Inner City Farmer

Compost_D responded to my last post with a couple questions about the legality of “humanure,” that is, composting your own feces, within the city limits of Austin, and what follows is pretty much everything I know on the subject.

In Section 15-5-8 of its City Code, the City of Austin basically passes the buck on the subject when it states that it follows the “applicable state law penalty provisions related to on-site sewage facilities” as provided by the Texas Health and Safety Code. Article 5 of Section 341.011 of the state code forbids “sewage, human excreta, wastewater, garbage, or other organic wastes deposited, stored, discharged, or exposed in such a way as to be a potential instrument or medium in disease transmission to a person or between persons.” A little further down the page in Section 341.014, it says that “human excreta in a populous area shall be disposed of through properly managed sewers, treatment tanks, chemical toilets, or privies constructed and maintained in conformity with the department’s specifications, or by other methods approved by the department.”

That all seems a little vague to me, but I do know that, according to Austin’s Building Code, if you’re building a house that’s within 100 feet of a sewer line you must by law connect to it. But as far as I can tell there’s nothing that says you actually have to use it. What’s to stop an intrepid humanure enthusiast from composting his own “excreta” as long as he does so in a way that doesn’t endanger the health of his neighbors?

I’m just a simple farmer so all this legal mumbo jumbo is a little over my head. However, I do know that the same rules that are designed to protect the public health are also hurting the environment we live in, which in turn will be negatively impacting the public health in the every near future. It’s high time that we as a society get over our Victorian priggishness about shit. According to Joseph Jenkins, author of The Humanure Handbook, “nearly a third of all household drinking water in the U.S. is used to flush toilets.” Which in a time of drought such as we’re experiencing right now seems absolutely absurd and will only grow more absurd the closer we get to experiencing a global crisis a hundred times worse than Peak Oil, and that is Peak Water. Add to this the fact that we as a society are also rapidly depleting the fertility of our soil, and the fact that we flush away so much rich organic material, i.e. shit, becomes almost laughably ridiculous, except I’m not laughing. Are you?

I’ll say this for those in charge of the City of Austin: they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to selling the idea of conservation. A smart homeowner can get all sorts of things for free and/or save a ton of money by taking advantage of all the rebates that are offered. I bought a high efficiency washing machine just after moving into this place, and, if I remember correctly, I received not one but two rebate checks soon afterward, one from Austin Energy, the other from the City. I also drove down to some generic office building downtown and picked up a low-flow shower head, which was about ten times nicer than my old one. And a couple months ago I got a rebate for buying an Energy Star refrigerator. The list of what they offer rebates for goes on and on: solar panels, rainwater harvesting, air conditioning, weatherization.

Just when I thought I’d hit them up for everything possible I discovered that the City was giving away high-efficiency toilets. I would be just as happy to install a “dry” toilet in my house—that’s right, humanure!—but composting your own feces remains an illegal activity within the city limits. So today I drove up to Metric and Rutland and picked myself up a fancy new Niagara Ecologic toilet. Warning to those who might be thinking of doing the same: it appears the program is wildly popular. When I got there I was initially informed that they were all out of toilets, but one miraculously appeared after a little poking around. Be sure to give them a call first.