Water Conservation Top Stories:
Roslyn Water District Recommends Water-Efficient
Home Plumbing Products to Cut Water Costs
Nobody likes a high water bill. So the Roslyn Water District reminds customers that other than closely monitoring the amount of water you use, the best way to save money is to use water-efficient home plumbing products, including aerated shower heads, energy-efficient clothes washers, and 1.6 gallon per-flush toilets. By using these products in the home residents will lower water costs. According to a report issued by the American Water Works Association, the use of water-efficient plumbing across the nation would decrease the amount of water used by 3.5 billion gallons per day.
"It's amazing how much water we can save by using the proper plumbing fixtures," stated Superintendent Richard Passariello. "If any of our residents are concerned about high water bills, they may want to look into the plumbing mechanisms they currently use in their homes. We welcome phone calls from residents interested in learning more about saving money and water by using more efficient plumbing equipment."
The report released by AWWA also projects that reducing the amount of water nationally,by 3.5 billion gallons per day would result in smaller operating and maintenance costs at local water utilities. When you combine the water reduction with energy savings from conservation, communities could save a significant amount of money.
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Remember, Garden Hose Water Not For Drinking
 Your RWD cautions against anyone, especially children, from drinking water directly or indirectly from an outside garden type hose.
Most garden hoses are not designed to keep water clean and potable. Stagnant water within the hose can promote a variety of harmful bacteria and other contaminants.
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H and O, Our Smallest Servants: Part I
Despite our familiarity with water, it is a mystery of creation. Its elements of hydrogen and oxygen should be totally incompatible. Separately they are highly flammable and even explosive. Both are colorless, odorless and tasteless. Surprisingly, when used separatily as gas and ignited by a welder these elements can melt steel. RWD Yet as water, these two elements combine to provide the very basics for life itself.
 The water molecular portrait looks like a clock with the face representing oxygen. Perched at exactly 104.5 degrees from center sits one molecule of hydrogen and at the other side, another hydrogen molecule.
Oxygen is the most abundant element. It is present in almost 50% of the earth's crust and 21% of air. Hydrogen is always in combination with an almost unlimited number of compounds. Yet, in the oddest of the relationships with each other, these two pyromaniacal elements when joined, make up the familiar substance we know as water. Contrary to most things, water expands when frozen and then is capable of splitting steel pipes.
Water itself is equally strange. No matter what form, or temperature as a liquid or even ice, it is never at rest but seeks to leave its form to escape into a vapor. It's a cloud, a fog, and dew. It leaves our body with each and every breath.
Water is a universal solvent capable of wearing away stones and anything that may be in its path. Perfectly neutral, it can jump to acid or base when coaxed with another substance giving endlessly novel compositions of matter. Polluted water can leave its sullied state as a vapor only to be returned as rain, forgiving of human assaults, yet still willing to slake our thirst and cater to our infinite needs.
Water monitors our planetary temperature interceding as clouds, rain and ocean currents to regulate our climate. Its clouds parcel out moisture from one part of the globe to another, making its appointed rounds in seasons favoring tropics and great river basins.
Water obeys the call of the heavens. Tides rise and fall to a cosmic cue exactly for time and tide and place. The sun and the moon alignment immutably govern this ancient rendezvous. Many creatures depend on this for their life cycles. At birth we issue out of water. Every living creature carries its own cache of water.
Help Our Smallest Servants Help You
- Conserve Water!
- Limit the use of pesticides and herbicides.
- Dispose of hazardous household chemicals at authorized sites.
Our Smallest Servants: Part II
Although water is common to all life, it was never understood for almost all of recorded history. The ancients classified elements as earth, fire, air and water. Aristotle opined that, "fire is hot and dry, whereas air is hot and moist and water is cold and moist while Earth is cold and dry".
This opinion remained until relatively modern times when electricity became a tool of science that a chance test of an Englishman, Henry Cavendish in 1783 passed an electric current through a sealed tube of water which "disappeared" when the current was turned on causing hydrogen to separate from oxygen as gases as water disappeared. Thinking that he had a leaky glass container, he repeated the test with the same results. The Cavendish experiment is called hydrolysis. Later, Lavoisier named one of the gases "hydrogen" meaning water maker and the other "oxygen". Thus, "H" and "O" entered our lexicon of science.
Everything about water is unique in the way of elements in natural states. Water even defies the usually strict law of physics that at low or freezing temperatures, all substances become denser, but not water. At freezing, instead of following the rules, water expands and takes a crystalline structure that breaks pipes, cracks concrete, etc. Instead of more density, it takes on a less dense crystalline form that floats on water as ice.
All this led to new thinking about elements. If water never existed we would have to invent this wondrous compound.
Water will continue to surprise us, there are new marvels ahead from it. The hydrogen content may well be the fuel of our future as in "Fuel Cells", a new modality using hydrogen to power our cars with an exhaust of just water. Prototypes of automobiles fueled by hydrogen already exist.
Our Smallest Servants: Part III
There are three states of most matter, gaseous, liquid and solid. Many solids are crystalline. The latter are materials with an orderly atomic arrangement, so much so that the color, shape and design can readily identify the material of the solid.
But water is the rare substance that can exist at times very naturally in any one of four states: vapor (steam, dew) liquid, solid (as ice) and as almost endless crystal designs with an incredible flair for flowering shapes.
It all starts as a vapor in the clouds. At the beck-and-call of temperature of 32 degrees F, or lower, molecules of water from each wisp of vapor form into infinite crystal designs of stars, hexagons, hollow columns, dendrites, needles and other shapes. These are all as colorless as clear water and are not yet snow until descent when these crystals attach themselves to one-another-and another and another getting bigger and bigger on the way down. They soon take a new whiteness disguise only because of the way light reflects on the millions of colorless crystals clustered together now seen as snowflakes covering the ground; as a downey white blanket.
Our Smallest Servants: Part IV
 Previous H&O columns describe the many guises of water; its elemental structure, how it changes in form, how it is affected by lunar motion, how our climate is modified and other unusual properties. Another phenomenon about water is its artistry.
Free of palette and paint with just natural sunbeams and purely colorless specks of water suspended in air after a rain, the rainbow melds all into a perfectly formed arc of red, orange, yellow, green, indigo and violet placed orderly within the arc.
Actually the rainbow arc is really a perfect circle. We see just the top of it because the horizon cuts the other half of the circle from our line of sight. (But it is possible to see a full circle rainbow called a 'glory' from an airplane with the sun behind the aircraft).
Sunlight is a mixture of many different wavelengths of light. When passed through a prism, the light is bent and different wavelengths form into a band of colors. In much the same way, sunlight passing through the tiny droplets of pure colorless water measuring a tiny diameter of 1/50 to 1/25 of an inch, the droplets act as a prism to separate the color wavelengths of the sun into the colors we see.
When watering a flower bed with hose nozzle set to 'fine-spray,' try to back up on sunbeams. You may spy a short but real rainbow.
- A. Jack Russo
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Roslyn Water District
Yearly Pumpage
Pumpage 2006, 2007, 2008
As you can see from this three year Water Pumpage Chart water usage varies dramatically. The summer months pumpage almost doubles due to pools, garden irrigation, etc. But the peak months can vary based on temperature and rainfall.
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Free Water Saver Kits
The Water District is offering a Water Saver Package to residents of the District Free of Charge. The package contains a variety of items designed to help you use less water while accomplishing your everyday household tasks.
The items in the kit will help to reduce flow from showers, reduce flow from faucets, use less water per flush and detect toilet tank leaks.
The kit includes a water bag to reduce the volume of water used in flushing, an aerator for your kitchen faucets that reduces consumption while seeming to increase the pressure, a water saving shower head and more.
For your Free Water Saver Kit, stop by the District office or call 516-621-7770.
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Nature is Our Most Formidable Recycler
 With water surrounding us on Long Island and Nassau County it is sometimes difficult to remember our need to conserve and protect this precious resource.
Long Island Sound to the North and The Atlantic to the South provide many business and recreational benefits; however, none of that water is currently available for drinking or household usage.
We get our water from deep underground wells that reach into three huge 'reservoirs' called "Aquifers" - The Upper Glacial, (upper), The Magothy, and Lloyd (deepest).
Aquifers are recharged from local streams, marshes, ponds and lakes on Long Island. These local sources, of course, are extremely dependent on rainfall and on our ability to protect them from contamination and pollutants. Since we depend on groundwater for our public water supply, it is crucial that we all work to properly manage our resources to ensure an adequate and continuous supply of high quality water.
Our aquifer system can be thought of as an enormous groundwater reservoir, or tank, containing a vast but finite amount of freshwater. Precipitation adds water (called recharge) to the tank. Nassau County has numerous recharge basins to collect stream water to assist this process. Water discharges from the tank by three means: consumptive use, streamflow, and underflow. ("Consumptive use" is the term for the water that is pumped out and not returned. "Streamflow" is the water that flows above ground and also discharges to the surrounding bays and Long Island Sound, and an "underflow" which is water that leaves the system underground and discharges into the surrounding bays and Long Island Sound.)
Based on consumption rates and the current average rainfall of 44 inches per year, experts confirm we are in balance with nature. Clearly, our goals are to protect the purity of our Aquifers and to conserve this balance of water used with that finite amount available.
Currently, we are utilizing almost 3/4 of the water available, and with the rapid residential and business expansion on Long Island we need to be increasingly vigilant in our use and allocation of water resources. This includes actively protecting valuable open land, wetlands, and other environmentally sensitive areas.
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Water Conservation Tips
Here are more ways to save water:
 Indoors
- Take shorter showers.
- Don't let the water run while brushing your teeth or shaving.
- Wash only full loads in your washing machine and dishwasher.
- Fix faucet leaks.
Outdoors
- Water your lawn only when it needs it.
A good way to see if your lawn needs watering is to step on the grass. If it springs back up when you move, it doesn’t need water. If it stays flat, fetch the sprinkler.
- Deep-soak your lawn.
When you do water, do it long enough for the moisture to soak down to the roots where it will do the most good. A light sprinkling can evaporate quickly and tends to encourage shallow root systems.
- Water during the cool parts of the day.
Early morning generally is better than dusk since it helps prevent growth of fungus.
- Don’t water the driveway or street.
Position your sprinklers so water lands on the lawn or garden, not paved areas. Also avoid watering on windy days.
- Plant drought-resistant trees and plants.
Many beautiful trees and plants thrive with far less watering than other species.
- Put a layer of mulch around trees and plants.
Mulch will slow evaporation of moisture and discourage weed growth, too.
- Use a broom, not a hose, to clean driveways and sidewalks.
- Check for leaks in pipes, hoses, faucets, and couplings.
Leaks outside the house may not seem as bad since they’re not as visible. But they can be just as wasteful as leaks inside. Check frequently and keep them drip-free.
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 S.T.O.P. -
To Protect Your Groundwater Supply
S.T.O.P. PROGRAM 2009
Drop Off Time: 9:30 AM– 3:00 PM
The S.T.O.P. (Stop Throwing Out Pollutants) program offers residents of North Hempstead the opportunity to dispose of their household hazardous waste in an environmentally friendly manner. Many people do not realize that ordinary household products, such as aerosols and cleaners, can be corrosive, explosive, or toxic if mixed indiscriminately with regular household garbage. Please take an extra moment to check labels for warnings, and please take advantage of this year's last S.T.O.P. date to ensure safe disposal.
Sunday November 8, 2009
Solid Waste Management Authority Building
802 West Shore Road (next to Harbor Links golf course)
Port Washington
PLEASE NOTE: For safety reasons, NO materials will be accepted
PRIOR TO 9:30 am on a collection day, nor will they be accepted later than 3:00 pm sharp.
Materials accepted at the S.T.O.P. program drop-off site are aerosol cans, anti-freeze, drain cleaners, fertilizers, furniture polishes, non-latex paint, oven cleaners, paint thinners, non-latex paints, pesticides, chemistry kits, deodorizers, motor oil, pet cleaners, pool chemicals, stain/spot removers, photographic materials, batteries, mercury products, upholstery cleaners and many medicines. Note: Perscription drugs are now acceptable.
Items not accepted are ammunition, bio/medical wastes, explosives and/or fireworks, radioactive materials, propane tanks and unlabeled or unidentified materials.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT
THE DISPOSAL OF LATEX AND WATER BASED PAINTS
Many Town of North Hempstead residents are under the impression that water-based paints and latex paints are considered hazardous and must be disposed of at a S.T.O.P. Collection Day.
This is INCORRECT. Latex and water-based paints, once dried out (usually 24-36 hours after the lid is removed ) can be placed in a trash bag and thrown out with your regular household garbage.
Latex and water-based paints will not be accepted at a S.T.O.P. Collection site.
OIL BASED PAINTS, on the other hand, are considered hazardous,
and will be accepted at any S.T.O.P. Collection Day program
Stop Hotline 516-767-4600
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Keep Your Fire Hydrant Accessible
 The citizens of the Roslyn Water District work diligently to keep their sidewalks clear and safe. Its is also important to keep your fire hydrant accessible in case of an emergency. Do not make it difficult for the fire fighters in time of emergency.
In addition please do not cover meter pits with plantings, snow or other obstructions.
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Make Your Property A Special Groundwater Protection Area
The Roslyn Water District suggests that you view your property as your own especially designated groundwater protection area. This is property "...managed in such a way as to maintain and improve water quality" (S 55-0105 Environmental Conservation Law).
Homeowners can employ various strategies to protect ground water from contamination including changing waste disposal and storage practices, using nonhazardous products, and properly managing septic systems and underground heating oil tanks (UTs).
Waste Disposal
Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to treat harmful substances such as paints, solvents, oil, or pesticides, so these chemicals should not be flushed down the toilet or dumped into the sewer. Similarly, these substances should not go in the trash or be dumped on the ground or buried.
More importantly, limit use of such products and substitute a nonhazardous product when possible. When this is not possible, buy only as much as you need. Hazardous products used around the home include some oven cleaners, toilet bowl cleaners, drain cleaners, bleaches, rust removers, paints, solvents, polishers, carpet and furniture cleaners and glues. If you don't completely use up a hazardous product take advantage of the Town of North Hempstead S.T.O.P. program to properly dispose of them.
If you must use pesticides and fertilizers on your lawn and garden, use them in moderation.
Alternatives to Hazardous Cleaning Products
Whenever possible, use cleaning products that will not harm the environment. Look for the "environmentally friendly" products at the market. Many household products such as shampoo and baby ointment contain zinc. Paints and solvents may contain lead.
Cesspool/Septic Systems
Anything you pour down the drain or flush down the toilet will enter your system and will affect its ability to treat wastes. Do not put hazardous substances or items like coffee grounds, cigarette butts, or grease in your toilet or garbage disposal. Limit the amount of water entering the system by using water saving fixtures and appliances.
Be certain to have your septic system pumped periodically.
Underground Heating Oil Tanks (UTs)
Become aware of the existence and condition of UTs on your property: Check your records.
Have your tank tested for thickness to determine if it is leaking. If your underground tank is more than 20 years old, consider removing it and replacing it, (with an exposed tank that can be easily inspected) or properly abandoning it in place.
Floor and Stormwater Drains
Some homes have floor drains in the garage or basement, which may lead to disposal systems that then discharge into the ground. Residential storm drains also provide a conduit and are subject to receiving the same harmful wastes. Use less water during vehicle maintenance and avoid spilling, pouring or washing automotive and other waste fluids down garage floor or community storm drains.
Each of these efforts will contribute to protecting the groundwater and making you property a "Special Groundwater Protection Area."
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From the Environmental Protection Agency
 Seven Suggestions to Protect Against Lead Contamination
- Make sure your children have a play area that is away from major streets and highways where lead air pollution can be concentrated. Remove or cover contaminated soil from around your home.
- Since 1986, it is illegal in New York State to use lead solder in plumbing systems. Be sure this law is observed when plumbing work is done in your home.
- Plant your vegetable garden in a safe, lead-free areas away from painted buildings and heavily traveled roads.
- Avoid storing or serving food or beverages from ceramic pitchers or plates with colorful lead-based glazes. Do not store liquids in lead crystal because lead may leach out. Short-term use for serving does not pose a threat.
- Make sure children do not chew on anything covered with lead paint. This includes toys, windowsills and cribs.
- Keep windowsills, furniture and carpets free of paint dust and chips. Vacuum or dust often with a moist cloth. Cover any areas of chipping or peeling paint with adhesive paper. Mop floors frequently with a wet mop and wash children's hands often, especially before they eat.
- Never use hot water directly from you tap for cooking or for making infant formula. Lead dissolves quicker in hot water than in cold. Always draw cold water and heat it on the stove.
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