Happy Garden Hose Day

If you were unaware that today is National Garden Hose Day you must live under a rock.   The phenomenal rise in popularity of Garden Hose Day is nothing short of amazing, and many experts in holiday marketing believe that National Garden Hose Day will soon rival not just the lesser national holidays like President’s Day, but it may soon eclipse traditional favorites like Father’s Day and Labor Day.

This year’s Garden Hose Day was enthusiastically celebrated in most American cities–from as far south as Brownsville to as far north as Wasilla.  As was the case in 2012, Minneapolis was the unchallenged epicenter of Garden Hose Day activities, with public offices and major businesses closing Monday to allow Twin Cities residents a full three-day weekend for the celebration.  Minneapolis and St. Paul square off each August 3 in the traditional Garden Hose Pull event.  The rivalry is intense and the competition brutal. Minneapolis leads the series by two wins, but St. Paul is a slight favorite in this year’s event  because of the acquisition of All Star puller Paul Browning from the Cleveland Pack Mules.

This bas relief rendering of a garden hose pull from antiquity demonstrates that hoses were in use much earlier than previously believed.  The thick, primitive hose used in this event was quite unlike the sleek but extremely strong hoses used in today’s competition.  Official garden hose pulls actually use specially manufactured hoses that are much stronger than conventional garden variety hoses. The stronger hoses were developed for safety after a St. Paul point puller lost an eye when a tightly stretched hose popped during the 2010 competition.

A new competition that emerged in several cities during this year’s Garden Hose festivities was the so-called Hose Blast. In this event, the player attempts to catch a burst of water from a fire hose in his mouth and squirt it back into the face of the friendly fireman.  The event’s future is uncertain, since several injuries were reported this year,  including a number of loose teeth.

Billy Meredith of Des Moines, Iowa was unable to withstand the jet of water dealt him by fireman Bob Withers in the Hose Blast event held at the Des Moines Civic Center. Although Billy was a favorite with the crowd, he did not qualify for the main competition. 

A Bright Future for Garden Hose Day

According to Esperanza Lopez,   research analyst for the National Federation of Merchant Associations,  holidays sink or swim according to their commercial appeal.  Holidays don’t get popular by accident.  Mother’s Day was a flop, Lopez points out,  until florists caught on that promoting it was an extremely successful way to sell flowers.

Lopez explains that for a holiday to really take off, it needs two things: commercial appeal and a nostalgic hook. Groundhogs are cute, but Groundhog Day comes in only slightly above zero as a national holiday because you can only sell so many stuffed groundhog toys and nobody has any happy childhood memories about groundhogs. Christmas, to the contrary, is the perfect holiday because the “good will toward men” theme is so generalized that almost any product can be associated with it.  Hard as it is to believe, people even give their loved ones guns for Christmas. And as for nostalgia, even a second-rate marketer can whip people into a buying frenzy by evoking happy white Christmas of childhood.  Even people who grew up on the Arizona desert remember blissful white Christmases of their youth when Bing starts to sing.

Garden Hose Day has wide product association plus an easy nostalgic appeal.  Almost everyone has memories of

Happy days of summer. Garden hoses take us back to the Good Old Days.

happy days of summer that involved hose spraying and lawn sprinklers and plastic wading pools filled with cool water from the garden hose.

As for the commercial side,  Esperanza Lopez points out that there are an exceptional number of products that relate to the garden hose.  In addition to the almost limitless array of decorative hoses, there are special nozzles, colorful hose bibs, manual and electrically-powered hose dispenser/retractors,  hose splitters, hose repair kits, hose unions, hose protectors, and more.  Related items include lawn equipment, car wash paraphernalia,  clothing,  books about gardening, patio cooking, landscaping and washing cars, patio furniture, lawn sprinklers,  gardening tools–the list is endless. Yes, even x-rated products that include sex toys and clothing with suggestive phallic mottoes and pictures were on the market this year.

One of the more serious products that has benefited from the popularity of Garden Hose Day is the garden hose filter. According to manager Katey Shannon of Pure Water Products,  a leading seller of garden hose filters, “We sell garden hose filters year around, but sales really take off in the month before Garden Hose Day.”  Shannon points out that garden hose filters enhance the hosing experience, whether you drink water from a garden hose, spray water on your lawn or vegetable garden, wash your car, or fill your horse’s water trough. “Whatever you do with a garden hose,” Shannon says, “you will enjoy it more if your water is filtered.”

So live it up on Garden Hose Day.  August, the hottest month and the last month of summer vacation, needs a great holiday.  Let’s face it.  No one wants to celebrate the day we bombed Hiroshima and no one wants to buy gifts to commemorate LBJ’s Birthday.  Garden Hose Day!  A holiday America can be proud of.

  For the Dog Days of Summer, there’s nothing like a garden hose to make you happy. 

Walk for water charity cut short after 5,000 miles

The Gazette gives its highly coveted Hero Award to Amy Russell who walked 500o miles for a very good cause.  Below is the Independent’s account of her adventure.

After 5,000 miles and 18 months, Amy Russell is done walking.

The 24-year-old Manchester native and founder of the charity Walking4Water has ended her trek through Africa, six months and 2,000 miles earlier than planned.

Health problems and political unrest in her planned destination of Egypt caused her and walking partner Aaron Tharp to stop their walk, she said. They plan to fly home on Sunday.

Amy Russell at a watering hole in Mozambique in August of 2012. She walked on for another year after the photo was taken.

  UV for Chlorine/Chloramine Reduction

Gazette’s Introductory Note.  The following short article from UVSciences.com gives a very general view of some alternative uses of ultraviolet in water treatment. UV is widely accepted as a method of water disinfection, but it is not so widely known as a treatment for TOC  (Total Organic Carbon) and the reduction of chlorine and chloramine.  The article does not explain that these special uses require special equipment and the regular 254 nanometer low pressure lamps that are used for destruction of bacteria and viruses cannot simply be applied to the treatment of  TOC or chlorine/chloramine.  Each of these requires specific wave lengths and chloramine reduction is done with a medium pressure lamp.  At present chloramine reduction with UV is mainly used for swimming pools, but other uses are being developed.–Gene Franks.

Chlorine and chloramine are used extensively for water disinfection.  These compounds, and related byproducts, such as trihalomethanes (THM’s), are often present in water supplies. These compounds must frequently be removed because they are potential health hazards, and they may affect the taste of consumable products, such as flavored beverages and bottled water. Removal is also necessary because chlorine and chloramine based compounds can significantly increase the operational/maintenance costs for purification equipment, such as ion-exchange beds and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, all used for ultrapure water processing.

UV is becoming more popular for destroying chlorine/chloramine compounds as the performance of UV lamps improves and the costs associated with traditional methods of removal become prohibitive. The mechanism used by UV to destroy chlorine/chloramine compounds is dissociation. The ultraviolet energy “breaks” the molecular bonds of the compounds reducing them to their basic elements. These basic elements will either combine with others to form benign compounds, or they can be subsequently removed in a downstream purification process.

Traditional methods for removing chlorine/chloramine are Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) filter beds, or chemical injection using sodium metabisulfite. Sodium metabisulfite can introduce undesirable byproducts into the water supply and it can create favorable conditions for microbial growth in RO membranes downstream. Sodium metabisulfite is also a potential health hazard that requires protected storage and careful handling.

Above, a very basic UV system. The quartz sleeve, lamp inside, inserts into the stainless treatment chamber. The simple control system provides both visual and audible warning of UV lamp failure. The system comes in 2, 6, 8, and 12 gpm versions. The lamps provide strong UV dosage (30 mj/cm2 at the end of the lamp’s life) that is certified by independent testing (BioVir). Very easy to install, the unit wall mounts with two simple clips.

Activated carbon beds used for chlorine/chloramine removal are susceptible to microbial proliferation, and they are vulnerable to “break-through”. As a result, it is necessary to inspect, clean, and replace activated carbon beds regularly, which requires costly downtime on manufacturing lines.

Case studies have shown that UV treatment prior to activated carbon beds and reverse osmosis membranes will reduce overall operating costs by increasing the time between cleaning cycles, and extending the life of both GAC beds and RO membranes. Ultraviolet treatment also provides additional benefits in the form of disinfection and TOC reduction, without affecting taste and without the creation of difficult to remove residuals.

http://www.uvsciences.com/chlorine.html

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Tides, Energy, and the Colorado River

by Elizabeth Cutright

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

In a Nutshell: John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, said that if you tug on one thing in nature you find it attached to the rest of the world.  With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that when a man in an apartment in Phoenix, AZ turns on his air conditioner,   flow in the Colorado River increases.  This will make sense after you read Elizabeth Cutright’s article.

In a lyrical piece written for The Nation, author William deBuys (A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest) describes his time spent rafting down the Colorado River. As he details the changing landscape and the effects climate change and demand management (or mismanagement) have on this interstate tributary, deBuys also manages to address one of the most pressing issues facing water resource management today: the water-energy nexus.

The Colorado is “a tidal river” explains deBuys, going on to note, “these days, the tides of the Colorado are not lunar but Phoenician.” As demand rises from Phoenix, AZ, water levels dip and ebb in response.

“On this April night, when the air conditioners in America’s least sustainable city merely hum, Glen Canyon Dam, immediately upstream from the canyon, will run about 6,500 cubic feet of water through its turbines every second,” writes deBuys. He goes on to illustrate the interdependent relationship between the city’s energy needs and its water resources:

“Tomorrow, as the sun begins its daily broiling of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, and the rest of central Arizona, the engineers at Glen Canyon will crank the dam’s maw wider until it sucks down 11,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). That boost in flow will enable its hydroelectric generators to deliver ‘peaking power’ to several million air conditioners and cooling plants in Phoenix’s Valley of the Sun. And the flow of the river will therefore nearly double.”

Of course, as the heat intensifies in that urban oasis, Phoenix residents will crank up the AC with little thought to effects those watts will have on the Southwest’s water resources.

For deBuys, the connections are clear and significant.

“By mid-summer, temperatures in Phoenix will routinely soar above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and power demands will rise to monstrous heights, day and night. The dam will respond: 10,000 cfs will gush through the generators by the light of the moon, 18,000 while an implacable sun rules the sky. Such are the cycles—driven by heat, comfort, and human necessity—of the river at the bottom of the continent’s grandest canyon.”

Despite the drastic and significant effects of the energy and water needs of some of the region’s largest cities, few laymen ever make the connection.

“The subsequent story of the West can indeed be read as an unending duel between society’s thirst and the dryness of the land, but in downtown Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles, you’d hardly know it,” writes deBuys.

In truth, the impact of this use (who some would undoubtedly label misuse or perhaps even abuse) of the Colorado has tendrils that stretch far and wide beyond green lawns in a desert-scape, or nonstop air conditioning during the hottest part of the day. As deBuys details, harnessing the power of one of “the West’s great waterways,” results in:

* Water for 40 million people
* Irrigation for 5.5 million acres of farmland
* The gradual (and perhaps irreparable) erosion of natural beaches and sandbars as a result of the hydroelectric tides
* Changing water temperatures—resulting from dam releases—aid nonnative species (like trout) to the detriment of indigenous populations of fish—some on the verge of extinction (and many protected under the Endangered Species Act).

The Colorado

The entire article is worth reading, as deBuys goes over the finer points of water rights, court decrees, and the eternal rain dance between supply, demand, and conservation.

One question deBuys asks at the beginning of his essay stuck with me to the end, “The crucial question for Phoenix, for the Colorado, and for the greater part of the American West is this: How long will the water hold out?”

Source: Water Efficiency.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

6 Reasons to Drink Water

It’s no magic bullet, but the benefits of water are many.

by Kathleen Zelman

Introductory Note:  We don’t know why his article has only 6 reasons to drink water, since most of the thousands of articles that tell  you to drink water have at least 10.  Likewise,  it has only 5 tips to help you drink more water, while many articles have fifteen or more.  Since they are good reasons and good tips, though, we decided to offer it. Although recommending the drinking of water should fall into the same category as the breathing of air, it is surprising that many people drink little if any water.  These are usually high consumers of soft drinks.  They should read all six reasons and all five tips. –Hardly Waite.

Americans seem to carry bottled water everywhere they go these days. In fact, it has become the second most popular drink (behind soft drinks). But water lovers got a jolt recently when we heard that a new report had found that the benefits of drinking water may have been oversold. Apparently, the old suggestion to drink eight glasses a day was nothing more than a guideline, not based on scientific evidence.

But don’t put your water bottle or glass down just yet. While we may not need eight glasses, there are plenty of reasons to drink water. In fact, drinking water (either plain or in the form of other fluids or foods) is essential to your health.

This man is only half full and clearly needs to drink more water.

“Think of water as a nutrient your body needs that is present in liquids, plain water, and foods. All of these are essential daily to replace the large amounts of water lost each day,” says Joan Koelemay, RD, dietitian for the Beverage Institute, an industry group.

Kaiser Permanente nephrologist Steven Guest, MD, agrees: “Fluid losses occur continuously, from skin evaporation, breathing, urine, and stool, and these losses must be replaced daily for good health,” he says.

When your water intake does not equal your output, you can become dehydrated. Fluid losses are accentuated in warmer climates, during strenuous exercise, in high altitudes, and in older adults, whose sense of thirst may not be as sharp.

Here are six reasons to make sure you’re drinking enough water or other fluids every day:

1. Drinking Water Helps Maintain the Balance of Body Fluids. Your body is composed of about 60% water. The functions of these bodily fluids include digestion, absorption, circulation, creation of saliva, transportation of nutrients, and maintenance of body temperature.

“Through the posterior pituitary gland, your brain communicates with your kidneys and tells it how much water to excrete as urine or hold onto for reserves,” says Guest, who is also an adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford University.

When you’re low on fluids, the brain triggers the body’s thirst mechanism. And unless you are taking medications that make you thirsty, Guest says, you should listen to those cues and get yourself a drink of water, juice, milk, coffee — anything but alcohol.

“Alcohol interferes with the brain and kidney communication and causes excess excretion of fluids which can then lead to dehydration,” he says.

2. Water Can Help Control Calories. For years, dieters have been drinking lots of water as a weight loss strategy. While water doesn’t have any magical effect onweight loss, substituting it for higher calorie beverages can certainly help.

“What works with weight loss is if you choose water or a non-caloric beverage over a caloric beverage and/or eat a diet higher in water-rich foods that are healthier, more filling, and help you trim calorie intake,” says Penn State researcher Barbara Rolls, PhD, author of The Volumetrics Weight Control Plan.

Researchers find elevated levels of heavy metals in North Texas fracking areas

Editor’s Note:  The AP Report below is one of many we could print that make a circumstantial link between hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.  How long are we going to go on reporting the damage and recommending “more studies?”  –Hardly Waite. 

ARLINGTON — Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington say there are elevated levels of arsenic and other heavy metals close to natural gas extraction sites in the Barnett Shale area of North Texas, according to a news release from the school on July 26, 2013.

Several scenarios — including disturbances from fracking, lower water tables from drought, removal of water used for fracking or industrial accidents such as faulty gas well casings — could release the dangerous compounds into shallow groundwater. “This study alone can’t conclusively identify the exact causes of elevated levels of contaminants in areas near natural gas drilling, but it does provide a powerful argument for continued research,” Brian Fontenot, the lead author on the new paper, said.

Arsenic, barium, strontium and selenium occur naturally at low levels in groundwater. But the release says fracking activities could elevate their levels. The results from the peer-reviewed study were published online by the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Elevated levels for most of the metals were not found outside active drilling areas or outside the shale.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, uses chemicals along with water under high pressure to crack open rock formations and release oil and natural gas. Samples were gathered from 100 private water wells of varying depths within a 13-county area in or near the Barnett Shale during four months in summer and fall of 2011.

Additionally, the paper recommended further research on methanol and ethanol levels in water wells after 29 of the 100 wells in the study contained methanol. The highest concentrations were in the areas of fracking activity. The samples were compared to historical data on water wells from the Texas Water Development Board groundwater database for 1989-1999, before natural gas drilling activity ramped up.

Article Source:  Amarillo Globe News.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

BPA Plastics Study Yields Yet Another Disturbing “Less Is More” Finding

by Gene Franks

A recent Environmental Health News report on BPA plastic begins:

Baby mice exposed in the womb to low doses – but not high doses – of bisphenol A were fatter and had metabolic changes linked to obesity and diabetes, according to a new study published today. Building on previous studies that link the hormone-altering chemical to changes in body weight and glucose tolerance, the new research fuels an ongoing controversy over whether federal testing of chemicals is adequate to protect people from low doses. “What’s scary is that we found effects at levels that the government not only says is safe, but that they don’t bother to test,” said Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri, Columbia, professor and senior author of the study. Many of the effects were reported in the mice fed daily doses – just during pregnancy – that were one-tenth of the amount that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for daily exposure throughout life. Used in polycarbonate plastics, canned food liners and some thermal receipts, BPA is found in almost everyone’s body. Some earlier studies have linked it to obesity and diabetes in people.

The report goes on to explain that current water regulatory practices are carried out under the assumption that high doses are more potent than low doses, so if a chemical does not prove harmful at a dosage of 5 parts per billion, there is no reason to test it at a concentration of 1 part per billion.

Modern Science, like all belief systems, holds certain principles to be sacred and beyond challenge.  One of these is the idea that when a substance is present in a large amount it is more powerful than it would be in a smaller amount.  In other words, more is always more, and less is always less. On the occasions when less seems to be more, as with the current BPA issue,  the scientific establishment simply dismisses the finding as heresy.  If the heretic refuses to recant, he is burned at the stake.  Witness the case of the French scientist Jacques Benveniste, who in 1988 challenged the “more is always more” commandment and was  excommunicated by Orthodox Science.   Benveniste’s sin against scientific orthodoxy was to publish experiments demonstrating that water has the ability to remember substances whose physical presence has been entirely removed from it.  (See The Lost Genitals of Uranus, or How Is an Elephant like a Glass of Water?)

Less is more, of course, is not a revolutionary idea, although orthodox Science treats it like  one.  Less is more is a cornerstone principle of the science of Homeopathy, which calls it the Law of Infinitesimals,   There are countless well documented exceptions to the more is more dogma. The truth seems to be that more is most often more, but sometimes less is more.

Low doses of BPA spurred weight gain and other metabolic changes in baby mice.  Of the doses fed to the pregnant mice – 5, 50, 500, 5,000 and 50,000 micrograms per kilogram – 500 caused the most metabolic changes.  The number of fat cells doubled at the 500 dose. No effects were seen at doses higher than 5,000.

The entire belief system on which modern water treatment practices are based depends on upholding the principal that more is always more.  Without it, there would be chaos. How can we regulate water contaminants if we have to contend with the absurd notion that reducing their quantity may actually be making them more potent threats to human health?  And even it a contaminant is removed to a non-detectable level,  how can we be sure that humans are not being affected by water’s memory of the contaminant?

References: Environmental Health News .

Thanks for the Memory. Experiments Confirm Benveniste’s “Heretical” Research.

Why is cheap tea a threat to your health? For the same reason that tap water is.

 

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

In a Nutshell:  New British research shows that the tea plant accumulates fluoride as it grows, with mature leaves containing the most fluoride. When tea is harvested, the older leaves are used to produce lower quality, stronger teas such as economy teas. The bud and newer top leaves are used in the  higher grade and specialty tea products. It is suggested that an adult consume no more than three mg of fluoride a day. The new study showed that on average, four cups of cheap supermarket tea provided six mg of the substance. Excessive intake of fluoride can cause a variety of health problems including joint pain, muscle weakness, osteoporosis, brittle teeth, kidney problems. Excessive fluoride has even been linked to cancer.

Adapted from  Could Cheap Tea Bags Make You Ill?  by Fiona Macrae.

Opting for cheap supermarket tea bags over artisan blends could have long-term health consequences, according to new research.

A study has found that cheap tea bags from supermarkets including Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco can push a person’s fluoride intake over daily recommended levels and put them at a higher risk of bone and dental disease.

Experts have now called for supermarkets and tea manufacturers to consider stating fluoride concentration as part of the nutritional information found on food packaging.

Levels of fluoride found in 38 tea products were compared by PhD student Laura Chan, Professor Aradhana Mehra and Professor Paul Lynch from the University of Derby.

Using Ion Selective Electrode analysis – which analyses trace elements, such as fluoride, in a liquid – of the dry tea, and of the tea infusions brewed with boiling water for two minutes, the researchers compared the fluoride levels consumed by someone drinking the average intake of four cups or a litre of tea a day.

It is recommended that an adult does not consume more than three to four mg of fluoride per day.

Yet researchers discovered that economy blends of tea contained between 75 per cent and 120 per cent of the recommended daily intake.On average, a litre of cheap supermarket tea contained six mg of fluoride.

They found significant differences in fluoride levels when economy black tea blends from supermarkets Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s were compared with branded black tea blends such as PG Tips, Twining’s and Typhoo.

They also found significant differences in fluoride levels between green tea blends including Clipper Organic leaf, Green Twining’s bags; pure blends such as Assam, Dilmah and Ceylon; and Oolong and Pu’er blends from India and Sri Lanka.

Economy black tea blends, such as Asda Smartprice, Tesco Value, Morrisons Value, Sainsbury’s Basics, and Waitrose Essential,  were found to have the highest concentration of fluoride – an average of six mg per litre.

Waitrose Essential was significantly lower in fluoride compared to the other economy black blends, however.

Infusions of green tea blends had the next highest concentrations of the substance, followed by branded black blends such as PG Tips, Twining’s and Typhoo, with an average of 3.3 mg per litre, compared to pure blends.

More specialist teas such as oolong and pu’er had the lowest concentrations of fluoride with an average of 0.7 mg per litre.

Excessive intake of fluoride can cause a variety of health problems.

In addition to tea, fluoride can be found in some seafood, fluoride-enriched toothpaste, drinking water in some areas of the country and in processed foods using fluoridated water.

Less seriously dental fluorosis can occur, which causes white and brown spots appear on the enamel of the teeth, and results in an unsightly ‘mottled’ effect.

This can be the first sign that fluoride has poisoned enzymes in the body.

Osteoporosis

But it can also cause skeletal fluorosis, a crippling disease that causes symptoms including bone and joint pain, muscle weakness and gastrointestinal disorders.

This tends to occur in people who have routinely consumed 10 to 20mg of fluoride per day for 10 to 20 years or  2.5 to five mg per day for at least 40 years. In the most severe cases, the spine becomes completely rigid.

Excessive fluoride consumption has also been linked to osteoporosis.

A higher incidence of kidney stones has also been recorded in areas with high fluoride levels in drinking water.

Research has also linked excessive fluoride exposure to bone cancer in young men. A 1992 study found that osteosarcoma rates were three to seven times higher in fluoridated water areas than non-fluoridated areas.

Ms Chan said: ‘The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, is a fluoride accumulator, with mature leaves accumulating most of the fluoride.

‘When tea is harvested, these older leaves may be used to produce lower quality, stronger teas such as economy teas, whereas the bud and newer top leaves are used in the manufacture of higher grade and specialty tea products.

‘Although fluoride is considered an essential micronutrient for human health, in the prevention of tooth decay and promotion of healthy bone growth, excess fluoride in the diet can have detrimental effects.

Dental fluorosis, the mottling of tooth enamel, and skeletal fluorosis, pain and damage to bones and joints through calcification, can occur.

‘People may be drinking excessive volumes of tea in addition to other dietary sources of fluoride and may not realise these potential health implications.

‘Indeed, there have been cases, in both the UK and the USA, of skeletal fluorosis in individuals who drank more than the average amount of economy tea,’ added Ms Chan.

‘All tea products should be considered as a main source of fluoride in the diet, and we would urge supermarkets and manufacturers of tea to consider stating fluoride concentration as part of the nutritional information found on food packaging,’ added Ms Chan.

The study is published in journal Food Research International

Source:  DailyMail.co.uk

Gazette Fair Use Statement

A New Online Tool from the Department of the Interior called Streamer

The US Department of the Interior has recently released a nifty online tool that they call Streamer.  Depending on your objective, it can be  a valuable research device or a lot of fun.

Streamer’s purpose is simple.  It is an interactive  map that allows you to trace a stream in either direction—upstream to its source or  downstream to where it ultimately empties. It also shows statistics for the  stream, such as its length, the political entities it passes through (states,  counties, and cities), origin elevation, and other information. A more detailed  report also shows all the US Geological Survey’s stream gages for that stream.

Following a stream in its entirety gives new meaning to the term watershed, which is a difficult concept for most of us to grasp.  Below is a Streamer map of the mighty Mississippi, with all its tributaries.  It shows all the 7,000 streams and 1.15 million square miles of surface area that drain into it.

The complete Mississippi

As good as it is, the Streamer is not complete.  McElligot’s Pool, for example, is omitted, and I could not find Cement River, which is what I call the drainage canal that carries a raging torrent near our business on rainy days in spring.

To trace the torturous wanderings of the streams that link with McElligot’s pool, you’ll have to rely on Dr. Seuss’s text.  It isn’t included in Streamer.

Go here to use the Streamer.