San Jose is at "catastrophic" risk of a major sewage spill, thanks to staff and budget cuts at the city's wastewater treatment plant, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The city is paying "top dollar" for contract workers and overtime staff to keep the Water Pollution Control Plant running, according to a city report. The plant, built in 1956, deals with sewage from 1.4 million people and 17,000 businesses, the newspaper reported.
Up to 43 percent of the plant's workforce, 90 workers, have left the plant in the last three years because of budget cuts, the newspaper reported.
City workers say, "I told you so."
"We tried to explain to them that this was what was going to happen," Daniel Finn told the newspaper. Finn quit his job as a city diesel operator and mechanic at the plant last year because the pay and benefit cuts "didn't make it feasible to work for the city anymore," the newspaper reported.
The private company who runs the plant has a 285 percent markup, the newspaper reported.
