Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Raymond Parks wrote: >> A non-technical progressive who started writing that water is a >> scarce resource no more than eight years ago writes sensational books >> and gets listened to by at least the progressive community and some of >> the general public. >> >> It's as if the public doesn't want to hear bad news from scientists >> and engineers but doesn't mind it from those already labeled radical. >> > > Hmm, maybe if Orange County can build a sewage purification system that > can serve 5 million people (for $480 million), perhaps could New Mexico > cover the whole state for a similar cost? In 2005 there were 895,116 > personal income tax returns > (http://www.tax.state.nm.us/pubs/TaxreseStat/2005PITStatsFinal1.pdf). > That's about $536 a person to buy the same system as OC (or several > smaller ones). Presumably that could be spread out over a generation or > two, say $20 over 30 years?
Um, I'm confused by what appears to be a non sequitur. However, the difficulty of translating Orange County to New Mexico is the 3 orders of magnitude of difference in size and population density. OC is approximately 790 square miles with 3,056,865 population (not 5 million, but that may be the planned capacity of their sewage system) which yields a 3,869 people per square mile population density. New Mexico's size is 121,593 square miles with a population of about 2,016,000 which yields a population density of 16.5/square mile. It takes more than several smaller plants to serve that low-density population. Albuquerque has about 25% of New Mexico's population (about 1/3 of New Mexico's population live in the ABQ metro area). The latest improvement to the wastewater treatment plant cost $70 million. Does this help with understanding sewage treatment in New Mexico? How did we get here? -- Ray Parks [EMAIL PROTECTED] Consilient Heuristician Voice:505-844-4024 ATA Department Mobile:505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
