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THREAD! This weekend's heavy rains & flooding across Central VA have lots of people thinking about stormwater and sewer overflows. Here's a couple key things to know.
First, Virginia has 3 cities with combined sewer overflow systems: Lynchburg, Alexandria, and Richmond. (1/8)
First, Virginia has 3 cities with combined sewer overflow systems: Lynchburg, Alexandria, and Richmond. (1/8)
. @DanielBerti12 has a succinct explanation of the problems of CSOs w/r/t RVA: "During heavy rainstorms, the mixture of untreated stormwater and wastewater is released into the James River and surrounding waterways to prevent it from backing up into people’s homes." (2/8)
Guess how often that happens? As he reported in @MercuryVirginia last year, in 2018, "more than 550 times, spilling 3.4 billion gallons of raw sewage mixed with stormwater into the river and surrounding tributaries." (3/8) https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/04/15/more-rainfall-a-consequence-of-climate-change-expected-to-make-sewage-overflows-worse/
He also brings up a really really relevant issue: climate change! In this part of the country, one way climate change is manifesting itself is through increased precipitation and more severe storms, like hurricanes. There's a ton of scientific evidence out there for this. (4/8)
Here's just one: an EPA brief on Virginia that notes "the amount of precipitation during very heavy storms increased by 27 percent between 1958 and 2012 in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly severe rainstorms is likely to continue." (5/8) https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/climate-change-va.pdf
This doesn't just affect urban areas! Rural areas, like VA's Middle Peninsula, also suffer from more intense rainfall b/c of their heavy reliance on septic systems...esp when coupled w/sea level rise. I wrote about this for @ChesBayJournal last year. (6/8) https://www.bayjournal.com/news/pollution/septic-system-failures-expected-to-increase-in-coastal-virginia/article_3fed2079-1b2a-5e5c-a8a0-e1080844cc16.html
Nor are sewer overflows the only environmental problem associated w/more rainfall. So is more pollution flowing into our waterways, like the Chesapeake, and impairing water quality. Here's a story on this I did for @MercuryVirginia earlier this year. (7/8) https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/01/22/why-stormwater-poses-an-increasing-challenge-for-virginia/
Policymakers are aware of these problems. The General Assembly has ordered that Alexandria fix its CSO by 2025 & this year set a 2035 deadline for upgrading RVA's. Lynchburg, as @newsadvance reported in 2018, has invested millions in its effort. (8/8) https://newsadvance.com/news/local/final-large-phase-of-cso-project-to-begin-later-this-year/article_7434497b-327f-54d4-9752-6ca765c45d1f.html
CODA: As the GA prepares for a special session starting Tuesday, one piece of funding that could be on the chopping block is increased money for the Stormwater Local Assistance Fund, which works exactly how it sounds. A few details here. https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/08/14/virginia-on-track-to-meet-bay-cleanup-goals-report-finds-but-budget-cuts-could-hamper-progress/
