Vernon
So how do you get this "no pollutant" goal that the EPA was trying to get when you've
got stormwater and wastewater mixed together. If you're going to meet that goal, you've
got to separate all those sewers. How much would it cost to do that, to tear up all the
streets in the major cities in the country and separate those storm sewers from the sanitary
sewers so you could treat everything Otherwise, you have to treat all the stormwater
along with all the wastewater. So that's the type of a problem you have--what can you do
in terms of cost. You can't treat everything, it's just too expensive to treat everything.
Q ..
That TARP project was mainly to take the stormwater, wasn't it?
A ..
Yes, and wastewater.
Q ..
I lived in Chicago. I know what happens when you get storms of a huge dimension in the
city. We use to have a basement full of it all the time.
A
Well, it's so flat. It takes a long time to get rid of it, and it doesn't runoff quickly, it
l
stacks up all over the place. It was really probably the only way they had of helping the
flood situation there because even if you build facilities, channel improvements and so
forth, the slope is so flat that they can't carry a lot of water. The only way you can do it
is if you put it underground like that, in storage underground, then it's not going to
overflow on somebody's property.
Then you keep your pumps operating all the time, and you only have a storm occasionally
so that you get it back out into the rivers when it's dry or not raining. It's just so costly
to do it that way--putting in those reservoirs, underground reservoirs, huge diversion
facilities, and all that costs a lot of money.
They had a few of these open pits, too, they were using in their plan where they had taken
out rock from the rock quarries. I guess you've seen them when you drive around
Chicago, there on the Interstate. You see them every once in a while. They would also
enter into their plan.
Well, we reviewed the plans that came in. But it was so complex that you really didn't
have enough time to go into all the details of the projects. In our office, we didn't have
the staff that could look into it in great detail.
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