How to Stop Dumping Sewage into the Water: Uytae Lee's Stories About Here 

I see Uytae, i click

Uytae, your videos on Vancouver are AWESOME! Thanks for the amazing content, a great service to the lower mainland

i love about here so much, beautifully researched and directed videos of my home city!

I have literally enjoyed every single video Uytae Lee has made. He's so good! About Here's videos about our cities are so good and so important.

Great summary. I'm a civil engineer who designs municipal infrastructure. You're right, there is no single solution to the problem, and the problem will be reduced gradually after spending many decades investing in multiple solutions. Separating sewers makes most sense in two types of sectors: 1) Sectors where you have large industrial, transport and commercial developments, because lots are large and these sectors tend to be impervious because they are made up mainly of large 1-story buildings surrounded by parking lots, so they generate a lot of rain run-off. 2) Large parks or green areas, because they generate very little domestic sewage, so it costs relatively little to build a separate domestic sewer. It is very expensive to separate sewers in residential areas, because lots are small, there are many services entries, and there is public resistance to digging up the streets. A better solution in residential areas, especially where at least 50% of the surface is vegetated, is to direct all rainwater from foundation drains and roof drains onto vegetated areas, so that much of the water is infiltrated, and to encourage pervious surfaces for driveways and small parking lots, such as open pavers where you can grow grass or other ground covers in the centre of or in between the blocks. Cities should systematically separate sewers whenever they need to rebuild an old street or need to upgrade the sewage system because of age or increased demand because of increased density. Even if the separated sewers are both connected to combined collector sewers, it is not futile to separate sewers, because if this practice is implemented over 50 to 100 years, eventually most of the sewers will become separated. At some point, when 80% or 90% of the sewers in a particular area have been separated, it may make sense to have a special project to separate the remaining combined sewers.

I'm currently working on a design to seperate some combined sewage pipe. Its really great to see a video which explains my work that I can show to people.

Look out into waters where numerous cargo ships are anchored you will find the most immediate source of sewage. BCFERRIES makes several trips back and forth across the Salish Sea daily and they discharge their grey water into the ocean. In each of the harbours you have numerous live aboards discharging their sewage.

I'm so depressed about the damage we continue to do to the environment and ecosystems 😭

Appreciate Uytae for making a reasonable and balanced narrative on Green Infrastructure. The reality for place like Vancouver, when it rains all the time, the green infrastructure would be saturated when it is needed the most. It will still provide benefits but not to the extent that could eliminate CSO (combined sewage overflow).

Uytae single handedly makes lower mainland journalism interesting

It depends on how smart and forward-looking the original designers were. Calgary, Canmore, Banff, and even UBC in Vancouver all have a separated sewage system.

How does uytae record in nice weather all the time? 😂

more Uytae please

Comment before watching the video, are we going to mention that the combined sewage overflow is next to Chip Wilson's house. So human waste is flowing next to the most expensive residential property in all of BC Edit, no we're not going to mention it

I just add Justin Trudeau to the conversation

love this guy, if he had his own separate channel I would definitely sub

nearby in a similar climate, Portland, OR relatively recently built The Big Pipe. (it's actually a series of several large diameter pipes), and alongside ongoing green infra efforts has nearly eliminated CSOs into the Willamette and Columbia rivers. it only took 1.4 billion and 20 years, which on the scale of these kinds of projects is pretty good.

When I was in highschool, we were taught what each level of government was responsible for. I wasn't really paying attention because of a lack of interest and understanding, so when I was asked what the city was responsible for, I said nothing 😅 The teacher obviously said I was wrong, and said roads were one of the responsibilities. This memory has stuck with me every time roads are mentioned 😅 After watching this video it has given me the better understanding I lacked when I was younger about the importance of roads and pipes underneath them.

I guess it's not feasible or economically friendly to just gradually tunnel underground, beneath these roads/streets/stroads, and simply add bolstering/support as you go, to avoid digging everything up from above? Edit: I've factored in how the areas would need to be closed down incrementally anyways, to avoid putting the public in potential danger. I'm more curious about the time and funding requirements.

what kind of species knowingly pollutes its own environment?

love this guy! More videos from him pls...love from toronto xoxox

In the city of guangzhou where I raised, the city at the time spent 8 years. Nearly 750 Million USD to separate the two system and that eliminated so many stinky spot and expand the residential area by 15% across the city.

Seems like Vancouver is already doing the right things to solve the problem. Even with the separated pipes, a major source of ecoli in Vancouver is from bird poop. So the "green" infrastructure is needed for that as well.

Does anyone know what the outro song is? I've tried searching from the lyrics without much luck.

Uytae, I'm loving your vids! Totally addicted!

The same the whole world over. Needs investment the costs offset from savings in health bills. Discharges makes people sick.

Look at the new filtration system in Dublin Ireland, 1.5 million people, distilled into clean water and fertiliser.

Great to know city of Vancouver is trying to separate sewage and stormwater since 1970s!🎉

Uytae is amazing

Excellent doc quite informative you show the options great work

Gray systems as a BACKUP TO green infrastructure

Well, that takes swimming off of the Spanish banks summer fun list.

Uytae seems like a nice young man I hope he finds a new job after the CBC is defunded,

this guy is killing it.. great topic and great coverage

In stockholms there’s a new part of the city called Norra Djurgårds staden and it’s a good example of how green infrastructure can work.

Great content! Would appreciate if you could drop references of studies or "more to read" on the topics at the description :)

Great content Uytae. Like I said hopefully you will get your own independent channel one day. Keep up the good work.

Another fine addition to "Stories about here" ! ( Would like to point out that the phonetic pronunciation of the word Asphalt is "As-faalt". ) Keep up the wonderful work you & your team do.

LOVE this. You should have your own channel!!

Vancouver is one big sewer dump.

You just left me stranded, what I can do to help?

How to stop dumping? Easy - stop dumping.

Is Uytae a Korean ？ who can give me an answer ?

These videos are awesome, keep it up

Best show ever love it I need more 😅

"How to Stop Dumping Sewage into the Water: Uytae Lee's Stories About Here" By not dumping sewage into the water?????

Uytae carrying an entire country’s broadcasting channel RU-vid is not something I expected but I’m glad the videos exist

let dump more waste water lol

We are committed to solving the problem. This video helps because people will surely stop complaining about how high their property taxes are when they learn what we are trying to accomplish. Right? Right???

It is our own extinction.

Great video. I’m told some cities in Australia have virtually 100% water recovery.

Mickey Mickey city.

😢❤

More trees please!

For just a 7min long video clip, it already covers most of the aspects of challenges associated with liquid waste management. You mention both grey and green infrastructures, and talks about how other countries have dealt with both which is very interesting. I think for our green infrastructure we sometimes refer to LID infrastructure/design. I like the animation for our combined sewer system you got there which is very easy to understand.

we are so effed

Really appreciate your work! Pls keep them coming

For me the problem isn't dumping the poo and pee into the water, after all there are microbes that are very efficient at processing them, for me it's convincing people to stop flushing other things down the drain. Also, we need to protect the wetlands on the shores so that the water can be equiped with the right microbes to clean up the poop.

"Grey" 😅

Vegas has the best model. Clean it and then pump it back into the reservoir. That water is super valuable and can be used again.

Great content! I love when I can learn something while also being entertained!

Hamilton city council should watch this video lol

Great job at popularizing that topic

production output is insane Uytae!

Very tutorial

You might mention the fact that when combined sewers do overflow, it is at least highly diluted sewage. And in a democracy with competing interests (schools, transit, etc) how much money to throw at this problem for how much benefit is an area of reasonable debate. What is acceptable? One overflow event per year? Two? Once per decade? One in a century? Trying for once a century will leave unused capacity for 99 out of 100 years!

This guy is the goat

Thank you

Love Uytae

Trees aren’t a solution. Because trees burn in droughts and wild fires. We have to plan for when the fires come to Vancouver. We’ve already had 3 days of orange skies from forest fires in Vancouver (2015). When the fires come to the city, everything burnable is fodder for the flame. We have to take the droughts into account too in any solution.

This is disgusting! Hopefully a resolution is made to bring the issue to a close!

Why didn’t he mention bioswales? They’re incremental and scaleable. They’re a hybrid of gray and green infrastructure. They address the problem of contaminated storm water. We have them all over Portland, on the street, in people’s yards, around new building and parking lots. Not only do they catch stormwater before goes into the combined sewer, they add nice neighborhood landscaping.

Did not Seattle do this years ago as a solution?

Ew, I'm eating!

Problem doesn’t exist in Calgary.

LA is working on re-wilding the LA river in this way, I'm really excited to see the results. Another great video, love Uytae's mini deep dives.

Do swim by a city. Cheap

Don't do it. Duh....

Is it me or did Mr. Lee seem to have gained some weight?

If we can ban gasoline-powered cars by 2035, then we can stop dumping raw sewage into the water by 2035. Any municipality that fails to meet this climate goal should simply have their sewage system shut off.

This sounds rather stupid to say the least. Someone there should wake up from The Bad Old Days of delusional thinking. This is rather hard to believe, although believable it is.