‘That’s Vinegar:’ The Ohio River’s History of Contamination and Progress Made – The Allegheny Front

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‘That’s Vinegar:’ The Ohio River’s History of Contamination and Progress Made – The Allegheny Front

In 1958, researchers from the University of Louisville and the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission gathered at a lock on the Monongahela River for routine collecting, counting and comparing of fish species.

At the time, the best way to accomplish this was what’s called lock chamber sampling, or filling a 350-by-56-foot lock with river water, injecting it with cyanide and waiting for the dead fish to float to the top. Archaic, but effective.

On this particular day, researchers opened the chamber to find one fish inside.

One fish.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, said Jerry Schulte, a biologist who managed the source water protection and emergency response team for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission [ORSANCO] for more than two decades. After all, the steel companies that dotted the region’s riverbanks were dumping their contaminated water right into the rivers. The waterways were so acidic that the steel-hulled boats meant to last 20 years rusted out in three and the pH routinely measured less than 4.

November 15, 2019 Morning

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Good morning! Yeah, it’s Friday! I’m glad, I’m looking forward to the weekend even if it means I’ll be at the Renewable Energy Fair most of Saturday. Two weeks to Buy Nothing Day 🛍️. Mostly sunny and 31 degrees at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA. There is a south-southwest breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. Feels much warmer than earlier in the week – it was actually a bit warmer than I would have liked in my apartment. I shouldn’t have left the heat at 55 before bed as it overrode quite a bit.

Last night I was playing with CSS flex and grid, trying to decide on a possible future redesign of the blog. I didn’t know much about the latest in browser development 📰 as it’s been a while since I’ve redesigned a website from the ground up. Stayed up much too late for sure trying to learn the ins and out. The current design works well but sometimes I’ve noticed display glitches while embedding Facebook and Twitter posts, and sometimes links don’t work properly. It’s also a bit slow at times — some of it’s my web host, but some of it’s bloated code. Plus, the parent theme I’m using to base my blog off (with heavy modifications), is no longer supported, and uses some code that isn’t PHP 7 friendly.

I went down to the library for a bit, 📚 mostly to download some themes, to based on my desire to put a fresh new look on the blog, but managed to save them in the /tmp directly, which was promptly discarded when I restarted my computer. Doh! 💻 Fortunately, I can always just re-download them.

But regardless of my new found knowledge on web programming, I certainly shouldn’t have stayed up until 11:30 AM, as I tend to wake up quite early most mornings, this morning included.🌄 I was stirring around 6:30 although I didn’t get out of bed until 7 AM. So I bet I’m going to be tired today at work. I’ll make it through today and get to bed early tomorrow. That will certainly make me feel miserable later today.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 43 degrees at 1pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 27th. South wind 6 to 9 mph becoming west in the afternoon. But much better than its been. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 29 degrees. Kind of like yesterday. The record high of 74 was set in 1993. 4.8 inches of snow fell back in 1906.❄

The sun will set at 4:33 pm with dusk around 5:03 pm, which is 55 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 41 degrees. There will be a west breeze at 8 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 46 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 10 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of snow showers between 11pm and midnight. Partly cloudy 🌃, with a low of 17 degrees at 6am. 15 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 27th. West wind 9 to 14 mph becoming north after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had light snow in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of 7 occurred back in 1972.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 29 degrees at 1pm. 19 degrees below normal. North wind 7 to 9 mph. Another cold day, but hopefully it won’t be so cold at the New Scotland Armory. I am going to end up having to drive there, as I need to bring a table, as they’re not being provided. It’s not like it’s the other side of world, but I try to avoid driving in the city. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 2006. 3.4 inches of snow fell back in 2002.❄

Looking ahead to Sunday, sunny, with a high near 36. ☀ Northeast wind 3 to 5 mph. Typical average high for the weekend is 48 degrees. Cold yes but it’s still improvement. The long range doesn’t show as much of a warm up as before but that’s good – maybe less potholes this year. That said, despite the cold I’m not sure that the ground froze up that bad, so maybe it won’t be so bad early in the season. I’m hoping for warmer weather for camping though.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Buy Nothing Day 🛍️ when the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm with dusk at 4:55 pm. On that day in 2018, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 56 and 28 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 42 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 2005.

Gone

My mom

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My mom’s better than your mom,
My mom’s better than yours.
She makes me homemade pumpkin butter,
And it tastes really good,
My mom’s better than yours.