Free Republic

The Democratic National Committee has apologized after one of its campaign buses was spotted dumping raw sewage along a road outside Atlanta. News outlets report a Lawrenceville auto shop employee alerted police Tuesday morning after witnessing the sewage getting dumped into a storm drain. The bus, which bears the slogan “Forward Together” and features the likenesses of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine, was in town for an early voting event. …

From the Washington Post:The next time you flush in the nation’s capital, you might consider this: You — or, more precisely, whatever you have flushed — will help generate clean energy. D.C. Water, which also treats sewage from much of the Maryland and Northern Virginia suburbs, recently became the first utility in North America to use a Norwegian thermal hydrolysis system to convert the sludge left over from treated sewage into electricity. Yes, to put it bluntly, the city’s sewage treatment plant is turning poop into power. It's actually a pretty interesting system, which you can see here.I'm reminded of...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Some companies boast of making beer with spring water from majestic mountains. They won't be competing in the upcoming Pure Water Brew Challenge, in which an Oregon wastewater treatment operator has asked home brewers to make great-tasting beer from hops, barley, yeast and the key, not-so-secret ingredient: treated sewer water.

There are people who definitely are a bit too attached to their smartphone, but this determined German schoolboy is in another league entirely. A boy enjoying a fishing trip with a group of friends accidentally dropped his iPhone over the side of the boat – so he decided to drain the entire pond. The 16-year-old took matters into his own hands after the angling club refused to let him use his diving suit to retrieve the device, sneaking back later that night armed with a powerful pump and two hoses. ‘I thought two pumps would drain enough of the water...

Journalism, which was ranked as the worst job in America last year, inched up a notch to finish at number 199, just ahead of lumberjack on CareerCast’s latest list of the top 200 best and worst jobs in the U.S. for 2014. By “worst jobs,” they are referring to employment opportunities. This is a reversal of last year when lumberjack came in at 199, after finishing at number 200 in 2012. Neither job has a very bright future, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that logging positions will drop by 9% by 2022, and reporters by 13%. Logging has...

This is a topic that one must approach delicately so as not to offend the reader’s sensibilities, but since it is a matter of importance for which you may receive a bill for some portion of $470 million, we start out with an analogy. You need energy, so you eat. Through the miracle of digestion, your body sorts what you have eaten, say, a pastrami on rye with a glob of coleslaw and a dill pickle, and plucks out the nutrients — proteins, carbohydrates and sugars it needs to generate power. Then it jettisons the rest. What your body jettisons...

Scotland's sewage workers discovered some strange items in it's sanitary system. According to the BBC, a large Winnie the Pooh bear, a fax machine and a bike, were among the items found in the system across Scotland last year.

A massive machine — longer than a football field — is munching away beneath Washington like a giant earthworm. Before it’s done, it will devour about 2 million cubic yards of soil that has been sitting under the city since the days of the dinosaurs. It is the most amazing and expensive construction project that no one ever will see. It will come within a center fielder’s throw of Nationals Park, within a corner kick of RFK Stadium, nibble at the deepest roots from the National Arboretum, pass below the Love Nightclub and the United House of Prayer for All,...

as stars begin to arrive for annual awards ceremonyIt was a mad dash to scrub the red carpet ahead of Sunday's Golden Globes after a pipe burst, spewing liquid some say smelled of sewage across the pathway for the stars. Black water gushed onto horrified members of the international press awaiting the arrival of Hollywood glitziest stars dressed in their finest gala attire. The press fled from the spill as the Beverly Hills Fire Department rushed to the scene to clean up the smelly mess in front of Hollywood's famous Beverly Hilton Hotel. An E! Television red carpet correspondent was...

A novel device that uses only sunlight and wastewater to produce hydrogen gas could provide a sustainable energy source while improving the efficiency of wastewater treatment. A research team led by Yat Li, assoc. prof. of chemistry at the Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, developed the solar-microbial device and reported their results in ACS Nano. The hybrid device combines a microbial fuel cell (MFC) and a type of solar cell called a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). In the MFC component, bacteria degrade organic matter in the wastewater, generating electricity in the process. The biologically generated electricity is delivered to the PEC...

A smelly and slippery spill involving human waste caused traffic to back up for miles along Interstate 81 in Cumberland County on Monday. It further snarled traffic in Carlisle and on other nearby road. The spill occurred before 9 a.m. and caused a motorcyclist to skid out of control and crash in the southbound lanes near the Hanover Street exit in Carlisle. A Pennsylvania Department of Transportation crew that was doing routine cleanup nearby was called to the scene and determined both southbound lanes needed to be closed, PennDOT spokesman Fritzi Schreffler said. It took several hours to clean up...

Water is everywhere in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy – in basements, on the streets and in transit systems – but the one place that flood water is most dangerous is in your body. ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser collected floodwater and drinking water in some of the areas hit hardest by Sandy and had them tested at The Ambient Group lab. The floodwater collected in Lower Manhattan tested positive for gasoline and two types of bacteria found in sewage: E. coli and coliform. “Very dangerous,” Besser said. “Make sure you wear protective gear if...

Avi Roeh, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, has told employees that police are likely to open an investigation against him in the near future, regarding a sewage treatment plant built in the town of Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Roeh is accused of violating a Civil Administration stop-work order in order to complete the plant despite a complaint by a far-left group that it was built on private Arab land. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Roeh admitted to the accusations against him, but argued that his decision had been the moral thing to do. “There are people living...

A big splash occurred on Monday morning at the House Press Gallery in the U.S. Capitol. No, this wasn’t one of those unexpected guest appearances for celebrities to talk to reporters about some favorite cause. This splash came from an exploding urinal. More specifically, something suddenly broke in the piping of the third-floor urinal, and water began spewing from beneath the men’s room door. As the water flowed, it first surrounded the Associated Press’s working area, then spread toward both ends of the gallery, which was occupied by fewer than usual reporters and staffers, because the House is out of...

As cities across the nation clean up after the Occupy Wall Street peeps they are coming across all sorts of rubbish and filth. Needles, human feces, garbage, and now disease have all been found at the park where the occupies have been encamped. Now tomorrow the are threatening violence? I am more concerned with them associating with the public. Time to bring back leper colonies.

A campaign for collecting overdue utility payments has started in a Russian city of Yekaterinburg. A city dweller having 4-years long overdue bills was chosen as a guinea pig for an experiment in using a sewage-blocking system "Sproot" ("Octopus"). That person had been holding out for 5 days before he gave in and paid all his debt, the city's utility company's "Oblcommunenergo" PR department said. This action for collecting 235 000 roubles debt ($7580) started on October, 14. The sewage tube to the apartment No 52, Old Boshevicks Street was blocked with that device. They also planned to block sewage...

Gaza City municipal teams worked for 24 hours to stem the flow of a sewage flooding homes in the city's eastern sector, Palestinian Authority (PA) based Ma'an News reported. Faulty sewage lines burst and poured into homes on Friday. Perhaps symbolically, the deluge took place as the city prepared to welcome a flood of murderous terrorists being released by Israel. Ma'an quoted a (presumably official) press release that laid the blame at Israel's door, but did not say who had issued it. "Workers face difficulties upgrading the sewage network because materials and machines necessary for the work are blocked by...

FORT WORTH — In parched West Texas, it's often easier to drill for oil than to find new sources of water. So after years of diminishing water supplies made worse by the second-most severe drought in state history, some communities are resorting to a plan that might have seemed absurd a generation ago: turning sewage into drinking water. Construction recently began on a $13 million water-reclamation plant believed to be the first of its kind in Texas. And officials have worked to dispel any fears that people will be drinking their neighbors' urine, promising the system will yield clean, safe...

Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross Monday, February 28, 2011 San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink. Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months. The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem. Now officials are...

San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink. Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months. The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem. Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite -...