“It was drizzling lightly in late October when . . . untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal,” reports the NY Times. “It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall,” said Bob Connaughton, one the plant’s engineers. “Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you’ve got overflows across Brooklyn.” In spite of the $60 billion Congress allocated in the 70′s to upgrade sewer systems, the Times says that “in the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere. . . . It is not clear whether the sewage systems that have not reported such dumping are doing any better, because data on overflows and spillage are often incomplete. . . . Academic research suggests that as many as 20 million people each year become ill from drinking water containing bacteria and other pathogens that are often spread by untreated waste. . . . Reducing such overflows posed a ‘significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for E.P.A. enforcement since the mid-1990s.’ . . . But widespread problems still remain. . . . The only real solution, say many lawmakers and water advocates, is extensive new spending on sewer systems largely ignored for decades.”