[Mutant Fest] AMF water system

[Stan Osborne]

AMF-X had terrible water provisioning.  Most of the time I 
was at AMF-X the spaz kitchen was out of water.  My time at last 
year's festival was limited, but the lack of water further 
limited my participation in feeding people.  Thus I was only 
able to cook about 1 & 1/2 meals.  I sent 60 lbs of fake
meat to the festival, but was not able to cook with any
of it.

   Dehydration (lack of water) will kill us faster 
   than starvation (lack of food). 

 http://www.cet.edu/ete/modules/waterq/wqwaterimport.html

People came to the spaz tent expecting they would be able
to fill their water bottles.  They were very dissapointed
as their camps with more of their own water were over 2 
miles away.

I was told that some people were getting water from the
creek that passed under the dirt road that connect all
of the AMF camps.   When I looked at this I saw stagnet
water, not clean running water.  I was told that people
were boiling this water before using it.  At least they
had water to cook with.

Things we can try to do in the future to make water more
availalbe during AMF:

  o  publish were to get water along with the directions
     for finding the AMF location.

  o  include words that encourage people to fill all their 
     water containers before they arrive. this should be in 
     the directions to the festival and amoung the location 
     of water sources (at AMF-X one late arriving bus had 
     6 x 50 gallon barrels, but only one of the barrels was 
     filled with water just before they arrived.  The other 
     5 clean barrels arrived empty.)

  o  encourage the people scouting locations to include 
     scouting for clean running water.    If there was a way 
     to fill water containers within a 2-3 miles, then crews
     with limited containers could refill as often as necessary. 
     AMF-2005 had drinkable running water in the middle
     of the TAZ.  Now that we are attracting over 1000 people
     during the peak days of AMF clena water should always be 
     this close.

  o  encourage one or more crews to include a 'water supply 
     system' as one of the important 'systems' they bring 
     with them.  Here is a website on how to do this in the 
     wilderness:

       http://www.ashevillecommunity.org/hawker/water/

     crews that want to do this should consider going to 
     national rainbow gatherings and volunteering with the
     Rainbow Water system people (eg. hawker, et al).

     If not running water, then we need several 300 gallon
     water pillows (2400 lbs of water) that can be used to haul 
     drinking water in the back of stronger pickup trucks (idealy 
     vegetable oil powered pickups.)  If the spaz kitchen had 
     two of these, one could be used for hauling and the other 
     used for storage near the kitchen.

         http://www.interstateproducts.com/all_tanks.htm
 
  o  the bigger kitchens should have running drinking water.
     this is often done at national rainbow gatherings.
     AMF has grown big enough that we should be trying to
     do this too.  Here are the standard water system 
     instructions for kitchens going to a national gathering.

     ==========================================================
     Rainbow Water system instructions for kitchens:
 
        We are asking all kitchens that want to be connected
        to the main water line to bring the following items.
        These items in total should not cost more than $50-$100.
        Please help get this word out to all kitchens. If each 
        kitchen brings a little it helps us all.

         * 1-3 rolls (usually 300-400') of NSF rated 3/4" black poly pipe.
         * 1 or more 3/4" plastic barbed T
         * 2-3 3/4" plastic barbed couplings
         * 1 or more spigots with 1/2" NPT male pipe threads
         * 1 or more 1/2" Female NPT threads to 3/4" barbed insert
         * 6-12 1 1/4" hose clamps 

     ==========================================================

Stan