Although there are alert systems for a variety of public health threats, ranging from bad air pollution days to tainted food outbreaks, there currently are no federal requirements for wastewater treatment plants to promptly warn the public when there is a sewage spill or overflow. This is an outrage, especially since this pollution threatens the lives and health of millions of Americans. Public notification and reporting is needed so people will have the information they need to protect their families -
and the rivers they love.

Better notification, monitoring and reporting would save millions of Americans from getting sick every year. The federal legislation we seek would help reduce the annual number of human illnesses and deaths from contact with raw sewage by informing Americans of sewer overflows discharging waste into their local waterways. The bill would:

Provide notification of sewer overflows by requiring sewage treatment works to:

• Monitor their treatment works for sewage overflows by using a management program or technology that will alert them of sewer overflows in a timely manner;
• Notify the public, public health officials and other affected downstream entities including drinking water suppliers of any sewer overflows that endanger human health.
• Report to state officials or the Environmental Protection Agency on all sewer overflows as soon as practicable within 24 hours of becoming aware of the overflow and follow-up with a written report explaining the duration and volume of the overflow and steps taken to mitigate the overflow prevent recurrence.
• Authorizes millions of dollars in much-needed federal funding each year to implement the above requirements.

Join the fight for your right to know if and when your river is contaminated by sewage...and fight for the funds needed to end the dumping of raw sewage in our nation's waterways!