Sewer Diving: A Journey Inside Milwaukee's Deep Water Tunnel

Since 1994, a more than 26-mile- (42-kilometer-) long tunnel has been keeping Milwaukee's sewage from spilling into Lake Michigan. This deep water tunnel—a holding tank on steroids—comprises two legs roughly 300 feet (90 meters) belowground that can hold nearly 500 million gallons (1.9 billion liters) of sewage and storm water during a downpour. And for the last 14 years it has kept 74 billion gallons (280 billion liters) of wastewater out of Lake Michigan, according to Bill Graffin, a spokesman for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

That's a good thing, not only for water pollution but also for the drinking water plants that must pull H₂0 from the same lake and spend millions in money and energy cleaning it up. A breakdown in Milwaukee's clean water system in 1993 caused more than 100 deaths as a result of drinking water contaminated with cryptosporidium, a microbe which causes diarrhea, primarily in the young, elderly or infirm.

The deep water tunnel is just one part of a $3-billion water pollution initiative that has also upgraded 400 miles (645 kilometers) of sewer infrastructure in Milwaukee and surrounding communities—and ends with a project to turn dried sewage sludge into fertilizer. But Milwaukee has a long history of good sewers: the Jones Island Water Reclamation Facility connected to the deep water tunnel was one of the first wastewater treatment plants built in the U.S.

Milwaukee's sewers still face challenges, however, from a growing population to climate change. "Weather patterns have changed," Graffin says. "Recently, we've been getting fewer rain events but more intense rain events." more

Lake Superior’s ups and downs

Science News

Analyses of trees and other organic material buried in a riverbank near Lake Superior’s northwestern shore shed new light on how much and when the lake level varied soon after the end of the last ice age.

Researchers have long known that the water level in Lake Superior has fluctuated, but pinning down the dates of those variations has been tough, says Matthew Boyd, a paleoecologist at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Many techniques that scientists have used to try and estimate the age of beaches, dunes, and other features that denote ancient lake levels aren’t accurate, he notes. Now, Boyd and colleague James T. Teller of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg have unearthed new clues about the lake’s history, they reported Monday in Houston at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

The researchers found those clues in an 11.5-meter-tall riverbank along the lower reaches of the Kaministiquia River, which flows into Lake Superior at Thunder Bay. The lowest 2.5 meters of exposed sediment is sandy and arranged in rippled layers, a sign the material was deposited by flowing river water, says Boyd. This stratum is capped with a 2- to 10-millimeter-thick layer of leaves, moss, wood and other organic matter, indicating water flow had slowed, enabling the material to accumulate. Carbon-dating samples of this material indicate that it was deposited about 8,900 years ago. In some places at the site, small spruce trees alive at that time — previously growing onshore but suddenly standing in water — were buried intact.

A 3-meter-thick band of sediment that overlies the organic material is arranged in thin, flat layers, or varves — a sure sign that the material was laid down in still waters. That, in turn, indicates that water level in Lake Superior had risen to flood the area, Boyd says. Water level rose as the land at the eastern end of the lake — which serves as the overflow outlet — slowly rebounded. This lifting was in response to the melting of the ice sheet that had weighed down the region during the ice age.

Billions of fish, fish eggs die in power plants

AP

For a newly hatched striped bass in the Hudson River, a clutch of trout eggs in Lake Michigan or a baby salmon in San Francisco Bay, drifting a little too close to a power plant can mean a quick and turbulent death.

Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed in large numbers each year to the cooling systems of power plants around the country.

Environmentalists say the nation's power plants are needlessly killing fish and fish eggs with their cooling systems, but energy-industry officials say opponents of nuclear power are exaggerating the losses.

The issue is affecting the debate over the future of a nuclear plant in the suburbs north of New York City, and the facilities and environmentalists are closely watching the outcome here to see how to proceed in other cities around the country. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this term in a lawsuit related to the matter.

The issue's scope is tremendous. More than 1,000 power plants and factories around the country use water from rivers, lakes, oceans and creeks as a coolant. At Indian Point plant in New York, the two reactors can pull in 1.7 million gallons of water per minute. Nineteen plants on or near the California coast use 16.3 billion gallons of sea water every day.

Most of the casualties are just fish eggs, and for many species, it takes thousands of eggs to result in one adult fish. The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration, which counts only species that are valuable for commerce or recreation, uses various formulas and says the number of eggs and larvae killed each year at the nation's large power plants would have grown into 1.5 billion year-old fish.

Environmentalists note that even fish that die before maturity contribute to the ecosystem as food for larger fish and birds, and as predators themselves on smaller organisms. But once they've gone through the power plant, they become decomposing detritus on the river bottom and have moved from the top to the bottom of the food chain, said Reed Super, an environmental lawyer specializing in the federal Clean Water Act.

"This is a really significant ongoing harm to our marine ecosystem," says Angela Haren, program director for the California Coastkeeper Alliance in San Francisco.

Technology has long existed that might reduce the fish kill by 90 percent or more. Cooling towers allow a power plant to recycle the water rather than continuously pump it in. New power plants are required to use cooling towers, but most existing plants resist any push to convert, citing the huge cost and claiming that most fish eggs and larvae are doomed anyway.

"We're not killing grown fish," says Jerry Nappi, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of Indian Point. "If we were killing billions of grown fish you'd be able to walk across the Hudson on their backs."

South Euclid rips out concrete, creates wetland to help with flooding

The Plain Dealer

For more than 200 years, we have dried up our oozing swamps, drained messy marshes and paved over bothersome wetlands in the name of suburban progress.

Not anymore -- at least not in South Euclid.

The eastern suburb spent about $1.2 million over the past year to go back in time. Contractors hired by the city ripped out a free-flowing, 64-year-old concrete flood retention basin and replaced it with a man-made, back-to-nature wetland.

The result should be drier basements, fewer washed-out roads and a new, green ecosystem in suburbia.

South Euclid, like other Northeast Ohio suburbs, has spent millions trying to better manage storm water from more frequent heavy rains.

"We're allowing Mother Nature to do what it does best -- slow down the water, filter the water and prevent flooding downstream," Mayor Georgine Welo said.

The project -- paid for with $530,000 in city money and the remainder in grants and loans from the Ohio Public Works Commission -- is among the first of its kind in Northeast Ohio and maybe the state, officials said.

The basin takes the northward flow of water between South Green Road and Langerdale Boulevard, part of a stream known as Nine Mile Creek, and drastically slows it down. The water descends through a series of a dozen small ponds, separated by rock piles, until it reaches a holding tower left over from the original storm basin.

The two-acre valley and adjacent eight acres of woodland will also eventually be home to nearly 13,000 native plants, from aquatic species at the bottom to dry land species planted up the sides of the embankment.

"We've designed projects like this in Baltimore, the Chesapeake Bay area, but it's only starting to catch on around here," said Ivette Bolender of Biohabitats Inc., a nationwide environmental design firm. more

Lt. Gov. wants your ideas on protecting Great Lakes

Mark Thursday on your calendar if you want to tell state leaders what should be done to restore and protect the Saginaw Bay, Lake Huron and the rest of the Great Lakes.

Do you think the state should spend and seek money to curb aquatic invasive species, sewage overflows and beach muck? Take your pick of the issues.

Lt. Gov. John Cherry will be at Saginaw Valley State University from 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday to gather public input on a Michigan plan he's helping put together to protect and restore the lakes. The meeting is in Seminar Rooms D and E of Curtiss Hall.

You may have heard about a $20-some billion Great Lakes Regional Collaboration strategy released in 2005 to renew the health of the lakes by cleaning up toxic sediments and taking other action.

While that strategy has languished in Congress, Cherry is working on a plan to set specific priorities for the Michigan Great Lakes.

"This is an opportunity to get very clearly our projects and our needs listed, identified, on a statewide list that will then be eligible for federal funding," said Laura Ogar, Bay County environmental affairs and community development director. Great Lakes states have been looking for federal funding for years to deal with environmental problems, and both major presidential candidates have signed pledges to fund the Collaboration strategy.

"Whoever's first with a good, well-thought-out plan with community support, those are the projects that are going to be funded," Ogar said.

She thinks the Michigan plan will eventually result in state or federal restoration funding.

Either way, the state plan will set priorities for Michigan leaders to focus on through existing environmental programs and at existing agencies, she said.

Ogar plans to attend the meeting and make her voice heard. more

Demand takes Great Lakes in new direction

Chronicle Herald

Great Lakes Feeder Lines, an Ontario company hoping to start a scheduled container service into Halifax, has changed its plans for its vessel Dutch Runner.

The original plan was to have the 84-metre-long vessel provide a scheduled container cargo service between Halifax, Montreal and Toronto, but demand has taken the service in a different direction, company president Aldert van Kieuwkoop said Tuesday.

The company is now providing unscheduled cargo service between Halifax, Newfoundland and St-Pierre-Miquelon.

"That is where the demand has taken us," Mr. van Kieuwkoop said.

The line had hoped to develop a feeder business up the St. Lawrence River for the major ocean carriers calling on the Port of Halifax.

However, building that business is going to take time, the president said.

"We haven’t given up on the Halifax, Montreal, Toronto run. . . . What we have found is the response of the container lines has been reasonable. But when it comes down to actually booking containers, they were apparently tied into rail for longer-term commitments and the rates they were throwing at us were very low. So it is a no-go area for us."

He also said stevedoring rates, particularly at Great Lakes ports, are high. He said the infrastructure for containers is lacking in those ports and the stevedore rates has been developed more for handling break bulk cargo.

It’s an issue being discussed with the stevedoring companies.

He said the company’s position is being re-evaluated and "it does not make economic sense for us to have a scheduled service."

"So we have done an unscheduled service."

Dutch Runner, which can carry up to 250 containers and has roll-on roll-off capability, made its first call at Halifax in late July and is back in Halifax this week loading cargo for St-Pierre, the capital of St-Pierre-Miquelon. more