Sorry to make you throw up in your mouth a little bit, but this information needs to be passed along, I think:

…the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

But despite those upgrades, today, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage — including human excrement and dangerous industrial chemicals — is spilling into waterways.

In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency. [NYT, via PlanetGreen]

Still with us? If anything, these numbers put a quantitative face on the kind of “urban suspicions” that lurk in the back of our minds everyday as dwellers of concrete and brick. Even though it is argued that living in a city can be among the greenest things we as a species can do for the planet, the oftentimes deleterious effects of urbanity can come at a high cost when infrastructure funding is either improperly allocated, or not at all.

And if you consider the volume of combined runoff generated by the August 4th flood (coverage here and here) — a figure that works out to about, like, a 2.3 on the Noah Scale — then you must accept the reality that we’ve been drinking more than our fair share of poo water. That the West End has drainage runoff systems that get waterlogged during even a modest rain event represents a threat to the city-at-large. And then there was that recent spill of 10 million tons of sewage directly into the Ohio River.

Oh, and since most commercial water bottlers derive their “product” from many of our nation’s rampantly polluted lakes and streams, your best bet would be to either (1) develop a comfort level re: how much poo you’re willing to ingest as a consequence of modern city living, (2) buy your water from Kroger, Amazing Grace, Rainbow Blossom or imported from the Antarctic, or (3) stick to your diet of soft drinks and Powerade. A win-win-win.