A town that floods with raw sewage every time it rains
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
That general area has magnificent geographic advantage - the Mississippi River just barely downriver from the confluence of both the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. But it floods. It has always flooded, and it always will flood. The French founded St. Louis on the other side of the river, on a bluff, so it would be protected from flooding.
> Some date the beginning of the problem to the 1986 completion of Interstate 255, which looped traffic around the southern edge of the Metro East region, and was eventually (in 2002) declared by the Army Corps of Engineers to be impeding the flow of water from Centreville into the Harding Ditch, the drainage canal designed to collect surface water from the American Bottom and carry it to the Mississippi. The situation has only deteriorated in the meantime.
https://www.sfweekly.com/news/shit-storm-why-wont-sf-stop-fl...
This is a good article. The upshot - San Francisco broadened pipes in wealthier uphill areas to reduce local flooding, creating a large bottleneck in a few lower income low-lying areas, so on very heavy rain days, yep, raw sewage backs up into residential areas (lower income, and among the few places in SF that still have a high percentage of children). To make it worse, San Francisco passed laws against paving over front yards, but in typical SF fashion doesn't really enforce the law, so every year, more and more storm water is diverted into the combined sewage/storm draining system. I'm not kidding when I say someone will probably die from this - during one of these floods, someone's dog was electrocuted, and like I said, there are a lot of children living in unpermitted downstairs units with dodgy wiring.
This issue, while maybe not the single most pressing issue facing SF, is the one that goes farthest to convinces me that San Francisco's city government is inept. These are the people who are going to manage the infrastructure preparation for the more frequent and intense storms that accompany global warming?
I don't know the details, but it looks like the flooding described in that article was addressed by the (now completed?) Lower Alemany Area Stormwater Improvement Project and/or Upper Alemany Drainage Improvements Project, both of which were part of the citywide master plan.
[1] They're also repaving roads after replacement, but it seems coordination isn't as good as it could be, especially in highly trafficked areas. I assume this is why some really bad streets haven't been repaved--waiting for sewer replacement--and why there's a lot of bad patching--repaved too quickly.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.589682,-90.1282352,3a,75y,36...
Be sure to adjust the time. This location is ALWAYS flooded. Standing, putrid water. They tried building walls around the containment pond but it's no longer enough. The house just to the west constantly has standing water in their yard.
A part of their problem was highlighted in the article. These people are now living in worthless homes. They cannot sell them. Nobody's buying them.
One good thing is there's talks about merging Centreville with Alorton. [1] The premise being that a larger city can actually get adequate funding from the state to address these issues.
[1]: https://www.kmov.com/news/possible-merger-being-discussed-fo...
> A town hall is scheduled for next month to discuss the merger.
> Voters are expected to weigh-in on the March ballot.
If the Commonfields of Cahokia is contracted (changed from supposed) to be treating waster water and is visible failing, can a company come in to try to fix the problem and ignore Commonfields?
This is kind of a weirdly worded question, but what I want to know is if companies are actively being negligent can that be used against them to fight the problem?
I wouldn't turn to companies to solve it though, we should be ensuring our tax rates are sufficient to repair and replace our roads, bridges, sewers, etc.
Its a hard problem because I also don't know how a private company would be able to fund these projects.
Corruption was a big part of the problem. But the root goes deeper. This was always a fake town, a hollow shell built to serve the interest of a business that no longer exists.
I know this sounds cruel but the sewage is only a symptom of a larger problem. The Fed shouldn't step in to fix the sewers, they should step in to assist in relocating the residents somewhere else and let the ghost town sink into the fetrid swamp.
Due to Illinois finances, federal funding is likely required to accomplish this. Success is more likely than what would be necessary to keep these residents in place and fix the systemic issues that caused this to occur.
If you’re in Illinois, consider forwarding this to your senators, and the House reps for these people. They’ll need funding for the Illinois EPA to administer the buyouts.
[1] https://www.fema.gov/news-release/2014/05/28/communities-pla...
I agree that buying out the residents would be MUCH cheaper than fixing the problem.
Do you know of any other towns that this has happened to?
If someone wants to start a database of communities impacted, I would be happy to help. This is where public policy and tech can collide in impactful ways.
It would take a massive bond of magical unicorn money to fix, never mind the next phase of raising homes to avoid floods or rebuilding damaged ones. And even then, who would want a home always surrounded by dirty standing water? Perhaps it has gone past no return. What money could be found would be better spent helping to relocate the people to higher ground and condemning the land. The OK town I just left has several empty square blocks bought out by the city. For a whole town it would be disaster.
There is probably no single company or entity one could lay all the blame. It was a bad idea to build there but people did anyway from desperation, when conditions were better. Then (probably during drier and more prosperous years) they doubled down on the bad idea and modern sanitary sewers were built working and maintained, but were only marginally resilient to a stretch of flood or bad economy. Even a municipality maintaining a lift station is helpless if the equipment gets repeatedly flooded out.
No this is not a climate catastrophe. People have made the term cheap and useless.
1. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-w...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Anarchist_Road_Care
I mean, is this a poverty issue, a race issue, a taxation / government issue, or a climate change issue? Or many or all of the above?
But you're saying there are scientists claiming GW causes these naturally occurring phenomenon.
The problem with GW is the same problem with most decentralized political movements. Since no one defines the scope of the movement, any wingnut can co-op the movement with their own BS.
Kind of mis-leading...