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
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
This is a solid idea
I love when people try to defend the status quo! The problem is that there is not enough natural to produce enough fertilizer to feed everyone at a "reasonable" price.
I've visited a water treatment plant that gives sludge away to local farmers. The sludge goes through extensive treatment and is completely sterile. This treatment plant is located in a rural area, and waste only comes from houses. There is no industrial waste entering the system, so no heavy metals. I would agree that at urban waste water treatment plants which treat industrial waste, there should be stricter regulations. The point is though that recycling is becoming essential for farming, and not all sludge is created equal.
Biosolids
They are unsafe, TOXIC, and do not belong on farmland. Their is no "FEDERAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH" on biosolids due to the fact, OUR GOVERNMENT SPENT ALL THE RESEARCH MONEY ON MARKETING".
The people in Rural Areas have testified before the National Academy of Science, They issued a report stating "The people need to be studied", NOTHING HAPPENED!
Sewage Sludge is a mixture of HEAVY METALS, DRUGS, and anything else you can get into a sewer, sink or toilet!
Think about that before you even consider re-cycle back into the eco-system!
WAKE UP PEOPLE! IF THE SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS PAY SOMEONE TO PICK IT UP, THAT MUST MEAN SOMETHING!
Biosolid lies
Who lied to Reporter Kent Garber? Who said biosolids, "they're a highly treated and modified form of sludge—sludge that's been processed to remove the various pathogens, metals, toxins, and other nasty things that get flushed down toilets or pushed out of industrial exhaust pipes."? This is a discription of the sewage effluent. You will not find the quoted text in any feral law or regulation.
Under RCRA, (26A) The term ``sludge'' means any solid, semisolid or liquid waste generated from a municipal, commercial, or industrial wastewater treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility or any other such waste having similar characteristics and effects.
503.9(w) Sewage sludge is solid, semi-solid, or liquid residue generated during the treatment of domestic
sewage in a treatment works. Sewage sludge includes, but is not limited to, domestic septage; scum or
solids removed in primary, secondary, or advanced wastewater treatment processes; and a material
derived from sewage sludge.
Sewage Sludge is an environmental pollutant
The US-EPA's sewage sludge land application regulations can be found in the US Federal Register 40 CFR Part 503. See a definition of sewage sludge "pollutant" listed in the EPA land application regulations:
Part 503.9(t) Pollutant is an organic substance, an inorganic substance, a combination of organic and inorganic substances, or a pathogenic organism that, after discharge and upon exposure, ingestion, inhalation, or assimilation into an organism either directly from the environment or indirectly by ingestion through the food chain, could, on the basis of information available to the Administrator of EPA, cause
death, disease, behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological malfunctions (including malfunction in reproduction), or physical deformations in either organisms (humans) or offspring (children) of the organisms. (emphasis added)
How could anyone with any reasonable level of intelligence or concern for farm land, water, animals, or human health possibly think that this pollutant is safe?
Nobody knows what chemicals, pharmaceuticals, toxic heavy metals or petroleum hydrocarbons are in the sewage sludge applied to farmlands. The minimal tests performed (usually only 11), is a geometric average of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium zinc, coliform and nitrogen over a period of time. And all during that time of testing for the averages reported to the EPA and state agencies, more raw sewage sludge is incoming--lime is mixed to "kill" pathogens and to raise the pH to 11 or 12. No chemical or drug tests are performed on sludge. No dioxin levels (ingredient of Agent Orange and a carcinogen and endocrine disruptor).
Our food system is at risk because of sludge application used to grow human food crops and animal feed and grazing dairy and and other cattle on sludge applied pastures. Do you know if the food you buy at the grocery store is grown on sludge? How about your cereal---grains love to uptake cadmium; or how about your french fries? Want them leaded or without lead? Want your milk with or without dioxin?
We cannot keep poisoning our children and grandchildren. This has to stop!
biosolids
If land application is such a good thing and the waiting list is so long, I suggest biosolids be spread where the communities welcome them, like Phil from Arizona. Don't drink their milk. Reputable companies won't buy your crops! Learn about oit if you dare!
Biosolids
I think you do us a disservice when you attribute the industry extensive treatment and testing. The reason land application is a preference is because it is so cheap. It is cheap because outdated EPA "guidelines recommend testing for a list of 500 items. In PA we test 11.Scientists at Universities not endowed by the sludge industry point out that anything dumped by anyone anywhere, (Hospitals, mortuary, industrial waste, careless homeowners -paint-oil-chemicals like chlordane- legal or illegal) end up in what we call biosolids. Sewage treatment is the act of sifting out the chunky stuff, precipitating out what can be and aerating the water to release dissolved gasses into the air. All of that is a good thing, but the pile that is headed to a farm near you is gotten rid of fast and furious because the plants don't want to deal with local odor ordinance, so when it stinks on farm land, everyone is exempted from this by Right to Farm legislation that magically turns the nuisance smell into normal agricultural smell. Some plants toss a few bags of lime on the pile, which really can make it smell enough to make a pig farmer puke, but it supposedly raises the temperature to nearby 115 degrees, which migh kill the bacteria if they cooperate and go kamikaze at the lime. If you do your research you will find sick people everywhere there is sludge. If it is not skin lesions, it is burning eyes and itchness, if it is not flys, it is neural problems that is giving people the shakes, oh & death. Levels of Molybdenum above what is allowed in water is ok if it is in the milk from the cows that ate the alfalfa grown on fields with drastically high levels of crazy stuff that no one would ever think to test for. You can remain naive, but there are us old codgers that remember polio and its link to human waste on fields. The human part of the waste that is being applied to fields is far more dangerous in an age where pathogens acquire immunity from antibiotics by surviving them in the sewer system. We urinate and dump enough used and unused pharmaceuticals to mutate maggots into Steven King subject matter.
If you think we exagerate, google "sludge," or "biosolids" and read such topics of how the State of PA under the pro-sluge industry Attorney General Corbett is suing municipalities that try to regulate it from being spread where children splash in sludge laden mud puddles or where people with compromised immunity call home. Read about law suits in Maryland, Michigan and Georgia where it is spread for experimenting on resident children, or how it got into milk and how it was covered up by our watchdogs, the EPA. Read how fired EPA bell-ringers are doing in their court cases. Don't be surprised that my little blog blurb is only a teeny tip of the turdburg, and you will come to understand why the Carlisle Group bought Synagro (pronounced Satan Gro) to take it from being a publicly traded stock to private where they can do what they do best which is grease palms.
Biosolids
I think you do us a disservice when you attribute the industry extensive treatment and testing. The reason land application is a preference is because it is so cheap. It is cheap because outdated EPA "guidelines recommend testing for a list of 500 items. In PA we test 11.Scientists at Universities not endowed by the sludge industry point out that anything dumped by anyone anywhere, (Hospitals, mortuary, industrial waste, careless homeowners -paint-oil-chemicals like chlordane- legal or illegal) end up in what we call biosolids. Sewage treatment is the act of sifting out the chunky stuff, precipitating out what can be and aerating the water to release dissolved gasses into the air. All of that is a good thing, but the pile that is headed to a farm near you is gotten rid of fast and furious because the plants don't want to deal with local odor ordinance, so when it stinks on farm land, everyone is exempted from this by Right to Farm legislation that magically turns the nuisance smell into normal agricultural smell. Some plants toss a few bags of lime on the pile, which really can make it smell enough to make a pig farmer puke, but it supposedly raises the temperature to nearby 115 degrees, which migh kill the bacteria if they cooperate and go kamikaze at the lime. If you do your research you will find sick people everywhere there is sludge. If it is not skin lesions, it is burning eyes and itchness, if it is not flys, it is neural problems that is giving people the shakes, oh & death. Levels of Molybdenum above what is allowed in water is ok if it is in the milk from the cows that ate the alfalfa grown on fields with drastically high levels of crazy stuff that no one would ever think to test for. You can remain naive, but there are us old codgers that remember polio and its link to human waste on fields. The human part of the waste that is being applied to fields is far more dangerous in an age where pathogens acquire immunity from antibiotics by surviving them in the sewer system. We urinate and dump enough used and unused pharmaceuticals to mutate maggots into Steven King subject matter.
If you think we exagerate, google "sludge," or "biosolids" and read such topics of how the State of PA under the pro-sluge industry Attorney General Corbett is suing municipalities that try to regulate it from being spread where children splash in sludge laden mud puddles or where people with compromised immunity call home. Read about law suits in Maryland, Michigan and Georgia where it is spread for experimenting on resident children, or how it got into milk and how it was covered up by our watchdogs, the EPA. Read how fired EPA bell-ringers are doing in their court cases. Don't be surprised that my little blog blurb is only a teeny tip of the turdburg, and you will come to understand why the Carlisle Group bought Synagro (pronounced Satan Gro) to take it from being a publicly traded stock to private where they can do what they do best which is grease palms.
