Milwaukee Sewage Dump: A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words


A sailboat makes its way along Lake Michigan on Friday in this aerial photo from Chopper Four with power zoom. The discolored water extended past the breakwater; the contents are unknown.
Mary Rohde & Steve Schultze write about the Milwaukee Metro Sewage District’s massive sewage dumping this past week:

The sewerage district dumped an unprecedented 4.6 billion gallons of raw sewage this month – exceeding any annual dumping tally since the deep tunnel system opened in late 1993.
To visualize how much sewage was dumped by the district, consider these calculations: The 4.6 billion gallons would fill Miller Park 15 times over, from its base to its retractable roof. The sewage spill would also fill the U.S. Bank office tower on the lakefront 41 times.
“That’s more than any sewage treatment system in the country could handle,” said Kevin Shafer, the district’s executive director. The dumping “is something we have to do if we want to minimize and prevent basement backups,” he said.

Background: Google | Teoma | Yahoo | Alltheweb
The Lake Michigan Federation has a useful web site on the impact of raw sewage dumping.