Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/author/k-lydersen/)
A program for fixing sewers is at risk because of the federal budget crisis. It comes as climate change is expected to bring more heavy rains that cause sewers to overflow. Advocates say the program helps struggling cities, the environment, the economy.
Milwaukee built some of the region’s first sewers more than 130 years ago to carry untreated wastewater into rivers and the lake. Today the city is a national leader in reducing stormwater runoff.
The U.S. EPA has ruled that Kennecott cannot construct a road it had proposed through wetlands and forest from the mine site to a reopened ore mill. Now Upper Peninsula residents worry about the potential impact on exisiting local roads.
Once prized for its medicinal value, the water produced at Waukesha, Wisc., is at the center of a fight with precedent-setting ramifications for using Great Lakes water.
This time the battle is over replacing instead of capturing the city’s water.
When more than two inches of rain falls in the Chicago area, the deluge flowing into storm sewers mixes with the wastewater from homes and businesses. Often there is more water than the metropolitan area’s treatment plants can handle, so the excess is discharged untreated into the Chicago River and its connected waterways. Such Combined Sewer Overflows — CSOs – are common in Chicago and many other U.S. cities where storm water and municipal wastewater are funneled into the same aging combined sewer pipes. Milwaukee and other cities discharge CSOs into Lake Michigan. The discharges include high levels of bacteria, parasites, viruses, toxic metals including copper and cadmium, nutrient pollutants including phosphorus, and suspended solids.