By ERNST-ULRICH FRANZEN
Sandra McLellan is right: A new study on the amount of human sewage flowing into the area's waterways and contaminating some beaches "should be a wake-up call" to citizens and especially local municipal officials. Those officials need to step up their monitoring of waterways and their local systems of sanitary and sewer pipes, figure out where the worst problems are occurring and step up the replacement cycle for those pipes.
McLellan knows what she's talking about. An associate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Great Lakes WATER Institute, she was the lead researcher on the $670,000 study commissioned by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
According to the three-year study, human fecal pollution is found at several beaches and rivers throughout the Milwaukee area, creating an unseen though serious public health risk for anyone in the water. The sewage is flowing out of municipal storm sewers and into local waterways and Lake Michigan, as the Journal Sentinel's Don Behm reported.
Sanitary sewer overflows at MMSD aren't to blame, because the flow occurs on rainy days without overflows and even during periods of dry weather. And the contamination cannot be pinned on animals living in the storm sewers. Genetic testing ruled them out.
The most likely sources include either broken sanitary sewers that leak into storm water pipes or sanitary pipes misconnected to storm sewers, according to Chris Magruder, a community environmental liaison with MMSD.
Each community's highest priority locations should be those where human bacteroids were found in 50% or more of samples tested, Magruder said. And that's a fairly long list. From 2006 through 2008, the WATER Institute tested 1,100 samples of water collected at 62 storm sewer discharge pipes and culverts within the MMSD service area, primarily inside Milwaukee County. Chronic fecal pollution, with half or more of samples contaminated, was uncovered at 44, or nearly 71%, of those sites.
But while there is cause for serious concern and for pushing up the cycle of replacing pipes, no one should panic. Some beaches should be avoided, but others are fine. McLellan told Paul Piaskoski of WDJT-TV (Channel 58) on "Eye to Eye" that she would have no concern about letting her kid into the water at Bradford Beach, for example.
On the other hand, avoid Big Bay Beach: Big Bay outfall's report card was an unhealthy 75% positive in 2007 and 2008 tests. "Eleven of 11 samples collected there in 2008 were positive," McLellan told Behm. "There is a problem somewhere in their sewer system. People should not be swimming at that beach."
Fixing the problem won't be cheap, and it can't be done all at once. But there is the possibility of financial help from a recently established federal trust fund for sewage treatment. And the work has to be done: There's just too big a threat to public health from a deteriorating
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