The high desert LA exurb of Lancaster has been having a wee problem recently with raw sewage flowing through the streets. Unknown individuals have been dumping skateboards, fence posts, doorknobs, eating utensils, construction waste and sundry other non-”biosolid” items into open manholes. This, intuitively enough, creates blockages and, in turn, spills.
“It takes a long time to clean it up,” says the Lancaster’s Utility Manager. Since there is raw sewage involved, cleaning up involves sanitizing all the contaminated areas.
As LAist reports:
Even something as simple as a plastic glove or rag can have a snowball effect when it blocks another piece of debris and so on. Eventually the flow of sewage gets plugged and it spills onto the streets, sometimes unreported for weeks and leaving a mile long trail in the gutters, causing unhealthy conditions, hefty fines from the state and unnecessary budget spent on resources and overtime for city crews.
Most sewage spills are small and tend to not to attract much, if any, public notice. But collectively they constitute a big problem. In many cases they are a sign that a community has outgrown the capacity of its sewer system. For example, officials in Kansas City recently estimated that 6.3 billion gallons of sewage spill into local rivers and creeks each year. To get control of the problem, the city needs to bring the system up to snuff. They have recently submitted a plan for doing so. The cost? $2.4 billion.
