Pollution

Water Pollution:

Everything we flush or pour down the drain, eventually flows to the Mississippi River.  It is treated to digest fecal and other pathogenic wastes, sludge ash is incinerated for landfill disposal, gas emissions are filtered through compost beds to reduce air pollution, and the rest flows to the river with as much chlorine poison as needed to prevent pathogens or the sheer impact of microbial metabolic activity from harming fish or people.  Each person in the city contributes something, and every year more people mean more waste.  More intensely treating the waste requires more energy and associated pollution.

Storm sewers are designed to prevent flooding, not to treat waste.  Everything rinsed off the land directly into sewers makes its way to the river unless it settles somewhere in a sewer where it is occasionally cleaned out.

The less that goes down the drain, the better.  Food scraps do no good in a landfill, but at least they do less harm than in the Mississippi River.  Nutrients in food scraps can feed the soil on land where there is plenty of oxygen to speed conversion into rich new soil and plants.  The compost we collect, is part of protecting the river that we drink from.

Air Pollution:

Electric, and gas power use results in air pollution.  Pollution occurs at many stages; mining, extracting, processing, transport, power generation and transmission.  By consuming less power we cause less pollution and less influence upon global climate change.  Unless winds flush local pollution away from the Twin Cities, the local air quality does impact our health.  Air pollution contributes to asthma, general breathing difficulties, and rates of a broad variety of ailments.

Gas lawn mowers, cars in idle while parked, and smoky fires can create acute local air quality issues.  We can educate ourselves to meet our needs with consideration of those breathing nearby.  One can find local air quality online, and schedule major polluting activities when they contribute to less acute harm.

Indoor air-quality is often much worse than outside.  Proper ventilation while cooking on the stove, and making sure to turn stoves and ovens off once not in use helps everyone breath better.   Airing out the house briefly during an unusually warm day is worth some heat loss for our health.  Within a house, people emit more than just CO2. Many plastics and cleaning substances release potentially harmful gas to the air.  Fortunately, house plants and the soil they grow in remove more than just CO2 from the air.  Tests by NASA revealed that the density of pathogenic microbes in the air within 100 ft of all plants was significantly less than air further away.  Chemicals documented to be removed by house plants include benzene and acetate.

Intelligent purchase decisions and attention to what we do to the air we breath effects the quality of air we share.  Second hand smoke is a serious public health issue.  In accord with local law, MSC prohibits smoking inside our boarding houses.  Accommodating the needs of habitual smokers on porches protected from the bitter cold, without subjecting smoke sensitive residents to second hand smoke is the MSC's intent.

Light Pollution:

Proper lighting of paths, and parking areas is a matter of safety.  However, it is tempting for managers to install more and brighter lights every time someone complains.  The result can be everyone enduring nauseating 24 hour per day light to appease the occasional resident who insists on white nights.  The sustainability committee supports intelligent lighting systems that focus light precisely where and when it is needed, without shining into people's windows as they try to sleep. 

Sensors and responsive lights that call attention to things happening outside deserve proper planning to secure the benefits of light without causing harm.

Light pollution in the broad sense refers to any nighttime artificial light that shines where it's not needed. This nocturnal brightness can disorient humans and a host of other animals, confounding eyes and biological rhythms that evolved in a world without such light.  The most famous example is newly hatched sea turtles that become disoriented by the light from brightly illuminated beach communities and have difficulty finding the ocean. But behavioral changes have been documented in a wide range of species.  Many nocturnally migrating birds are drawn to the source and can wind up circling round and round lighted towers, often colliding with other birds or dropping from exhaustion.  Implications for human health concern circadian rhythms that may help explain higher breast cancer rates in societies with brighter nights. Studies on shift workers exposed to nearly constant light during the night hours reveal a higher risk for the disease, perhaps because of altered levels of melotonin. Other research shows that blind women have a lower occurrence of breast cancer. A study that looked at a general population also found a correlation between neighborhood nighttime light levels and breast cancer incidence.

Why conserve water:

Relative to MSC's energy expenses water is cheap.  However, we pay to heat water in our water heaters and much of the cost of harvesting and treating the water we drink is not reflected on the water bill.  When we extract clean water from river or ground water, we leave less and dirtier water behind.  Energy is used to pump and to process each volume of water delivered.  The greater the volume of water that must be processed to treat our wastes, the more expensive it is to treat.  Using only the water one needs, minimizes many associated costs and leaves more good water in the land for the benefits that provides.

Rain barrels provide garden plants water that involved no treatment, and contains no treatment chemicals.  This is better for plants than saltier tap water, and involves minimal treatment costs.  Don't drink this unfiltered water, because it does contain whatever crap flushed off our roofs.  In our gardens, what plants don't take up from the soil can filter slowly to recharge groundwater between rain events.  The barrels capture rain water quickly, preventing pulses of intense runoff that would otherwise move soil that we want where it is and not in a river.  Far more water is captured in the soils of the garden and the lawn, but the barrels allow the land more time during which water can filter into the soil rather than runoff.  When a little more time is all the garden depressions require, the barrels prevent runoff pollution.  When the extra water provided by rain barrels sustains plant health through a brief dry period, these plants can protect the soil, and better speed water uptake by the soil.  We still water vegetables with a hose, but less than we otherwise might.