It starts with a flush.
Miles away, the flush surfaces at what Moccasin Bend Sewage Treatment Plant Superintendent Alice Cannella calls “the gates of Hell.”
The gates are where all sewage treatment pipes for the greater Chattanooga area converge to enter the Moccasin Bend plant.
Three stories below ground level on a sunny day, a massive pipe gushes 65 to 70 million gallons a day of raw sewage and sewage-tainted stormwater runoff into the 50-year-old treatment plant that has been upgraded or expanded three times.
Ms. Cannella says it’s the rainy days that give the 140-million-gallon-capacity plant a workout.