Anonymous wrote:I had never heard of this sewage line until it recently broke. The entire idea seems absurd - piping Virginia sewage across the Potomac, through Maryland and then to be treated at Blue Plains. Seems like it would be far easier to build a sewage treatment plant in Virginia. But this is what Congress wanted.
Clearly you don’t really get things like hills, topography, gravity…

You just understand snark.
A sewage treatment plant requires an enormous area of flat ground next to the river. Because such plants need numerous massive settling ponds to treat the waste in different stages of the process. Dozens of acres of ponds. Blue Plains treatment plant is built on such a topographic feature. A flat parcel of land at the lowest spot in the city.
Where along the Virginia shoreline of the Potomac River south of Great Falls in Fairfax County is there such a place?
That’s why the *only* option was tunneling the sewer line under the river, and down to Blue Plains - where Congress, advised by experts in such matters, recommended.
It only sounds absurd to you because of your ignorance. Akin to trying to explain an airplane or spacecraft to a serf in 1300’s France.