"It's unnerving to consider what poured into Puget Sound last week during King County's worst sewage spill in decades:

Toilet tissue, bacteria, viruses, coffee grounds, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, holiday spices — and untold amounts of human matter better left undescribed.

Yet just days after a malfunctioning switch at a wastewater-treatment plant released an Exxon Valdez-scale dump of raw sewage, contamination levels in Elliott Bay were returning to normal.

Experts said that's because a 10-million-gallon shot of untreated wastewater, while unacceptable, pales when compared with the toxic insults funneled into the Sound legally every day."

Craig Welch reports for the Seattle Times December 19, 2009. [2]