Their firefly was on a plate eating orange marmalade when mom scraped it into the garbage disposal. She turned it on. 

Sam thought it was cool to see the bits of light follow them down the drainpipe down to the sewer line. He thought it was a like a light show in a planetarium in a water park. This would be the ‘neatest’ thing he would see for a while. 

 “Here we go Sam” 

They went past the P-trap and into the wastewater underworld of humanity. And no, P-trap is not a potty-mouth bathroom talk. A P-trap is a device that looks something like the letter ’P’ and is used to keep sewer gases from seeping into homes. 

“I’ve smelled sewer gas before. It stinks. I’m glad I can’t smell, but I’m still not thrilled about this part of the trip, I have to tell you,” Sam muttered. “I was up on the roof once with dad cleaning gutters and I saw a pipe coming out of the roof and asked dad what it was. He said it was the sewer vent pipe. I stuck my face in it and breathed in deep. I almost threw up. Dad just shook his head and helped me down the ladder. It was a few minutes before I felt alright again. Dad shakes his head like that a lot, y’know?” 

“I’m sure he does Sam. Nonetheless, this trip will do you good. For every gallon of water drawn from a faucet, it has to go somewhere. While some of the water put onto lawns or baked into cakes that may evaporate, the rest of that water has to be carried away or a city would drown it its own sludge. Understand?” 

“I guess! So, the amount of water brought into a city, plus rain and snow, minus transevaporation, equals water out?” 

"Very good! Yes! Chicago has about 4,400 miles of sewers to take away water from the city,” Dorp explained.

 “Wait!” Sam said. “When we came in, I thought Chicago has 4,000 miles of water lines.” 

“Exactly right, Sam.” However, since Chicago has combined sewers, we can speculate that the difference is due to the need for more storm sewers than water supply lines, eh?” 

“Wait; what are combined sewers, storm sewers and all that?” Sam asked. 

Dorp explained that sewers are big pipes like tunnels that take away any unwanted liquids from a city. Storm sewers take away rainwater and melted snow, water from washing a car or from a lawn sprinkler water that runs into the street. Sanitary sewers take away black water (from toilets), grey water (from sinks, washing machines and bathtubs) from homes and businesses, and they also take away discharge from factories. Discharge is the dirty waters and discarded chemical leftovers from service and manufacturing businesses. Combined sewers handle both rainwater and sewage. 

Sam asked, “Why are some sewers combined? “ 

“Years ago, when pollution was not understood like it is now, over 700 industrial cities in the US built combined sewers. 

As we go down the line toward the treatment plant, you’ll see big sewer pipes with the bottoms closed off at certain places. During days when it’s not raining, regular sewage and discharges flow through the constricted bottom half of the sewer system, and all the goodies happily find their way to the treatment plant. However, when it rains, things change. The roofs of building are designed to shed water quickly, not absorb it. If you added up all the roofs, sidewalks, and streets in the average downtown city block, it can exceed 90% of the area. 

The water leaves quickly and runs into the storm sewer. Heavy rains create more flow than the short walls in the sewer pipes can handle. The water overflows the barriers and heads toward the storm water discharges, bypassing the treatment plant. This means untreated sewage is released into the waterways."

“Why don’t cities put in separate sewers for those people?” Sam asked. 

“Sewers lay under the streets. It’s expensive and disruptive to open up streets to put separate sewers, as they are called. Omaha, Nebraska is currently installing separate sewers, and it is quite an undertaking,” Dorp said. 

“Enjoy the view? What are we going to see down here? Are there really alligators in sewers?” 

Dorp said, “Baby alligators and other amphibian pets have been flushed down toilets, as have countless goldfish, but full-grown alligators are extremely rare. But sanitary workers have found interesting things in various city sewers.” 

“Like what?” 

“Well, these items can be categorized into a few broad categories. 

First, there are things accidentally lost down the pipes. These can range from car keys dropping through street grates to jewelry going down sinks and false teeth being flushed down the toilet.”

“Tasty, Mr. Dorp, real tasty.” 

“Next, are things that toddlers put down there because they like to watch it disappear, such as toys. 

Toilets are also used to dispose of things people don’t want to be caught with, like children with their accidentally soiled underwear, and people with illegal drugs.” 

“People also intentionally put things down the drain they shouldn’t, like females who flush personal hygiene items. 

One woman in China flushed her newborn baby down a toilet. Neighbors heard the crying and called authorities. 

Workers chiseled out the section of pipe that held the baby and took it to a medical clinic to free the baby.” 

“Wow. A baby can fit through a pipe?” Sam gasped. 

“Not all the way. Additionally, Sam, cooks in homes and restaurants pour hot grease down the drain. This grease, along with baby wipes that shouldn’t be flushed, form into large masses that can clog sewers.” 

Dorp was talking about something that he had seen in a London sewer, a 15 ton ‘fat-berg’ was discovered that was blocking 95% of the capacity of the sewer. It was the size of a double-decker bus and took three weeks to blast away with high-pressure hoses. This happened in a restaurant district of London. 

Sam said, “I have a poe-m, Edgar;

 
An Ode to Sewers:
I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as a sewer
It carries away both poo and pee
So I can’t see or smell the eeewww-ers 

Beneath the ground, dark waters flow
gone from sight, and justly so.
What it carries away from my hometown,
would gag my fav’rite long-eared hound. 

People put wrong stuff down there
then walk away without a care.
these things, they do coagulate
Sewer workers think they mate...

and multiply beyond belief,
and cause all sorts of toil and grief.
Fat and wipes and other things,
congeal while cooks above do sing 

They set their meals upon their tables,
while fatbergs grow the size of fables.”

 “Very clever Sam. We’re almost at the treatment plant, the Stickney Facility.” 

“Did you say The Stinky Facility?” 

“No Sam, I said, ‘The Stickney Facility.“

"What happens to us there?” Dorp replied: 

“Nothing happens to us. We are water molecules. 

First, the sewage passes through a screen to take out foreign matter, like baseballs and shopping carts. 

Then it passes through a settling pond that lets the sand and grit drop out. The sand is then collected, washed and used elsewhere. This grit actually contains a lot of coffee grounds. Chicago has to wash its citizens’ used coffee grounds before it can haul them to the landfill. Consider this: if every household in Chicago had five people, and one 10-cup pot of coffee was made per day, per household, using 2/3 ounce of coffee grounds, and all the grounds were put down the disposal, guess how many grounds would go in the sewer every day? For every million people, there would be 8,333 pounds of coffee grounds put into the sewer. That’s over four tons of just coffee grounds per day per million people. Not very ecological or economical. 

"Yes. Anyway, the water is then sent to a tank where fat and oils float on the top and the ‘bio-solids’ drop to the bottom…” 

“Whoa, cowboy; what is a bio-solid?” 

“Guess, Galileo,” Dorp responded. 

“Oh. Poop” 

Dorp continued, “The solids are spin-dried in a machine and then hauled to a field where it ages and dries, then is sold as a soil enricher. It is used in area golf courses, tree farms, and the like. The left-over liquid is sent to a series of digestion tanks where bacteria turns the leftovers into less offensive matter.” 

“Finally, the leftovers, called effluent, is discharged into The Sanitary and Ship Canal, a body of water fed by water from Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. The operators of the plant claim that the water coming out of the plant is cleaner than the river it is going into. We will leave the Stickney Treatment plant and go into The Sanitary and Ship Canal, then the Des Plaines River and then the Illinois River, and eventually into the Mississippi River.” 

"Wait!. The Mississippi River!? I was hoping we would go back into the Great Lakes and play a while. I wanted to see if there is a way to get from the Great Lakes to New York City. I was hoping to go to New York City and eat in a Jewish deli. Wait: I can’t eat anything, can I?” 

“I’m afraid not Sam, but I can tell you how to get from Chicago to New York City via water. Chicago is on the southwest corner of Lake Michigan, one of the five lakes that make up the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes touch eight US states and two Canadian provinces. About 21% of the earth’s fresh water is here, so these Great Lakes really are a big deal. 

“Why the big drop, Mr. Dorp” 

“There is a famous landmark that accounts for 170 feet of the drop. It is called Niagara Falls.” 

Sam became animated, “Oh Yeah! I’ve heard of people going over the Falls in a barrel. What a ride that must be!” 

“No doubt,” said Dorp. “Niagara Falls is actually the name given to the geological landmark that contains three waterfalls. 

and the Bridal Veil Falls.” 

“Wait,” Sam interrupted. “Why is it called Niagara Falls if the three falls are called by other names?” 

“This is because the water that flows over the three falls is brought there by the Niagara River. Between two million to six million cubic feet of water flow over the Falls every minute.” 

“Then that means the other four Great Lakes are sending that much water downstream then, eh?”

“Nice Canadian accent Sam; but yes. Very perceptive. And Lake Ontario empties into the St. Lawrence River and flows in a northeastern direction to the Atlantic Ocean.” 

 “Wait! If there are five lakes tied together, how does water move through the Great Lakes? “

"Sam, if we were to travel the Great Lakes in a fish for example, we would start either in Lake Superior or Lake Michigan, then swim into Lake Huron, and through Lake Erie. Then we would go over Niagara Falls and into the St. Lawrence River. “

"So, Lake Ontario isn’t even connected to the other lakes in a way that boats can safely travel?” Sam asked. 

via the Welland Canal, which uses part of the Welland River as its watercourse. It is a 26-mile-long waterway that bypasses the Niagara Falls just to the west. It has a series of locks that enable watercraft to be raised or lowered from one altitude to another. The Welland Canal is half the length of the Panama Canal and works on the same principle of locks to raise and lower ships.” 

“What is a lock?” Sam asked, exasperated with all the new terms he was learning on summer vacation. 

“A canal lock,” Dorp said patiently, “is like a water elevator that raises or lowers a ship from one level of the canal to the next, so the ship can move from one end of the canal to the other end.” 

“Why do they put locks in canals,” Sam puzzled. “Why don’t didn’t they just dig a trench to go from one water to the other?” 

“Well, Sam, that’s the way the Suez Canal in Egypt was built, shoreline to shoreline without locks. But consider this: The Panama Canal, though at equal elevation at both oceans, has hills between them that are 600 feet off sea level. With a canal 200 feet wide, that’s a lot of dirt to move. The water elevators that we call ‘locks’ saved a lot of work and money in building the Panama Canal.” 

“And concerning the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario sets about 300 feet lower than Lake Erie. 

The locks are needed to keep the water in the higher lakes.” 

“Oh, I see. Are there any other canals in the area?” 

“There are several, but the most famous is probably the Erie Canal, which goes from Lake Erie at Buffalo, New York,

about 150 miles north of New York City.” 

Dorp and Sam slid through the gate into another waterway on the western side of Chicago. 

“OK Sam, we’re now in the Sanitary and Shipping Canal. Soon we’ll be going down the Mississippi River, 

past several large cities like St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana.”

Photo: Chicago Sun Times