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At their monthly meeting April 27, the Pike County Planning Commission viewed an eye opening presentation on America’s crumbling water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure by PSU Cooperative Extension’s Peter Wulfhorst.
The presentation, really little more than a long trailer for a much longer film, was called “Liquid Assets.” Despite the fact that it was only sixteen minutes long, it was packed with information most are unaware of concerning the state of our country’s water systems.
The film began with a brief history of centralized water systems in America starting with the first municipal water system ever built on this continent, which was built in Philadelphia.
As noteworthy as that historic development may be, the real reason it was mentioned was to point out that many of the pipes that make up the system are still being used to this day. In fact, the film points out that there are 100 to 200 year old drinking water pipes under communities all over the country which are in desperate need of replacement. Some, as in the case of the Philadelphia system, are so old that the supply pipes are actually made of wood. Others are less old, but are nonetheless subject to chronic failures, and contribute to 31 million waterborne outbreaks of disease every year.
According to the film, the trouble doesn’t end with the drinking water system. There are more than 700 combined sewage and stormwater systems around the country that pose even greater threats, as they often overflow during storms, poisoning grounwater, streams, rivers and even streets with raw sewage. Los Angeles, CA, is an example of this type of combined system, where one man in the film points out that it common knowledge in the city that you just don’t go into the ocean for three days after a rainstorm, because the city’s sewer system is designed to discharge the combined runoff and sewage directly into the Pacific.
The city of Boston finished building the first city sewer system in the country back in 1884. While some might consider this a monumental acheivement, the film points out until the 1960s every bit of waste from that sewer was sent directly into the ocean without any treatment.
The town of Herminie, PA, still has a similar 100 year old sewage system, only without an ocean to dump the effluent into, their system releases raw, untreated sewage directly into streams, old mines, and streets.
At their monthly meeting April 27, the Pike County Planning Commission viewed an eye opening presentation on America’s crumbling water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure by PSU Cooperative Extension’s Peter Wulfhorst.
The presentation, really little more than a long trailer for a much longer film, was called “Liquid Assets.” Despite the fact that it was only sixteen minutes long, it was packed with information most are unaware of concerning the state of our country’s water systems.
The film began with a brief history of centralized water systems in America starting with the first municipal water system ever built on this continent, which was built in Philadelphia.
As noteworthy as that historic development may be, the real reason it was mentioned was to point out that many of the pipes that make up the system are still being used to this day. In fact, the film points out that there are 100 to 200 year old drinking water pipes under communities all over the country which are in desperate need of replacement. Some, as in the case of the Philadelphia system, are so old that the supply pipes are actually made of wood. Others are less old, but are nonetheless subject to chronic failures, and contribute to 31 million waterborne outbreaks of disease every year.
According to the film, the trouble doesn’t end with the drinking water system. There are more than 700 combined sewage and stormwater systems around the country that pose even greater threats, as they often overflow during storms, poisoning grounwater, streams, rivers and even streets with raw sewage. Los Angeles, CA, is an example of this type of combined system, where one man in the film points out that it common knowledge in the city that you just don’t go into the ocean for three days after a rainstorm, because the city’s sewer system is designed to discharge the combined runoff and sewage directly into the Pacific.
The city of Boston finished building the first city sewer system in the country back in 1884. While some might consider this a monumental acheivement, the film points out until the 1960s every bit of waste from that sewer was sent directly into the ocean without any treatment.
The town of Herminie, PA, still has a similar 100 year old sewage system, only without an ocean to dump the effluent into, their system releases raw, untreated sewage directly into streams, old mines, and streets.
The film envisions catastrophic failures of the nation’s water systems in the next 20 years unless a massive repair effort gets underway soon. It cites a 540 billion dollar discrepancy between what we are currently paying for such projects and what we might need to pay in order to avert system collapses and the possibility that one day there may not be water when you go to the tap.
Wulfhorst said the reason he presented the video was because Penn State’s Extension was trying to get the general public thinking about an issue that never crosses most people’s mind, but that effects their lives hugely.
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