Forget the rhetoric; the tunnel mostly works

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorialized on the continuing controversy over the operation of the "deep tunnel" system of underground storage to reduce combined sewage overflows.

Due to the constant and often uninformed sniping by talk radio and other critics, many people have mistakenly come to think of the tunnel system as a colossal, obscenely expensive public works failure...

I think so, but not because of talk radio.

Yes, the tunnels, part of $3 billion in sewer improvements, bore a huge price tag. And, regrettably, sewage overflows still occur, including one early last week after two days of rain, the second this year.

The alternative was separating the combined storm and sanitary sewers. It was the newspaper that reported on over 1.5 billion gallons of MMSD overflows in May 2004 despite deep tunnel, while Green Bay had none. The paper at that time interviewed Paul Thormodsgard, executive director of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, who said one reason for no overflows was that Green Bay had separated its combined storm and sanitary sewers.

So from what I've seen in the paper, deep tunnel "mostly works" but separating sewers "works".

Update: Bruce Murphy in his "Murphy's Law" column in Milwaukee Magazine reviews the The Deep Tunnel Debate. He could have called it "Forget the tunnel, the rhetoric mostly works".

(To reduce the overflow as close as possible to zero would cost another $7 billion, and would still provide no guarantee of total success, which is why community leaders rejected this approach.)

This appears to refer to the estimated cost of expanding the deep tunnels to eliminate the remaining sewage overflows. That does not address the issue whether overflows could have been eliminated at the same or lower cost as the existing deep tunnels by separating the combined storm and sanitary sewers. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, though remaining a defender of deep tunnel in principle, had been critical of the continuing overflows.

But last fall, the paper did a historic about face, pulling Marie Rohde and Steve Schultz from this beat and replacing them with Don Behm. The coverage of the MMSD changed radically.

Rohde and Schultz wrote the 2004 article I linked to above.

Last week, with the historically unprecedented downpour of rain in late August, the MMSD had an overflow of 117 million gallons of partially treated sewage, and the news was buried in a couple paragraphs at the back of a story about the weather.

Which Mr. Murphy considers a good thing.

Its Sunday editorial made plain to readers what its news coverage has more subtly suggested for the last year: The Deep Tunnel works.

More accurately, "mostly works".

The change in coverage will leave [talk radio hosts Charlie] Sykes and [Mark] Belling with no oxygen on this issue, no factual verification of their complaints.

I've lived around Milwaukee so long I can remember when this was the kind of thing the paper's defenders denied that it did. But as a paid subscriber, shouldn't I be entitled to a list of the facts the editors are suppressing?