https://www.rochesterfirst.com/environment/building-resiliency-to-climate-change-in-our-sewers/

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — In his own words, Mike Garland, Director of the Monroe County Department of Environmental Services, calls our sewage system the envy of other municipal areas. Namely for its efficiency and its protection of our local waterways.

In the 1970s, Monroe County was just one of three major metropolitan areas to use federal funding to update their sewer systems to minimize the amount of raw sewage that was dumped in local waterways and improve water quality.

Even with today’s increasingly heavy rain, the system is still performing as designed. 

“CSOAP is a Combined Sewer Overflow Abatement Program tunnel system,” said Garland. “So, when there’s significant rainfall, those pipes can overflow, and in most cities these they would overflow to local water bodies. In this case, here in Monroe County they would overflowed Genesee River or Irondequoit Bay and out into the Lake Ontario embayment, so it was roughly ten years in the planning and design before construction began.”