Solving Civic Problems in a Post-Fact Society
We’re living in an age when facts don’t matter. Farhad Manjoo, in a thought provoking new book, explains how modern media technology has exacerbated human tendencies to selectively absorb information that comports with our beliefs, and to screen out information that doesn’t jive with our version of “reality.” In a post-fact society, the line between what is fact and what is opinion has become blurred to the point of irrelevance.
We now conduct public debates without a base of verified, agreed-upon facts. While Manjoo uses sweeping national issues like global warming and the war in Iraq to demonstrate this, the lack of fact-based debate also shows up in questions of local infrastructure and services, where the public is called upon to decide how to invest public dollars to solve public problems.
It’s the dirty little secret of every city built on water that poo sometimes ends up in the water. Even in those places blessed with modern sewerage treatment, ie, the developed world, poo still ends up in the water when it rains a lot. In old cities, where the storm and sanitary sewers run through the same lines, heavy rains can overwhelm the system, requiring the release of untreated wastewaters into the waterways. It’s a problem that continues to plague cities throughout the developed world.
Modern engineering has hit upon an ingenious, though expensive, solution to this nagging problem: massive underground tanks that hold overflow wastewater until it can be treated, thus preventing its release into the waterways.
Milwaukee is one of the first large Great Lakes cities to adopt this technology. In the 1980s the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) embarked on a multi-billon dollar project, dubbed the Deep Tunnel, which essentially resulted in a series of massive tunnels bored deep beneath the city. These tunnels hold excess rainwater during heavy rains, wastewater that would have previously ended up in our rivers and Lake Michigan.
So how has the system performed? Here are some facts: untreated wastewater overflows have declined from an average of 60 per year before the Deep Tunnel to 1.5 per year today. The volume of untreated wastewater dumped into the waterways has declined 80% since the Deep Tunnel went online. With the Deep Tunnel, Milwaukee today dumps a fraction of what other large Great Lakes cities do.
But these facts don’t matter. In a public sphere heavily influenced by talk radio and other media outlets, such as local blogs, where there is no clear line between fact and opinion, where outright falsehoods are presented as legitimate opinions, (often in the form of “regular joe” commentary) the billons of dollars in investment in the Deep Tunnel are now deemed a massive waste.
The debate is not over whether the Deep Tunnel was worth the investment, whether its benefits have outweighed its costs. No, the rub is with whether or not the Deep Tunnel has been a public benefit. The fact that it does largely function as it was designed to is irrelevant. A large swath of the public believes it doesn’t work, and that MMSD has made the problem worse.
Back before the Deep Tunnel, sewerage overflows were a common occurrence and were rarely reported in the media when they happened. Now they are a rare occurrence, and so are widely reported when they happen. The public’s perception therefore, is that that sewerage overflows are a worse problem today than they were before the Deep Tunnel. Ironically, the project’s success has led to the perception that it’s been a failure. And since the public is predisposed to think that regional government agencies like MMSD are cash-eating monsters that not accountable to the taxpayers, in the public mind, MMSD has wasted our money on a boondoggle.
Add to that the periodic (and odoriferous) algae plumes that wash up on the shoreline, and beach closings that have been caused by unsafe levels of bird droppings in the water, and there’s little doubt in the public mind: MMSD not only wastes our money but also made the water dirtier.
Water pollution is a highly emotional issue, and the engineering behind the Deep Tunnel and wastewater treatment in general is highly complex. Public education is problematic on an icky topic that would take five minutes of tedious airtime to explain to the average TV viewer. How does MMSD explain the facts behind the Deep Tunnel when a much simpler and more sensational message resonates through the echo chamber of local media: “There’s poo in the water”?
The massive public investment in the Deep Tunnel has resulted in a public benefit: the water is noticeably cleaner. Fish species that haven’t been seen in the Milwaukee River in generations are repopulating, and bird species, such as blue heron, are returning. The urban Milwaukee River has seen over one billion dollars in residential development along its shores over the last ten years.
Indeed, Milwaukee’s system is often cited as a national model, and it’s not yet complete. When the final leg of the system is completed, the Deep Tunnel may very well make Milwaukee the first big city in human history to have essentially made the problem of poo in the water go away.
A public investment that nets public results: this is how it’s supposed to work, right? If only we could recognize the fact that the Deep Tunnel works, and finish job.
Dave Steele is a planner who lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He works for a Milwaukee foundation that works to develop and support innovative approaches to urban education.
Larry Martin on Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 11:32am
Washington DC is another of those old cities with combined sanitary and storm water sewers in about a third of the city (apx 12.5 thousand acres) that pollute the Potomac horribly with “combined sewer overflow” (aka poo) during heavy rains. Our sewer and water authority had its long term control plan approved and is budgeting for 4 huge tunnels to store overflow for later treatment - at a cost of over $1 billion. (http://www.dcwasa.com/education/css/Executive Summary.pdf)
So, OK, the ratepayers will pay for that. But I’m a little bummed that the results, for all the facts employed, virtually ignored the adoption of innovative storm water standards that require developments to retain and filter one inch of rainwater on-site and to use natural systems to provide treatment - such is the norm in some cities such as Santa Monica and Seattle. The standards should require use of green roofs, trees, wetlands, rain gardens and other vegetation, which will remove harmful contaminants, reduce sewage overflows, and create attractive, inviting streetscapes to support community development objectives. Similarly, the DC DDOT should adopt a variety of natural drainage system technologies for public streets and other infrastructure designed to retain and reuse the rainfall from a 1-inch in 24-hour event.
It may be too late for DC to rebuild itself intellegently, but other cities should look into these options carefully before pledging $Millions on underground storage tunnels for poo-laden combined sewer overflows. Facts of omission are more insidious than ignorance.
Dave Steele on Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 3:44pm
Thanks, Larry. I wanted to keep my post to a reasonable length so I didn’t even get into stormwater reduction and the huge difference that many small changes can make—changes in pavement, landscaping, rooftops, etc, that reduce runoff. There have been wetland-restoration efforts, both in the city and far upsteam at the headwaters of the Milwaukee River. But no one is forcing new development to adopt stormwater-control measures. Right now it’s up to the individual property owners, like myself, to “disconnect” from the grid, adopt rain gardens and use rain barrels. I’m working to disconnect my 1/15 acre backyard from the grid, which is of course just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Each case is unique. MMSD is in charge of three rivers that converge and empty into Lake Michigan, but these rivers’ watersheds together form a wide swath of Southeastern Wisconsin, much of which is outside of MMSD’s service boundaries. So until there’s serious consideration at the State level to ameliorate the effects of the agricultural and suburban runoff which lessens water quality downstream in the city, I would submit we won’t see much change without a big, expensive, tunnel.
Erik Gunn in Milwaukee, WI on Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 11:34am
For more on the true success of the MMSD’s Deep Tunnel, read the May 2008 issue of Milwaukee Magazine.
http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/currentIssue/full_feature_story.asp?NewMessageID=19928
daver in Milwaukee, WI on Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 10:03am
Yea I’ve tried to explain this very fact to talk radio listeners and all they can give back is Belling’s rants. That fact is the system is working at very close to as it was designed and Milwaukee does a much better job than most other cities with this issue.
Karen Sands in Milwaukee on Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 8:01am
Dave, Yours is a pretty fair assessment of the past situation, but I’d like to add that things are gradually getting better in Milwaukee. Sure, there’s a long way to go with the misled public, but I think the MMSD has gotten a fairer shake in SOME media outlets recently. And, there’s a new, concerted effort to work on water resource problems that vex us. Necessary to changing the dialog will be pursuasion (with the facts) and then education (with the details), and the good news is that MMSD and others have embarked on a path to do just that; there’s new hope for civic dialog. See here: http://web.mac.com/km3192/iWeb/MRPI/Home.html . Thanks, Karen
Thomas Gonzales in Evanston, IL on Tue, May 06, 2008 at 2:52am
I’d just like to point out the rather blatant misstatement that Milwaukee is the first Great Lakes city to implement such a system. The Chicago Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), also known as the Deep Tunnel Project, began several years before Milwaukee’s, and I can only assume the Chicago project served as a model for the latter. While there is not a huge wealth of information, despite the scale of these megaprojects—which belies the clear apathy of the general public toward the toils involved in the provision of modern municipal services—any Google search for “Deep Tunnel” would have made the mistake painfully obvious.
The Chicago TARP has been featured in numerous engineering publications, and received the 1986 award for most outstanding Civil Engineering Project from the American Society of Civil Engineers. It has also been named by the USEPA as one of the nation’s top Clean Water Act success stories. The huge tunnel boring machines developed for TARP even paved the way for future projects, such as the English Channel Tunnel.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago’s website has more information: http://www.mwrdgc.dst.il.us/plants/tarp.htm
I must say that, given this omission, I find the theme of “an age when facts don’t matter” to be rather ironic.
Lastly, however, I do agree with another poster here in that these are overly expensive attempts at treating the symptoms rather than the source of the problem. While I applaud the cities for the ability to reduce pollution levels in their nearby waterways, on-site storm water remediation should clearly be the first step before investing billions of dollars in hollowing out the earth beneath our cities.
Dave Steele in Milwaukee on Tue, May 06, 2008 at 7:04am
Thanks for the correction, Thomas.
Anonymous in Milwaukee on Tue, May 06, 2008 at 9:02am
While I agree with Thomas and his TARP comments, there are a couple of additional things to consider :
1. TARP is aimed at overflow reduction AND flood management, MMSD’s tunnel system is aimed at overflow reduction only.
2. While Chicago is undoubtedly a Great Lakes city, the flow of wastewater was reversed down the Chicago River to the Mississippi—there is no discharge to Lake Michigan. This is a critical difference between Chicago and Milwaukee.