USA Today: Aging systems releasing sewage into rivers, streams

[Omaha Steve]

I work in a treatment plant. Even after the new mandated clean water improvements (1.5 billion for Omaha), it won't be a total fix.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-05-07-sewers-main_N.htm?csp=34

By Larry Wheeler and Grant Smith, Gannett News Service
America's aging sewer systems continue to dump human waste into rivers and streams, despite years of fines and penalties targeting publicly owned agencies responsible for sewage overflows, a Gannett News Service analysis shows.

The analysis of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data found that since 2003, hundreds of municipal sewer authorities have been fined for violations, including spills that make people sick, threaten local drinking water and kill aquatic animals and plants.

DATABASE: Sewer treatment plant reports by state

Local governments across the USA plan to spend billions modernizing failing wastewater systems — some of which are more than 100 years old — over the next 10 to 20 years, EPA, state and local sewer authority officials said.

Those improvement efforts face a huge challenge mitigating problems in what the EPA estimates to be 1.2 million miles of sewers snaking underground across the USA.
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Waste gurgles from manholes and gushes down streams and rivers somewhere in the USA almost every day, the EPA estimates.

• In March, 700,000 to 1.3 million gallons of human feces and other waste spilled from a damaged pipe into Grand Lagoon at Panama City Beach, Fla., said Al Shortt, the city's utilities director.

• In January, about 20 million gallons of sewage flowed into Pennsylvania's Schuylkill River after a 42-inch pipe ruptured near Reading, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection.

FULL story at link.

[whistle]

1. More BushCo/republican mandated crumbling infrastructure