Saturday, March 22, 2014

Do What You Say

Politicians to the people next door need to mean what they say and stick to it.  A report is out that the EPA office is flushing raw sewage into the Chesapeake Bay.

"The Drudge editor believes it "utter hypocrisy" that EPA headquarters is flushing billions of gallons of untreated waste directly into the Potomac River each year while daring to threaten Andy Johnson, the owner of a family trout pond, "an oasis for wildlife such as ducks and geese," with fines of $75,000 a day for violating the Clean Water Act. The sheer hypocrisy of the agency prompted Hurt to ask, "Why not charge Gina McCarthy and every one of her EPA employees $75,000 per flush?"

My friends in Germany and around the world used processed effluent for fertilizer before we did.  I will never forget the Chinese farmers carrying their waste in a little pot on a stick.  The translation was "night soil."

Most of you know that I am appalled with the amount of debt our nation has and the disconnect that won't even try to address it.  If I farmed like government does, I would be officially bankrupt before I planted the first seed!  I was raised more conservative than that.  You didn't borrow money you couldn't pay back.  That is gone out the window with today's live for today attitude.

Our environmental efforts have been somewhat effective but EPA is not doing themselves what they ask us to do.  Many of the residents of where I live were forced to hook into a new low water sewer system to try and solve local septic tank/sewer issues.  It is still a "sore subject" around here.

I work and talk to a lot of good people who struggle to make ends meet.  We need a moral society that does what is says and says what it means.

How did we get so far off the beaten path?

We need to start our kids our right and do the right thing.

Ed Winkle

4 comments:

  1. People are too squeamish to use "night soil" in this pseudo-sanitary society. They choose to continue polluting their drinking water with it.

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  2. You are smart beyond your time, Gorges.

    Ed

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  3. Ed, if you are conservative, then I am Amish, not borrowing any money! ;)

    From what I read from more objective sources, the sewage treatment plant does handle all the sewage it gets from the area (not just from the EPA building) except in case of heavy rains, that saturate the network. So the EPA office building does not have a privileged sewer that goes directly to the Potomac river, it goes into the normal sewage system, and it's certainly not "hundreds of billions of gallons every year" especially not from that one EPA building. Besides, even if it were, it wouldn't be raw sewage, everybody knows that all EPA employees' excretions automatically qualify as Clean Water, they even have an Act to prove it! Even some of what comes out of their mouth qualify as BS! Just kidding, I think the EPA does mostly good things, even if these federal agencies have a tendency to self-regulate and protect their own interests before the public's.

    Now see what you have done: With all this bad press, the Chesapeake Bay sewage treatment company will be able to get a 2 billion dollars loan of our tax payer money sponsored by the EPA to fix the sewage system!

    I would be wary using urban sewage as fertilizer for anything edible by humans, you don't want to know what people put in there or what powerful drugs are in the urine, but I know some cities that use it for all their lawns and flower plantings. It's fine using your own manure in your own garden if it's composted thoroughly, but again, I would keep it separate and for specific usage, with an extra long and warm composting to kill off all potential pathogens. Using it for perennials, bisannuals or row crops should be fine too.

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