Clean Water for Baltimore: Seeking a Solution

Author: Erika Pietrzak , National Climate Fellow

Every person needs access to clean, drinkable water to live and the lack of access in Baltimore endangers this 62% Black city. This issue was created, in part, because of the redlining plaguing the city’s planning, housing, and public works which led to ignoring the repercussions of that planning. Furthermore, the city’s environmental justice goals are failed each year, particularly affecting Black and less affluent neighborhoods already suffering “from poor water quality in nearby waterways, increased flood volumes, and associated public health impacts and property damage. Though Baltimore’s poor water quality affects all its citizens, majority-Black neighborhoods experience the most dangerous sewage backups.

Yearly, hundreds of millions of gallons of stormwater and sewage mix with nutrients, sediment, and fecal bacteria in Baltimore’s waters, partly due to the sewage’s datedness. Baltimore’s stormwater management is “over-reliant on shortsighted, ineffective solutions,” and, coupled with poor infrastructure and heavy rainfall, toxic sewage backs up into residents’ homes, endangering their health, homes, and finances. In 2018, over 17 million gallons of sewage overflowed in Baltimore and experienced 25 billion gallons of stormwater runoff, making stormwater runoff one of Baltimore’s fastest-growing sources of pollution. Rain pushes bacteria, trash, heavy metals, and other pollutants from the city’s streets and roofs into its waters.

Baltimore is a port city with “a long history of heavy industry, manufacturing, shipping, and transportation.” Its waters are filled with toxic pollutants including chromium, PCBs, chlordane, other organic pollutants, and heavy metals because of the ‘urban water cycle’. More than 55% of rain rushes into pipes that empty directly into its waterways, rather than “being absorbed by soils and plants that transpire that water into the atmosphere.” Baltimore’s pipes were installed in the 1920s and are now crumbling. They are raw, untreated, and carry abundant pathogens harmful to human health. They also run directly beside equally old pipes with raw sewage in them. Yearly, millions of gallons of raw sewage are dumped into Baltimore’s waters. Sewer overflows can be caused by grease balls or debris that back up the pipe system, stormwater infiltration of the sanitary sewer system, and increased rainfall. In one study in 2017, 12 out of 54 locations had sewer overflows that released an estimated 18.2 million gallons of this harmful sewage........

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