Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

At the Baltimore Brew, Scott administration seeks to push back the sewer consent decree deadline from 2030 to 2046, at which point Scott will no longer be in office. "Back in 2002, Baltimore entered into a consent decree with the EPA to end raw sewage overflows into local streams and the harbor. Delayed once, the city now wants another 16-year extension."

The Brandon Scott administration says Baltimore will need another 16 years to eliminate sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) that for years have periodically polluted local waterways and introduced E. coli and other contaminants into the harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. The information comes by way of a cryptic press release issued late last week by the Department of Public Works before the Labor Day weekend. The press release says that “detailed modeling” has concluded that elimination of SSOs in the sewage collection system won’t be completed until 2046. “This means the city will not meet the original 2030 deadline set for finishing the consent decree work,” the release says.

Baltimore has been under court order since 2002 to upgrade a poorly maintained sewer system that continues to release untreated wastewater through leaks and during storm surges in violation of the 1972 Clean Water Act. The 2002 decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and U.S. Department of Justice called for the end of untreated sewage releases from “structured outfalls,” or engineered pipes where wastewater can escape, by January 1, 2016.

When the city failed to meet that deadline, EPA and MDE entered into a modified consent decree that extended the improvement program to December 2030. 

Spending over $930 million in sewer and treatment plant upgrades in recent years, Baltimore still maintains a dozen structured outfalls and additionally has 104 manholes known to release untreated sewage.

The manholes are found along Western Run Drive and Bonnie View Drive in northwest Baltimore; Chinquapin Park and Herring Run in northeast Baltimore; on Wilkens Avenue, Brunswick Street and Braddish Avenue in West Baltimore; along Sharp-Leadenhall and Warner streets in South Baltimore; and along Eager Street and Ashland Avenue in East Baltimore. The most active “spewing” manhole, attached to the sewer main that parallels Herring Run, discharged 3.84 million gallons of wastewater north of the Belair Road Bridge in July alone, according to DPW records.

Lovely.