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New York City is beefing up the effort to prevent a similar tragedy to Hurricane Ida a year removed from the historic storm’s wake of destruction, which left 13 residents dead and hundreds of others permanently displaced. Mayor Eric Adams was on hand yesterday to showcase newly-installed... View full entry
The New York Times' latest Op-Doc—part of their series of short, interactive, and virtual reality documentaries—profiles Julio César Cú Cámara, whose job it is to dive into the sewers and water treatment plants of Mexico City. For the past 36 years, Cámara has been a sewage diver... View full entry
Researchers at Cranfield University in the UK have created a prototype of a toilet that works without being connected to water or sewage systems, and that can generate electricity and clean water as it composts waste. [...]
The Nano Membrane Toilet, which has been developed with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would be a kind of ‘super-toilet’, helping to improve sanitation for people without access to utilities – at present some 2.5 billion people around the world.
— globalconstructionreview.com
This is how the Nano Membrane Toilet works: "The toilet flush uses a unique rotating mechanism to transport the mixture into the toilet without demanding water whilst simultaneously blocking odour and the user’s view of the waste. Solids separation (faeces) is principally accomplished through... View full entry
Waikiki Beach closed on Monday after heavy rains caused by a tropical storm set off the spills.
Tropical Storm Kilo caused 500,00 gallons of wastewater to come gushing out of manholes, making the waterfront unsafe for beachgoers.
"Now's not the time to go swimming," said Lori Kahikina, Honolulu's director of environmental services.
The beachfront sees about 4.5m tourists annually.
It will be a few days before the ocean is safe for people to swim in again, Ms Kahikina said...
— BBC
It works like this: people empty their latrines into a sewage receptacle (currently, latrines are often emptied into rivers), the waste gets funneled through a series of tubes and is pressurized at extreme temperatures, and the byproduct is clean, possibly drinkable water. Deshusses describes the process as “a pressure cooker on steroids.” — wunc.org
'[R]emember that a place like Dubai really emerged in the last 50 years. It was a sleepy, you know, Bedouin town half a century ago. And what you do is when you bring in the world’s, you know, most sophisticated architects and engineers, you can literally build anything, including a building of 140 or 150 stories. But designing a municipal network of sewage treatment is in some ways more complex. - KATE ASCHER — Boing Boing
Terry Gross recently interviewed Kate Ascher about her skyscraper book, and ended up discussing the common lack of sewage connections in Dubai - including the Burj Khalifa. So they end up using trucks to cart the sewage to the central treatment plant, where they often end up queuing for 24-hours... View full entry
