Tons of Success

Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  — Abraham Lincoln, 1863.  At the risk of sounding disrespectful to one of our greatest presidents, these words came to mind today when I looked at our cleaning records from the last eleven years of maintaining our own CrystalStream water quality vaults.  “Eleven years and 12 million pounds of pollutants ago, our company brought forth in this industry a new device, conceived in concern for water quality, and dedicated to the proposition that effective water quality was feasible and affordable.” – John Moll, 2011. 

We just did our latest internal report on how all of our devices are performing, and one part of that report is a total of all the pounds we have hauled away to disposal facilities over the past 11+ years.  The total does not count all the material we have removed during the construction phase on those sites, as this total would be much higher.  The total of 12,094,840 pounds on our report is only that material that was washed off of sites in the post construction phase of their existence.  The first device we sold is still under maintenance and has had over 26,000 pounds of material removed over the past eleven years or so.  Do we sound proud of these facts?  Well, we are.

How can we envision the 12 million pounds of trash, debris, vegetation, oil and sediment that never made it to our lakes, rivers and streams?  If we loaded the material in ten pound bags, we would have 1,209,484 bags of the nasty stuff.  While you are reading this, we will have someone start piling up bags like they were sandbags used to protect from a flood.  If they place one bag every 10 seconds, it will take a mere 201,581 minutes to pile up all those bags (read slowly please).  This is equal to about 3,360 hours or 140 days.  In a short 4 and one half months, they will be finished piling up the bags.  If they put them in a 10 x 10 bag grid (100 bags per layer), and the bags are 6 inches thick, the pile will be over a mile high at 6,047 feet tall.   

I had the sad duty of speaking at the funeral of my partner and co-inventor, Clark Joseph Use` last fall.  The church was full of people who wanted a good way to remember him and his accomplishments.  I used the example of a bag being placed every ten seconds in a procession to honor what he had helped accomplish for our environment.  The idea of a four month long procession seemed to get across to them what Clark had helped achieve.  It brought home to many of them the enormity of what is at stake in water quality, and Clark’s contribution to clean water.  The best part is that the 12 million pounds is not the end of the story.  Every day, these devices continue to collect pollutants from stormwater, and the total will continue to grow.

We truly believe that there is no “removal rate” for any BMP, until someone shows up and removes the material that it has collected.  We believe that our products are good, but they are only as good as the organization that stands behind them.  Can you say that about your BMP?

On April 22, 2011, posted in: Blog by
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