Mid-morning.
The lawnmowers were out earlier. The windows are open to the fresh Fall-like
air and blue California-like skies. The day in southwest Ohio is quite pleasant
– a good day for playing championship tennis less than two miles away as the
crow flies. You and Carol had your breakfasts and read the Saturday paper. It
actually feels like a weekend, something you rarely not after more than a decade
of full retirement. Toyota called about four-twenty yesterday to say the car is
ready. You did not have the time or inclination to get over there during the
Friday rush hour traffic. So, Monday you will pick up the car wondering if you
will remember how to drive it. – Amorella
0949
hours. It has been fun driving the Honda to and from the Lewis Center area a
few times – remembering why we bought the 2005 Accord EX six in the first
place. – Checked my email and not much news this morning. Time for a nap then
my exercises.
After noon local time. You completed your
forty minutes of exercises after the nap. Carol will have errands and lunch out
after she’s dressed for going places. You are looking for a quiet afternoon.
One of the joys of older age – spending ten minutes looking for a Kroger bag
with essentials like toothpaste and mouthwash in it and then finding it right
where it is supposed to be in plain sight in the bathroom. How Carol could miss
this is beyond you. You spent ten minutes looking all over the rest of the
house for a misplaced Kroger bag and it was in the bathroom with her the whole
time. What do you say to this, boy? – Amorella
1252
hours. It would be funnier if I hadn’t spent all that time looking for
something I spotted the second I looked in the bathroom to tell her I couldn’t
find it. What could I do but laugh. It happens to me too. How can the eyes
gloss over something you are looking for and not see it? It happens. Actually,
it is nothing new. It has happened our entire lives, but I think we are more
sensitive to it now. Lost and found has a lot of meaning for everyone.
You are at Kroger’s on Mason-Montgomery Road
after a late lunch at Potbelly’s. After dropping off the few groceries you are
to Pine Hill Lakes Park to read/write under the shade of the hill in the far
north lot. – Amorella
1445
hours. I feel ready to finish up Dead Ten today. I am liking the different
sense and tone of Merlyn’s words. I am wondering why I am angry with my soul.
These writing lend me insight sometimes as I realize/know all these words and
situations must be explained or shown or told via my birth language and basic
cultural background even if you were more than my imagination there would be no
choice. I wonder if one was angry enough at one’s soul that it would leave and
allow another soul to put up with the cantankerous heartanmind? That’s my
thinking. (1452)
You are home, sitting in the shade of the
front porch seemingly not angry at anyone, including yourself at the moment. –
Amorella
1521
hours. A lawn mower is running across the street, Carol is reading the new Money
magazine and she says she has moved 17 times in her life and that the average
American has moved 11 times. She just bought the magazine today because Money listed
Mason as number 17 out of the top 50 small towns in the United States this
year. It is not as good as a year or two ago, but then that was another
magazine survey (I think). Little Mason (1970’s) – who would have thought. It
was a little town out in the sticks that had United Telephone Company. It was
long distance to call to Cincinnati Bell. Everyone had a soft water machine
because the local water contains far too many minerals. In the mid-nineties we
began getting our water from Cincinnati and the Ohio River rather than the
large aquifer just north of town.
** **
“Giant aquifer:
Drinking from the sea beneath our feet”
Although it may
surprise some residents, many in southwest Ohio drink from an aquifer that holds
trillions of gallons of water.
Michael D.
Clark, mclark@enquirerDOTcom 4:07 p.m. EDT May 10, 2015
Beneath
thousands of Southwest Ohioians' feet is a "sea" from which they
drink.
When 360,000
residents turn on their kitchen sink taps, they are drawing water from one of
America's largest aquifers.
The
internationally acclaimed water they are swallowing is sometimes months or even
decades in the making, having been filtered down into a 1.5 trillion gallon
Great Miami aquifer lying deep below Butler County and nine other area
counties.
This week,
Hamilton's City Council will honor the city's water plant in a special ceremony
celebrating its recent international award for best-tasting water.
But this is
also an ominous time of year for the aquifer.
Each spring,
local water experts monitor the aquifer because of what millions of homeowners,
businesses and farmers do to their grass lawns and crops.
They use too
much fertilizer, says Tim McLelland, ground water consortium manager with the
Hamilton Water Plant.
"Every
spring we see a spike in nitrogen levels, most of it from rain runoff from area
lawns," McLelland said.
University
of Cincinnati professor Dion Dionysiou says that constant monitoring of the
aquifer is key to protecting it from fertilizer runoff and industrial
pollutants.
"We
have to make sure we protect it, because it's a very rare resource in the
world," says Dionysiou, a professor of environmental engineering and
science. "Typically aquifers have better water quality than surface water
sources like the Ohio River or lakes."
Fortunately,
the massive aquifer has so far handled the annual pollutant spike, diluting the
nitrogen and other chemicals and staying below minimum safe drinking water
levels, he says.
That 360,000
Butler and northern Hamilton county residents drink from an ancient, glacially
formed aquifer is news to most households, McLelland said.
"A lot
of people don't realize this is a hidden natural resource," he said.
"The aquifer is millions of years old, hundreds of feet deep and a lot of
this water travels for miles underground" fed by rain water drainage and
thousands of miles of rivers – primarily the Great Miami River – and streams
flowing southward from west central and southwest Ohio.
"We're
pretty lucky to have a large filtration system before it ever even makes it to
a lot of the drinking water plants in the region," McLelland said.
Internationally
acclaimed water
That
natural, underground filtration makes the Hamilton Water Plant's job easier,
and its water processing has produced international awards.
In February
– for the third time since 2009 – Hamilton's water won a gold medal in the 25th annual Berkeley Springs
International Water Tasting contest. But John Berry, a Hamilton resident for
six decades, says the awards only confirm what residents have known for years
from their own taste buds.
"We
have the best water around, and the aquifer is a godsend," Berry said.
"Every time I have people visiting me from out of town, they comment on
how great the water is here compared to where they come from."
Denise Quinn
likes to treat millions of gallons of aquifer water in a very special way for
her job: She uses it to make beer. The vice president and brewery plant manager
for the MillerCoors brewery in Butler County's city of Trenton says the
expansive plant, which has 33 acres under a roof, chose its location to better
tap into the Great Miami Aquifer.
"It's
incredibly important for us," said Quinn, whose brewery is MillerCoors'
second largest in America, employing 550 workers, and the largest in Southwest
Ohio.
MillerCoors
uses three wells on its site to tap into the aquifer, Quinn said. Like other
area industries, she said, the company is mindful that the underwater source
remains an asset only as long as its replenishment process is keep
environmentally clean. That includes not drawing too much water too quickly.
An average
day sees about 62 million gallons of water used from the aquifer's estimated
1.2 trillion gallons.
Quinn
declined to give company details but says the brewery in recent years "has
made significant reductions in water usage."
Not over
tapping the aquifer, which can lead to increased concentrations of pollutants,
is key to preserving it, says UC professor Dionysiou.
"It's a
groundwater replenishment system that renews itself," he says. "We
have concerns about keeping its quality so we have to monitor it, and we have
to make sure we protect it."
Aquifer
facts
The Great
Miami Aquifer is fed by groundwater drainage and 6,600 miles of rivers in
western and west-central Ohio that includes drainage and streams in Southwest
Ohio counties of Preble, Montgomery, Butler, Warren and western Hamilton County
that flows southward underground toward the Ohio River.
A leftover
from the glacial water deposits millions of years ago, the aquifer is not a
single contiguous, underwater sea, say water experts who monitor it. Rather,
they say the best way to picture it is to imagine it as semi-liquid mix of
water, sand and gravel with a consistency much like a gigantic bowl of soggy
cereal.
In general
the aquifer is centered under the 170-mile long Great Miami River, it's main
source of replenishment, with its deepest underground tributaries extending
about two to three miles east and west of the river, covering about 39,000
square miles.
As one of
America's largest aquifers, it holds about 1.5 trillion gallons of water that
is naturally filtered as it meanders downward through top soil and underlying
layers of earth to the aquifer's semi-solid layers. Depending on its location
in the aquifer area, water can take months or decades to accumulate before
wells bring it to the surface for treatment before flowing to area households.
Wells near
the Great Miami River and large streams can yield more than 2,000 gallons of
water per minute. Much of the aquifer's water maintains at temperature of 56
degrees.
It is the
principal drinking water for 1.6 million people and for about 360,000 residents
in western and central Butler County and parts of northern Hamilton County.
The Ohio
River is the primary source for drinking water elsewhere in Southwest Ohio.
Hamilton's
international award-winning tap water
In February,
international judges of American and foreign city tap water declared Southwest
Ohio's city of Hamilton as having the "Best Tasting Tap Water in the
World."
The 25th Annual Berkeley Springs
International Water Tasting, was the second time Hamilton's water, which is
drawn from the Great Miami River Aquifer, grabbed the top award in the last
five years.
The Butler
County city's water bested a domestic and international group of cities that
included former gold medalists: Clearbrook, British Columbia (three-time
champion); Emporia, Kansas (2013) and Greenwood, British Columbia (2012).
Hamilton also won a silver medal in 2009 as the "best
tasting tap water in the U.S." And the city's water earned "best of
the best" honors from the Ohio Section of the American Water Works
Association in 2012 and 2014.
Selected and
edited from -- cincinnatiDOTcom
** **
1547
hours. I decided to check; it turns out this Southwest Ohio aquifer is a bit
larger than I expected. All I remember is that it contains a lot of minerals,
i.e. the drinking water in old Mason was very hard – 26 grains or thereabout,
that’s the reason most people had water softeners. We don't need them with Cincinnati water from the Ohio River.
Such matters attract your attention but
mostly it goes back to being on the moraine of the last Great Wisconsin ice
sheet, which was supposedly a mile high above your house. – Amorella
1554
hours. I like to remember stuff like that. It gives me a perspective of time
and place when I did not exist. Imagine, I look up and envision ice about a
mile thick. Most cool. Neat stuff.
Post. - Amorella
1615 hours. This is not doing much to get Dead 10 completed.
You are sitting enjoying your time on the
front porch. This is what your Grandfather Orndorff used to do when he was your
age. – Amorella
1616
hours. True, enough I have a picture of him on the front porch at 103 West
Walnut Street in Westerville in those days. He was the best grandfather I could
have ever asked for. I loved him very much, still do. He used to tell me
stories about the Indians living nearby along Alum Creek north of Westerville
when he was a kid. He liked to hunt and fish and so did they. – According to
the 1890 U. S. Census there were 14 civilized Native Americans living in
Franklin County at the time and Delaware County possibly had 9 or less. (What
would I do without the Internet? What a blessing.) As far as I know the only
Native American Popo had an autograph of was Jim Thorpe. (1634)
2210
hours. Carol made a good tasty supper of stuffed peppers; then, we watched the
news and a PBS show called “Mountain Music” and a mystery titled “Father Brown”
on Channel 14 (Oxford, Ohio).
You had a good day even though you didn’t
work on Dead Ten. Let that be a lesson to you, boy. – Amorella
2215
hours. This is a lesson I am learning to understand. The spirit is where it is,
and it is not always in the fingertips.
The heartansoulanmind does not exist in
physical time and space, that’s the point, my friend, and neither do I, the
Amorella.
2221
hours. I cannot verify such a claim, but from my perspective it is difficult to
doubt. You are at the very least, a part of my own spiritual nature. To deny
this would to be dishonest. - rho
Post. - Amorella
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