The Treatment - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 47

BUILDING A “POROUS CITY”
In 1994 the EPA established a national framework to lessen the effects of CSOs. It re-
commended that the public be given ample warning when overflows occur, and that
sewer pipes be designed in such a way that they do not become blocked. In 1996, EPA
budgeted $44.7 billion to implement a nationwide CSO Control Policy, a comprehens-
ive set of water quality standards, and in 2000 the Clean Water Act was amended by
Congress to reduce sewage overflows. Some cities made great progress. San Francisco
eliminated seven outfalls and reduced overflows into San Francisco Bay and the Pa-
cific Ocean by roughly 88 percent. Saginaw, Michigan, spent $100 million to eliminate
twenty of its thirty-six outfalls and reaped a 75 percent reduction in annual CSO dis-
charge. Portland, Maine, eliminated twenty-five of thirty-five outfalls, and saw an 80
percent reduction in CSOs.
But fixing large infrastructure is physically daunting, politically challenging, and ex-
tremely expensive. A decade after Congress amended the Clean Water Act, hundreds of
sewer systems remained out of compliance.
No national records document how many people have been sickened by CSOs, but
there is anecdotal evidence. When local sewers overflowed in Milwaukee, the journ-
al Pediatricsreported in 2007, the number of children suffering from diarrhea rose. In
2008, the ArchivesofEnvironmentalandOccupationalHealthestimated that as many
as 4 million people are sickened every year from swimming in California waters tainted
by pathogens linked to sewage.
These are cautionary tales, especially given that between 2006 and 2009, a third of
major US sewer systems (more than ninety-four hundred, including those in San Diego,
Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose, and San Francisco) reported
violating environmental laws. In addition, thousands of smaller wastewater treatment
systems operated by factories, mines, towns, colleges, and even mobile-home parks have
broken the law. But few of the violators—less than one in five, according to a NewYork
Timesanalysis of EPA data—were sanctioned or fined.
• • •
Since the 1970s, New York City has invested about $35 billion to maintain and improve
the quality of its waterways and has focused on developing systems that capture CSO
overflows before they are discharged into the harbor, store them until after a storm has
passed, and only then send the excess water on to treatment plants.
Although rain causes Pynn headaches—and has turned him into a devotee of the
Weather Channel—it is also his ally: rainwater is high in dissolved oxygen, which helps