I would not argue that Durango must move forward to renovate or move the sewer plant, I would argue to immediately embrace and initiate a door-to-door collection service for all household organics, including toilet contents and food waste to be composted in a active pile.

Saying that, most folks can’t imagine what that would look like, or what that exactly means, but given the opportunity to talk about and present this process to people, some will choose to remove their water toilet. Water sewer is a concept more than 6,000 years old. However, we baby boomers are the first generation in the history of the North American continent to take water toilets for granted.

Stepping off sewer and septic as a species will be the most significant evolvement of our species to date. Like bees make wax and honey, we make dirt and food.

Sewer and health are not synonymous.

Sewer is more than 99 percent water. Remove water from our waste stream and greatly diminish the bulk we deal with. Very little space is required to compost.

Containment of human waste in the composting process is hundreds of times more probable than sewer or septic. Sewer has historically proved itself uncontainable. Septic’s very premise is to leach.

Build the best sewer plant you can, spend as much money as you can to make it state-of-the-art, but if we don’t allow another option to evolve with it, in 10 years the Animas will be more polluted than it is today.

I don’t believe we can count the cost of water sewer. It has a ripple effect through our economy and environment.

A composting service will give jobs to people and step us into a new era of human health.

Making dirt at a community level will fix our food economy and reverse our carbon footprint.

Jeff Wright

Durango