Editors Note: Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. SOW will return to it's Friday posting on the 7th. - JK

A Kentucky man, David Bowling, was fined more than $260,000 and sentenced to a year in prison for dumping raw sewage into the Big Sandy River, in Kentucky. Bowling, who owned and operated Dave's Concrete Products and Septic Service was caught in December 2006 taking his septic truck labeled "water" and emptying thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the Big Sandy. It either takes complete idiocy or complete disregard for your community to pull a stunt like that.

Blatant disrespect for the law, our communities and the health and prosperity of our children, neighbors and families is just plain wrong. Here's your sign... Bowling!!

And now the Spills of the Week:

San Francisco has had a rough week, with nearly six million gallons of sewage seeping in the bay. But it's been a big week all over the country. San Diego has kept it real by dumping more than 100,000 gallons onto its beaches. Florida seems to want to keep up with similar numbers into the heavily used St. Johns River. And in the DC suburbs, a screw up in Prince George's County dumped nearly five and a half million gallons of raw sewage into a major Potomac River (and Chesapeake Bay) tributary (see below). With all of the rain in the Midwest, I'm not even going to speculate what a troubled week it has been. It's weeks like this that reinforce our "Right to Know" what's in our streams, rivers and lakes. Contact your local and federal legislators and tell them you want them to Act for a Healthy Rivers by passing the Sewage Overflow Community Right ot Know Act.

And now the Spills of the Week:

Brad Devries on the Lower Yough

The Youghiogeny River is renowned as one of the best white water rivers in the eastern United States. Thousands of boaters, anglers and families flock to western Pennsylvania's Youghiogeny River every year because of its outstanding recreational value. Sadly, you know when a river shows up on this blog it rarely means something good and as someone who loves to paddle the Yough I'm troubled to be writing about this. Last week, the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported that over the past year the wastewater treatment plant in Elizabeth Township has released more than 95 Million gallons of raw sewage into the river, sometimes six million gallons a day! And this is the first the public has learned about this issue.

© XPRESS/Abdel-Krim KalloucheThere's dirty secret that permeates the oil and wealth of Dubai. According to the Xpress News, A Dubai newspaper, sewage tankers are circumventing regulations and long lines at sewage treatment plants by simply dumping loads of raw sewage into the streets and storm drains of the city. So far 50 tankers have been caught red handed and fined. Officials fear that this may only be the tip of the sand dune. Tanker driver's can make up to 2,000 dirhams ($544) per load. Illegally dumping can yield ten times that amount because drivers can get more loads per shift. They can dump full loads of raw sewage into the street in less than six minutes, as opposed to waiting in long lines at the treatment plant which can take hours.

Dubai is a rapidly growing city with enormous capital resources. It is a shame that it doesn't have the foresight to better develop its wastewater infrastructure more quickly. Hopefully regulators will get a hold of this and end a gross and dangerous practice. As for the tanker drivers, as my mother would say, ‘shame on you.'

Now the Spills of the Week:

Here's a little Gem for the Slog from the Picayune Item in Picayune, MS. This story is just unbelievable.

Photo by Jeremy Pittari for the Picayune ItemPICAYUNE — A faulty waste water treatment plant in Westchester Subdivision is failing to properly treat waste water that is eventually fed into Hobolochitto Creek.

As the Slog has shown, there are sewage problems all over the country. Nevertheless, I was shocked when I was in Mississippi recently and had some time to explore the sewage situation there.

My first stop was to investigate a sewage treatment plant near Jackson, MS. In the stream below the sewage treatment plant, I found a large buildup of sludge and no signs of anything living in the stream.