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Robotic Mini-sub to Inspect NYC Water System
jhiv writes: "The Delaware Aqueduct, one of the world's longest water tunnels, may be developing potential serious leaks, according to this article in the New York Times (free registration). One leak has already created a pond and a stream with a flow of a million gallons per day. New York city officials plan to use a robotic mini-submarine being developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to inspect the interior of the 13 foot diameter tunnel. Previous repairs required four deep sea divers to spend almost a week at 700 feet pressure to fix a leaking valve. Ironically, if the tunnel is repaired, the wetlands created by leaks will be destroyed, causing a potential EPA violation. Additional coverage can be found here and here." NYC has been building a third major water tunnel to take the load off the first two - but it's a fifty-year project.
It's simply amazing to me how much we take for granted our water supply....
:-)
That said, I hope there's still water to run through the aqueduct come May.... we're having a SERIOUS drought condition here in the Northeast...
In fact, both Jersey and New York (ever notice how Jersey is the only "New" state that can be named without the "new"? Anyway...) Anyway, both Jersey and New York are in a "Stage 3" water emergency.... and it's only early March!
This is gonna be a bad one.... let's hope the little yellow submarine finds some secret cache of a few billion gallons
--NBVB
It's a fresh water tunnel, not a sewer, moron.
This is probably one of the best ideas as in some cases water could flow in. Building some sort of water testing systems or collection systems into the sub for testing would be g00d as sources of contamination from chemical factories could also be found.
internet like monkeys'
The television show Beauty & The Beast with Linda Hamilton filmed in the huge hole that was in NY's Central Park 10 years ago. This hole was the drop point for large equipment to get lowered into the tunnel being digged. For those inerested it was West-South-West of Delcorte Theater. I think the new drop point is in Queens now...
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
The nice thing about this capital project, is it may be the first major capital project that is on schedule. Compared to the Big Dig in Boston, the NYC water project is remarkably on schedule, and is even arguably ahead of schedule.
In fact, 13 miles of the third tunnel is ALREADY activated and allows a little of the stress of tunnels 1 and 2 to be relieved.
I can't even imagine what the city will do when this project will be done... they'll be a serious amount of money freed up for more capital projects. Perhaps sinking the west side highway from canal to the brooklyn/battery tunnel and creating another central park-type area? The idea's been batted around since the 80s. Hmm... Gotta say, nothing seems to keep NYC down.
Gods... why can't man reshape the world in his own vision... why does some tree hugging, liberal whale loving idiot always got to spout off against development.
I live in NJ... I would rather have decent roads and what not, better and bigger facilities and housing, than a few extra trees.
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Seriously though isn't the hudson system supposed to supply some of the cleanest water in the world to the denizens of new york?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Of all the ridiculous, stupid things... a wetlands that is artificial, when removed, is an EPA violation? JFC, things have gotten out of hand.
You'd think that the artificial wetlands WOULD be an EPA violation, since it is not supposed to be there and has obviously changed the area dramatically.
Welcome to era where environmentalist whackos can take your property rights if your water pipe has a leak and makes a pond of standing water in your back yard. Suddenly, your property is a wetlands, and we all know you can't damage a wetlands. The poor tadpoles might need to go find a new home.
And the damage to your land equity isn't even reimbursed most places.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
What a stupid web site!!!!!!!!!
The FedGov and TomRidge have been ordering our nation's libraries to pull any material describing water treatment facilities, watersheds, reservoirs, and pipelines because the A-Rabs could use this information in a terror attack.
Now the nitwits in New York City lay out the locations of the only two aquifers supplying same. Why not just paint bullseyes on the pipes? You'd kill a lot more people by cutting of the water supply than you'd ever kill with planes.
God, are you stoooooooooooooooooopid.
What I find most interesting about all of this is the statement about repairs being too risky and to just let the thing leak itself to death, hopefully while building a new tunnel.
I agree with the lawyer in this case -- this seems like a really serious problem, with the capability of affecting many, many people. NYC has already had it's share of disasters, hopefully a city-wide water failure won't be next.
I was also thinking about that 1958 inspection, and the statement in the article about how draining a high pressure underground tunnel can be very dangerous to it's structure. Is it possible that a significant amount of damage occured in the '58 jeep tour, when the tunnel is drained? The sources at hand even state the sink-hole was created around this time, so possibly the ignorance of the past and an inspection is to blame for these leaks?
All I can say is I hope they will do something preventative. How big is the risk to do repairs vs. building a new tunnel? Hopefully we will all have water in a few years! This news (including the 12-year cover up) is certainly interesting to know...and it's been going on all along under our feet!
I wouldn't take much risk with something as fundamental as water.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Now if only they could find a solution to the rodent infestation problem.
Or would that cause another EPA violation?
Why don't they just use duct tape to seal the leak?
The job seems like _the_ poster-boy for why we need autonomous robots...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
It's an aquaduct, not a sewer.
Or better yet, how about Leak Ender 2000?
First of all, the Corps of Engineers regulates filling of wetlands (through the 404 permit process), not the EPA.
Second of all, this is exempt from Corps fill requirements as it is a man-made water source.
How do I know? Because I'm the one that gets Corps wetland delineations done for the water agency I work for, and man-made sources (like those created from all of our water sampling stations) are NOT regulated by the Corps.
The guy in the article said "Those wetlands are going to dry up and that's probably against the law." Note the "probably". He obviously does not do regulatory work.
Before anyone else on this board talks about "environmentalist whackos", get your facts straight.
Well I remember the over 7 thousand who died in the World Trade Center attack and also in the attack on the Pentagon. Ye Gods Man! Have respect for your country and the many great people who make it up, or else I might think you should have been among one of those 7 thousand...
We've been freezing our butts off in the cold North patiently waiting. We have control of the waters of life. You will bow before us... soon... soon
>if the tunnel is repaired, the wetlands created by leaks will be destroyed, causing a potential EPA violation.
So a MAN made water source is a wetlands.
Oops, I left the yard sprinkler on too long...I gotta go turn it off before some EPA guy declares it a wetlands.
Let's see can declaring a man-made place a wetlands and therefore preventing development and thus lowering the value of the land be termed 'unreasonable search and seizeure'????
This must be the start of a scam to get New York locked into higher water wholesaling prices.
:)
Beware of owning any exciting water wholesaling companies come next fall!
my blog
Are they nuts?! Just driving a harmless little robot around the sewer system. Next thing you know you'll have alligators in the street, vigilante ninja turtles and rivers of slime that lead to bill murray driving Mecha Liberty around with a 8 bit Nintendo "arcade style" joystick!
What the hell are they thinking?!
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
Never mind...
Does he really do gay stuff as well? I'll be damned.
I suspect many geeks would also be interested in this book The Great Stink of London about the Victorian engineering works that transformed London and the Thames. A fascination subject, considering the same tunnels etc. are still in use today. If any code you write lasts as long then ....
development.lombardi.com
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This guy is a NUT!
I know for a fact in Michigan a company I worked for tried to buy a ton of land for three large manufacturing plants.
good flat land in michigan naturally has some watery swampy marsh on it usually somewhere, but if the water is a recent MAN MADE issue it is NOT excempt.
So man made swamps are too regulated by whackos.
In fact in this case the mashy area was caused by a small area of water buildup near the bank of a highway system and the highway embankments directed some rainwater and rivlets onto the property creating the man made semi-swampy section.
IT WAS PROTECTED AS A WETLAND and so were a large amount of buffer zone around it.
I hav nothing against protecting legitimate ponds from dredging, or legitimate swamps from filling (I have seem tens of both illegally done in michigan) but this poster has his head up his rear if he thinks that waterflow created by man is a consideration of swamp or pond status... it isnt.
If it does not look like a water truck accident spilled a load, and instead represents a couple years of plant growth, and harbors a few chiping frogs and a turtle or two it is very protectable.
Same thing if you plant pine tree on your own tree farm for xmas trees in Placer County CA. If these trees ever get to 15 feet because you forget to cut your trees down regularly they become a legal FOREST. A federally protected FOREST of hundreds of 15 foot trees that cannot be cut down.
even though they were recently planted.
I do not care one way or another about man made marshes or ponds, but this guy is flat out WRONG despite his claims of expertise in the field. WRONG.
Roman aquaducts seem to be lasting 20 times as long as this. Silly capitalism. :)
Seriously, crumbling infrastructure is only part of the reason that I see water getting (comparitively) real expensive in our lifetime. As source waters get more scarce and contaminated treatment costs go up. Plus the infrastructure is just wearing out. And since governments (at least in N. America) seem loathe to raise taxes, the costs are going to be passed on to the end user. Which I really don't think is a bad thing, once people realize the real costs of the resources they take for granted, conservation should go way up.
So yeah, flame me for being a tree hugger. Some are passionate about linux, I'm passionate about water.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
Evil Genius Gates at Work
We get our water from the Croton system; none comes from the Hudson River anymore, which is probably a good thing. Let's just say I wouldn't want to let any of it get on my skin, let alone in my mouth.
For some reason, it kinda reminds me of Fantastic Voyage. Nevertheless it is quite cool. I guess the next logical step would be to build a robot to actually do the repairs as well.
How is it our Goverment can take 10.. !10! years for somthing like this.. yet takes NO TIME at all to pass legislation like the SSSCA or the DMCA
i dunno if i mean this to be funny or insightfull, i dont know.. i just dont get.. really dose any one get it? i dont.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
IT RUNS LINUX TO
now if this aint a karmawhore post.. i dont know what is =P
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Maybe they will find that baby alligator I flushed down the toilet back in the '80's...
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
There is a rivet. a rivet of life. It exists as a thread between two infinities.
Kappaspace has rejoined.
meeptspace now has a rival. Single letters of the alphabet. So few letters.
meeptspace is a dying force. Kappaspace , with it's powerful alphabet no longer needs meeptspace.
BEEPO has become my master. meeptspace is close to answering to Kappaspace.
The wisdom has prevented this, so far, for what chance do letters have against the numbers that discovered them.
Conclusions are to be drawn.
MEEPT!!
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
(waits for the forehead slapping and groaning)
Starkle, starkle, little twink.
yup he is actually 100% homo. He just does the straight stuff for bucks..
It's a joke, not an annoying correction.
I'm a concientious
What's the point of this supid stat?
What are you trying to state. If you are arguing too many people are getting hurt in the Middle East fighting why break it down by nationality? If you are arguing the higher number of death on the Palestinian side is what is important then would change their conception of who is "right" or "wrong" if groups like Hamas had their way and were successful in killing hundreds of Jews?
Lobster Spaghetti dude.
I wonder if I spelled that right...
Which of the above constitution items don't you understand?
If I am deprived via regulations or law of the use of my property I deserve compensation.
Simple one-line Environmental slogans sound good and are fun to say you want them...but they transfer civil liberties/freedom from citizens to the government....
Liberals: I trust the EPA and hate the Military
Conservatives: I trust the Military and hate the EPA
They're in the same orginization...and should be viewed with equal spepticism
We can't even put ONE house on the aforementioned 7 acres. They won't even budge 1 bit.
So sue them under the 5th amendment "Takings" clause of the Constitution.
- You have their assessment - and the standard for assessed valuation vs. sale price, and comparable values from sale prices of houses in the area that have sold recently that would be similar to what yours would be if you could build it.
- You also have comparable values for swampland with restrictions from the same area.
So sue the agency that is blocking you for the difference.
This has been EXTREMELY successful in the recent past, thanks to some supreme court decisions relating to a situation in California. (A church camp burned down. The zoning board blocked permits to rebuild for years while considering whether to allow rebuilding at all. The church sued for the reduction of the value to the property (value of property where you can build a camp - value of property where you can't build a camp). The Supreme Court agreed with them, establishing the doctrine of "partial taking".
So look up that case, find a good lawyer who understands it (or the one who DID it), and start a suit.
One of three things will happen:
- They do an about-face and grant you your permits. (You'll have your land value back, less fees for the lawyer to send a letter and maybe start the suit.)
- You win. (You'll have your land value back, less the lawyer's fees for running the suit - and you may be able to collect that, too.)
- You lose and lose on appeal. (You're out the cost of the case. But you have the satisfaction of dragging the bureaucrats through the courts for a while. B-) )
(And while you're at it, think about a civil rights suit: "Denial of Civil Rights under Color of Law.")
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And after this is fixed, New York can finally repair Flood Control Dam #3.
So aren't they not supposed to be posting stuff like this on the internet anymore where some loony may get a hold of it and try something stupid?
When I was in college, I remember sitting on a dock on the hudson and some freshmen came down, stipped down to their undies and jumped in, got out, got dressed and walked off.
I think I still have nightmares about them. Ewww...
All ready here. They are called Oxygen Bars and can be found in a number of major cities such as Cincinatti, Honolulu, Hollywood, Seattle and Ft. Meyers. If you want to open your own Oxygen Bar you can hook up with these people
The point is to show what state-sponsored terrorism over a prolonged time versus a grass roots terrorist system reflects in bodycount. It reflects quite clearly that one inflicts far more causalities when they use m-16s against rock throwers and bombs against snipers.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
After looking at the picture of the sub, it makes me think that is the kinda stuff Gulianni worked so hard to get out of times square.
Uhhhhh.....disturbing.
Mod this down! This guy's post is full of goatse links!
Expect this aqueduct to collapse about 5 seconds after they shut down the water flow. Given the age and status of this thing, it's guaranteed.
Right now, the only thing keeping it together is the WATER PRESSURE pushing on the sides to get out... It's holding the whole shebang together... And leaking out around the edges... Some goes around pieces entirely, some create sinkholes, some create underground rivers, etc...
As soon as you stop the pressure, those pieces will fall out...
How do I know this? Because it happened right here in Chicago a few years ago... In our zeal to kill off those pesky zebra mussels, some mental giant decided to shut off the water flow, thread a line that would feed chlorine to the intake to kill the mussels, and then kick the water back on...
Problem? Yeah. This particular tunnel was built a zillion years ago OUT OF BRICK. Ummm, the mortar was long since gone. Held together by sand, dirt, clay, some mud, and oh yeah, water pressure! Remove the water pressure, and ummm, well, the thing collapsed... Right under a part of Lake Shore Drive - which then had to be closed off, ripped out, reconstructed, filled in, repaved - all in the middle of the fucking summer... oh joy, it was lovely in traffic...
Last I heard, the engineering firm didn't get paid, got sued, and the engineer that came up with the idea lives in a box under Lower Wacker Drive where he belongs...
Even if the thing in NY is made of concrete - it's apparently in such wonderful shape as to be leaking and it's likely to collapse.
I'd say that the best thing to do is to take the little remote sub through there and see what's what... Then reinforce those areas that are in poor shape somehow... Keep digging out the new tunnel, and when it's 100% up and online, take this sucker off-line and fix it right - maybe relining the whole thing... The one thing you can bet on is that it's going to be a clusterfuck of problems from all the leaking - all those spots will have to be identified and addressed before it can be brought back to life...
Best of luck...
This may be a nice article, but who is able to understand it? Except for Americans, that is. A million "gallons" - what's a gallon? A diameter of 13 feet - how large would that be?
Being a member of the majority of the world's population, I do not use local USA units. My country abides by the agreement to use only standard units. The USA signed the agreement too - but it seems some countries cannot be trusted even if they sign an agreement.
(Sorry for the inflammatory language - just getting tired of continually being forced to learn someone else's system. And still strong enough to resist!)
If there is a third water tunnel, how come the cops where able to retrieve the gold before any robbers? Jeremy Irons must have been sleeping between September and January. Just imagine: the potential for the heist of the century, and they just let it pass!
You know, it might just be because I'm from the UK, but I'm having a very hard time working out why they are building a tunnel to pump more water into New York.
I took a look at the map of NY/NJ here : http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/wsmaps.html and the surrounding area showing the aqueducts and I noticed this big, jagged blue line running vertically down the map. At first I thought this might be a misprint, or an ink leak, but it's labelled 'Hudson River'.
Imagine a river! A huge, great big river running right to New York city - someone had better tell the mayor quick, because apparently no-one else has noticed it yet.
For those of you not clued up, rivers are natures viaducts, they transport huge amounts of water from place to place, always going downhill - I'm willing to bet that Hudson river has more than enough drinking water in it for the whole of New York! For those of you who are sceptical about this whole point, there's also an ocean nearby - far nearer than the reservoirs - now you don't get much more water in one place than an ocean!
...but will there be a miniature Raquel Welch on board ?
Cool, arm that puppy and we can finally kill off the menacing albino alligators!
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
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When was the last time you went into a service station and got free air to fill your tires with?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
But how is it armed? What will it do if it encounters Chüds?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
For those of you not clued up, the ocean is salty! Yes, I know that's amazing, but it's absolutely true.
...now, what do you suppose they have to do to the ocean to make it drinkable? That's right, desalination!
...and how do you think they desalinate large volumes of water? Yes, with spectacularly huge quantities of electrical power! The kind of power that NYC doesn't really have to spare!
Woooo! Here's a clue for the UK twits in the audience: go take a drink out of the Thames, and let us know how you like it before you go suggesting anybody use the Hudson for a drinking source.
What where wetlands called before they were called wetlands?
Swamps.
Poughkeepsie has been getting all of its water from the Hudson for over a century. The water is meticulously checked for every contaminant they can think of. No problems. Ever. The Hudson gets a bigger dis than it deserves I think.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Viaducts?
Via - ducts?
Via-no-chicken?
Via-no-horse?