the forgotten charm of the outhouse

Sewage spills into the San Francisco Bay have become headline news. It started with a multi-million gallon spill in Richardson Bay during the heavy January rains. Then there was the San Quentin parking lot spill that drained into the Bay. Pretty soon, eager journalists discovered that spills are a regular occurrence and are usually quickly forgotten. A token fine is paid and everybody moves on. For the sewage treatment plants, paying the fine is peanuts compared to the money that would be needed to upgrade the system. Most systems are outdated by several decades and in need of millions of dollars of repairs.

In the meantime we are polluting the Bay and with it a plentiful food supply of bottom feeders and salmon. It is not just a minor inconvenience. And it is not about to get better. Because nobody wants to pay the extra taxes that would be needed to fix the problem. You heard the voters: they want services but they do not want to pay for it.

But why is there a problem? For one, there are over five million toilets in the Bay Area that all get flushed several times a day.

You may think the modern toilet is a marvel of engineering. Especially the newer low flow types that "save" water. This is the type of savings that we are familiar with. Spend more to save more. And even those low flow marvels account for a huge chunk of the residential water use. Imagine that, we spend all this effort to provide clean running water, free of chemicals and bacteria, and people just flush most of it down the toilet. In some cases, cities will go as far as desalinating ocean water at a huge cost and huge pollution just so we can flush away our waste (into those same oceans by the way).

Is an ultra-low flow toilet the solution ? Well, not really. The famous water closet (WC) toilet is the problem not the solution. It used to be people had outhouses to take care of waste. Outhouses are remarkably simple. They consist of a wood plank with a round hole in it, suspended above a huge container. The more sanitary ones include a cover for the hole and screens in the vents to keep out flying insects. The outhouse does not use water. It also keeps the smells out the house by a simple means: location. No water waste and no fans or windows that let out the heat (that then gets replaced).

Outhouses have another benefit. The residues stay put and ferment. Then they can be used to cover the land and fertilize it for the next growing cycle. That way we return a lot of the nitrates that we took out in plants. It is a neat cycle with a minimal amount of loss. That, my friends, is a marvel of engineering. It cuts back on water and artificial fertilizer use. Granted, it is a rather stinky preposition especially on those days when the redistribution takes place. It is not something our modern noses are used to anymore. It is not something suburbia can tolerate. Never mind the tons of air pollution from SUVs, lawn-mowers, leaf-blowers and chain saw exhaust that smells like roses to us now. But not human waste, mind you. That is "unnatural."

So what happened to this marvelous system ? Well, soon people figured out they'd rather not go outside to use the bathroom. They'd rather do so in the comfort of their home. But that meant bringing a toilet into the house, not exactly an appetizing idea. To solve this problem, ingenious minds invented the flush toilet and the S shaped outflow. Now there was a way to dispose of things and block smells from entering back into the house. Add a couple of fans and generous windows and you can take care of the other smells too. Never mind the heat and cooling you lose that way. It is all part of modern conveniences. No more freezing bottoms or scary night time trips to the outhouse. No more fears of falling down the toilet.

Cities, with no room for outhouses, quickly discovered the sewer system. At first sewers would just dump their residues in rivers and streams a little ways away from the city. But that quickly led to ugly and smelly scenes and so sewer outlets were moved. Until they could no longer be moved. In came the sewer treatment plant. More water and power use. And more losses. Because we were now shipping the valuable nitrate and other bio-components away from the land and the next cycle of plants.

Soon other ingenious minds came up with the artificial fertilizer, a clean non-smelly substance that can be spread over the land with bare hands. Never mind all the oil and power that went into producing that. And once that fertilizer goes into plants and the plants into humans or animals, the residues just get flushed away. So every season you need to bring in more fertilizer. That, my friends, is good for business and the economy.

While we were busy undoing this highly efficient system, we also added a lot more people. That is called a double whammy. We move to a more wasteful system and we bring in more people to waste even more. And where do all these fertilizers go ? With a healthy dose of enteric bacteria mixed in ? To the oceans. There, they provide ample nutrients for algae and bacteria in a convenient watery medium. And to make matters even better, we are also adding a healthy dose of warming just to keep the pot boiling.

Now instead of recycling our waste and growing more food with it, we ship it to the oceans where it grows algae. Algae that then bloom and use the oxygen supply killing off the fish that we otherwise would eat. In other cases we "only" add bacteria, that are now also free to multiply in the water (instead of the soil where their expansion is limited). These can then infect our favorite shellfish and other bottom feeders and make us sick that way. Or they can infect us when we use the beaches for recreational activities.

However, we all have warm bottoms and a toilet in the coziness of our home. And in doing so, we are helping the economy.