Rio’s stench is not rare – the Olympic call to ordure is a familiar ritual

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/07/rio-stench-olympic-call-to-ordure
<snip>
There is an argument that the one still-ignored basic human movement already has its place at the Olympics, albeit only unofficially. Over the past few weeks it has seemed that the focus of attention as the world’s press gathered in Rio was less on the sport than the sewage, a great deal of which is bobbing grimly around Guanabara Bay. “A giant pipe churns human waste into the marina,” reported USA Today on a visit to the sailing venue. “The stench makes uninitiated visitors feel like vomiting or fainting.” These days, Olympic glory can transform an athlete’s life, opening doors and boosting bank accounts. In Rio the sailors will have to cross streams of effluence to sustain their dreams of affluence.
Bullet, blast and queues cast shadow over first day of Rio Olympics
Read more

But there is nothing new here: every four years we get our knickers in a twist about the same subject. The Olympics has become sport’s quadrennial call to ordure, and few modern Games have passed without at least flirting with filth.

In the run-up to 2012 the Times reported that waterways around London’s Stratford site (the Olympic stadium stands less than a mile from the Abbey Mills Pumping Station, the celebrated “Cathedral of Sewage” designed by Joseph Bazalgette) “look and smell more like a shanty town’s open sewer than the promised 21st-century eco-park”. Organisers proposed a lengthy tunnel to take foul fluids elsewhere, the only problem with that solution being that it would have taken £2bn and 15 years to construct. Instead a new pumping station was built, and rapidly recycled refuse was repurposed to flush the park’s toilets and water its gardens.

Four years earlier Beijing had renovated nearly 400 miles of sewage pipes to avoid embarrassment. In 2000 a 20km tunnel was built to carry overflows away from the hitherto filthsome Sydney Harbour, and organisers also had to battle a “sewage-like” whiff that drifted over the main stadium during a test event, eventually traced to a nearby mangrove swamp that emitted a “naturally occurring odour” of nauseating intensity.

In Atlanta 20 years ago the local government issued bonds to finance the repair of a creaking, antiquated sewage system and still didn’t do it on time, leading to scare stories about infected tap water. Four years earlier Barcelona built a new sewage plant just in time to clean up its beach, scientists the previous year having found “large amounts of flotsam, including condoms” and “solid faecal matter” in the area to be used for the Olympic sailing.

[heaven05]

1. must maintain illusions

that usually fade with the smell......

[Demonaut]

2. I still remember swimming in the water off L'Estartit when I encountered a large "baby ruth"

after a siesta, I got out of the water fast

I was only 10

[malaise]

5. LOL

Heheheheh

[suffragette]

3. Yep. Another example here.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Victoria-wades-in-with-sewage-treatment-plant-6882697.php

The city of Victoria, its neighboring municipalities, and the province of British Columbia have finally gotten off the pot on plans to treat millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow daily into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

"I would be cautious," Munro said on Facebook. "We have heard this before. Hate to say it but I simply do not trust Victoria anymore. They have been 'promising' for more than 30 years."

The B.C. government pushed sewage treatment on Victoria as part of its successful campaign to win the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Victoria was also shamed when a local graduate student began dressing up in a 6-foot-tall turd costume complete with a sailor's cap. Speaking with a falsetto voice, "Mr. Floatie" invaded a B.C. Legislature candidates' forum and at one point tried to run for mayor of Victoria.


More about that here, including pic of Mr. Floatie:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8078911

[malaise]

4. Looks like all our cities

are full of shit

[suffragette]

8. Imagine if we pooped beaches, like the parrotfish

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/absurd-creature-of-the-week-parrotfish/

Oh, that’s right. Your precious Hawaiian beach vacation was actually a frolic through epic amounts of doody. Specifically, the doody from a very special kind of critter: the parrotfish. You see, parrotfish are quite partial to the algae that grow on coral, and they gnaw it off with two impressive rows of fused, beak-like teeth (hence their name). Simply by chewing on reefs, a large Hawaiian parrotfish can ingest a coral’s calcium carbonate and poop out up to 800 pounds of sand each year, according to marine biologist Ling Ong of Hawaii’s SWCA Environmental Consultants. One Australian species, she notes, produces up to one ton per year.

[malaise]

9. It's one of the reasons why we don't eat parrotfish

They clean up our mess and protect the environment.

[backscatter712]

6. And here I am in Denver...

...that gets mocked for being the one city that actually refused the honor of hosting a Winter Olympics, after citizens rebelled.

Can't say I disagree with that decision.

[malaise]

7. All the data suggests that you made the correct

decision