Category: Environment

Ten years ago Deepwater Horizon spilled an estimated 210 million gallons of crude oil was dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill – Wikipedia

The oil seen from space by NASA’s Terra satellite on 24 May 2010

In 2017 the Seattle Sewage treatment plant near Discovery Park dumped between 150 million and 200 million gallons of raw sewage and stormwater into the Puget Sound.

Again in 2019 4.5 million gallons of raw sewage was dumped into Puget Sound.

4.5 million gallons of sewage spill into the Puget Sound

SEATTLE — Power outages at King County’s two largest sewage plants this week caused millions of gallons of sewage to spill into the Puget Sound, according to the Washington Department of Ecology. Ecology said they are investigating a 3 million-gallon sewage spill Friday morning at the West Point W…

There have been other smaller raw sewage spills in the Puget Sound area as well.

The Gulf of Mexico has an area 617,000 square miles and an average depth of 5000 feet. The Puget Sound has an area of about 1000 square miles and an average depth of 450 feet.

So the volume of the Gulf of Mexico is 1000 times that of the Puget Sound. Oil is probably a worse contaminant than raw sewage, but it was spread out over a much greater volume.

Why didn’t environmental groups protest the sewage spills? Why didn’t the media provide round the clock coverage? Why aren’t there multi billion dollar cleanup funds for the raw sewage?

Maybe to protect the environment, rather than banning plastic straws and grocery bags, the City of Seattle ought to require all bottled water sold in the city be collected from the outflow of the Seattle Wastewater Treatment Plant.