High Energy Costs Prompt Farmers to Eye Treated Sewage for Fertilizer
Advocates insist it's safe (and often free), but others worry about health and environmental effects
All these unknowns have made for a contentious and litigious fight. Lawsuits have broken out in several states between farmers and local and federal officials. In Georgia, for example, farmers have claimed that biosolids have killed their dairy cows.
Biosolids proponents acknowledge that they have a PR problem. "People have this phobia because it's human waste," says Sam Hadeed of the National Biosolids Partnership. But they also say there are benefits that are usually overlooked. Run-off from chemical fertilizer has been responsible, in large part, for the growing aquatic wastelands that now sit off the cost of the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. Biosolids largely avoid that problem because they are organic and release their chemicals more slowly. Chemical fertilizer is also a huge natural-gas hog, whereas biosolids can actually be used as a biofuel for energy in addition to its use as fertilizer.
How rapidly farmers choose to adopt biosolids will depend upon a number of things, among them fertilizer prices, new research findings, and political support, as well as the amount of biosolids produced by treatment plants. In Virginia, a committee is reviewing the state's policies and is expected to report its findings to the legislature in January.
Reader Comments
Sewage sludge contains waste from Superfund sites
Sorry Nathan but you're factually incorrect. Some Municipal waste treatment plants (the sources of sewage sludge) not only receive industrial waste water they receive "leachate" from Superfund sites. Superfund sites are, by definition, some of the most highly contaminated sites in the entire U.S.
No matter how technologically advanced the waste treatment plant (and most are not due to lack of funding for new technology), the technology simply does not exist to remove the majority of chemicals, pathogens, heavy metals, and other dangerous substances in sewage sludge.
BIOSOLIDS
This has got to be one of the better ideas in a long time. Spending a lot of time overseas, where virtualy everything is organic. Eating more than normal and my digestive system works like when I was a teenager or better.
sewage sludge not safe
The 9/18 article includes a number of inaccurate statements about the risky practice of using sewage sludge as fertilizer. First. the technical and legal term of this complex and unpredictable mixture of thousands of pollutants is SEWAGE SLUDGE. Biosolids is an EPA/industry invented PR term, referring to the same material. Second,sludge is not "highly treated", the US regulations only require standards for nine metals. Third, there is scientific documented evidence and court rulings that determined that sludge-exposure has sickened and killed humans and live stock, impacted groundwater, and degraded agricultural soils. Third, even Class A sludge compost is not 'completely sterilized" as reader, Nathan, claims, but contains a number of robust pathogens that can regrow in cool and moist climates, especially if stored. Fourth, we will NEVER know what is in a particular load of sludge; it depends what particular industrial solvent, PCB, radioactive material, hospital waste, or other hazardous material was discharged into a particular waste water treatment plant on a particular day. Fifth, those promoting sludge use are covering up the real problems, by claiming, as the industry/EPA supported National Biosolids Partnership does, that the reported health and environmental impacts are based " on people having this phobia". People who were killed, or dangerously sickened by sludge, are not suffering from "phobia"; neither are sludge-exposed infants who need to be rushed to emergency because they can't breathe; neither are hundreds of cattle who died, after ingesting toxics-containing forage grown on sludged land.
Sludge CAN and is being used beneficially and safely
as a biofuel: either in placing it in landfills, where the resulting methane can be captured and used as a renewable and clean source of energy, or by using it as a direct non-fossil fuel source in biodigesters or high-temperature gasification plants. These newer methods of using sludge have several advantages: not only do they protect public health, live stock, agricultural soils, and groundwater, but they are using a renewable form of energy and thus help reduce the generation of greenhouse gases.
For accurate information about sludge visit www.sludgefacts.org
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