Friday Condom Blogging

Just in time for your weekend of drinking and sex... we have this news from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District:

After spending more than $1.8 million for a temporary system to catch stray condoms slipping through the Jones Island sewage treatment plant - including having a full-time worker at $52.15 an hour manually skimming errant condoms from the final wastewater treatment tanks - the sewerage district is declaring its effluent condom-free.

Pretty much, anyway.

"We are fairly confident we are capturing a majority" of the spent condoms before they can reach the Milwaukee Harbor and Lake Michigan, said Bill Graffin, spokesman for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
...
The district couldn't provide full costs of the effort. But the final 424 days of condom scooping cost $184,400 for the 10,196 condoms collected during that period, which ended Feb. 6. That comes to a per-condom collection cost of $18.09.

Drinks at the bar for the hot woman you see: $25.00
Box of condoms you bought in case you got lucky: $6.50
Cost to remove condom from sewage the next day: $18.09
Laughing out loud while reading the paper over breakfast: Priceless

Oh but it gets better...

An elaborate fabricated system of condom-catching nets - which themselves resemble giant condoms - also was approved and installed early last year at Jones Island at a cost of $1.5 million. Other costs, including replacement nets, have added another $120,000 to the project.

The net system installed in the plant was supposed to end the manual condom catching effort, but the system blew out when it got its first big test after last May's rainstorms. The device, euphemistically dubbed the "floatables removal project" by MMSD, was rehabilitated, reinstalled and adjusted by April.

Trojan has apparently contacted the MMSD saying they would make new nets that are guaranteed not to break under the stress of any amount of fluid trying to bust through. The company already makes super sized prophylactics for the Jolly Green Giant.

Update: WTF?! I just did the math. The manual condom skimmer makes $52.15. At 40 hours/week, and 52 weeks/year, that's $108,472 per year! Are you kidding me?