If you live anywhere in the Houston area, this story should bother you:
Fecal pathogens are thriving in the regional waterways. Buffalo and White Oak bayous have bacterial counts that rank among the highest in Texas. […]
Whitworth said the city of Houston has done better recently upgrading sewage treatment plants, spending $1 billion since the 1980s. But in the suburbs and parts of Houston, sewage infrastructure is scattered among hundreds of municipal utility districts, known as MUDs.
“With the very small plants, they can’t afford to have someone there 24 hours a day,” Whitworth said. “If a plant malfunctions, it could be several days before someone comes by to correct the malfunction.
“And, if we have a lot of rainfall, then the plant is overwhelmed, so the solids, which are the bacteria, just get washed out.”
“The solids”. Ewwwwwwww…….
As it happens, Polimom lives in the above-mentioned “suburbs” (though I generally refer to it as the exurban wilderness), and it’s out here, in the unincorporated, rapidly expanding, sprawling western arm of Houston, that one finds those MUDs.
It’s also out here that you’ll find the “headwaters” of Buffalo Bayou — the very waterway to which the article refers — and while the report focuses on Houston, I can absolutely assure you that the problem cannot be isolated in that way.
I know a lot of people who refer to the bayous as “drainage ditches”…. and they treat them exactly that way.
At a certain level, I guess they’re right. I mean… every stream and river, regardless of where they’re found, drains the surrounding land. And who’s gonna care about a drainage ditch, after all?
They’re just birds. It’s just water. Never mind that funky color or the slow-moving sludge.
It’s just a ditch.
Right?