NY State - running out of water....

SHALER

Member
Fascinating article in the wall st journal today about the town of Lowville, NY. Lowville is just west of the massive Adirondack Park. Huge amounts of precip fall on Lowville, mainly from snowfall from Lake Ontario. How those guys milk cows up there with all that snow I will never know, but anyway the article is about how the local Kraft cream cheese plant is using about a million of gallons of water per day and totally stressing the water system. Other than the Buffalo NY area, I would think lack of water would be the last problem they would encounter. Anyway, interesting article pointing out that even in the "water belt", fresh clean water can be precious.
 
Wow,i know when i sold milk to kraft at bentonville arkansas the city gave them a huge discount for water in return for employement.
Wish we could send them our surplus water in missouri
 
I lived near Lowville in the town of Lorraine. Hard to believe Lewis or Jefferson County is running out of water. We have Nestle up here in Northern Michigan taking and bottling HUGE amounts of fresh water to sell all over the USA (and maybe the rest of the world too).

Big military base of Ford Drum only around 30 miles from Lowville.
 
Been through Lowville quite a few times on summer vacation. Very pretty area up there. You see a lot of big farm machinery driving right down main street and nobody blinks an eye. The name of Lowville is not LOW ville. It is lauwww ville. Arial of the plant and don't forget the big fiber glass cow in the front yard. With sun glasses.
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As
 
I know that equipment must be washed and sanitized, but how does a cheese plant use a million gallons of water per day? That much can't be for washing can it?
 
Lowville primarily used slow sand filtration before cheese plant came on line. It's expensive to add filter capacity to slow sand.
Likely they added microfiltration to deal with higher demand and much higher peak demands. Their source water is a spring/stream
reservoir so also likely they didn't increase water plant supply lines. They have plenty of water,just tough to get sufficient volume
treated. Cheese plants have a tremendous process water need.
 
(quoted from post at 18:00:23 06/05/19) I lived near Lowville in the town of Lorraine. Hard to believe Lewis or Jefferson County is running out of water. We have Nestle up here in Northern Michigan taking and bottling HUGE amounts of fresh water to sell all over the USA (and maybe the rest of the world too).

Big military base of Ford Drum only around 30 miles from Lowville.

Drum ain't that big. 13,000 or so. Just a regimental combat team now. Use to be a full division. The local civilian population that supports the post is most likely similar in size.

Rick
 
My cousin worked there for as a plumber/steel fitter for about a year gearing up for their I believe cream cheese line. I live a little over an hour away.
 
We have a Kraft plant here in New Ulm too. They just expanded, after losing the soft cheese a while back, they brought it back because the other plant failed at it. Never hear of a water issue, town has many wells drilled near the Minnesota river, all the water you want.

We also have what was at one time not sure now, the biggest butter plant in the world, AMPI owns it. I?d assume they take a lot of water too.

Paul
 
Nestle had a big plant in Fulton,NY. They closed it down at least ten years ago. Raised total havoc with the local economy. Two years ago they knocked most of that huge brick building down. There is an Aldi on a corner of that lot. At one time much of upstate NY Was an economic power house. Not much left now.
 
A bit more of history in that area. The Blackriver Canal ran right through there. For the water needs of the canal they had reservoirs all over the place up in that area. Thousands of acres of water. The canal was a feeder for the Eire canal and really opened up the agricultural infrastructure in the late 1800s. They almost had the canal go all of the way from Rome to Carthage and the shore of lake Ontario. The top end was just hooked into the river. Couple of neat books on that canal. Close in 1922 if i remember but other dates are given up to 1925. It was only 35 miles long but had 109 locks. The locks just north of Boonville are smack in the middle of the highway.
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Now, that is something to laugh about! They are within reasonable distance of two HUGE bodies of water that could easily be sources of supplemental water. Oneida lake and Lake Ontario.
 
Wasn't so much a lack of water as the Lowville Water treatment system couldn't keep up with the added demand when Kraft added the string cheese line couple of years ago. Lowville made some changes to the water system and the problem has been alleviated for the time being. Lowville is now updating their whole water distribution system on the lower half of town which was desperately needed irregardless of Kraft. It will be a two year project.

Lewis county has more cows than it has people and they do just fine up here. (smile)
 
Kraft is the largest local employer (non-government employer, that is) and has one of the highest, if not the highest, wage scale in Lewis County. Dairy is King in Lewis County. Nothing else comes close for economic impact.
 
Oneida Lake is almost 100 miles south and Lake Ontario is controlled by an international commission that is definitely not people friendly.There is also a "Save the River" outfit up here. (St. Lawrence River) Does the name Abby Hoffman ring a bell to any of you? Yeah, THAT Abbey Hoffman. I believe he kicked the bucket, but it is his outfit.
 
Just to put another spin on this....

The average rate of flow in the Mississippi River is 646,000 cu.ft/second

OR 4,832,415.58 Gal/sec

In flood stage it can be well over 1.5 million Cu.Ft./sec

That's a lot of water.

Larry
 
Typical "fake news" and not only did you fall for it, you emulated it.

The title of this thread makes it sound like the WHOLE STATE is running out of water. Oh, then it turns out to be just one community, and then oh, it turns out to be just the cheese plant in that community, because they waste so much water.

Sensationalize, get people riled up, get them making ignorant comments because they didn't make it past the headline... Good job! You should be writing for the USA Today.
 
Barney ...... your reply reminds me that there is always a troll out there on discussion forums waiting to pounce on someone.
Relax a bit and put yer feet up and settle down, or better yet, make a post or two yourself that everyone will find
interesting instead of flaming someone else. Good grief !!! Running out of fresh water is probably the biggest issue the
planet is gonna face in the next 100 years and that's not fake news.
 
(quoted from post at 09:22:14 06/06/19) Oneida Lake is almost 100 miles south and Lake Ontario is controlled by an international commission that is definitely not people friendly.There is also a "Save the River" outfit up here. (St. Lawrence River) Does the name Abby Hoffman ring a bell to any of you? Yeah, THAT Abbey Hoffman. I believe he kicked the bucket, but it is his outfit.

Thanks for straightening that out Don. Can you imagine trying to pump water up to Lowville from Syracuse? Har! Or over the hills from Ontario? I didn't read the whole article but it's the NYT, so everything in it is suspect until researched, vetted and verified.
 
It's all a matter of economics. I'm sure Lowville wants the Kraft plant and they will expand the water system as needed. But there's never much incentive to spend the money to add more capacity than is needed.

Stupid story.
 

Ever figure out how large of a supply pipe and drain pipe would be required for a million gallons a day ?
Imagine a square cube of water 51ft high, 51 ft in length and 51 fit in width .
 
Really?

Please tell me how it is possible to run out of something that is continually being replenished.

Every open body of water - oceans, lakes, and rivers - are continually giving up water to evaporation. solar powered evaporation if you will. This evaporated water is being returned to the earth in the form of rain, show, sleet, hail and whatever other kind of precipitation you can imagine. Much of it is stored in the form of snow and ice on high mountain peaks.

Just another cause for the kindly folks in government to use to control our lives? Sorry. I just can't swallow that one. The sun will burn out before we run out of fresh water.
 
Yes Jim, I remember your explanation of the water cycle from grade school. In my post I should have mentioned FRESH water (ie no salt content). People believe different things about all kinds of things, some that the earth is just a few thousands of years old and others lean towards billions of years, take your pick. Some still believe the earth is flat (well, at least they say that to get attention). Not sure where government control got into the issue, that sort of came in from left field on me. Meanwhile, there are all sorts of opinions on the water topic, the link below is one which I think everyone should read no matter which side of the argument you are on. Of course, fake news is rampant, one of these days I hope we forget about that phrase which is for the most part only three years old.
Untitled URL Link
 
(quoted from post at 09:22:14 06/06/19) Oneida Lake is almost 100 miles south and Lake Ontario is controlled by an international commission that is definitely not people friendly.There is also a "Save the River" outfit up here. (St. Lawrence River) Does the name Abby Hoffman ring a bell to any of you? Yeah, THAT Abbey Hoffman. I believe he kicked the bucket, but it is his outfit.
I am a bit north of you in St Lawrence County and remember Abbey well. Back in the day we had any number of communes near us, populated largely with hippies from the Hudson Valley region. We had moved here from that region in the early seventies to farm and were of the same generation so we became friends with many of them. I forget now what he called himself but the fact that it was Hoffman who founded Save the River was a well known secret among those folks. I actually met him a few times at different gatherings. He was a quiet unassuming sort but pretty intense at times.
 
(quoted from post at 22:37:07 06/06/19)
(quoted from post at 09:22:14 06/06/19) Oneida Lake is almost 100 miles south and Lake Ontario is controlled by an international commission that is definitely not people friendly.There is also a "Save the River" outfit up here. (St. Lawrence River) Does the name Abby Hoffman ring a bell to any of you? Yeah, THAT Abbey Hoffman. I believe he kicked the bucket, but it is his outfit.
I am a bit north of you in St Lawrence County and remember Abbey well. Back in the day we had any number of communes near us, populated largely with hippies from the Hudson Valley region. We had moved here from that region in the early seventies to farm and were of the same generation so we became friends with many of them. I forget now what he called himself but the fact that it was Hoffman who founded Save the River was a well known secret among those folks. I actually met him a few times at different gatherings. He was a quiet unassuming sort but pretty intense at times.

There a few of us from SLC here, 3 of us are from over Black Lake/Morristown area. Where are you at?
 

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