By Marc Schollett
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 at 12:42 p.m.
Read more: Local, Drinking Fountain, Marc, Schollett, Fact, Finder, Drain, Water, Waste, Tax Payers, Fact Finder
There is no shortage of water down by the Grand Traverse Bay, but one of our viewers actually found an excess of H20 in an unlikely place. Call it the energizer bunny of drinking fountains. It just keeps going and going.
Our viewer found it running first back in May, while on her daily walk along the trail at the Open Space. And then again, every day there after the water was just running, day and night. She looked a little closer, and concluded something had to wrong. The push button wasn't stuck. The button wasn't there at all.
Each time she passed, she got a little more concerned. All that water was just going down the drain. How much? We tried it out. The stream coming out the fountain fills up a one cup measuring cup in about 10 seconds, which means about 540 gallons a day, about 16 thousand gallons a month, and around 70-thousand gallons this summer season has run through the fountain. Our viewer wondered why that much water was allowed to go down the drain. What happens to the water once it does? And if it's broken, why hasn't the city fixed it?
Good questions that deserve answers. So I went straight to the City Department of Public Service which houses the city's Parks and Recreation Department. Lauren Vaughn is the department's superintendent and he makes it perfectly clear, "No it's not broken, it's designed to run."
As it turns out, the non stop running water is no accident for two reasons; depth and a dead end.
Let's start with depth. The water pipe that brings water to the non stop fountain is the same one that brings water to the underground sprinklers. Because it feeds these sprinklers heads, the pipe can't be very deep. That's a problem, because pipes close to the surface get warm during the day if the water isn't running, and who wants to drink warm water?
Mr. Vaughn says the obvious solution of putting in new pipes would fix part of the problem; it is not a fix all. He explains "getting it lower would keep it cooler, but still it needs to run to keep it fresh and good." And another problem exists. The foundation from the former power plant is still intact in places. That would make running pipes deeper across the field to the fountain almost impossible.
And that brings us to our second problem, a dead end. This drinking fountain is at the end of the line, in term of water. If this drinking fountain had an on and off button, and wasn't being used much, the water would just sit in the 200ft long line that runs from the street to the fountain. Sit, get warm and get stagnant until someone pushed the button for a drink. Other fountains are closer to the street with deeper pipes, thus they don't have to run all the time to stay fresh and cool.
So that's why they have to run this fountain from May to October, to keep the water moving in those shallow pipes in order for it to stay cool and fresh. But where does all that water from all those months go after it goes down the drain?
Mr. Vaughn explains "its set up to a French drain system where there is gravel and sand that it drains into, then down into the water table. It doesn't get sent back into the water plant to be treated, it just goes right straight into the water table."
So it's not being treated once it goes down the drain, but it is before it arrives here? So who is paying for that?
Mr. Vaughn says "yeah, we do pay for it; it goes from our account and gets transferred from one of our line items into the water fund. The city pays the city for it basically."
So what do you think? Please leave a comment below.
