Thomas Jefferson said: "It is an axiom in my mind that
our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the
people themselves. Every government degenerates when
trusted to the rulers of the people alone."
There is a ground swell of angry people all across the
United States who have organized grassroots groups, from New
Hampshire to Hawaii, to fight the spreading of sewage sludge
on our food crop production land. The EPA and USDA's intent
to include pollutants contaminated sludge as a fertilizer on
organic foods focused people's attention on the need to
protect our food supply. When the USDA's Organic Rule was
released for comment, USDA Secretary Dan Glickman reported
approximately 50,000 comments were received from the public
objecting to the proposed rule a month before the comment
period ended. USDA expected to receive at least 70,000
comments. According to the April 6, 1998 issue of The
Newsletter SLUDGE, Glickman said, it is "the largest public
response to a rule in modern history at the department."
One of the first sludge activists was Linda Zander of
Lynden, Washington, who founded Help for Sewage Victims to
assist others who like her and her family had become
victims of sewage sludge. In Ohio, Pat Wolford became an
activist in Citizens Concerned About Sludge when it was put
on farm land 2 miles from her place. The more Pat learned
about sludge--what it contained and how it was poorly
regulated--the more determined she became to fight to get it
banned. She was successful in getting one site closed down.
Tina Daly in Pennsylvania, the leader on the Sludge Team of
the Pennsylvania Environmental Network, has been busy
networking with others and compiling and sending out
information packets, and organizing workshops protesting its
use in Pennsylvania. In California, Jane Beswick became
involved with sludge when a neighbor was planning to spread
sludge on rented property adjoining her dairy farm. She is
the Coordinator of the Coalition for Sludge Education and a
member of the Stanislaus County Sludge Task Force. Working
with the California Farm Bureau and others, she was
successful in getting sludge banned in Stanislaus County.
In New Hampshire, Abby Rockefeller's concern for the
preservation of the integrity of the soil and of the
ecosystems and the agriculture dependent upon it, led her to
become a founding member of Citizens for a Future New
Hampshire. Joining Abby, is Helane Shields who has been a
thorn in the side of Alan Rubin. They are successfully
fighting the spread of sludge town by town in New Hampshire.
On March 15, 1998 the Sunday Monitor carried the story of one
of their successes. NO SLUDGE in WEBSTER! 155 to 62; no class
B, no class A!
In New Hampshire, Mary Merci, who became concerned when
BFI wanted to use sludge to reclaim a sand pit across from
her, led a group of activists who were also successful in
getting sludge banned in their town. Several groups have been
working in New York to stop both composting and land
application of sludge. Tom and Louisa Bisogno of Brewster
worked with Citizens of Putnam to help defeat a composting
operation there. Melissa Jacobs and Valeria Knight working
with RAGE and CEC have been opposing use of sludge on root
crops in their vicinity. Melissa became involved in stopping
an 8 million gallon sewage sludge storage lagoon and sludge
injection facility 2 miles from her organic farm. She won!
Marian Feinberg and Jacqueline Cooperman helped the
South Bronx Clean Air Coalition and the Hunts Point Awareness
Committee to focus attention on the terrible air pollution
problems there that were making children ill. When the group
got the attention of Representative Serrano, who appears to
be only one of a few congressmen who takes his mandate to
represent the people seriously, the situation was improved
but not resolved. In Kapolei, Hawaii, Linda Smith
successfully led a coalition to stop a composting facility.
Charlotte Hartman of the Citizens' Environmental
Coalition, after attending the symposium on Minimizing Risks
and Sharing Liability From Application of Sludge and Sludge
By-Products on Agricultural Land of The Springfield District
Farm Credit Council, of Springfield, Massachusetts,
a regional environmental group in New York, became so
concerned, she organized the Sludge Roundtable, a meeting of
environmental groups from across the United States, which was
held in July of 1996. During that meeting, the National
Sludge Alliance was created. Hartman has taken the lead as
its director in compiling information on sludge application
problems from across the country, from Hawaii to New York,
and furnishing the information to people who have been harmed
by sludge use or who are concerned about the use of sludge on
land and food crops.
The National Sludge Alliance (NSA) is concerned because
the national media, except for CNN, and reporters and editors
like Joel Bleifuss of In These Times, Greg Campbell of the
Boulder Weekly, Chris Carrel of Seattle Times, Duff Wilson of
the Seattle Times, and John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of
Center for Media and Democracy for the most part, failed to
adequately examine the use of sludge as a fertilizer. It is
the consensus of the NSA that while the issues may have been
too complex for some reporters to grasp, many major news
organizations have failed to address the problem because of
pressure put on them by EPA and its stakeholders. As we
discovered in Kansas City, the Kansas City Star newspaper was
number 17 on the list of major contributors of pollutants
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which effected sludge use. Therefore, it is self-evident that
EPA and its stakeholders, the treatment plants, can bring
considerable pressure to bear on certain news organizations.
The Prime Time TV program on the sludge mountain in
California is another example.
There were several other very important people at
the symposium with Hartman who were extremely concerned about
the potential liability to the farmers and more concerned
about the effects sludge use could have on our food supply
and our children. Among these were, Ellen Harrison, Director
of Cornell's Waste Management Institute, and Ken Cobb, also
associated with the Institute, and Dr. David Bouldin, of
Cornell's Department of Soil, Crop, and Atmospheric Sciences.
Ellen Harrison, put her reputation and job on the line
when she challenged EPA's risk assessment and methods in
developing the Part 503 regulation. Scientist, David Bouldin
joined her, as did their colleague at Cornell, Dr. Murray
McBride. When these courageous scientists reevaluated the
EPA's risk assessment methods, they found that EPA had
used a less conservative method of figuring the safe level of
metals that could be disposed of on farmland. Their 1997
study, The Case for Caution, recommended a safe level of
2
metals in soil that was 1/10th that of the Part 503.
A Washington source has it that EPA tried to get the
study withdrawn and the scientists fired. The same source
also has it that the USDA has withdrawn much of Cornell's
financial support for further studies on agriculture.
Fortunately, for the general public, the Cornell
Administration is standing firmly behind the work of these
honest scientists.
These Cornell scientists and others like Dr. Stanford
Tackett, Dr. Donald Lisk of Cornell, Dr. Joseph Maness of
Oklahoma, Dr. Karl Schurr, Dr. Melvin Kramer, and Dr. David
Lewis of the EPA are openly speaking out about the dangers to
the public health and the environment from the use of sewage
sludge. Steve Lester of the CCHW as well as the staff of CCHW
have also voiced their opposition to sludge and given
invaluable assistance to the NSA.
Anger is building as more people learn how they have
been deceived by the EPA/WEF propaganda that has assured them
that sewage sludge with its disease-causing organisms,
dangerous heavy metals, deadly organic chemicals, and in some
cases, radioactive waste, is safe. Although sludge does
contain pollutants, we have been told we are protected from
them because sewage sludge is regulated and carefully
monitored. How can this be when most of the states have
refused to take delegation leaving the enforcement and
compliance up to the EPA regions, which claim they lack both
money and personnel for enforcement and compliance. As a
result, there have been many many violations that have been
causing adverse health effects and environmental damage all
across the country.
More and more people are becoming angry over the extent
of the food and water contamination and its possible
connection to the use of sewage sludge on food crops. This is
having an impact on EPA's regional offices as they are being
besieged by people asking for help, or requesting information
under the Freedom of Information Act--information that has
repeatedly been denied under one pretext or another. When
Helane Shields wrote requesting an FOIA in Oct 16, 1997
concerning information and documents from Oak Ridge National
Laboratory on the ecological risks associated with
land application of municipal sewage sludge, she received a
letter on November 21, 1997 informing her "We are unable to
provide you with the requested records because they are
exempt from mandatory disclosure by virtue of 5 U.S.C. 552
(b) exemption five, deliberative process privilege." If
sludge is as safe as it is touted to be by the EPA, then
there shouldn't have been any ecological risk. Obviously,
this must not be the case, otherwise why the refusal to
supply information about the research that is going on there
and its findings.
In some cases, instead of outright denying FOIA
requests, the EPA has claimed the cost to fulfill the request
is prohibitive. A $42,000 dollar price tag was placed by the
EPA to furnish information on victims on sewage sludge.
Obviously, there have been lots of victims.
Both residents of urban and rural communities across the
country have been reporting illnesses associated with sewage
sludge. In previous chapters we have already reported adverse
health effects from exposure of sewage sludge to rural
residents from the application of sludge on farms and adverse
health effects on the children and other residents in the
South Bronx. Adverse health effects have also been
experienced by residents of communities living near
composting facilities such as Almaden, California in the
West, Islip Township in New York in the East, and Franklin,
Kentucky in the South. Information on the adverse health
effects suffered by residents in these selected communities
was obtained from personal interviews, correspondence and
newspaper articles.
In a telephone interview concerning the composting of
sludge in Franklin on December 23, 1997, I spoke personally
with Bob Safay of the U. S. Health Department Toxic Substance
and Disease Register who had visited the site; he told me,
"The people had alleged problems, but what else can we do
with it; people don't want landfills."
This is a ploy used by regulators to justify their
spreading of sewage sludge on the land or composting it.
The reason most people have opposed landfills is the fear of
another Love Canal. They are concerned that they and their
children could be exposed to the contents in the landfill
which could cause adverse health effects.
A comparison of landfilling of sewage sludge with
land application of sewage sludge and sewage sludge sold as a
fertilizer shows the greatest danger to us comes not from
landfilling but from the uncontrolled land application of
sewage sludge and sludge products sold as a fertilizer. The
danger to our health isn't from highly regulated landfills,
which are contained in a small area and covered daily, but
from exposure to poorly regulated and monitored sewage sludge
that is spread over fields where the toxic substances it
contains can volatilize into the air, enter the food supply
and leach into the water. Unlike landfills, where the
groundwater is monitored, there is no requirement for ground
water monitoring of sludge that is land applied.
Sewage sludge, with its disease-causing organisms,
deadly organic chemicals, dangerous heavy metals and
radioactive materials, poses no danger to us or animals until
we are exposed to it. More and more we, both human and
animals, are being exposed to it every day. Sewage sludge
products are now being used in parks, on golf courses,
in forest areas, in highway meridian strips, and cloverleaf
exchanges. It is sold for fertilizer for lawns and gardens,
and applied on fields and pastures.
Although sewage sludge can be disposed of in monofills,
which are only for sewage sludge, many POTWs dispose of their
sewage sludge in co-disposal landfills with solid and
hazardous waste. The fact is that if all sewage sludge was
land applied or sold as a fertilizer, we would still have
landfills because hazardous and solid waste as well as
garbage are disposed of in a landfill.
Co-disposal landfills, gasification, which is used in
Europe and favored by Hugh Kaufman, and incineration, if the
incinerators are redesigned to eliminate harmful emissions of
dioxins and other pollutants, are other viable choices to
replace land application of sewage sludge. Several options
could be used. Another possibility is the Clivus Multrum
composting toilet which Abby Rockefeller introduced to the
U.S. in 1972.
With the big push, Biosolids 2000, by EPA/WEF for
nationwide acceptance of sludge for beneficial use, there
will be many many more compost and other sludge processing
facilities. As more POTWs are able to meet the requirements
in the lax Part 503 sludge rule for land application, more
sludge will be produced and offered to farmers as a free
fertilizer. If you live in the country, your neighbor could
be spreading sludge on his field next to you. You could be
the next Zander, Ruane or Roller. Your child could be
playing in a park where sludge was used as a fertilizer. You
could purchase a bag of fertilizer for your lawn or garden,
not knowing it contained sludge or hazardous waste. There is
no way for you to know since there is no label and the
contents are not disclosed. You and your family could eat
fruits, vegetables, meat from cattle or other animals
contaminated by the disease and chemical pollutants in sludge
or drink milk from contaminated cows. You could also drink
water contaminated with sludge.
If you become a victim, you will receive no help from
your local, state and federal regulatory agencies, which were
designed to protect public health and the environment,
because they have entered into what amounts to an alliance
with the wastewater industry for the purpose of promoting
sludge as a beneficial product for land applications as a
cheap means of disposal for the sewage treatment plants. Some
well-meaning regulators have been duped by EPA/WEF propaganda
that sludge called biosolids is a nutrient rich product that
can be recycled without any harm to either the public or the
environment.
EPA/WEF in their promotion of sewage sludge are
targeting different environmental groups trying to enlist
them as stakeholders in a "divide and conquer" tactic to
defang the opponents of sewage sludge. On page 10 of their
Communication Plan for Biosolids, Powell Tate stated the
value of gaining environmental support. They wrote:
Groups that focus on ocean-related issues, especially,
should be most receptive and may be recruited to help
gain the support of other organizations. Recognizing
that some important groups are troubled by the EPA
regulations, however, we should nevertheless seek to
work with them as closely as possible to keep open
channels of communication.
The EPA/WEF ploy hasn't worked with the Sierra Club who
have been working with Farm Bureau in California and with
Charlotte Hartman of the NSA in New York to stop the land
application of sludge. More environmental groups need to
become involved like the Sierra Club. Working together we
could take a giant step to stop the pollution of our air,
water, land, food supply, destruction of ecosystems, and the
extinction of different endangered species. Preserving our
environment has not been a priority of Congress, in fact,
some congressmen have openly opposed the environmental
movement. Together we could form a formidable lobbying group
with the clout to be heard in the halls of Congress.
Throughout this book, we have made reference time and
again to the work of Dr. Theo Colborn, the expert on
endocrine-disrupting chemicals, especially PCBs and dioxins
which are unregulated in sewage sludge, who has synthesized
the scientific research available on the effects of these
chemicals on the development and function of the human body.
In Our Stolen Future, she and her fellow authors have
graphically demonstrated how already the effects, from
exposure to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been
manifested in bizarre and puzzling abnormalities in animal
populations, defective sexual organs, impaired infertility,
and miscarriages, in both animals and humans and the rising
number of children with learning disabilities, attention
deficits, and hyperactivity. They warn us of the terrible
threat to mankind posed by the continued exposure of humans,
animals and wildlife to these dangerous toxic chemicals. They
say:
What we fear most immediately is not extinction, but
the insidious erosion of the human species. We worry
about an invisible loss of human potential. We worry
about the power of hormone-disrupting chemicals to
undermine and alter the characteristics that make us
uniquely human--our behavior, intelligence, and
3
capacity for social organization.
They add further:
Nothing, however, will be more important to human well-
being and survival than the wisdom to appreciate that
however great our knowledge, our ignorance is also
vast. In this ignorance we have taken huge risks and
inadvertently gambled with survival. Now, that we know
better, we must have the courage to be cautious, for
the stakes are very high. We owe that much, and more,
4
to our children.
We owe our children breathable air. No children should
have to attend school gasping for every breathe from daily
attacks of asthma and other respiratory diseases from
breathing foul air laced with an indeterminate mix of
pollutants as did the children in the South Bronx. Spray
inhalers should not be standard equipment along with books
and other school supplies.
We owe our children uncontaminated food and water. When
they take a drink of water or eat a bite of food, it should
be free from bacteria and viruses and parasites which can
make them acutely ill and from heavy metals like lead and
mercury and cadmium and organic chemicals like PCBs and
dioxins, and pesticides which can wreak havoc on some of
their bodily systems causing irreversible harm, immune system
impairment, learning disabilities, attention deficit,
hyperactivity, and in some cases even death.
We owe our children a safe environment. Children should
have fishable lakes and rivers where they can eat the fish
they catch. Their waters should be swimmable waters and
their beaches unpolluted. They should be able to play in
their own yard or the yards of their neighbors or in the park
without inhaling or ingesting metals and organic chemicals
which will make them ill.
More and more people and groups are realizing we have
been ill-used by our government. One of the findings of
Powell Tate's research in July 1993 for EPA/WEF on biosolids
was the "highest level of scorn or distrust is aimed at
elected officials." "Your congressman" is generally seen as
the least credible of the options, with only a few
exceptions, while "your state and local elected officials and
federal, state, and local government agencies" fare only
moderately better. Sentiments of distrust and lack of
confidence in government are evident throughout the course of
5
many respondents' interviews."
In Journal of Proceedings of the New Mexico Conference
On The Environment, September 13-15, 1992, published in
February 1993, written before the final Part 503, I
emphasized that the land application of sewage sludge was not
just a farmer's problem although he will be liable for any
damage to humans, animals or the land. It effects the most
basic needs of each and every one of us--our need for
6
uncontaminated food, clean water and clean air. Although
Congress has passed the laws to control the use and disposal
of sewage sludge and given EPA a solid waste statute to
implement and enforce, the EPA, who is suppose to be an
enforcer and regulator is a promoter of land application of
sludge and is in with the wastewater industry, the very ones
they should be regulating.
We can wait no longer to do something--too much damage
has already been done throughout the country to humans,
animals and the environment. Therefore, it is time that we
as concerned citizens do address the problem of land
application of sludge with its deadly pollutants before more
damage is done to the health of those who work on or live
around these sites and those of us who consume the food
raised there. No action will happen unless we band together
to make it happen because there are powerful forces which are
determined to continue to land apply sludge as a cheap means
of waste disposal even at the cost of lost of valuable land,
and harm to humans and animals.
What you can do:
Read Toxic Sludge is Good for You and
Our Stolen Future
Join environmental groups on the local level and national
level who are fighting the land application of sludge.
Write your Congresspersons telling them to:
1. Eliminate risk assessment and cost benefits--the costs are
always too great
2. Immediately stop the use of toxic sludge as a fertilizer
and demand it be properly disposed of either in a landfill
as required by law or by other safer options
Remove any Congressperson from office who refuses to
listen to you and fails to support strong environmental laws
that will protect you and your children. These people work
for us--if they want to work for the polluters--let the
polluters pay their salary. Let your voice be heard loud and
clear and work with others to stop this threat. Your vote can
stop the source of the pollution, the action of the
regulatory agencies and in some cases even the Congress
itself.
While there is still time, we should pay heed to the
words of Colborn et al., in which they say:
In the interest of the coming generation and those who
follow, we must limit what children are exposed to as
they grow up and keep the toxic burden that women
accumulate in their lifetimes prior to pregnancy as low
as possible. Children have a right to be born
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chemically free.
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