That's the Poop

Blog #19

• Do you know where the sewage treatment facilities are in your community?
• Monterey One Water Treatment is our local sewage treatment plant; it located in Marina and is approximately 10-12 miles from neighborhoods and the ocean. In reading about their history this facility was build in 1989, before this time every community in the Monterey Bay area has its own sewage treatment plant. Something scary to learn was most of the communities at that time were discharging their waster into the Monterey Bay with as little as 300 feet off shore. In 1971 with the implementation of the Federal Clean Water Act, Monterey realized that its groundwater supply was deteriorating because of extensive withdrawal of ground water for agriculture. This overdraft led to an increasing problem of seawater intrusion, which was threatening the multibillion dollar agricultural industry and the drinking water supply for the City of Salinas. Today the Regional Treatment Plant now sits 2 miles north of the City of Marina near the farmland that was experiencing the worst seawater intrusion and treats up to 29.6 million galls per day of waste.
• Consider their locations- is this an environmental justice concern
• The new location is of no concern to the environment, according to the history, there used to be 8 facilities within the communities all responsible for their own waste with damaging effects to the community and seawater.  Eventually they were decommissioned, but pumping plants remain open to pump sewage (rather than treated wastewater) to the new treatment plant.

• Many attempts to encourage the people of India to use toilets have failed. You have learned about one. Can you think of another solution that might help?
• 60% of India do not have toilets, it's important to remember that so many go without the comforts that we take advantage of everyday. And the recent report by the United Nations stating that more people in India have access to cellular phones then toilets; I'm sorry WHAT? And some won one just for fun. I was interested to learn more; is this just an issue with India, or do other countries face the same issues. And many countries (totaling 1 billion according to Deputy Secretary of the United Nations) in general do not have toilets and if they do, they are public and not sanitized. In India some use the beach to openly defecate, in Indonesia they have little exposed huts that sit over the running river, and defecating in plastic bags in Kenya.
• India:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixJgY2VSct0
• Indonesia:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scr-V8dKIX8

INDIA: (MEN AND WOMEN's PUBLIC BATHROOMS)

INDIA: (OPEN DEFECATION ON INDIAS BEACHES)

INDONESIA: (BOAT BATHROOMS IN INDONESIA)

• In order to earn his future family-in-laws approval, he had to provide a toilet; only after this was installed and functioning could they be married. This showed his new family and bride- his pride, dignity and status symbol
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyhFGNar08Y

• The "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign was initiated through Indias government in an effort to improve sanitation. Although successful in some part of the country, not attainable in others. The government has a need to organize and raise funds for proper sanitation facilities and treatment plants. Without both, this campaign can only be successful in homes have a waste facility, but not a proper way to dispose of the waste. I truly am at loss for words on how to help, or how I would go about helping.

In the News:

Along the lines of poor sanitation, I had a thought about treating possible infection from such awful conditions, and found an article out of Kiberia on over use of antibiotics and resistant bacteria. Across the world Antibiotics are mass produced and thus are relatively accessible and cheap to afford. Kiberia are one of the top consumers of antibiotics with an estimated 90 percent of households using antibiotics compared with the United States who use about 17 percent. With the availability of antibiotics in these regions, the drugs are losing their ability to kill the germs they were created to treat. Hard-wired to survive, many bacteria have evolved to outsmart the medications, these mutant bacteria are making them impervious to antibiotics. Something so interesting in this article, was although this is global threat, rich countries who have properly insured patients often rush to a physician and demand prescriptions at the slightest hint of a cough or cold. Scary times for us all, and makes us even more on guard as health care workers.