Prompt Entry 5

I've lived in Pittsburgh for two-thirds a year now, so it's high time I cultivate some understanding of the environmental ills of my immediate surroundings.

Last semester, I was able to enjoy a couple educational walks (one geological, the other botanical) in Frick Park sponsored by a local organization called the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association. My first inclination was to research their mission and goals and see what environmental issues they take to task.

The Nine Mile Run (NMR), I've learned, is a stream that flows through my very neighborhood of Squirrel Hill as well as several others including Wilkinsburg, Edgewood, and Swissvale. Most of the stream runs underground, but some of it emerges in Frick Park, which is just three blocks from my apartment.

The stream suffers pretty seriously from pollution. The problem goes something like this:

Pittsburgh is of course an urban environment, which means that there are many impermeable surfaces like blacktop, concrete, roofs, and sidewalks around NMR, the same area where I live. These surfaces don't allow water to filter into the soil. During really wet weather (I wonder if all the recent snowfall counts) the city sewer systems become overloaded with water. They dump onto the NMR, of course contaminated with lots of sewage. This is actually called a "fecal fountain." As one can imagine, this makes the NMR both unfit for wildlife as well as human recreation.

I absolutely am concerned about the possibility of a "fecal fountain" in my neighborhood, although I may have some difficulty writing lyrically about the phenomenon. Apparently, the city of Pittsburgh in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers has been working since 2002 to restore the ecosystem, filter out the pollution, and improve the sewer system. However, I'm skeptical of anything the Army Corps of Engineers does because of all the terrible things I've heard of their other "restoration projects," particularly the way they screwed up the Everglades. They're arrogant and always seem to make things worse.

For my part, I wonder why instead of defecating in clean water people don't just poo in their gardens or somewhere else outside. Wouldn't that alleviate the issue? I would totally do it if it was socially acceptable, and I've done it plenty of other times anyway (usually don't anymore because I'm three stories up and it's too much of a pain). Hmm, how much drinkable fresh water do we have to crap in before we realize we should be shitting somewhere else?