Tagged: sewage

The city of Seattle and King County will spend $1.46 billion on upgrades to public sewer systems aimed at reducing the amount of polluted water entering the Puget Sound and other waterways, according to a federal settlement filed under the Clean Water Act. 

Under the agreement, the city and county will also pay $750,000 in fines for dumping raw sewage into the Sound and several lakes. 

A more efficient way to fix one of Seattle’s most embarrassing environmental problems – that’s the promise of a proposed agreement on meeting federal standards for clean water.

The problem is untreated sewage that flows into our lakes and other waterways after big storms.

It's a dirty topic with a refined name: Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). When heavy rains exceed the capacity of Seattle's century-old drainage system, raw sewage gets dumped into our rivers, lakes and Puget Sound.

Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) is developing a Long-Term Control Plan for limiting CSOs to no more than one outfall per year.