Don't Drink Poopy Water

Nobody likes poopy water so I wanted to know how to avoid being in the situation where I have to drink the poopy water. So for the you and the word project, I am focusing on green vs grey infrastructure, and how all of the bigger cities have outdated sewage systems and pipes. It’s a really big problem that I had no idea about. Throughout the states the storm water management is mostly comprised of pipes that lead to bigger pipes or “grey infrastructure.” This is only a problem when there's just a little too much rain for the sewers to handle. So when that happens there is a backup which causes the mixed waste and rain water to overflow into the water sources. Just a reminder that's where we get our our drinking water from. This is a big enough of a issue for the EPA to address it., and so , that gave the cities some time to fix it. Philly, in particular is very far ahead in our green infrastructure with green roofs and  other things like that to help slow down the stormwater runoff as much as possible. The Philadelphia Water Department (PGW) has great explanations of their visions that they have for the city that you can check out here.

The general idea of green infrastructure is pretty simple actually. We all know that plants are living things, and they consume water just like we do. So green infrastructure is just using that to slow down the stormwater, not necessarily to catch it all in the soil, more like giving the sewers enough time so the storm water can get through without overflowing everything. It’s really smart if you think about it because usually it only rains hard for 5 or 10 minutes. With grey infrastructure the sewers will overflow pretty quickly but that wouldn’t happen with green infrastructure. The plants would soak in and hold up the water long enough so that the water that fell onto the streets and roofs can get down the drain fine without overflowing. Then the water in then soil will get released and there would be no problem with there being too much water for the sewer to handle.

Although bad drinking water can be disgusting and undesirable from the city you live in, that's not the only problem caused by stormwater overflow. The other big one in cities would be flooding streets from extreme backups in the sewer. Other than that there can be really bad for outcomes for wildlife around the area or even downstream. Wanting to improve the city's stormwater management for our purposes is a perfectly good reason but there are other life forms suffering from polluted water coming into the city's watershed. The Delaware river is Philly's watershed, meaning we use it for our drinking water but it is also home to other living animals. The Delaware river is one of the most polluted rivers. Most of the pollution comes from dumping toxic chemicals in waterways that lead to the river but other than that when the sewers overflow with the waste water that is also going into the river.