The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District has a $500 million bond issue, Proposition Y, on the ballot April 6. Prop Y will fund five years of needed upgrades for MSD’s “Project Clear” consent decree with the federal government, which in turn will cost a minimum of $4.7 billion over two decades to fix sewage overflows and other sewer system improvements. Funding Project Clear through bond issues could add several billion dollars of interest to the final tab. But the federal government is requiring MSD to fund those upgrades, no matter the cost to ratepayers. As pointed out in an op-ed from frequent MSD critic Tom Sullivan, the sewer district should have tried to fix and fund these problems many decades ago but didn’t.