Hmmm…

This is just a ‘tad’ odd…

The Navy is investigating what caused the drinking water aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to become rank and cloudy last month.

It is at least the second instance of fouled drinking water on a U.S. carrier in recent weeks.

Full article, HERE from Navy Times.

And HERE is the article on the Nimitz…

Steel is porous and it is very possible that the potable water tanks and JP tanks are adjacent to each other (this does happen on DDGs), but for it to be bad enough that people got sick, is odd…to put it mildly.

Carriers make their own water, and it is usually fine. It will be interesting to see what the upshot of the investigations are, but those will take months… sigh

And in the ‘it’s about damned time’ corner…

GM Financial has agreed to pay more than $3.5 million to resolve Justice Department allegations that it illegally repossessed the vehicles of 71 service members and improperly denied or mishandled over 1,000 requests for lease terminations, in violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Full article, HERE.

This has been an ongoing issue since ‘leasing’ of vehicles started… sigh…

Comments

Hmmm… — 11 Comments

  1. I was on the Lincoln when it was brand new so this is interesting to me. Immediate questions: All tanks? All drinking water? I don’t remember the specifics (I was nuke, not engineering and it was almost thirty years ago) but with that big a system there must be more than one tank, which suggests supply rather than holding. If I were in charge I’d drain and flush all tanks, refill them all with clean water, then start testing to see which were contaminated first. Actually sounds like an interesting project. Of course what do you do with the carrier in the meantime. I have no idea where they are in the rotation so that could be a problem. Unrep bottled water? (PS Four flash distillation units putting out 100,000 gallons each per day, iirc)

  2. We had JP4-flavored oil slicks in our coffee cups until a new guy doing some kinda quals figured out the distillers weren’t piped exactly right. That was the rumor, so it had to be true. Everyone’s clothes (and bodies) smelled like we all worked on the flight deck. Fun times.

    • It should be unusual. Do you mean the Navy, just as like way back when, has trouble getting potable water? If so, this is not encouraging.

      • In part, going back to Greybeard’s comment, the officer and enlisted engineers of today and the last 12 or so years have not, for the most part, been self motivated to excel, as we of 40 odd years ago were, because of “external influence” 🙂 meaning the Vietnam Veterans that we learned from trained us as needed to properly operate the plant. This has not been the priority for some years, with a few exceptions, to the detriment of the fleet.

  3. From the article, it seems that some salt water got into the Abe’s water. It can happen if the watchstander running the DU system screws up (or off). Given that it happened to only a few tanks, I’d bet on a person rather than a mechanical failure.

  4. On CVA 59 from ’70-’73; occasionally we had our water with a little diesel flavor and sometimes a bit salty but I don’t remember it being cloudy. Somebody turned the wrong valves?

  5. Robert- Grog’s answer is correct… sigh

    Justin- Possible…

    The other Justin- Possible or ???

  6. CV-63 1975-77. JP flavored water was a regular happening. IIRC, never made anyone sick, beyond a little loose bowels.