Slow River

I had learned at age twelve, from my uncle Willem, that in a properly run plant the average BOD should never be higher than two ppm, but I didn’t say anything. Hepple hadn’t mentioned heavy metals or any of the volatile organic compounds, either, and I wondered what the plant’s record was like on those.

We walked among enormous translucent vats filled with swimming fish and floating duckweed. Pipes ran everywhere: transparent and opaque, plastic and metallic, finger-thin and bigger around than a human torso. I could feel the vibration of larger pipes ru

“The fish graze on this weed,” he said, “and if we have overgrowth we can harvest for animal feed. Further on we grow the lilies that are the real commercial backbone. But nothing, nothing at all, is wasted.” He came to an abrupt halt.

“According to your employment file you’ve worked at the Immingham Petroleum Refinery. What was your speciality?”

“Continuous emission monitoring,” I said, knowing full well that in this solar aquatics and bioremediation waste-water plant there was no such job.

“You’ll be assigned something suitable, of course, but whatever your role, the one thing to bear in mind is that this plant—the four and a half million gallons coming in, the thirty-five million gallons on the premises, and the four and a half million going out—is one giant homeostatic system.” He waited for me to nod. Probably wondered if I knew what homeostatic meant. “The more polluted the influent the more plants we grow and the more fish we harvest, but the effluent is always the same: clean, clean, clean. The only way this can be achieved is through attention to detail. As you’re used to a monitoring post, we might start you off in TOC analysis.”

I asked, because Sal Bird would have. “What’s TOC?”

“Total organic carbon analysis. Of the influent.”

At the initial stage, where none of the workers wore masks. One of the dirty jobs.

We stepped through what looked like an airlock into another closed corridor. Hepple fussed with the seals and we started walking again.

“It’s not for you to worry about what a given reading may mean, but you’d better know what the parameters of any substrate are, and know what to do if they rise above or fall below that level. When you’re assigned, your section supervisor will give you more precise details.”

We stopped at another air-sealed door. Hepple opened a panel in the corridor wall and took out a pair of dark goggles for me. He pulled up his own pair. “Goggles must be worn in the tertiary sector at all times.”

With his eyes covered, his mouth seemed plump and soft.

“Even though you will not be assigned to the tertiary sector immediately, the possession of eye protection is mandatory.”

He ticked something off his chart. “The cost of those will come out of your first wage credit.”

It seemed I had the job. I pulled on the goggles.

Hepple opened the door. The light was blinding: huge are lights hung from a metal latticework near the glass roof; bank after bank of full-spectrum spots shone from upright partitions between vats. It was incredibly hot and the air was full of the hiss of aerators and mixers and the rich aroma of green growing things. I had forgotten how much a person sweated in a ski

“This is where the heavy metals are taken out by the moss.”

I watched as a man and a woman lifted a sieved tray out of a vat and scraped off the greenery. “It’s recycled, of course.”

A woman carrying a heavy-looking tray of tiny snails walked toward us. I started to move aside to let her pass, but Hepple pretended not to notice and the woman had to detour. A little tin god, lording it over his tiny domain. He wouldn’t have lasted more than a day on one of my projects.

“Zoo-plankton and snails do a lot of cleaning up at this stage, along with the algae, of course.” women and men moved back and forth, harvesting zoo-plankton; checking nitrogen levels; monitoring fecal coliforms. Hard and busy work in the tertiary sector, but not dangerous.

We climbed up to a moving walkway that ran twenty feet above the floor. As we moved farther downstream and the water became progressively more clean, the heat lessened, as did the light, and the smell got better.

“Our main sources of income at this stage are the bass and trout, and the lilies.” As we glided past the hydroponic growth, the smell of flowers was almost overpowering. “We’re pla

That was ambitious, but I said nothing.

“Ah, here we are.” We stepped down from the walkway. It was a plain white room, full of thick pipes. One had a spigot. I recognized a pressure reduction setup. Hepple pulled a paper cup from a stack and held it under the spigot, turned the tap. The cup filled with clear water. He drank some. “Here, taste it. Cleaner than what comes out of your tap at home. Pure. And that’s our effluent.”

I sipped, to show I was willing.

He slapped a pipe. “This is it. From here the water is no longer our responsibility.”

He seemed to expect some admiring questions. “Where does it go from here? Out to sea?”

“Not so long ago, it did. And then we realized we had a practically foolproof system and started simply piping it back to the watertable.” I nodded. Standard practice.

“Now, though, even that’s not necessary.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. “The water goes straight back into the mains?”

He looked amused. “Certainly. We avoid all that u

I tried not to look as horrified as I felt. My half sister, Greta—a lot older than me—had told me, “Lore, there’s no system on earth that’s foolproof. One mistake with a waste-water plant and without that vital break in the cycle, you could have PCBs and lead and DDT ru

Hepple, obviously, had never heard that bit of wisdom. There wasn’t even a last-line human observer here in the release room. One major spillage upstream at the same time as a computer failure here and there would be thousands of immediate deaths due to central nervous system toxicity, followed twenty years later by hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from various cancers. The implications were dizzying.

He looked at his wrist. “Time’s getting on.” He stared abstractedly into space a moment. “We’re shorthanded in three sections this month but I think, with your experience… I imagine the Immingham plant gave you some ideas of nitrification and denitrification processes?”

I tried to work out how much Sal Bird would understand of this conversation. “You mean the tidal marshes?”

“Just temporarily, of course.” That translated to Just until you’re no longer at the bottom of the heap. Shit work. “The salary is scale, Grade Two, with an additional percentage for the unsocial hours. You’ll be paid monthly, in arrears. Questions?”

I was just glad I still had a lump of money left. How did other people manage without pay for a month?

“Good. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Cherry Magyar, your section supervisor. You should find her understanding. She’s new at her job, too. I promoted her myself, just two weeks ago.”

We did not shake hands. No welcome-aboard speech. He just nodded, told me to get myself assigned a locker for the ski

It was cool outside. I walked the mile and a half back to my fifth-floor flat, trying to sort out how I felt about starting a job as a menial in a plant I could have run in my sleep.

I didn’t expect to get much sleep tonight. That direct mains release setup would give me nightmares.