This town is nearby to Cahokia [1], which was most likely the largest human settlement in North America until the late 1700s. It declined and was abandoned (in the 1300s or earlier) and there is ample evidence that flooding was a major cause of the decline.
That general area has magnificent geographic advantage - the Mississippi River just barely downriver from the confluence of both the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. But it floods. It has always flooded, and it always will flood. The French founded St. Louis on the other side of the river, on a bluff, so it would be protected from flooding.
Flooding of the Mississippi is somewhat different from flooding of raw sewage, though. I’ve never lived in a naturally flooded region so can’t comment on the former, but the latter does sound way more disgusting and insanitary.
Older cities used the same pipe system for both storm water and sewage setup, usually setup with an overflow dumping into a nearby body of water. When the overflow itself gets flooded it backs up the whole system and causes this
Yeah, this happens in SF too, which uses an antiquated gravity based single pipe system. It works cause of the hills, but it does have this problem. I read that a bit of old Sacramento uses this system too, otherwise you won't find it in California.
This is a good article. The upshot - San Francisco broadened pipes in wealthier uphill areas to reduce local flooding, creating a large bottleneck in a few lower income low-lying areas, so on very heavy rain days, yep, raw sewage backs up into residential areas (lower income, and among the few places in SF that still have a high percentage of children). To make it worse, San Francisco passed laws against paving over front yards, but in typical SF fashion doesn't really enforce the law, so every year, more and more storm water is diverted into the combined sewage/storm draining system. I'm not kidding when I say someone will probably die from this - during one of these floods, someone's dog was electrocuted, and like I said, there are a lot of children living in unpermitted downstairs units with dodgy wiring.
This issue, while maybe not the single most pressing issue facing SF, is the one that goes farthest to convinces me that San Francisco's city government is inept. These are the people who are going to manage the infrastructure preparation for the more frequent and intense storms that accompany global warming?
The city is midway through a 20-year, multi-billion dollar sewer upgrade project, systematically refurbishing and replacing the system block-by-block, road-by-road, neighborhood-by-neighborhood. This is a big reason for all the insane construction citywide.[1]
I don't know the details, but it looks like the flooding described in that article was addressed by the (now completed?) Lower Alemany Area Stormwater Improvement Project and/or Upper Alemany Drainage
Improvements Project, both of which were part of the citywide master plan.
[1] They're also repaving roads after replacement, but it seems coordination isn't as good as it could be, especially in highly trafficked areas. I assume this is why some really bad streets haven't been repaved--waiting for sewer replacement--and why there's a lot of bad patching--repaved too quickly.
Thanks for the info. It's been a few years since the last very serious sewer system backup in the lower Alemany area. I'll do my own research, but if you have any links to this project that address flooding, please post them.
For us it backs up the sewers and makes things unsanitary, for them it ruined their crops and destroyed their buildings. It was arguably worse for them, but different problems with the same cause.
Of course natural geography plays a major role in both cases, but the sewage backup problem in this case seems at least partially manmade.
> Some date the beginning of the problem to the 1986 completion of Interstate 255, which looped traffic around the southern edge of the Metro East region, and was eventually (in 2002) declared by the Army Corps of Engineers to be impeding the flow of water from Centreville into the Harding Ditch, the drainage canal designed to collect surface water from the American Bottom and carry it to the Mississippi. The situation has only deteriorated in the meantime.
I actually grew up just outside of here. And now I drive through it every day. I always see the standing water, just never realized it was sewage. And now that I know it is, it's kind of obvious. Here's one highlight of my drive:
Be sure to adjust the time. This location is ALWAYS flooded. Standing, putrid water. They tried building walls around the containment pond but it's no longer enough. The house just to the west constantly has standing water in their yard.
A part of their problem was highlighted in the article. These people are now living in worthless homes. They cannot sell them. Nobody's buying them.
One good thing is there's talks about merging Centreville with Alorton. [1] The premise being that a larger city can actually get adequate funding from the state to address these issues.
Is there anything the community can do in these situations?
If the Commonfields of Cahokia is contracted (changed from supposed) to be treating waster water and is visible failing, can a company come in to try to fix the problem and ignore Commonfields?
This is kind of a weirdly worded question, but what I want to know is if companies are actively being negligent can that be used against them to fight the problem?
Buy out the residents, help them relocate, demo the properties and prevent them from ever being purchased again. FEMA has a similar initiative and funding for properties that continually flood after natural disasters [1].
Due to Illinois finances, federal funding is likely required to accomplish this. Success is more likely than what would be necessary to keep these residents in place and fix the systemic issues that caused this to occur.
If you’re in Illinois, consider forwarding this to your senators, and the House reps for these people. They’ll need funding for the Illinois EPA to administer the buyouts.
Not sewer related, but an underground coal seam that was ignited and threatened the entire town. The town (Centralia, PA) was bought out, and the Interstate Route was shifted (if you’re in the area, stop by; I’ve walked the old Interstate at night and it was an experience).
If someone wants to start a database of communities impacted, I would be happy to help. This is where public policy and tech can collide in impactful ways.
I'm guessing it's a funding issue, and there isn't the tax base locally to pay for fixes. Combined with aging infrastructure and changing climate, I expect a lot more of this in years to come.
I wouldn't turn to companies to solve it though, we should be ensuring our tax rates are sufficient to repair and replace our roads, bridges, sewers, etc.
It's not just funding, it's also that the local government in these areas is entirely corrupt. Any money they do receive from above or collect from below is sure to be siphoned one way or another. If it wasn't so un-American, I'd suggest the only way they can be saved is to have the state or feds take over, like too many of our school districts around here. Then again, every governor of IL goes to jail, so maybe just the feds.
"Metro East, the city of East St. Louis had always served as more of a legal shell for corporate privilege—low taxes, nonexistent regulation, minimal public services—than a fully functioning city. By the late 1980s, the city’s sewer system was failing, and the city government was being sued by the EPA for misusing federal funds that had been earmarked for its repair."
Corruption was a big part of the problem. But the root goes deeper. This was always a fake town, a hollow shell built to serve the interest of a business that no longer exists.
I know this sounds cruel but the sewage is only a symptom of a larger problem. The Fed shouldn't step in to fix the sewers, they should step in to assist in relocating the residents somewhere else and let the ghost town sink into the fetrid swamp.
I think the tax base is the leading factor in this as well. The state would care if the people had more money. I agree that correct tax rates would help in this situation, but I also feel that the towns that are contributing more in taxes will see the improvements over towns that have less money.
Its a hard problem because I also don't know how a private company would be able to fund these projects.
The problem is that this condition is geographically inevitable on a floodplain with zero maintenance, or even if you get a little behind on the maintenance. And the catastrophe sets in soon after. It sounds like the town does have some lift stations (deep pits to collect sewage where it must be pumped into sealed forced mains some distance away down or over-hill, unless that area is flooded too) ... but they are in disrepair. Also storm water massively enters the sewer so even if lift stations did work they might flood every time.
It would take a massive bond of magical unicorn money to fix, never mind the next phase of raising homes to avoid floods or rebuilding damaged ones. And even then, who would want a home always surrounded by dirty standing water? Perhaps it has gone past no return. What money could be found would be better spent helping to relocate the people to higher ground and condemning the land. The OK town I just left has several empty square blocks bought out by the city. For a whole town it would be disaster.
There is probably no single company or entity one could lay all the blame. It was a bad idea to build there but people did anyway from desperation, when conditions were better. Then (probably during drier and more prosperous years) they doubled down on the bad idea and modern sanitary sewers were built working and maintained, but were only marginally resilient to a stretch of flood or bad economy. Even a municipality maintaining a lift station is helpless if the equipment gets repeatedly flooded out.
No this is not a climate catastrophe. People have made the term cheap and useless.
I did not know about this and this was exactly what I was wondering with the question I asked above! Here is an article for others that are interested in hear more about Portland Anarchist Road Care (PARC)
Why is he overhanding the tamper like that? Whats with the Fight Club stances? It's hard to take anarchists seriously when everything they do is wrapped in performative aggression.
That's funny, whenever I hear far out claims made by journalists mentioned to scientists, they always dimiss them.
But you're saying there are scientists claiming GW causes these naturally occurring phenomenon.
The problem with GW is the same problem with most decentralized political movements. Since no one defines the scope of the movement, any wingnut can co-op the movement with their own BS.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We ban accounts that keep doing this, and have already had to ask you about it once.
That general area has magnificent geographic advantage - the Mississippi River just barely downriver from the confluence of both the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. But it floods. It has always flooded, and it always will flood. The French founded St. Louis on the other side of the river, on a bluff, so it would be protected from flooding.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia