One of the most poignant and revealing quotes from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation is, “There’s shit in the meat,” referencing the extremely unsanitary conditions at a beef cattle slaughterhouse in Colorado. Here in Albemarle and Fluvanna counties, beef cattle are excreting in another undesirable location: the Hardware River.
In 2006, an estimated 590,000 pounds of cow crap plopped into the Hardware and its two forks. Humans also shuttled some of their excrement into the river via 233 failing residential septic systems. These stinkin’ stats are brought to you by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. The two state entities recently published a report [PDF] concerning the conditions that have caused the Hardware to be classified as an “impaired” river since 2002. Beef cattle cooling off and taking dumps in the river during summer months are the main contributors of unicellular pollution flowing downstream.
Kayakers beware: Bovines bring bacteria, not just bucolic beauty, to the Hardware River.
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According to the document, the river is no longer safe for recreational activities like swimming or boating because of the high amount of fecal coliform bacteria that showed up in two state-funded water monitoring stations. The premiere nasty bacterium discovered on the banks of the Hardware is none other than E. coli—the li’l bug that caused a tainted spinach scare a few months ago. Some strains of this microorganism that calls poop home can give you dysentery, meningitis or pneumonia.
The area of the river in question.
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Don’t expect the Hardware River to run unpolluted anytime soon. The plan of action to restore water quality developed by the Virginia DEQ has a target completion date of 2010. Until then, crap-infused water will continue to flow south of Charlottesville into the James River and eventually onward to the Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads harbor.
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