Some Chinese may be steaming eggs in urine but Florida is about to grow its crops in such waste. After a heavy lobbying effort by industry, Florida is about to rescind a ban on the use of human waste to treat crops. Soon more than 90 companies will be pumping waste from about 100,000 septic tanks on to their fields — an estimated 40 million gallons treated with lime.
Only last year, the last year, the legislature banned the use of such waste under the strong advice of public health experts. When “land application” was used, it was destroying not only Florida’s waterways but harming eco-tourism.
Now, companies have succeeded in reviving “land application” starting in 2016 in the House. HB 1479, which lifts the ban, passed by a one-sided vote of 89-25.
Rep. Bryan Nelson, R-Apopka, insisted that the ban drives up the cost of disposal and constitutes a tax on people with septic tanks. It is the ultimate victory of anti-tax rhetoric. It is better to serve you crops grown with human waste than pay extra to dispose of septic tank waste.
What is astonishing is that the pull of lobbyists is sufficiently strong that politicians are not concerned about an public backlash to having their fruits and vegetables treated with human waste products. In the ultimate twist, lobbyists are saying that runoff from other allowed chemicals and herbicides are just as bad if not worse. Of course, one would think that a legislator would mitigate toward limiting such harmful runoff. Instead, in Florida, it is used as a rationale for allowing other waste products to be poured on crops.
The matter now rests with the Senate.
Source: Tampa Bay
Confucius say:
“Man who pump sewage onto food field, develop crappy outlook on life.”
This is probably the most amazing example of the extent these radical wealth mongers will go to make a buck and enrich their corporate friends. What about proper composting and increased organic farming meathods instead of pumping crap out of our toilets. Are they using this “fertilizer” in the orange groves? Shouldn’t the orange juice and oranges that come from this filth be labeled accordingly to warn consumers? This is about someone getting richer and the rest of us getting sicker. Disgusting. This story should be the headline on every major newspaper and the lead story on every newscast.
Hello Professor! Long time no talk! Thank you for your post.
We the People in the great State of Florida are under assault by these clowns. The overwhelming Republican majority has run roughshod over the electorate and the will of the people.
Your post is just one example of what these “lawmakers”, drunk with power, allowed to pass as law. There is not one group they didn’t attack this legislative session.
They went after teachers, firefighters, police, unions, pensions, developmentally disabled, medically needy, the elderly, children, college students, voting rights, they let BP off the hook – the list goes on and on. It is utterly depressing
They also managed to pass a bestiality bill and debated 18 abortion bills. Of course, this insanity created zero jobs.
All of this with a corrupt and cruel miscreant leading the charge, Rick Scott.
Pray for us down here. We need all the help we can get.
Somehow the first law of dung-o-nomics comes to mind: “Don’t shit where you eat”.
A century ago the food that filtered through the human to become waste was from 99.9% plant sources. Today is much different. Compare horse manure to dog scat. Which do you feel comfortable to use in your garden? Read any book on composting and they all warn against it unless you can assure the complete break down in adequate duration of high temperature. Septic tanks harbor not only human waste but anything else that used the toilet for disposal. IE drugs, tampons, poisons…
According to the article in the link, this practice (land application) is now ongoing. There was (or is) a ban set to take effect in 2016. What the house bill does is revoke the ban. It also appears that human health may not be the prime motivator for the ban.
Tom:
You are correct, and treated sewage is used in Florida as well. But that is not what this bill is about. This has to do with human waste pumped out of residential septic tanks. It is not processed through sewage treatment plants.
What a shitty way to treat our food …
The Amish here in PA have been doing this for a long time. Every spring various municipalities PAY them to take the solid waste leftover from water treatment plants, which they spray or dump on their fields and turn under as fertilizer. So what? Nobody has died or even gotten sick as far as i know and it’s recyling at its best.
The Florida legislature has been conducting an all-out assault on Florida land use and environmental regulation this session. This bill is merely one example of the madness.
Rep. Nelson’s support of the legislation is particularly ironic. He is from Apopka, home of Lake Apopka, once known for some of the best bass fishing in the world and now virtually lifeless from lack of oxygen following decades of fertilizer and pesticide runoff from agricultural interests. Lake Apopka is also famous most recently for a massive and still unexplained bird kill along its shores.
Come to the Florida sunshine tree.
In China they use human waste to fertilize crops as they have done for millennia. Admittedly it does pong a bit as I learned when I visited my wife’s family in Fuzhou in 1993. They lived in a flat in the grounds of the University of Fuzhou and nearby were some vegetable fields. You could certainly tell when the wind was blowing from the direction of those fields.
In pre-revolutionary China farmers would preferentially employ laborers who lived at a greater distance as opposed to ones who lived nearby since the former could not go home for a call of nature and the valuable fertilizer would be captured in the latrines provided by the farmer.
There are two problems with using human waste as fertilizer, one is the smell and the other that bacteria of dangerous diseases such as cholera may survive in the feces and create a risk of spreading the disease. However surely it is possible to treat the sewage to make sure such bacteria are killed and then reintroduce other appropriate bacteria to complete the conversion of the waste to useful compost.
In Sydney Australia we dump our sewage into the Pacific Ocean through deep water outfalls, but sometimes the currents carry it towards our many beaches making them unsuitable for swimming, but what enrages me even more is the waste of valuable phosphorous and nitrogen. Australian farmers use superphosphate made from phosphate rock mined from millions of years old deposits of fossilized bird crap on Pacific islands. The phosphorous is turned into vegetables and grain and then dumped in the sea.
Ecological, coming resource shortages and the need to cut greenhouse gases should be pushing us towards treating sewage to convert the valuable phosphorous and nitrogen into fertilizer and towards capturing and burning the methane to limit its contribution to global warming. If the methane were burned in the gas turbines of small power plants that would be even better.
Having lived in Florida for a few years this is not surprise. If we cut them off from Federal money & rules Cuba really would look like paradise in comparison.
Anonymously
You should know.
So, in five paragraphs they have managed to freeze my brain function. I don’t think I could have made this up if I was being paid to write satire.
Tootie,
You should be in good company today….
AY wrote:
“…makes one wonder where we are headed….”
Indeed it does. Indeed it does.
That’s nuts.
anon nurse,
The good….senators usually have a greater price….
“The matter now rests with the Senate.” -from the article
Let’s hope that wiser minds will prevail, as it’s said…
Seem like a crappy ideal…but then so far we have urine eggs….animal crapped coffee….makes one wonder where we are headed….