EPA Finds Aging Sewer Systems Need Money

Date: January 31, 2002

Source: News Room

More than 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage pours into waterways each year from aging sewer systems designed to overflow when it rains, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced. Two-thirds of the 772 communities that rely on these systems don't comply with minimum federal standards, prompting "serious public health and water concerns," the EPA said in a report required by Congress under a 2000 law. Cities with newer systems are designed to treat all sewage. Most of the raw sewage discharged by the older systems spews into rivers and streams, but some also flows into ditches and canals, oceans and lakes. Those systems are among the earliest such facilities built in the United States, moving sewage and storm water through a single-pipe system to a public treatment plant. They are spread among 32 states, most of them in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. The cost of bringing all the older systems into compliance was estimated at $45 billion in 1996.

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