Posts about Combined Sewer Overflow

Sustainability

Impervious Area Charge is an integral part of sewer service

by Eric Fidler   •   October 8, 2010 1:46 pm

The Obama administration's decision to to pay an impervious area fee added to all water bills in DC, reversing its earlier position, is a welcome step toward cleaner water.

DC Water levies the impervious area charge on customers based on the estimated level of stormwater their properties dump onto the streets and thus into the sewers. This is necessary to pay for replacing DC's antiquated Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system.

Until 1900, the District installed under every street one pipe to handle both sewage and storm water. Whatever you emptied into your kitchen sink emptied into the same pipe carrying whatever washed along your street's curbs.

The problem is that our sewer system, much like those in other old American cities, simply cannot handle the sheer volume of water that flows through the sewers during heavy rains. As a result, the sewers overflow into Rock Creek, the Potomac, and the Anacostia at 53 outfall points during these storms. As you can imagine, this discharge is neither safe nor pretty.

Rather than dig up every 18th- and 19th-century neighborhood street, DC Water is building several huge containment tunnels to temporarily store sewage-storm "brews" until the treatment plant at Blue Plains can process it all after the storm.

Public Spaces

Environmental groups identify $145B of immediate green stimulus

by David Alpert   •   December 11, 2008 10:18 am

Does an immediate economic stimulus package have to include anti-environmental, sprawl-inducing projects like new highways or highway widenings, such as those many state DOTs are just itching to fund? Yesterday, in the discussion over Barack Obama's proposed stimulus, commenter Alex B. wrote,

Any STIMULUS must move fast. A national high speed rail system is a great investment, but it's not something that we can ramp up in time to boost our way out of this recession. Likewise, as much as operational assistance to MARC and other transit agencies may be a good idea, it is not a good STIMULUS spending plan.

It's worth noting that of the transit projects that are in a position to serve as a stimulus, they all look like Obama will aim to include them. The simple reality is that the economic package will require much, much more.

This morning, a coalition of 17 environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, NRDC, Environmental Defense, Greenpeace, and many more, released a list of 78 projects that could spend $145 billion over the next 12 months on immediate economic stimulus. (See the summary table or detailed list.) On transportation, the list includes fixing existing roads and bridges, operating grants to keep up transit service and current fares, and fully funding all New Starts transit projects that are in the pipeline, but no new lane miles of highways.

Transportation is responsible for a third of global warming pollution and more than 60 percent of domestic oil consumption. To mitigate this, we need a comprehensive transportation sector investment strategy that includes substantial build out of public transportation and other alternative transportation resources, rehabilitation and maintenance of existing roads and bridges (which creates more jobs than investments in new road capacity), investment in next generation alternative fuels, and acceleration of increases in vehicle efficiency. Meeting these needs can reduce our dependence on oil, reduce global warming pollution, and create millions of good jobs by investing in low-carbon transportation projects.

We recommend at least $58.8 billion investment in transit, other transportation alternatives, environmental mitigation, road and bridge maintenance, and vehicle and fuel technologies ...

We also strongly oppose spending any portion of an economic stimulus package on highway projects that include new capacity. Adding road capacity has been shown to induce additional vehicle use, leading to increased oil consumption, greenhouse gasses, and traffic congestion in the long term. These projects also promote sprawling land development patterns that further exacerbate these problems and require future infrastructure investments to mitigate. Any spending on highways and roads (including bridges) should be based on Fix-It First principles of asset management.

The list also includes funds for alternative energy research and starting up production of non-corn biofuels, worker training for green jobs, energy efficiency tax credits, weatherization for households, schools, and local governments, incentives for energy efficient appliances, purchasing foreclosed land for conservation, maintenance in national parks and wildlife refuges, solar panel depeloyment on public and private buildings, energy transmission grid upgrades, dam repair, coastal restoration from Long Island Sound to the Great Lakes to the Mississippi delta and coastal Louisiana, and more.

One of the largest water items on the list is a Combined Sewer Overflow fix. DC currently has a CSO system which dumps raw sewage into the rivers when heavy rains overflow the system. The DC area will have to spend over $2 billion over the next few years to build the holding tanks and tunnels so that this doesn't happen; stimulus money for this here and in other cities would create jobs and fix a major source of water contamination.

Even economists aren't sure which of these bailout and stimulus programs will actually work. But if we do need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy, we can do it without covering the countryside in new freeways. We needn't bail out homebuilders who bought up too much land and constructed too many houses in the distant exurbs beyond the actual market demand, while there's a shortage of housing and good transit in walkable, closer-in areas. We can stimulate the economy in ways that set our country on the right course to sustainability for the next generation.