Altavista Journal
December 20, 2006
Altavista and Campbell County, Virginia news
Biosolids debate heats up
By MARTIN FISHER/Altavista Journal Staff Writer
RUSTBURG - Citizens Against Toxic Sludge (CATS) held a gathering Saturday that erupted into a standing-room only
event of hundreds voicing opposition to what companies have called recycled biosolid fertilizer free to farms.
"Please don't ever use that term - biosolids - again. That is a corporate spin," Shireen Parsons, whose home is next
door to a proposed spreading sight, said. "Please call it what it is, toxic sewage sludge."
"I don't want to see my neighborhood become a toxic waste dump," home-schooling mom Jennifer England said.
"I live next to a proposed site for dumping, and when I look across the street it makes me just want to cry," she added. "I
have five of the most beautiful children you have ever seen in your life, and I would go to my grave trying to protect
them."
Her emotional resolve received a sturdy response of acclamation and support.
She added county leaders should hear from their neighbors.
"Call them and tell them that we don' want this, tell them that the excuse our hands are tied’ is just not acceptable
anymore - tell them, you've got to tell them."
CATS had environmental activist lawyer Tom Lindsay explain a strategy for fighting against the treated sewage approval
process now before the Virginia Department of Health.
The Community Environmental and Legal Defense Fund headed up by Lindsay in Pennsylvania would import legal
challenge tactics he said have been successful there.
Lindsay said fighting a new way is necessary because the corporate powers have taken the rights to a democratic
process away from the majority of local residents who don't want treated sewage used as fertilizer in their
neighborhoods.
He added the regulatory system protects industry powers while binding individuals and groups opposed to them.
"When you fight it in the conventional ways, they budget for that, and they'll end up thanking you for a better regulated
application process; the sludge still comes in," Lindsay said.
"You have the choice to do nothing, and you'll get sludged, or you can try to regulate it better - and get sludged just the
same, or you can do something different."
His idea, which has been used in other areas, is to formulate numerous local ordinances he said end up banning the
treated sewage industry trucks from operating in the locality - up to 77 townships in Pennsylvania.
He added the ordinance would ban corporate farming in the locality; and moving it forward included not taking no
answers from county attorneys - even using a ballot petition to change the county's form of government to break the
roadblocks that may come.
Lindsay said his organization has documented one case that clearly linked the treated sewage use as fertilizer to the
death of a Pennsylvania boy, and he understands there are many claims of other deaths.
A questioner asked about pursuing a lawsuit, and he responded that proving the waste spreading as the cause of a
person's demise is made nearly impossible by legal tactics available to the corporations.
"The law is not on your side," Lindsay said. "The question is, are you interested in regulating this, or stopping it,
because stopping it means having a mini revolt here in Campbell County."
He added his staff is ready to assist in moving the process forward.
CATS gathered more than 200 signatures for expanding their opposition campaign. Information handed out included
assertions that peer-reviewed scientific studies raised serious questions about the safety of what they characterized as
minimally treated sewage.
Waste water treatment plants are not designed to be fertilizer manufacturing plants, and the product can be
contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutants such as PCBs, dioxins, viruses, bacteria, pathogens, fungi and
parasitic eggs, according to CATS leaders.
They added no one can guarantee that using the free fertilizer program will not pose health risks.
Supervisor J.D. Puckett, who represents Brookneal District, where most of the farms requesting the program are
located, said the issue is on the agenda for discussion at their first meeting of the year in January.
"I want to hear their presentation at that meeting before I comment about their proposed ordinance," Puckett said.