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On Saturday, Bro took me for a hike along the Rail Trail in Stuveysant Falls, NY. Stuveysant Falls is a small town up in Columbia County near where my brother lives in upstate New York, in and around the Hudson River Valley, East of the Catskills.
The town is aptly named for the falls, which in the late to mid-19th and early 20th centuries, prior to the industrial age, empowered the rail line - a hydro-electric trolley system that ran from roughly New York City to Buffalo, connecting all the small towns, and also provided power to various communities in a sustainable way via the hydro-electric and lumber mill.
I didn't read the above anywhere, I got it mainly from my brother. They have a rusted wrought iron and steel bridge that requires replacement, with signs, help save our bridge.
ME: So are you helping them save their bridge?
Bro: why would I do that?
ME: uh...
The falls are quite lovely, and normally there's a lot of water that goes over them - in cascades. But we've been in a bit of a drought.
Me: Everything is so dry -
Bro: It is fall, things die off.
Me: Yes, but we also have a drought.
Bro says nothing.
Me: so, it's drier than usual.
Bro hadn't slept well, just finished having company the previous week (his wife's cousin visited for a week from Sacramento (she literally left the same day I arrived - this isn't on me, I had no idea she was visiting), and was just a touch cranky.
As you can see, it's a rather dry falls, with not a lot of water cascading down it.
While walking the Trail, we ran across a huge truck, carrying a long tank (one of those tankers). I assumed it was gas, but no, it was human feces (aka poop) and sewage. My Brother informed me that they spray the sewage on the crops as fertilizer - and you can smell it for miles.
Me: I suppose that's a good way to dispose of the sewage - fertlizes the crops, kind of like -
Bro: Not at all. I mean you'd think - but consider all the chemicals in that? And PFAS that are in the sewage and feces (aka poop).
Me: What are PFA's? (I'd heard the term before, of course, but couldn't remember what they are.)
Bro (in full lecture mode): They are forever chemicals, also carcinogens, which can't break down and aren't biodegradable. Once a week - they come out here in the fall, summer, spring months and spry the agricultural fields with this fertilizer. So our food carries all these carcinogens. They think it's ecologically sustainable - but it's not, because of all the other chemicals and things that end up in our sewage. So, the best of intentions and all that...
And people in New York wonder how they get cancer. It's not God folks, or random. It's people unknowingly spraying our crops with carcinogens.
Picture of field being fertilized by human sewage:
( agriculture field that was sprayed )
We talked about this for a good twenty minutes, while walking at a brisk pace. My brother is 6'5 and in good shape. I'm 6 foot and not in good shape. I was huffing along, and just barely managing to keep up, and from his perspective he wasn't walking that fast. It made me appreciate poor Wales and my mother, who don't even bother trying to keep up with me.
Then we switched over to how they dispose of human feces (poop) at camp sites. Mainly because I was trying to come up with an environmentally sustainable way to dispose of human waste. (Short Answer: There really isn't one.) And a safe topic to discuss with my brother, which he was knowledgeable on, and I didn't have to talk all that much during.
So yes, we talked about the disposal of human poop for about an hour.
Without going into too much gritty detail, learned the following:
( Read more... )
If you're thinking at this point that my brother is a wee bit overly concerned about the disposable of human poop - he's not. I swear.
A somewhat better picture of the falls:
And no, I didn't take any photos of the truck or the poop. But I did take a picture of the area in which they were spraying, along with the little fish pound in front of it. As you may or may not be able to see below, it's quite picturesque.
The town is aptly named for the falls, which in the late to mid-19th and early 20th centuries, prior to the industrial age, empowered the rail line - a hydro-electric trolley system that ran from roughly New York City to Buffalo, connecting all the small towns, and also provided power to various communities in a sustainable way via the hydro-electric and lumber mill.
I didn't read the above anywhere, I got it mainly from my brother. They have a rusted wrought iron and steel bridge that requires replacement, with signs, help save our bridge.
ME: So are you helping them save their bridge?
Bro: why would I do that?
ME: uh...
The falls are quite lovely, and normally there's a lot of water that goes over them - in cascades. But we've been in a bit of a drought.
Me: Everything is so dry -
Bro: It is fall, things die off.
Me: Yes, but we also have a drought.
Bro says nothing.
Me: so, it's drier than usual.
Bro hadn't slept well, just finished having company the previous week (his wife's cousin visited for a week from Sacramento (she literally left the same day I arrived - this isn't on me, I had no idea she was visiting), and was just a touch cranky.
As you can see, it's a rather dry falls, with not a lot of water cascading down it.
While walking the Trail, we ran across a huge truck, carrying a long tank (one of those tankers). I assumed it was gas, but no, it was human feces (aka poop) and sewage. My Brother informed me that they spray the sewage on the crops as fertilizer - and you can smell it for miles.
Me: I suppose that's a good way to dispose of the sewage - fertlizes the crops, kind of like -
Bro: Not at all. I mean you'd think - but consider all the chemicals in that? And PFAS that are in the sewage and feces (aka poop).
Me: What are PFA's? (I'd heard the term before, of course, but couldn't remember what they are.)
Bro (in full lecture mode): They are forever chemicals, also carcinogens, which can't break down and aren't biodegradable. Once a week - they come out here in the fall, summer, spring months and spry the agricultural fields with this fertilizer. So our food carries all these carcinogens. They think it's ecologically sustainable - but it's not, because of all the other chemicals and things that end up in our sewage. So, the best of intentions and all that...
And people in New York wonder how they get cancer. It's not God folks, or random. It's people unknowingly spraying our crops with carcinogens.
Picture of field being fertilized by human sewage:
( agriculture field that was sprayed )
We talked about this for a good twenty minutes, while walking at a brisk pace. My brother is 6'5 and in good shape. I'm 6 foot and not in good shape. I was huffing along, and just barely managing to keep up, and from his perspective he wasn't walking that fast. It made me appreciate poor Wales and my mother, who don't even bother trying to keep up with me.
Then we switched over to how they dispose of human feces (poop) at camp sites. Mainly because I was trying to come up with an environmentally sustainable way to dispose of human waste. (Short Answer: There really isn't one.) And a safe topic to discuss with my brother, which he was knowledgeable on, and I didn't have to talk all that much during.
So yes, we talked about the disposal of human poop for about an hour.
Without going into too much gritty detail, learned the following:
( Read more... )
If you're thinking at this point that my brother is a wee bit overly concerned about the disposable of human poop - he's not. I swear.
A somewhat better picture of the falls:
And no, I didn't take any photos of the truck or the poop. But I did take a picture of the area in which they were spraying, along with the little fish pound in front of it. As you may or may not be able to see below, it's quite picturesque.
