Courtesy American Rivers
Rep. Timothy Bishop, D-N.Y., would like state and local governments to answer the age-old question: What’s that smell?
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The House on Monday passed Bishop’s H.R. 2452, the Raw Sewage Overflow Right-to-Know Act. This piece of legislation amends the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to guarantee that sewage treatment facilities monitor for and report releases of raw sewage.
And, of course, even this issue has a lobbyist: The American Rivers Foundation helped the nation understand the stinky situation it was in with its eye-catching video, “Flushie’s Summer Vacation,” which follows the adventures of a talking, smiling, vacationing commode.
If this bill becomes law, sewage overflows will need to be reported within 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the House also gave a nod to the national pastime, acknowledging Pittsfield, Mass., as the birthplace of baseball (take that, Cooperstown!).
See, in 1791, some ball-playing hooligans broke a window in Pittsfield. Soon a law was born “for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House … no Person or Inhabitant of said town, shall be permitted to play at any game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other game or games with balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House.”
That, then, was the earliest documentation of the term, “baseball.”
This news should warm the hearts of Amherst College alumnia. The first “friendly game of ball” in Pittsfield ended when Amherst College delivered a crushing defeat to Williams College 73- 32 (pitching must not have been very good).
