The Prairie Plan

The Prairie Plan is a conceptual mechanism to recycle urban wastes safely into the natural environment. It assumes that to provide an acceptable solution, the following four requirements must be met: (1) the solution to the problem must be environmentally safe and not transfer the problem to another form of pollution; (2) the solution must be long-term and provide consistently reliable methods of operation; (3) the system must be economically competitive with other alternatives; and (4) the system must maximize multi-use aspects to be both publicly and politically acceptable. The Prairie Plan uses the natural watershed as a planning unit. The Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago is implementing the Prairie Plan to recycle wastewater solids over at a 10,500-acre (42.5-km²) site in Fulton County, Illinois. The multi-use benefits of the Prairie Plan include land reclamation, agriculture, development, recreation, conservation, wildlife preservation, reforestation, and natural science education.