Dump On

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A few hours without rain Friday afternoon reduced flows from municipal sewers to Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District facilities to the extent that district officials were optimistic they could halt blending of partly and fully treated wastewater at the Jones Island sewage plant by this morning.

But no end was in sight Friday for the combined sewer overflows to Milwaukee rivers and Lake Michigan that began Thursday evening.

Blending started around 8:15 p.m. Thursday as a last resort to push more wastewater through Jones Island and prevent filling the deep tunnel storage system to capacity, district Executive Director Kevin Shafer said. At about 9 p.m. Friday, the deep tunnel, with a capacity of 405 million gallons, remained 87% full. A separate northwest side storage tunnel, with a capacity of 89 million gallons, was 85% full.

...Combined sewers will not resume discharging to the deep tunnel, a step that would end the overflows, until rain is out of the immediate forecast and flows from municipal sanitary sewers no longer pour into the tunnel, Jankowski said.

Neither seemed likely to occur before midday Saturday....

On Friday afternoon, municipal sanitary sewers continued to discharge to the tunnel at a rate of around 44 million gallons a day. Progress was being made, however, as pumps were draining the tunnel faster than sanitary sewers were discharging to it.

The headline of the article: "Halt in rain helps to ease sewage mix"

The subhead: "Sewer overflows to lake, rivers will continue"

I think they should be flipped. The primary focus of the piece is on the dumping. That's the story.

Of course, a halt in the rain will help the situation.

"But no end was in sight Friday for the combined sewer overflows to Milwaukee rivers and Lake Michigan that began Thursday evening."

That's important.

Cut the crap. There's no way to put a positive spin on dumping partially treated wastewater into local rivers and the lake.