• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

EDITORIAL: Comcast Center Tower: Stand Up to Plumbers

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 March 2006, 03:03 CST

By The Philadelphia Inquirer

Mar. 28--So what's the big deal about a little water trickling down the drain of a urinal? It's not like, say, a five-gallon flush in an old-fashioned toilet.

Actually, it's a huge deal. Environmentally, the impact of switching to waterless urinals in a building the size of the new Comcast Center tower in Philadelphia could be a savings of 1.6 million gallons a year.

But water use isn't the only issue. The implications of city officials' refusal to stand up to union demands that they don't permit waterless urinals go way beyond conservation.

The politicians' timidity embraces a mind-set that says it's OK to let special interest groups selfishly stifle the city's economic growth.

For their part, the plumbers' union opposition to the environmentally friendly toilets that Liberty Property Trusts wants to put in the Comcast tower stems from a simple calculus: Fewer water pipes to install means fewer jobs for plumbers.

In a limited, crabs-in-a-barrel world view, the union is right -- since it might take fewer man-hours to install waterless urinals. But that's also an incredibly shortsighted view.

Waterless urinals hardly foretell a replay of what happened to workers who made buggy whips. No one's seriously putting plumbers out of jobs with this technology, any more so than today's proliferation of single-handle faucets.

In fact, plumbers could be awash in new work generated by waterless urinals. How so? Well, waterless toilets still require drains. If every major building in the city and region were to convert to these toilets in a conservation and cost-savings push, just imagine all those busy plumbers.

Even better: the more commercial buildings that operate efficiently, the more attractive the city will be to businesses looking to lower operating costs. That means more jobs for people who, sooner or later, are going to need the services of a plumber.

It's too bad that Philadelphia is a place where taking the long view to foster economic growth isn't exactly a strong suit. Especially when it comes to unions applying flexibility in work settings to solve problems.

So we have a Convention Center that faced a staggering blow to its future bookings by squabbling, and near-fistfights, among union workers at the center. Labor protests nearly halted taping of local episodes of MTV's Real World some years back, at great cost to the city's image.

That image would be burnished by embracing environmentally conscious technologies, including waterless urinals. To refuse, now that stinks.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NASDAQ-NMS:CMCSA,

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

More News in this Category