Aging sewers threaten environment, public health

America's sewers are showing their age.

Deteriorating pipes, overwhelmed by volumes of water they were never designed to carry, release billions of gallons of raw sewage into rivers and streams each year. The spills make people sick, threaten local drinking water and kill aquatic animals and plants.
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Hundreds of municipal sewer authorities have been fined for spills since 2003, according to a Gannett News Service analysis of EPA data.

And dozens of local governments have agreed to spend billions modernizing failing wastewater systems over the next 10 to 20 years. Many of those projects will be financed by rate increases.

But the improvements can't keep up with problems affecting the thousands of miles of sewer pipes snaking underground through each community. Foul-smelling waste gurgles from manholes and gushes down streams and rivers somewhere in the U.S. almost every day.

In March, between 700,000 and 1.3 million gallons of human feces and other waste spilled from a damaged pipe into Grand Lagoon at Panama City Beach, Fla.

In January, about 20 million gallons of sewage flowed into Pennsylvania's Schuylkill River after a 42-inch pipe ruptured near Reading, Pa.

That same month, heavy rain, deteriorating pipes and operator error combined to send about 5 million gallons of sewage into Northern California's Richardson and San Francisco bays.

"When people flush their toilets, they think the sewage is going to the treatment plant, and that's where they deserve to have it go," said Nancy Stoner, a project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which says the government isn't doing enough to police sewage overflows.


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