"Straight Pipes Foul Kentucky’s Long Quest to Clean Its Soiled Waters"

"A two-decade mission to reduce sewage pollution still has a lot of work to finish."

"HARLAN COUNTY, KY — In the mountains of eastern Kentucky a creek is often steps away from the front porch or back door. Here in Loyall, several dozen homes rim a bend close to the Cumberland River. Amid the brambles on the bank at least one white PVC pipe, a couple inches in diameter, pokes out of the ground and points toward the water.

Though it could be coming from a gutter or laundry room, the pipe displays the characteristic stealth of a drain straight from a toilet. Straight pipes, as they are known, are a dangerous and illegal scourge in this economically disadvantaged region of Kentucky. Though the state has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to build contemporary treatment systems, straight pipes still proliferate, flushing raw human waste directly into creeks, streams, lakes, ravines, and backyard sumps.

Straight pipes in Kentucky join malfunctioning treatment plants and failing septic systems in producing a sewage pollution crisis in eastern Kentucky that is worse than water contamination from coal mining, according to state surveys."

Brett Walton reports for Circle of Blue February 28, 2018.