And It's a Hard Rain's a-Fallin'

Daniela Kirshenbaum of Fog City Journal raises a question that's bugged us for years, mainly why is it everytime it rains we get instantly flooded? For those of you who lived in any part of the country that wasn't San Francisco (or California for that matter), you can attest that when it rains, there's minimal flooding (except, of course, for when it rains a lot and you get actual flooding). What we mean is that any normal rainstorm doesn't cause huge puddles of rain that flood up streets and sidewalks. It seems that it doesn't take much for any sort of rainstorm to cause the flooding.

So why is it?

Well, it's a matter of sewage. San Francisco just doesn't have enough of it. And what we do have is single-pipelines, which obviously can't hold as much rainfall as double-pipelines, the kind of pipelines most cities have. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report last year on the State of Our Sewers and determined that if we were to be graded, we would get a D+ and avoid getting an F only because because we bought them an apple and stayed after class a few days to clean the erasers. It doesn't help that our sewers are falling apart too.

So what can be done? Well, the water department came up with Sandbag Saturdays (wheee!) to help people put up sandbags when it rains. Then there's trying to fix our sewage problems and as well as demanding that new buildings being add more sewage space.

We shall see. But until then, we're going to keep on being puddle jumpers.