the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 12, 2023
The three-and-a-half foot wide pipe carrying sewage from northwest of Baltimore City, under Lake Roland and the Jones Falls creek and into the city to join the main sewer line, is in desperate need of repair. The 70-year-old pipe is also seriously overburdened by the increasing sewage load from more and more suburban developments. A sewer feeding the pipe near the lake has more than 500 defects and keeps flooding when more than seven times the volume it was designed to handle comes through. For years, E. coli bacteria has been found in the lake.
Baltimore County has not met its federal obligation, negotiated in 2005, to renovate the pipe, just as Baltimore City has not met its promise from 2002 to fix the main sewer line. Politicians are quick to offer tax breaks and all kinds of incentives to developers, but when people’s toilets and basements flood, the politicians say they have no money for the infrastructure.
Capitalist society has known how to handle sewage for decades now. But they chose to put the money necessary for repairs into profit ventures. And our streets are flowing with the result!