The Culture of Flushing: A social and Legal History of Sewage
By Jamie Benidickson
UBC Press, 2007; 404 pp.; $29.95

The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage, by University of Ottawa law professor Jamie Benidickson is primarily an exhaustive, and at times dense, account of western civilization’s environmentally unsound relationship (can there be any other?) with sewage. Focusing mainly on the industrial history of Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada, Benidickson delves into the cultural and legal assumptions that have led to the on-going blasé attitude most people, communities and businesses take in regard to water’s ability to remove waste.

Certainly waste removal and sewage are the central areas of analysis here, but overtly The Culture of Flushing seems to be not so much about sewage but rather about humanity’s blithe relationship with water itself and by extension the natural world. Not surprisingly, and at almost every page, Benidickson shows that relationship to be based on convenient but ultimately inadequate assumptions about the ability of natural systems to withstand the pollution created by human habitation and industry. Moreover, and to devastating effect, Benidickson shows that these assumptions – based in part on a lack of scientific understanding, and, more often than not, willful ignorance on behalf of individuals, municipalities and business interests – helped endorse the primacy of human needs and desires over the maintenance of the ecological integrity of natural systems, with bodies of water being the prime example. Generally speaking, The Culture of Flushing can be read as a modern history of humanity’s disregard for the planet.

Although his book is essentially a detailed scholarly work – Benidickson cites liberally, and at length, from legal sources (sometimes dating back as far as the 17th century) among others – The Culture of Flushing is highly accessible to general readers. And despite the ostensibly dreary nature of the subject matter – after all, who wants to read about, excuse me, shit – it manages to be mostly fascinating, literary and, at times, even entertaining. Benidickson, with bookish aplomb, describes a repulsive scene where literary greats Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann walking along a beach near Los Angeles were “struck by the sight of myriad small whitish objects reminiscent of dead caterpillars. On closer inspection the caterpillars revealed themselves to be condoms.” Quoting Huxley, Benidickson continues by writing: “ ‘ten million emblems and mementos of Modern Love,’ an ‘orgiastic profusion’ that had poured out of Los Angeles’ nearby raw sewage outfall.”

All details aside, legal, literary or otherwise, there is a pro-environmental message to Benidickson’s book. By way of a brief history of sewage, he seems to present the reader with the dire ramifications of humanity’s casual tendency to flush away our wastes when he states in the introduction:

Water became a ‘sink’ by design. Indeed, observers have been known to remark that “water is one of the most valuable media for the disposal of municipal, industrial and agricultural residuals.” All too frequently, it has been assumed that this is a primary purpose of water and waterways. It has even been argued on occasion that such usage enjoys the exalted legal status of a right, a central element of our perilous fantasy that the planet was created for human convenience.

However, for the majority of the book, the author is content to play the observer, letting the lurid details of the development of sewage systems, or their lack, and all attendant damages speak for themselves.

It is impossible not to be dumbfounded by the almost endless examples of environmental folly and negligence to be found in this volume. The reader is presented with the all too depressing accounts of business interests consistently, and unsurprisingly, trumping the needs of other riparians (water users), or municipalities balking at the cost of sewage treatment facilities. Perhaps the book’s main weakness is that it does not seem to offer any solutions to the continuing problem, indeed crisis, of human caused pollution. The Culture of Flushing seems rather to content itself with a historical analysis in the hope that such an examination will somehow contribute to more adequate environmental policy in the future.

Let’s hope it does.