Germany’s Sewer System

choi

(1)
(a) Our Combined Sewer. San Francisco Water Power Sewer, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, undated.
www.sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=398

Quote:

“San Francisco is the only coastal city in California with a combined sewer system that collects and treats both wastewater and stormwater in the same network of pipes. Water flows through most of the sewers using gravity. Our hilly geography comes in handy reducing the energy and maintenance costs associated with mechanical pumping.

"Why do we need to treat stormwater? Cleaning stormwater is important because of the street pollutants that wash into the sewer system. Imagine all the motor oil, pesticides, metals, and other street litter that you see on the street. They all go into the sewer system when it rains.

(b) San Francisco Combined Sewer. Oakland Museum of California, undated.
www.museumca.org/creeks/1690-OBSFSewers.html
("Except for portions of Old Sacramento, all other cities in California have separate sewer systems")

choi

(2) History of the Sewer System. Healthy Harbor, undated.
www.healthyharborbaltimore.org/s ... of-the-sewer-system
("Because Baltimore took so long to construct a sewer system, the streams and storm drains were required to act as sewers, conveying human and industrial waste as well as stormwater into the Harbor. However, with the construction of a sewage system separate from the storm drain system, the City managed to avoid the problems caused by combined sewer systems, which are currently plaguing other modern cities including New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC")

My comment: The first sentence is about Baltimore's situation PRIOR TO construction of sewer system in 1915.

choi

(3)
(a) The first modern sewer system in the world was built in Hamburg, Germany.

Seeger H, The History of German Waste Water Treatment. European Water Management, 2: 51-56
www.helsinki.fi/envirohist/seaandcities/articles/Seeger.pdf

Quote: “1866/67, a massive wave of cholera epidemics spread over the whole of Germany. Typhoid, on the other hand, had a permanent presence in the cities, and it continued to show high mortality rates up to the late 19th century. Slowly the idea was accepted that the cause of the epidemics had to be looked for in the cities’ bad sanitary conditions.

“Although a sewer system had been constructed as early as 1842 in Hamburg, the general introduction of sewers in the German cities started with the construction of a system in Frankfurt/ Main in 1867, just after the biggest wave of cholera epidemics. Table 2 shows the construction dates of the first German sewer systems.

My comment: Please view Table 2.
(b) Joseph Bazalgette
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette
(1819-1891; an English civil engineer; The [London sewer] system was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1865, although the whole project was not actually completed for another ten years; Extensive sewage treatment facilities were built in 1900 [in London])
(c) The first sewer system in US: “Chicago's antiquated combined sewer system, first built in 1856”


(4) Li N et al, Molecular Surveillance of Cryptosporidium spp, Giardia duodenalis, and Enterocytozoon bieneusi by Genotyping and Subtyping Parasites in Wastewater. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 6: e1809 (2012)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435239/
("Qingdao has separate storm water and domestic wastewater systems, and the other three cities [Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan] use combined sewer systems in the inner city areas.")

choi

(5) Gebhard Weiss and Hansjörg Brombach, section 8.1 Today’s practice in stormwater management in Germany - Statistics. Novatech, 2007
documents.irevues.inist.fr/bitstream/handle/2042/25163/1557_063weiss.pdf?sequence=1

Quote:

"The first sewer networks in Germany were built in the late 19th century. William Lindley and William Phillips Dunbar were two famous British engineers who designed the first combined sewer systems eg in Frankfurt and Hamburg. After the first mechanical sewage treatment plants came up, also separate drainage systems were built. The latter were preferred mainly in the North and the East of Germany, while the South is mainly governed by the combined system. Fig. 1 shows the up-to-date distribution. * * * Moreover, the cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen resemble islands [mixed combined AND separate systems, while the surrounding regions uses mostly separate sewer system].

My comment:
(a) Praising its sewer works in Tsingtao/Qingdao, Chinese admire Germans more than Taiwanese. But Germany’s first two sewer systems were designed by Englishmen (the Lindley father and sons; but not Dunbar, see (b)). Moreover, US says German sewer systems are crumbling due to old age.
Robert S Amick and Edward Burgess, Project Summary: Exfiltration in Sewer System. US Environmental Protection Agency, December 2000 (EPA/600/R-01/034)
nepis.epa.gov/Adobe/PDF/P100E5PY.pdf
(“The study of exfiltration has been of great interest in Germany. The country has a very old, deteriorated [sewer] infrastructure. The cost to complete the necessary repairs to Germany's sewer systems is estiated to be near $100 billion (US). Therefore, several exfiltration studies have been conducted to prioritize repair work")
(b) William P Dunbar
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Dunbar
(William Philipps Dunbar; 1863 - 1922; an American physician)

In other words, Wikipedia makes a serious mistake.
(c)
(i) William Lindley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lindley
(1808-1900; an English engineer who together with his sons designed water and sewerage systems for over 30 cities across Europe; a catastrophic fire in May 1842 left a third of the town [Hamburg] in ruins; Within three years 11 km of sewers had been built in Hamburg)
(ii) Municipal Engineering on the Continent; A presidential address. Nov 25, 1904. In: The Surveyor and municipal and county engineer. vol 26, July 1 to Dec 30, 1904. London: The St Bride's Press, Ltd.
books.google.com/books?id=vpZVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA626&lpg=PA626&dq=William+Lindley+sewer&source=bl&ots=eWEOx1fuLs&sig=u1zWx1eWiUgN78aaHNMobvUquGI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5qcsVO_lE8a9ggT4x4IY&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=William%20Lindley%20sewer&f=false
(summary of a speech delivered by WH Lindley, a son of William Lindley: “Mr Lindley [the son] proceeded to explain how the first works for supply as well as the first sewerage works were those of the city of Hamburg. These were designed and carried out by his father, William Lindley, after the great fire in 1842, under the influence of English works of a similar nature. * * * He [son] described the system of flat-graded sewers of elliptical section")
(iii) William Heerlein Lindley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Heerlein_Lindley
(1853-1917)
(d) Why Berlin has a mixed sewer system? See next posting.