Water Issues
Tara Koenke, Photo Editor
Fish Outta Water
On a recent trip to the Port Orange Green Market, we discovered some funky fish outta water! This ridiculously cute monster is made from recycled materials and has some sneaky secret compartments. Artist Rachel Romot handcrafts these perfectly imperfect creations with personality and childish character. We love it so give us (and our kids) some more Poke n’ Stuffem!
Don’t Drink DeLand!
DeLandians, beware of the well water. Private wells in communities across DeLand are testing positive for being contaminated with the insecticide Dieldrin at levels unsafe to drink. Used to protect corn, cotton and kill termites, the stuff was taken off the US market in 1985, after being indicated in the deaths of hundreds of birds. Globally, it’s now been banned in 50 countries and 100 others have outlawed its importation! While officials at Florida’s Department of Health claim that, "At the levels that have been found, a resident would need to have to lived [in DeLand] for 70 years and drunk 2 liters of water every day to increase their chance of developing cancer to 1 in 100,000." Our View – Have your well tested every year and take the bottled water vouchers (and see our picks for bottled water below)
Daytona Water
When only the best will do, just turn on your tap (if you are so fortunate as to live within the friendly confines of the city) and fill up a glass of Daytona Beach water. Named best tasting water at the 21st annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting Competition, our very own H20 received top honors over 35 other municipal tap waters from 13 states and Canada. The water was judged on odor, color, taste and our favorite “quench factor”. What in the Viewniverse is quench factor and how do you measure it? Is it the length of the “AHHHH” at the end of the gulp? We don’t know, but here are our top picks for bottled waters with high quench factor.
Fiji (Artesian Water) – Sold everywhere, exotic Fijia source
Voss (Artesian Water) – H2Whoa cool bottle, crisp taste from Norwegian ice
Evian (Mineral Water) – The Eiffel Tower of waters
Mountain Valley Water (Natural Spring Water) - For those who prefer water made in America. Drink American!
Not a drop to drink
The average elephant consumes over 40 gallons of water per day versus only 8 gallons for a donkey; do you realize that you consume about 80 gallons of water per day? Yeah. Showers, faucets, toilets and kitchen sinks use up to 5 gallons of water per minute while the average dishwasher uses 25 gallons per cycle and the average clothes washer sucks 30 gallons every time you do laundry. You use 2 gallons to brush your teeth, 4 gallons to flush the toilet and between 25-50 gallons to take a shower. With 97% of the earth’s water in the oceans, 2% in the frozen (for now) glaciers and 1% left for all of us humans to drink, would you please do your common man a favor and conserve?
How Many?
They tell us that you’re supposed to consume eight, eight ounce glasses of water each day. Well we found a delightful way to do that. Just off the Daytona Beach Pier on Main Street you will find the world’s greatest taffy. More than a tag line, this stuff is legit good (they also say it’s the most “famous," so we are trying to help them achieve that too). On any given day you can take a stroll down the pier and hypnotize yourself by staring at the non-stop taffy pull churning out over 60 flavors of salt water goodness. Their top secret ingredient? Local water. Eight glasses of eight ounces of water per day equals 64 ounces, 3/80th of an ounce in a piece of taffy is water – that’s 1,707 pieces of taffy per day or 1.19 pieces per minute. Enjoy.
An Ounce of Prevention
This is no laughing matter - of all the negative categories in which Florida leads the nation, child drownings are among the hardest to bear because they are preventable. In Volusia County alone, there have been five reported drownings of children under 5 this year and a number of near drownings. With over 900 publicly accessible pools in this area we want to make sure it's a priority in your Viewniverse too. A common thread in these tragic drownings is the lack of supervision by capable adults - so pay attention parents! In an effort to keep children safe during this water season and throughout the year it's important that you:
• Be alert
• Install barriers that completely surround the pool with self-closing, self-latching gates
• Have a life hook and/or lifesaver near the pool
• Actively watch children in the pool
• Know how to swim and perform CPR
• Have alarms and sensors that alert when someone is by the pool
While we love to enjoy the Floridian View from any pool, it's important that we protect our little ones. Our View? Make like a village person and take them to the local Y to sign them up for swimming lessons this summer. They take everyone from 6 month guppies all the way to you so there is no excuse! Get more info at www.vfymca.org.
