Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
$125 million. The plan, funded through a $2-per-household monthly
sewer charge, involved the construction of an interceptor sewer around
the entire perimeter of Lake Washington as well as facilities to treat waste
volumes before discharge into Puget Sound. At the time, this was the most
expensive sewage diversion project in the nation.
121
Metro also entered
into fi fty-year contracts with member cities and neighboring sewer agen-
cies, and by 1962, had signed contracts with fi fteen municipal sewage
districts representing over three hundred thousand customers.
122
Diversion of sewage discharges began in 1963, and water quality condi-
tions in the lake improved almost immediately. Visibility in 1967 was 2.5
feet, 9 feet the following year, and 20 feet by 1977—twice the visibility
as measured in 1938. The diversion process was completed in Febru-
ary 1968, and Metro received international recognition for one of the
most successful lake cleanup efforts ever undertaken.
123
The effort was
similar to the large engineering projects undertaken in the fi rst half of
the century to replumb and regrade the city, but now the equation was
reversed: big engineering was needed to improve nature by controlling
the impacts of humans.
124
Furthermore, the work on Lake Washington
added environmental protection to the Promethean Project of technologi-
cal development. A change in societal values in response to post-World
War II urbanization was translated into an amended mission for techni-
cal experts who governed the environmental fl ows of the region. The call
for environmental protection did not threaten the technomanagerial elite
but rather strengthened their position while extending their geographical
reach as environmental managers. Nonexperts were involved in exposing
the problems of pollution, but it was the experts who were charged with
designing and implementing solutions that could be carried out by local
and regional governments.
Despite the claims of Metro and its allies, the replumbing of the region
to save Lake Washington was not a win-win solution for all residents in
the region. Saving the lake came at the expense of the waterbody receiving
the diverted sewage, the battered Duwamish River. Already burdened by
dredging and straightening activities to accommodate industrial develop-
ment in the early twentieth century, the fi shermen and Native Americans
who relied on the Duwamish for recreation and sustenance were further
affected by the Metro interceptor sewers and treatment plants that defi ned
the river as the ultimate drain of the region.
125
As a result, those who lived
closest to Lake Washington received the greatest benefi ts, while those who
lived in the bottomlands of the city were once again burdened with the
negative side effects of economic and population growth. Klingle notes,
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