My office in Menands is down the street from the North Albany Sewage Treatment Plant, which processes about 83 Olympic swimming pools worth of water each day, reducing harmful pathogens and nutrient load before taking dumping much of Colonie, Menands and North Albany’s waste water in the Hudson River. It’s also home to one of state’s remaining sewage sludge incinerators, where they use natural gas to dry and burn off the solids separated out of waste water process, both generated on-site and trucked in 6-days a week from sewage treatment plants across the county and beyond. It wastes energy and produces carbon emissions, but greatly reduces the amount of sewage sludge ash that is currently disposed of in City of Albany Landfill in the Albany Pine Bush.

Lately there has been a push towards more composting of sewage sludge, but that has not been without problems. We live in a chemical-rich society, and wastewater not only often contains treated industrial effluent but also landfill effluent, the remains of pots and pans washed off, soaps and chemicals used in cleaning, and so forth. And it all get mixed in with the poop and pee, that is itself can contain the byproducts of pharmaceuticals. Most notable is the problem with PFOAs which have caused all kinds of issues for farms in Maine when they’ve been detected in farm field soils. Probably PCBs would be an equal problem, had they not been phased out what is going on 50 years ago now.

The thing about it is landfilling and incinerating might reduce immediate human exposure to the toxic compounds in sewage sludge, it hardly makes the problem going forward. And its a terrible waste of nutrient value and only increases climate emissions. I know whenever I can I will pee outdoors, and don’t think twice about digging a cat hole and using my bucket shitter up in the woods. I tihnk that’s a vastly more sustainable option. I really don’t love the idea of septic tanks either and capturing all those solids and having to have them pumped every few years. Yes, there is some biological degradation both in a septic system and a waste water digestion, but you’re still disposing rather utilizing nature’s fertilizer.