America’s Streets Are Filled With Poop, And Billions Of Gallons Of Untreated Wastewater Are Being Poured Into Our Lakes And Rivers
All over the United States, the streets of our major cities are covered in poop. So exactly what does that say about us? It isn’t as if this is a new problem. As long as human societies have existed, human and animal waste has been a problem. Civilized societies have always found ways to deal with it, while uncivilized societies have always struggled to keep things clean. Unfortunately, despite all of our advanced technology, we seem to be fighting a losing battle. In fact, one New York City resident recently complained that there is “poop everywhere” this winter…
“It’s horrible: It’s, like, garbage and poop everywhere,” Mott Haven resident Lulu Gerena, 28, fumed to The Post while walking her Beagle-mix Pinkie near the stench-filled stretch.
“It’s not fair, because everybody has to step in the poop, because nobody is picking it up.”
Residents are steaming over the slobs who are turning city sidewalks into a sewer trail.
For months, snow has been mixing with poop to create gigantic mountains of “snow poop”.
Now that those mountains have been melting, people are posting videos of what is being left behind…
Of course conditions on the west coast are even worse.
At one elementary school in San Francisco, students have turned jumping over piles of human excrement into a game…
But the school, located a block from the 16th Street BART Plaza, has been dealt a tough hand, geographically. Six school staffers and six parents told Mission Local about their routine sights: Drug use, drug dealing, public intoxication, public urination, public defecation, littering, sex and nudity. All are in the school’s immediate environs.
“My daughter covers her mouth and nose,” said Karen Puc, the mother of a seven-year-old student, in Spanish. “Sometimes we play that we jump poop on the street,” she said. They make it a game, like hopscotch.
Isn’t that horrible?
No student should have to grow up in such conditions.
Further north in the once beautiful city of Vancouver, the human waste problem has become so severe that local businesses are actually hiring “poop fairies” to help clean up the mess…
Vancouver, renowned for its natural beauty and laid back lifestyle, has a human waste problem so bad that businesses have hired “poop fairies” to speed the cleanup on city sidewalks.
Dodging human and dog waste has become a real problem for pedestrians navigating the city’s sidewalks, and it’s not just a problem plaguing the Downtown Eastside. The city’s own feces removal response program can’t seem to keep up so business improvement districts have hired the “poop fairies.”
“Everybody down here feels that you end up walking in stuff no matter where you go. So, basically, it’s getting tracked around,” said Dave Hamm, vice president of the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, which counts about 3,000 people in its membership.
Sadly, this is a crisis that isn’t going away any time soon.
As the ranks of the homeless and the ranks of the drug addicts continue to expand, the number of people pooping in the streets will only continue to grow.
Meanwhile, America’s crumbling pipes are pouring billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into our lakes and rivers.
I know that sounds crazy, and so let me give you some examples.
When a section of the Potomac Interceptor recently failed, 243 million gallons of untreated wastewater went directly into the Potomac River…
In Montgomery County, Maryland on Jan. 19, a 72″ diameter section of a sewage pipe known as the Potomac Interceptor collapsed. The pipe carries about 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from near Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia to a station that pumps it to an advanced wastewater treatment plant.
As a result of the collapse, more than 243 million gallons of untreated wastewater have flowed into the Potomac River, DC Water, the utility responsible for the system, reported on Feb. 6.
That was a major disaster, but an incident that occurred in Wisconsin last August was far worse.
When the city of Milwaukee was overwhelmed by a giant rainstorm, 5.14 billion gallons of untreated wastewater were “discharged into nearby waterways and Lake Michigan”…
For example, intense rain in Milwaukee in August 2025 led to 5.14 billion gallons of untreated wastewater from the city’s combined sewer being discharged into nearby waterways and Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Needless to say, incidents like this are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are more failures of our rapidly aging wastewater systems literally every single day.
Some of the pipes that are in the ground are more than 100 years old, and that is a major problem…
While the average lifespan of a wastewater system is 40 to 50 years, many of the plants and pipes installed across the nation could be twice that old or more. In cities like Washington, D.C., for example, Olson said, wastewater systems were put in well over a century ago.
In some cases, those pipes may have been replaced, but in many cases, including Chicago, the pipes have not been replaced, he said. “They may have been repaired or maintained at times, but there are still pipes (sewers) in the ground throughout the United States that are well over a century old.”
According to the EPA, it would take more than 300 billion dollars over the next two decades to properly upgrade our wastewater systems.
And of course this is just one element of the unprecedented national infrastructure crisis that we are now facing.
Overall, we literally need trillions of dollars that we do not have to deal with America’s crumbling infrastructure.
Since we are absolutely drowning in debt, it is highly likely that our rapidly aging infrastructure will continue to be neglected.
So more pipes will break, more bridges and tunnels will collapse, more roads will crumble, more accidents will happen, and power grid failures will become more frequent.
We have a giant mess on our hands, and it is really starting to stink.
