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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Clean water . . . Anywhere?
Message-ID: <539@shark.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Feb-84 16:34:19 EST
Article-I.D.: shark.539
Posted: Wed Feb 22 16:34:19 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Feb-84 00:12:54 EST
References: <885@ihuxm.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 44


Actually still LIVING in "God's Heaven on Earth" I can make a few
points about the water quality here.

The water in parts of Eastern Orygun is unpotable.  Ground water is
contaminated by high amounts of arsenic in the soil, presumably
deposited by some mysterious (to me) volcanic action when Eastern
Orygun was settling out of the lava floes.

The water in Southern Orygun is among the purest in the country,
although in places the air is beginning to lose it.  In Medford it is
possible to use tapwater in place of distilled water for almost all
uses, except for laboratory uses where any halogens are unacceptable.

The water in this area (Portland) is almost as clean as the water in
the mountain valleys in Montana.  Not quite, though.

As for rotting elk and other things, be reminded that elk are larger
and less common than rats and other vermin (which rot in YOUR water),
and that filtration occurs when water flows through sand and that
dilution occurs when water combines from many sources.  I know this is
not always the case back in the desolate reaches east of the
Mississippi (spelled right, by the way)  but then we seldom completely
pave over our waterways here, and the population density is lower, and
the industries here tend not only to generate less pollution by volume
(Air more than Water, what with the laws of this state) but they also
generate less chemically active pollution and more in the way of smokey
particulates, which tend to precipitate to the ground.  They don't make
it totally undrinkable.  Nor does our rain tend to cause third degree
acid burns nor dissolve pets and small children.

As for insecticides, we have LOTS of people who don't like them, and it
requires major permissions to use wide area insecticides, and further,
the TYPES of insecticides are restricted.  We have a lot less trouble
in that respect than most other states.  For your edification, the
state of Orygun is the ONLY state in the USA to have defined in law the
requirements that food crops must meet before they can be labelled as
Organic.  So there.

Nyah, Nyah,

Hutch