PolyParadise - Water Reclamation - 2004

November 4, 2004

This was, hands down, my best year EVER at Burning Man, even with my back problems, and I owe the success to many, many people. The top of the list though, is, of course, Scotto! Both Kathe and Scotto took great care of me personally as well as my water reclamation project and I really appreciate them both very much! Darlene was essential in her support, 'cuz she packed me up and got me on the road to Burning Man when my back still wasn't functional, (and I missed her terribly for my entire trip).

My close neighbors on site at Burning Man were all precious in their support and camaraderie, helping me to do physical tasks as well as helping me walk away and release/recreate for short & extended periods of time. Thanks especially to Jodi for her support and wisdom with that perspective! And thanks to Bill for his support before and during Burning Man with the Water Reclamation signs and setup!

Thanks to Heatseeker for giving a new name to a great category of people I want to thank: The
Road Hosers! This is the new name for Water Reclamation Volunteers, so in the future I hope it will be Water Log and the Road Hosers up doing a fresh song every year to promote water reclamation and water ecology education at Burning Man! Using a standard garden hose to spew the reclaimed water onto the roads of Black Rock City is the easiest and simplest thing I can delegate to a volunteer, hence the name 'Road Hoser'.

This year I think we had about
8 different people hosing the road at over the course of the week, thus freeing me up for possibly 11 hours or more that I would have spent locked into that task, ... a very precious 11 hours I then could spend at Burning Man, Thank You Road Hosers, One and All!!!

The
previous year we collected about 2400 gallons of gray water, processed it, cleaning it up and sending it back to the playa and to the sky. For Burning Man 2004, this year we collected and processed about 1900 gallons, and spewed about 1800 gallons of it back onto the roads, once it was cleaned and prepared, (the rest evaporated during processing). This year it was a batch process doing about 200 gallons in each batch, and it took about 1 hour and 10 minutes to spew a finished 200 gallon batch back onto the road. Should 'Road Hoser' be one word or two? Hmmm.

At the end of the event, I coordinated with DPW to stay on the playa for a few days with their permission and supervision to continue cleaning up our village site. The trash was pretty much gone, and the Moop was pretty much taken care of, so I was really staying to take care of water stains. The huge improvement over the previous year of doing this post Burning Man clean up is that this year there were no stains of color (which are much harder to remove or clean up) there were only stains of white (soaps, toothpaste, conditioner, hair, etc.) and some brown tinged body oil stains (natural body oils rinse off the body as a slightly brown scum leaving a brown tinged stain on the playa, which is not a big deal). Some stains I scraped up and hauled off the playa, some stains I diluted with my excess water (both clean and reclaimed water), and some stains I burned right on the playa by applying a mixture of water, chlorine and muriatic acid straight to the stain on the playa. Over the course of 3 days of this clean up work my back slowly began to seize up on me and I finally packed up and left the playa fearing that if I waited any longer I might not be able to physically do anything.

Steve ' Water Log' Iddings
Water Reclamation Master