Podcast

Clean Water Matters More Than Ever

April 25, 2020April 28, 2020 Mike Nowak clean water, Community Supported Fisheries, Debra Shore, don’t flush sanitary wipes, Dr. Nicolaas Mink, eco-influencer, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, overfishing our oceans, Peggy Malecki, Sitka Salmon Shares, The Mike Nowak Show

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(April 26, 2020) You know you’re in the midst of a pandemic when sanitary wipes are in the headlines. And when authorities admonish people to “flush with care.” These are strange times, indeed. That’s why we’re so grateful to know smart, responsible people like Commissioner Debra Shore from the MWRD. That’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, for those of you who don’t keep track of our waste water. And she knows that clean water matters.

Skip to a specific segment in today’s podcast here.
7:50 MWRD Commissioner Debra Shore
54:15 Dr. Nicolaas Mink from Sitka Salmon Shares
1:24:40 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio

A year ago, we were talking to Shore about clean water in the time of climate change. Now it’s the COVID-19 pandemic. Distressingly, there are many similarities.

“We went through the stages of climate change denial in the matter of a week,” said Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, who studies how misinformation spreads. Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science who has studied the origins of climate disinformation, spelled out the pattern in an email: “First, one denies the problem, then one denies its severity, and then one says it is too difficult or expensive to fix, and/or that the proposed solution threatens our freedom.”

And here we are, at a point when some states are “re-opening up” far too soon, mainly because the messages coming out of the White House have been confusing, at best. At worst…don’t get me started.

However, Debra Shore is here today to talk about why clean water matters. She recently sent out a newsletter that reminded people to flush nothing other than pee, poop and toilet paper.

That’s right – flush NOTHING else down the toilet. Not paper towels, not disinfecting wipes, not diapers, not wet wipes, not dental floss, not baby wipes, not disposable sanitary products, not Kleenex, not napkins, not even so-called flushable wipes. Put them in the trash instead. Why? Because wipes clog pipes!

In an article on their website, MWRD explains why.

Wipes are trouble for infrastructure in cities of all sizes, and in all parts of the country. They are often reinforced paper or fabric (some contain plastic threads), and are designed to remain intact under friction to keep from disintegrating in consumer’s hands.

“With COVID-19, [the problem] has increased exponentially,” Keith Oldewurtel, chief operating officer at Veolia North America, told Smart Cities Dive. “People were always flushing wipes, but at a much, much lower rate and not in as much of a concentrated period of time. When COVID-19 came about and people started using the disinfecting wipes, it exploded.”

In wastewater systems, wipes can either wrap around and damage equipment or create sewer line blockages. Many wipes claim to be flushable, but they don’t break down like toilet paper or human waste.

“They don’t dissolve. Period,” Shaun O’Kelley, operations and maintenance manager at KC Water in Kansas City, MO, told Smart Cities Dive. “Put a wipe in a blender… It won’t dissolve. At the treatment plant, it’s going to get stuck.”

Here’s one more problem.

Did you hear about the monstrously large ‘fatberg’ consisting of fat, oil, grease and, yes, wet wipes 210 feet in diameter found clogging a sewer in England in 2019? Fat and oil poured down the drain congeal in sewers and block the flow. Wipes (and other materials that should never be flushed) accumulate and make the ‘berg’ grow ever larger. London’s water utility revealed in 2017 it had finally broken up a “fatberg” measuring 800 feet long and weighing 130 tons. This is no joke, people.

No, it is not. Especially during a pandemic. We’ll examine other reasons why clean water matters with MWRD Commissioner Debra Shore this morning. BTW, you can find a list of what NOT to flush–and it’s pretty much everything other than The Big Three–here.

Will COVID-19 save our fish populations?

If clean water matters, we need to think about our oceans, too. The 21st century world is so interconnected that it’s almost impossible to measure the good and the bad of COVID-19 at the same time. For instance, it’s good that the skies around the globe have become clearer, right? Not if you read this blog post from Guy McPherson, who has been on our show several times. He writes,

I strongly suspect the ongoing reduction in industrial activity will reduce the aerosol masking effect sufficiently to trigger a 1 C temperature spike, as described in the peer-reviewed literature. In fact, I suspect it already has.

In case you’re wondering, in a world that is worried about global temperature increases, that’s not a good thing. You might also know that Professor McPherson is extremely controversial. Deal with it.

The same could be said for fishing. The Smithsonian Magazine muses on this issue.

The spread of COVID-19 has forced such a stop upon the world. The question now is what effects, if any, a slowdown will have on fish populations. A slowdown that lasts a couple of months would not have much long-lasting impact. However, if demand for fish dropped because of a wider recession, operations could take longer to restart. A slowdown of at least a year would allow most fish to go through their spawning cycle—and that may be enough for some species to flourish.

“Most European fish stocks (whitefish, flatfish, herring) will nearly double their biomass within one year without fishing. So, reduction in catch caused by coronavirus will lead to an increase in fish biomass,” says Rainer Froese of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany. Froese says this could benefit about 40 percent of the stocks currently being overfished.

Can I see a show of hands from folks who think we’ll rethink about how we fish once the pandemic is over? Yeah, I thought so. So, perhaps the only time that human exploitation of our planet’s resources slows is when war or pestilence reigns supreme. That would be very sad, if inevitably true.

Which brings us to Dr. Nicolaas Mink, CEO and founder of Sitka Salmon Shares. The company, as we always mention in full disclosure, is a sponsor of the show. But Dr. Mink always brings a wealth of information about seafood to our radio table, so to speak. He spoke to us in January, when COVID-19 was already spreading in our country but we didn’t know it yet. That seems like a zillion years ago.

But just yesterday, we learned about the expected salmon harvest forecasts and outlooks for Alaska from The Cordova Times (which, no doubt, most of you subscribe to).

A catch of 4.2 million coho salmon is projected this year, a 300,000 fish increase.
For chums, a catch of 19.5 million would be a drop of 100,000 fish.
For sockeye salmon, a harvest forecast of just over 48 million compares to 55.5 million reds taken in Alaska last year, or a drop of 13.3 percent.
A run of nearly 50 million sockeyes is expected to surge into Bristol Bay’s nine river systems, six percent higher than the 10-year average. That should produce a catch of 37 million reds, down from nearly 42 million last year.
Besides the Bay, the outlook for salmon fisheries in most other Alaska regions is fairly bleak.

One man’s “bleak” is another fish’s “brilliant.” Just sayin’. Today we hope to learn about how Sitka Salmon Shares is moving forward in the face of this crisis. Mink writes this on the company blog.

Of course, for those who understand our company, our mission, and our values, you probably have anticipated the steps we’re taking. We’ve significantly expanded paid sick leave for our entire team, while rapidly building policies to take care of those who are the most vulnerable among us and the most likely to be affected by the current social and economic dislocation. These social priorities align with our priorities for your health and safety. Internally, we’re following the most cautious interpretations of the directives shared to us by the CDC and local and state health departments on top of the local, state, and federal regulations we always follow to ensure your safety. We’ve got all hands on deck to ensure the safety of our product and we’re developing a comprehensive guide for you that will be released in the coming days to provide full transparency for this process.

It’s odd to think about how closely CSFs (Community Supported Fisheries) are related to CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). But they are. Just as clean water matters, so do community supported programs. And we learn a lot when we connect all of the dots.