Environmental Echo

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will make collection system improvements

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources awarded a total of $41.2 million in financial assistance to the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District for upgrades to its collection system. The project is estimated to cost $43.2 million and is expected to be completed by January 2023.

The project is part of the sewer district’s Public Inflow and Infiltration Reduction Program to rehabilitate the existing collection system throughout the entire service area. This program is part of an ongoing effort to reduce the number and volume of overflows in the sewer district’s combined sewer and sanitary sewer systems.

Funding for the sewer rehabilitation project consists of a $40.2 million low-interest loan and a $1 million grant through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. To complete the project, the sewer district will provide an additional $2 million in local funds. The department’s funding is estimated to save ratepayers $1 million in principal and approximately $8 million in interest over the loan’s 20-year term.

“Improving the key infrastructure that Missouri communities rely on every day continues to be one of our top priorities,” said Governor Mike Parson. “We are absolutely committed to doing all we can to assist with infrastructure improvement projects large and small.”

Continue reading →

A “Trash Trout” trash trap floats on Deer Creek in Deer Creek Park in Maplewood, Missouri. (Photo credits: Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper, Ashville GreenWorks, and Trash Trout.)

The Trash-Free St. Louis Project to show how solving marine debris starts inland

EPA Region 7’s Trash-Free Waters program, along with Wichita State University’s Environmental Finance Center and the Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper organization, are working with local community groups on a project to install and maintain three trash traps in St. Louis area streams.

A stream trash trap is a mechanical system that includes a floating boom and net that funnel and gather floating debris near embankments, canals, or stormwater outfalls before it can reach  primary waterways like streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Three different types of trash traps are being installed at the following locations: “Trash Trout” at Deer Creek in Maplewood, Missouri; “B2B Beaver” at Mackenzie Creek in St. Louis; and, “Litter Gitter” at River Des Peres in University City, Missouri.

“Stream trash traps, like the ones being deployed in St. Louis, help build awareness of this issue and make the amount and composition of trash more visible, all the while helping to clean up litter in waterways,” said Jeff Robichaud, EPA Region 7’s Water Division director. “St. Louis has the ability to influence change and reduce the impacts caused by trash in urban streams and rivers that feed into the Gulf of Mexico.”

St. Louis serves as an ideal location to launch the pilot project to study trash and litter, as it sits on the confluence of the two most prominent American rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri. Their watersheds combined form the largest single watershed in the United States and flow south to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean.

“The debris and trash that enters these two watersheds often makes its way through storm sewers and remains hidden until storms and rain empty the debris from storm sewers into small streams and larger rivers,” Robichaud said. “This is a positive step in helping to keep River Des Peres – and the Mississippi River it flows into – cleaner for both the animals that live there and humans who rely on it,” said Diane Bauhof, executive director of the St. Louis Aquarium Foundation.

Continue reading →

The University of Missouri (MU) recently published information announcing a two year study of the COVID virus and the virus variants found in community wastewater made possible by a $4 Million grant. Please read below for more from the MU press release and link to the article.

University of Missouri scientists receive $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to examine clues about the rate of infection in communities and virus variants.

Using the 2-year, $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, scientists at the University of Missouri are collaborating with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, or DHSS, to figure out how differing levels of SARS-CoV-2 can appear in a community’s wastewater.

READ THE STORY FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI HERE.