Nancy Gregg’s Y2K Series
As presented in the
Siskiyou Daily News
ŠN. E. Gregg 1999
Water; water everywhere and not a drop to drink! Solutions offered.
It won’t matter if you are in a small community or out in the country. If you think you can use that little stream for an emergency supply of water, you may want to think twice. Water flowing in rivers and streams becomes an instant source for everyone! Immediate use brings immediate disease. Even considerate people who use the water for personal use makes its cleanliness suspect for everyone else. Without electricity, your well is limited in its use, or is it? Maybe it is time that you called your local well man again.
Pumping basics for deep wells: If water is less than 200 feet down you can have access to it with an old fashioned but modernized hand pump. The pump head above ground allows you by hand to supply the power. The cylinder is the heart of the system. It contains the valves and leathers that provide the lift. It needs to be placed deep below water level. Most work best with a foot valve and can be installed right in your present well casing. The "drop rod" runs from the pump to the cylinder inside the drop pipe. It provides the linkage that transfers the pumping action from pump head to cylinder. This system for a deep well (about 200 feet) will be about $750.
For shallow wells (100 feet) the price is about $450 and these pumps can work with windmills. With a windmill the storage tank can be elevated and give you gravity feed right into the house. Some of these pumps have a hose bib attached to the system. If you get one of these it affords you the option of putting on a hose and running the hose to the outside water faucet. By using two female couplings on either end, you can keep the hot water take in your home full. This would give you some water pressure in the house especially if you elevated the hot water tank.
For these kinds of preparations call your local well man; remember people are waking up. There was a two-week delivery time for pump equipment. Now with these systems in demand it is about 12 weeks. If you don’t think people are getting prepared, think again! Some suppliers say they will not fill orders placed after July!
Open streams should be used only for the flushing of toilets and then only if the sanitation plants are working in the communities. In the country your septic systems will work just fine. Rivers and streams need to be moved for irrigation. Ramjets can move as much as 250,000 gallons of water a day. Their cost is from $525 and strainers from $10 to $20. (Prices from Lehman’s the no-electric store; contact at 330-857-5757 or fax 888-780-4975.)
That brings us back to city living. What if the water cannot be pumped into the tank above Yreka? Yreka has several water wells that are on private property. These wells could be used for water distribution, for drinking water and cooking only. Not for bathing or toilets.
Are you one of those people that need a shower every day? Try a bath, once a week. The old fashioned "Saturday night bath" was no joke. My mother gave everyone in the family a clean towel and face cloth once a week. We all had our own place in the bathroom to hang it. We used that same towel and wash cloth all week long! We would draw a small amount of water in the hand basin and we would wash our face, neck, hands and arms, brush our teeth and go to bed. Saturday night I had the fun of getting into three inches of water in the bathtub while sharing the experience with my younger cousin. In this water our hair was washed first and then after it was rinsed with cups of water from the faucet, we were bathed!
This was during W.W.II and Mom had seven family members plus a Navy family of three, in her two-bedroom bungalow with converted attic. (And a clean tidy basement apartment, as she called it.) When beds were changed the top sheet was put on the bottom and only a new top sheet was added. (No fitted sheets here!) Bleach was used not only to get the whites white but it acted as a disinfectant. Hanging on the lines in the sun also served these two purposes. Where can you put up a clothesline? Do you even own a scrub board? This was how a lot of the smaller items were washed if you needed them sooner than a week.
Mom always kept a bucket of lye in the basement. This was to disinfect if the septic system backed up, after cleaning and scrubbing. She would spread it around, let it set for a couple of days and then sweep it up. This was used on the lighthouse in the privy tanks. On the tank light the privy buckets were lowered over the side during high tide and when the tide came in they were emptied. Sure glad the environmentalist didn’t see that one! Fines all over the place.
Do you have gutters on your roof? Invest in rain barrels. Put them under your downspouts and collect the rainwater! Use one tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water and it will purify it. Cut a pool cover to fit on top. This will float to the water level and keep out other contaminates.
Water is also in other sources. The canned foods are all done in water! Commercial as well as home canning. This is full of vitamins. Make sure you cook with it! Making a casserole by mixing vegetables bringing them to a boil for 20 minutes covered and then adding rice to the mixture with a few spices makes a very tasty filling dinner! Keep a one-gallon glass jar for the soaking of beans, as these added to that above dish make it everything you need. This also keeps the beans in site to get us accustomed to using them more often.
We don’t realize how much we use water until it is no longer there. Yet we also don’t realize how much we waste.
It could be the streams and rivers are full, yet they could also carry the disease that comes from use by people who do not take the water away but use it only thinking of themselves! It could be water, water everywhere, but not a safe drop to drink!
Thinking about others is the only way we will get through a major crisis.
We can and will come out a stronger and free America! God bless us all.
Nancy Gregg’s book, The Rebirth of OUR Republic by sending $16.00 which includes mailing and handling to The Grassroots Press, P. O. Box 516, Yreka, Ca. 96097
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