The US is a massive country friend, there are lots of places with combined sewers (domestic wastewater and stormwater) that will bypass treatment when there is a big rain event, especially in coastal cities that discharge wastewater to the ocean. It’s not ideal but the alternative is massively oversized treatment plants or replacing all of the existing sewer infrastructure to separate the sewers. Both options would cost tens of billions of dollars in any of the large east coast cities. People are not willing to pay for that.
The US is a massive country friend, there are lots of places with combined sewers (domestic wastewater and stormwater) that will bypass treatment when there is a big rain event, especially in coastal cities that discharge wastewater to the ocean. It’s not ideal but the alternative is massively oversized treatment plants or replacing all of the existing sewer infrastructure to separate the sewers. Both options would cost tens of billions of dollars in any of the large east coast cities. People are not willing to pay for that.