There is not much here anymore, if there was ever much of anything to begin with. The town's main street is coated in dust, and the old movie house is long shuttered. The one sign of activity -- the traffic moving along elevated Interstate 10 -- is a reminder that the modern world rarely stops here.

The other reminder can be found on the outskirts of this tiny town, where freight cars are being unloaded for the last time. The last sludge train from New York City arrived this month, leaving its last shipment of what officials describe as ''bio-solids'' but what others call treated sewage.

The dump in Sierra Blanca, one of the biggest sludge dumps in the world, is going out of business.

''We've survived before without it, and I'm sure we still will,'' said James A. Peace, the Hudspeth County judge and the area's highest elected official.

The news came unexpectedly in June and was greeted with a mixed response in this town of 600 people in the vast, empty country about 90 miles southeast of El Paso. For local critics and environmentalists who have fought the sludge operation and recent efforts to build a nuclear waste dump here, it is a long-awaited victory. For others, it is an economic blow, resulting in the loss of 40 jobs and the planned closing of the town's biggest private employer.