Post Aquapocalypse Stories

The Boston Globe has a few interesting stories today about the Aquapocalypse.

I thought Flow restored, MWRA hunting for answers gave a nice summary of the current knowledge of what happened and state of the investigation. It put a number of things in context: the boil water order was in effect only 59 hours, the water was safe throughout but it was a precaution, the history of the failed clamp, etc. I also liked these stats:

"Water usage jumped immediately after Patrick’s 6:45 a.m. news conference, to a daily rate of 284 million gallons, said Ria Convery, a water authority spokeswoman. The normal flow rate is about 180 million gallons per day. The surge probably occurred because officials advised the public to run tap water for 15 to 30 minutes, flush toilets, and run their dishwaters empty to purge their pipes of unpurified water. On Monday, when the boil-water order was in effect, water usage was far below normal — 150 million gallons."

I assume that's for the 2 million affected by the boil water order.

They also wrote As test run for disaster, alert system passed which seems pretty good, though my town didn't do so well. I was at a Kentucky Derby part on the north shore, not affected by the crisis, but they did have a scroll at the bottom of the screen with the info.

Then there's this, Emergency has some in Concord reconsidering bottle ban. "Less than 48 hours before a ruptured water main cut the supply of potable water to about 2 million people in the Boston area, local residents voted to ban all sales of bottled water, an unprecedented measure in the country meant to spur other municipalities to reduce the rising amount of plastic clogging the nation’s streets and landfills."

I mostly agree with, "Jean Hill, 82, who spent months lobbying neighbors to take action against bottled water, said too many people panicked. She noted that most people could easily have spent a few minutes boiling water, rather then rushing to buy bottled water." Given the rush to buy water, I know a lot of people that were unable to find bottled water in stores during the period, so store sales aren't sufficient for such emergency management and I'm not sure they're even necessary.

Anyway, nice coverage Globe.