Baltimore is Just a Shitty Place

A new project measures sewage and dog waste
 entering the Jones Falls from stormwater

Study finds massive unreported sewage overflows in Baltimore

Over the last five years Baltimore intentionally discharged 335 million gallons of sewage mixed with stormwater into the Jones Falls – and ultimately the Inner Harbor and Chesapeake Bay – but failed to report nearly all of the releases to the public or the Maryland Department of the Environment, as required by state law.

To put that in perspective, that's whole lot of shit.

This unsavory spew, shooting out quietly during rainstorms, comes almost entirely out of two “Sanitary Sewer Outfalls” that were ordered closed by 2010 as part of the federal consent decree, but are still open, according to the Environmental Integrity Project. One of them, SSO #67, near the Baltimore Streetcar Museum at 1901 Falls Road, had a foul fecal odor when a reporter stopped by on Sunday. The other outfall, SSO #72, is located at 428 East Preston Street.

Information on the huge unreported overflows – 15 times more than what was reported to the public – was obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request by the Environmental Integrity Project as part of its troubling new report about the city’s sewer system.

This calls into question the results of the modeling of the Bays nutrient budget, and the relative impact of urban versus suburban and urban inputs. If the Big Urb (I just invented that, to go along with Big Ag)  can get away with just lying about their contribution how much do you think the models are worth.

The report shines a spotlight on Baltimore’s old and famously failing sewers, with the deadline for the city to comply with a 2002 federal consent decree just weeks away and less than half the work completed, according to the D.C.-based group’s calculations.

This stuff pisses me off. Why can't Baltimore take responsibility for taking care of their own shit? Certainly, if a farm on the eastern shore was responsible for this kind of input there would be immediate consequences.