All Mixed Up

Today I saw someone post this link of some arresting photos of rivers colliding. As a water nerd, it got me thinking about how the miracle of H2O and it’s ability to all varieties of life forms for millenia. It’s something that continues to strike me the longer I’m in environmental engineering. Guess that’s a good thing, right? Below is a photo that shows the confluence of two water supply sources in Switzerland – with clearly different water qualities (sorry, couldn’t resist).

The Rhone and Arve Rivers in Switzerland

I remember seeing a similar photo when I was in undergraduate school of two rivers in China – one that was in pristine condition which originated from snow melt in the mountains and another from a river which was used as a destination for wastewater effluent. The juxtaposition was almost as stark as the photo above. The difference is that the “dirty” looking stream above actually isn’t that bad of water quality – it just has some excess silt in the water from higher flows. The image it strikes is just as startling though.

What I like is that it shows a good example of why different water supplies require different levels of treatment. People think about water treatment (which is my specialty at my company) as a “do it all” black box that takes bad water and makes it good regardless of the specifics involved. This just isn’t the case – every water supply is unique in it’s characteristics and requires unique twists on the typical treatment processes. However most water treatment plants in the U.S. use a basic “conventional” method whose primary mechanisms (settling of particles and filtration) have been around for hundreds of years. The following figure does a good job showing the basic process:

Filtration, Sedimentation and Disinfection are the most typical mechanisms of any conventional treatment process

Lost my phone yesterday

After I got home from work yesterday I went for a jog with Violet, called my sister, ate dinner with Lydia, gave Violet a bath, watered the lawn, and then put Violet down for bed. Somewhere in there I misplaced my phone – and knew that I had left it on a vibrate so calling it wouldn’t be much help. Despite a pretty thorough search it didn’t turn up (as thorough as can be expected when we can’t turn the master bedroom light on since Violet was sleeping in there). Before we turned in for the night I checked the “Where’s my iPhone” app on Lydia’s phone just to confirm it was somewhere around the house. Seeing this was so, we went to sleep.

Wishing I could zoom in further

This morning I was a little more nervous since there was a decent chance the battery had died and so I turned off every noise (white noise maker, the fan, the air conditioner) and started texting 1 letter texts from Lydia’s phone to mine. In the corner of the living room Lydia and I could just faintly make out a vibration sound. After sending 80 texts I finally located it – outside on the patio table. Thanks God it didn’t rain.

Letter to Violet

Violet,

Austin, Texas. It’s 9:20pm on April 11, the year 2012. Tomorrow we get to meet you as we have a scheduled induction procedure to start the labor process at 7am! As your father, I can’t even put into words how excited this makes me.

You have grown in stature and importance in our lives over the past 9.5 months – going from being a flash on a screen to a fully developed 7 lb+ child dancing like crazy in your mother’s tummy during that time. But thinking of you having existed for such a short period of time makes me feel like tomorrow could be a daunting ordeal that depends heavily on us surviving a gauntlet of tough decisions and unknown circumstances. The truth is, though a lot of crucial decisions and actions will go on tomorrow, nothing will be that hasn’t been seen from the beginning of time by the Creator and allowed to happen. This gives me great hope. So that even if something happens unexpectedly tomorrow (from our perspective), it won’t be beyond the comprehension or control of our Maker.

I want so badly for you to be healthy and live a successful life, sweet Violet, but more than that I long for and pray for you to live a life marked by a devotion and submission to Jesus. I am confident I will not perfectly exemplify a life of obedience to Him in front of you (and any siblings you end up having), but I hope I can be a father who is quick to exemplify repentance and grace by admitting when I’ve wronged you and seeking after reconciliation with you and our God above.

I love you so much and will continue to pray for you as you grow up, sweet girl. I can’t wait to meet you and start a lifetime of memories with you and your Mom tomorrow.

Love,

Dad

P.S. Here’s a picture of your mom and me tonight on our last date before we get to meet you. We are excited!

What’d you do on Saturday?

Had one of the busier days that I can remember this Saturday…

• 8am – Woke up late and flew around the house trying to prepare for a busy day, including making 2 peanut butter sandwiches for us to eat for lunch.
• 9am – 11:40am – attended the second half a Gospel Counseling class at the St. Johns campus of the Austin Stone. Learned how to think of human issues like trees – the branches are our surface behavior problems (anger, loneliness, suicidal thoughts, etc.), tree trunk is the heart idolatry (fear, shame, seeking approval, etc.), and the roots are the area of distrust or disbelief in God (think He’s not powerful enough to care for us).
• 12pm – 5pm – attended our second (of 2) birthing class. Learned what to focus on right before the birth (the acronym P-U-R-E-E) and how to breathe Lamaze and Bradley style.
• 5:40pm – 7:40pm – de-weeded, de-leafed and mowed our lawn after 4 weeks of being too busy to touch it. Think I managed to get bit twice by fire ants and swallow only four mosquitos.
• 8:15pm – 8:45pm – while eating dinner at Chipotle, Lydia began feeling pain in her lower abdominal region on the pace of every 10 minutes (read: Toni braxton-hicks contractions).
• 9pm – 11pm – the contractions continued during our shopping trips to Academy sports (needed a yoga ball for Lyd to speed up labor once it comes), Target (bought some hard candy for her to chew during labor, and a hanging mechanism to be able to put up a painting I made for Violet’s room), and HEB for some groceries and a much needed 6-pack of barley soda.

I think this was put up around 1am

• 11pm – 1:5oam – with each consistent and subsequent wince on Lydia’s face, we stayed up half the night packing our suitcases, hanging Vi’s painting, blowing up the yoga ball and doing laundry, all while telling each other repeatedly we weren’t going to be that couple that rushed to the hospital for a false alarm.
• 1:55am – 2:00am – ended the “evening” in modest humiliation by waking up our OB (who happened to be the doc on call) asking if what Lyd was going through was okay for only 36 weeks. “Don’t come in until they are less than 5 minutes apart for several hours,” was the reply. Point taken and goodnight to you, good sir!

Today was much more "restful"

Why I Won’t Help Re-elect Obama

Not particularly captivated by the upcoming Presidential election season (as it is months away and already getting quite bicker-y), but as a Christian, I do take seriously our obligation to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” and to be a “city on  hill“.  One way I interpret those texts is that we have an obligation to participate in and seek to positively influence the governmental systems we find ourselves in. As Americans, part of that means we vote as informed citizens. The following represents a few of my thoughts on the first few years of President Obama’s presidency from someone who voted and campaigned for him 2009 to someone who is fairly certain I won’t be voting to re-elect him.

Why I like President Obama:

• He’s charismatic and seems to genuinely care for people. This is why I voted and even campaigned to get this guy elected. He is well-spoken and engaging, and he remembers names – as someone who struggles to remember the names of my coworkers, I very much respect this.
• He’s icy under-pressure. Nothing seems to rattle this guy, and that’s a Presidential quality.  Here’s a quote from an article in the Atlantic, “just after Labor Day the McCain-Palin team had opened up a lead over Obama and Joe Biden in several national polls. CBS News and an ABC–Washington Post poll had McCain up by 2 percentage points in early September, a week before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy; a USA Today–Gallup poll that same week had him ahead by a shocking 10 points. But Obama and Biden stayed unrattled and on message, and two months later they won with a two-to-one landslide in the Electoral College and a 7-point margin in the popular vote. ” Obviously the work he’s done in exacting justice on Bin-laden and numerous others is encouraging.
• He sometimes admits where he’s been wrong (unlike President Bush pt.2) as in the case of the recent kerfuffle over the so-called “birth control rule“.

After receiving some grief from the public, President Obama backed off on the Birth Control Rule.

Why I probably won’t vote to re-elect him:

• He hasn’t kept some of his key promises. Guantanamo, Super-PAC‘s or budget restraint anyone? As a fan of the fair trial system, campaign finance reform and fiscal responsibility it has been unfortunate to me that these have not been improved under his leadership.
• He hasn’t reached across the aisle enough for me. Despite numerous campaign promises and continued rhetoric I haven’t seen a consistent approach on his part to get consensus on various issues – most notably on the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, in the 24-hour news cycle of today I feel less and less optimistic that any President will be able to be a consensus-builder, but for someone who trumpeted compromise on the campaign trail, I just haven’t seen enough of this from him.
• The XL Pipeline. Say what you want about the environmental pitfalls of building this pipeline from Texas to Canada, but the way the Obama Administration handled this one was all sorts of short-sighted.
• I feel the government is quite large enough already, and yet it keeps getting larger anyway.
  • In President Obama’s defense, GWBush pt.2 left our nation in pretty dire financial shape. However, one thing that our nation hasn’t improved on since Obama took office has been federal spending. Mr. Obama has tagged on an additional $4 trillion since he took office in 2009, even though as a presidential candidate in 2008 Obama criticized then-President George W. Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt, saying it was “unpatriotic” and also “irresponsible” to saddle future generations with such a large national debt. Seems a wee bit disingenuous.
  

  Contrary to the opinion of many elected leaders, spending money isn't the best way to have more of it to go around.

  • For its handful of virtues, the new Affordable Care Act did not set right our healthcare system, and in some cases made it worse. Under the new healthcare law, medical care is scheduled to eventually transition from what is appropriate for the individual patient to what is appropriate from government’s perspective.  And, of course, the cost of care will be a significant factor, with government, not doctors and patients, ultimately deciding if a treatment is worthwhile. Not a big fan of this approach.
  • Regulations, like scalpels, are one of the key tools in an elected leader’s toolbox to realize change in the country. However, a surgeon would be thought to be mad if she expected to get more praise the more she used her knife. The Obama administration (and really the federal government at large) seems to understand their role in this regard: the more regulations developed, the better their performance. How is this a good way of looking at the purpose of government?
  • Not only so, but the way in which these regulations are marketed is disingenuous. Calculations of “savings” for new regulations, such as this mercury emissions rule, are exaggerated at worst and dubious at best.

Now, I haven’t quite got my mind around who I would end up voting for if not for Mr. Obama, but I have some time to consider that.

Drought Easing?

Even though most prognosticators of weather predict the more than 18 month long drought will continue, Central Texas has begun to experience a slight ray of hope in the form of recent rains. Reservoirs and aquifers are still very low statewide, but approximately 14% of the state is in what’s considered an exceptional drought. That’s down from 20% of the state being in an exceptional drought just last week.

South and West Texas are still in the throes of a devastating drought, but it appears to be easing in Central and NE Texas.

Goes to show that though droughts can develop over a short period of time, with the right amount of rain they can end even more quickly.

Couldn’t help noticing that another news story from today showed an estimated 45, 000 jobs will be added to Austin’s economy over the next two years. Perhaps good news is contagious?

Water Shortage: The New Reality

Amid a significant rain storm here in Central Texas it’s not as easy to remember that as a state we are in the worst 15 month drought in history. Every morning I wake up and turn on the tap and water still comes out at a good pressure. Even though I’m an environmental engineer I take for granted all the energy and processing that went in to getting that water safely into my house. But then news items like this one about a community 30 minutes from Austin help remind me how dire things are getting:

The well serving about 1,100 people around Spicewood Beach in Burnet County is estimated to run out of water in just a few days the Lower Colorado River Authority said Tuesday…On Monday, the LCRA, the water system’s owner, said the well had two to three weeks of water remaining but on Tuesday said that the well level dropped 1.3 feet overnight, after falling one foot over the past week.

It is becoming much more conceivable to imagine conflicts and wars starting between countries or even states within the U.S. all in efforts of trying to secure water supplies. Still sounds crazy, you say?  Ever heard of the Aral Sea?

Formerly one of the four largest lakes in the world, in 2007 the Aral Sea had declined to 10% of its original size