Environment: The Value of Sludge

Day after day, residents and industries in the Chicago area flush 1.5 billion gallons of raw wastes into the city's sewers —out of sight and mind. The flushings become the metropolitan sanitary district's Sisyphean task; the engineers must not only treat the ceaseless torrents of raw sewage but also find some place to put the day's residues—and space for such byproducts is limited. Yet Chicago now seems to have solved the dilemma with such practical and ecological wisdom that its program may well become a model for other cities while incidentally and fortuitously...

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