Trust Vermont to figure out how to do this.
The state had a highway rest stop in Guilford that was overwhelmed with visitors. The toilets could not keep up. Portable toilets were brought in to help, and everyone hated them.
“State officials,” says the Federal Highway Administration website, “needed a solution that could be designed and built quickly for the next foliage season.
” ‘We were looking for an alternative because we couldn’t continue with that high level of frustration,’ said [Dick Foster, director of the Vermont Information Center Division of the state’s Department of Buildings and General Services.]
“To further complicate matters, the welcome center was slated to be replaced by a newer facility in 2000, so the ‘quick fix’ also needed to be low cost. Tom Leytham, an architect who had designed other rest areas in the state, suggested the concept of using a Living Machine to Foster. …
” ‘I’d heard about Living Technologies, who had come up with a very elegant, simple solution that cleaned wastewater through a natural process involving plants.’
“Leytham drove Foster to South Burlington, Vt., where Living Technologies had installed a Living Machine to treat municipal wastewater. …
“In December 1996, in response to an inquiry from state officials, Living Technologies proposed a sewage-to-reuse system to reduce flows to the leachfields by recycling treated wastewater back into the restrooms to flush toilets. The Living Machine could be installed to serve the existing facilities at the Guilford center, and because the system was a modular design, it could be moved to another rest area when the center was relocated.
“In only eight months, the system was approved by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services, and installed by Living Technologies.”
The rest of the FHWA story by Molly Farrell, Liz Van der Hoven, and Tedann Olsen is here.
Katie Zezima at the NY Times adds more: “In a wing of the building, in the glass greenhouse, visitors look down on the vegetation from a grated ledge. The room, which offers spectacular mountain views, smells like a combination of mulch and chlorine.
“The building is heated and cooled by 24 geothermal wells. A similar system lies under the sidewalks to melt snow in the winter.” More from Zezima here.
Photo: Federal Highway Administration
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/00mayjun/vermont.cfm
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Yea, a success story. We need more of these.
I am often struck by the randomness of solutions to problems. It didn’t seem like they did an exhaustive search into options but rather one guy happened to have heard about something about a “green” waste-water treatment facility in South Burlington, and it came his head when he was talking to another guy, and off they went to take a look.
I sometimes think that the current obsession with exhaustive research before making any decisions leads to a kind of bureaucratic, paralyzing coughing fit.
Yes! I love the image of a “coughing fit”!
“bureaucratic coughing fit” 🙂 it was one of those artistic-creative insights, it just flashed into my brain. But I have to give the credit to any inventive metaphors I might come up with, to my lifelong obsession with Barbara Kingsolver, who is a genius at brilliant images.
Suzanne loves that author, and I am sorry to say I have yet to try her. What should I read first?
I think it’s interesting to follow her development as an author–I’d start with her first novel, “The Bean Trees” followed by its sequel, “Pigs in Heaven”–they’re simply delightful. And definitely read her essays about her family’s year of eating locally “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.” Her later novels are quite complex and rich; “Lacuna,” especially, is almost like a 21st century American version of the late 19th-C. grand Russian novels, set in Mexico and America with glimpses of Diego Riviera and Frieda Kahlo. I’m currently enjoying her most recent “Flight Behavior.”
Thanks so much! Will pursue.