Safe water when decomposing bodies are polluting the pond

From the comments on EHD in Eaton County and a previous commenter noting that there were dead deer scattered around a farm-pond:

This makes getting emergency water from surface water very difficult.

Historically polluted water was a battle tactic.

 

A cow that died in a flood. Nobody admits to owning the cow. There it sits.

That is a topic worth discussing because floods often kill livestock and the bodies pollute the water. Sometimes material spills cause massive fish-kills. Even milk will kill fish because it consumes all of the dissolved oxygen and the fish suffocate.

Art Ludwig and Oasis Design

Art is a civil engineer whose expertise is in waste-water. 

He went to Latin American and used his expertise to help them find sources of safe water. He used Petri dishes to get actual bacteria counts of water from various sources.

So...the most challenging time to get safe water in much of the Developing World is at the start of the rainy season. Animals (donkeys, dogs, chickens, cattle, monkeys and "other primates") defecate in the open and the deposits accumulate during the dry season. They all sluice into the streams and rivers during the wet seasons. And during really heavy rains, the sheet of surface water can also run into open wells. An additional source of contamination is from wet clothing (hems of trousers) dripping into the open well.

The following text was written about a sample taken at the start of the rainy season. It was taken next to a river-in-flood and the water was the color of chocolate milk. Quoting from Art's writing:

M35 Well, pit-Freshly re-dug community drinking & cooking

Location, description, sampling technique: New well freshly (<48 hrs) dug next to M1 after it flooded, and used for same purpose. Sample taken from well-rinsed plastic water scoop.

Temperature: Turbidity: Color: Clear Smell: none detectable Taste: didn't try it

Surrounding influences: This well was about 4 m from chocolate river, 3 m from old well, which, when the groundwater level rose, filled with light brown foamy water. People collecting water waded through the river, then stood with dripping legs right by the 2 gal galvanized bottomless bucket which was the water container. This well did not have a fence.

Use of water: Was being collected for drinking (after boiling, they said) by several villagers as the sample was taken.

What do you think of this water? It was 4 m of coarse, highly permeable sand from a river chocolate brown first runoff water containing 20,000 buttwipes per swimming pool of fecal coliforms*. Would you drink it? Make tea with it?

---

What I thought about this water: I felt very leery of this water due proximity to the river and the possibility of contamination from dripping legs and feet during collection.

Test results:(fecal coliforms/100 ml) 0

Other bacteria: (general coliforms) 4,933

Discussion: I was astonished at how clean this water was; I've drank untreated spring water with higher levels, without problems. This result suggests that 1) this amount of sand filtration is extremely effective, and 2), the contamination in all the wells in Maruata comes more from above than with the water from below, and that it increases with the age of the well. This was one of the cleanest wells tested, with the only possible explanation being that it was by far the most freshly dug, this factor overriding the close proximity of a huge quantity of very contaminated water.      Source

How is that possible????

The traditional wisdom is that filters function by having pores that are smaller than the particles that it is filtering out. Coarse sand has open spaces between the grains that are thousands of times larger than bacteria.

The answer is that sand (and soil) are not inert. The grains are covered with a film of microbes that actively feed on the organic matter in the water that percolates through it. Bacteria, virus, amoeba and paramecium are "organic matter" to those films. The filtering media doesn't mechanically filter out microbes. The microbes stick to the film as if it were flypaper and are digested by it...or become part of it. 

With that information, decent water could be obtained by moving 20 feet back from the water's edge and digging a pit to dip water from. It might have a vegetal taste but it would not be unsafe and would be totally bulletproof if boiled. 

* Ludwig uses an unconventional measure to help the regular people get a grip on just how dirty "wild" water can be. He calculated the number of fecal bacteria that would result if one kid who did not wipe his butt one-last-time would leave in a standard sized swimming pool. It was something like 0.1 grams of human feces (a faint smear) in 20,000 gallons of water. This is a level of pollution that rounds-to-zero for most people.

Disability

 

In very round numbers, every year represents about five million people and the number of people between 15 and 64 is about 250 million people who are potentially in the labor pool.

There were 28 million Americans with some form of disability in 2012 and that drifted up to 30 million by 2020. In the last six years it has grown to 36 million. That is 14.5% of the entire labor pool.

Twenty years ago, it was rare for a worker under 30 to be on disability. Disability was generally caused by repetitive motion injuries or work-place accidents and the case-rate climbed with age. It is my impression that there has been a significant number of people in their 20s going on disability for emotional/mental issues compared with decades past.

I know this comes across as cold, but there is a world of difference between somebody in construction tapping-out at 48 because his body gave out and a 24 year-old who goes on disability because of an inability to cope with the work-place. The man in construction worked for 30 years and wore out. The 24 year-old hit-the-silk before contributing virtually anything back to society.

All that said, many people with disabilities are fully employed. Sixty percent of the people with hearing disabilities are fully employed while only seventeen percent with "self-care disabilities" are. In total, the labor participation rate of people with disabilities is half that of people who do not designated as disabled.

EHD in Eaton County?

 

A dead deer in the Upper Orchard. Maybe a couple of weeks old.

Another dead deer. This one in the Hill Orchard. No evidence of an archery wound. The other deer was too-far gone to even look for evidence wounds from a hunter.

Dating corpses is an art and ambient temperatures make a huge difference. My Wild Azz Guess is that this deer has been dead for four days. Extremely bloated. Prolapsing rectum. Rectum? Heck, it killed 'im.

In total, the Upper and Hill Orchards are about an acre. Two dead deer in a single acre doesn't mean EHD is in Eaton County but it doesn't bode well for the 2026 hunting season.

Word on the street is that Jackson and Calhoun Counties, both of them directly south of Eaton County, have been hammered by EHD. 

Lifting and I-hate-fleece for outerwear

I went to the gym yesterday. It has been more than a month since I lifted in the gym.

I was very surprised that I was able to complete my "maintenance" routine with no issues. I even added 10 pounds to the last two sets.

The routine (all dead-lifts):

• One set of six repetitions 135 pounds (a 45 pounds bar + two 45 pounds plates). Lift without straps.
• Five minute recovery
• One set of six repetitions of 185 pounds (same as above + two 25 pound plates). Lift made with straps.
• Five minute recovery
• Four sets of six repetitions of 205 pounds (same as above + two, 10 pound plates) with five minutes of recovery between each set. Lifts made with straps.

I expect to be sore for the next couple of days. I am feeling it most in my trapezius muscles. The right amount of soreness is conducive to a good night's sleep. 

While I was lifting I saw another lifter who reminded me of somebody I hadn't seen in 20 years. When he was taking a break and I was on my five-minute recovery, I walked over and asked "Did you ever work at Fisher Body?"

"Yes. Yes I did..." he replied. And we chatted for about ten minutes before I could pry myself away. He looks healthier now than he did in 2003, primarily in his skin-tones. They were now rosy-pink rather than ashy-gray.

Mistakes were made 

I have about 120 pounds of potatoes that I dug but have not collected.

We had a frost last night. 

I don't know if the potatoes were damaged but we are not going to commingle these potatoes with the others.

Fleece and burs

Fleece and fabrics with a soft surface are almost universal now. You have to look to find outerwear that is suitable for wearing beyond mown surfaces. Fleece outerwear just does not work for me this time of year.

45% of 15-to-24 year-olds do not participate in the labor market

 

Labor force participation 15-24 year-old men. NOT seasonally adjusted.

Notable for 17% swings in participation rate in the 1960s and less than half that now. Also notable for the base-rate of 55% being incredibly stable for the last 15 years.

Peak month for participation is July. 

Seasonal work is important because it is often a gateway to full-time employment and because food harvesting, for instance, is seasonal in nature.

It is worth noting that work that is paid "under the table" is not captured in this data. 

Labor force participation 15-24 year-old women. NOT seasonally adjusted.

Notable for the rapid climb starting in 1965, hitting a plateau between 1980-through-2020 and then sagging until 2010. Currently tied with men's labor participation rates although seasonal excursions are about 2/3 that of men's.

Peak participation month is July. 

Labor force participation 15-64 year-old men. NOT seasonally adjusted.

For the entire population of men, labor-force participation has been collapsing for as long as they have been taking data. We are currently at 80% participation.

Labor force participation 15-64 year-old women. NOT seasonally adjusted.

For the entire population of women, labor-force participation rose from 40% to 70% between 1955 and today.

In what appears to be a statistical anomaly, there is not seasonal ripple. That suggests that the 15-24 cohort ripple (peak in July) is damped by higher seasonal employment Sept-through-May by older cohorts of women. Examples, teachers and aides in classrooms, working retail in November and December.

Fake News Friday: Gwyneth Collections drops new fragrance for October, 2026

 

An excellent and very long essay about the fragilities in the US food system

An excellent and incredibly long essay on the fragilities of the US food system by Madge Waggy. About a 30 minute read, 45 minutes if you stop and think while reading it.

Rather than repeat the whole catalogue (of potential failure points), four things are worth holding in mind, because they are where the pressures actually meet: 

• The system has very little stored reserve, so a delay anywhere turns into a shortage somewhere else.
• The most critical nodes, from packing plants to ports, are few enough that one failure travels nationally.
• The natural base, meaning water and soil, is degrading slowly and unevenly, with the damage concentrated in the regions that produce the most.
• The public has little reserve and adapts quickly, which delays any political pressure to fix the problem.

The point of gathering them is not to list ten separate troubles but to show one system with several places it can give.

***

What would make the biggest difference is probably the least glamorous thing, which is treating resilience as something worth paying for in advance rather than regretting in hindsight. That means valuing the buffer, the spare plant, the local mill, the cover crop, and the extra warehouse, even when they look inefficient in a good year. It means measuring the system not by how cheaply it runs in calm weather but by how gracefully it fails in bad weather.

The hardest part is that resilience has no constituency. It has no ribbon-cutting, no dramatic rescue, no visible hero.

Disclosure: Some of the "stock phrasing" suggests that AI might have assisted in the writing of this essay.