Life In The Wastelands

Don't you fret, M'sieur Marius, I don't feel any pain
A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now
You're here, that's all I need to know
And you will keep me safe, and you will keep me close
And rain will make the flowers...
A Little Fall Of Rain (from Les Miserables)

It's just not funny. Project's dragging way past the due date and I've pretty much been stuck in this provincial town for almost half a year now. Sigh.


Alright, so it could be worse. At least this provincial town's got malls and wired coffee. And it's only a bridge away from a reasonably sized city. And oh, time does go by a little more quickly when you're cracking your pretty head over a game of Scrabulous. Or two. Or three. Or... a dozen.

In any case there's been time enough in my hands to get blogging a little more than usual, not to mention opportunities to get snaphappy. If you're wondering just what there is to shoot in the desolation of a wastewater treatment plant, well, not much. But, as they more or less said in Jurassic Park, life finds a way.


Wastewater treatment plants aren't just about getting the water clean enough to discharge out into the rivers and seas. Large enough plants actually form ecosystems of their own. I remember once, as a student, I visited Melbourne's Western Treatment Plant. Sure, there were places that stunk of rotting eggs. It's part of the process. What really impressed me was that, by the time the treatment reached the final stages, you'd find a wetland environment serving as haven for local and migratory birds.


In a nutshell, treating wastewater produces microbes, which go on to become a rich food source for higher organisms. Worms thrive, plants propagate, insects flourish. With enough of these around, even fish and birds will come along for the feast. And there we have it, a living habitat, generated from waste.


Indeed, rain will make the flowers grow.