The sewage pipes in a particular place were let out into a nearby lake. What is your opinion about it?
Answers
Answer:
And what can you get when rain, pesticides, fertilizers, automotive chemicals, and trash run off the streets and down the gutters into those very same sewers? Sewage backing up into people’s basements. Sewage spilling onto streets and parks. Sewage pouring into rivers and streams.
Each year, more than 860 billion gallons of this vile brew escapes sewer systems across the country. That’s enough to flood all of Pennsylvania ankle-deep. It’s enough for every American to take one bath each week for an entire year.
After bursting out of a pipe or manhole cover, this foul slurry pollutes the nearest body of water. Downstream, some of it may be pumped out, treated, and piped into more homes and businesses. From there, it goes back into a sewer system, and the cycle resumes.
A threat to human health
Untreated human sewage teems with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and many other infectious diseases.
One hundred years ago, epidemics of these diseases helped limit the life expectancy of a U.S. citizen to about 50 years. Estimates vary for how many people sewage still sickens or kills each year, but they are all large.
Germs linger even after the stench of sewage has dispersed. Healthy adults may never realize that yesterday’s swim caused today’s cough, diarrhea, or ear infection. Young children, their grandparents, and people already weakened by illness are more likely to become seriously ill or die. Scientists believe as many as 3.5 million Americans get sick each year after swimming, boating, fishing, or otherwise touching water they thought was safe.
A 1998 study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology blamed water pollution for one-third of all reported gastroenteritis cases and two-thirds of all ear infections. It’s not just the people who play in and around the water who are at risk. Between 1985 and 2000, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) documented 251 separate disease outbreaks and nearly half a million cases of waterborne illness from polluted drinking water in the United States. Another study by the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences concluded that most illnesses caused by eating tainted seafood have human sewage as the root cause.
Outdated treatment plants
To understand why this is happening, it’s helpful to know some history. For centuries most American sewage poured into the nearest river or creek with little or no treatment, and few people gave it a second thought.
That changed when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the federal government began making significant investments to modernize sewage treatment infrastructure serving communities across the country.
Today, many of the plants built with that initial investment are undersized or are near the end of their effective lives.
There are 600,000 miles of sewer pipes across the country and the average age is 33 years. Some pipes in cities along the eastern seaboard are nearly 200 years old. Some are even made of wood. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s wastewater infrastructure a “D” grade overall.
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Explanation:
And what can you get when rain, pesticides, fertilizers, automotive chemicals, and trash run off the streets and down the gutters into those very same sewers? Sewage backing up into people’s basements. Sewage spilling onto streets and parks. Sewage pouring into rivers and streams.
Each year, more than 860 billion gallons of this vile brew escapes sewer systems across the country. That’s enough to flood all of Pennsylvania ankle-deep. It’s enough for every American to take one bath each week for an entire year.
After bursting out of a pipe or manhole cover, this foul slurry pollutes the nearest body of water. Downstream, some of it may be pumped out, treated, and piped into more homes and businesses. From there, it goes back into a sewer system, and the cycle resumes.