Angelina Blystone is 5 years old. Tuesday, in the hot Spokane summer, she floated with family and friends down the Spokane River. The same day, it was revealed that raw sewage had been streaming into the Spokane River near Downriver Golf Course because of a blocked line. It’s probable that the leak went undetected for several days.

Angelina floated on water contaminated with feces and needles and used toilet paper. Gross. Spokesman-Review photographer Dan Pelle took a photo of Angelina after the float. She had a faraway look in her eye. These are not the childhood memories the Spokane River should be creating in the lives of our children.

Clean-river advocates have said for years that it will take a crisis to get people’s attention focused on the value of a healthy river. The spill had all the visuals of a crisis. The sewage plume showed up clearly on television news reports.

It helped focus attention on an ongoing problem with raw sewage spilling into the river through combined storm and sewer pipes, especially during rainstorms. This latest spill added an unknown amount to the 200,000 gallons of untreated sewage that has dumped into the Spokane River in the past two years – in dry weather. This is unacceptable.

The Sierra Club is threatening to file a lawsuit under the federal Clean Water Act. The Washington state Department of Ecology is concerned, too, especially if the Downriver Golf Course area overflow has been going on for a long time.

The highly publicized sewage leak story coincided with news that environmentalists, dischargers and government officials are considering signing a 20-year Department of Ecology plan designed to reduce the amount of phosphorus discharged into the river.

Phosphorus feeds the river’s algae blooms and when the blooms die, they suck up life-giving dissolved oxygen. The plan has reuse provisions, meaning some of the region’s treated wastewater could be diverted from the river and used to water such things as golf courses.

The agreement is needed for plans to go forward to build a $100 million Spokane County wastewater treatment plant in Spokane Valley.

The Inland Northwest has been hoping for, and working toward, increased population and business development in order to rev the economy and keep the most talented among us from moving to bigger cities.

It’s happening. But more people means more sewage, and that translates to the need for updated wastewater treatment systems and fail-safe sensor systems that pick up spills as they happen.

It also means a more concentrated effort to conserve water in the first place and then reuse treated wastewater rather than dispose of it all in the river.

These are expensive options, and taxpayers will pick up much of the tab. They’ll also need to learn water-conserving habits.

But in the long run, these measures will save money and preserve the quality of life little Angelina was expecting, but didn’t get, while floating down a sewage-saturated stretch of the river Tuesday afternoon.