If I Were Mayor Of Greensboro: Part 39, The Other Part Of The Drinking Water Debate

Over a week ago I was approached by a group calling themselves Clean Water Greensboro.

It was there I was presented with an interesting fact:

"Most developed nations, including the vast majority of western Europe, do not fluoridate their drinking water. Cities that do not fluoridate their water include: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Florence, Frankfurt, Geneva, Glasgow, Helsinki, London, Montreal, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Tokyo, Vancouver, Venice, Vienna, and Zurich."

Hum...

Turns out fluoridation doesn't produce the results some folks once claimed it did. I mean hey, scientists used to tell us smoking was good for us and doctors once prescribed alcohol and cocaine for all that ailed you but no one believes that any more either. So without getting into a fight over Russians using fluoridated water to control prisoners (That didn't work either) let's just admit that maybe, way back when (80 years ago) the research was wrong. The EPA classified Fluoride as a neurotoxin.

"January’s EPA recommendation reversal was made following a revised risk assessment study that found 2 out of 5 adolescents had tooth streaking or spottiness and some pitting as a result of excessive fluoride. In addition, other studies have found excessive ingestion of fluoride capable of increasing the risk of brittle bones leading to fractures and debilitating bone abnormalities.

There have always been fluoride critics who questioned the chemical’s safety and challenged the decision to use fluoride in municipal drinking water. According to the Los Angeles Times, back in 2005, “the heads of 11 EPA unions, including those representing the agency’s scientists, demanded that EPA reduce the permissible level of added fluoride in water to zero, citing research suggesting it can cause cancer. Other studies have pointed to neurotoxicity and hormone disruption from excessive fluoride”.

In Why Fluoridation Is Unjustified the folks at Clean Water Greensboro spell it all out.

Now when it comes to Chloramine, that stuff is just plain nasty. For starters, it has a foul odor I smell every time I turn on the water. Perhaps you've smelled it too. Chloramine also leaches lead from pipes and solder in older houses. Does the EPA require the use of Chloramine or Fluoride? No the EPA does not.

And while Chlorine can be removed by most common household water filters, Chloramine passes straight through those filters into your bodies, the bodies of your children, and the bodies of your unborn children. And you don't even want to know what Chloramine does to unborn babies.

Well, the fact is: we don't know what Chloramine does to unborn babies because it hasn't been studied but using Chloramine requires the use of Chlorine Burnouts to to keep the water system clean, and after the burnout we get Chlorine spikes sometimes lasting as long as 2 months which can lead to excessive trihalomethane:

"Maternal exposure to THMs may be associated with fetal growth retardation. Our findings are consistent with most previous work, although we generally found smaller effects of TTHMs on low birth weight and intrauterine growth retardation."

I don't claim to know much about babies as the only baby I recall bringing into this world would be 39 if he were still alive today but as I recall tiny babies often have lots of problems.

But none of that is what I want to talk about.

Clean water Greensboro wants to do away with Chloramine and Fluoride while simply using Chlorine as a disinfectant. And they want to improve our water filtration system by switching to Granular Activated Carbon instead of the sand filled filters we use now.

One of the great things about using Granular Activated Carbon instead of sand or other filter mediums (besides the fact that it filters better) is that spent Granular Activated Carbon can be used for fuel instead of having to go straight to an expensive hazardous materials landfill. You see, that's where the sand must go now.

But there is another advantage to getting rid of Chloramine that the folks at Clean Water Greensboro never thought of. The economic development advantage it would bring us.

You see, a lot of people in Greensboro have been talking about urban farming, fish farming, and Aquaponics of late. And when you consider that "The World's Largest Sustainable Indoor Fisheries" are located less than one hour away in nearby Martinsville, Virginia, it just makes sense to turn some of these empty old buildings in Greensboro's poorest communities into Aquaponic farms raising fresh fish and vegetables. We could turn Greensboro into the Aquaponics center of the world with not only Aquaponics but all the manufacturing involved to build the equipment needed. As a matter of fact, the manufacturers are already here, they would simply have to expand their product lines.

But alas, fish can't live in chemically treated water and while Chlorine is easily removed from city water, removing Chloramine from the large amounts of water needed to fill commercial fish tanks is just too expensive.

Seems to me a smart Mayor would also know that an Aquaponics industry would consume more of that water the Greensboro Water Department so desperately needs to sell since all the mills closed down and Greensboro's water usage has been dropping since 1995. --Mike J Baron Greensboro Water Conservation Manager

But alas, Greensboro doesn't have a smart mayor.

But if enough of you were to write-in Billy Jones for Mayor we could have safer water, economic development, locally produced foods, more jobs, and lower water bills all because of one simple change in the way things are done.

Now if I can only remember to mail the 2017 Clean Water Greensboro Candidate Survey back to them so they'll know where I stand.

Please continue reading Billy Jones For Mayor Of Greensboro, Part 40, Let's Put The Money Where It Does The Most Good