https://www.wortfm.org/393191-2/

May 22 is Wastewater Professionals Appreciation Day, as proclaimed by Gov. Evers. 

This special day for wastewater workers should have been celebrated by ice cream and awards at the region’s Nine Springs Plant in south Madison. 

Instead, for much of the staff, it was a long night stretching into this morning.

“We’ve had people working since 8:30 last night on the response to the storms,” says Eric Dundee, the Principal Engineer of the Sewerage District who supervises the maintenance and operation of the plant.

These crews were out because last night’s thunderstorm did not only leave thousands of homes without power, schools closed and streets blocked, it also left much of the community unable to safely flush the toilet.

That’s because the city’s pumping stations rely on electricity. And when they lose power, as twenty of them did last night, water from sinks and toilets cannot reach the power station.