Combined Sewage Overflow

                                         By Celines Hermida             

What Is Combined Sewer Overflow?
More than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge out of 460 combined sewage overflows (“CSOs”) into New York Harbor alone each year. Combined sewage overflow is how we are killing each other. Combined sewer systems are sewer pipes that were strategically built to gather storm water runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater to the same pipe and travel it towards the publicly owned treatment works (potw) facilities. Usually this system works fine (during dry days); the sewage piles carry along to where it needs to, but throughout the duration of rain occurrences, when stormwater enters the sewers, the magnitude of the sewer systems may be pushed over its maximum capacity, transferring the extra sewage directly to a outlet body of water. This process is referred to as combined sewer overflow and we as victims have yet to fix this problem.

                                                     You May Be The Cause Of CSO

You may not know but you are a contributor to combined sewer overflow. Any time during heavy snowmelt, a hurricane or even a rainstorm if there are too many people taking showers or using more water than they need to i.e faucets, shower water, the toilet, or if you are doing launder. That water will add to the already full pipes making it our fault that our already used (polluted/unfiltered) water is going back into our suppose to be filtered water pipes. This procedure is giving you and everyone you know the chance to get sick. Not only is CSO revolting; but it is a huge threat to human health, in fact The Gowanus Canal, located in Brooklyn, New York, In 2010 was declared a superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, because of it’s contaminates.  This means that it is a place so hazardly  polluted that the federal government has to step in and take control. “The agency plans to dig up hundreds of thousands of tons of muck from the bottom of the canal, and then incinerate it, by 2022. For more than 200 years or more, people have been dumping in the waterway. After all this time, no one can be sure exactly what is down there, from shipwrecks to cancer causing pollution, to possibly guns. ” Statement by Newsela.com. This all started “On June 21, 1911, the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel was built. It contained a propeller that circulated and flushed water in and out of the canal to and from New York Harbor. The flushing tunnel functioned until the mid 1960s when service was suspended due to mechanical failure and, once again, the Canal returned to its polluted state. Since then, repairs to the tunnel were postponed several times due to the City's fiscal crises. Efforts to improve the area's sewage collection and treatment through the construction of the Red Hook Wastewater Treatment plant, which began operating in 1987, did little to solve the canal's odor and pollution problems.” Stated by NYC Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And I don’t know about you, but I feel it is a necessity that we get this working so we can have our beautiful canal back and I agree with Christopher swain, a supporter of the cleaning up the Gowanus Canal, that “We deserve a Gowanus Canal that sparkles like a jewel.”

  The Dangers Of CSO
CSO can initiate the corruption of drinking water. CSOs carry with it waterborne diseases such as hepatitis and gastroenteritis but you don’t just have to be drinking this water to get sick. Reported by EPA, these illnesses “may also be contracted through inhalation of  water vapors, eating contaminated fish and shellfish, and swimming.” And it doesn’t just impact us, it also terminates aquatic life their habitats which are no less important than our problems. The act of this can lead to algae blooms, and force closures of beaches and shellfish beds. Excess wastewater can also backup into buildings and apartments causing property damage  revealing chemical and other pollutants to the people. So if you have yet to experience CSO before your eyes, it soon enough will present itself until we can right our wrongs.

                                             
                                                     What Can We Do To Prevent CSO?

But there is hope for a clean water system. Even though the current action of most plans to clean up the Gowanus Canal will be completed in the early 2020s. But that doesn't take away from the fact that there are multiple solutions for CSO,  for instance EPA is working towards  making  ¨green infrastructure¨ which are absorbent settings to keep the stormwater from even entering the combined sewers. Like bioswales, rain gardens, and green roofs to minimize, store and treat the amounts of stormwater runoff. There also is the production of ¨gray infrastructure¨ which are pipes, sewers and offline storage facilities for runoff. And you too, can assist in decreasing the amount of wastewater by not using the shower, toilet, sink water or doing laundry during a rainstorm and with enough people's help we can change the fact that this water is going into our pipes.