BAC wrote:

"swroot" wrote in message
...

[-]

The sewage works merely concentrate the solids, they don't make the
stuff magically disappear. The resultant sludge may be burned, but this
is expensive and wasteful: the fertility is better returned to the soil.
So sewage companies are now (I understand) *paying* farmers to take the
sludge as agricultural fertiliser. It's more usual in truly rural areas,
as farmers spreading it near other people's houses are often inundated
with complaints about the smell (it's truly noxious).


In the 'good old days', there were sewage farms which were just that, i.e.
farms where the principal use was the disposal of sewage on the land. There
was one of these not far from the location of what is now the Toyota factory
south of Derby, which was the sewage farm for Burton on Trent. Sewage was
pumped there via a steam powered beam engine at Clay Mills sewage works just
outside Burton, and distributed around the fields via a quite complex ditch
and drainage system. I think it remained in use until the 1960s or 70s.

That's interesting. I hadn't thought to wonder about precisely why
they're called 'sewage farms', simply assumed they were another use of
farmland or something similar. I wonder if anyone has checked those
fields for heavy metal contamination :-/

regards
sarah


--
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view,
is silence about truth." Aldous Huxley