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Piece Description
Like most places the Bay Area sits on top of a ticking time bomb: a vast network of disintegrating sewage pipes, some of them made of clay and dating back to the Gold Rush. We visit the frontlines of the war on sewage: plumbers who make their living off of busted pipes, as well as a city official with an unenviable job: tryign to sell the city on a multi-BILLION dollar plan to fix the system.
Broadcast History
Aired twice locally on KQED/KQEI during "B" segment of Morning edition., 2/22/08
Transcript
If there is a front line in the war on sewage, it?s people like Paul O?Grady, owner of O?Grady plumbing in San Francisco
O?GRADY..Play for me? Now I run my camera a little further, and I see another break?
O?Grady is showing me a video clip from his greatest hits of broken sewage pipes.
O?GRADY We?re looking inside a 12- inch sewer main that is completely broken with roots. Amy: That are actually growing into the pipe? O?Grady: Oh yeah, definitely.
This is just one tiny -- but typical -- slice of the vast subterranean network beneath our feet. There are some 900 miles of pipe under San Francisco alone. They link every house, business, public bathroom, water fountain, and school. Some of them date back to the Gold Rush. And many of them are a mess.
OGRADY That ball of roots is so massive that I actually have to use a shovel?and there?s even more roots and I don?t make i...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
SUGGESTED HOST INTRO When five million gallons of sewage gushed out of a wastewater treatment plant just north of San Frmncisco, people started paying attention to something that we usually prefer to ignore: aged and disintegrating sewage systems. There are about 800 sewage spills in the Bay Area each year. What will it cost to fix the problem? Amy Standen reports.
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