Orlando water announcement
 

The city of Orlando is asking residents to reduce water consumption IMMEDIATELY. Liquid oxygen used to treat water is being diverted to the hospitals to treat COVID patients. They believe if water consumption doesn’t change, water treatment could hit a critical point in a week.

Boil water notice coming soon!

So for those who don't understand secondary and tertiary effects of virus prevention, maybe you might want to reconsider

Probably not going to happen in heat of the summer.

It is the heat of summer NOW

I think this is disturbing news. Will this problem become more widespread? Who knows? I had no idea liquid oxygen was used to treat water.

From the OUC website:

To reduce demand for liquid oxygen, OUC is asking water customers to immediately limit irrigating their lawns and landscapes. If OUC’s liquid oxygen supplies continue to be depleted and water usage isn’t reduced, water quality may be impacted. But, we believe that will not happen if everyone does their part to conserve water.

I'm trying to understand the scope of this problem.

So ... across Florida, or across the USA for that matter, does every water treatment plant use liquid oxygen to treat water? Are there some (or many) water treatment plants that use a system which does not use liquid oxygen?

How did the population of the USA go from 100,000,000 to over 300,000,000 with this issue?

Why have we not heard of this "issue" before in drought stricken areas of the country.

As was said in an earlier post...."what is the scope of the problem"?

Another part of the story news report....the bar is not very high anymore for what gets passed on to the general public....and the general public believes most of it!

The magazine 'Fox and Hound' had an article in their July edition that the new Costco that's coming to Clermont will be selling liquid oxygen

What was the status of the liquid oxygen at the peak of the pandemic hospitalizations during 2020??

I do not recall even hearing about it last year.

Florida hospitalizations appears to be at 200% what they were in January and 150% what they were last July.

Different time. IN 2020, we had a declared state of emergency and that allowed many waivers on transportation of and delivering oxygen.

..” absent certain transportation waivers, “hospitals are fighting with a hand tied behind their back and don’t have the same chance that they did when states had the public health emergencies declared,” said Soumi Saha, vice president of advocacy for hospital supply purchasing group Premier Inc.”

Florida Hospitals Fighting to Get Oxygen Amid Covid Delta Variant Surge - Bloomberg

Just watched the mayor of Orlando speak on this. He mention nothing about something critical happening in a week. Yes, there is an issue that requires optional water usage to be reduced, but the sky is not yet falling. Remain calm.

Is Orlando the watershed for The Villages? In other words, does this mean us?

Unless you are one who needs it now

I understood that announcement of limiting water to mean due to the heat and watering lawns. They ask that for many areas in the country (even here) during the hot/summer months. I didn't hear anything about oxygen. I do have a question though....was in Walgreens last week and saw small canisters of "oxygen" that one can buy. Have never seen that before.

Oxygen / Ozone Water Treatment
 

Ozone is produced when oxygen (O2) molecules are dissociated by an energy source into oxygen atoms and subsequently collide with an oxygen molecule to form an unstable gas, ozone (O3), which is used to disinfect wastewater. Most wastewater treatment plants generate ozone by imposing a high voltage alternating current (6 to 20 kilovolts) across a dielectric discharge gap that contains an oxygen-bearing gas. Ozone is generated onsite because it is unstable and decomposes to elemental oxygen in a short amount of time after generation.
Ozone is a very strong oxidant and virucide.

Not all water treatment systems use oxygen and ozone; one article I saw estimated that one out of every 500 municipal water treatment plants used ozone.

According to the presentation in a recent Resident's Academy that I attended along with information on the districtgov.org page and my water bill, it appears that we are not at all connected to Orlando water. Pumping water 60 miles doesn't make sense if you can dig a well and according to the presentations, we have wells. Districtgov.org lists three different utility companies serving different areas of the Villages - my water bill lists one of the three. There would be no need for wells or separate utility companies if our water came from Orlando.

The presentation at the Academy did not go into the level of detail to know whether oxygen was used. They specifically mentioned chlorine though and since far more systems use chlorine than use oxygen I assume our utilities do not use oxygen. However, that's just an assumption and it should be relatively easy to call the local utilities to get a real answer. Also, the Villages seems to do a good job with communications, particularly through the District Weekly Bulletin. I have to believe that if this was an issue on our horizon there would have been some mention of it by now.

My doctor told me there was an oxygen shortage in central Florida when I saw him more than a week ago. He blamed it on several hospitals which were not accepting new patients and were giving arriving COVID patients a tank of O2 and a mask and sending them home.

Wow that's scary!

Hey, I just had an idea! If the ozonator is not working, how about adding chlorine, like all those thousands of water treatment plants in America that don't use ozonators?

Heck, it worked on my pool back home, when that stupid ozonator the pool company sold me conked out after a couple of years!

Or, here's another idea... we could just ignore the fake news that the Covid situation is so dire that a few dozen people on oxygen are capable of are sucking up all the oxygen used to treat the water supply for a million people!

Glad to have well water and Nova filters.

Water treatment
 

Although I do not know anything about treating water with liquid oxygen, for many years I managed a chemical plant. One third of our revenue came from supplying the chemical used for water treatment. This was liquid chlorine - not liquid oxygen. Our chlorine was delivered in a large oblong cylinder called a "ton cylinder." It's tare weight when empty was a ton. Filled, the cylinder weighed 3600 pounds. That's a lot of LC. I don't remember my plant ever delivering much liquid oxygen - but what we delivered went to hospitals and fabrication shops - and they weren't treating water with it.

Orlando
 

I was in Orlando yesterday. I noticed when driving by the lakes, all of the fountains were in operation. Doesn't this help to evaporate water? It sure didn't appear anyone was concerned with saving water.

Did they check if Kennedy Space Center has any extra LOX? They use it all the time for launches.

I love it! The fear mongers have no limit to how low that they will go to to try to scare seniors! Hope it makes you sleep better at night!!!

Gotta feel for those who choose to live in such a high state of panic over whatever might be happening in this world. What a horrible way to live one's life.

Even if this was/is a current issue now happening, really, how big of a request is it to back off watering the lawns a bit? Come on, its just grass and if it has to look like crap this season, oh well...its all for the good of the people.

I would ask you to please provide the "real" news of how many people are sucking up oxygen but I know how that would turn out.

There are more than 1,400 dozen people hospitalized in Florida for Covid. When I leave "a few" bucks on a tip at a restaurant or when I ask a friend for "a few" dollars or when I drive "a few" miles to the grocery store, "a few" NEVER means 1,400! Your definition of "a few" must make you very popular with your servers!

The issue with oxygen in central Florida may have as much to do with transport as one poster pointed out as it has to do with overall demand. However, there is no question that hospital demand is up.

Generally, CV patients need MORE oxygen than average patients. Florida hospitals are full in Orlando (as they are locally). So, hospitals are running out of oxygen. Basically, this is just ANOTHER example of the fact that modern history will be divided into pre CV and post CV. CV has affected all of society in the US and the world in some way or another.

As to the question about the growth of the US population from 100 million to 350 million - there has never been any popular US leader warning AGAINST population increase - immigration was always considered good for GNP and was supposed to have zero downside. Yet, biologists know that each animal species has a HOLDING CAPACITY based on their NEED for natural resources like food and etc.

I would just guess that outside of Florida there may be more and deeper wells to get fresh water from. I know as a fact that the US is one of the top 5 countries with navigable rivers. Florida's aquifer is prone to saltwater intrusion as the oceans rise - that could be a problem in the future. Overall, it was a good question - I hope to hear answers from forum experts!

I agree with the content of this thoughtful post!

I believe that the Orlando government leaders did NOT say that the situation was dire and that the sky was falling. They merely SUGGESTED that the citizens of Orlando might be willing to allow their precious grass yards to suffer just a TINY bit in order that real humans in and out of hospitals might have life-saving oxygen.

I assume that the water in the lakes was not from water treatment plants. The lake water likely came from rain, which we have plenty of right now. The water to water lawns in Orlando must, mostly, be treated water - the same as they drink - palatable water. Again, I am assuming, maybe someone knows otherwise?

I agree with the contents of this post.

molecular disassociation... yawn!!

As a former town supervisor in upstate NY, I had a problem with the guy running the water system and got heavily involved with the day to day operations. This included getting class B and D water licenses. Ozone is rarely used in municipal systems as chlorine based chemistry lasts much longer in the water. As mentioned in an earlier post, larger water systems usually use chlorine (Cl2) injection since they have the resources to use this material safely. Smaller systems usually opt for sodium hypochlorite which is much easier and safer to store and use. (Though there are still some safety precautions that need to be followed. Basically, it is a concentrated form of the common bleach we all use.)

My guess is that Orlando is using the oxygen in waste water treatment. While reducing water usage in the home would reduce oxygen required for wastewater, irrigation would have no effect. However, most cities use water consumption as an indicator of your water waste generation. (I realize that is not the case here in The Villages.)

I believe we were talking about Orlando. not the entire state of Florida, but I'm sorry if you were offended that my use of "a "few dozen" minimized the actual number of Orlando Covid hospitalizations -- 454, as near as I can tell (ask google yourself -- the actual number is oddly difficult to locate). But you're right. 454 is actually 38 dozen.

However -- my point still stands. Even if all 454 patients are on oxygen (highly unlikely), common sense is still strained to the limit at the notion that their oxygen supply somehow threatens the water supply of a million people!

We live in a world where everyone in charge is lying to us, all the time. Our only defense in such a world is common sense. I just think if we all applied a little common sense, the liars would have a much harder time selling us their lies.

From the OUC page:

OUC uses an advanced ozone treatment process to produce its great-tasting tap water - proudly called H2OUC

Liquid Oxygen Production
 

This is a little hard for me to take serious.
I worked in the Air Separation Field for 57 years producing liquid Oxygen, Nitrogen & Argon.
We were continously looking for customers to sell our cryogenic products too. Once a regions consumption showes signs of exceeding local production we build additional capacity.

According to WESH News, at the end of July AdventHealth was talking about 1,350 patients and Orlando Health had 573. That's 160 dozen at the end of July.

According to the CDC data, Florida had about 9,000 hospitalized on August 1 and about 16,000 today, a 78% increase. *If* Orlando experienced the same increase then they have 285 dozen patients sucking down oxygen today.

I don't know what effect 454 patients might have but I can believe that nearly 3,400 Covid patients along with any non-Covid patients they still have room for could have a significant effect. Add to that increased water use during hot months and perhaps a transportation problem and it is not at all difficult to believe there could be trouble on the horizon.

I don't believe everyone in charge is lying to us. I believe there are communication struggles, bias in those hearing the messages, confusion about what the messages actually mean, and often a knee-jerk response to disbelieve anything that doesn't fit our preferred narrative. Sometimes there are mistakes made and incorrect information is given out and yes, occasionally there is an attempt to deceive.

Perhaps the mayor of Orlando is overreacting, we've certainly seen a lot of that in the past 20 months, but I don't believe she is outright lying.

To me, common sense is to wonder about statements that don't seem correct and then try to find the data to support or refute them, not to immediately assume everyone in charge is lying to us.

I was too quick to assume you were aware of the 16,000 number for the state. I didn't realized you were only considering Orlando and I didn't realize you had no idea how many patients there were.

Are all 3,400 Covid patients on oxygen? I have no way of knowing but common sense tells me that if hospitals are at capacity then they are likely sending home all but the most serious patients which would be the ones who need oxygen. Even if not all 3,400 are on oxygen a large percentage would be and the effect on oxygen supply would be the same.