Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted
It was a farm idea with a big payoff and supposedly no downside: ridding lakes and rivers of raw sewage and industrial pollution by converting it all into a free, nutrient-rich fertilizer. Then last week, a federal judge ordered the Agriculture Department to compensate a farmer whose land was poisoned by sludge from the waste treatment plant here. His cows had died by the hundreds.
The Associated Press also has learned that some of the same contaminants showed up in milk that regulators allowed a neighboring dairy farmer to market, even after some officials said they were warned about it.
In one case, according to test results provided to the AP, the level of thallium - an element once used as rat poison - found in the milk was 120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The contaminated milk and the recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo raise new doubts about a 30-year government policy that encourages farmers to spread millions of tons of sewage sludge over thousands of acres each year as an alternative to commercial fertilizers.
The program is still in effect.
Alaimo ordered the government to compensate dairy farmer Andy McElmurray because 1,730 acres he wanted to plant in corn and cotton to feed his herd was poisoned. The sludge contained levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs two to 2,500 times federal health standards.
Also, data endorsed by Agriculture and EPA officials about toxic heavy metals found in the free sludge provided by Augusta’s sewage treatment plant was “unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, fudged,” Alaimo wrote.
EPA-commissioned research by the University of Georgia based on the Augusta data was included in a National Academy of Sciences report and served as a linchpin for the government’s assertion that sludge didn’t pose a health risk.
In his 45-page ruling, Alaimo said that along with using the questionable data, “senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of EPA’s biosolids program.”
Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA’s assistant administrator for water programs, said Thursday that the judge’s order underscored the significance of what he called strong national standards on sludge rather than undercutting the giveaway program.
“This unfortunate instance of poor recordkeeping and biosolids sampling techniques on the part of one plant reiterates the importance of our national biosolids program,” Grumbles said in a written response to AP questions about the ruling.
About 7 million tons of biosolids - the term that waste producers came up with for sludge in 1991 - are produced each year as a byproduct from 1,650 waste water treatment plants around the nation.
Slightly more than half is used on land as fertilizer; the rest is incinerated or burned in landfills. Giving it away to farmers is cheaper than burning or burying it, and the government’s policy has been to encourage the former.
Alaimo’s decision was a bittersweet victory for McElmurray, whose silos and dairy barns sit mostly empty since his herd was wiped out. He contends the cows were done in by grazing on sludge-treated hay for more than a decade, beginning in 1979.
Interviewed before the ruling, McElmurray crossed his arms, scowling at the empty pastures and idle equipment where his prize-winning herds once grazed here in eastern Georgia. “This farm never would have looked like this if we hadn’t used the city’s sludge,” he said angrily.
The city of Augusta recently settled a lawsuit with him over the dead cows for $1.5 million. Another nearby dairy farmer, Bill Boyce, won a $550,000 court judgment against the city on his claim that sludge was responsible for the deaths of more than 300 of his cows.
The deaths of McElmurray’s and Boyce’s cows in the 1990s and their suits against Augusta raised a red flag with officials at EPA, which since 1978 had been promoting the use of sludge as a fertilizer.
In 1999, the agency awarded a $12,274 grant to the University of Georgia to study the problem. That research would result in a study published in 2003 in the Journal of Environmental Quality finding that the city’s sludge was safe and that EPA’s regulations were working.
Cities’ sewage and industrial pollution had spewed untreated into lakes, rivers and oceans until 1972, when Congress passed the landmark Clean Water Act.
Back then, cleaning up waterways was the first target of the newly created EPA. The agency oversaw a multibillion-dollar grant program that Congress set up to help cities and counties build wastewater treatment plants that would filter out pollutants.
Alaimo, citing data from an environmental engineer hired by McElmurray, found that the Augusta plant was sending out hundreds of truckloads of sludge daily with dangerously high levels of cadmium, molybdenum and chlordane.
The engineer, William Hall of Atlanta, had been a project manager at seven Superfund cleanup sites and had extensive experience with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. His tests found polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs in the Augusta sludge at levels 2,500 times higher than the EPA standard, thallium levels 25 times the legal limit, and arsenic levels twice the government’s health standard.
William Miller, a University of Georgia soil scientist who co-authored the 2003 study commissioned by EPA, stands by the conclusions it drew on how much sludge had been applied to McElmurray’s and Boyce’s land and the composition of it.
But in a draft of the paper obtained by The Associated Press, he wrote a note by hand saying the authors should “fess up” that they didn’t know those things.
“Now, we didn’t really know exactly how much sludge and we didn’t know the quality of sludge,” Miller told the AP in an interview. Despite the discrepancies, he maintained the study was valid. “It does not include fake data,” he said.
Boyce told the AP that in January 1999 he informed Georgia dairy regulators and EPA that tests he had ordered on the milk from his cows had come back showing high levels of thallium, molybdenum and cadmium.
A top state official alerted the Food and Drug Administration, but Boyce said no one ever told him to stop selling his milk or mentioned a possible threat to public health.
“We were a little startled,” Boyce recalled. “They concluded that our permit was good, and we could continue to sell milk. So we did.”
EPA lists thallium as a toxic heavy metal that can cause gastrointestinal irritation and nerve damage, but the agency has no standard on the metal’s presence in milk. Neither does the Agriculture Department, even though it regards thallium as one of the most dangerous agents of potential bioterrorism against the nation’s food supply.
State and EPA officials followed up by testing Boyce’s milk, but he said they wouldn’t share all their results with him or McElmurray. There is no evidence that those officials took any further action. Boyce said he decided finally to reveal the milk contamination to the AP to illuminate a broader issue.
“The real problem was the state and federal regulatory agencies did not do their jobs,” he said, adding that EPA and Augusta officials “tried to say we were just a disease-infested herd. Well, that’s just a bunch of bullhockey.”
Charles Murphy, then head of Georgia’s dairy program, said he notified FDA’s Administration’s office in Atlanta of Boyce’s contaminated samples. “I know I talked to them some, shared some of that information with them,” he recalled. “I don’t think they sent anybody out.”
Murphy said he was persuaded by evidence provided to him by Boyce and McElmurray to seek broader state testing of dairy cows, but there wasn’t enough money.
FDA officials in Atlanta and Washington said they had no record of Murphy’s account.
But over the Super Bowl weekend in 1999, two senior EPA officials, Robert Bastian and Bob Brobst, huddled with the two dairy farmers and their lawyer, Ed Hallman, to talk about sludge.
“They showed us some data,” Bastian recalled. “I don’t ever remember seeing any milk data.”
Boyce and McElmurray insist they shared all of their data with the two EPA officials, including separate tests they ran on milk pulled from store shelves in Charleston, S.C. That milk, which came from other farms in the Southeast, suggested more widespread contamination, they said. It had heavy metals similar to those found in Boyce’s milk.
There are no records that anyone became ill because of milk tainted with heavy metals or other contaminants that could have come from sludge.
On the Net:
http://www.ag.auburn.edu/aaes/communications/highlights/fall96/cattle.htm
© 2008 Associated Press
Also, data endorsed by Agriculture and EPA officials about toxic heavy metals found in the free sludge provided by Augusta’s sewage treatment plant was “unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, fudged,” Alaimo wrote.
For 31 years… I think I’ll be bookmarking this for the next person who imagines that general government incompetence and malfeasance is a G. W. Bush invention.
I’ll stick with mined potash and phosphate, thank you. Add some nitrogen and your good to go. Of course long-term, micronutrient deficiencies may cause problems, but with awareness and knowledge, solutions are generally possible. Perhaps the problem of disposal of this toxic stuff is to spread it on land that will be used only for ethanol or biodiesed production.
Perhaps this toxic crap could be spread on land dedicated to renewable fuel production.
The REAL Question here is: Where did the heavy metal pollutants Come From?
These are Not normal components of sewage.
In fact, every one of them is supposed to be collected up by the Industrial firms which use them and disposed of as Toxic Waste.
Sounds like someone has been ILLEGALY pouring their toxic waste down the sink (or toilet) instead of disposing of it as required by EPA Law.
Is anyone Investigating the Source of the toxic waste?
At the same time, the sewage treatment plant Should have been testing for this very possibility. Along with several Other possibilities. If they haven’t been, someone has been Criminally Negligent. So, who is on the way to Jail?
Smell the profits
Return of all biowaste to the soil is crucial, especially in the prairie grass ecosystems where the average root depth is minimal. The soil takes decades to rebuild after a few years of depletion. Perhaps nothing is a better example of western capitalist stupidity than the west’s centuries old failure to return sewage to the soil. The capitalist’s excuse has always been toxins but also pathogens. But the capitalist only uses these as pretexts to gain control over the public through capitalist central planning. To the public, the purpose of public works is to improve their lives while to the capitalist the purpose is to increase public dependence on him, to increase his political power. The way to keep the toxins out of the sewage is to criminalize contamination and enforce the law. In every sane society this goes without saying. The way to keep the pathogens out of the sewage is to pump it through solar cookers. One of the key causes of the degenerative diseases of the west is the lack of soil fertility which potassium, phosphate and nitrogen do not compensate. Decade after decade, soil science is suppressed by the capitalist. The fix for all capitalist contamination/destruction is to teach the kids in K-12 civics class the lesson: In Mother Nature We Trust, And Capitalism We Crush.
This is old hat in Philadelphia. Our glorious water department has continued to try giving away sludge fertilizer free to all -rife with heavy metals, PCB’s, DDT and plenty of other industrial toxins courtesy of the likes of Rohm and Hass (yes, they still make DDT), Allied Chemical, and other toxic dumpers.
They only advise the takers not use the deadly crap on or near areas that will be used for growing foods. They also spread the crap all around the city parks! LOVELY
Been there, done that!
The Washington State legislature finally put an end to those guys in moon suits dumping toxic waste in one end of silos and taking home and garden fertilizer out of the other.
WE got that shit eating grin.
Before getting too happy about this story, an investigation should also be made into whether the thallium in the milk actually came from the cows….
If it comes from a cleaning fluid or other process at the dairy plants, then much more problem solving needs to be done.
Like letting farmers sell raw milk again so they can make a living without depending on ‘free’ fertilizer.
Much of the problem is with the pickle vendors dumping toxins at sewage treatment plants whether legally or not.
The other idea is whether civilization (city-based living) is viable when it requires these materials to support the infrastructure someplace. Much of the toxic culture comes from the culture itself: consumption. It’s all bizarre when you really start to ask what some of these things are used for, or if there are cleaner alternatives. Most of the time it’s a matter of saving 2 cents per hundredweight on a catalyst or cleaner in some industry. The Business of America is Business, and government is not going to change what it is sworn to protect. There isn’t a law that’s written which doesn’t have a quantified loophole as big as a semi-truck full of cadmium.
I can understand why people dont want shit recycled. It is yucky poo. But that is natures way. If you put artificial fertilisers instead, you will get peak soil. Soil without organic content becomes waste land. It needs to be recognised that waste aint waste. Sewerge is an essential part of the carbon cycle.
Poisons with heavy metals, on the other hand, must not go back into the soil, or into the ocean, or into the air. It is best not to create these in the first place.
That is what makes the battery powered car a bad deal. The batteries need to be replaced every few hundred charges. The batteries are very polluting to create in the first place and the waste is very polluting to deal with. The only long term solution is to change our ways.
Read the book, “Toxic Sludge is Good for You,” by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. They chronicled the problem years ago as a case of “greenwashing” PR bullshit. It’s a huge problem that has major health implications for all of us, but it isn’t discussed or acted upon by government agencies that know.
The truth is, they can’t handle all of the shit that comes down the pipe at waste treatment plants, and that stuff is mixed with industrial effluent, contaminated with heavy metals. So these pass it off as organic fertilizer to unsuspecting farmers at cheap prices.
It’s not just the cows. Vegetables suck up the toxic minerals too.
“Vegetables suck up the toxic minerals too.” Good luck with those ‘organic’ veges Mr. Consumer.
Composting human wastes makes the best fertilizer. Not that residential and industrial chemical laden sludge. What sense does it make to poop into clean water, which is being misused and depleted? Even on a large, municipal scale, human waste containers could be picked up on the curb just like trash and recycling and taken to localized composting plants then the finished compost could be sold to farmers and gardeners. For a few years now in various places I have used toilets with buckets that are emptied into a compost pile and where I’m living now I just built a bucket toilet and set up a compost pile thereby enlightening a new group of folks on the joys of humanure. There is a community of over 75 people that use bucket toilets exclusively for well over a decade. It works on any scale. Check out this link for details:
http://weblife.org/humanure/default.html
peace
Having been involved in the operation of a municipal sewage sludge composting facility in an effort to implement the federal law regarding the disposal, treatment, and re-use of municipal sewage sludge I was dumbfounded reading this article. Of course what was recounted here, for the most part, pre-dated the enactment of this law (40 CFR Part 503.)
A Registered Land Surveyor with experience in heavy construction and implementation of computer technology in the civil engineering field, and coincdentaly a strong interest in composting human waste, I sought out the position I eventually held at this local facility. The first task I was given by the firm’s chief engineer was to memorize every aspect of those regulations. I had never read the entire text of a Federal Regulation before and I was very impressed by the candor, sincerity, and desire to protect the public interest.
That is why this article is so disturbing. The 503 Regulation specifically prohibits the application of sewage sludge or derived biosolids (such as municipal sewage sludge derived compost) on ground that will be used to grow crops for human consumption, and that includes crops grown for feed to be fed to livestock that will make products for human consumption (i.e. milk, meat.) The regulation had a very long section discussing the lack of scientific data on the uptake of contaminants known to be normally present in sewage sludge by plants grown on treated soil; the rate of uptake by livestock fed crops grown on such soil; and finally the rate of uptake by humans from milk or meat in this chain.
tonkatsu you are incorrect. It is in fact heavy metals that are the problem with biosolids. The particular metals and their concentrations are dependant on the particular waste stream that generates those biosolids. Here, in an industrial area (steel and heavy manufacturing) laboratory analysis of the sludge from our local sewage treatment plants consistently showed high concentrations of nickel, cadmium, zinc, molybdenum, berylium(sp?), and lead. Because of these lab results we would not even accept the sludge from our own community into our composting operation as any compost made from this sludge would have to be mixed and re-mixed many times to reduce the concentrations of these contaminants to federally acceptable levels. It was no secret where these contaminants were entering the waste stream. The local steel mill just completed a $25 million treatment plant to remove those contaminants from their discharge.
But those contaminants were not unusual in all of the sludge that we accepted into our composting process (from municipalities in Eastern Pa, NJ, and Southern NY,) though the levels of concentration were not as great. However, thallium is one contaminant I don’t ever recall seeing on the long list of contaminants in our extensive testing.
An addendum or amendment to the 503 regulation was a program called the EQS program or “Exceptional Quality Sludge” program wherein municipalities would be rewarded through ongoing contracts for the disposal of their sludge by keeping the concentrations of contaminants below certain levels. This was to be accomplished through citizen education (don’t dump paint, harsh cleaning products, and other similar questionable products down the drain in the privacy of your bathroom) together with programs to encourage and enable citizens to dispose of these residual products in controlled and regulated landfills. Another aspect of the EQS program was for municipalities to track down and identify point source locations of contaminants (such as our local steel mill.) I cannot remember ever hearing of any discussion of this EQS program outside the time I spent at the composting operation.
solrey I have been reading about your efforts elswhere, but what you are doing is completely different from composting municipal sewage sludge. Your source material (the human waste from your household) is a completely different animal than municipal sewage sludge, as should be evident from the above article and the comments I’ve supplied. Don’t get me wrong, I believe we must find acceptable ways to re-use municipal sewage sludge, but the difficulties are enormous and there is quite a lot of misinformation out there.
And here is the last kicker. When I left this facility, industry periodicals were discussing the emergence of a new problem with the use of biosolids. That is, the increasing overmedication of our society. It is possible to make compost from municipal sewage sludge that has acceptably low levels of heavy metals, and the biological pathogens associated with fecal matter are mostly destroyed in an effective composting operation, but the contaminants being introduced by all the new medications on the market are posing a new and unknown factor.
I sought out that position because as a teenager I worked with my father laying out municpal sewer projects all over this area. I remember what it used to be like: septic tanks in every back (or front) yard, ditches along subdivision streets that were not much more than open sewers, all of the beautiful creeks and streams in this area full of turds, toilet paper, condoms, tampons, and anything else we flushed down our toilets.
In my profession I worked in many different areas, but waste is by far the most difficult and emotionally incendiary.
Greg R wrote: “‘Vegetables suck up the toxic minerals too.’ Good luck with those ‘organic’ veges Mr. Consumer.”
In BC (at least) you cannot use sewage sludge and be certified organic.
Even worse, you cannot use small-scale humanure and be certified organic, even if everyone “contributing” eats only organic food! (“Humanure” refers to a specific process for composting human excrement — it isn’t waste — which results in a rich, safe, soil amendment. This is opposed to “night soil,” which is raw human excrement.)
So we choose to be non-certified organic. Currently, you can use the word “organic” if you are not certified, but they are closing that hole as well. A group of us are labelling our farm products as “Permacultured” to distinguish the fact that we go beyond “certified organic” standards in many cases, and choose to ignore cases like the prohibition on properly composted humanure.
Folks, we must close the nutrient cycle! But we must do it in a safe manner. People dump all sorts of crap in the sewer: paint, used motor oil, live pet fish they’ve grown tired of, etc. Until this social problem is solved, general sewage should not be used as fertilizer. But a whole ‘nother social problem keeps properly crafted humanure from being used. What a world.
What Jan and I are talking about is a whole new paradigm for dealing with human excrement. Within this new paradigm, human excrements are not waste, they’re a valuable commodity. I was the manager of a small sewage treatment plant for a community of 100 people all eating organically and conscientious about putting nothing but human excrement down the drains and we still only used the dried sludge on a hay field on acreage that was a few miles from the main property. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to run a typical sewage treatment plant so what happens when the energy starts to run out? The only energy required in a humanure system is the minimal effort of carrying buckets from the toilet area to the compost pile and a little time to manage the pile and clean the buckets. Even in a large scale municipal humanure composting system, methane could easily be collected from the composting process to provide the energy to run the composting plant and fuel the trucks that would pick up containers on the curb. Methane could be collected on a small household scale as well. Sustainability is the key to our future survival because we cannot continue to waste resources at our current pace. As Jan said, we must close the nutrient cycle… as well as complete the circle for all of our other resources.
SOLREY — Great idea, but I’d be concerned about all of the drug residues.
What is the prognosis on composting temperatures disabling, and/or not making things worse?
Namaste
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