Editorial

Tax Day is looming, the deadline we all over complain about, deal with anyway and somehow always survive — often ending with a nice refund check from the IRS. How much of our complaining is justified and how much is just an inbred response to anything made mandatory by the big, bad government?

As an educator who has always lived in the town where I work, I’ve often struggled with being associated with any sort of alcohol consumption and the perception it might give to my students.

Proud of the brown lawns

Millions of gallons of oil have been spilled across the United States through ship, rail and road collisions, explosions, pipeline ruptures, storms, etc. Big oil disasters continue to reverberate through the environment and through our news cycles: the BP oil rig explosion that wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the ship Cosco Busan that crashed into the Bay Bridge in 2007 dumping oil into San Francisco Bay, and the famous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. While we watch the ongoing analysis, litigation and attempted cleanup from these high-profile events, there are measures we can all take to reduce a lesser but still very serious threat.

For centuries, civilized peoples recognized the need for removal of bodily wastes from the human environment. Apart from the obvious odors and appearance of this waste, either on land or in bodies of water, the disease-causing germs were also present. Dysentery, Typhoid Fever, Cholera, and other public health issues were often found to be caused by the presence of bacteria and parasites in drinking water sources which were contaminated by wastewater. In areas where populations are concentrated, and where there is more wastewater to treat, communities construct wastewater collection systems that collect the wastewater and convey it to a treatment facility. The wastewater collection system typically consists of gravity-fed and pressurized underground piping which allows the unobstructed flow of wastewater to treatment facilities.