Heavy Rains Mean Pollution in Bay

KCBS 106.9 FM

The Chronicle is reporting that overwhelmed sewage facilities led to four dozen spills during January, 630,000 gallons of hazardous raw sewage and 170 million gallons of partially treated sewage.

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Deb Self is the Executive Director of San Francisco-based Baykeeper, an environmental watchdog group, and she says the problem isn't so much the plants themselves but dilapidated wastewater and storm pipes.

"They're so out of repair," she said. "A lot of that rain water actually flows through the ground and into the sewage pipes."

One state officials says the cost to replace those old plants and pipes could be billions of dollars.