Sewergate-Combined Sanitary & Stormwater Sewers

In July of 2018 it was discovered that over the course of the previous four years 24 billion litres, or over 5 billion gallons, enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw sewage was allowed to flow into one of the major creeks in the City of Hamilton, Canada. A gate meant to contain the sewage was left open. Over a year later, there is still no explanation for the oversight. In fact, it wasn't until November of 2019 that the public was even made aware of the accident. In over 800 cities in North America, a combined system of stormwater run-off and untreated sewage run beneath city streets. These releases are becoming more problematic, contributing to the serious surface-water problems that crop up frequently in the news. Harmful algal blooms are all fed by phosphorus, nitrogen, and other contaminants found in the untreated sewage that, according to EPA estimates, flows out of America's treatment plants during the 23,000 to 75,000 sanitary-sewer overflows that happen every year.

You can listen to Sewergate-Combined Sanitary & Stormwater Sewers online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Sewergate-Combined Sanitary & Stormwater Sewers is an episode from EarthMatters by Lawson Hunter.

This episode is 28:59 long.

This episode was published on Dec 9, 2019.

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