
NYC Sends “Poop Train” to Small Alabama Town, Where It’s Been Stuck for Months - arosier
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/poop-train-from-new-york-stuck-in-parrish-alabama.html
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kpil
The law is somehow always flexible in only one direction.

If a government body says it can store a train full of shit just outside your
backyard indefinitely, and you disagree, then oh, ah, no - sorry, there seems
to be absolutely no legal framework that we can operate within that will get
the train removed within your lifetime.

But on the other hand, another government body forgets to protect some
electronic documents, and a teenager downloads them just by guessing
incremental id:s, then just a phone call later the teen is swatted by 14 cops,
and should be so lucky that they didn't even kill the dog. Well they had if
there was a dog to kill.

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gamblor956
No, the problem is that the local government where the train is stopped _can
't do anything either_ while all of its neighbors have given themselves the
power to prevent the train from stopping within their borders via zoning laws
that this particular government has chosen not to enact. (Not that the
neighbors can't block it from traveling from within their borders; they can
only block it from stopping and offloading the cargo within their borders).

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TheVikingOwain
How can a city zone what’s stored in rail yards? I thought that was federal
turf like in Vermont. [https://vtdigger.org/2017/12/11/railroad-prevails-road-
salt-...](https://vtdigger.org/2017/12/11/railroad-prevails-road-salt-storage-
dispute-shelburne/) And I believe there’s one about oil in rail cars I can’t
find right now.

~~~
gamblor956
The issue isn't the zoning of the rail yards--the issue is that the
surrounding cities and counties all amended their zoning laws to prevent the
_offloading_ to trucks of the particular types of cargo that the NY trash
trains were hauling, which is within their power.

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violatorrrrr
I want to know more about how and why this poop finds it's way into a train
load, and why there are train loads at all?

Why did they put it on a train? Other than porta-potties, are there any other
situations where poop isn't flushed into the sewers?

Do sewage plants normally haul away treatment byproducts as cargo? How much of
this, if any, comes from treament processing plants and not ad-hoc plumbing
substitutes? I'd figure only porta-johns would have this problem?

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irgeek
_Other than porta-potties, are there any other situations where poop isn 't
flushed into the sewers?_

Where, exactly, do you think the poop goes once it's flushed into the sewers?

Sewers are not magical portals into another realm that we can just dump poop
into forever. The sewers run to sewage plants where the water is extracted and
treated to be sent back into the water supply. The poop that's left over has
to go somewhere...

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violatorrrrr
Listen, I get that there are non-decomposable solids like fatberg in the
sewage system, but I figure, even in NYC, there'd have been a system in place
to reduce that quantity to an amount more managable than a scale that requires
freight train shipping to other states.

Human poop is by abitrary fractions, grease, plant fiber, bacterial biomass,
ph imbalanced water and table scraps.

Processing plants deal with that, plus everything else people dump down the
drain, or what fits without clogging during heavy rain.

The only reason the human excrement is not completely liquified is because
digestive tracts are sensitive living membranes, and not chemical distillation
vats.

Industrial processing is capable of leveling off the organic waste into salts
with enough chemical action, and the grease can be processed through
saponification. Our guts aren't capable of hydrolysis, over-boiling organic
material until it's transformed and destroyed, or incinerating the waste in
situ, but given that NYC has been dealing with the output of millions of
toilets for over a hundred years, a brute force option like carting by train
seems like a brainless, unsophisticated hack.

How does there come to be such an overflow that trains are the only option? It
makes sense to me that porta-potties get handled in their own way, and if
that's all this is, then I can see what happened. But if processing demands
outstripped the capacity of on site management operations, I'd be interested
to learn how that happened, and what leads to those conditions.

I'd figure big cities, like New York, all have had better infrastructure than
this since at least the 1950's, when more options for advancing technologies
appeared on the table.

These digester eggs presumably do more than just skim and filter purified
water for recirculation:

[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/environmental_education/dig...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/environmental_education/digester_egg_tours.shtml)

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mentalpiracy
> I'd figure big cities, like New York, all have had better infrastructure
> than this since at least the 1950's, when more options for advancing
> technologies appeared on the table.

The NYC sewage system dates back to 1850, with full coverage of the city only
being achieved in the early 1900s. New technologies can and are added to the
system (water treatment was introduced in the 1940s) - but there has never
been a wholesale reconstruction of the sewer system.

[0]
[http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/environment/2005-the-...](http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/environment/2005-the-
sewer-system)

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squarefoot
Couldn't they turn that poop into something useful such as manure? Also they
should check that it is kept under constant airflow (even though at the risk
of spreading more stink) because the gases could be highly flammable.

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zenmollusc
IIRC Human poop can't be used as manure for crops humans might eat, since it
can transfer diseases.

If you were growing crops strictly for animal consumption it might be ok,
although you might then not be able to eat those animals.

Basically, the old saying "Don't shit where you eat" still holds up.

