“‘We’re really concerned because we don’t think it’s a sanitary place for our children to be.”
The Daily Mail reports,
Students at a high school in Boca Raton, Florida, must step over rivers of urine and endure the stench of rancid waste after a plan to bring ‘green’ waterless urinals into bathrooms backfired.
School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms.
But with no water moving through the school’s copper pipes to flush the urine into the sewer system, the waste produced noxious gases that ate through the metal, leaving leaky pipes that allowed urine to drip into walls and flow onto floors.
‘It was pretty disgusting,’ school board chairman Frank Barbieri told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel…
[h/t Daily Bayonet via Climate Depot]
Great idea — move their offices into the malfunctioning lavs until they straighten it out.
These school boards are typically dominated by arrogant, know-it-all liberals; we should be grateful we have them to guide us poor ignorant slobs. The school board should be replaced and the contractor and/or consultants that oversaw this installation should be sued for restitution and the tried and true technolgies that have served us for 100+years need to be restored.
The “FLOOD” of unintended consequences to all this silly green technology is probably a really good thing; perhaps a good slap upside the head to the morons in charge is better than any scientific evidence or studies.
Reality for the users may actually trump the absurd naivete of those that embrace this step-backward mentality.
I don’t expect environmentalists to be smart or educated; that’s not their thing (rather, it’s caring), hence indoor outhouses, um, green toilets. But schools are supposed to be the font of society’s knowledge. Obviously the people in charge of schools are not the brightest of those that graduated from the system. I read that everywhere.
Why don’t they ask Falcon, the manufacturer of these waterless urinals to get one of their major shareholders – Gore the Green, to come and personally fix their urinal problem.
Should be easy for him after inventing the internet and Global Warming. /sarc off
Kinda’ gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Going Green”.
This is just a consequence of America’s new “Zero Tolerance Thinking.” If a drawing of a gun is functionally equivalent to a gun, than something that looks like a urinal must be functionally equivalent to a working urinal. Mistakes were made, society is at fault, let’s not play the blame game, where’s my summer bonus.
“Everyone, we cannot expect the school board responsible for making these decisions to be knowledgable of wastewater handling. Nor can we reasonably condemn them for this decision.”
If the decision was in their hands, yes we can. If they’re not knowledgeable about the approvals they’re issuing, they ought not to be working there. Even if they didn’t research the technology, they approved the contractors and they wrote the contracts — so if they did all that and left themselves no recourse, FIRE THEM.
We have one of these Falcon urinals at work, next to a regular flush urinal. The trick is to keep one regular urinal to flush the pipe with water. Clearly two low flow urinals would be better, or if we considered people smart enough to be resposible for their own actions we could just post a sign: “don’t flush the urinal until it’s orange”. I thought teenage boys already practiced this type of water saving.
This is typical green BS. Just how much water are we “saving” using a hair-brained scheme like this one? And how much money was wasted on this fiasco? Just remember, GREEN = BS
When I ride my bike on the local bike trails, I have a free, Green, waterless urinal. It is called “the woods”.
George
If you think it’s bad when installed with copper pipe, you can hardly begin to picture what happens when maintenance forgets to change the cartridges often enough. The stench is unbearable, and they can plug a pipe so thoroughly that the only solution is to replace it. I know this because of the installation of waterless urinals at a military base where I’m currently attending training…
If you hear of someone trying to sell these to your local school board – get a rope.
Everyone, we cannot expect the school board responsible for making these decisions to be knowledgable of wastewater handling. Nor can we reasonably condemn them for this decision. No-Flush urinals, while a poor choice compared to a low-flush design, sound good on paper.
HOWEVER, we can and should condemn whoever stole our taxpayer dollars by not doing a proper analysis and installed this equipment on piping that it is specifically non-approved for. The installation instructions clearly state to not use this with copper piping for this reason. The installation company and any consultants used should be held responsible for the damages.
In the sawmill where I once worked they had a “Green” waterless urinal in the maintenance shop. It consisted of a funnel attached to a pipe that ran out through the wall. The gravel outside absorbed most of the urine and it had one advantage, they did not need any signs to direct you to the urinal, just follow your nose.
As to the state of education, we only have to drive 1/2 mile down one of our main streets and read the signs on the restaurants. Misspelled words and n’s and z’s backwards, (Gluten free pissa. Try our fruit fresses.) and they never correct them, guess they don’t know the difference.
The administrators that approved this need to be made to account for their rationale and be held responsible for the additional subsequent expenses that this mistake will cost the tax payers. They installed this garbage because they were following a fad. Why was “saving water” made a priority in their decision?
‘The girls had to step over a river of urine. I could smell it as soon as I walked into the hallway.’
Only a bit of Misandry there, apparently its OK for boys and men to be subject to pools of urine & stench.
To be fair, I recall when these green urinals first came out, then the odor issues were blamed on male users, so things have improved a sliver.
My ancestors have toiled for 2000 years to advance civilization from the point where flush toilets were a privilege reserved for the Roman elite to the point where it is a ubiquitous necessity of civil hygiene available at no charge – in the interest of public health.
Spanish River High School officials have tried to reverse two millenia of progress by fiat, in the name of being ‘green.’
Backfire? Bad visuals.
I can’t believe the stupidity of some school officials.