Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sewage in NYC redux--Can this possibly be true?

So, I recently read this article in the wall street jounral, Deluge Overloads City Sewers, wherein Phillip Musegaas, the Hudson River program director for Riverkeeper is quoted as saying that the city's sewage city absorbs approximately 27 billion gallons of sewage a year.  So what does this work out to, per person, per day?  As in, if you are a denizen or tourist of NYC, how much average sewage do you produce?

Well, let's do some simple math.  27 billion is 27,000,000,000.  Now, the population of NYC is about 8 million, or 8,000,000, and the yearly tourist population of nyc is 50 million, or 50,000,000.  And then there's a whole bunch of commuters.  So let's start by getting the total sewage produced in a particular day in nyc:

27,000,000,000/365 = 73,972,603.  Okay, so 73 million gallons produced in a day.

Now, there's 8 million people.  On any given day, let's say 1 million are gone, out traveling, but in-flows for commuters should be accounted for too.  We need a rough estimate here.  So let's say there are 18 million people in the Metropolitan Statistical area, so 10 million outside of NYC proper, and half of them commute on given day.  So, 8 million plus 5 million is roughly 13 million on a given day, though the 5 million are confined to, let's say, 8 hours  day of shitting or pissing time (and let's not take into account, or worry too greatly, about the shit and piss they exude on the trains in or out of the city.  I don't want to figure out where that stuff is emptied out.  Okay, for tourists we've got a 50,000,000/365 = 136,986 a day figure.  Total now at 13,136,986 people and a total of 73,972,603 gallons of sewage.

12,136,986 (13,136,986-1 million outflow) /73,972,603 = 6.09 gallons of sewage produced per person.

Rough estimate, I know.

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