Effluent, I believe, is the polite term, but any way you suspend your solids, the conundrum involving the wastewater treatment plant and JBS Swift & Co. is a real stinker.

Remember the good old days, when we fussed and cussed the wastewater stench, a smell rank enough to singe our nostrils?

But odor problems are so 10,000 dead fish ago.

Last we checked, discharge from the Grand Island wastewater treatment plant killed all those fish a week ago along a 24-mile stretch east including the plant's outfall ditch and the Wood and Platte rivers. The city said the problem was the volume and quality of what Swift the plant's biggest customer was sending along to be treated.

The fish kill happened after the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality cited both the plant and Swift five times in the previous nine months for exceeding their discharge limits. A citation can turn into a $10,000-a-day fine.

Mayor Margaret Hornady suggested that Swift's poo problem too big, too rich, too much for the wastewater treatment plant could leave the city no choice but to close the valve. Tuesday night, the Grand Island City Council took up the subject. Discussions between Swift and the city are ongoing.

As a flushing ratepayer in good standing, I have a stake in the stink. Swift sends the plant 57 percent of its flow; it provides more than that in revenue. If the meatpacker goes offline, the math and inefficiencies alone push my rates up.

While we wait for the two solutions now in the works a pre-treatment lagoon at Swift and a possible $7.5 million digester at the plant we run the risks of fines, dead fish and an impending seat between a hard spot and a sizable rock about what to do with the plant's biggest customer.

Our options, it seems, are limited.

Hold our noses

We could gnash our teeth and wail about how we got here from there.

We could grumble about how this could happen.

We could even point fingers and find fault.

And we should all of it.

Yes, we have to roll up our sleeves and hold our noses and find a fix to immediate problems: citations, dead carp, etc.

But unless we see past the next batch of effluvium over the discharge limit, my nickel says we are again bound to have this discussion while we and the environment suffer similar consequences.

That's the bigger problem, the one that defers maintenance, that solves it later, that sees everything but the horizon, that believes "we've always done it that way" is a business plan, that thinks only to the end of the week or month or even fiscal year.

If you're a visual learner, imagine a big fraying Band-Aid on a pipe, an extra large Curad doing its best to hold back an awful ooze, bubbling and about to spew a vicious, stinking fountain of

You get the picture.

And while the details of that graphic may not be exactly accurate, the larger point is: We have to solve the current wastewater treatment plant/Swift problems now and, to the best of our abilities, solve them later now.

Pricey tag

So I'm encouraged when the city council and mayor consider the long term because, in tight economic times, the future is often the first thing to go.

Upgrading the treatment plant or even building a new one carries a pricey tag, sticker shock for ratepayers and city councils. Results from demands on your biggest user/revenue source are finite.

That's why we need to know how we got here, find our faults and stare long and hard at our mistakes if only as a starting point for a plan that would lessen our wont to make them again.

The problem is more than the poo.

But we don't have to keep repeating it.