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As Usual, Portland Carries Lead Weight

While the EPA demands utilities take action when lead levels surpass 15 ppb, Dr. Bruce Lanphear, who has been studying lead poisoning for 25 years, said lead in drinking water can have detrimental health impacts once levels hit 5 ppb. He recommends Portlanders in high-risk homes use filters for their water.

The water bureau says the homes most at risk for lead in the water are those with copper pipes joined with lead solder, which were generally built or plumbed between 1970 and 1985. That’s potentially up to 15,000 homes, according to the bureau. Twice a year, Portland will sample water from the highest risk homes — those built between 1983 and 1985.

Edwards, the Virginia Tech Professor, said Portland holds the distinction as the largest major city consistently displaying high concentrations of lead in their water samples for high-risk homes.

The city's much-ballyhooed Pure Bull Run water isn't so pure once it hits the pipes.

Bottled water is likely fine, but folks may want to steer clear of Portland-area beer producers. I get mine from brewers in Eugene and points south.

 

Seattle State Of Mind

The organizers behind the Alki Beach Polar Bear Swim have changed their participation requirements due to the rapid spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19. None of it makes particular sense.

Swimmers dunk themselves into the Puget Sound’s chilly water each Jan. 1 in this annual tradition. The water is expected to be around 47 degrees. But this time, organizer and community activist Mark Ufkes is reportedly requiring masks at the event.

But that’s not all. Adult participants must be fully vaccinated, booster-ed, and “be in good health.”

Obviously, this is an outdoor event that involves a large amount of chilly water - expected this year to be around 47 degrees F. And quite a bit of fresh air, as well. I could almost see the vaccination part if the event was held indoors, but it's at Puget Sound. Lots of room, lots of air. After years of watching these folks, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that "community activists" are nuts.

 

 

Lobster Rescue

https://digg.com/video/grocery-store-lobster-raised-as-pet

Interesting, and blessedly brief. Still going strong, last I looked.

Odd idea of a pet, admittedly.

 

 

We Got A Bit Of Rain, Here - But B.C. Is Bad

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—The Canadian Pacific coast province of British Columbia declared a state of emergency Wednesday following floods and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall, and officials said they expected to find more dead.

Every major route between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where Canada’s third largest city of Vancouver is, and the interior of the province has been cut by washouts, flooding, or landslides following record-breaking rain across southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday. The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides late Monday.

Premier John Horgan announced the state of emergency Wednesday afternoon in a press conference explaining that the once in a 500-year natural disaster has devastated entire communities and forced thousands to evacuate with many others left stranded by road closures and mudslides. 

I saw footage of a two-story home floating downstream, yesterday. Even apart from that, there's going to be a whole lot of debris to gather and homes to try to dry out. And a lot of drywall to be replaced.

Living near the top of a mountain has a lot to be said for it!

 

 

 

The Pacific Northwest Is in the Midst of a ‘Cascading Hazard’

In British Columbia, around 275 people, including 50 children, had to be rescued off of flooded highways near Vancouver on Monday after they became trapped Sunday evening by a deluge of water, rocks, and mud. At one point on Tuesday, every major road out of Vancouver to the rest of Canada was closed.

About 7,000 people in the town of Merritt, British Columbia, were ordered to evacuate Monday due to flooding and after the wastewater treatment system failed. This is the second time in less than six months that the town of Merritt was under an evacuation order. In August, residents were placed under an evacuation order as two wildfires raged nearby. The wildfire flames have long since been put out, but they’ve left an imprint on the land that’s making the flooding worse.

In Bellingham, Washington, the average daily record rainfall before this weekend was 0.88 inches (2.2 centimeters), which was handily beaten by Sunday’s 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) of rain. And evacuation orders are in place for communities in the valleys as floodwaters keep rising.

More than 40,000 households were still without power in western Washington as of Tuesday and major highways remained closed.

“We call this a cascading hazard,” Ward said. “We have increased heat, increased drought, resulting in increased wildfires, resulting in increased landslides. One hazard triggers another, which triggers another.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/the-pacific-northwest-is-in-the-midst-of-a-cascading-hazard/ar-AAQMzQF

We're keeping our ears open just in case. Vancouver isn't all that far away from here.

 

40 Years

For almost 40 years Ken Smith has shunned conventional life and lived without electricity or running water in a hand-made log cabin on the banks of a remote loch in the Scottish Highlands.

"It's a nice life," says Ken. "Everybody wishes they could do it but nobody ever does."

Not everyone would agree that Ken's isolated, reclusive lifestyle of foraging and fishing as well as collecting firewood and washing his clothes in an old bath outdoors is the ideal. And even less so at the age of 74.

His log cabin is a two-hour walk from the nearest road on the edge of Rannoch Moor, by Loch Treig.

"It's known as the lonely loch," he says. "There's no road here but they used to live here before they built the dam."

Looking down on the loch from hillside, he says: "All their ruins are down there. The score now is one and that's me."

Ken, who is originally from Derbyshire, tells the programme how he began work at the age of 15, building fire stations.

But his life changed at the age of 26 when he was beaten up by a gang of thugs after a night out.

He suffered a brain haemorrhage and lost consciousness for 23 days.

"They said I would never recover. They said I would never speak again," he says.

"They said I would never walk again but I did.

"That's when I decided I would never live on anyone's terms but my own," he says.

Ken began to travel and became interested in the idea of the wilderness.

In the Yukon, the Canadian territory that borders Alaska, he wondered what would happen if he just walked off the highway and "went into nowhere".

So that's what he did, saying he finally walked about 22,000 miles before returning home.

Blubber Anniversary (50th) On Friday

FLORENCE, Ore. - A 45-foot, 8-ton whale washed up on the beach near Florence on Nov. 9, 1970.

Three days later, the whale's tale exploded into history - and became what some people regard as the first-ever viral story.

"It had to be said the Oregon State Highway Department not only had a whale of a problem on its hands," Paul Linnman reported for KATU more than a half century ago. "It had a stinking whale of a problem."

"So dynamite it was, some 20 cases or a half ton of it," he said. "The hope was that the long-dead pacific gray whale would be almost disintegrated by the blast."

"After they blew it up, everyone is watching in awe, and then 30 seconds later - blam blam blam - then everyone's going, 'There's huge chunks of whale blubber getting thrown on us,'" Umenhofer said in 2015.

The plan was to obliterate the whale into tiny pieces that seagulls would eat.

But as Linnman and former KATU Photojournalist Doug Brazil found out, the pieces were not exactly bite-sized.

The two had to run to escape the flying blubber.

One chunk of airborne blubber proved so big it flattened a car.

"It might be concluded that should a whale ever wash ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do," Linnman said in his now infamous report, "they'll certainly remember what not to do."

I remember that one; talk about a huge mess! There was blubber flying everywhere. Bystanders were running away, but couldn't escape from the blubber that was raining down on them. One chunk was so big that it crushed a guy's new car when the blubber fell from the sky. The state hasn't blow up a dead whale since.

Expensive, But Effective - Call Ida.

Experts believe that hundreds of thousands of rats may have perished in the deluge, amounting to one of the largest vermin depopulation events in decades.

NOLA SOL Again

Multiple New Orleans sewage pumps lost power as Hurricane Ida began to thrash Louisiana Sunday morning, with officials calling for remaining residents to limit their usage of wastewater in homes.

Yeah - unless you have generators down there, you've got no power. The whole grid there's non-functional at present. So they're dealing with more crap than usual.

 

 

Mendocino's Running Out Of Water

The historic California town of Mendocino is running out of water and the reservoir it depends on is drying up amid a devastating drought in the state.

Eric Hillesland, who runs the historic Alegria Inn situated in Mendocino Village, said he pays to truck in water so that guests at the hotel can shower. He said it costs $600 for 3,500 gallons of water, which lasts the inn for one week.

There's another problem as well: the towns to the north, from whom they've been buying water, are shutting off the spigots.

At Café Beaujolais in Mendocino, the dining room is empty three nights a week to save water. Owner Julian Lopez said he pays about $3,600 a month for water delivery. He said he can't get more water trucked in because "these towns on the coast are starting to shut off the sale of water."