The city of Colton is dealing with something Los Angeles has just about completely taken care of.
COLTON - This holiday season, the water running from some residents' taps will be brown like gravy. The chunks won't be giblets, but sediment that has begun to clog the city's water arteries. It regularly appears in drinking glasses. It leaves rust-stained rings around toilet bowls and sinks. And it infects loads of laundry with brown, yellow, orange and red stains.
The good news is, the stuff is harmless. It's iron rust, and it's a form of iron that doesn't react in the body, so it's non-toxic. The bad news is, it stains clothing, it clogs filters, and it just plain looks nasty.
If the pipes are still in reasonably good condition, there's a well-developed technique for reconditioning water mains in place. Workers dig down to the pipe at the corners of the street and open it up. A brush, kind of like a chimney brush, with spring steel "bristles", is pulled back and forth through the pipe until the rust is gone. Then, they pull through a gadget that sprays a coat of cement on the inside of the pipe. Close it up, and fill in the holes in the street, and move on to the next section.
It works very well, and costs a fraction of the cost of digging up the pipe and putting in a new one. I hope Colton is at least looking at the procedure.
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