Sludge happens..
One summer many years ago I worked with the Knoxville Water Service in their waste treatment plant. Among other discoveries, I found out that there really is a s**thook (you don't wanna know!).
If you worked inside in the air conditioned offices where the suits labored, the product processed was known as 'sludge'. If you worked outside or in the 'mixer/processer' buildings, it wasn't called sludge...but that's for another night.
Tonight, I attended (with a goodly number of other Salemtown neighbors) the Metro Water's presentation outlining their plans for odor abatement and plant reconstruction. The plans for the reconfiguration of how sludge is handled were impressive. The new buildings proposed were servicable and not esthetically dreadful, but they do have the unmistakable aura of government institutional blandness.
The good news is that Metro is sinking a lot of money to mollify and contain the effluviant odors so pervasive in our part of the world. The bad news is that we have to wait until 2008 before the major portion of the odor abatement project is going to be in place.
I'm hoping that the Presidential candidates in the year of diminished smell don't have the same olfactory qualities as current summer nights in Salemtown....prepare to hold your breath for a while folks.
