Time 4 serious talk about sewage treatment

I went to an Agriculture college, majoring in environmental sciences, and part of my curriculum was learning about sewage treatment and the planning of pipes for drainage (for example under fields for crops). I'm assuming that I don't have many blog readers who are giggling idiotic twelve year old boys who make farting noises, and I'm assuming that most of my blog readers are all grown up folks who sit at the big boy and big girl tables and are capable of being mature about this topic.

All people have basic requirements, and celebrities in particular are fast to mention the ones like food and water, plus medical facilities. Schools are also pretty easy to mention and focus on, especially for attention getting. Celebrities are a little less quick to mention housing needs, although they do after a disaster, such as the tsunami. But one of the most basic needs of humans is sanitation. I cannot believe how pig ignorant people are on this subject. Fart humor makes every movie out of Hollywood, but the fact that an entire caste of people in India have to pick up with their bare hands the "night soil" (as it is politely called) off the streets where people take a crap when needed, and place it in pits because there are NO TOILETS somehow doesn't get the attention of the do gooder billionaires and celebrities.

Further, the UN has completed a study and found that something like one billion people in the world have no access to toilets at all (and I don't mean the flush type, I mean nadda, nothing at all but crap in the street or the fields). You can't wait to build a hospital but you won't build toilets for some village in Africa, and it doesn't cross your pinhead minds that maybe one reason children get really really sick is because they live, literally, in crap. So the UN has announced a good initiative but it's not enough fast enough.

Why? Because it's not just a question of children and adults being disgusted and sickened by lack of sanitation facilities. It's also killing the oceans. Oh, now I have your attention? Nothing like some "green" reality. What's more important than.....drum roll...... "climate change?" How about sanitation facilities for the one billion people whose crap makes its way into the ocean for a start? If the ocean dies, there is no returning for humanity and that's a fact.

Here's where it gets tricky. It's not just those poor folk who poop in the street and rice paddies that are the problem. There is a big problem called the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Google it if you've not heard about it and it should scare you. It's a huge area of the Gulf that is totally dead to ALL life; not even the smallest fish can live in it. And what is it from? Runoff and sewage from Texas and the southern coastal area. Yep, the great and wise USA has farm and human crap running into the ocean to the point that it has killed a huge part of it already.

Back when adults actually made civic decisions in the USA (the 1940's-50's), there was attention paid (without giggling, which would not have even occurred to anyone back then, excuse me using the word "back") and bonds issued for sewage treatment facilities and maintenance. Facilities were built and maintained. But like everything else in this downward sliding country, no one cares about sewage treatment maintenance. You have insufficient systems, overwhelmed systems, and not maintained systems that desperately need upgrading. These are what is leaking. I know, I can smell it down the street where Hurricane Katrina did its number on many underground pipes and still, more than two years later, nothing done. I mention this only because it's an example everyone can think about, oh yeah, a hurricane could wreck septic tanks and public treatment facilities, hmm. Well, imagine twenty to thirty years of neglect of systems and how many of them are leaking, or technically backwards? People MUST stop the flow of untreated sewage into the ocean. The ocean is not endless and it is already on its way out. And I am not using hyperbole or hugging a whale if I tell you that if the oceans die so will humanity. Trust me on this. If I could wave a magic wand and get people to be intelligent and caring again, I would divert all the political crap (and money pit) about climate control into the sanitation, sewage treatment, recycling, water purification (e.g. all the hormones and drugs that are now in the water supply) global initiative. THAT's where the threat to humanity lies, in truth, not in goofy "climate change" mania. You can't "carbon swap" poop out of the d*** ocean; you have to treat it and prevent the pollution.

So I hope you can take a break from your "number one" and "number two" jokes, and obsessing about sex using alternate holes, and start obsessing about how to provide sanitation and treatment facilities for the humanity that depends on water and the ocean for its very survival in truth.

Bless those of you who are all grown up now and can take this seriously. I'd offer photos of me on the toilet as a fund raising device, except I understand that it's already a "flooded" market for free of such lovely snapshots.

Here's some quick terminology about sewage treatment plants:

Primary treatment: Skims out the basic stuff, throws on some chemicals.
Secondary treatment: Moderate processing of the sewage.
Tertiary treatment: The high end treatment where sewage is removed/treated, and also the water is cleansed to the highest possible quality of most or all contaminants.