4/mg L Nitrogen!

Wow. These guys had even tougher standards than we did and our 7/mg L nitrogen, the Riverhead Sewer District on Long Island, New York.

https://www.tpomag.com/editorial/2018/05/a-new-york-plant-adopts-reuse-and-eliminates-the-pumping-of-100-million-gallons-of-groundwater-annually?utm_source=StreamSend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter&utm_campaign=180425

This was just a fascinating read because of our similarities in treatment plant size and their being near an estuary, the Peconic River Estuary. "....an EPA-designated nationally significant waterway. The shallow estuary has been prone to algae blooms, including the brown tide that decimated the scallop population in the 1980s."

I signed up for an online wastewater magazine subscription. I'm sure I was supposed to be a worker in the industry.... but due to living in a town with most likely the l-o-n-g-e-s-t sewer war in history that I am still writing about, it seemed like a useful idea for this blogger: https://www.tpomag.com/

Poop Train Pauses In Parrish: 10 Million Pounds Of Poop Stuck Two Months!

A bureaucratic foul-up caused a 42-car train with 400 containers of New York poop to ferment in Parrish, Alabama's rail yard for two months. The residents were not happy. You can read about this rail constipation off the link. The New York Times finds the best stories, really, they do!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/nyregion/poop-train-alabama.html

Where does OUR sludge go? Last I heard, it was trucked to Engel and Gray in Santa Maria. But what happens if they fill up? A sludge train from our county to the large facility in the Central Valley (yes there was a great deal of controversy in the early 2000s and beyond) could help us out! We sure don't want oil trains in this county, but what about poop trains? (And will we have any choice?)

http://www.synagro.com/offerings/rail-transportation/

Check out their location map!
http://www.synagro.com/locations/

And finally, for more sewage information - a bit of history, a lot of money, wimpy regulations, and LAWSUITS! Read an excellent paper, Regulate This: The Politics and Practice of Poo Farming, by a Harvard Law School student on what we euphemistically call - biosolids!

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852199/Christenson06.html?sequence=2

(There is a wealth of resources just in the footnotes!)

Museum of London - FATBERG!!!

I was tardy getting all parts to The New York Times read from their April 1 edition. Last night I was cleaning out my office and ran across an article in the New York Times Magazine section called "Fatbergs." 

Sewer followers, this is a MUST READ!!!! Below is the link. Don't be put off by the subscription pop-up, just remove it by clicking the "X" in the upper right hand corner. The fatberg in question was broken up by sewage workers in hazmat suits and a section of it was saved and put into a London museum! That London fatberg, reported here in 2017, was the length of 22 double-decker buses and weighed the same as a blue whale! The online image is far superior to the print edition, so do NOT miss this article—and, as with all things New York Times, the writing is superlative!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-fatbergs.html

Enjoy!