Same government that demands citizens conserve water is wasting it to heat its buildings

(NaturalNews) Leading by example is something governments fail to do on a regular basis. Government bureaucracies might try to legislate morality, but they are ultimately the ones who engage in immoral conduct. Take the example of the DEA. The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General recently released a report revealing that DEA agents had sex parties with prostitutes paid for by Colombian drug cartels.

It is also common for governments officials to speak out about protecting the planet, yet it is ultimately the government that is responsible for subsidizing the very actions that ravage the earth's natural resources. A government leader might scold the population about the devastating effects of global warming and force carbon taxes on the people, but it is ultimately these leaders who travel in expensive private jets, polluting more of the air in one coast-to-coast trip than the average person does driving an SUV regularly in a month's time.

San Francisco government preaches water conservation while wasting a quarter million gallons of water every day

This same type of government hypocrisy is currently being demonstrated in California. The same government that is instructing people to conserve water is actually wasting water at an unprecedented rate. In San Francisco, the biggest water wasters are the City Hall.

This is occurring because of an 80-year-old water heating system that still in use at the San Francisco City Hall. In this inefficient system, water is heated to make steam, which is then used to heat City Hall and 170 nearby buildings. The leftover condensation, amounting to a quarter million gallons of water, is wasted each day. This perfectly good drinking water is then flushed into the sewer system.

"After the water is heated up, the condensated water is then discharged into the sewer system," said Tyrone Jue of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. "This is drinking water that is being used for the steam loop."

"This system has been set up in the city for many decades, as far as this steam loop. It doesn't rely on fossil fuels or natural gas to heat these buildings. So in that sense it's good," Jue said.

The environmentally-friendly idea of using steam instead of fossil fuels comes with its own set of downfalls, and those cons are being highlighted like never before as water becomes scarce in California.

Even though the system wastes a quarter million gallons of water every day, the company that manages it says it is bound to remain in operation. The good news is that the company in charge of the system, NRG, is looking to use different sources of water that are non-drinkable so that clean water isn't wasted in the system. Specifically, they are looking into utilizing a non-drinking water source that often floods beneath the Powell Street BART station.

"This station has had a problem with water intrusion since it opened in the mid-1970s. And so we've been pumping it out and trying to get rid of it since then," said Taylor Huckaby of BART.

Instead of pumping the 65 million gallons of ground water under BART straight into the sewage system, NRG plans to use it in the heating system for the City Hall and the other 170 buildings that still use the system. However, Huckaby points out, "There is no infrastructure right now to move the water from the Powell Street pumping station."

Sources:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com

http://www.cbsnews.com

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com