Few people in Florida think about where their sewage ends up and we assume that the government is protecting us and the environment, but this is not always the case. It is not uncommon for people to be swimming right next to a sewage outfall pipe and not even realize it.

Last week, the Florida Clean Water Network released a report on the current condition of thousands of domestic wastewater treatment facilities along the Gulf Coast of Florida reveals that decades of poor planning and lax enforcement of the Clean Water Act has created an infrastructure meltdown. Our research found that many of Florida's domestic wastewater facilities are either over-capacity at times or simply not performing at levels for which they are designed.

I had a close friend here in Milwaukee who got really sick this summer from swimming in the lake while sailing after a dry weather overflow. She had no idea an overflow event had even occurred. This is pretty commonplace, and unfortunately, it's really difficult to correlate sewage overflows with illnesses contracted by recreational use, because so few people seek medical attention or make the connection that the water made them sick. There's a huge need to study that connection, but the records pretty much don't exist.

That's why the study we [Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers and the Emergency Department, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin] focused on the drinking water connection, which freaked everyone out. It is highly likely that many of the kids in our study could have gotten sick from recreational use as well. We weren't able to isolate their exposure, but the hospital is now using questionnaires so we can try to get at that question in the future.

Pediatrics, a peer reviewed medical journal, recently published an article on our study of increased visits to a pediatric emergency room for gastrointestinal illnesses after releases of partially treated, or "blended" sewage, here in Milwaukee.

Here's the abstract of the report as it appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

As we look forward to celebrating the Clean Water Act's 35th birthday this week we've discovered that a lot of work remians to be done to meet the goals of this landmark piece of legislation.

In a report we just released, Troubled Waters: An Analysis of 2005 Clean Water Act Compliance (available for download below), our research found that more than 57% of Clean Water Act permitees are out of compliance with their issued permits.

Indiana Dunes LakeshoreMost people probably don't think of Indiana as a major beach destination. However, Lake Michigan forms miles of lakeshore along northern Indiana where time and nature have created beautiful sand dunes. Save the Dunes is a leader in the community to protect the Lake Michigan basin and conserve Indiana's lakeshore. Research conducted by Save the Dunes Conservation Fund, during the development of the Dunes Creek Watershed Management Plan, found that leaking wastewater from aging and failing septic systems is a major source of E. coli and poses a serious threat to water quality in Dunes Creek in northwestern Indiana's Lake Michigan basin.