Here’s a funny story that Peter Kallin of the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance posted to an EPA listserv I subscribe to:
I used to work with a Parks Department in NJ doing stream and lakeshore restorations. One of the things we implemented was a pick up after your pet program. One day I watched a little old lady dutifully pick up after her dog, put it in a zip lock bag and then heave it out into the lake. When I approached her, she assured me that she had picked up just like she was supposed to so ‘no one would step in it.’ She had no clue that it impacted water quality. She assured me that she had been throwing it all in the lake ‘for years’ and was glad that we had finally made it a rule so other people would do it too.
It was quite fascinating to see how some of the other subscribers to the list reacted to this story. Some drew social marketing insight from ‘little old lady’s behavior. Others took the opportunity to plunge deep into the shoptalk about dog poop. I wonder how the ‘little old lady’ in the story would have reacted if Peter had responded to her story with something like this:
Bacteria can move much further than TSS in surface water flows. Bacteria particles sizes are around 1 micron (that is why we use a 0.45 micron filter to measure TSS using EPA methods - these methods were developed for secondary wastewater treatment compliance measurement in which bacteria TSS are the discharge to be regulated after the activated sludge and secondary clarifyer treatment). Bacteria specific gravity is about 1.01 or so. Runoff TSS are typically larger and heavier (mineral TSS particle specific gravity 2.65, particle sizes we focus on for stormwater control > 20 microns). Bacteria do like to attach to particles, or form flocs, in which the particles are the transport element to be modeled. However, bacteria also break off and move as single cells (an evolutionary advantage when food runs out where they are attached). Also bacterial flocs that have no mineral particles will have specific gravities of around 1.01, albeit much larger floc sizes than 1 micron.
Comments
There were several dog poop threads going on concurrently (if you’re talking about NPSinfo); I disagree that that was a “response to the story.”
I found the technical email useful, as it enables me to answer a greater range of questions with confidence. If a person retorts, “but it can’t get into the water when the water is 200 feet away,” I can say with confidence “Yes, it can.” If they further ask me how/why, I could again respond knowledgably. The poster of this email did not intend it to be an outreach message.
Hi Sarah,
I do understand that the second post was not aimed at the little old lady. The point of the post is simply to highlight how differently professionals and lay people can understand and talk about the same set of circumstances.
No criticism of the second post was intended.
Another good anecdote posted with that thread:
A while back I was involved in a study to determine the sources of high bacterial counts at a coastal beach. One of our field crews out investigating the local storm drains to make sure that there were no sewer cross-connections was approached by a woman who was curious about what they were doing and commended them for their efforts to clean up the beach. She then proceeded to tell them quite proudly how she had actually trained her dog to squat and do its business over the catchbasin, thus avoiding having to pick up after it. She, like much of the public, had no idea that the storm drains simply transport water (and whatever gets dumped into it) and discharge it untreated to the nearest water body. To me, that’s the main message we need to get across in our stormwater public education efforts.
Her conclusion reminds me of a musing I’ve been having: that in some cases, it’s not true anymore that RUNOFF doesn’t get treated. Stormdrains don’t get treated, but that’s not accurate either: it’s their CONTENTS that don’t get treated, but we still call that RUNOFF. I’ve not seen any discussions on this nuance yet… our vocabulary needs to evolve some, but can it evolve in a way that ENHANCES public understanding of the issues instead of obscuring it further?
We had a little old lady in our neighborhood who would carefully bag her dog poop and leave it at the curb believing that it was picked up by city workers. In the spring, when the snow would melt, there would be these bags of poop all over and of course, we would pick them up and throw them away, perpetuating the myth of city dog poop curb-side collection.
