"swroot" wrote in message
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BAC wrote:

"swroot" wrote in message
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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 :-/


I've a sneaking feeling a good proportion of the land went into the new road
complex serving Toyota and the 'new' A50 Stoke to M1 link. That's even
heavier contamination :-)