M Live
Heavy rains pushed more than 187 million gallons of partially-treated sewage into the Flint and Saginaw rivers last weekend, according to updated reports filed by wastewater officials in Flint, Saginaw and Bay City.
The discharges, treated with disinfection and some settling, were also heavily diluted by rain and melted snow, according to reports filed by the three cities with the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.
Flint, Saginaw and Bay City each have combined sanitary and storm sewers, which means runoff from rain ends up at sewage treatment plants that have retention basins but limited capacity. Once that capacity is reached, the overflow is released to prevent sewage backups. More
Why is this news?
Just about every sewage treatment facility in the world has an overflow system that dumps into a body of water.
Flint’s water problems are much farther upstream.
In Baltimore the facility is on the shore of Back River. The locals call the floating turds “back river brown trout”.
Sure would like to know how they still have combined sewers. My little town of thirty thousand was forced by the feds about ten years ago to undertake sewer separation after first being informed of the requirement over thirty years ago. Our local government kept kicking the can down the road and putting it off citing the expense. That can kicking actually made it much more expensive as it now had a set deadline for completion. But no big problem. They just changed our water bills from quarterly to monthly while saying rates would not rise but their would be additional charges to cover the expense of new staff required to handle the additional billing requirements. I now pay in a month what I used to pay for three. Crooked politicians are everywhere.
Should be renamed Shit Creek.
Different Tim .We never dump anything in the river on our side. No siirree just beeautiful.
Sewage Treatment Plants & Sewage Pumping Stations, like Jethro said, always overflow in heavy rain events (now called Climate Change).
the pumps & the piping systems cannot handle the overflow, even w/ 104″ Force Mains & multiple 20 mgd pumps running … hey, shit happens
Huron, your neighbor Sarnia is or was just recently undertaking the same process I recall. Only reason I know is because my Bill Maher/CNN worshipping step father was crying about the cost and his being inconvenienced by the downtown street’s being torn up a couple of years ago.
Does it make it better or worse than normal? A good start would be to stop electing free range morons to council seats.
Different Tim . True but i was referring to the area south with all the stacks.
Huron, Oh, the area with all the pretty lights. Nothing better than a fresh caught walleye with tumors. Yummy!
Different Tim. Adds weight for the derby.
All’s you have to do is put
smellocrats in charge of any city
and sit back and watch it go
downhill and even into a cesspool
Why hasn’t anyone published an account
of the smellocrat great accomplishments.
If you look at your water bill in most cities you will find that waste water treatment costs more than your water usage.
You even pay for waste treatment on you lawn and flower water even thou it never goes to the treatment plant.