Author Topic: A Railroad Strike Could Lead to a Literal Shitshow in NYC  (Read 325 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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A Railroad Strike Could Lead to a Literal Shitshow in NYC
« on: November 26, 2022, 02:40:48 am »
Daily Beast by Jake Lahut 11/23/2022

POO CHOO

A potential railroad strike would be a huge problem for the economy—and for a city that depends on the rails to flush away its sewage.



Aside from shutting down a massive sector of the global economy ahead of the holidays, a looming national rail strike could end up being a much more visceral experience for New Yorkers.

A tentative deal brokered by the Biden administration fell through on Monday, with one of the freight rail industry’s biggest unions narrowly voting down the labor agreement and sending everyone back to the drawing board. The strike could cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day, according to The New York Times.

But a strike could be particularly shitty for the 8.8 million people living in New York City—literally.

Across the city’s five boroughs, the 2.4 million pounds of human waste produced daily ends up having to go somewhere.

With the rail strike arriving as soon as Dec. 5, residents of the Big Apple may be in for an entirely undesired gift that keeps on giving: stalled freight containers filled with “biosolids,” the dehydrated and treated version of what is still very much poop.

While the city used to send it straight into the ocean, since the early 1990s, they've been sending the treated remains to landfills, most often by freight rail. The Big Apple has lowered that share going to landfills from around 85 percent to 70 percent (a NYC Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson noted "about one-tenth of one percent" of the city's wastewater ends up on a freight train).

Normally reserved for a subplot of Billions or the unfortunate residents of a town in northern Alabama, the so-called poop trains stemming from the Big Apple have only had notable and smelly snafus on their way to landfills in rural areas. But when the open-air containers—filled with 10 million pounds of excrement—once got stuck in Alabama for two months in 2018, the smell grew so strong that residents resorted to wearing masks (NYC mandates the containers be sealed on top).

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Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: A Railroad Strike Could Lead to a Literal Shitshow in NYC
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2022, 08:21:40 am »
Maybe New York City can figure out something creative to do with their sh*t (besides dumping it in the Hudson Canyon).
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis