Acceptable or destroying water supply?

[junkytj]

It seems a lot of people don't really understand chemical and biological processes.

When does a tree stop being a tree?

When it's cut down?
When it dies?
when fungus and algae consume it on the forest floor?
when chopped up?
When it's burned?
When it's boiled and smashed flat?
When it's chipped up and put on flower beds?

Burning oil is a chemical reaction and it's no longer oil.
Microorganisms will consume small amounts of oil.

Both of things will create other byproducts. Just like some microorganisms in the soil consume iron and manganese and shit out sulfur when they get in water. It's always better to re-use something that has as much energy put into refining it as oil does. Using it for waste heat or fuel for an engine is reasonable. Recycling it back for another run of usefulness is better. Dumping it is the most wasteful and the worst move, but probably not the end of the world.

 

[grumpy356]

i didn't realize Houston got water from the Trinity River for drinking. i thought ot was all underground

Most of it comes from Lake Houston.

 

[M92PV4U]

 

[Penetrode Offroad]

The earth is an interesting thing. Remember when BP was spewing gazillions of barrels of oil into the ocean and it was going to be the worst disaster in history? Suddenly microorganisms popped up and ate it all.

Not saying that's a rock solid truth in all situations but there are crazy things happening all the time that point to us being nothing but a minor nuisance at best. Chernobyl is a good example. Humans fuck up the ecosystem and it's uninhabitable by humans but don't tell the wildlife and vegetation that it's uninhabitable.

1. Whats happened from Fukashima nuke reactor spill?

2. Thats cause they dont speak Russian. Or whatever.

 

[DWT]

1. Whats happened from Fukashima nuke reactor spill?

2. Thats cause they dont speak Russian. Or whatever.

Fukushima is ok now. The boars are still hot as pig shit (pun fully intended) but having worked at Hanford I understand why. They eat contaminated food and hang out in the hottest zones. No 5th leg or 3rd eye though like we were lead to believe.

Yea, the surroundings of Chernobyl are ok because they don't know they're supposed to be dead.

 

[rockmup]

Does this contaminate the ground in an unhealthy manner or contaminate the aquifers?

What’s the consensus?

I bought a house in Marina Ca. that had 3 of those in the side yard. Never stopped anything from growing

 

[Penetrode Offroad]

Fukushima is ok now. The boars are still hot as pig shit (pun fully intended) but having worked at Hanford I understand why. They eat contaminated food and hang out in the hottest zones. No 5th leg or 3rd eye though like we were lead to believe.

Yea, the surroundings of Chernobyl are ok because they don't know they're supposed to be dead.

no 6 eyed fish and shit?

What you dont know doesnt hurt you.

 

[Levigarrett76]

So has popular mechanics been sued for it yet?

 

[Roc Doc]

No problem at all. Asbestos is only dangerous when airborne. When it's still in shingles as siding or wet it's no more dangerous than the shirt on your back.

Shit, my elementary school had it both in the ceiling tiles and flooring. and look how good I turned out.

 

[Bogus One]

.gov tell you that quart of oil will kill the environment
meanwhile, every single country road is built like this and is magically doesn't hurt anything

Yep
Just like the SWPPP Bullshit
GAWD Forbid a concrete truck washout onto the ground, BUT, put a wood trowel on it and it's a sidewalk

 

[[486]]

Yep
Just like the SWPPP Bullshit
GAWD Forbid a concrete truck washout onto the ground, BUT, put a wood trowel on it and it's a sidewalk

I don't understand all (well, two) of the "concrete truck washout" comments

it's just water and lime and sand and stone
big whoop

 

[Bogus One]

I don't understand all (well, two) of the "concrete truck washout" comments

it's just water and lime and sand and stone
big whoop

Exactly
But it's a big SWPPP No-No.
Put it on the ground to create a slab or sidewalk, no big whoop.

 

[Corey Young]

 

[Sandy Johnson]

I bought a house in Marina Ca. that had 3 of those in the side yard. Never stopped anything from growing

Which side of town? Close to the dump?

 

[Levigarrett76]

I don't understand all (well, two) of the "concrete truck washout" comments

it's just water and lime and sand and stone
big whoop

This is the bizarre thinking behind it
Its become more and more commonplace for these to be required on the smallest of construction projects

What Is a Concrete Washout and Why Do You Need One?

If your construction site isn't using a concrete washout system, you need to reconsider. Learn about these solutions and their benefits here.

www.paylessrolloff.com

 

[rockdog57]

Yep
Just like the SWPPP Bullshit
GAWD Forbid a concrete truck washout onto the ground, BUT, put a wood trowel on it and it's a sidewalk

That’s some funny shit right there. Poured a couple of driveways on Saturday. Concrete truck had to wash out in my wheelbarrow. Nope, can’t wash out on my dirt pile. After she was done, I wheeled it up to my dirt pile and dumped it out.

 

[Stingray]

Most of my waste oil gets thinned down enough to spray through a back pack sprayer. I have a 12x100 gravel parking area. I spray regularly to keep down the dust.

When it rains its a rainbow. but the dust stays down.

 

[Hooligan]

It was probably okay in the 50s with less people, and likely the folks doing that were more rural. Imagine today if all the peeps in LA or NY did this…probably wouldn’t be good.

 

[fordguy]

what the fak

 

[arse_sidewards]

I'm surprised nobody threw a match on the methane vent for shits and giggles.

 

[Pocahontas]

How the hell is this thread this long.

Don’t dump oil on the ground because there’s better uses for waste oil than wasting it. If you get some oil on the ground it’s not a big deal as long as it’s not hundreds of gallons. Don’t see how this is even a thread, this shit is just common sense especially for anyone on this site.

 

[Provience]

How the hell is this thread this long.

Don’t dump oil on the ground because there’s better uses for waste oil than wasting it. If you get some oil on the ground it’s not a big deal as long as it’s not hundreds of gallons. Don’t see how this is even a thread, this shit is just common sense especially for anyone on this site.

Not 56% of people polled who think it's the end of the world

 

[Filthy McChevy]

Cool Starry time:
I had a friend who lived in low income .Gov apartments in east San Jose by Story Rd and Capitol Expressway. He pointed out the sewer (storm drain) gratings in the parking lot were all black with orl from the residents there pulling up on the curb over the drains to drain their orl right into the sewer when changing orl in their cars.

 

[bgaidan]

I don't understand all (well, two) of the "concrete truck washout" comments

it's just water and lime and sand and stone
big whoop

....and plasticizers, water reducer, fly ash, corrosion inhibitors.....

It's really not a problem on a small pour with a few trucks. But scale it up to a big project that's running 50-100 trucks in a pour and at some point there's enough volume that the runoff can fuck some shit up.



When surface grinding or profiling highway concrete pavement, you used to be able to run to shoot off the side and dump the slurry down the slopes of the shoulder. And the next summer, you'd see the greenest grass on those shoulders. Then they said you have to capture the slurry and put it in a lined settling pond, evaporate the water off and solidify the concentrated slurry and send that to a landfill. Now you either need to truck it to a treatment plant or bringing in a portable plant and separate the solids and PH treat the water to a safe discharge level. Last time I dealt with pricing, it was adding $1.5m to a typical maintenance grinding project.

 

[DWT]

....and plasticizers, water reducer, fly ash, corrosion inhibitors.....

It's really not a problem on a small pour with a few trucks. But scale it up to a big project that's running 50-100 trucks in a pour and at some point there's enough volume that the runoff can fuck some shit up.



When surface grinding or profiling highway concrete pavement, you used to be able to run to shoot off the side and dump the slurry down the slopes of the shoulder. And the next summer, you'd see the greenest grass on those shoulders. Then they said you have to capture the slurry and put it in a lined settling pond, evaporate the water off and solidify the concentrated slurry and send that to a landfill. Now you either need to truck it to a treatment plant or bringing in a portable plant and separate the solids and PH treat the water to a safe discharge level. Last time I dealt with pricing, it was adding $1.5m to a typical maintenance grinding project.

The EPA knows better than you plebes!


The shitty river running around my old home town needed another bridge built. They had to dry pour the pilings so they set large tubes around them. Any water that seeped inside had to be pumped a couple hundred feet up top to a settling pond to let the dirt settle out before pumping it back into the river. They said the water had to be cleaner going back in than it came out. 50 years ago the water would have just been pumped right back over the tubes instead of all the bullshit.

 

[arse_sidewards]

Then they said you have to capture the slurry and put it in a lined settling pond, evaporate the water off and solidify the concentrated slurry

How's the grass on the slope of the settling pond?

 

[bgaidan]

How's the grass on the slope of the settling pond?

Oh....I can bring you to two of my projects from ~5-6 years ago and show you exactly where they were.


The first thing you do is accidentally take a t-post and poke a few dozen holes in the bottom of the liner to speed up the evaporation process. Once you get down to a thick-sh slurry, you send the hoe in and scoop a couple buckets of slop in to the dumpster. You do this around 4:30 so the inspector sees you doing it when he goes home at 5. You're gonna work late that night. Loading up the rest of the slurry in to the dumpster and grading out the old pond. When the inspectors come in the next morning, there's a nicely graded field where the settling pond used to be, and all the slurry and liner are in the dumpster, of course.

Allegedly.

 

[arse_sidewards]

Allegedly.

That sounds so much more environmentally friendly than spreading the waste out over the length of the grinding job.

I wonder if I can get some of that shit dumped on my land after I get the trees cleared.

 

[bad zuki]

Sure, but lined landfills are magnitudes better than just burying it or dumping it in the ground. The biggest issue it with the landfill owners/designers making their cells way to big and the amount of leachate created while they're in operation. Once they're capped and sealed, leachate production drops significantly and relatively quickly approaches zero.

I don't know much about the design, just the byproduct of ours. A 10' tall methane flame reminder of the byproduct of a sealed landfill. Methane that is too acidic to be burnt for energy production.

When surface grinding or profiling highway concrete pavement, you used to be able to run to shoot off the side and dump the slurry down the slopes of the shoulder. And the next summer, you'd see the greenest grass on those shoulders.

Dang, this reminds me of an ammonia story. Ammonia is vacuumed down into a bucket of water to kill the smell, and it likes to attach to the water molecule and is basically a fertilizer. I didn't know any better and just dumped it out on the grass behind the work area. We got a call a week later demanding we pay to replace the dead grass. We went back for servicing over a 2 year span and that grass was the thickest, tallest, greenest grass you've ever seen just in the shape of a water bucket flow path.

Before anyone asks. it was De Minimis release. Still less than the local factories leak into the environment around here.

 

[bgaidan]

I don't know much about the design, just the byproduct of ours. A 10' tall methane flame reminder of the byproduct of a sealed landfill. Methane that is too acidic to be burnt for energy production.

Really. Most of the larger landfills around here have small-ish generators that run of the gas and back feed the grid. There was one I worked on that piped the gas about a mile away to feed a cement plant. Guessing they used it to heat the kilns. No clue what goes in to those systems or if they do any kind of scrubbing before they can burn it though.