Chalk up one more reason to be glad I work here instead of at my old site. For what's supposed to be one company, there are a lot of odd little differences between the two sites. One of them is that there are bottled-water water coolers all over the place here; at the North site there are almost none - a few unfiltered fountains and one or two coolers that filter tap water, scattered over two enormous buildings. (To understand why all this really matters, you have to know that Phoenix-area tap water is undrinkable. I'm not fussy: I'll drink tap water in Philadelphia, Houston, Boston, San Diego, LA and pretty much anywhere else I've ever been including cities where many other people insist on bottled water, but the stuff here tastes nasty.)
I don't know if it's been on the national news, but apparently 3 of the city of Phoenix's water processing plants are down and one of the two remaining ones is working at half capacity. There's still water, but it may be contaminated and should be boiled before drinking. Apparently this problem arose because - wait for it - with all the rain up north some silt washed into the system and gunked it all up. (I wonder what they think people in other places, where rain is a normal occurrance, do?) I don't imagine many Phoenicians were thrilled to wake up and be told not to shower or to "shower very quickly" this morning. Fortunately I live in another contiguous city - especially fortunate since I was halfway through an erg workout when I found this out. However, both my current and former worksite are within the city of Phoenix.
I'm still on the e-mail list for my old site, so I was amused to be notified (not until after lunch, mind you) that they company would be supplying bottled water in the cafeteria for free - but the urged employees to be considerate of others and not take more than a bottle or two. Yikes. Here they just told us not to use the sinks, presumably in case someone wanted to lick their hands after washing them. (To be fair, some people do brush their teeth with that water after lunch.) But they left us bottles of hand sanitizer!
The funny thing is, normally our water is cheaper and we have restrictions more rarely than places that aren't nine years into a drought in the desert. (We don't know yet if this year's rains will be enough to end the drought - or rather, I suppose the drought is technically gone but water levels are still way low. Stay tuned.)
Posted by dichroic at January 25, 2005 02:56 PMMemories -- of working somewhere that supplies the necessities of life. For the past three-plus years, I've brought my own water, my own coffee brewer, and my own hand sanitizer (which I keep in my pocket because the water in the sink is cold.
Posted by: l-empress at January 25, 2005 04:02 PMRe: the drought being 'ended'-- I keep hearing, over and over again, that this season's rain has not ended the drought, but has lessened drought conditions. One of the guys I hike with (his background is in forestry, and he certainly sounds knowledgeable, but I admit that's about as far as I've taken it) claims that it will take a couple years in a row with this sort of rain to end the drought.
Posted by: Maggi at January 26, 2005 02:16 PMEesh. Living in a temperate rain forest, we'd be screwed if our facilities couldn't handle a little run-off. You're reminding me, though, of the flood in September (thanks to the hurricanes). Our water processing plants were completely screwed from that. We didn't have safe water for almost two weeks, and much of that time, no water at all. And they are well-prepared for large amounts of rain.
Posted by: Melissa at February 1, 2005 10:39 AM