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> Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC. Is this meaningfully true? My understanding is
by weberc2 7y ago
> Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC.
Is this meaningfully true? My understanding is that the wastewater is treated and emptied into the Chicago river where it flows toward Missouri. Insofar as that water is rich in organic compounds, it "fertilizes" the fields that draw from that river and its distributaries; however, this model is different than the picture you paint, which sounds more like dumping more-or-less raw sewage directly on fields. If the latter is indeed the case, it's news to me, especially since I understand human sewage fertilizer to be prohibited as a health risk.
- lallysingh 7y agoNo parts of the sewage are filtered out and turned into fertilizer. At least that's how it works in ny.
- reaperducer 7y agoChicago is not in New York. https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater-fertilizer-mwrd-plant-battles-nutrient-pollution https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater-fertiliz... “What it does is essentially recovers the phosphorous and the nitrogen in the wastewater at the Stickney plant and coverts that into a high-grade, slow-release fertilizer that can be used for all sorts of agricultural applications.”
- newnewpdro 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Water_Reclamation_District_of_Greater_Chicago#Resource_Recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Water_Reclamation...
- reaperducer 7y agoIs this meaningfully true? Yes. My understanding is that the wastewater is treated and emptied into the Chicago river where it flows toward Missouri. The clean water goes into the Sanitary and Ship Canal. The solids fertilize fields. https://mwrd.org/mwrd-biosolids-compost-help-energize-ford-heights-field-dreams https://mwrd.org/mwrd-biosolids-compost-help-energize-ford-h...