CrapEx
Got some crap to ship? Send your sludge coast-to-coast overnight by rail! Do what New York City does: Send your human waste to Alabama.
GOODSPRINGS, Ala. - Human waste from New York is creating a stink in rural north Alabama. A Texas company has opened a plant that treats sewer sludge from New York and turns it into fertilizer that is spread on Alabama farmland. It's a great deal for farmers, who get the fertilizer for free, but some in northwest Limestone County say they can't stomach the stench.
"When the wind is right, we can't even breathe," said Lori Muse of Goodsprings. "People out here are really upset about it. It smells 10 times worst than a pig barn."
Bill Daws, a county commissioner, called the odor "the worst smell that I've ever smelled."
"But we've checked everything out and it all appears to be legit," he told The News Courier of Athens, which first reported the flap.
Synagro Technologies Inc. of Houston, Texas, has a contract to dispose of human wastes from New York. The company treats sludge from wastewater plants in New York and ships it to Alabama by rail car by the ton.
The sludge is treated again at a plant in Leighton before it is spread on fields for farmers who sign up for the program, said Rodney Jackson, who investigated the arrangement for the Limestone County Commission after complaints started coming in Friday.
If we lived in Goodsprings, we'd be sorely tempted to send Mayor Bloomberg back some of his gift to the community. So to speak.
Something else to wonder about: railroads, like any other transportation business, prefers not to haul empty cars. What else gets shipped back to New York City in those trains?
By BubbaB, Thursday, 4 October , 2007 @ 1:40 pm
…soylent green…
By Gaius, Thursday, 4 October , 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Give it time
By FedUp, Thursday, 4 October , 2007 @ 3:30 pm
Send it to DC… they’ll never notice the smell….