Combined sewer

A combined sewer is a sewage collection system of pipes and tunnels designed to simultaneously collect surface runoff and sewage water in a shared system. This type of gravity sewer design is no longer used in almost every instance worldwide when constructing new sewer systems. Modern-day sewer designs exclude surface runoff from sanitary sewers, but many older cities and towns continue to operate previously constructed combined sewer systems. A combined sewer is a sewage collection system of pipes and tunnels designed to simultaneously collect surface runoff and sewage water in a shared system. This type of gravity sewer design is no longer used in almost every instance worldwide when constructing new sewer systems. Modern-day sewer designs exclude surface runoff from sanitary sewers, but many older cities and towns continue to operate previously constructed combined sewer systems. Combined sewers can cause serious water pollution problems during combined sewer overflow (CSO) events when combined sewage and surface runoff flows exceed the capacity of the sewage treatment plant, or of the maximum flow rate of the system which transmits the combined sources. In instances where exceptionally high surface runoff occurs (such as large rainstorms), the load on individual tributary branches of the sewer system may cause a back-up to a point where raw sewage flows out of input sources such a toilets, causing inhabited buildings to be flooded with a toxic sewage-runoff mixture, incurring massive financial burdens for cleanup and repair. When combined sewer systems experience these higher than normal throughputs, relief systems cause discharges containing human and industrial waste to flow into rivers, streams, or other bodies of water. Such events frequently cause both negative environmental and lifestyle consequences, including beach closures, contaminated shellfish unsafe for consumption, and contamination of drinking water sources, rendering them temporarily unsafe for drinking and requiring boiling before uses such as bathing or washing dishes. Recent archaeological discoveries have shown that some of the earliest sewer systems were developed 2500 BC in the ancient city of Harappa. The primitive sewers were carved in the ground alongside buildings. This discovery reveals the conceptual understanding of waste disposal by the early civilizations. The earliest sewers were designed to carry street runoff away from inhabited areas and into surface waterways without treatment. Before the 19th century it was commonplace to empty human waste receptacles, e.g., chamberpots, into town and city streets and slaughter animals in open street 'shambles,' while the use of draft animals such as horses and herding of livestock through city streets meant that most contained large amounts of excrement, while paving systems pre-Macadam were mostly porous, so that precipitation could soak away and not run-off and urban rooftop rainwater was often saved in rainwater tanks. Open sewers, consisting of gutters and urban streambeds, were common worldwide before the 20th century. In the majority of developed countries, large efforts were made during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to cover the formerly open sewers, converting them to closed systems with cast iron, steel, or concrete pipes, masonry, and concrete arches, while streets and footpaths were increasingly covered with impermeable paving systems. Most sewage collection systems of the 19th and early to mid 20th century used single-pipe systems that collect both sewage and urban runoff from streets and roofs (to the extent that relatively clean rooftop rainwater was not saved in butts and cisterns for drinking and washing.) This type of collection system is referred to as a combined sewer system. The rationale for combining the two was that it would be cheaper to build just a single system.:8 Most cities at that time did not have sewage treatment plants, so there was no perceived public health advantage in constructing a separate 'surface water sewerage' (UK terminology) or 'storm sewer' (US terminology) system.:pp. 2–3 Moreover, runoff was, pre-automobile, likely to be typically highly contaminated with animal waste, while until the mid-late 19thy century, the frequent used of shambles (open street slaughterhouses) contributed more waste. The widespread replacement of horses with automotive propulsion, paving of city streets and surfaces, construction of municipal slaughterhouses, and provision of mains water in the 20th century changed the nature and volume of urban runoff to be initially cleaner, include water that formerly soaked away and previously saved rooftop rainwater after combined sewers were already widely adopted. When constructed, combined sewer systems were typically sized to carry three:pp. 2–4 to 160 times the average dry weather sewage flows. It is generally infeasible to treat the volume of mixed sewage and surface runoff flowing in a combined sewer during peak runoff events caused by snowmelt or convective precipitation. As cities built sewage treatment plants, those plants were typically built to treat only the volume of sewage flowing during dry weather. Relief structures were installed in the collection system to bypass untreated sewage mixed with surface runoff during wet weather, protecting sewage treatment plants from damage caused if peak flows reached the headworks. These relief structures, called storm-water regulators (in American English - or combined sewer overflows in British English) are constructed in combined sewer systems to divert flows in excess of the peak design flow of the sewage treatment plant. Combined sewers are built with control sections establishing stage-discharge or pressure differential-discharge relationships which may be either predicted or calibrated to divert flows in excess of sewage treatment plant capacity. A leaping weir may be used as a regulating device allowing typical dry-weather sewage flow rates to fall into an interceptor sewer to the sewage treatment plant, but causing a major portion of higher flow rates to leap over the interceptor into the diversion outfall. Alternatively, an orifice may be sized to accept the sewage treatment plant design capacity and cause excess flow to accumulate above the orifice until it overtops a side-overflow weir to the diversion outfall. CSO statistics may be confusing because the term may describe either the number of events or the number of relief structure locations at which such events may occur. A CSO event, as the term is used in American English, occurs when mixed sewage and stormwater are bypassed from a combined sewer system control section into a river, stream, lake, or ocean through a designed diversion outfall, but without treatment. Overflow frequency and duration varies both from system to system, and from outfall to outfall, within a single combined sewer system. Some CSO outfalls discharge infrequently, while others activate every time it rains.:pp. 2–3, 2–4 The storm water component contributes pollutants to CSO; but a major faction of pollution is the first foul flush of accumulated biofilm and sanitary solids scoured from the dry weather wetted perimeter of combined sewers during peak flow turbulence. Each storm is different in the quantity and type of pollutants it contributes. For example, storms that occur in late summer, when it has not rained for a while, have the most pollutants. Pollutants like oil, grease, fecal coliform from pet and wildlife waste, and pesticides get flushed into the sewer system. In cold weather areas, pollutants from cars, people and animals also accumulate on hard surfaces and grass during the winter and then are flushed into the sewer systems during heavy spring rains. CSO discharges during heavy storms can cause serious water pollution problems. The discharges contain human and industrial waste, and can cause beach closings, restrictions on shellfish consumption and contamination of drinking water sources.