Did you realize that raw sewage still goes into the Hudson River? As recently as the 90s. And guess who was one of the premier proponents of pumping poo? The Donald! From the Daily Beast:
How Donald Trump Tried to Cash In by Dumping Sewage Into the Hudson River
Trump had two choices with a billion-dollar West Side project: build a sewage treatment plant or bow out. But there was a third option: flood the Hudson.
Slate has an article about the sewer opening off the Florida
Outflow off Hollywood
coastline. It sounds horrible, and I agree: don’t eat the grouper.
The ancient Romans had The Cloaca Maxima, which worked basically the same way: throw stuff in and it eventually winds up in the Tiber and goes downstream and you can forget about it. Bacterial bloom? What are bacteria?
Am I about to become Freethought Blogs special rapporteur of fecal content?
Even if the sewage was treated properly fish might like to be near the outflow pipe. There was usually a lot of fish moving near the paper mill waste water outflow pipes, when the active sludge method was used* as the waste water is well oxygenated by the process, at least when I had summer jobs at paper and pulp mills.
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*
First, solids are separated in a settling basin, then nutrient balance and pH is adjusted, then the liquid is pumped into an mechanically aerated basin that contains active sludge, then the waste water is pumped into settling basin (active sludge evolves to settle to the bottom because a part is returned to the previous stage) and the treated water is discharged into the receiving aquifer. At a suitable point, phosphorus may be precipitated with ferrisulphate.
Londoners have been eating jellied eels since the 18th century. Thames eels!
Rob Grigjanis@#2:
How does one jelly an eel? Does it involve poaching it in lye like lutefisk?
I will NOT be having the jellied eels this week.
Marcus @3: I was raised in Yorkshire, so this is all foreign to me. I can only guess that Scottish, London and Scandinavian cuisines are all based on a dare.