Tougher rules won’t make sludge safer
biosolids - coverup
Letter to the Editor - Lynchburg News & Advance
Letters to the Editor for Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Lynchburg News & Advance
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Tougher rules won’t make sludge safer
The JLARC report recommending more oversight and enforcement of existing land application rules
ignores the key problem of using treated municipal sewage sludge as “fertilizer.” Sewage treatment
plants were never designed to produce fertilizer. They were designed to remove thousands of
pollutants from raw sewage. Most of these pollutants - many of which are hazardous and persistent -
end up in sludge. This is why the Federal Clean Water Act defines sewage sludge as a pollutant.
Every month every industry in the country can legally discharge 33 pounds of hazardous wastes into
publicly owned treatment plants.
Hundreds of sludge-exposed rural residents across the country have reported adverse health
effects. Livestock has been seriously harmed and killed by ingesting forage grown on sludged fields.
The link between adverse health problems and land applied sludge has been documented in peer
reviewed technical and medical journals.
Yet for the last 10 years, EPA has collaborated with state agencies and the regulated industries to
cover up these problems and mislead the media, legislators and the public by claiming that this
controversial practice is safe and beneficial.
Farmers who choose to use this material should, at the very least, ask for an indemnification
agreement from the sludge supplier to protect themselves from potential harm to their health, live
stock, pets, wells, or land.
CAROLINE SNYDER
North Sandwich, N.H.