HEALTH: How can drinking cause dehydration?

Why drinking responsibly means hydrating responsibly

Whether celebrating a holiday or the end of a work week, many people kick back a glass of their favorite beverage to toast the occasion. If that beverage is alcohol, we hope you drink responsibly, but with that comes responsible hydration.

Did you know alcohol dehydrates you? drinkaware UK explained that alcohol acts as a diuretic, acting on your kidneys to make you expel more liquid than you are consuming.

That's what increases your number of trips to the bathroom when consuming alcohol: Once you head to the bathroom to pass the liquid you just drank, you'll feel the urge to go again soon after because of the diuretic effect drawing additional liquid from your body. That can lead to dehydration and increase the likelihood of a rough day-after.

We're in the wastewater-treatment business, so we're prepared to handle as many trips to the bathroom as you need. But we do encourage keeping water in your drinking routine. It can reduce the impacts of alcohol on your system, and it's a healthier option overall. We'll even give you a fancy drink name to go along with that glass of tap if that helps.

Hydrate responsibly, celebrate responsibly, and flush responsibly.

Image credit Flickr Maya83 Creative Commons

WATCH: Flush o' the Irish? Kelsey shows us green dye is for more than St. Patrick's Day.

Chicago can have its green river. Water Quality and Industrial Surveillance Investigator Kelsey Amidon shows us how we go green (green dye, actually) to protect water quality.

Fluorescent dye helps our investigators trace the source and destination of flows in our streams and sewers, and the glowing-green dye is even eco-friendly.

LIST: 5 naughty things that will earn you a visit from Krampus this Christmas

Krampus says be good to your plumbing and your environment for goodness sake.

Don't be naughty this year.

Of course, St. Nicholas is known for bringing gifts to kids on the Nice list. The Naughty list earns children a more frightening visit from Krampus, a creature of European tradition who hands our more punishment than presents.

We want everyone to do the right thing and protect water. But if Krampus knows who's been bad or good, these are the Naughty things to avoid.

LIST: 9 ways the movie Elf pretty much sums up any water lesson we could ever teach

The life lessons offered in Will Ferrell's Elf are profound and unparalleled. In this holiday season, we invite you to reflect on nine specific clean-water insights only Buddy can convey.
 

A short shower is just as effective as a long one.
 

Everyone needs some alone time. Let your throne be a place of emotional comfort.
 

Singing a song while you're in the shower can help you conserve water by timing your routine. Singing while someone else is in the shower is creepy.

VIDEO: @Sewer_Chic's report from our Southerly plant shows there are no holidays off

Your toilet can't take an extended holiday. Which is one of many reasons our shift workers like Christen don't either.

Christen Wood is an Operator at our Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant and she was working on Thanksgiving with a number of her colleagues. She sent us this video after dinner, not only thanking her own family and co-workers who live the shift life, but thanking you, our customers.

We're proud to serve you all year long, holidays, weekends and snow days included.

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DIY: How to protect your plumbing in style when entertaining holiday houseguests

Some people have a habit of flushing things they shouldn't flush: Disposable wipes, paper towels, wrappers, cotton swabs, and a whole lot more. And when you're entertaining guests this holiday season, if you don't know their habits, they might be flushing something in your bathroom that could cause a problem.

Here's something that might come in handy. Download and print one of our 5x7 inserts [PDF], find a frame around the house, and place your new reminder somewhere near your bathroom sink or toilet.

Let us know if you put one to use. Happy holidays.

GREEN: Um yeah, even wastewater's not supposed to look like this. #StPatricksDay

Green is the color of the St. Patrick's Day holiday and the Chicago River that is dyed for celebration, but some colors come with questions.

Especially when they're not supposed to be there.

Southerly Assistant Superintendent Kevin Zebrowski shared that oddly colored green water has come flowing into our Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant several times before, like the time shown here from 2007.

"We isolated it," he said of this example, working with our investigators to determine possible sources of three separate incidents.

"We suspected and installed downstream samplers for a company [within our service area] which manufactures dye for plastics. It stopped with no other events."

"At a similar time [2008], Akron had a similar event where the EPA caught someone dumping powdered green dye in the sanitary sewer," he said.

If all the water at a treatment plant is being treated anyway, does the color coming into the plant matter? Kevin said yes. "We have had in our permit that we cannot discharge effluent [the treated water] with any color." Treatment plant staff and our Water Quality & Industrial Surveillance Team collaborate to track down the cause.

Investigators can use any number of clues coming from the flow to find the source and take necessary action. Our laboratory conducts nearly 200,000 tests on more than 25,000 samples every year to ensure the processes in our plants and the quality of our effluent is safe.

Southerly is not the only plant to face issues of colorful influent, he said. "At Westerly [in Cleveland], there was a printing company that would often clean their process tanks; our operators would see various colors coming into the plant. They would sometimes get red which would interfere with the laboratory running tests."

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• GREEN: 5 stories of green with Cuyahoga River connections

VIDEO: Sing along with the #12clogs of Christmas

Sinks, toilets, and drains in general tend to get a little extra work during the holidays, especially if you're hosting house guests.

That's why we created our #12clogs of Christmas infographic last year, and now have put it to song, to help you remember what to keep out of your toilets and drains.

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• INFOGRAPHIC: 12 clogs of Christmas
• TIPS: 15 things not to flush
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• HOME: 10 tips to protect your plumbing when entertaining this Christmas

Special thanks to Ruthie Spearman and Michael Uva for the audio!

HISTORY: What were toilets like in 1776?

Whether America is celebrating its founding fathers or its independence, we ask a question about one item most of us are quite dependent upon today:

What were toilets like in 1776?

To understand the privies of the day, it's best to look at the entire state of sanitation overall in the late 1700s.

At the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolutionary War, sanitation left much to be desired. Disease spread easily, especially among troops in the close quarters of army barracks.

As Edward Park put so plainly:

...eighteenth century troops stank. The citizens of Williamsburg (Virginia) would have smelled pretty ripe, too. It's safe to assume that we would have found the entire Old Dominion—in fact, all thirteen colonies—afflicted with B.O. And since everyone stank, no one noticed it or recorded it for history.

TIPS: Stylish way to tell house guests you don't want them clogging your toilet during the holidays

Some people have a habit of flushing things they shouldn't flush: Disposable wipes, paper towels, wrappers, cotton swabs, and a whole lot more. And when you're entertaining guests this holiday season, if you don't know their habits, they might be flushing something in your bathroom that could cause a problem.

Here's something that might come in handy. Download and print one of our 5x7 inserts [PDF], find a frame around the house, and place your new reminder somewhere near your bathroom sink or toilet.

Let us know if you put one to use. Happy holidays.

NEWS: #WaitToTweet 'til you're toilet-trained? iPotty voted worst toy of 2013

Photo courtesy Jezebel

The votes are in: The worst of the worst toys of the year is the iPotty, an iPad holder built into your child's potty-training seat.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood annually presents one unlucky winner with the TODAY (Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children) Award, and the voters' cases for the iPotty "winning" this year were definitive.

Whatever your opinions are about children and technology, technology in the bathrooms is a growing trend, but we never realized how far until seeing this. Either we should be aiming our #WaitToTweet message at a much younger demographic, or we better start working on our "Wally Waterdrop Saves the World" app.

What are your thoughts on worst or best toys of the year?

PHOTO: Rub a dub dub, four men in a President's tub?

Of the many fun facts and statistics surrounding the history of presidential plumbing and the White House, one of our favorites is the tale of President William Howard Taft's bath tub.

President Taft's nickname was "Big Bill" for a reason. At a weight of 330 pounds, his facilities required special attention. The 1909 photograph above shows Taft's specialty-made bath tub which measured seven feet long and almost four feet wide, big enough to fit four grown men. The tub itself weighed close to a ton and might have held about 600 gallons. That's a lot of wastewater.

Today, DC Water handles wastewater treatment for the White House and all of the District of Columbia.

Taft's original tub was removed from the White House during a renovation in 1952.

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• JULY 4: What were toilets like in 1776?
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Image from classroomhelp.com