Seattle and rainfall

Not doing so well - from The Seattle Times - February 9, 2017:

Millions of gallons of wastewater dumping into Puget Sound after heavy rainfall
Millions of gallons of untreated wastewater and stormwater began dumping into Puget Sound Thursday after high tides and heavy rains overwhelmed a King County wastewater-treatment center in Seattle.

Flooding at West Point Treatment Plant in Magnolia’s Discovery Park caused damage that apparently fried an electrical circuit and triggered a system shutdown, a spokesman said.

That has caused the county to operate the facility much of Thursday in “emergency bypass mode” — dumping untreated effluent directly into Puget Sound.

Officials were still calculating how much untreated wastewater had flowed into Puget Sound. Doug Williams, a spokesman for the county’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks, estimated more than 150 million to 200 million gallons, with that number likely to grow.

And now, The Seattle Times - today:

Officials say damage to sewage plant in Discovery Park is catastrophic
King County has stopped dumping raw sewage into Puget Sound from its crippled West Point treatment plant for now — but the county will likely start dumping again when rainy weather returns.

Beaches at Discovery Park are closed because of the risk to public health from raw sewage pumped from the plant into the Sound, with no date yet for reopening. “We are here for the health of the environment, and for public health, and right now, we are compromising that,” said Mark Isaacson, director of King County’s wastewater treatment division.

And a bit more - the extent of the damage:

But the plant was already flooded by then, with a barrage of some 15 million gallons of water barreling through it, powerful enough to buckle and break down 25-foot-high garage doors, mangle equipment, and leave a fur of untreated sewage 12 feet up the walls. Cavernous rooms filled with pumps and other equipment were flooded to the ceiling and steeped in muck.

This is what happens when you defer maintenence and system upgrades and spend the money on handouts and virtue signalling.