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As the Queen City begins a new year of struggles with the same crappy issues other urban centers face, let’s look at how we deal with our shit.
How do cops deal with horse shit?
The mounted patrol gives Cincinnati Police officers a unique tool for managing crowds and for interacting with the public. But what about the horse droppings?
“Sometimes we are trotting to runs and the horse may go on the sidewalk area, and we do not clean it up right away,” says Sgt. Matthew C. Cornacchione of the Mounted Patrol Squad. “We will usually clean it up.”
But he says there’s no cause for alarm if some is left behind. Horse poop isn’t so bad.
“Horses are herbivores, so it does not stink or pose any health concern as a carnivore’s feces,” Cornacchione says.
What’s a blind person to do about waste from helper dogs?
Nothing, according to Cincinnati Municipal Code 701.30. The blind are exempt from the law that says people shall not “fail to remove any excrement deposited by any dog under his or her control on public or private property.”
The stuff must be picked up and “contained” or else a fine of $105 may be imposed. If the fine seems steep, there’s a reason. This is serious shit, according to K9 Scooper (k9scooper.com), a company that provides residential poop removal services; the bacteria, viruses and parasites can make people sick, and some of the doo could result in blindness in children.
How do performers deal with shit?
Cirque du Soleil, a human circus, didn’t require an animal-poop dumpster when they were here in August 2006. They brought their own portable restrooms — 35 of them. Guests used 29 of them, augmented with a few local facilities. Performers used two portable bathrooms equipped with three toilets, showers and sinks.
Where does transportation shit go?
Horse carriage operators working downtown must follow a catch-and-release-law. City Ordinance 407.13B requires that each carriage be “equipped with standard manure nets to catch and hold such manure until such time as the operator is able to place the manure in standard wire-tie plastic bags.” It’s up to the carriage operators to properly dispose of the load.
Is fowl poop really foul?
Pigeon poop damages buildings, cars and monuments and, in large quantities, can be hazardous to human health, according to the Humane Society of the United States. But the organization doesn’t recommend rounding up pigeons and getting rid of them — which is the approach the city took with the homeless people living under bridges. With the pigeons, patience and understanding is needed, according to the Humane Society. Adding uncomfortable, sloped wire mesh to flat surfaces and installing predator statues such as owls or cats on window ledges can help.
How about everyday shit?
In 2006 the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) handled, so to speak, approximately 68 billion gallons of shit. The term “shit” here is used loosely because it isn’t processed separately. All that crap was handled by 11 wastewater treatment plants in the MSD service area, which is “essentially all of Hamilton County within the I-275 loop,” says Mike Heitz, assistant superintendent of wastewater treatment. That means hundreds of thousands of daily poopers.
What’s special about wild animal shit?
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens has Ph.Ds on staff who study shit. The saying “It’s all in a drop and it’s all in a plop” explains how the zoo remains “the sexiest zoo in the world,” according to Thayne Maynard, co-interim director of the zoo. With a phenomenal success rate of breeding animals in captivity — the only zoo in the world to breed a Sumatran rhinoceros, for instance — the zoo examines excrement instead of a blood test to check ovulation and pregnancy in certain animals, such as elephants. Some of the zoo’s poop is used as fertilizer, but most goes to a landfill. In the past, it’s been dumped, er, offered to the public as a gift item.
“At times we have taken some of it, dried it out and packaged it and sold it as Zoo Doo or Endangered Feces,” Maynard says. ©
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2007.