When It Rains, It Contaminates

NYT has a pollution series or "Has science been good or bad for the world" or "No matter what we do we still lose". Today was on our lackluster sewage system.

Quick breakdown:

One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

But despite those upgrades, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage is spilling into waterways.

Upgrade fail. But we punish those failures right?

But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows.

Punishment fail. This points out two things: 1) we can't fix the problems we have, 2) we can't enforce the laws we have that were made to enforce the fixes, and/or 3) we don't have the balls to admit how we live is wrong. It's all three.

Prescription: We need to get over ourselves and move toward a more reasonable existence.