MMSD's Historic Dump

The numbers are in...

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

This month's overflows of combined sanitary and storm sewers in central Milwaukee and eastern Shorewood poured 2.9 billion gallons of untreated sewage and water into local rivers and Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District said today.

This was the largest combined sewer overflow since the district's deep tunnel opened in 1994.

In a report to the state Department of Natural Resources, the district said wastewater was flowing out of combined sewers into relief pipes and then into the waterways for a period of nine days: June 7 to 15.

Heavy rains in June 1997 caused four days of combined sewer overflows that sent 1.6 billion gallons of untreated wastewater, the previous record amount since 1994, to the waterways.

Earlier this month, the district's separate sanitary sewers released 686 million gallons to the rivers and lake during overflows that occurred from June 7 to 9. MMSD receives wastewater flows from 28 communities.

This month's total overflows amounted to nearly 3.6 billion gallons, or more than 7 times the deep tunnel storage capacity, district Executive Director Kevin Shafer said.

Billions of gallons of untreated sewage and water, 2.9 billion, were dumped by MMSD into Lake Michigan and local rivers.

That's horrible.

Do you know what else is horrible?

It's horrible that the rains were so heavy and the event so destructive that 15 Wisconsin counties have been declared disaster areas by FEMA.

As of today, the counties include: Columbia, Crawford, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green, Iowa, Marquette, Milwaukee, Racine, Richland, Sauk, Vernon, Washington, Waukesha, and Winnebago.

The capacity of 7 deep tunnels would have been needed to handle the rains.

It's unreasonable for anyone to expect MMSD to be able to manage a 500-year flood.

While the dumping is terrible, it was unavoidable in this case.

Well, it wasn't really unavoidable. MMSD could have allowed sewage to bubble up into thousands and thousands and thousands of homes and buildings.

Imagine the extent of the damage and the ramifications for the public's health that NOT dumping would have entailed.

In a perfect world, Lake Michigan and local rivers would be crystal clear and sewage free.

In a perfect world, there would be no flooding, and birds would be toilet trained.