http://www.northeasttimes.com/index.html

"The water department wants to bury a multimillion-gallon storage tank on a local tract of Fairmount Park to manage sewage overflow in the Poquessing Interceptor, a pipe that runs along its namesake creek and takes wastewater from much of the Northeast and four suburban communities.
The raw sewage is supposed to make its way to the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant in Port Richmond. But during heavy rains, untold volumes of contaminated water spill from a manhole behind Holy Family University’s Northeast campus into the Poquessing Creek.

...a water department official is scheduled to present to the public for the first time the agency’s proposed remedy to the wastewater problem during a meeting of the Friends of Poquessing Watershed."

I would like to know if anyone else was at this meeting and their opinion. I'm still sorting through my notes but to sum some items from last night:

The water department wants to build an underground sewage holding tank which will be 300 feet long by 100 feet wide holding 4.25 million gallons of raw sewage which will be collected from Lower Moreland, Southampton and Bensalem during severe storms which will occur about 6-10 times a year at Hagerman and Stevens Streets.

The members of the community who attended were vocially upset and concerned about property value, environmental and public health issues, future impact on development, and safety. Bottom line, they don't want a tank in their neighborhood.

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If they want to build it, let them go for it. It's more than we are getting here.

We have a creek behind our homes, that is fed by the street rain sewers, which dumps into Pennypack Creek about 1/4 mile downstream. But somewhere in the NE a sewage line got tapped into this system. For years now the sewage has been pooling up in one spot after the rain subsides and the creek level drops, causing the obvious odors and mosquitoes associated with it. Some nights you can't even sit outside due to the smell. Since they can't find the source of the leak, the best thing the water dept came up with is to fill in the deep pool area with rocks to improve the flow and maybe evacuate the crap to another area, or even all the way to P-P Creek.
Good luck with your area, hopefully they can resolve that for you guys before it becomes a health issue.

Yep , lets keep building more and more new homes on every inch of ground . And Oh yes lets let the new owners live here tax free for ten years. Lets over load the septic system that was put in back in the 50s and 60s.
The crap tank that they want to build will act as a shock absorber for the over loaded system for a while.
Then when the system fianly fails due to the unchecked building we will have a catastrophic failure and it will cost millions and millions to fix.
Thank you very much Mr. Street , but what do you care ,you will be safe on your fat pension and all the money you flim-flamed us out of.

http://www.northeasttimes.com/index.html

Though dedicated exclusively to carry wastewater from homes and commercial buildings, the 5-foot diameter pipe tends to back up with storm water during heavy rains. When that happens, flow ceases and a mixture of storm water and sewage cascades from a manhole adjacent to Holy Family University ground near the 4700 block of Grant Ave., down some rocks and into a tributary creek just upstream from the Poquessing.
One recent storm, the April 15 nor’easter, flooded the system and resulted in 20 million gallons of untreated sewage and storm water to be released, according to Joanne Dahme, the water department’s watersheds program manager.

City Council members Brian O’Neill (R-10th dist.) and Joan Krajewski (D-6th dist.) have introduced a bill that would ban the tanks within 1,500 feet of residential districts. With testimony having been heard at two prior Rules Committee sessions, a vote on the bill is expected today (June 14). ••

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If they don't want this, what are the other options the objectors propose?

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I'm tired and I'll post this quick...These are from informal conversations and may not be the best alternative, the best way to determine is a complete analysis of options available since the Water Department is limited to city owned land which is near the point of the problem.

1. For the suburbs to build their own holding tanks.
2. A larger diameter parallel pipe to be installed.
3. Pump the overflow into a tank at a neutral location.
4. Correct the problem of groundwater seepage into the pipes.
5. Correct residential mis-connections to the sewage or water pipe.

Then there are issues of:
1. What is the impact of residential/industrial development or home improvement additions in both the suburbs and Northeast Philadelphia.
2. Effect of the Clean Water Act
3. Would/are the suburban waste sewage facilities built to the same standards as Philadelphia's
4. Cost to build, maintain or upgrade
5. Recovery of operating expenses and capital costs
6. Contract of management fees for maintaining and treating the suburban sewage
7. Why city owned land, can the city purchase property for a project.

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The city has decided to change the name of the creek to............
,,,,,,,,,,,,,POOPQUESSING CREEK.

This is the solution that makes the most sense environmentally and from a long-range infrastructure persepctive. Its also the best solution for even worse problems with backups into homes in South Philly and Northern Liberties. Its also incredibly, incredibly expensive. Basically storm water does not "seep" into sewage sewer pipes and the coverage of this misses this point generally. For literally tens of thousands of Philly homes the water that hits roof goes directly into the normal sewers - not the storm sewers as it should. The system gets overloaded and at best raw sewage gest dumped into our rivers and streams wrecking environmental chaos - at worse lots of folks in Northern Liberties andSouth Philly have seen the results - raw sewage overflowing drains and sinks in their homes flooding their basements.

My understanding is that the only reason they are proposing these overflow pools is because its much, much cheaper than upgrading the storm sewer system and requiring each home to put in a second lateral for roof runoff to feed into the seperate storm runoff system. That however is the problem, not accidental "seeping", but that in this city of century old rowhomes, virtually every house sends its roof runoff incorrectly into the "solid waste" sewers, not the storm sewers. The type of infastructure investment called for fixing this makes the idea of burying I-95 sound cheap and would be both a massive government investment but also a major, major cost to homeowners who I presume would be privately responsible for installing that second lateral for the roof runoff to cleaner storm sewer system that can dump into the river without requiring as intensive water treatment. Basically the kind of money we are talking about is completely out of the range of the city budget and short of massively increasing taxes in this over-tax burdened city would require major federal input. These tanks were a more affordable solution and if they worked out would have been the model for similar tanks in No Libs, South Philly, and on Venice Island.

People are right to suggest that increasing development will only make the problem worse over time and lead to more uncontrolled overflows of raw sewage out of overflowing sewer lids and into our creeks and rivers. The holding tank does have the potential to smell temporarily after the 6 times a year that the overflowing happens but at least its in a covered controlled environment that can be power washed out after the flooding subsides and all the sewage stays in the sytem where it gets handled properly instead of the status quo where it simply dumps into the creeks and rivers.

So why is it worse to have the overflow in a covered tank where the sewage laden water will eventually be treated safely and correctly than having dangerous, bacteria laden pooh dump directly into our city's streams and parks? Thats what makes no sense about this NIMBY proposal - O'Neil is basically worrying about tanks that migh be allowed to sit and smell when currently the poop-water just flows directly into the creek - as someone already pointed out in this thread - where it 100% definitely smells and poses a real environmental and health threat. And its not like O'Neil is going to support the what doubling or trippling of the wage tax that a real infrastructure upgrade would likely cost without significant Federal input.

This is case where the NIMBY's should be required to name a funding source for the alternate solutions before they are allowed to put up thier objections.

I do like the idea of putting the tanks underneath the casinos though. Maybe we can rename the Sugar House casino the Honeydipper House.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

Yes, this is NIMBY-ism at it finest. Trust me, if they don't collect the stuff in a tank, you DON'T want to be around for the alternative. Their plan for our overflow problem is to make the water move better from behind our homes in the hopes that it will make it's way to Pennypack Creek. I'm just afraid it's only going to pool up somewhere else downstream behind someone elses house. At least it will Not be In My Back Yard. Yeh, it will be two yards down. So this is where we are after all these years of civilization; barely one step above dumping our waste out the windows to the streets below....

Where is this location? What are the cross streets?