Train Carrying 10M Pounds of Poop Stuck in Alabama Town
By Rob Quinn , Newser Staff
'God help us if it gets hot and this material is still out here'
(NEWSER) – Springtime in one small Alabama town smells more like manure than magnolias this year—and it's going to get a lot worse as the weather gets warmer. Dozens of freight cars carrying some 10 million pounds of human waste, enough to form a malodorous train more than a mile long, have been stranded in a Parrish rail yard for two months awaiting transfer to a landfill site, and residents say they can't take the stench for much longer, NJ.com reports. They say the freight cars smell like rotting corpses. The sewage sludge waste, shipped south from treatment plants in New York and New Jersey, is destined for a private landfill in Adamsville that has been accepting "biosolids" for more than a year. But nearby West Jefferson sued in January to prevent the foul-smelling waste from being handled at a local rail yard where the containers had been moved to trucks that would get the waste to the landfill.
And so the cars were shifted to Parrish, which didn't have zoning laws to prevent the move, and now they sit. Residents say the foul odor pervades the town, which has a population of 982 in 2 square miles. "It greatly reduces the quality of life," Mayor Heather Hall tells CNN . "You can't sit out on your porch. Kids can't go outside and play, and God help us if it gets hot and this material is still out here." She says the landfill told her it would take about a week to get the waste shipped out—but that was months ago. She says she is worried about the health of residents, though officials have told her that since the waste is "Grade A biowaste," not raw sewage, there should be no problems.
http://www.newser.com/story/257479/train-full-of-poop-from-nj-ny-stuck-in-alabama-town.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=earthlink&utm_campaign=rss_topnews
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Pretty shitty way to have to spend your spring. And just curious, why doesn't New York keep it's own shit? Are they pay a lot to send to Alabama. And since when did Alabama decide to become a shitty state?
Many cities and states do this Randy. It's also a huge problem worldwide, the developing nations being the dumping ground for industralied countires.
I've heard about that, but I was a little surprised to here of another state in the U.S. selling space in it's state for the dumping of human shit from another state. I would expect that a state like NY would find a way to process their own shit somehow?
That link is absolutely disgusting. I'm a firm believer of recycling and cleaning up after ourselves, but it doesn't seem to be contagious. Over the last few years I see people dumping crap right out the doors of their vehicles at stop lights.
They used to put it on barges and dump it at sea, then the EPA made them stop. Now, they export it to other States. Too many people in too small an area; that's why I stay away from big cities. Now, it's not enough; you now have to stay away from any place that does business with big cities.
What could be an even worse problem is if those rail cars are put back into general service hauling grain or something.
These railcars are custom fabricated for refuse duty. Grain is transported in covered hopper cars. Finished goods are transported in either box cars or intermodal cars.
Kind of like we get stuck with a lot of the nation's chemical waste here in New York. Not sure why they can't process, but fortunately for me, I'm not an expert in shit. Might ask a couple people around here-they seem full of it....
I know that epistte. That was a joke; a pretty funny one actually.
I have an extremely dry sense of humor but your reply did not come across as being funny.IMVHO
You rang?
Wow. Who knew the tea party think tank was mobile.
And here's candidate number 1.
Off topic. This article is about #2.
They always have been. Any state that would push people to vote for a known pedophile like roy moore is a shitty state.
[eye roll]
Alabama is a shitty state precisely because it's controlled by conservatives and bible-babblers.
And we now have candidate number 2.
And..... .candidate number 3
Alabama was 50 years behind the time 50 years ago and now it is 75 years behind the time because other states have moved forward while Alabama stagnates in the 1890s.
Alabama has always been a conservative state. The Dixiecrats switched from being democratic to GOP when the DNC supported the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment. The Southern Strategy flipped the Dixiecrats to being Republicans. Reagan finished that job when he appealed to the evangelical voters.
Not really. It still seems to be controlled by bigoted white conservative morons.
You left out some very important adjectives. Having lived here since 1973 coming from LA to this Great State, I am not only those, but racist, illiterate, and a red neck coon ass. Love sitting on the pier fishing and crabbing on Mobile Bay. My home fronts on the Bay and not too bad considering that my family never owned a slave.
Episette should be enlightened to a degree. We fought tooth and nail to take our State away from Wallace and his cartel. BS on the evangelicans.
Alabama is poor economically.
Notice" We do not want your Northern, Eastern folks retiring to Alabama. Our borders are full of your complaining about everything. If lunch is $2.50 you want it on $1.50. All you do is complain.......stay home.
Sweet Home Alabama with 20 tons of NY and NJ shit.
If you fought so hard to get away from the ideas of George Wallace then why do social fossils such as Jeff Sessions and then Roy Moore have such strong support in your very conservative state?
You don't have to worry about me visiting or retiring to Sweet Home Alabama. I don't like hot humid weather and I plan to move forward when I retire and not backward 50 years.
Thank you......praise God you will not be moving here.
Jeff Sessions is great. Beats the hell out of your want to be "of the people and for the people"
There goes your claim of opposing the Christian evangelicals in Alabama if you support Jeff Beauregard Sessions. He would turn the country back 75 years if he had his way.
Sherrod Brown is a moderate in my eyes. Rob Portman is a GOP soldier who talks like a reasonable moderate when he needs a public statement, but when it comes to the vote he a is a party-line hack.
That's just your opinion......how much is it worth?
Probably less than a nickel, unless you find someone who is willing to pay more.
Do you feel threatened by my opinions?
No aa most of the time I laugh/
I presume you voted for Roy Moore too, eh?
You know it.
Didn't the Dems just advance Alabama by winning a special election against a bigoted and theocratic Republican?
You mean like Strom Thurmond, David Duke, Roy Moore, Miles Godwin and Jesse Helms? I think conservatives today are in deep denial about the southern political realignment. It's far simpler to look at racist, homophobic or misogynistic organizations like the SBC and compare their political affiliation today to what they were 60 years ago. There's a very good reason why hate groups like the FRC are affiliated with the GOP, why the south is a solid block of red states today, and why the GOP is so blindingly white.
Alabama turned solidly Republican by the late 1980s.
LOL - who said it happened just in the 1960s or just because of the CRA? It happened over several decades as the two parties switched positions on a number of fundamental issues starting in the New Deal era. The GOP's racist "southern strategy" and the GOP's marriage to the bible-babblers both happened well after the CRA and VRA were enacted, they merely pushed the realignment along a bit faster. Plus there's lots of inertia on party affiliation.......heck, a Dixiecrat like Kim Davis didn't even get the message until 2016.
As far as David Duke goes, it's very telling that he couldn't win election as a Dem but did as a Republican. That shows that the party affiliation switch was essentially a fait accomplis in Louisiana by 1989, at least from the standpoint of broad electoral demographics.
And in another benighted confederate state Roy Moore didn't even switch parties until 1992 despite literally being a neoconfederate and theocrat who has hosted meetings for white supremacist groups.
You should read the article I cited up thread because it exposes a number of misconceptions and falsehoods which conservatives hold on this issue. And as I said the political affiliation of bigoted groups like the SBC and the FRC is a far better indication than the affiliation of any one politician.
There was an exodus before the 1964 Civil Rights Act but the passage of that legislation sealed the fate of the Dem, Democrats being the dominant party of the American southeast. The switch of the conservatives from the Democrats to the GOP was finished by the late 1980s. Those southern conservative Democrats were not the same platform as the northern liberal democrats or even blue dog democrats.
So apparently you believe all those bigots and racists in the south whose ancestors fought for slavery and they themselves fought tooth and nail against the civil rights act and voting rights act just up and moved out of their home States? How is it that they are ALL Republican strongholds now unless all those bigots and racists moved away or died? You have to be seriously brain dead to not see how the GOP capitalized on the northern Democrat decision to support the civil rights act and voting rights act.
Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War . "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:
The Senate version:
But really, trying to define racism by party is ignorant because racists can and have changed party affiliation many times in the last 240 years of our history. Not only that, but there have been multiple groups with very different agendas who have shared party names at time such as the 1860 Presidential election where there was a "Southern Democrat" party with their candidate for President, a hard line supporter of slavery, John C. Breckinridge and an abolitionist "Northern democrat" candidate named Stephen A. Douglas. The only consistent throughout the years is that those who fought to defend slavery, fought for segregation, fought to prevent women and blacks from voting, fought the civil rights and voting rights act, fought to protect their bans on interracial marriage and fought to protect bans on gay marriage, have always considered themselves "conservatives". Those who fought for equal rights, supported the removal of Jim Crow laws, fought for women's suffrage, fought to allow blacks a voice and a vote, fought for the civil rights and voting rights acts, fought against bans on interracial marriage and fought against bans on gay marriage consider themselves liberals or progressives.
History tells us who has won and who has lost, and the result is always the same which is why conservatives are so bitter and angry. They lost the civil war and every other war they waged against civil rights. It didn't happen overnight, conservatives won many battles, but they never win the war. Logic, reason and equality always eventually win the war even if it takes us a hundred years.
No, just bible-babblers like Kim Davis, Tony Perkins, Mike Pence and all the other conservatives and Christofascists who think their superstitions and sharia laws belong in other people's lives.
Most Christians aren't like that, but most Christians aren't conservative theocratic freaks.
It was conservatives who did that. No wonder the conservatives of today still want some Americans to be treated as 2nd-class citizens.....they've never supported equal rights for all.
It's also no wonder that the conservative party today is disproportionately white, Christian and male. And any LGBT conservatives are usually deeply in the GOP's closet.
My rhetoric about bible-babblers concerns bible-babblers. I think most Christians here understand that since they have similar complaints about these right-wing Christian extremists.
It's like you are totally ignoring the previous comments explaining how the racist democrats of yesterday became the republicans of today. Do you not want to get it or are you just pretending it didn't happen?
Tex is trying to ignore the fact that all these bigoted southern conservatives states are a solid block of red today, and also ignore that his party's leader is a blatant racist who is supported by the KKK and neo-Nazis.......who even has white supremacists on his staff. Tex is in denial about what his party actually is - a bigoted white stain on the nation.
Talk about spin. I have never denied that the majority of those who supported slavery considered themselves "Democrats" (though technically since there were two different parties using the same word, they considered themselves "Southern Democrats"), those who created the KKK considered themselves "Democrats". those who instituted segregation and Jim Crow laws considered themselves "Democrats".
I think what you're continuing to refuse to acknowledge is the definition of "Democrat".
Democrat: noun - 1. an advocate or supporter of democracy. 2.a member of the Democratic Party.
Strom Thurmond is the grandfather of the racist TEAparty. Strom Thurmond was a racist till the very end.
Rosie O'Donnell is stuck on a train somewhere?
She's in one car and Trump's in the other.
no. The article said there 10,000,000 pounds stuck. That only leaves enough for her alone and she must have lost some weight .
Trash trains are a regular move and they smell when they are on the move. Standing and rotting it would be awful
I'd hate to be the crews assigned to pusher duty on a refuse train. I hope those locomotives are modern air-conditioned units.
Several years ago, I rode a steam powered excursion train over Horseshoe Curve in the Pennsylvania mountains. At the top we had to wait for a train coming up and then cross over to the down track. We stopped with the steam locomotive just outside the double track tunnel. We were in the tunnel while a heavy trash train went by slowly. What a smell!
Yuck. I never thought of a pusher train. That could be one really unpleasant ride for the crew. Maybe that's why they can't move it, they can't find any volunteers to run the engine.
On long trains or in the mountains is is common to have 2-3 locomotives on the front with 2 older locomotives pushing from the rear to get the train over a hill. If they put all of the power on the front there is a risk of breaking couplers.
I doubt that anyone notices the smell in that state.
What a shitty thing to do.
I have smelled rotting corpses, and picked them up for disposal. Take my word for it, the smell of shit and rotting corpses are not even remotely the same.
Looking for a use for it? Don't some farmers use human shit as fertilizer for crops? Sage advice: Wash all your ground fruits and vegetables VERY carefully.
You can buy fertilizer made from human waste at most garden centers.
Milorganite. It is great fertilizer that doesn't burn plants or grass.
Note, this isn't raw sewage stuck in Alabama. It has been treated.
Before I switched to an organic lawn service, I used milorganite. It has a peculiar smell, but by no means an awful one. The corn farmers around here do, however, use a "tea" made from cow manure. They spread it during winter to minimize the raunch on the ranch, so to speak. It's still 2 to 3 weeks of stank.
I apply Milorganite to my lawn 3 times a year. There is a slight smell until the first rain and then it goes away. I like the fact that it doesn't burn the lawn and the green is consistent.
I also use Milorganite on my veggies and flower gardens. My roses get Espoma fertilizer.
My neighbors hate it when I bring back 3x 5-gallon buckets of manure from the county fair to add to my compost pile and to dress the rose beds with. The roses love it but the neighbors are less than impressed.
around here where I live , that's called "fresh country air"....
Can't be any worse than chicken manure. Now that stuff is rank
Chicken is bad but piggy poo isn't far behind. There is a large hog operation about 3 miles west of me. Whenever they spread the manure of the fields it smells like all 3000 of them passed gas at the very same time. That stench is RANK!
I may sound like a shit connoisseur here, but horse is probably the best smelling. Chicken is the worst, followed by pig, then cow. I can't say that sheep smells all that bad, either.
Horse poo is pretty benign. It's also fairly dry and easy to remove when I get it on my car or bike tires from the numerous local Amish buggies.
LMAO, talking about pig poo made me think of mad max beyond thunderdome , and master saying ," not shit, ENERGY!!!!!!" if we can only bottle it.....
Lol I have lived near both chicken and turkey farms and though you'd think they'd smell similar they don't, turkey is worse.
Where I grew up in Michigan the farmers all used cow shit. Even on nice days when they were out on the fields hauling their shit spreaders around the field you drove with the windows up going back and forth to work and tended to avoid visiting friends out of town and invited them to met you at one of the two town taverns for the next week or two instead.
I live at the base of a hill and my neighbors are farmers. One day the valve on their manure tank got stuck open while they were driving on the road and I learned that shit flows downhill.
disgusting...but I laughed
Looks like it's time for the annual Alabama Sons of the Confederacy Memorial Picnic.
Hosted by Roy Moore's Foundation for Christian Sharia Law.
Speculation on the entertainment line up would probably get us both suspended.
Interesting that so few know the difference between wastewater sludge which is the remains from the biological activity in processing sewage and human waste. If the sludge was acquired from essentially no industrial waste it is actually a good topical fertilizer.