The Sewershed!

Yes, that is a word. I heard it for the first time tonight on the TV news. 

I signed up for daily emailings of sewer news of course ages ago, and get them to learn of various technologies and case studies. Testing sewage to get an idea of the COVID-19 it might contain tosses around the words "prevalence testing," and "biomarkers," but the word "sewershed" is new! But only to me. Apparently it is a real word, but the way it is applied in big cities is different than how it was used by the researcher on TV tonight. So the word expanded a bit to not mean just the storm sewer piping, where it is, what it holds, and where it goes, but also sewer water fed into a plant through home flushing.

Just how much of THE virus is floating around in the murky waters at a sewer plant? Scientists in England and in California are attempting to find out. How interesting I'd say, could it actually even BE here? But we'd be a lousy town to test for two reasons. 17% of our town is on septic tanks, and we have so few cases or maybe none officially (although I doubt that), we get nothing but silence from the County daily briefs because they only post information on towns with five or more cases.

Anyway, back to the story. The idea is to catch virus spread. How much virus is in the sewage, and is the amount going up or down. Plenty of sewer workers in the US are freaked out by virus being in the sewage and have gone on strike or demand better protections from possible airborne virus bits, etc..

On another, happier note, a wastewater treatment plant in Portland Oregon had between 15,000 and 20,000 gallons of expired beer dumped into their plant. One would hope sewer workers might have grabbed a draught or two on the way in if it wasn't too stale.