They had been convicted of illegally dumping sewage from two outhouses at the Amish sect’s schoolhouse and not having a permitted sewage disposal system. The county sewage agency said the sewage was collected in buckets instead of a legally emptied tank and the waste then dumped on the land.
Actually if they are dumping it on the land, that does sound unsanitary. I know it is good fertilizer but it also puts that bacteria in the ground.
It’s called a composting toilet. They work by AEROBIC action, in which aerobic- or oxygen-breathing - good bacteria breakdown the “sewage” into raw components. Done correctly, it poses little or no threat to health of humans or animals.
The exact opposite is the “septic” system, which is called exactly what it is not! Sewage in a “septic” system is broken down by ANaerobic bacteria - non-oxygen breathing- which are typically toxic and can cause all kinds of problems if not handled and treated properly.
In other words, the sewage that is dumped into a municipal sewage system is hazardous and must be handled that way, and is very expensive to make non-toxic.
Composting, on the other hand, is the natural, non-toxic method of handling the waste and because it uses aerobic bacteria in the process, it is for the most part non-toxic during most of the process.
Of course, government minions who have been brainwashed with the “modern” health regulations will usually have none of the composting ideas, and will prosecute people, like they are these Amish. Once they are educated- if, in fact, they actually can be- they can learn that composting and aerobic breakdown is not really harmful. They still don’t like to go along with it unless they are forced, as they are, after all, government bureaucrats who will grasp at any chance to lord their position and one-size-fits-all rules over mere peons using common sense. Especially peons who know better and want to compost.
It doesn’t take much research on the ‘net to learn all the benefits of composting “humanure”. Those “buckets” that are disparagingly described are actually composting toilet buckets, part of the very natural and beneficial process.
After doing some research, I got rid of my “septic” system, and went to composting. It is not quite as easy as out-of-sight-out-of-mind toilet flushing, but much better in just about every way. These JBT’s need to learn about composting and get over their little power trips.