Jerusalem To Cut Out Middle Man, Make Sidewalks Of Dog Poop

Jerusalem, December 31 – Mayor Nir Barkat approved a measure today to save the Municipality of Jerusalem millions of shekels annually by paving streets and sidewalks directly with dog droppings instead of laboriously laying bricks or asphalt and then bringing in dog owners to leave their pets’ deposits everywhere.

The Pavement Orifice Output Project (POOP) will combine the steps of laying down the road surface and then adorning it with canine feces, eliminating the need to have discrete teams of workers to implement and oversee two separate sets of tasks. POOP is slated to cut personnel expenses by nearly 8 million shekels, and the cost of purchasing paving materials by 3 million, amounting to almost 1% of the entire municipal budget. Instead, the city will employ a single corps of sanitation workers and inspectors to simply rearrange the existing dog piles to be flattened by passing vehicles and pedestrians. The feces will thus attain its final form and installation.

Barkat’s office issued a brochure touting the benefits of POOP, including environmental benefits born of fewer fumes from the production and transportation of materials and equipment. Dog excrement is considered a renewable resource, notes the publication, especially in Israeli urban areas where the animals roam free, with leash laws and regulations requiring owners to clean up after their dogs only laughably enforced.

Passage of POOP on the City Council was all but assured, despite vehement opposition from left-leaning parties outside the governing coalition. After meeting with a consortium of environmentalist and animal rights organizations, Council delegate Mokesh Mehrdi of the Meretz Party explained his decision to vote against POOP by noting that it constitutes nothing less than exploitation – he called it “excreploitation” – of dogs.

In terms of the environment, Mehrdi cast doubt on Barkat’s claims, noting that special equipment would likely need to be transported for POOP, undercutting much of the reduced emissions. “I’m sure Mr. Barkat paid just the right consultants to issue just the right reports massaging just the right data to support what he wanted to do regardless of the environmental impact,” said Mehrdi.

Animal rights activists protested the decision outside City Hall, saying it discriminated against cats, which outnumber dogs in the city by about 4 to 1, but whose outputs were never considered for use in POOP. “It’s rather suspicious that the most prolific producers of the raw materials for this project were completely ignored,” said Stu Yott, leader of the group Stop Hurting Innocent Tigerish Souls.

Once POOP is in place, Jerusalem will still be a more sanitary city than Gaza.