They call them magical floating faucets in the United States,
but I’ve also seen them called floating taps, spigots or spouts.
The illusion is one of a faucet floating in the air and producing a
stream of water with no apparent source.
They have been created as decorative, amusing fountains in all
sizes — from tabletop models, which you can purchase or make
yourself, to giant sculptures that can be viewed from a distance or
as close as you wish to get.
Large faucet fountains seem to be popular in Spain, where the
“iconic red tap” marks the starting point of a large water slide
outside the Tobogan restaurant in Cala Galdana, a resort town on
the island of Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea. A Resort
Guide to Cala Galdana, which includes a photo of the red tap,
creates an exciting invitation to this locale. I wasn’t able to
find the name of the artist who created the sculpture.
A silver faucet fountain in El Puerto de Santa Maria, located in
southwest Spain, is said to be the work of the late French sculptor
Philippe Thill. It might, however, be a floating faucet inspired by
Thill, whose website
(archived) shows a similar piece titled “Insolate Fountain”
along with other water-related sculptures.
An unprecedented yearlong pump test of a deep water well in
Central Kitsap is expected to provide a wealth of new information
about our underground water supplies.
Joel Purdy, hydrogeologist for
Kitsap Public Utility District, checks the flow at Newberry Hill
Well 2, which is being pumped at 1,000 gallons per minute for a
full year. // Photo: Christopher
Dunagan
The 900-foot-deep well, off Newberry Hill Road, will be pumped
continuously for a year, drawing water at a rate of 1,000 gallons
per minute. Drawdown effects of the high pumping rate will be
measured in 56 other wells — including those operated by Silverdale
Water District, Kitsap Public Utility District, the city of
Bremerton, North Perry Water District, Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and
others.
The pump test is designed to better define the extent of
aquifers throughout Central Kitsap while increasing the accuracy of
a groundwater model developed to predict water supplies across the
Kitsap Peninsula.
“This is going to be one of the best data-gathering tests,” said
Joel Purdy, hydrogeologist for Kitsap Public Utility District.
“Hydrogeologists dream of doing this kind of aquifer test.”
Severe drought is settling in across most of Western Washington
— including Kitsap County — where dry conditions raise the risks of
wildfire, and low streamflows could impair salmon spawning this
fall.
Western Washington is one of
the few places in the country with “severe” drought.
Map: U.S. Drought Monitor, Richard Tinker, U.S.
agencies.
Scattered showers and drizzle the past few days have done little
to reverse a drying trend as we go into what is normally the driest
period of the year, from now through August. As of today, the fire
danger is moderate, but warmer weather could increase the risk
substantially within a day or two.
The topsy-turvy weather that I observed across the Kitsap
Peninsula last quarter (Water
Ways, April 2) continued through June. Normally, the southwest
corner of the peninsula near Holly receives twice the precipitation
as the north end near Hansville. But that didn’t happen last month,
when the monthly rainfall total was 0.61 inches in Holly and 0.83
inches in Hansville. Silverdale, about halfway between, received
1.11 inches in June.
UPDATE, MAY 31
The name LeCuyer Creek was approved yesterday by the Washington
State Committee on Geographic Names. The name change now goes to
the state Board of Natural Resources, which sits as the state Board
of Geographic Names. Action is normally a formality. The name,
which will be recognized for state business, will be forwarded to
the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which is likely to adopt it for
federal actions as well.
—–
The late Jim LeCuyer, who developed a system of monitoring
rainfall, streamflow and groundwater levels in Kitsap County, could
be memorialized next week when a stream near Kingston is officially
named LeCuyer Creek.
Jim LeCuyer
The state’s Committee on Geographic Names will meet
TuesdayThursday to
consider the proposed stream name in honor of LeCuyer, who died in
2012 from a blood disorder.
Jim, who joined the Kitsap Public Utility District in 1984, came
to understand the water cycle on the Kitsap Peninsula perhaps
better than anyone else. When Jim took the job, one of the looming
questions for government officials was whether the peninsula would
have enough water to serve the massive influx of people who were
coming to Kitsap County.
“Jim started doing hydrological monitoring about 1991,” said
Mark Morgan, KPUD’s water resources manager who proposed the name
LeCuyer Creek. “What he developed became one of the best monitoring
systems in the state, some say on the West Coast.”
Microsoft founder Bill Gates remains obsessed with human waste —
in a good way, of course. His goal is to improve sanitation
throughout the world and thereby reduce suffering from disease.
Poop is a subject that never goes out of style with comedians,
and Ronny Chieng of “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” is right on
top of the subject. In a conversation with Bill Gates, shown in the
first video, Chieng demands to know why Gates has been carrying
around a jar of human feces.
“Toilets are something that we take for granted,” Gates
responds, “but billions of people don’t have them.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a major
campaign to get engineers and other smart people to design a
small-scale treatment device that generates energy while producing
useable water. It’s called the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge.
Ronnie Chieng is asking some good questions, but I’m not sure
why he needs to blurt out a bunch of four-letter words, when
five-letter words like “waste” and “feces” work quite well.
“We’ve put several hundred million into this to show it can be
done,” Bill says.
“Several hundred million dollars?” Ronnie responds. “Oh my god,
is Bill Gates literally flushing his fortune down the toilet?”
Those who have been following Bill Gates’ efforts for a few
years won’t be surprised at his desire to improve sanitation in
places around the world where flush toilets are just a pipe
dream.
Last month, Gates carried a jar of human feces onto the stage
with him in Beijing where he addressed an audience at the
Reinvented Toilet Expo.
“This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200
trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion shigella bacteria and 100,000
parasitic worm eggs,” Gates said, as quoted by
National Public Radio. His
prepared speech can be found on the website of the Gates
Foundation, along with a
press release.
About 20 exhibitors were able to show off their inventions,
including household toilets capable of internally processing small
amounts of waste as well as commercial-sized treatment plants that
turn waste into drinking water, electricity and ash.
Sedron Technologies, based
in Sedro Woolley, is working at both ends of the spectrum. On the
larger scale, its Janicki
Omni Processor dries out solid waste and uses it as fuel. On
the smaller scale, its new Firelight Toilet was just unveiled at
the recent expo and explained in a news story by reporter
Julia-Grace Sanders of the
Skagit Valley Herald.
Gates discusses what he calls “clever toilet” technologies in
the second and third videos on this page. In addition to
NPR, the Expo was covered by Popular
Science and
The Hindu, which localizes the story for its audience in India
where sanitation is a monstrous issue.
As I said, Bill Gates has been obsessed with this issue for
quite awhile. In 2015, I featured a video about the “ultimate taste
test” using sewage effluent. The tasters were Gates and Jimmy
Fallon of “The Tonight Show.” See
Water Ways, Feb. 9, 2015.
Wednesday of this week is a national day of action in which
people are asked to “Imagine a Day Without Water.” The annual event
was launched in 2015 to increase appreciation for the water we
enjoy in our everyday lives.
It’s a serious subject, but one that can be approached with a
sense of humor, as you can see from the videos I’ve tracked
down.
In the event’s initial year, participants included nearly 200
organizations, from water and wastewater providers to public
officials, business leaders, environmental organizations, schools
and more.
We’ve just gone through one of the driest five-month periods on
record in Kitsap County, yet the total precipitation for entire
water year was fairly close to average.
Water year 2018, which ended Sunday, offers a superb example of
the extreme differences in precipitation from one part of the
Kitsap Peninsula to another:
In Hansville — at the north end of the peninsula — the total
rainfall for the year reached 35.2 inches, about 3.5 inches above
average.
In Silverdale — about midway from north to south — the total
rainfall was recorded as 43.1 inches, about 5 inches below
average.
In Holly — near the south end — the total rainfall came in at
82 inches, about 3.3 inches above average.
The graphs of precipitation for the three areas show how this
year’s rainfall tracked with the average rainfall through the
entire year. The orange line depicts accumulated rainfall for water
year 2018, while the pink line represents the average. Click on the
images to enlarge and get a better view.
UPDATE:
July 5. Greg Johnson, who lives in Hansville and manages the
Skunk Bay Weather
station there, said the unusually high rainfall in June for
Hansville, compared to the rest of the peninsula, was the result of
the Puget Sound convergence zone settling over the area on several
occasions. Weather conditions brought localized squalls during the
month, he said, adding, “This is very unusual for us.”
The reading at Greg’s weather station, 1.98 inches for the month
of June, was somewhat lower than the 2.26 inches recorded at Kitsap
PUD’s weather station in Hansville.
—–
Cool, often cloudy conditions have helped obscure the fact that
very little rain has fallen on the Kitsap Peninsula over the past
two months.
Precipitation in Holly
(click to enlarge)
Now that we are in the fourth quarter of the water year, we can
see that rainfall levels for this year will be close to average for
most areas on the peninsula. What might not be recognized, however,
is that April was well above average, while May and June were well
below average.
More than 1,300 students entered this year’s Water Resources Art
and Poetry Contest, sponsored by New York City’s water utility,
known as the Department of Environmental Protection. Some 60
winners were named as “Water Champions” by a panel of judges.
Art by Lily H., grades 6–7.
Photo: New York City DEQ Art and Poetry
Contest
“For more than three decades, DEP’s annual Art and Poetry
Contest has given young New Yorkers a wonderful opportunity to use
their artistic abilities to learn about and express the importance
of protecting our environment and water resources,” DEP
Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said in a
press release announcing the contest winners. “Nearly half the
State of New York relies on the city’s water supply system, so this
is a terrific way for students in both New York City and beyond to
celebrate our shared natural resources.”
While world health officials are trying to bring clean drinking
water to sickly communities around the globe, there appears to be
an upstart movement promoting so-called “raw water,” which is said
to be considerably better for your health than pure clean
water.
Raw water, by definition, is left untreated and reported to
contain living organisms that provide health benefits. One brand,
aptly named Live Water,
is selling for more than $6 a gallon. You are advised to drink it
within a month to prevent it from turning green, presumably from
the growth of organisms.
The movement, which seems to encourage people to go out in
search of natural springs, grew rapidly in California with the help
of a guru-like character who changed his name from Chris Sanborn to
Mukhande Singh. The whole story has been just too good of a setup
for comedians to ignore.
There are some very amusing lines in the videos shown on this
page, but I thought I should begin with a video that actually puts
the issue into a serious context. Reporter Gabrielle Karol of
KOIN-TV in Portland produced an investigative report two weeks ago.
She found that the source of “Live Water” is a bottling and
distribution plant in Oregon.
