(NECN) Although communities are having a hard time finding places to put all that snow, the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass. should not be one of them. Dumping snow, which can be contaminated with sand, salt, trash and oil, is illegal and now a criminal and environmental investigation is under way.
Click here to hear from the Lawrence Police Chief. More than 42 trucks were caught on camera in a video obtained by The Lawrence Eagle Tribune on Sunday night into Monday morning dumping their loads into the river.
Emphasis mine. The local news had this story as one of their main stories, and expanded on why it is illegal to dump snow into the ocean or rivers:
But there’s one very important reason why the snow can’t be dumped in the ocean….it’s against the law. The Clean Water Act prohibits dumping snow in the ocean, and The Wetlands Protection Act says “no” to dumping it in rivers and lakes. Why? Because those truckloads of snow would contain contaminants like road treating chemicals, salt and even oil and gas from cars. Not to mention garbage picked up off the road. All stuff that doesn’t belong in our waterways.
The Clean Water Act prevents dumping snow in the ocean. Please note that, because this is *not* just a "Oh, MA is retarded" thing - this is Federal retardedness. Granted, something this incredibly stupid could only be brought to you by the Federal government, but still. Can someone please explain to me how the "contaminants like road treating chemicals, salt and even oil and gas from cars" that sits in a giant pile of snow in a parking lot somewhere does NOT get into the waterways? Does it magically disappear when the snow melt?
I don't about anywhere else, but in my town, all the storm drains have little pictograms telling you not to dump chemicals down the drain because it drains in the river. So any snow piled up in my driveway or the parking lot of the Getty is going to melt, flow into those drains, and wind up in the river anyways. Got that? Piling snow in a giant pile in a parking lot, where it will eventually melt and wind up in the river is fine; removing it from the roadways and dumping it directly into the river is against Federal Law. Something magically happens to the snow as it sits in a pile that renders all those evil chemicals inert.
Personally, I blame George W. Bush for all this snow.
That is all.
18 comments:
Jay, it's the federal government, logic, common sense, and intelligent decision making are not allowed.
We can't dump all that snow and salt into the ocean because it would turn into salt water. Oh, wait...
OK, we can't dump all that salt and snow into the ocean because there is sand mixed in and it would sink to the bottom and end up on top of all the sand. Oh wait...
OK, there must be some reason that makes sense, right?
Funny. In NYC there is very little room to pile even a fairly small snowfall. They use front end loaders to dump the snow in giant melters that melt the snow and let the water run down the storm drain (and out to the river).
Oh, and locally, with 5ft of snowfall in the last month, most of the cities are loading snow into trucks and carting them to parks and dumping it there. Where are most east coast cities located? Along major waterways. Where are those parks? On the waterfront. So you cant dump the snow into the river, but you can pile thousands of cubic yards of the stuff 30ft from the water's edge. Go figure.
I'm not sure about Nashua or Manchester, but the City of Concord does exactly what mopar said - on the banks of the same Merrimack river. Check out the huge, very dirty pile to the right of Exit 13 on Route 93 northbound next time you're up that way in the late winter.
But that's okay! That snow will NEVER make it into the water all of 30 feet away! And if it does, magic unicorn farts will keep ZOMG TEH EBIL CONTAMINANTS out of the water...
Man, this is Dope and Change...
http://bmpinc.com/ and other products like it help. Yeah, the salt will be in solution, but you can't stop everything.
Science is wonderful, no?
I'm glad the Mayor has cleaned up the drugs and gangs on the streets of Lawrence. He can now concentrate on his new highest priority - Snow Dumpers, the dirty bastards!!
Some cities are required by the federal government to treat/purify the run-off before it goes into local waterways (I know Dallas is one of them).
Read between the lines and the issue here is really that a contractor is importing "waste" into a town, and the mayor doesn't like it -- neither the extra traffic nor being perceived as the dumping ground for North Andover.
But, while I agree 100% that the water will all get to the river on its own without our assistance, the litter, garbage, and sand will not. Gravity will deposit them on the ground where the snow-pile has been.
And surface-drainage has been built with oil traps for a long time, so the lighter-than water liquid contaminants will be largely removed from parking-lot snow also, either by the traps on the storm-sewers or by the natural biological breakdown in soil that they soak into.
So while I agree that (absent litter and garbage) dumping into the sea would make sense. I strongly think that the river would be better off without the extra sediment and salt.
Reminds me of when I was in the Navy. We could get in serious trouble if we dumped anything within a 50 mile range of the shore. So those of us who worked in Navigation would get on the 1MC and announce "Now Hear this, Now this. The ship is now 50 miles away from the coast. Repeat: The ship is now 50 miles away from the coast. That is all". Boy, you should see all the trash that came out and went over the side during the next hour. Funny thing, this only applied when we were in American Waters. You should see how filthy many countries coastal waterways and shorelines are. But since it's America's fault that Mother Gaia is wounded...
Refusing to enforce stupid laws (see prohibition) is the prerogative of law enforcement everywhere. It a federal law, why is this man enforcing it? Is he enforcing federal immigration laws, too?
Bubblehead Les:
On our ship in the Med, we once had a Russian sub that was "hiding" underneath us. We held a special "heavy objects" dump over the side. Old electrical motors weighing hundreds of pounds, that sort of thing. He didn't hide down there for long...
It is suppose to be diverted to storm water basins. These basins hold the water till it leaks through the soil and contaminates the groundwater which is much harder to clean up.
Duh, don't you feel stupid now?
Gerry
ASM826,
It's pretty obvious you've never been to Lawrence. Where illegal immigrant status isn't just common, it's practically required.
When I served onboard an LPD in the Navy (a gator-freighter - effectively a militarized transport that carried Marines and their gear overseas), we were prohibited from emptying ballast tanks in port in San Diego. Why? Because the salt water from the ocean may be more contaminated with oil and whatnot else than what was in San Diego harbor.
'Cause, y'know, San Diego harbor and the ocean are not at all connected...
*headdesk*
They need to stockpile as much snow as possible so that when it all melts this coming spring the resulting floods will be big enough to trigger federal disaster funds ---
....this year's version of last years "stimulus" funding.
Actually, snow melt entering a storm water drainage system is filtered in a way that direct dumping is not. Even the most basic storm sewers have physical rakes to catch debris and gravitational seperation for oil; increasingly they also have settlement basins for sediments (sand). It isn't the salt that is the issue.
Chemicals dumped in generally won't get filtered by those mechanisms, hence the request that they not get dumped.
A few cities with older infrastructure will have storm drainage systems that when overfilled will dump without any filtering; but that is increasingly uncommon. More common is to treat storm water as waste water and really clean it.
Actually, something *does* happen to the snow when it melts and runs into the river. It picks up far more contaminents. Perfect government logic in action, folks!
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