Fact: The only thing that smells worse than your poop is tons of other people's poop. If you don't believe me, take a road trip to the town of Parrish, Alabama. They'll back me up on this one: According to the Associated Press, the citizens of Parrish were forced to endure the stench pouring off a train full of sewer sludge from New York and New Jersey for close to two months.
It's not unusual for trains full of human waste to pass through the town of 982 people: there's a landfill complex that treats and disposes of the excrement another 20 miles further down the track. Having the train stop in town to share its intoxicating perfume for two months? That's both unreasonable and unusual. It seems that another county in Alabama blocked the train's passage, making it impossible for it to reach its final destination. So, there it sat in Parrish: like a man in the bathroom after a large, questionable meal, full of poop, making everything terrible for everyone. NPR states that the train was stopped near a local park. The odor coming off of it was so bad that little league games had to be cancelled.
After two months of having to put up with the stench ruining the lives of everyone in the town, in mid-April, the Mayor of Parrish was finally able to tell her constituents that it was finally moving on. The town's administration will be looking into passing a series of by-laws to keep similar incidents from happening again.
This is a terrible/fun story, but there's a big issue behind it: Alabama is a state without a lot of money. A combination of the state's loose-goose zoning laws and cheap land, make it an attractive place to set up businesses that require massive amounts of acreage to operate: like a landfill, for example. With it being illegal to dump raw sewage into the ocean, shipping it out to be disposed of is pretty appealing to regions that have the money to afford it.
It's just another example of affluent taking advantage of the poor. Be it a country, city or a person, where there's a lot of money involved, someone's going to get screwed.
Image via Wikipedia Commons
