Here's a kind of a disgusting thought that I didn't really think of till today.
I work a couple of blocks away from Salt Creek on York Road. This is where Fullersburg Woods and Graue Mill dam are located. During the flood of a couple of weeks ago, the south bank of Salt Creek came within a couple of hundred feet of here. That's a lot of water.
I had wandered over to see how the creek was receding in the days immediately following the high water. The parking lot next to the creek was full of water for a few days and the area was closed for about a week.
Today, I got to work a little early and decided to go hang out along the creek while I finished a cheap cigar. Of course, the long ride and a couple of cups of coffee required that I use the outhouse located just off the parking lot and less than 100 feet from the creek.
I realized as I was walking toward the outhouse that this area had been under a good foot of water just 2 weeks earlier. This was bourne out by the mud line on the side of the outhouse. There are actually two, one for men and one for women, and each had the distinctive mud line about a foot up from the bottom.
Then I thought of the shit pits under them. They had to be filled with water at that point.
Then I thought of what was probably floating out of the shit pits.
That really grossed me out.
I immediately started thinking about what was all along the Fox River. Glenwood Park in Batavia, North Aurora island park, Violet Patch Park and Hudson Crossing in Oswego, all had outhouses or port-a-potties that were probably filled with water. Who knows where else.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I remembered something I was told years earlier. The greatest source of untreated waste entering the Fox River system wasn't coming from treatment plants, they actually produce some of the cleanest water entering the system. The highest concentration of waste comes from all the aging and leaking septic systems that line the shores of the Fox chain and all the way down stream.
Apparently the leaking gets worse when the septic systems get flooded.
I suddenly have the urge to go take a shower, in peroxide.