Culture
One Climate Change Era Growth Industry: Giant Sewer Balloons
In a race to meet EPA guidelines, U.S. cities have installed dozens of these devices over the past decade.
Every so often, walking by the water in an American city, you see the sign: Wet weather discharge point. No swimming.
That's a nice way of saying: This is where your toilet flushes when it rains. Our sewer systems, poorly prepared to deal with the effects of even moderate rainstorms, dump billions of gallons of raw sewage into lakes, rivers and oceans each year. Superstorm Sandy alone caused more than 10.9 billion gallons of sewage to flow untreated into the East Coast ecosystem.