Flush toilets had already begun to catch on in London in the middle of the nineteenth century, so when Joseph Bazalgette designed and oversaw2 the construction of London’s sewage system, he made the decision to base it on the strategy of using water to dilute waste and rinse it into sewers, to flow downhill and downstream, into the estuary of the

This lack of protection is no doubt partially to blame for the fact that 22 percent of samples of our nation’s groundwater come back positive for chemicals at levels that are recognized as concerning to human health.19