Policy News - November 17, 2004

Americans are swimming in sewage

If you happen to visit Washington, D.C., on a rainy day and take a bathroom break during your tour of the Smithsonian or Lincoln Memorial, there’s a good chance that whatever you flush down the toilet will flow directly into the nearby Anacostia River. With a system designed at the turn of the 20th century, the District of Columbia’s sewers regularly overflow into nearby waters if as little as half an inch of rain hits the pavement. But the District is not the only metropolis battling poorly working sewers.

Anacostia Watershed Society These sewage outfalls near O Street in Washington D.C. overflow into the Anacostia River around fifty-two times a year. Because of these overflows and because of sewer leaks further upstream in Maryland, the Anacostia is one of the most polluted rivers in America.

A U.S. EPA report sent to Congress in August finds that more than 772 combined sewer systems annually discharge around 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater into nearby waterways; this is approximately twice as much drinking water as New York City uses every year. The agency estimates that these sewage overflows degrade water quality, shut down numerous beaches, and lead to about 3500–5500 gastrointestinal illnesses every year.

Combined sewer systems, like the ones in D.C., were built primarily in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions and contain pipes that carry both sewage and storm water. During heavy rain, the pipes overflow into rivers and onto beaches. Newark, N.J.’s sewers, which date back to 1852, are so old that they now grace the rolls of the National Register of Historic Places.

But the data on sanitary sewers, which serve only a single purpose, are equally dismal. An EPA report in 2001 found about 40,000 sewage overflows into waterways and 400,000 backups into basements. Each overflow is a violation of the Clean Water Act. EPA estimates it will take $139.4 billion to fix all the nation’s leaky sewers.

In 2001, a report from Johns Hopkins researchers linked sewage overflows with diseases such as giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, and hepatitis A. The study found that 68% of waterborne disease outbreaks over a 47-year period were preceded by high precipitation events (Am. J. Public Health 2001, 91, 1194–1199). But an honest account of how sewage overflows affect humans is difficult to come by, in part because sewage authorities are not required to report overflows to EPA or any other government agency.

“There really isn’t good research out there in what overflows might mean to drinking water,” warns Alan Roberson, director of regulatory affairs for the American Water Works Association. In the waning days of the Clinton Administration, regulations were proposed to require sewage operators to report overflows to EPA and local health authorities, but the Bush White House placed the proposal on hold.

“We’ll be considering whether to focus on a requirement for reporting,” says John Hanlon, director of EPA’s Office for Wastewater Management. The problem in the United States, he says, can be summed up in two words: “miserable infrastructure”.

On the last point, environmentalists agree. “We have underinvested in infrastructure for years,” says Nancy Stoner, director of the Clean Water Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s a sewer underground, and people just assume it’s okay.”

Recently, EPA has begun forcing cities to invest more money in their sewers. EPA settlements in Baltimore, Md., Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Ga., each came with price tags of more than $1 billion for repairs. The largest case was against Los Angeles, Calif., which has the world’s largest sewer system.

For decades, Los Angeles had been spewing raw sewage into coastal waters. Now, after a lawsuit, the city has agreed to spend $2 billion during the next two decades to fund projects, including fixing the entire sewage system and revitalizing the Los Angeles River. If the city doesn’t meet the schedule for repairs, there will be penalties, says Tracy J. Egoscue, the executive director of Santa Monica Baykeeper, an environmental group. “I think the city finally means it, and they are going to start making changes,” she says. The lawsuit was the culmination of an 11-year effort by her group to force the city to upgrade sewer lines. The problem had become so bad that Los Angeles was forced to form an odor advisory task force because some neighborhoods smelled of raw sewage after backups.

However, Egoscue says that the problem remains in surrounding cities. The same week the agreement was publicly announced, sewers in the nearby oceanside city of Huntington Beach overflowed and shut down beaches during tourist-heavy Labor Day weekend.

Other cities are finding the road to repair to be tortuous. In 2002, Washington, D.C., proposed a $1.265 billion plan to fix its sewers. However, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the district, and the case is now tied up in court. “There’s some contention over the schedule of the plan,” says John Hemphill, a spokesperson for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA). “WASA wanted a 40-year plan with a rate hike.” The federal government wanted a faster fix.

Hemphill says that WASA does plan to invest $150 million in D.C. sewers over the next four years, which will cut the volume of overflow into nearby rivers by 40%. Every year, over a billion gallons of wastewater flows into the Potomac River and Rock Creek. But twice that amount runs out of D.C. sewers into the Anacostia River, one of the 10 most polluted rivers in the country.

Roberson says that the money for improvements will be borne by customers paying higher rates in their sewer bills. Rural areas can qualify for federal grants and low-interest loans; however, he adds that most of the problems are in metropolitan areas, which will require federal funding. “I don’t see that happening in this budget and political environment,” Roberson says. —PAUL D. THACKER