The "End of the Line" for Melbourne's already terrible water supply.

Way back in the late 1970s I worked in the machine tool maintenance group at Documation in Palm Bay. I was working on getting new supplier for the water soluble cutting fluids. The head sales guy showed up with two (2) 1/2 gallon Nalgene jugs that he wanted filled with our water. He was going to take it back to his lab for analysis and from there his company would produce a cutting fluid that would be optimized on our water supply. We (him and I) filled them up at the closest hand washing station.

About 2 weeks later he called me up and he was pretty upset, saying that he thought he was clear when he told me he wanted a sample of our "Good" drinking kind of water! Hmmmmmm? I told him that we did. He came in the next week with 2 new jugs and I clearly showed him where the city (Melbourne) water came into the building, where the piping split off going here-and-there, and where the one pipe ended at the washing sink. He filled up and was on his way.

He called back in a week laughing! His lab folks had roundly chastised him for bringing back "tramp water" again! He had to explain to them that he witnessed the whole collection process. They damn near died laughing about how crap like that could be considered safe for human consumption!!!!!

And, also, the actual, old, dump at Patrick was to the west of the end of the runway, taking up what is the southern portion of what was called the "Survival Area". It was not where South Patrick Shores is now located. My father was a photog with the original RCA crew that flew over Brevard in the old B-17s to take survey photos for the emerging AFETR, and he kept original copies which he gave to the County way-back-when when the whole Toxic Neighborhood issue came up.

-------------------------
Dora Hates You