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Newsletter Feature Articles
Published by:
Seattle Public Utilities Newsletters
written by news correspondent: Tami Jayne Jackson
Employees
Hoot Over T-shirt Contest
New Home Clean-up Regiment Trims Community Services’ Waste
Conserving Water Costs More, But It Can Also Save
YOU Money
Norine Sells Her Bloomers
Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell, hm-m-m, Drinking Water!
Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell, hm-m-m, Drinking Water!
Just because dogs, with their long noses, possess an acute sense of smell
does not mean yours must be big to qualify as a taste test volunteer. It’s
how you savor the senses of taste and smell that counts, not the size of
your sniffer.
Still, a clean nose proves essential in taste testing. If, for example,
the mucus in your nasal cavity runs thick, as with a cold, your sense of
smell degrades. And if your shirt brags of last night’s spaghetti, the
smell will mask important specimen odors.
That’s why Moya Joubert, Water Quality and Supply selects dedicated
volunteers. Her taste testers do not wear perfume, scented make-up, or
wash with fragrant soap before an experiment.
“If someone ate a bunch of garlic the day before a taste test they’re
going to be sent out of the room.” Moya said.
That is because volunteers must taste and smell only the sample odors.
This month, Moya and Liz Johnson search for eight new recruits to train.
Panel members will learn how to rate similar foods, such as various peanut
butter samples, for subtle differences in sweetness and saltiness, before
they progress to sniffing, swirling, and tasting water. New recruits will
commit two years to the panel and begin work in January. Thereafter,
tasters work about one-and-a-half hours per week on the panel.
In addition to increasing awareness about drinking water quality issues,
volunteers prove instrumental in discerning water quality problems before
they start.
~ back to top ~
Norine Sells Her Bloomers
Every night, instead of tugging on her house slippers after work, Norine
Grace, Finance Division, pulls on her garden gloves and goes outside to
dilly dally around with her Dahlias.
She cuts and grooms her flowers until it is too dark to see. In fact, this
season Norine grew 3,000 plants and harvested 125 different Dahlia
varieties, with their brilliant blooms and roll-back, pointed petals.
“When you’re working with flowers you work with such a beautiful part of
nature. It takes away a lot of strain from working such long hours.”
Norine said.
Both Norine and her spouse Bernie O’malley planted two fields of Dahlias
at their home on Vashon Island. Now they sell their cut flowers to a
wholesaler, who furnishes local florists with them.
According to Norine, despite all the extra work she has put into growing
flowers, her interest in Dahlias has not waned. Dahlias are odorless and
do not cause allergies or headaches the way fragrant-heavy flowers, such
as Lilys, can do.
Norine got her first Dahlia tubers (plant starters) a few years ago from
co-worker and hobby grower John Curtin, Management Resource Division.
Meanwhile Deanna Wagner, Communications Division; Diann Shope, Finance &
Administration Division; and Alan Sommarstrom, Finance & Administration
Division also grow Dahlias as a hobby.
~ back to top ~
Conserving Water Costs More, But It Can Also Save
YOU Money
The ABCs of the mayors new 1% for Water Conservation Initiative are
Awareness, Behavior, and Consumption. That’s not just Awareness that you
will save on your water bill, Behavior to celebrate your water bill
savings, and Consumption at McDonalds via the money saved.
In truth, water bills will increase for consumers who maintain current
water consumption levels.
According to the Mayor’s office, “The overall size of other expenditures
planned for the regional water supply system, such as filtration and
ozonation plants and major pipeline replacements, will result in
customer’s rates and bills increasing over the next six years to catch up
with long overdue investments.”
On average, the new program may cost a household of four individuals 40
cents each month.
However,
if that same household simply replaced old commodes with new low-flush
toilets it would reduce water consumption by 9%, save $70 on the annual
water bill, and earn a $50 cash rebate from the city.
Perhaps more important than that, households conserving water will help
preserve existing water sources for other life forms (including salmon and
their habitats). Conscientious households will also contribute to current
water sources being able to accommodate future growth within the region.
~ back to top ~
New Home Clean-up Regiment Trims Community Services’ Waste
The Home Clean-up Program swept through the year with the cleanest record
ever, thanks to a new efficient system where communities choose one of two
new disposal options.
Each Neighborhood chose either to export reusable goods to an exchange
drop site, or to use a one-time free access voucher and dispose of goods
at a Recycling and Disposal Station.
Tom Gannon, Community Services Division, supervised exchanges at the
various drop sites. He said people making donations and treasure hunters
overlapped to make the sites very crowded.
“We were swamped to the gills from the moment that we opened.” Tom said.
Moreover, Tom said sometimes it was difficult to predict what items
treasure hunters would haul away.
“We had somebody drop off an iron forge . . . with a billows attached to
it. It was immense and huge and heavy,” Tom said. At first Tom worried
about how he would dispose of the enormous item. Then Tom said, “While
somebody dropped it off, we were satisfied somebody also took it.”
Meanwhile, over at the Recycling and Disposal Station, Diane Finch, Solid
Waste Division, helped settle a lot of dust when she addressed a growing
traffic jam. Diane said with the free voucher option cars frequently jam
up the station.
“I had to kind-of get out and direct traffic for about ten minutes (last
month) so I could get my own car out,” Diane said.
~ back to top ~
Employees
Hoot Over T-shirt Contest
With so many fifth floor employees in the Dexter Horton building, workers
there could easily pass in the hall and not
speak a word to each other.
That sort-of changed after Ticiang Diangson suggested a new contest idea,
however.
“It
wasn’t a wet T-shirt contest.” Ticiang was
quick to declare.
Yet, for three Friday afternoons, Community Services employees proudly
wore their most outrageous T-shirts and competed to win according to a
weekly theme.
Alex
Tunnel donned an alien T-shirt, an image he
describes as a “Martian popping thing,” and won the “wildest” T-shirt
category.
The following week, when judges could not remember what Shelly Lawson’s
T-shirt said, they assigned her the “Most Boring” distinction.
Still it was Ticiang who earned the “Oldest T-shirt” award.
Ticiang not only wore the “Wild Thing” logo, but after some prompting, she
sang a few verses from the early seventies hit song.
“We wanted for people to come out and just mingle together.” Said Camille
Scholz after she learned that one co-worker used to be a DJ. “It was fun
to learn things you don’t usually hear about people.”
“We wanted to do something fun and everyone seems to have T-shirts.”
Ticiang said, “Not enough people have tattoos. Otherwise we would have
had a tattoo contest.”
~ end ~
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