For my first project in the clean-water field, I worked in the 1980s on a public participation program involving land application of biosolids.I was with a public relations agency hired for the project by a utility district. It started, ironically enough, with a heaping helping of bad publicity. The local newspaper editors thought the project was nothing but an exercise in image polishing: Why would the district spend $200,000 just to make itself look good?The editorial cartoon showed a taxpayer half submerged in black goo and getting more of it dumped on his head from the end of a pipe.
