Dumping
In all, 206 million gallons total gushed out of the well but a fleet of boats and other efforts were able to contain more than 33 million gallons, the task force said.
The 172 million gallons, nearly 5 million barrels, is on the high end of earlier task force estimates that anywhere from 92 million gallons to 184 million gallons had gushed into the sea.
Judging by the latest estimate, BP could be fined up to $5.4 billion under the Clean Water Act, or as much as $21 billion if it is found to have committed gross negligence or willful misconduct.
Hell, Milwaukee can dump BILLIONS of gallons of sewage into Lake Michigan and nobody even thinks of fining them.
Hell, Milwaukee can dump BILLIONS of gallons of sewage into Lake Michigan and nobody even thinks of fining them.
Brilliant!
If Milwaukee was fined I wonder who would pay the fine?
Maybe the Tax Payers!Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 1749 hrs
WWOD?
Allow it to back-up into everyone’s basement?
I don’t like it one bit either. But it’s a little more complicated than just bitching about it, Owen.
What would you do?
Please share?
Posted by Swamp Gas on August 03, 2010 at 1816 hrs
Owen hasn’t had control of MMSD like Tom Barrett has the last six-years.
For me, I’d start with having my personal friend Obama allow me to use the Stimulus train money on separating the sewers. The project could have been started with that $120 million that was burned down the drain on the MPS Neighborhood Schools initiative a few years back.
There is a billion right there. Should be a start to fix half the problem.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 1900 hrs
Mr. Austin…
I don’t live in Milwaukee so I don’t care about Tom Barrett.
Are you Owen’s spokesperson? Please don’t obfuscate by interjecting trains and schools.
I simply asked what would Owen do?
Dump the crap in the lake or in everyone’s basement?
Posted by Swamp Gas on August 03, 2010 at 1948 hrs
Owen - so what ratio are you using to balance the impact of dumping oil to dumping sewage?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 1950 hrs
I don’t like it one bit either. But it’s a little more complicated than just bitching about it, Owen.
What would you do?
Probably do a cut and paste on a blog. Now that’s real action you can count on.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 1953 hrs
MMSD [Milwaukee taxpayers] has been fined by the DNR for dumping. But obviously not enough to force a decisive change in sewer management. MMSD has changed the company managing things and dug more storage capacity and landscaped for more above-ground storage. but as Steve Austin points out, the real management of the problem is separating the sewers. The sooner the project is begun, the sooner the problem is solved.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 2000 hrs
I’m not obfuscating at all by talking about trains and schools. We have finite financial resources at our disposal.
Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle have chosen to use one billion dollars in the two ventures cited. The Neighborhood Schools initiative that even the MJS discredited with a series last year for over $100 million along with the $900 million they want on the half-fast train to Madison.
In the meantime, we’ve known about the one to two billion dollar cost to separate our sewer system in Milwaukee for the last twenty years. Yet our “conductors” chose to have our tax money spent elsewhere.
The answer of where the sewage should go (basement or lake) is “neither” when we have (or had) one billion evidently to spend on boon-doggles that Barrett and Doyle support.
If Barrett was a smart person, he would have gone to Obama last year and said “look, I can solve a major environmental problem and bring jobs to the city if you can send me one or two billion to fix our sewers here. Send me that money and I’ll run for Governor to help out the party”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 2100 hrs
Steve…
I’m not taking issue with your point at all.
I’m simply pointing out that Owen has his shorts in a knot over this and I’m wondering what Owen would do under these circumstances if there was a major rain event like we had recently.
If you want to go back in time and whine about crappy (pardon the pun) decision-making that doesn’t address today’s reality.
That simply doesn’t answer WWOD.
Would he dump the crap in the lake or force it into the basements of the populace?
Posted by Swamp Gas on August 03, 2010 at 2125 hrs
Water perlution is very serious , the oil pulled over the water can lead very serious problems .
Posted by vibram fivefingers on August 03, 2010 at 2129 hrs
“If Barrett was a smart person, he would have gone to Obama last year and said “look, I can solve a major environmental problem and bring jobs to the city if you can send me one or two billion to fix our sewers here. Send me that money and I’ll run for Governor to help out the party”
I’ll run for office if you give me money for my community. Mmmm… the taste of quid pro quo in the morning.
Here’s my question: why shouldn’t the offending municipalities pay for this? I don’t know that anyone’s said around here that what Milwaukee area municipalities do is acceptable, but nobody seems to be willing to hold the municipalities accountable for their own transgressions.
If I were people living in lakeshore communities to the north of south of Milwaukee, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass how high your property taxes went. Your problem. You fix it. Or don’t conservatives believe in responsibility if being responsible means having to raise additional revenue?
Posted by Recess Supervisor on August 03, 2010 at 2151 hrs
RS——I don’t want to pay for Milwaukee and Shorewood’s mess.
Simply pointing out if Obama, Doyle and Barrett are going to hold me up with a mask and gun, I would at least like them to spend the money on things that make sense.
From Owen’s numbers above, it would appear we sent ten times in crap into Lake Michigan two weeks ago compared to what BP leaked into the Gulf over a 90 day period. I am waiting for Anderson Cooper to show up under the Kmart sculpture with live reports.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 2214 hrs
Here’s my question: why shouldn’t the offending municipalities pay for this? I don’t know that anyone’s said around here that what Milwaukee area municipalities do is acceptable, but nobody seems to be willing to hold the municipalities accountable for their own transgressions.
That’s a good question Mr. Recess.
Plenty of communities, both up and down the coast, dump raw sewage during major storm events.
Do your read the press from Manitowoc, Algoma, Tr’vers or Green Bay? They all do it from time to time.
Are you equally outraged by dumping by those communities?
Again, this is all would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.
I’m still waiting to hear from the blogger.
Posted by Swamp Gas on August 03, 2010 at 2218 hrs
In the meantime, we’ve known about the one to two billion dollar cost to separate our sewer system in Milwaukee for the last twenty years.
The cost to separate the system, with the exception of Downtown, was $4 billion as of 2007.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 2318 hrs
Name me one sewer district in Wisconsin bordering Lake Michigan that dumps at the volume or frequency with which MMSD dumps. Your argument of abstract equivalence is, pun intended, a load of crap. It’s like saying “Bob killed one guy and Stan killed one hundred, but since killing is wrong they’ve both sinned equally.”
I would never expect a system to operate flawlessly. And while I think that expanding the deep tunnel system is a dead end that is nothing short of throwing bad money after good, and that separating the sewers would’ve been a far more effective long-term choice, the expansion has helped relative to where things were previously. But if that’s the road Milwaukee wants to go, maybe it’s time to pony up and build yet another deep tunnel or five.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on August 03, 2010 at 2325 hrs
So far we have all sorts of whining, moaning and hand-wringing about policy decisions made decades ago.
In the interim Mr. Robinson wishes to be outraged and I’m just asking what he would do if he were in charge.
Inasmuch as the Blogger won’t say what he would do I shall retire and wait.
G’night.
Posted by Swamp Gas on August 03, 2010 at 2354 hrs
It’s just plain awful leadership that a long-term plan didn’t exist for incrementally separating the sewers. Barrett (apparently) campaigned on it, but didn’t actually do anything about it. God knows it’s a huge, huge problem in terms of expense. But the way to deal with such things is create a plan over X years to get it done in a manner that doesn’t require an impossible tax burden.
Which leads directly into the federal/stimulus funds and train issue. With a well-defined plan in place to gradually replace & separate the lines, when the Feds announced the stimulus and were looking for projects, especially “shovel-ready” ones, Milwaukee would’ve been good to go. This is exactly the type of project the stimulus money should have gone towards - necessary infrastructure work that everyone agrees needs to be done. In addition to the stimulus effect & work generated, it would have been an investment with a long-term positive ROI especially for home owners who have to bear the cost of the waste backup and flooding damage (ultimately probably saving billions) and beyond the immediate area, for anyone who actually gives a damn about clean water. Instead we got nearly a billion spent on a train that not very many people will ride and things like the bridge in the Town of Arena that gets 4 vehicles a day in traffic.
Also - anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist and is not complaining about this problem and criticizing Barrett for doing nothing has earned the right to STFU. You no have no credibility whatsoever when it comes to environmental issues.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 03, 2010 at 2356 hrs
I don’t live in Milwaukee so I don’t care about Tom Barrett,either.Thank you for sharing all the same.
Posted by shure microphones on August 04, 2010 at 0354 hrs
The oil spill was an environmental atrocity. The sewage dumping is an environmental atrocity.
We need a solution to both.
The solution, the only solution that will work, for the City of Milwaukee is to separate the storm and sanitary sewer system downtown, on the east side and in shorewood.
I understand the benefits that combined sewers can have, but it is pretty clear that we need to do something, so that if we are going to dump, it is only storm water going into the lake. The only thing to do is to separate the sewers, and use the deep tunnel system ONLY for storm water during major rain events. That runoff that was retained can then be treated later.
Our state actively pursues lawsuits against farms that allow manure to runoff into waterways, the hypocrisy is astounding…
Do your read the press from Manitowoc, Algoma, Tr’vers or Green Bay? They all do it from time to time.
It is a matter of relative size of the dumping. Manitowoc is less than 1/10th the size of MMSD… Two Rivers is much smaller than even Shorewood…. and Algoma…. Algoma is 1/5th the size of Shorewood….
Am I saying that they should not also be held responsible for any damage they might be doing to the lake? Absolutely not, but it is a matter of scale.
The Twin Cities have had great success in their sewer separation undertakings. The sewer separation would be a genuinely beneficial use of stimulus funds, and would provide thousands of jobs for a decade or more…. I guess I can’t expect the leftist meme to accept that notion though.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 04, 2010 at 0848 hrs
Looks like all that sewage reached the Atlantic and is going to screw up Obama’s vacation plans:
Will bacteria count beach Barack Obama?Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 20, 2010 at 1213 hrs
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