Plumbers vs Waterless Urinals

In many ways, life is better on this side of the Colorado. For example, however crazy we are about immigration--and wasn't that craziness imported from So. Cal?--the pollution in our air doesn't cause the sort of dementia that makes waterless urinals controversial.

Via Wired, we have a report that the plumbers' union in Southern California attempted to ban waterless urinals, and that it made some rather nutty claims to support this:

To buttress their health claims, plumbing unions in California hired Phyllis Fox, an environmental engineer and water quality specialist. She conducted her own analysis, which involved visiting men’s rooms to acquaint herself with the subject matter. Fox didn’t perform any tests, but by examining the designs of the Falcon and other waterless urinals, she concluded that hydrogen sulfide gases in the sewer lines could escape when the cartridges were replaced, resulting in “unconsciousness, respiratory paralysis, and death.” In other words, the waterless urinal could kill.

Yes, janitors in the many Arizona public buildings with flushless urinals die of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. All the time. That is, if they survive traffic: our gun laws mean that shootouts over lane changes and parking disputes happen everyday.

But seriously, this dispute shouldn't be happening. Other states can look to Arizona and conclude that flushless urinals are safe and effective.

Read the original article: it has quite a few Arizona connections, including a somewhat humorous account of a plumbing incident at Fort Huachuca, and some interesting facts. I had no idea how much electricity was used for water pumping, and didn't consider that flushing a urinal aerosolized bacteria, either.

On Earth Day, I recommended that more businesses install these urinals, and additionally that people just "lift a leg" from time to time. There's no sense in contaminating clean drinking water with human waste.

San Diego police chasing homeless to AZ

On behalf of nine San Diego homeless and a relief-providing church, ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties has filed for injunctive relief and damages against the City of San Diego.

The city would wait until homeless left their belongings to seek services in a church, then confiscate them and load them in a garbage truck. Seized items included medical devices, medications, bedding, winter clothes, identifying papers, and personal effects such as family photos. Victims of this practice were advised to head to Arizona.

The San Diego Union-Tribune and Courthouse News have more.

HT: Nick Martin

From the road #2: A partial solution to road shrapnel

Cyclists in the Tucson area, especially in the Mountain Avenue corridor populated by under-mature college brats, encounter much more glass than they should, and throughout Arizona we commonly see roadside beer and pop cans, more glass still, and "urban flotsam" even in Garden Canyon and Oak Creek. It's a hazard to cyclists and an eyesore to everyone else. "There ought to be a law!", the vulgar might say. There already is a law: both the State and municipalities will fine litterers of the public streets and highways.

The law is a "stick"; a "carrot" is also possible. I remember, vaguely, grocery stores taking refillable bottles back and refunding deposits until the mid-1980s, at least in the Chicago area, but this seemed to have stopped when pop stopped being sold primarily in glass bottles. Bottles and cans to this day are stamped with "HI" and "MI" and "CRV" bottle deposit indicators or values--I've noticed these but didn't think too much of the system or directly encounter it until this trip.

One doesn't see bottles along the roads even in poorer or shabbier areas of CA like one does in e.g. South Tucson or the student-populated areas. There are some, but fewer. Perhaps a cultural difference is involved--I cannot say definitively--but I suspect that the State's bottle deposit program has something to do with it. This is what "CRV" indicates on some containers: California "Cash Return Value" of five cents for small bottles and cans and ten cents for those holding more than twenty-four fluid ounces. One pays a deposit at checkout and collects it at service counters or very nifty "reverse vending machines" which scan the bottles and give cash or cash-equivalent coupons in return.

This incentive may seem small, but there's little inconvenience associated with it and it can be a non-insignificant portion of the grocery bill for many. Moreover, it gives bums some other easy means to earn a little cash than "spanging" and gets both them and largely idle kids picking up after less conscientious neighbors and hauling the containers to the grocery store. And it puts recycling, something which some people don't do seemingly out of spite--it's no harder to throw the wine bottle into the blue bin!--into a nicely Sunnsteinian choice architecture. Roughly 78% of bottles are recycled in states with deposit programs, whereas only 23% are recycled elsewhere.

Bottlebill.org keeps track of efforts to pass bottle deposit bills. Their records have a such a bill being introduced in Arizona in 2008, but by such far-left characters as Phil Lopes, Krysten Sinema, and Steve Farley (the public artist responsible for replacing cheap buses with expensive streecars in Tucson, presumably because they're more aesthetically pleasing.) A nonstarter, in other words, given the makeup of the Legislature. People can be prone to oppose ideas simply because they come from people who usually have bad ideas. Don't let that get in your way here. And cyclists: think it over a bit every time you patch a puncture.