A Million Here, a Million There, and Pretty Soon You're in Deep Shit

More than 12 million gallons of untreated wastewater released into Jones Falls amid rainfall

The announcement of the intentional release, one of the largest in years, marks one of a handful of times in recent history city officials have notified the public when heavy rain forced them to discharge wastewater from two pipes that flow directly into the Jones Falls, said David Flores, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, who works for the watchdog group Blue Water Baltimore.

A December report by a Washington-based advocacy group, the Environmental Integrity Project, faulted the city for dumping 330 million gallons of wastewater into the harbor over five years and failing to disclose the contamination.

Friday's announcement came a day after city public works officials said 200,000 gallons of wastewater made their way into the Patapsco River and Inner Harbor after overflowing from manholes and from the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Facility. Those releases were not intentional.

Jeffrey Raymond, a spokesman for the city Department of Public Works, said officials decided to announce the contamination after receiving several inquiries about it since Wednesday.

Their records should be online and immediately available. The dirty little secret is that Maryland and EPA are slow rolling cleaning up Baltimore and other big cities because that is where the votes are, and the voters in Baltimore would rather have 12,000 farmers pay to clean up the Bay than the 800,000 people in Baltimore County.