As expected, the rain over the weekend triggered dumping of both partially-treated sewage and raw sewage from the combined sewers in Milwaukee and Shorewood. I decided to run through all 20 of MMSD’s working rain gauges to see how much rain fell between the 7-am hour Saturday (the first gauge, at Green Tree and River in River Hills, showed 0.03 inches of rain at 8 am) and the start of the dumpings (the partially-treated dump began at 11:30 am Sunday, the combined-raw-sewage dump began at 2:45 pm).
The average rainfall in the 28 hours between the start of the rain and the start of the partially-treated sewage dump – 1.93 inches, with a high of 2.64 inches on Granville just north of Bradley (Milwaukee’s far northwest side)
The average rainfall in the 31 hours between the start of the rain and the start of the combined-raw dump – 2.45 inches, with a high of 3.36 inches on Granville just north of Bradley, 2.11 inches at 3rd and Lincoln (the southern part of the combined sewer area), 2.46 inches at 25th and Canal (the middle of the combined sewer area), 1.92 inches at Bartlett and Belleview (Upper East Side, also in the combined sewer area), and 2.31 inches at 36th and Fond du Lac (the northwest part of the combined sewer area)
The average rainfall in the 46 hours between the start of the rain and 5 am this morning – 2.95 inches, with a high of 3.90 inches on Granville just north of Bradley
As of 7:20 am, the main Deep Tunnel was holding 369 million of its 405 million-gallon capacity, and it is slowly being pumped out, while the Northwest Side annex was holding 88 million of its 89 million-gallon capacity. Both sewage plants are running at over 100% capacity.
Exit question – Is that a “hundred-year” rain that MMSD and their echo chamber at The Milwaukee Journal (I don’t remember whether the Sentinel also bought in) said would be required to defeat the somewhat-almost-not-quite-deep-enough Deep Tunnel?
