The Bull in Full

Duke gets on board with transit, offers free GoPass to employees

I confess that my basketball allegiences probably made me increase my snark in this regard, but for years now I've been griping that during my four and a half years of working at Duke, I had to pay every time I rode a Durham Area Transit Authority bus, but now that I work at UNC, I can ride the Durham bus system for free.  Yes, even though UNC is in Chapel Hill, and Duke in Durham, UNC was paying for its employees to ride on Durham transit while Duke was not.

This was, of course, a simplification.  Because I joined UNC's Commuter Alternatives Program (CAP), under which I agreed to forgo my right to buy a parking pass for a year, UNC gives me a yearly Triangle GoPass for free, under which I get unlimited rides on Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Triangle Transit buses.   (The Chapel Hill/Carrboro is always fareless, of course, so the pass isn't necessary there.)

Well, thanks to some welcome news out of Duke, I can snark no more.  In a news release near the end of July, Duke announced that the GoPass will be available to all Duke students as well as employees who work on or near one of the main campuses or at American Tobacco.  (Duke has posted an eligibility map for the program online to make more sense of that definition.)

I'd love to be able to post this story without editorializing, but I just can't.  To my eye, this is a most welcome, long overdue change in Duke's policy. 

For years, institutionally, Duke has regarded alternative transportation with a skeptical eye.  In the original regional rail plans put forward over a decade ago, Duke's opposition over the asthetics of a rail stop at Duke Hospital caused Triangle Transit to abandon the station and end the line at Ninth St., a move that removed the most dense employment stop from the line, and which some (including me) partially blamed for the insufficient ridership projections that led to the failure of federal funding. 

Bicycle advocates for years grumbled about Duke's hesitancy to put bicycle racks on its main quads, on the grounds that they weren't the look that Duke wanted to project.  As to buses, Duke for years has seen its own (somewhat decrepit) bus fleet as the solution to connecting parking with offices.

I have no sources inside the university these days, so I have no insight into what caused the change of heart.  I could speculate on parking crunches finally becoming too onerous for its construction plan to bear, or employee complaints about rising parking fees reaching a dull roar, but it's just guessing. 

However, I think this move is a great step for all parties involved.  Duke may potentially see on-campus parking demand drop by over a thousand spaces; our local bus systems get a boost of cash, and perhaps more importantly, an increase in the ridership numbers that help them qualify for federal transit subsidies; badly snarled area roads get fewer single passenger vehicles; and of course Duke employees get a break on gas and car maintenence for getting to work. 

Duke does end up having to buy these passes, and it loses out on parking revenue, but I can't help but suspect that the ever-increasing demand for parking spaces on campus was starting to make that revenue seem less and less enticing.

In any case, wherever the change of heart came from, good job, Duke.  This Durhamite, at least, thanks you.

Full

I made the prediction at Barry's yesterday, and while it wasn't exactly going out on a limb, it looks like Durham's reservoirs are finally topped off:

Lake Elevations

Lake Michie Elevation: 341.00 feet, mean sea level.
Lake Michie is full at 341.00 feet, mean sea level.

Little River Reservoir Elevation: 355.00 feet, msl.
Little River Reservoir is full at 355.00 feet, msl.

Matt Dees at the N&O notes the same thing, and hints that we may finally be ready to back off of water restrictions.

On the one hand, despite the soggy weekend, we're not out of pretty bad drought conditions.  The historic low flows in the Flat and Little Rivers before this heavy rain testify to the fact that the groundwater and the underground aquifers are simply a long ways from being fully recharged yet.  But when you're spilling water over the dam, it would seem to make some sense to take a step back, not all the way to baseline, non-drought conservation measures, but to at least let people water their gardens twice a week.  I mean, we're all happy to chip in when we're in a pinch, but loosen up the taps just a little at least. [where: 27701]

Gray water article on Weather Channel's site

Not many posts this week due to being slammed with a bunch of work and non-work stuff.  Fortunately, someone else has written stuff for you to read!

Claire Campbell at the Weather Channel's Forecast Earth site just put up an article on gray water that features yours truly as the case study, with more good info about gray water.

Grey Water: Breakin' the Law!

So, like many people in North Carolina, I've been getting pretty crazy with my attempts to save water.  Most things I'm doing are pretty typical -- including catching the water I have to run off to clear the lines for hot water, using the cutoff valve on my shower head, and all that.  One experiment I tried this weekend was to take my 22 quart canner and set it on top of the washing machine, then pull out the drain hose out of the fixture in the wall (funny thing if you've never done this -- your washer drain hose typically just sits loosely stuck down a PVC pipe hole, without any threading or anything) and hung it over the side.  Then, as I ran a load of clothes in my super water efficient front loading machine, I just bailed the "grey water" out of it as the machine ran, and took it outside and put it on my plants.

Now, I did first check to make sure that the detergent I was using wasn't going to be horrible for my plants.  Granted, it's probably not great, but most of the soils in my yard are the typical red or grey ultisols that are typical of the area, although the area around the bog garden is significantly more alluvial.  (Sorry, geeking out again...)  These are the kinds of soils you typically put lime on to raise the pH, so adding some organic bases in the form of BioPac laundry detergent might even help break up the clay a bit.   In some ways, I was a little alarmed at just how much water was coming out of the drain, even on my water efficient model.  I had to bail rather quickly, particularly after the wash cycle, to keep up.  However, I ended up being able to give my younger trees and a few of the herbs I'm trying to keep alive until next year a good healthy dousing.

It wasn't until afterwards, when I was thinking about how I might be able to install a full grey water system on my house and doing some Googling on such, that I realized that I was breaking the law.  Grey water can be a public health hazard, particularly when it's spread on the surface.  The primary concern is water from kitchen sinks, dishwashers, and showers, which can contain high amounts of organic solids and can lead to the spread of dangerous bacteria.  (Toilet water is considered "black water," and is, of course, right out.)  Some states have adopted regulations for installing grey water treatment systems, but  North Carolina isn't one of them. 

Granted, I don't think the police will be showing up at my door any time soon.  Washing machine water, from what I can tell, is one of the least dangerous forms of grey water, and given that I'm pretty certain absolutely none of it is going to make it past all of the incredibly thirsty plants and into my ditch, where my bog garden would suck up anything that was left, I'm probably okay.  But as we all rush to find ways to conserve water, sometimes we trip over regulations we never realized were there.