In This Month's Flooding, More Than 4 Billion Gallons Of Raw Sewage Spilled In Louisville

[hatrack]

More than 4 billion gallons of raw sewage from Louisville were added to the watery mess created by the recent floodwaters. To put it in perspective, that's about a year's worth of spills in a five-day span.

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But there's some good news. The Metropolitan Sewer District also treated a lot of wastewater – more than 2.5 billion gallons during the same five days that saw as much as 8 inches of rain, said Brian Bingham, MSD's director of operations. And things would have been much worse without all the improvements made over the last decade.

"These are huge numbers but they would have been much larger before," Bingham said of his preliminary estimates from last week. He was referring to MSD's $943 million court-required cleanup plan that started in 2005 and runs through 2024.

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The more rain the more sewage that overflows, and MSD has in recent years reported annual overflows of 2 billion to nearly 6 billion gallons. The spills are a combination of what people flush down their drains and stormwater that gets into sewer pipes. Louisville's city's sewer system can now collect and treat a lot more than it could a decade ago after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on improvements. The consent decree focused first on illegal sanitary sewer overflows; they are the ones caused by crumbling, leaky pipes designed to carry only sewage but can fill with water during heavy rains.

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https://www.courier-journal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2018/02/27/louisville-flood-major-sewage-spills-msd/377744002/?from=new-cookie

[tonyt53]

1. Most US cities are in similar situations as Louisville. Combo sewer/storm water piping.

Those cities are ALL spending big bucks to separate the two systems, but it will take several more years to accomplish this. Until that time, there will be many more overflow events.