Government and the Environment
Somthing that all-too-seldom gets attention -- when it comes to water pollution, most of the worst private offenders were brought in line decades ago (at least for point sources, like a particular factory; agriculture and runoff are still issues in some areas). Many or even most of the worst water pollution offenders in the US are actually municipal authorities, who dump raw sewage into open waters. I remember that when I lived in Boston, there was this digusting spot in the bay where the sewer pipe ended. They sort of fixed the problem .. by making the pipe longer to dump further out into the bay.
Even in the Bay Area in these environmentally sensitized times, some egregious environmental practices remain in place, with little public scrutiny.
It's bad enough that there are cancer-causing chemicals in the bay. And Marin recently had a 500,000-gallon sewage leak into the body of water. But did you know that when it rains, the area's sewage treatment plants are designed to overflow into the bay?
The leaky pipes in drainage systems take in more than the system can handle. In last week's storms, Richmond loosed 890,000 gallons of untreated water into the Bay, about 10 percent of which"”or 8,900 gallons"”was pure, unadulterated sewage.
You mean government exempts itself from its own rules? No way!
