There’s more than one reason to be concerned about large commercial waste digesters: their environmental risks, their fiscal strain on a municipality’s infrastructure, their exaggerated or illusory economic benefits, and the secretive way they’re promoted by a few insiders.
For these reasons, I’ve a modest proposal: let those within a community who introduce these waste-processing plants live closest to them, and daily walk through the fields spread with their waste, drink the water that comes from them, and breathe deeply of the malodorous gases from them.
Better still, if proponents are so very confident of this waste-disposal scheme, let them have their children play in those fields, drink only the digester’s water, and inhale the gases from the digester plant. Not merely for a day, but instead day after day and year after year, as a regular and unfailing routine.
If the processing of rotten food, partly-eaten food, animal carcasses, and excrement (and all attached to them) offers only benefits and no risks, then proponents should be happy to relocate near a large, commercial digester. Why should other homeowners, their families, schools, retirement communities, parks, a campus, and nearby farms and businesses be alone in proximity to the digester?
A ‘monumental’ deal surely deserves monumental confidence and commitment: let each advocate take pride of place, and move near the digester.
It’s a simple request, and fulfillment just a real estate agent’s call away, after all.
Why live far away, when one could have the honor of being next door?