Wasting Away

By Laura Paskus

Yeah, it’s true that the West is full of complicated environmental problems: We host underground nuclear waste dumps, big-ass strip mines and coalbed methane wells that leach natural gas into domestic drinking wells. It’s easy to blame state regulators for shirking their duties or the federal government for selling off public lands to energy companies. It’s even easier to complain about out-of-state corporations that colonize the West, extracting natural resources while leaving behind toxic waste. But there’s one major problem we all consistently ignore, avoid thinking about and are at a loss to solve — and it’s coming out our own digestive tracts. Basically, every single community in the region has an egregious story to share, but here are some that merit special attention, if, for no other reason than to underscore the reality that, in the West, the shit getting deep is not just a metaphor.

1. Mmmmm … cesspools

The largest source of groundwater pollution in New Mexico isn’t from rampant energy development or even national nuclear labs like Los Alamos and Sandia. It’s from septic tanks and cesspool discharge. The state’s more than 280,000 septic tank systems and cesspools produce 78 million gallons of wastewater each day. Four years ago, some nice fellow with the state’s Environment Department called me up to ask why no one writes about that issue, which he sees as an impending disaster in the arid West. “Well, um, I don’t know,” I told him and proposed a story to the rest of the staff. The consensus? People are depressed enough about the state of the environment, and they don’t need to hear about something as hopeless as West-wide sewage problems.

2. Good to the last drop!

It’s no surprise that the Middle Rio Grande has a problem with fecal coliform — bacterial microorganisms that live within the intestines of animals and are linked with e.coli. I mean, really, the entire Albuquerque metropolitan area drains into the river. But a few years ago, scientists sampled 42 miles of the river and found out there’s a lot of crap in there — most of it coming from birds, humans and dogs. Says Steve Glass, chair of the Ciudad Soil and Water Conservation District: “Someone did a study that showed each day dogs drop a semi trailer worth of feces throughout the entire city — and that only accounts for registered dogs in the city, probably.” Albuquerque spends $15 million a year to treat sewage, he says, but septic tanks are still a huge problem. Oh, right, and one more thing: By next summer, Albuquerque will have opened its new drinking water project, which diverts river water from just below the spot where fecal coliform levels are at their highest.

3. We like our rivers yellow, brown and waddy

Last September on lowbagger.org, editor Josh Mahan wrote about how the city of Gardiner, Mont., often releases untreated sewage into the headwaters of the Yellowstone River: “From out of the pipe an assortment of tampon applicators, condoms, syringes, dead rats, hair brushes, shampoo bottles, lighters, wads of toilet paper, and actual raw sewage spills down a steep rocky bank and into the Yellowstone River.” Mahan writes that the sewer district manager and the county director of environmental health both “admit that discharges of sewage are not desirable, but they counter quickly that it’s not something to worry too much about because the river has so much water in it that it dilutes the sewage and the solids.” And no, he writes, officials notify neither residents nor river runners when there’s “discharge” into the river.

4. Dinner and a poopy

Poor Tim Williams in Post Falls, Idaho. He’s so bummed out about all of the dogs crapping in his yard that he had to write an op-ed in his local paper, the Coeur d’Alene Press. He tries to keep his yard nice and neat, but day after day watches people let their dogs violate his yard. “Nice to see a dog doing his thing when you’re eating dinner or breakfast,” he writes. “What is really pathetic is those walking a dog see us watching them and pretend like it is OK. It does not sit well while we sit down to dinner looking out seeing a dog defecate right before us. Then the dog owners pretend to pick up the feces and they really don’t and leave my wife and I to do it later.” All those guilty, raise your hands.

5. Women rule

University of Colorado scientist David Norris has been studying “mutant” white sucker fish living downstream from sewage treatment plants in the South Platte River and Boulder Creek. His 2004 study found that the fish swimming below the plants — where water samples included pharmaceuticals and other chemicals such as detergents — were almost all female fish, whereas upstream, the numbers were even. After publishing the initial study in 2004, Norris and other scientists exposed samples of male fish to treated effluent water and found the fish lost their male physical traits and began acting like female fish. No word if the fish became more sensitive or developed a craving for chocolate.

6. God doesn’t like it when you leave a mess in the woods

I have to admit right here that I don’t know anything about the Bible, despite having been raised Catholic and sent off to catechism from the first-through-tenth grades. On the climbingforchrist website, Jim Doenges writes about “doo-doo-ronomy” and obviously practices what he preaches: While serving as an instructor on a 40-day hike in Wyoming, Doenges didn’t allow participants to use toilet paper the entire trip — advocating the “smear technique” instead. Little did I know, lapsed Christian that I am, that the good book has wise words on how to clean up after yourself. Leave it to the Internet to educate: “Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.” (Deuteronomy 23:12-13, NIV)

7. The best slopes are the pre-smeared ones

Thanks to global warming, ski areas are bracing for a loss of snowpack as a result of rising temps and decreased winter precipitation. When owners of Arizona’s Snow Bowl started looking for a way to keep the ski resort open during dry seasons, they hit upon the idea of using treated effluent water to make snow. American Indian tribes opposed the idea — the San Francisco Peaks are considered sacred and tribes weren’t psyched about their sacred lands being sprayed with sewage — but the Forest Service approved the plan in 2005. The battle rages on, however: In March 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the tribes and said the ski area couldn’t spray effluent water on lands sacred to American Indians.

8. Buy low (really low), sell high

Developers are so desperate to feed the maw and keep building, building, building in Arizona that they are lining up to buy wastewater being sold by the town of Prescott Valley. Originally scheduled for last November, the auction was supposed to have been presided over by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. (No comment.) But the town decided to delay the auction of 2,724 acre feet of effluent water — which could support between 6,000 and 12,000 new homes — in anticipation of higher prices in the future. According to a press release from West Water Research, LLC, “the premier transaction and asset-valuation advisory company to the water sector”, the town has already received pre-auction offers ranging from $20 million to $50 million.