Duchy Sewage could help the desert bloom

Cornish Guardian, 23/9/93 by Sue Doyle
Duchy Sewage could help the desert bloom
Ships that pass in the night could well link Cornwall and the land of the Nile if the vision of one of the campaigners who visited the Surf To Save contest last week is realised.
Mr Andrew Fletcher from Paignton, travelled to the contest to promote "Operation Oasis"-the use of sewage and waste water as a fertiliser in the arid deserts of Egypt. He thinks it should be possible to use the returning super tankers after they have offloaded oil in this country, to transport effluents back again.
Once unshipped in the Near and Far East, whole areas of desert could be sprayed with liquid mulch made from sewage and waste water. The Mixture would bind with the sand grains to create a fertile crust of top soil, where trees and plants could grow to slow down evaporation.
If additional water was needed it could be pumped from underground using methane also derived from the sewage.
Mr Fletcher's occurred to him some years ago, but only recently has he decided to follow it up, following a discussion with an Egyptian Doctor, Dr Awad told him that as only three per cent of the land on either side of the Nile is fertile, the populations there suffer from a paucity of good soil. He urged him to make his plan public.
The Egyptian Embassy in London has responded with interest in the idea.
One persons annual faeces outlet is equivalent to a 25kg sack of EEC 20:10:10: NPK fertiliser.
Despite its potential no ultimate strategy has ever evolved for dealing with it usefully in a widespread way.
Recently South West Water has been encouraging experiments with land reclamation in the baron clay tip areas of Cornwall, by giving treated sewage cake or powdered form to the ECCI horticultural department.
Experiments are underway to see what combination of sewage and infertile soil are best for growing grass and later trees and crops.
These experiments started only last Spring-an indication of how recent an idea this is.
A SWW official explained that all the sewage sludge collected from cesspits in the county is used on farmlands here (on two hundred and fifty farms in all).
He thought that demand far outstripped the ability to supply as only 1/200th of available land is covered. 'Possibly because no one wants the stuff and already have a massive problem dealing with the waste generated by farm animals,'
If there were inland treatment works for sewage from areas such as Newquay, eventual export of effluents would become more likely, but at present there are only limited supplies of "human fertiliser" for land use.
Mr Fletcher's comments that if we continue dumping sewage in the sea, not only will we ruin the marine environment, we will lose a valuable soil compost.
His idea compares with a scheme piloted some years ago in Kinshasa, Zaire, for using grow-bags filled with a mixture of earth and excrement.
Called "The Eco-Lavatory" the bags were used to nurture plants again in arid and infertile regions.
Seeds where sown in holes in the plastic bags, which were sunk into the land.
The bags had the advantage of preventing the spread of contamination and retaining water.
Perhaps the most novel use for sewage is the one sited by Surfers Against Sewage in its Campaign Journal, Pipeline News.
In Japan treated sewage is compacted into paving slabs... insoluble it is hoped in water.