I was getting into my boat at the put-in the other day and I caught the deep, sharp and unmistakable smell of sewage. This is not typcally the case for the section of river I run, however lately it's become all too common a scene, especially in the spring. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we've been getting some much needed precipitation and I'm not complaining about the rain one bit. Afterall, it's spring rain that help the season come into its own and helps recharge our groundwater sources. But with the good comes the bad. Spring rains wash the wintry litter of salt, sand, cinder and auto residues from our roads and other paved surfaces into sewer systems that empty into our rivers and streams, and stormwater is rarely treated. 

A construction accident at the Salisbury, MD wastewater treatment Plant on Feb. 7 resulted in a reported 5,000 gallons of partially treated sewage being discharged into the Wicomico River through an on-site storm drain that feeds directly into the river.

On March 26 another construction accident while installing plant upgrades dumped an estimated 28,000 gallons or more of sewage into the river through the same storm drain.

Scary Stuff

UPDATE: This video is from Calgary, Alberta in July of 1999. I guess it's not news but nevertheless shows the power and danger of summer storms. Green urban planning (rain gardens, green roofs, rain barrels, etc.) can significantly reduce the flow of stormwater into sewer systems.

With my girlfriend busy earning her MBA at the University of Michigan, I find myself making several trips a year to the greater Detroit metropolitan area. She and I have taken in many of the local attractions (there's more to Michigan than UM football) and last weekend we visited the world's largest green roof.

Photo by Steve SandbergUnfortunately, the storm incidents are starting to add up.

Earlier this week, a powerful category F2 tornado and localized storms hit parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. It looks like Mother Nature is sending us a message: storm incidents are on the rise, probably due to global warming. And with that comes flooding, often extreme. And, once again, runoff from our streets contributed heavily to that flooding. Even Mayor Bloomberg, in yesterday's press conference about the storm, couldn't avoid speaking about the runoff problems.

Did you know that nearly every city in the U.S. is built on top of an aging and inadequate wastewater infrastructure system? When these systems fail, and all too often they do, untreated sewage and polluted stormwater gets dumped into our favorite waterways.

Chicago Rain GardenFortunately, many cities are now looking beyond what is referred to as "gray infrastructure" to find green solutions to this problem. Green infrastructure offers environmentally friendly ways to control combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and stormwater discharges.

Here's something that takes the idea of "recycle and reuse" to whole a new level. Ecobrique, a revolutionary building material developed by the French company vBc 3000, is a brick that's 2 parts clay one part sewage.

Global warming is a real party pooper. As if melting ice caps, rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, killer hurricanes, and massive flooding weren't horrible enough, now we have something else to worry about: the threat of more frequent and more severe raw sewage spills.

SI: March 12, 2007On weekends I try to sneak in a few quiet moments to grab a snack, kick back in my La-Z-Boy, and catch up on the world by flipping through a few weekly magazines. Imagine my shock to stumble upon the feature story in last week's Sports Illustrated on...wait for it...global warming!

The Santa Cruz River, which flows northward toward Tucson, Arizona, is like so many streams in the arid Southwest: lacking in water.

People who care about the Santa Cruz celebrate even the lowest of flows, but therein lies the problem. While the wide, silt-choked channels can quickly be covered in a torrent of storm-fed runoff following a summer thunderstorm, usually the shallow river maintains a gentle yet steady current. And always the odor persists.