5 minute read
Quarantined for 14 Days The Lore of Odessa – Insight into the MRWA Wastewater
QUARANTINED FOR 14 DAYS
Advertisement
When the phone rang late Saturday afternoon, I figured it was one of the kids calling, but after hearing the inflection in my wife’s voice as she answered, I knew it was not the kids and there was something wrong. This was our conversation after she hung up the phone:
Wife: That was the county health department and they have quarantined me for 14 days!
Me: Why?
Wife: Because I passed Marissa at the post office on Thursday and she’s tested positive for
COVID-19.
Me: But you didn’t stand and talk with her, you only said ‘Hi’ and ‘How are you?’ in passing.
Wife: Evidently that’s enough for them to quarantine me and I have to stay in a completely different room from you, too.
Me: Am I quarantined, too?
Wife: Not according to the health department, just me.
Me: That doesn’t make sense! If you were exposed on Thursday and we’ve been together for the last two days, that would make me exposed also, so I’m going to selfquarantine!
That was the gist of the conversation and for the next two weeks, my wife stayed in the back part of the house and I stayed in the front part. That left me sleeping on the couch and doing all the cooking! Now, I’m not saying I haven’t slept on the couch before, but I didn’t even do anything wrong and it seems like I’m being punished! Of course, I suppose my wife felt like she was being punished on the day I prepared her breakfast and then went out to my shop and worked until 6 pm that evening before I came back into the house and started preparing supper. She did let me know that she expected to be fed a little more often than that! Truth is, sleeping on the couch wasn’t punishment, but not being able to hug and kiss my wife was! And, not being able to hold my grandkids, hug my kids, or socialize with any of my family or friends, definitely felt like punishment! If this was the ‘new normal’, I was not fond of it! However, I understand the need for social distancing to prevent the spread of this virus, so for now, I am not shaking hands with people to introduce myself and am praying for an end to this madness.
You hear the phrase new normal quite often, but, let me say there are some old normal things still around. One of those is the amount of power it takes to pump water. Most of the time, the power used to pump water is electricity, and the national average cost of electricity to pump water is $.50/1000 gallons, or, $500.00 to pump 1,000,000 gallons. Again, this is the national average, but I know for a fact that in southern Missouri, it costs approximately $350.00 to pump a million gallons of water so it could be higher or lower for you, depending on where you live..
Over the past few months, of the water leaks I’ve located throughout the state, two separate communities stand out. I assisted both with locating their leaks and, both communities repaired the leaks and saw significant decreases in their electric bills. The first system I would like to discuss was a small POA (Property Owners Association) with approximately 50 meters. Soon after a change in management during a MoDNR sanitary survey, they
(continued from page 19) were told their pumps were cycling too often and they should call MRWA Resource Conservation Circuit Rider Wayne Roderman for assistance in locating the problem. We discovered they were losing approximately 40 gallons per minute with no water surfacing anywhere. Investigating the system, we were able to discern which water line had the leak and then we were able to pinpoint the exact location of the leak. The month following the repaired leak, their electric bill decreased by $550.00, which caused me to wonder when the electric bill began increasing. Checking back in their records, we discovered the monthly electric bill increased over $500 in August 2009! That is almost eleven years of escalated electric bills due to a water leak! At this point I asked, “Didn’t anyone question an electric bill increasing that much in one month?” I also had to wonder why someone hadn’t noticed the increase with the pumps cycling on and off. Believe it or not, I have met people that have worked for water systems in the past that would say, “I don’t care how much they have to spend on something” or “It’s no skin off my nose”, but let me say, it is skin off of your nose! When you work for someone, one of the ways to get a pay raise is to decrease the cost of doing business, and water systems are just that, a business. Water may be free as it falls from the sky, but when you pipe it to your house, it costs for pumps, piping, electricity, and someone to maintain the system and ensure the water is safe to drink when it reaches you! And none of this brings in the consideration of wasting one of our natural resources.
The second system I refer to is a small community with a population of approximately 900 people. At this system we located and repaired a water leak which decreased their electric bill over $500 a month. Checking back in their records, we discovered this was a gradual increase since 2013. The danger of a gradual increase is we become acclimated to the higher cost of doing business and presume that it is normal. You need to check your records and if you’re not selling any more water today than you were five years ago, why are you pumping more? This reminds me of a story Grandma told about putting a frog in a pot of water and then putting it on the fire. In the story, the frog kept swimming around in the water not realizing it was getting hotter all the time until he was cooked. Let us not be like the frog, just swimming around unconcerned until it is too late, but let us look proactively at our water systems and address situations that arise before they become costly problems. One other thing I wanted to point out, neither one of these water leaks were surfacing. There were no wet spots, greener grass, or soft spots in the ground. Losing that much water, everybody always says, “there would have to be a lake around here somewhere.” Water leaks do show up, but sometimes not where we expect them to. It could be on your electric bill…
