Sewage Makes Cesspool of Our Waterways

[Mushy's Dad]

All,

Here is a very well written article about the raw sewage being dumped into our Great Lakes. Loretta Baughan the founder of the Spaniel Journal puts the vast quantity of pollution into a great visual form.

This article was written in 2010 but little to nothing has changed and we need to keep beating the drum on this DISASTER or we will lose more than our fishing !!!

20% of the WORLD'S fresh water is contained right here in the Great Lakes !

http://spanieljournal.com/47lbaughan.html

Read it and share it, maybe it will get in the right hand of some who can FIX IT !

[Far Beyond Driven]

To some extent, the lakes are sterile, and some nutrients are good for it. Seems years we have heavy rains that fall we have piles of baby perch and alewive in the fall.

I can recall fishing in the early 80's and the lake was green. We ran size 5 J's 3' off the cannonballs, as the cannonballs got the attention of the fish.

[danthebuilder]

We definitely take our source of freshwater for granted. We have 20% of the world's fresh water. We should do everything in our power to protect it. One third of the pollution in that lake is from coal plants. Regulation was passed to cut the pollution drastically. That's a huge win. Many of our local political friends are rallying against this. This is a huge mistake.

Everyone saw the news this past year of the extreme droughts in Texas. So what do we do? We propose to build a pipeline to area to use our oil refineries to turn tar sands into oil. Its a very polluting process. Worse than coal plants. This type of activity leads to pollution in our lakes. When I say pollution I'm talking about toxins & PCB's & high mercury levels.That's not really the part I really worry about. The main problem is it takes an insane amount of water to get one barrel of oil. Lots of areas in our country have water shortages or are the verge of having very drastic water shortages. Why should we encourage our refineries to waste water? The oil will not be used in american cars. It will be refined & shipped to china. If we encourage others to waste water in this manner. Guess what? We're soon going to be talking about another pipeline being built. Its going to be the pipeline that empties water from the great lakes. Everyone knows the proposals in the past for people to take water out of the great lakes that has been shot down time & time again. You just wait until people are truly out of water and we'll have a hard time keeping Indiana/Chicago from draining our great lakes. I am so mad at Fred Upton for leading the republicans in the charge to build this pipeline. I live in his district. I see NO WAY IN HELL it will help anyone from our district. I only see the bad consequences.

Another thing that stinks to high heavens about the pipeline. Non-pollution wise. Just general observation. In 2008 we were paying $4 a gallon and one of the main reasons we were told was because we haven't built a refinery since the 1970s. Last time I checked no new refineries have been built due to the tough EPA rules. It seems like all these tar sands do actually have the real chance of running up our refining capacity & raising our gas prices. Why should our refineries be used up to help china? I don't trust these oil companies one bit.

As for the sewage running into our lakes. Yes, its a problem. Especially when you lose tourism dollars. Many people came to our town last year and 2 separate ocassions the beaches were closed. People see that visiting for the first time & never come back. Its also an expensive problem to fix. Its going to require 2 separate systems being build under our roads. 1 to collect waste. 1 to collect rainwater. I think the best way to solve this is that every time you tear up a road. You separate the systems. Over time the problem will be fixed. If there are few areas which gets insane amounts of rain. Maybe those places are attacked more aggressively.

[IRon]

OOPs sorry wrong thread.

[Paulywood]

I know that towns & cities are required to separate the sewers. Lansing & grand rapids are both doing it now but it's expensive & takes time. I know I don't like fishing for taper headed brown trout.

[Mushy's Dad]

Milwaukee is the biggest violator of dumping untreated sewage and storm water into the great lakes. Milwaukee has a combined sewerage system called the deep tunnel. Every time it rains more than a few inches the tunnel fills up and they dump it to the harbor and fill it with poo poo! CAN you imagine if this was a private company, how much would a billion gallons of poo poo water would cost to be cleaned up plus the fines..... I just wonder how long is this going to take before Milwaukee and Wisconsin fixes this huge problem !!!!!