The poop train is gone.
Parrish, Alabama is now free of smelly containers of human waste that had been parked on railroad tracks in the small Walker County town for more than two months.
The shipping containers had been parked at a rail yard since February, awaiting transport to the Big Sky Environmental landfill in Adamsville, about 20 miles away in Jefferson County.
Parrish Mayor Heather Hall said in a Facebook post that the last container of sludge was taken to the landfill Tuesday afternoon and that any remaining containers in the town were empty and ready to be shipped back north.
"I have wonderful news," Hall wrote. "Big Sky has ended their operation in Parrish."
The Big Sky landfill reached a deal in 2016 with seven wastewater treatment plants in New York and New Jersey to ship their biosolids -- the solid material left after wastewater treatment processes -- to the landfill for use as "alternative cover," to encourage plant growth on the covered slopes of the landfill.
Trainloads of the material have been rolling into Alabama since early 2017, generating complaints and lawsuits from local towns and counties along the way.
Big Sky has been using local rail yards to transfer shipping containers full of sludge from trains to trucks to haul them to the landfill. That transfer operation generated most of the complaints.
The landfill shifted to Parrish from a rail yard in Jefferson County, after a federal judge ruled that the county could enforce a zoning ordinance on the rail yard, which prohibited noxious odors from being emitted at the rail yard.
During those court proceedings, landfill personnel admitted that on two occasions, sludge from the containers spilled out onto roadways near the town of West Jefferson during transit.
Hall said that approximately 250 containers of the sludge were parked in Parrish at one point, and it took the landfill more than two months to haul those containers to the landfill by truck.
In her Facebook post, Hall thanked state Sen. Greg Reed for advocating for the town of Parrish, as well as Norfolk Southern railroad.
"I would also like to thank Norfolk Southern for requiring Big Sky to hire more drivers to move this material more expeditiously out of the Town of Parrish and all they did to help bring an end to our nightmare," Hall said. "We are extremely grateful for your help."
Norfolk Southern also forced the cars out of a rail yard in Birmingham when they were parked there for more than a week. Residents there complained of a "death smell" emanating from the containers.
"I will say this over and over....this material does not need to be in a populated area...period," Hall said on Facebook. "It greatly diminishes the quality of life for those who live anywhere near it."
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection announced in March that it was no longer sending its sewage sludge to Big Sky after the numerous public complaints from Alabama.