Sewage sludge train finally emptied

Tiny Alabama town a dump site for waste from New York

ATLANTA — The last train car full of New York City sewage sludge that has stunk up a small Alabama community has finally been emptied, the town’s mayor said this week.

For more than two months, the sludge has blown an unbearable stench throughout the tiny town of Parrish, Ala., population 982.

All of the containers have now been emptied from the so-called Poop Train, Parrish Mayor Heather Hall said on social media Wednesday. Some of the containers are still at the site, awaiting shipment back to the northeast U.S., she said.

The sludge is a by-product of New Yorkers’ excrement. It was shipped to the nearby Big Sky landfill. Hall said after a public outcry, the Norfolk Southern railroad required Big Sky to hire more truck drivers so the sludge could be removed from the train cars more quickly.

“Other towns and cities have been fighting this material in their towns for years,” Hall said in announcing the end of what she described as a nightmare. “While what happened in Parrish was, to our understanding, an unprecedented event, there are still small towns like Parrish fighting this situation on a smaller scale.”

Experts say some cities send their waste to Alabama and other Southern states due to low landfill fees and lax zoning laws.

“Would New York City like for us to send all our poop up there forever?” said Sherleen Pike, who lives about a half-mile from the railroad track in Parrish.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Train cars filled with sewage sludge from New York City sit in a railyard in Parrish, Ala., earlier this month. The cars were finally emptied this week.