Sludge Watch ==> Massachusetts - Its a shit storm, Randy

[Maureen Reilly]

August 15, 2007
Crappy Day at Work, or, Shit Storm

Yesterday a couple of Massachusetts Water Resource Authority workers at Deer 
Island took a shower in shit. Literally. When the two workers popped off a 
valve to do some routine maintenance about 100 gallons of "return sludge" 
coated them. So it's really mostly treated sewage, but still wicked nasty. 
Anyone know if Aquafina is using return sludge in their process? To put it 
into perspective, if you're a ten minute shower kind of person you can think 
of it that way – most showers pump out 5 gallons a minute, split the 100 
gallons between two (we've got no idea if they were coated evenly or not) 
and it's like they got about a 10 minute shower of sludge, each.

The employees were decontaminated on site and them taken to the hospital. 
Both were treated and released by mid-afternoon yesterday. Word from the 
MWRA is that at least one of the guys even showed up for work this morning. 
Mike Rowe has only been knee deep in sludge once, and he wasn't bathing in 
it, the MWRA guys do it day in and day out. We're giving a point to the MWRA 
workers but we're taking away points from the Herald for disappointing their 
readers – with such obvious puns to make the headline deliciously stinky 
they lamed out and went with the tame "Workers swamped in sludge when pipe 
explodes.

Image from the MWRA on "How the Sewer System Works." If you look closely 
there is one left pointing arrow – likely the point of return sludge.

http://bostonist.com/2007/08/15/crappy_day_at_w.php