Tony Shelton
BS Detector, Esquire
Saw something interesting today. The city of R#no was cleaning sidewalks in the middle of the day.
The first thing I noticed was there were no warning signs (as if anyone is stupid enough to see a guy washing and think the ground is dry) and there were no detours or anything. The guy stopped to let us all walk through. I had on flip flops and the runoff was slippery as ice. I almost busted my butt. A lot of older people walked through and Shelly and Fayth had no problem and said it must have just been the surface of the flipflops that caused the slippery condition.
He was using hot water and I didn't see any evidence of soaps. I can't understand why it felt so slippery.
The next thing I noticed was there was nothing whatsoever filtering the runoff. It was going directly into the street, then into the storm drain, then right into the Tru%kee River.
What is wrong with this?
Nothing whatsoever. (unless you want to smack the guy upside the head for the way he dealt with pedestrian traffic.)
The city (or the state - in rare cases) holds the NPDES permit. As long as they remain within the limits of their permit (which the state of nevada has ALWAYS performed within the limits) they are doing nothing illegal and doing nothing wrong, neither legally or morally. The water maintains a cleanliness standard while allowing for sanitary conditions to prevail on the streets. And I can guarantee you that without that pressure washing the streets downtown would smell like a toilet within a few weeks with all the drunks urinating all over the place at night.
My question is why are we allowing leaders in our own industry to go around preaching that "one drop" of this or that can cause irreparable harm to the environment.
Yesterday we were in Tahoe City in Lake Tahoe. We saw a lot of resurfacing of paved roads and parking lots. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAD NOTHING MORE THAN A HAY BALE snake around the storm drain, just like all construction. Now how much petroleum runoff do you think will come from that fresh asphalt at the first rain???????? Yet, they work in one of the most environmentally conscious areas of the world using COMMON SENSE methods that REDUCE pollutants as much as feasibly possible without DESTROYING THEIR OWN INDUSTRY by allowing a few greedy troublemakers to shut them down.
In some industries I'm sure guys sabotaging their own industry would have never made it as far as they have in our industry. Maybe we need to recruit some guys with some balls from the teamsters or some of the construction unions to take care of the business that we've been too content with the status quo to shut down ourselves.
Nice Rig the city has though.
The first thing I noticed was there were no warning signs (as if anyone is stupid enough to see a guy washing and think the ground is dry) and there were no detours or anything. The guy stopped to let us all walk through. I had on flip flops and the runoff was slippery as ice. I almost busted my butt. A lot of older people walked through and Shelly and Fayth had no problem and said it must have just been the surface of the flipflops that caused the slippery condition.
He was using hot water and I didn't see any evidence of soaps. I can't understand why it felt so slippery.
The next thing I noticed was there was nothing whatsoever filtering the runoff. It was going directly into the street, then into the storm drain, then right into the Tru%kee River.
What is wrong with this?
Nothing whatsoever. (unless you want to smack the guy upside the head for the way he dealt with pedestrian traffic.)
The city (or the state - in rare cases) holds the NPDES permit. As long as they remain within the limits of their permit (which the state of nevada has ALWAYS performed within the limits) they are doing nothing illegal and doing nothing wrong, neither legally or morally. The water maintains a cleanliness standard while allowing for sanitary conditions to prevail on the streets. And I can guarantee you that without that pressure washing the streets downtown would smell like a toilet within a few weeks with all the drunks urinating all over the place at night.
My question is why are we allowing leaders in our own industry to go around preaching that "one drop" of this or that can cause irreparable harm to the environment.
Yesterday we were in Tahoe City in Lake Tahoe. We saw a lot of resurfacing of paved roads and parking lots. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAD NOTHING MORE THAN A HAY BALE snake around the storm drain, just like all construction. Now how much petroleum runoff do you think will come from that fresh asphalt at the first rain???????? Yet, they work in one of the most environmentally conscious areas of the world using COMMON SENSE methods that REDUCE pollutants as much as feasibly possible without DESTROYING THEIR OWN INDUSTRY by allowing a few greedy troublemakers to shut them down.
In some industries I'm sure guys sabotaging their own industry would have never made it as far as they have in our industry. Maybe we need to recruit some guys with some balls from the teamsters or some of the construction unions to take care of the business that we've been too content with the status quo to shut down ourselves.
Nice Rig the city has though.
