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Sierra Club ..'s Twitter Updates

Daily Roundup: November 19, 2009: Watch This: The California Energy Commission approved the nation’s first energy... http://bit.ly/3kfVVb 9 days ago
@livenature You can sponsor a wild place without the stuffed animal too, if you like: http://bit.ly/sponsorwild 9 days ago
Buying Greener Gold: A new gold ring may dazzle, but its environmental history isn't very shiny. Many eco-minded peo... http://bit.ly/Eu5by 9 days ago
Looking for the perfect gift for the wildlife lover in your life? Sponsor a wild place for them: http://bit.ly/wildplace Stuffed animal too! 9 days ago
Daily Roundup: November 18, 2009: Remember the Women: The U.N. Population Fund concluded that poor women in poor co... http://bit.ly/199olz 10 days ago
 

Wastewater Spills, San Francisco Bay, and Beyond

Posted Jun 02 2009 4:32pm

Eight to 12 hours. That's how long it takes water flushed down the toilet in San Francisco to end up in the bay. 

Most of the time, the water undergoes several stages of purification before it gets there, but sometimes, especially during rainy parts of the year, the Bay Area's wastewater treatment plants get overloaded and raw sewage is discharged into the bay. The segment above from KQED'sQUEST looks at how the Bay Area's crumbling sewer infrastructure and poor regulation is causing this problem.

Think you are in the clear because you don't live in San Francisco?  The problem is huge: The EPA estimates that there are 40,000 "Sanitary Sewer Overflows" every year. To take it out of Orwell-speak, that means raw sewage gets dumped into supposedly clean water sources more than 100 times a day.

--Mario Aguilar

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