Some scary results at work

**Hardy85** · 04-30-2013, 11:27 AM

I work for a construction company in Niagara Falls working on a project that is a clean up job. We had some water tested from the site and I had to explain to a co-worker why the results were BAD. The pH of the water we had tested came back at 11.76...

No wonder there is nothing living near this site, slightly disturbing the things we do the places we live

**Cliff** · 04-30-2013, 11:32 AM

Chemical contaimination perhaps ?

When you think about it, pure ammonia has a pH of 11 (if I remember correctly)

That is some messed up water

**talldutchie** · 04-30-2013, 11:34 AM

What's being dumped in there then that causes these insane readings?

In this country I've seen big improvements in water quality in general. When I was in elementary school the river Rhine was one big open sewer and a cormorant was a very rare bird. There's now all sorts of fish back in the river and you can see cormorants on many lamppost.

I guess what I'm trying to say it's not all doom and gloom.

**Hardy85** · 04-30-2013, 11:40 AM

Can't talk about all the details, but it is a huge site (like 2mil+ sf) that used to be used to dump different types of slag. Lovely huh.

Hopefully by the time we are done it'll be a bit nicer. But nothing is being done to fix what has already happened, just stopping anymore from happening... My co-worker said it smelled like chlorine, which has a pH of around 11.7, even though the sample had no chlorine to speak of in it

**talldutchie** · 04-30-2013, 12:16 PM

Nature's a lot more resilient that we sometimes think.

I've seen beautiful wildflower meadows here on ground so heavily polluted it was seriously fenced of and would be so for at least 2 decades.