And our taxes will go up by how much, Ben?

I proposed catching politician's hot air to fuel a steam engine as a renewable resource.

I'm sick and tired of these stupid bills introduced to look good to greens/tea party/or whatever flavor of the day that the representatives know have 0 chance of passing. It is a collosal waste of our time and resources.

Please do something real Sen. Cardin.

First response is a typical GOP/Tea-Party rejoinder, worried more about taxes than either public or environmental health. Typical of the political party that still wants to dump mercury into the atmosphere, where it gets into the food chain and then into fish, and thus into humans, where it affects the neurological development of fetuses. And they are so WORRIED about the unborn - Texas representative Joe Barton questioned the health effects of environmental mercury while advocating continued minimal regulation of coal-burning power plant emissions.

WE"RE SICK OF THIS. True public servants like Ben Cardin show how it SHOULD be done.

This is not a GOP/Tea-Party nor Democrat/Liberal issue, it is a simple funding, or I should say lack of funding issue. There currently exists a gross underfunding of the public infrasturucture to just maintain it and by adding more federal rules as proposed by the Senator will mean the very limited dollars available now won't be spent on keeping the pavement in good shape, but instead spent on ancillary items. Which would you rather drive on, a narrow but well maintained road surface free of potholes, or a broken down piece of road that has wide shoulders and huge storm water system sending all the storm water to a treatment center. If you want to collect pollution at it's source, catch it at the tailpipe, the vehicles are the polluter, not the road.

In fact, the road is the polluter. The road erodes, as so tires. Petroleum products leak and spill. Salts don't vanish and the snow accumulates debris. This is not to say a bill is the answer. States and cities are already incorporating stormwater into road designs, the fed should too. We pay anyway to pretreat drinking water to remove the stuff. Maybe we can use a little less of our scarce public works budget if the water is cleaner to begin with.

Whoever that guy above is, he's not a PE licensed in the state of Maryland. You can check here:

https://www.dllr.state.md.us/cgi-bin/ElectronicLicensing/OP_Search/OP_search.cgi?calling_app=PE::PE_personal_name

In any case, he's offering a false choice. The choices aren't well maintained roads *or* treated runoff. You find funding for important projects, whether it's through taxes, redirecting funds or changing priorities.

It's bad enough that so much of our gas tax money is wasted on noise walls and mass transit without adding another non-road use to sap the transportation fund.

Our roads will be full of potholes but at least the water that runs off of them won't pollute the bay.

Cardin the Clueless rides again.

For governments that can't maintain roads, it seems a long shot project to upgrade them. Even with the millions of pounds of pollutants that run off from our roads every year, it is hard to justify the cost. As to what has been said above, no, there is no way of doing this using a central treatment system. It would be insanely expensive to bring all that water to a central treatment system. What you need to do is redesign the roads, and put in small stormwater structures that will remove most of the pollutants before they get to the Bay. Unfortunately, this will require someone to go clean out these structures now and again and to otherwise maintain them.