Environmentally Unconscious

I learned something more about the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District ordinance banning salt water pools. And I learned it not from some left coast tree hugging environmental website - though I do tend to gravitate that way - but from an archive issue of Industrial Water World’s on line magazine. These are pretty much industrial wastewater management folks. Not folks you would readily connect with a vast left wing conspiracy to undermine the poor misunderstood Salt Peddlers out there. Here’s the link:

http://ww.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?Section=ARCHI&C=INDUS&ARTICLE_ID=241116&KEYWORDS=salt%20ban&p=41

You have to sign up to be able to get to it. It’s free. Sign up and then type "salt ban" in the search engine and the second article on the search return is:

"Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District adopts ordinance banning saltwater pools
Officials continue to combat chloride discharge to protect Santa Clara River"

The article’s pretty much a rehashing of information I’ve already published in this blog about the salt ban. But it contained one piece of information I didn’t know:

"Swimming pools [in the Santa Clarita Valley] contribute about 125 pounds of salt per day, or about half of a percent of the chloride now entering the sewer system. If there is widespread conversion to saltwater pools, it could increase up to nine fold. If salt levels discharged into the river do not decrease, the Sanitation District may have to install new treatment equipment, possibly more than quadrupling Valley residents' annual sewer bills ..."

So, simple math would indicate that, if left unchecked, the Salt System business in the Santa Clarita Valley could increase up to a 4.5% level of contribution to the chloride discharge problem. Lucky for Santa Clarita pool builders, most pools aren’t plumbed to the sewer because building code doesn’t require it. So they just roll out the old backwash hose and let it spew... into the ground, eventually affecting the groundwater, or into a storm drain, which isn’t connected to the sewer system for waste treatment at all. Everybody keeps telling me I ought to keep my mouth shut about this issue, because it’s the only one I’ve really gotten any flack over. But I’m arguing with a guy who preaches and teaches ways around this ordinance so he and others can keep selling $1200 Salt Boxes. Amazing. As I’ve said before, Bizarro Pool World.

There’s some other news that I think will eventually affect the Salt Peddlers. It’s out of Scottsdale, Arizona. Here’s the link:

http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=67097

The gist of it is, golf courses in Scottsdale use 24 million gallons of water per day to irrigate their courses. But they use treated wastewater. You see, back in the early 1990's, the golf courses ponied up about $12 million to switch over to treated wastewater to get everybody off their backs about using potential drinking water. Trying to be good neighbors and good corporate citizens and all. But now, the grass on the gold courses is starting to decline because of the higher salt content of that wastewater.

And guess where that salt is coming from? Salt pools? Well, yes. But right now they’ve got their sights set on the water softener folks. Here’s why: "Art Nunez, water and wastewater treatment director at the water campus, said rising salt content of the irrigation water can be attributed to Scottsdale’s increased use of Colorado River water over the last two decades, and to the proliferation of water softeners in the city’s north... Increased use of water softeners also has contributed to the level of salt in wastewater, Nunez said... Each softener consumes about 40 pounds to 50 pounds of salt per month, which is flushed into the wastewater system, he said."

So, they’re pushing to speed up a $25 million water project, and add about $23 million to it to accomodate methods to reduce the salinity of wastewater discharge. And the reason that Scottsdale is probably going to say yes is because their golf courses generate "more that $6.2 million in tax revenue for Scottsdale in the peak January-to-April golf season".

How much tax revenue do water softeners and salt pools generate? Gee, I wonder who’s going to win?

The guy who is pushing all this is a fellow named Tim Bray. He’s a consultant with Southwest Community Resources. He’s also on the Board of Directors of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District.

Yeah, I know. Another liberal tree hugger out to strip the poor Salt Peddlers of their right to make oodles of money selling you environmentally unsound technology. But Mr. Bray hasn’t said anything about swimming pool salt systems yet. And to make sure he hasn’t overlooked them, I’m going to send him a letter pointing out the issues in Santa Clarita Valley.

So, you see, first it was Santa Clarita. Now, it’s going to be Scottsdale. Face it. It’s coming to a water district near you. Just wait and see. Salt System manufacturers are baling water on failed technology. And it’s not going to be pool damage that’s going to sink them. It’s going to be the environment. The environment and Rich Guys in Golf Carts. Wait till they hear that keeping salt water in their pool means teeing off on Astro Turf.

Speaking of pool damage... Here’s some nifty photos I took a while back. I was called out to work on a pump. It’s a five year old salt pool. Stamped concrete deck, pebble surface, and LOTS of Oklahoma flagstone for a waterfall that extends across the whole backside of the pool. The pool cost $100,000.

This first photo shows the inside of the difuser. The difuser shrouds the impeller, which is the deivce at the heart of your pump that moves all the water. That’s what’s left of a brass insert after five years of salt water. By the way, click on any of the photos to make them bigger.



Here’s what it looked like when it was new. Click to Enlarge



Here’s the old difuser and the new difuser side by side. I don’t know what the brown patina is. Click to Enlarge.



But it shows up on the shaft seal too. Click to Enlarge.



And the end result is stains on the pebble finish. Click to Enlarge.



These stains are just like the stains on the pool I posted about last week. Is it from the galvanic corrosion going on? The stray currents corrosion? Or maybe just salt contaminated with iron oxide. What? Never heard of contaminated salt? It’s only five bucks a bag and it’s not food grade. What did you expect?

Another thing you can see in the photo of the slotted return is the little pile of light brown dust down in the lower right hand corner. That dust is all over the pool. It’s there because the salt is dissolving all of this Oklahoma flagstone into the pool. Click to Enlarge.



That whole wall is a waterfall. The water comes rushing out from in between those rocks from one end to the other. It’s very impressive when it’s running. That’s where a lot of that $100,000 went. They’ve stopped running it much because of the issues of dissolving the flagstone into the pool.

Last but not least, we have these unexplained stains on the stamped concrete.



These little white spots disappear when the deck is wet, but show up as soon as it dries again. Nothing takes them off. They showed up when the pool was just under a year old. The owner made the builder come back out and strip the finish off the stamped concrete and reapply it. One year later the spots showed up again. Click to Enlarge.

It makes me wonder if stamped concrete is going to go the way of Cool Seal decks when it comes to salt damage.

Well, that’s all the news that fits. See you next week. And, in case you missed it, Click to Enlarge.