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Community Corner

Piles of Processed Pooch Poop on Public Paths

If it's your dog, it's your poop. Clean it up!

Whenever more than 15,000 people of widely varying demographics call the same single square mile “home,” there are bound to be conflicts. 

Remarkably, Charlestown is consistently rated one of the safest neighborhoods in Boston. Nevertheless, one conflict stubbornly remains.  I am of course referring to the errant medium-to-large sized piles of both fresh and decomposing dog crap dotting the sidewalks of our otherwise happy little corner of the world.

I’ll concede that the majority of dog owners are responsible and properly dispose their pets’ piles of processed Purina. However, too many of our neighbors do not.

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I live across the street from an elementary school. Each morning and each afternoon, streams of carefree young children flow past my door on their way to becoming the leaders of tomorrow. In light of this, you might think that pet owners would be a little more conscientious and clean up after their precious pups. I regret to report that this is not the case. While the problem isn’t quite pandemic, it is still obnoxious, ignorant, and easily remedied.

I’m embarrassed that I have to explain this, but there’s something every last dog owner ought to understand and too many in Charlestown don’t: Dogs are not ornamental.

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Dogs are domesticated mammals that many people enjoy incorporating into their families. Bravo! People who choose to do this have four basic responsibilities. Make sure the dog is 1)safe, 2) healthy and 3)has nourishing food to eat. Nearly all dog owners seem to understand and accept this much. The last one is where people are having trouble. 4)When the nutrients have been extracted from that food and it is left in a steaming pile on a public way, the owner’s job is to collect it and dispose of it in a manner that will not soil or otherwise assail the senses of his neighbors. In a civilized society such as ours, this doesn’t seem to be asking too much. 

Still, it seems that there are those who crave canine companionship, but just can’t seem to bring themselves to bag it and bring it home on the morning walk. I cannot understand these people, but maybe I can get this much through to them: There are other options.

You could pay a local dogwalker to do it for you, providing the economy with a little much-needed stimulation. Problem solved.

You could employ the services of a firm like Doody Calls, who, for a monthly fee, will clean up after your dog(s) and—for an additional fee—will also empty your cat’s litter box, which is something else too many do too seldom. Doody Calls will even contract to clean up a whole neighborhood and offers an array of tools and services for the dog poop-averse.

You could buy yourself a “digester” which is essentially a large plastic bucket with holes in it.  You bury it in your backyard, fill it with pet poo, sprinkle it with magic enzyme powder, water it occasionally and Presto!  The “sh” disappears and “it” oozes odorlessly into the earth.  The whole set-up will set you back less than $100. You can buy more magic enzyme powder as you need it.

Pet waste can also be composted into topsoil, though it requires more care and higher temperatures than other compost, so you’ll need to keep it separate from your grass clippings and food scraps composter.

For the truly ambitious, there was a movement in San Francisco to convert the area’s estimated 6500 pounds of animal waste into energy a few years back. Though it got caught up and ultimately died in bureaucratic red tape, it isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. The “eggs” that can be seen out on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor do something similar on a large scale.  While treating sewage from Boston and 42 surrounding cities and towns, they recapture enough methane gas to run the boilers that heat the facility and generates 25 percent of the electricity consumed onsite.

Even closer to home, Cambridge resident Matthew Mazzotta invented the Park Spark which converts dog waste into methane gas and fuels the lights public parks. Dog owners simply collect their pet poop in biodegradable bags supplied by Mazzotta and toss it into a tank and turn a crank.  Bacteria do the rest and the gaslight is safe and odorless. He’d like to install more of these. Call him.

Bottom line: If it’s your dog, then it’s your poop. Please keep it off our streets.

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