Baltimore recently had to shut down Lombard Street downtown due to a large diameter water main break snarling traffic throughout the downtown area. East Monument Street was shut down because of a sewer collapse. Perhaps a year or so back, Linwood Avenue in Canton shut down first at Fleet Street and later at Foster Avenue due to water main breaks causing the collapse of the intersections. And these are just the recent problems.
The Inner Harbor, our city's lifeline to the tourism industry, brings a much needed stream of economic life to a place where a seemingly endless stream of trash flushed from storm drains floats into the harbor. Another (seemingly annual) major fish kill masked the waterfront neighborhoods in the putrid odor of dead fish last week. The water is so acrid that on many days, even without an algal bloom killing the fish, the odor makes residents of waterfront neighborhoods close their windows to the breeze and passing motorists on I-95 wrinkle their noses and close car windows. The water often has a sheen of oil slick from parking lot runoff, and the Patapsco has so much trash floating in it near the mouth of the Gwynns Falls and the I-95/395 interchange that it is clearly visible from the overpass, hundreds of feet above. An olive oil spill at an East Baltimore factory last fall visibly contaminated the water for weeks if not months.
All of these things are evident to us who live here and see them daily, all just as visible and detrimental to those tourists who visit this city and spend their dollars.
The connection, though possibly not as easy to discern as the more obvious signs above, is Baltimore's lack of attention to its water and sewer infrastructure. That's not to place blame; this city certainly has its share of social and economic woes, all of which need their fair share of attention. But let's not forget that much of the water and sewer infrastructure is already working on borrowed time. Much of this infrastructure was installed over 100 years ago, and updates have been rare if not non-existent. Aged water mains leak, undercutting roadways, causing collapse and costing taxpayers to patch up the problem and to treat and transport water for drinking. Aged wooden sewers collapse beneath loads. Over capacity, clogged and cross-connected storm sewers flush adjacent sanitary sewers into the harbor, increasing already high levels of nitrogen and bacteria, bringing conditions to ideal levels for harmful algae blooms and causing odorous conditions. Overfilled and uncleaned oil, grease and sediment traps in the storm sewers flush more nitrogen, trash and pollution into the harbor, adding to the already bad conditions.
In light of recent surpluses, perhaps it is time that Baltimore gets serious about repairing and upgrading this infrastructure, before it costs us more than what it already has and will. It is important that Baltimore, its government and its residents don't forget that the costs of failing to make these improvements now will have implications that reach far beyond just the environment, and that making them will be an investment in the city's present and future.
-Gabe Creighton, Baltimore
The writer is a geographer who works for a civil engineering firm
