Why I Want to Know about sewage

Posted on December 27, 2006 | Filed Under Healthy Waters

baerKatherine Baer, Healthy Waters Director
Act for Healthy Rivers

Do you remember the e coli outbreak on the bagged spinach back in September - upon getting reports of the tainted veggies, the FDA immediately and rightly issued a warning not to eat the spinach because it was dicey for our health. Similarly, I know that it’s unsafe for me to go running outside during the summer when the air pollution alert is orange or red.

Why is it then that if I live in most places, I don’t know when there’s raw sewage in my local creek? Raw sewage causes all kinds of sicknesses and infections (note - no link here yet, but will link to our own webpage once its up) and yet there’s not a consistent nationwide requirement that sewage treatment plants tell you when they spill into your stream or river.

As usual, some states are already ahead of the feds on this one and have some really good laws on the books. But in other states people swim in sewage without knowing it showing why we really need strong federal law that will require some consistent, sewage spill notification basics for the entire country. Because we all have a fundamental right to know what’s in our environment so we can make the best choices for our health, we’re working for new legislation that would require a publicly owned treatment works to:

Similar legislation has been introduced in the past, but now is the time to make this happen. While we will still need better enforcement, more money for better treatment technology and other solutions to reduce sewage, sewage right to know is a critical part of this process.

Remember, Popeye doesn’t have to eat sick spinach, so why should we have to swim in raw sewage?

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All I Want for Christmas is Right-to-Know

Posted on December 20, 2006 | Filed Under Healthy Waters

Rob PerksRob Perks,Senior Director of Outreach & Communications
Act for Healthy Rivers

Every year for the past two decades, companies have reported their releases of toxic chemicals to the public. This isn’t a voluntary step, taken out of the goodness of industry’s heart - it’s a federal law.

Congress created the Toxics Release Inventory program in the wake of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, where an accidental release of toxins killed and injured thousands of people living near the plant. TRI is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups as well as federal facilities.

Thanks to TRI, U.S. toxic releases have dropped sharply since companies were compelled to file the reports. This speaks to the power of citizen’s “right to know.”

With aging, overburdened sewer systems overflowing more than 860 billion gallons of raw sewage into America’s rivers every year (enough to cover Pennsylvania ankle-deep!), it only makes common sense that there should be a similar reporting requirement for sewage treatment plants that foul our waters.

Don’t we all have a right to know when these surges of sewage flow into our rivers? That way we can protect ourselves, our families and our pets, and take action to fix the problem.

Getting Congress to enact Community Right-to-Know legislation for sewage pollution (especially for sanitary sewer overflows where there are currently no public notification requirements!) will give people the knowledge to protect themselves, and help spur local, state and federal governments to do something about it.

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Rivers of No Return

Posted on December 16, 2006 | Filed Under Healthy Waters

Rob PerksRob Perks, Senior Director of Outreach & Communications
Act for Healthy Rivers

Who doesn’t love dolphins? The Chinese have long revered the legendary “baiji” dolphin, a six feet long, tiny-eyed, long-nosed “gray phantom” that for eons has made its home in the waters of the Yangtze River. But not for much longer. With only 50 left along the river’s 1,500-mile reach, scientists have declared the dolphin “functionally extinct.” The primary culprit? Sewage fouling the creature’s habitat.

The habit for humans is not much better in Israel’s sacred River of Jordan. “Wading into the Jordan River, the pastor blessed his flock, tapping the believers on the head before sending them into the hallowed waters to be baptized. The faithful wet their faces and arms, shouting ‘amen’ and ‘hallelujah’ after each baptism, unaware that just downstream, raw sewage was flowing into the water.”

Here at home we also need to be concerned about the human health risks in our rivers. Untreated and partially treated sewage contaminates water with nasty micro-organisms (like E. coli), and other germs (like dysentery, cholera and hepatitis). Health experts estimate that there are 7.1 million mild-to-moderate cases and 560,000 moderate-to-severe cases of waterborne disease in the U.S. annually.

Sadly - and all too often - children, the elderly, cancer patients and other people with weakened immune systems are more likely to get sick from coming into contact with sewage-contaminated water.

So sewage dumping pollutes our rivers, contaminates downstream drinking water supplies, causes disease outbreaks, and raises treatment costs. I doubt those Chinese dolphins would have fared much better in America.

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