Dumping and more dumping

In the last two weeks, the Milwaukee Metropolitain Sewerage District has dumped -- get this -- one and a half billion gallons of untreated wastewater and sewage into Milwaukee's waterways and Lake Michigan. The best way I know of to visualize that large a quantity is to imagine taking the US Bank Center (formerly the First Wisconsin building), filling it from bottom to top with wastewater and sewage, dumping it into the lake, and repeating that about ten times.

Just to be clear, my position is that the $3 billion Deep Tunnel Project was a phenomenal misallocation of resources. Milwaukee's fundamental problem continues to be the fact that their system channels rainwater runoff into the same lines that carry human waste. Most communities have segregated lines (one set for runoff, another for poop). Milwaukee though is just going to keep dumping and dumping wastewater until that fundamental problem is remedied.

Why, then, was the Deep Tunnel ever built? I honestly don't know, but my guess is that Milwaukee's City Government probably figured it was a way to build a partial solution while sticking the federal government and/or surrounding communities with a huge part of the bill. Whereas if they actually buckle down and start a project to segregate their sewers, they probably have to come up with all the money themselves. Again I do not know this. I am guessing.