Posted on 12/28/2011 2:16:58 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington is starting to dig deep in a $2.6 billion underground solution aimed at helping clean up the polluted Potomac River and the ailing Chesapeake Bay, the biggest U.S. estuary.
In the U.S. capital's biggest public works project in more than 40 years, work started this fall to cut about 16 miles of tunnels to keep overflow sewage and stormwater from running into the Potomac.
The project, designed to be finished in 2025, is seen by environmentalists as part of resolving the next great water pollution challenge facing the United States -- keeping fouled runoff out of lakes, streams and rivers.
The vast dig "is a dramatic piece of the puzzle to improve the water quality in the Potomac," said Carlton Ray, head of the District of Columbia's Clean Water Project.
For the 15 million tourists who visit Washington each year, the broad Potomac serves as a dramatic backdrop to the city's gleaming monuments and public buildings, like the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.
But the smoothly flowing waters of what admirers call "the nation's river" hide deep problems.
The Potomac carries so much sex-changing pollutants that male bass have been found carrying eggs. Swimming is banned after heavy rains because of polluted runoff.
Locals are warned about eating the Potomac's fish because of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls, a likely carcinogen in humans.
The river and its almost 15,000-square-mile basin is the top source of sediments dumped into the Chesapeake Bay, a leading U.S. crab fishery and itself struggling to revive from decades of overfishing and pollution.
REPORT CARD: D
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
When it comes to building underground tunnels in DC the eye brows rise. Saving the Nation’s river? Really?
The people in my town had to borrow $hundreds of millions to comply with EPA demands on these matters. But we all get to pay for D.C. sins.
Sounds a bit like that giant underground stormwater reservoir system they built in Japan.
http://www.archdaily.com/3591/giant-storm-sewer-system-sitama-japan/
This is proof that Washington is full of you-know-what.
Maybe it would be easier and cheaper to move Washington D.C. someplace else.
So what is it, exactly, that goes downstream in the storm sewers?
Gotta' be poop ~ tons of it in fact.
"They" once let the dogs up near American University pollute the main drinking water reservoir in DC ~
Oh, I forgot the squarshed squirrels. Lots of them.
Last I read, only 17% of the estuary is still viable for clam beds.
It’s dead Jim.
On that note, this is one of the proper uses of public monies for the public good, “shovel ready” projects that fix old and decrepit sewer systems that are in really really bad condition.
There are a few sewage systems using the original pipes from the 1870’s population expansion on the Chesapeake still in use, meanwhile the population has gone up 500% to 1400%.
No matter how you cut it though, the Bay watershed is beyond carrying capacity, no amount of remediation is going to fix the Ganges on the Beltway.
Washington is starting to dig deep in a $2.6 billion underground solution aimed at helping clean up the polluted Potomac River and the ailing Chesapeake Bay, the biggest U.S. estuary.
In the U.S. capital's biggest public works project in more than 40 years, work started this fall to cut about 16 miles of tunnels to keep overflow sewage and stormwater from running into the Potomac.
The project, designed to be finished in 2025,
~~~~~~~~~
Uh oh. What could go wrong?
Price of Boston's Big Dig Up to $22 billion (vs. $2.4 billion original quote per Dukakis)
"Surprise! The $ 2.4 B Big Dig in Boston is now up to $ 22 B plus! And the federal reimbursement is down from 85% to 27%, leaving MA taxpayers with an unpayable bill due by 2038."
Washington D.C., like many other old cities has what is called “combined sewers”,
where many of the storm drains and sewer drains all go to the wastewater treatment plant prior to discharge.
When there is too much rainfall, the system becomes overloaded and untreated wastewater is discharged.
This project will collect the combined stormwater/wastewater overflow in an underground tunnel where it will be pumped out after the rain stops and excess treatment capacity is available.
Many cities have ripped up streets and separated the storm sewers from the rain sewers;
other cities have built ponds and lagoons to collect the overflow.
I suppose neither of those options were cost effective for D.C.
Or, more likely, some senator has a brother-in-law that owns a tunnel drilling machine.
The Mississippi/Missouri is the nation’s river. The Potomac is its sewer considering the sh!t hole it runs through.
Isn’t Washington’s typical arrogance to charcaterize the Potomac as the nation’s river. Ther are certainly larger and more economically and historically important rivers. Mississippi, Missouri, Colorado, Ohio to name a few.
“The Potomac carries so much sex-changing pollutants that male bass have been found carrying eggs. Swimming is banned after heavy rains because of polluted runoff. “
that explains the spineless metrosexual political elite in dc. maybe they should swim some place else.
Chicago has these tunnels and crap still goes into Lake Michigan. We in Milwaukee, WI have these deep tunnels too and millions of gallons of crap still go into Lake Michigan after a rain shower over 3/4 inch.
Our Milwaukee tunnels came after a federal judge ordered our Milwaukee sewage system to do tunnels to lessen sewage going into the Lake after rains. After two plus billion dollars of tunnel work we still pollute. The real problem is a large part of the city and suburbs still have sanitary and storm sewers linked. Had the construction money been spent putting in separate storm and sewer pipes and expanding the treatment plant, we would pollute the lake much less.
If D.C. has the old style of sewers and storm water run off going in the same pipes, the tunnels will be swamped just as the ones in Milwaukee are. When the tunnels are full, the default is to send untreated sewage into lakes and rivers.
The Potomac is one of the major rivers in terms of average flow. You can do the research, but last time I looked the Potomac was larger than anything West of the Mississippi
They'd be the last folks I'd check with about how to build a sewer line.
I guess you've never heard of the Columbia or Fraser rivers then? You could fit the flow of 20+ Potomacs into either one, and still not fill their regular channel.
Potomac: ~6 mcfs
Columbia: ~125 mcfs
Fraser: ~26 mcfs in March, 209 mcfs in June
Nevermind, my original data seems to be flawed. I found several other sites that corrected my error.
It does indeed appear that the Potomac is a MUCH larger river than my original post claimed.
Oops.
Federal judges are ill equipped to figure out anything but laws and cases. When they get into social or business management they are over their heads. Besides our tunnels that still overflow sewage into the lakes, we had a federal judge “solve” our racially imbalanced public schools here in Milwaukee back in the 1970s.
The judge said buy lots of school buses and bus the kids around until the school count of races matches the area demographics. Well, a lot of parents afraid their local school’s quality would decline opted for sending their kids to private or religious schools. Not just white parents as we have several Catholic elementary and H.S. that became very Black, yet kept standards up and still get lots of Black kids. They have a lottery on new admissions.
Meanwhile the Milwaukee public schools which had been good places to learn turned into bad schools with bad kids and the race balance never happened. The buses burned millions of gallons of diesel and kids spent up to an hour each way bouncing up and down on bus seats. About five years ago the judges let parents chose which public schools to send kids to and the bus ridership is way down. The public schools still suck and are still almost all Black. Not a success.
And your last hurricane was................?
The Potomac did 12,000 m³/s back in 1936.
The Columbia does 7500 m3/s, barely half!
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