This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Pipes and Politics

How I found buried "treasure" in an interest in buried sewer pipes.

I’ve decided to take up my mouse to blog. I’m a local activist and elected official dedicated to protecting the environment and public health through sewer system and wastewater issues awareness and education.

Wow, I’m sure that sounds deadly dull or of no interest to the average person, as it certainly didn't to me some years ago. It all started when I was innocently attending a funeral of a long-time friend when another long-time friend I hadn’t seen in a while started to bend my ear about the shenanigans of our local sewer board.

Now I know I never really thought about what happened to ‘things’ once I had flushed the toilet, but a whole lot of other people do have to think about it and work to take care of it for us. Well, it turned out that the good old boy board that was running the sewer agency was unfortunately more interested in attending junkets and partying at public expense than repairing the sewer pipes in our 110-year-old system.

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Then, like out of an old Jimmy Stewart Hollywood-scripted plot, a group of reformists took over the board at the next election and ousted most of the old guard. A year later, I was then appointed to fill a vacancy on the board when another of the old guard resigned. This is where in the movies it would be fade to black, inspirational music would swell and everyone could exit the theater enjoying a vicarious moral victory feeling all warm and cozy inside.

Of course, as you might have guessed by now, the old timers did not like losing and have been waging battle ever since then to regain what they lost – POWER and CONTROL – two of the scariest words out there.

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I’m going to try, through this blog, to hopefully raise awareness about the importance of all those pipes that are buried in our streets and the fact that they provide a vital level of public health for us that is not available in most of the world. And maybe, just like me, there is a chance you will recognize the critical nature of this infrastructure and want to learn just how valuable it is for the environment and the continued health of all of us – something that we should not take for granted.

All opinions expressed are my own. This is a post from Marcia Johnson's blog, which can be read in more detail or followed here.

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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

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