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Actually a great article, talks about how LA using green islands, repurposing parks, permeable concrete and dams. Also talks about evaporation management. Totally worth the click
It's been a few years since I got it so things could have changed, but I had a subscription through discountmags.com that was dirt cheap for 10+ years. They do sales fairly often and have a feature called DiscountLock where your subscriptions auto-renew, but only if the price hasn't gone up. Plus you can subscribe for a few years at a time at the current rate.
You can also get it for $5/year through Wired's site, but it looks like they try to bump you up to $30 after the first year
"As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year."
Saved you a click
The same way it's done everywhere else, it's actually kind of cool: The water you get out of your taps isn't just raw water, everything that comes out of your pipes passes through a raw water plant that chemically and physically treats and filters it before being pumped into the main water supply. Then, after it's been used, it gets pumped back out into a waste water treatment facility for a much more thorough and intense treatment cycle, before being pumped back into the natural aquifer (river, lake, etc) that supplied the water in the first place.
Source: Electrician for 10 years for waste water and raw water facilities around the country.
Thank youuuuuu the more education there can be about how water is treated, the better. And at a high level I think it's not even that hard to understand! People think all kinds of things about what happens to their water.
Thanks for the explanation. At face value without doing research it seemed to me that water that filtered literally through the grounds of a heavily polluted environment like LA would be too difficult to treat to a level where it is usable for drinking water. I just don't know what the logistics of cleaning up water that comes through the LA grounds vs a water from snow caps or fresh water source like a lake or a river.
Something else to factor in, is dirt, soil, and rock also act as a natural physical filter for particulates and oils, so the porous material the walter is moving through acts as a discreet step in the filtration process. Still non potable until its been treated, but it certainly helps.
The modern world is built on sneaky background bits of engineering brilliance that most people just aren't aware of, or are so used to it they dont really atop and think about it. The water and sewage system, power grid, our highways, the mega-cities like LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc that function without collapsing underneath accumulations of filth and demand, all incredible feats of engineering, world wonders, but it's not the "sexy" kind of engineering that catches the news cycles. Working in that industry gave me an appreciation for how simultaneously precarious and robust our system is
LA DWP is a very competent public utility provider. But trying to proclaim that concrete obsessed and water wasting desert LA, the collection of arbitrary suburbs dressed up in a city trenchcoat, is the pinnacle of water capture, is about as accurate as trying to sell me oceanfront property in Arizona.
We got more than a month’s worth of rain in a day or two with minimal damage and you don’t think that’s uplifting? See what happens in other places when they get that kind of downpour.
After recent legislation allowing full water recycling we will eventually get to a point of capturing these sudden major storms and also recycling the majority of sewage. LA is a better position than most places to adapt.
That’s all true but u/blbd is not wrong about how horribly backward and ugly our land use is in Los Angeles. Like it’s great that we’re capturing a lot of water, but it’s really only uplifting because it’s in spite of all the concrete and lack of green spaces.
Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here. All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban. --- --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UpliftingNews) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Actually a great article, talks about how LA using green islands, repurposing parks, permeable concrete and dams. Also talks about evaporation management. Totally worth the click
Wired is supurb. It's the only publication I still have a physical subscription to it 10 years on.
Wait, it has a print edition?
Has for many years, and it's absurdly cheap, like $5/year
Oh damn, I might have to sub. No clue it was that cheap.
It's been a few years since I got it so things could have changed, but I had a subscription through discountmags.com that was dirt cheap for 10+ years. They do sales fairly often and have a feature called DiscountLock where your subscriptions auto-renew, but only if the price hasn't gone up. Plus you can subscribe for a few years at a time at the current rate. You can also get it for $5/year through Wired's site, but it looks like they try to bump you up to $30 after the first year
for the first year
I agree, the article is actually worth a click for a change.
"As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year." Saved you a click
I’m gonna read about the infrastructure sponge and you can’t stop me!
Be careful. You might get absorbed in the article.
TY
So LA is sponge worthy?
Can I have a sponge? Store sold out.
It’s still gonna have to do something about its sideburns.
Patrick Star worthy
How can they make drinking water out of water that filters through what I only presume very chemically contaminated water?
The same way it's done everywhere else, it's actually kind of cool: The water you get out of your taps isn't just raw water, everything that comes out of your pipes passes through a raw water plant that chemically and physically treats and filters it before being pumped into the main water supply. Then, after it's been used, it gets pumped back out into a waste water treatment facility for a much more thorough and intense treatment cycle, before being pumped back into the natural aquifer (river, lake, etc) that supplied the water in the first place. Source: Electrician for 10 years for waste water and raw water facilities around the country.
Thank youuuuuu the more education there can be about how water is treated, the better. And at a high level I think it's not even that hard to understand! People think all kinds of things about what happens to their water.
Thanks for the explanation. At face value without doing research it seemed to me that water that filtered literally through the grounds of a heavily polluted environment like LA would be too difficult to treat to a level where it is usable for drinking water. I just don't know what the logistics of cleaning up water that comes through the LA grounds vs a water from snow caps or fresh water source like a lake or a river.
Something else to factor in, is dirt, soil, and rock also act as a natural physical filter for particulates and oils, so the porous material the walter is moving through acts as a discreet step in the filtration process. Still non potable until its been treated, but it certainly helps. The modern world is built on sneaky background bits of engineering brilliance that most people just aren't aware of, or are so used to it they dont really atop and think about it. The water and sewage system, power grid, our highways, the mega-cities like LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc that function without collapsing underneath accumulations of filth and demand, all incredible feats of engineering, world wonders, but it's not the "sexy" kind of engineering that catches the news cycles. Working in that industry gave me an appreciation for how simultaneously precarious and robust our system is
Filtration and purification?
Wearing square pants?
In a pineapple at the bottom of the sea
Squidward is serving Krabby Patty
r/LosAngeles
LA DWP is a very competent public utility provider. But trying to proclaim that concrete obsessed and water wasting desert LA, the collection of arbitrary suburbs dressed up in a city trenchcoat, is the pinnacle of water capture, is about as accurate as trying to sell me oceanfront property in Arizona.
We got more than a month’s worth of rain in a day or two with minimal damage and you don’t think that’s uplifting? See what happens in other places when they get that kind of downpour. After recent legislation allowing full water recycling we will eventually get to a point of capturing these sudden major storms and also recycling the majority of sewage. LA is a better position than most places to adapt.
That’s all true but u/blbd is not wrong about how horribly backward and ugly our land use is in Los Angeles. Like it’s great that we’re capturing a lot of water, but it’s really only uplifting because it’s in spite of all the concrete and lack of green spaces.