Seattle like many older cities has a Combined sewer system. You can look that up to see the definition.
Read my post. We have a combined sewer in this city, with the same problems. Fully aware of the problems that creates and the costs of fixing it. (I owned a small water treatment company that worked with industrial customers to develop solutions)
Seattle/King County is under a consent order to clean up their wastewater discharge problems. And like all discharging municipalities they bust themselves by reporting their discharge violations.
As quoted above from the official docs, they plan on reducing current untreated discharge incidents to a standard of one discharge per each of the 38 outlets.. by 2030.
38 discharges per year, of UNDEFINED amounts.. 12 years from now.
Obviously they can't afford to lower than number..I don't doubt that 2030 target, of simply reducing the number of untreated outflows, (not the actual gallons of of outflow), will be extended, like all government projects.
The fines somewhat make me laugh. It's like taking money from one pocket and moving it to another when the government does inter department fines. $1,000 for a boater to pee vs $13,000 for 300,000 gallons released from a municipality. LOL. A bit of a joke IMHO.
I have heard that Vancouver discharges raw waste into Puget Sound, you Canadians need to work on that because it is not cool and could endanger your national reputation for courtesy, and polite behavior!
If you read my post it's lower Vancouver Island, not Vancouver. And according to PR releases they are working on a plan. Unless you mean Vancouver WA, which also has untreated sewage issues south of puget sound ?
After reading a bunch of stuff last night, it looks like the Puget Sound municipalities don't have the capacity to handle the waste they have, never mind the additional sewage from pump outs. (possible increased seasonal rainfall will make it even worse, unless they eliminate the combined sewer systems)
It's almost as goofy as putting pump-outs on Lower Vanc Island, when they don't treat sewage at all.
Sewage from lands, and from marine use, is definitely a problem. The science is there.
But, spending money on pump outs when you have much bigger problems, is like putting valve cover gaskets on a car that is spewing oil all over the road from it's drain plug. A rational approach is to fix the bigger problems with what money you have, then tackle the smaller ones.
Let's hope all the PNW regions get their crap together, but unfortunately it will take HUGE piles of money to convert all the combined systems. That takes money, yet people on both sides of the Strait of Juan de Fuca rant about taxes and want stuff for free. All while population increases put more load on the infrastructure.
Taxpayers in general are simply too cheap, or too poor, to pay the bill to actually fix problems. So they blame others as a misdirection/distraction, or attempt to "fix" a smaller problem to make themselves feel better.