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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.
I agree completely, we do take it for granted. In northern california, sprawl is using up the water supply, but no one seems to be putting the brakes on. of course, in Cali, we were already had to deal with rolling blackouts, but at least we had water.
... a beige landscape.
...same goes for New Jersey as you said. they have no water table left due to massive over-development.
that's why we need legislators willing to stand up to mega-suburb developers who don't care in the slightest about resource OR public transportion concerns. just build build build
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Water from the Atlantic off the Jersey shore is fundamentally undrinkable. After all the desalinization, distilliation and purification needed to make it fit for human consumption, it would probably run you about $2/gallon.
Doesn't matter who regulates the filling of them, the problem is WHO defines what a wetland is. There is another poster who seems to think that with the EPA, 14 days of continued "wet" area... e.g. ponds, puddles, snowmelt, whatever, makes it a wetland.
While, I don't think that is exactly correct, the current definitions are still absurd, and still used as a way for a small number of people to stop a large number of people from using their own land.
Furthermore, the Corps does NOT, as far as I can tell, regulate wetlands within incorporated areas, and NOTHING prevents other agencies from stopping you, even if the Corps would give you a permit.
I know this because my family has 7 acres of land in Minnesota that we bought 40 years ago, with the idea of subdividing it and selling it in the future.
Now that future is here, and when we went to do that, suddenly it is a wetlands (It is lakeshore property, of course it's fscking wet!), and nobody bothered to inform us over the 40 years that it had become one, nobody gave us an option to appeal its status, and the land is worthless to anyone. You can't even camp there.
The land would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars we could use it the way we bought it. Right now, it is worth... Nothing.
My point is, that this is bullshit.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Most of the urban parts of California never had any water to begin with.
The main issue isn't really supply, but allocation. Right now, most of the water is used for agricultural purposes. So we have a conflict between people who live in cities in the middle of a desert verus people with farms in the middle of a desert.
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
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...
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!