Mega projects have tons of money sitting around, plus they have highly compensated consultants standing at the ready, just waiting to listen to your complaints and bright ideas. There’s 1% for art money, there’s environmental impact study mitigation efforts, there’s the fact that those consultants only get paid if they can prove their value by accommodating your inputs.
In other words, now is the time to figure out how your solar powered gondola idea can be rationalized in terms of a poo tube. The tube is fixing overflows of poo into Lake Union that currently happen 163 times per year, like this:
The poo tube will be 2.7 miles long, 14 feet in diameter and will be able to hold 15 million gallons of stormwater mixed with some sewage that overflows during heavy rains. Post storms, the overflow will be directed to the existing treatment plant in Magnolia.
Here’s where the poo tube is going. Your solar powered gondola should start at the East Portal, located at 35th and Interlake on the old UCDS property that is currently scraped, and (rumor has it) will be used as a parking lot for Evo until tunnel construction begins in 2018:
Timing is going to be critical in getting your gondola built. You have only 1 week left to get things going, since the initial comment period closes on August 24. Email [email protected] or sent to SPU attn: Betty Meyer, SEPA Responsible Official, Seattle Municipal Tower, Ste 4900, PO Box 34018, Seattle 98124. Here’s the schedule:
Much thanks to Erika Bigelow of the Wallingford Community Council for her assistance with this fine news story. If you want to dive in deep on the ins and outs of the poo tube, see the project site here.
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Since the route seems to be under the “Missing Link” section of the Burke-Gilman Trail maybe it should be suggested that the tunnel boring machine be repurposed to dig a tunnel for the trail segment to appease Ballard Oil, Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel, ….
Project link at the very end.
It’s amazing to me the efforts be made to deal with CSOs. Since there are no surface streams and little surface area to build more capacity for stormwater, we’re going to get a big long tank underground that fills up when it rains. With mostly rain, but some poo mixed in just to make things difficult.
Is there a reason you called it a “poo tube” the whole time? It makes the article harder to read since I’m constantly thrown out by the tone. There is a real term: it’s called a sewer line/main.
If you insist on using poo tube in the title as a cheap way to hunt for clicks, fine. It’s 2015 and everyone is pushing outrageous sounding titles. But in the body please use the actual terms. People spend real time, effort and money to design, build and maintain our critical infrastructure. Please don’t treat it as a cheap joke.
I was contemplating a related issue lately concerning the push to make Seattle as dense as the City Council…wants it to be. An neighborhood that was built decades ago with infrastructure to serve the evil Single Family Homes that comprised the bulk of buildings in the area is now being turned into a warren of high density condos/apodments/retail or whatever. We already look at the road and transportation issues, but what about these other utilities? Sewer and water systems built to handle a few thousand people must now handle many many times that. The wastewater system may well collapse around us, or under us. I think mostly of South Lake Union going from some SFH and warehouses to the dozens of high density living/working buildings there now. Same with Ballard. Can we be far behind? Well, poo.
The story I heard is that the sewer infrastructure in the area that drains out to the foot of Stone wasn’t even adequate for what was here 5 years ago.
It is not clear how a solar powered gondola fits into the Ship Canal Water Quality Project (which is oddly called the poo tube in the article). What is the route for the gondola? How can it be rationalized to fit into the water quality project? Who came up with this idea? Is it supported by the community?