as the most clever jokes. I talked about this last year in “Water Ways” during the annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship.

Now, I’d like to share some water-related puns from the website “Pun of the Day.” I seem to hear a few groans already, but I’m hoping most people will like these.

1. If we don’t conserve water, we could go from one ex-stream to another.

2. All the waterfowl kept their eyes closed except for one. He was a Peking Duck.

3. A friend told me he dug a hole in my backyard and filled it with water. I thought he meant well.

4. For plumbers, a flush beats a full house.

5. The building inspector said whoever installed the water pipes was plumb loco.

6. The well-driller had a boring job.

7. An ex-sailor prefers to forget the days he spent playing cards in submarines, dismissing them as ‘so much bridge under the water’.

8. You would think that being a submarine captain would pay well, but I hear they can’t keep their heads above water.

9. I used to be a tap dancer until I fell into the sink.

10. There was a big paddle sale at the boat store. It was quite an oar deal. (Ron – Eldora, IA)

11. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft it sank. This proves once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it, too.

12. The soundtrack for the killer whale movie was orcastrated.

13. The water department made a gallon-t effort to provide litre-ship during the drought.

14. A waterbed may just be the vinyl resting place.

15. Anyone hear about the dictionary that fell into the river? It was un-a-bridged.

16. The river crested when a factory spilled toothpaste into it.

17. To spot a glacier you have to have good ice sight.

18. When carrying your musical instrument over ice if you don’t C sharp you will B flat.

19. Swimming can be easy or hard. It deep-ends.

20. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.

21. It’s raining cats and dogs. Well, as long as it doesn’t reindeer. (Juls – Sweden)

22. What keeps a dock floating above water? Pier pressure.

A few non-water puns:

23. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was ticketed for littering.

24. The little old woman who lived in a shoe wasn’t the sole owner. There were strings attached.

25. Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

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Rain Bird’s “Intelligent Use of Water” Film Competition has become one of my favorite water-focused events for “Amusing Monday.”

Winners of the contest were announced a couple weeks ago in Beverly Hills. The Audience Choice Award, “The Wash,” is featured in the player at right. It was the most amusing among the six finalists, but I have to say I enjoyed all the films this year.

The Jury Award, chosen by a six-member panel, was presented to a serious documentary called “Isla Urbana,” which examined a new way of bringing water to the residents of Mexico City.

The Jury Award winner, Greg Harriott of Brooklyn, N.Y., received a $10,000 prize. The winner of the Audience Award, Carla Dauden of Long Beach, Calif., took home $5,000.

The host of the awards ceremony was Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and host of the new television program “Wild Countdown” seen Saturday mornings on the ABC network.

All the 2012 finalists can be seen on Rain Bird’s website, along with finalists from past years.
(more…)

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This week, I looked for some interesting facts about water and created the following 20-question quiz. Find the answers below along with the various sources of the information.

Image: U.S. Department of Energy

1. If an adult’s body is 70 percent water, what percentage of water is an infant’s body?
A) 60 percent
B) 70 percent
C) 80 percent
D) 90 percent

2. How much of the Earth’s surface is covered by water?
A) 60-65 percent
B) 70-75 percent
C) 80-85 percent
D) 90-95 percent

3) An average person uses from 80 to 100 gallons of water a day. Excluding lawn-watering, the largest water use by an individual results from:
A) Flushing the toilet
B) Cooking and drinking
C) Taking a bath or shower
D) Water fights
(more…)

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