The most mundane, and painful, of human maladies — a tooth ache — has led me to a testable hypothesis that wind-blown sludge-dust produces asymptomatic infections in humans (and cows and pigs). It’s all laid out over at the Mother Site.
Jan10.07
Funds, political influence, and solutions are three things that sludge-warriors are typically short of. But here is a letter Mary Carwile has just sent the Va. legislature offering some short-term and long-term solutions. You can contact her at humhaven10@aol.com.
VA Legislators January 9, 2008Dear Honorable Delegates and Senators:We have been following the Biosolids Expert Panel meetings and make it a point to have concerned citizens present for each of the committee meetings: Health and Environment Committee meetings as well as the Full Panel meetings. It has been quite a learning experience for all of us.We ask that you consider the following for possible legislation for the upcoming General Assembly session.1. Alternatives to Land Applications of Biosolids/Sludge:Land application of municipal sewage sludge is not a sustainable, beneficial, or safe practice. Hundreds of rural sludge-exposed neighbors have reported serious adverse health effects. Deaths have been linked to this practice. Groundwater has been impacted. Livestock ingesting hay grown on sludged land has died. The repeated sludging leads to the accumulation of persistent pollutants in a non-renewal resource, resulting in degradation of farmland. Therefore we propose the following solutions:(1) Short term: sludge should be stored in properly sited landfills or monofills; monofills are specifically designed storage pits for biosolids/sludge, they will be constructed to house sewage sludge that will be covered at all times and capped when full. It will also be designed so there is little to no leakage and will be monitored at each site same as landfills.(we are in the process of investigating this option further and will keep you abreast of new developments.) These pits will not be in close proximity to any populated area so that there would not be an odor problem or a problem with delivery.(2) Long-term: sludge should be used as a source of renewable energy through high temperature gasification. It is the perfect material for small, decentralized waste-to-energy plants. Monofills are the immediate answer to the storage of sludge until technology has been developed to utilize the constituents in sludge with quantifiable and acceptable risks. We suggest Legislators apply for an EPA or Department of Energy Grant to build a high temperature gasification pilot plant.To reduce risks to human health and the environment we urge you to modify the current sludge management rules:1. Limitations on Field Storage of Biosolids/Sludge:(1) Field Storage of biosolids/sludge shall not be permitted for longer than seven days. If sludge is stockpiled longer, pathogen testing is required.2. Minimum Biosolids/Sludge Buffers:No biosolids/sludge shall be applied (1) within 1.5 miles of any residence, business, or place where people gather on a regular basis or (2) within 3.5 to 5 miles of immune or respiratory system- compromised individuals or individuals who have suffered health problems in conjunction with the spread/disposal biosolids/sludge and (3) request from physicians that their patients should not be exposed to the constituents in biosolids/sludge.3. Sludge should not be top dressed but immediately incorporated into the soil4. Sludge should not be applied on grazing pastures.Thank you for your time and consideration of citizens input on the biosolids/sludge issue in our state.Respectfully,Mary H. Carwile, Chair
Commonwealth Coalition (CRAS)
Jan05.07
The sludgers and the government bureaucrats who push BS (i.e., US EPA and Virginia Department of Health mules) invariably argue that BS applied to land is safe because there is no evidence that it is not safe. This is not just twisted logic, it is a means of lying.
The major problem with current BS practices is that it is not possible to be certain that each load of sludge is safe. When the sludgers and b’crats make an unequivocal statement that the stuff is safe, they are flat out lying because no one knows whether each load is free from toxic levels of metals, organics, radioactive materials, and harmful biologicals such as endotoxins, prions, and viruses.
What is more frightening is that they repeat these lies to courts and the courts base their decisions on the lies. Then the lies become established as part of our jurisprudence. Example: US Federal District Court Judge Moon’s decision in O’Brien v. Appomattox County.
I recently ran across a letter Prof David Pimentel of Cornell University sent to the state b’crats in Maine summarizing experiments he carried out with BS generated in Syracuse and Cayuga Heights, NY. In a first set of experiments they found sludge from Syracuse had an effect on insects as if it were an insecticide, but the Cayuga sludge was OK. Then they retested the sludges.
“. . .subsequent experiments using sludge from the same locations, we found the crops and insects responded similar to the first experiments. What was unexpected was that the crop plants did poorly and the insects were negatively influenced by some unknown chemical(s) in the Cayuga Heights sludge. We consulted a toxicologist but did not have sufficient funds to conduct an investigation of the chemical pollutants that were NOT supposed to be in Cayuga Heights sludge. This illustrates the problem with sludges-one batch may be alright for agricultural use but the next may not be. Needless to say we never ate any of the crops produced on fields with either the Syracuse sludge or the Cayuga Heights sludge.
“We also fed earthworms on Syracuse sludge and then fed Japanese quail the contaminated earthworms. We found that the earthworms concentrated one of the heavy metals, cadmium. This metal was found to be toxic to the quail. It is quite possible that this and other heavy metals commonly found in sludge will be toxic to other bird species that feed on contaminated earthworms.” [Bold added]
Here’s the link
Prof. Pimentel’s strongest point is, I believe, understated. The batch to batch inconsistency and uncertainty is the major problem with current BS practices. Unless each and every container full of BS is thoroughly tested, it’s a crap-shoot — literally.
-GG
Dec31.06
As explained in detail in Spew #8 back at the Mother Site, my solution to the Great Name Debate has been to pretty much give in to the sludgers. They want to call sludge “BioSolids,” and they paid a lot of money to a Washington PR firm to come up with the moniker–and taxpayers’ money at that. So, what the hell? Why buck ‘em?
Besides, they are leaving us an opening I just can’t resist. If they want to call it BS, then that works for me. BS is pretty much all we get from Synagro, WEP, EPA, and the Va Dept of wHealth anyway.
– GG
Dec31.07
In Spew #007 over at the mother-site — Something-stinks.com — I related a conversation I had with a sludge-farmer in Campbell County, Va. in 2006. This guy is laying sludge down on paddocks right next to his yard, where his pre-schooler plays. I mean, this guy is dead-serious and terminally convinced that sludge is good for his pastures, good for his farm, and safe enough to let his kid play in it. Of course, his source of “information” is Synagro who is spreading the sludge on this guy’s paddocks and spreading his picture in local papers as the face of sludge.
Likewise, I met and discussed sludge with a dairy sludge-farmer in Appomattox County, Va. He was equally impressed with sludge, and convinced that the money he was saving in fertilizer was the only thing keeping his farm going in the face of rising land taxes.
These farmers are not bad people. I’ve talked to one who is very testy about not being told what he is or is not going to put on his land, but I believe that generally they are not malicious, and they care about their communities as much as you care about yours. It’s just that they are badly brainwashed. If you’re laying this stuff down within a few yards of where your young boy plays, you gotta’ be badly brainwashed.
To my mind, on at least two levels sludge-farmers represent an exposed Achilles heel in the sludgers’ plans to spread sludge from sea to shining sea (shining again only because sewage is no longer being dumped in them). First, if we can get to the farmers and at least get information in their hands that presents the other side of the BS coin, it might be possible to shut this nonsense down. This is what happened recently in Rappahannock County, Va. where the farmer who intended to spread sludge was convinced to change his mind at a public hearing on the issue. It also happened near Salem, Oregon in late 2007.
I had some e-conversations recently with a lady in Augusta County, Va. where BS had just raised it’s ugly head — her neighbor had applied for a permit. This lady, who is running a farm but is an escapee of Washington’s political scene, put together a brilliant anti-BS PR brochure that presents the other part of the story. This is what we need badly on a statewide or national level — the stories of dead kids and dead milk herds. The court cases. And examples of indemnity agreements the farmers can put in the sludgers face and demand they sign. We need to counteract the misinformation being presented to the farmers by the sludgers.
The second reason the sludge-farmers represent the Achilles heel is that they are the ones who ought to be paying for testing the BS that is being dumped on their land. The greatest danger in BS is that one can never know, short of testing, which load is contaminated as a result of some negligence or criminal activity that results in toxins entering the sewage pipe that ultimately empties out onto the farmer’s field. Prions, heavy metals, and radioactivity have all been dumped on farmland through the BS network.
The only way rural communities can be protected from New York City’s contaminants is by testing each and every load. Since it is, technically, the farmer that is importing the BS and it is he/she that is getting free “fertilizer,” it should be the farmer that has the responsibility for having every truckload tested before it is spread. If it costs $300, or $500, or $1000 per load to test, then that’s the cost of doing business. Why should the community pay it? In central Virginia, these BS loads sit in RR containers in a rail yard at Gladstone, Va. until they are loaded onto trucks for delivery. Each and every container should be sampled while still on the RR tracks and held certified safe. Then the bill for testing should be sent to the farmer. Better yet, each container should be tested and certified before leaving it’s place of origin with spot-checks run before spreading to be sure nothing has been added enroute.
-GG
