"Corruption is often the price of progress."
Reverend Emanual Cleaver II, Mayor, KC, Mo.
(Starbeam--Kansas City Star, 1996)
Maybe, but killing or damaging the health of people seems to be a little more
than corruption.
For almost 30 years, I have watched, as the
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Wastewater section of
the Office of Water Division altered its character from a law
enforcement agency and protector of the environment, as
envisioned by Congress, to become one of the most powerful
and corrupt entities in government. This small group of
people within the EPA has promoted a policy of land
application (disposal) of sewage sludge that has polluted our
air, food, soil, and water.
The Water Division of EPA was created and entrusted with
protecting our national water supply and cleaning up our
sewage (wastewater). One of the largest construction projects
in history was initiated by the EPA for the construction of
municipal primary and secondary sewage treatment plants to
prevent most of the harmful toxic chemicals and disease-
causing organisms from entering our water supply.
I was shocked to discover the Wastewater Division
betrayed that trust, by not only failing to protect our
national water supply, but by taking the most hazardous toxic
and disease contaminated sludge extracted from the sewage
wastewater and promoting its use as an unregulated and
uncontrolled fertilizer on home lawns, gardens, school
grounds and our food crop production land. This small
section of about 20 people within the EPA have violated its
Trust, and the law, by creating a sludge use regulation based
solely on unrelated exclusions and exemptions in the
environmental laws, which do not apply to sludge, and a
statutory exemption for contaminated stormwater run-off from
agricultural land.
I first became involved in the 1970s, in Kansas City,
Missouri's waste disposal planning. Because of my public
service activities as the first Vietnam veteran to serve as
an American Legion Post Commander in Kansas City, Missouri, I
was asked to serve on Kansas City's solid waste management
committee to evaluate solid waste disposal methods.
In modern public relations terminology I was a
gatekeeper, a public figure who had little knowledge about
solid waste at the time, but who would be believed when I
passed on the government's official line of so-called
scientific facts concerning solid waste disposal. The
official line is much different from the truth. The truth is
that solid waste is a simple term for all the toxic chemical
and disease contaminated waste generated by homes, hospitals,
newspapers, industry and the sludge from air, water and waste
treatment plants, which can do irreparable damage to human
health and the environment if it is mismanaged. Sewage
sludge at that time was considered to be a solid waste and
the environmental laws still classify sludge as a solid waste
which must be safely managed in a secure landfill.
Twenty years after I was first introduced to the dangers
of solid waste on the Kansas City Solid Waste Evaluation
Committee, the City began limited sludge disposal operations
next to our farm. In 1972, the City had taken part of our
farm for the disposal site. As it was funded by the EPA and
the State, I assumed all the necessary precautions would be
taken to assure the protection of any person coming in
contact with the sludge as well as protection of the
environment. I also assumed that it would be well managed to
prevent the toxic chemicals and disease organisms from
entering the groundwater, surface water or causing other
harmful effects. These assumptions were based on my naive
belief at that time that the wastewater section of the water
division of the EPA and Missouri's Department of Natural
Resource (DNR) had as its main concern enforcing the
environmental laws to protect human health and the
environment.
I became concerned when our tenant farmer, who also
farmed part of the City's sludge site, was not warned of any
danger associated with exposure to the toxic chemicals and
disease organisms in sludge which would contaminate the air,
crops, soil and water at the City's farm disposal site. I
also became alarmed when a cluster of cancer cases developed
around the disposal site. I discovered that none of the four
farmers farming the sludge amended ground were ever warned
they could take the dust borne toxic chemicals and disease
organisms home on their clothes, which could affect the
health of their families. Was it just a co-incidence that
one farmer developed cancer of the throat, the wives of two
of the farmers died of cancer, and the fourth farmer died of
questionable causes? Two other women living on the perimeter
of the disposal site also died of questionable causes.
When the State did well water testing around the
disposal site, it said there were no problems with the ground
water these people had been drinking. However, city water
lines were installed for all of the residents near the sludge
site.
My concern with the safety of our tenant led me to
question how sludge was managed in land application farming
vs in a disposal site. I knew, based on my work on the waste
disposal committee, that there was potential for harm to
human health and the environment if the sludge was not
monitored and highly regulated, which included warning the
public (farmers) of the danger from contact with it. In my
investigation of the land application of sludge, I was
shocked to learn that the safeguards under the Solid Waste
Act that should have protected human health and the
environment were not in place. Sludge, with its disease-
causing organisms, toxic organic chemicals, heavy metals and
even radioactive materials, was being applied to food crop
production land with little or no monitoring, oversight or
regulation.
The propaganda contained in the EPA/WEF promotional PR
brochures assures the public that not only is sludge safe,
but it is highly monitored to prevent any adverse health
effects. Powell Tate noted the need for this strategy in its
Research Findings in 1993. According to Powell Tate:
Respondents do not believe that sludge or biosolids are
well regulated. Respondents from all groups, including
some public health and elected official representatives,
are distrustful and skeptical about government and
government's regulatory abilities. This is a critical
finding. As noted above, respondents do not believe in
government, even though in many cases government
officials are some of the most knowledgeable on the
issues. This mistrust appears to effect peoples' faith
in the state and local officials that regulate the
quality and safety of the product. (p. 2)
In the WEF brochure, BIOSOLIDS RECYCLING AND BENEFICIAL
USE, WEF assures the public that:
"Biosolids are managed by a two-tier network of
regulations. The federal Part 503 regulation, in
conjunction with the state regulations, ensure that
biosolids recycling is a safe and integral part of this
country's water quality and waste management programs."
Although WEF Director, Albert Grey, assured millions of
viewers on CNN's "Hazardous Harvest" that sludge was: 1) a
material (sludge) that is carefully processed, and 2) tightly
regulated, 3) carefully monitored, and 4) fully controlled
precisely for the purpose of protecting public health, the
opposite is true.
There is a wide disparity between what the WEF brochure
claims is happening in both the EPA and state biosolids
programs and what is actually happening. Once the Part 503
was released and the public relations campaign for disposal
of toxic sludge on farms, lawns and gardens was on track, EPA
began to cut back on its involvement. To accomplish the
transfer of the liability to the states, EPA created its
"gang of 10" EPA and WEF stakeholders to rewrite the federal
rules to make it easier for the states to accept
responsibility for the sludge program.
The "gang of 10's" formation was reported in the August
1, 1995, issue of SLUDGE. The article noted that the
rewriting of the Code of Federal Regulations on state
delegation requirements would be given to "John Walker of
EPA's Municipal Technology Branch who would submit it by
September 1 for the agency review and comments." The major
change in the Code would be that the states' attorney general
could simply certify that state rules were in place to
regulate sludge, thereby, bypassing the current approval
process of states' legislative bodies. There was a
qualifier, the states' rules could not be any more stringent
than EPA's rules.
According to Bob Bastian, writing in his 1995 paper, The
Biosolids (sludge) Treatment, Beneficial Use, and Disposal
Situations in the U.S., EPA is working with the states "to
encourage their adoption of biosolids regulatory programs
that can be approved to carry out delegated programs and
avoid the need for separate U.S. EPA permits, compliance
monitoring and enforcement activities." He says:
Until a state applies for and is approved to carry out a
delegated program, all TWTDS in the state will be
dealing directly with their U.S. EPA Regional Office
regarding federal permits, compliance monitoring and
enforcement issues associated with implementation of the
Part 503 requirements. (p.7) According to Bastian, as of
December 23, 1997, only Utah had completed the
delegation process.
In this same paper, Bastian lists several problems with
land application that are reasons why states are not wanting
to accept delegation:
Areas such as the long-term fate of some land applied
pollutants in biosolids [sludge] relative to plant
uptake rates, surface runoff and groundwater movement,
and the potential impacts (both positive and negative)
on wildlife and unmanaged ecosystems are ripe for
further research due to the limited amount of field data
currently available. Future attempts to make the
pathogen control portion of the rule more "risk-based"
will also require additional research efforts. (p.10)
Alan Hais, EPA's Multimedia Risk Assessment Branch
Chief, is concerned with the enforcement issue. In SLUDGE,
August 1, 1995, he says, "The Water Environment Federation
(WEF) of Alexandria, Va. and EPA forged a partnership to
implement Part 503, but the association probably will not be
able to assist in the agency's enforcement efforts." The
partnership he was referring to was the EPA/WEF stakeholders
group. Basically, it included WEF and AMSA members as well
as the Wastewater Division of the EPA. In his 1995 paper,
Bob Bastian also refers to stakeholders as, neighbors,
farmers, food processors, and customers.
As a neighbor, we and our tenant farmer are
stakeholders. We have a stake in protecting the soil and the
crops grown there, which in turn protects the value of the
property and the consumers of the crops. The EPA/WEF
stakeholder group on the other hand, is only interested in
sludge disposal at the cheapest cost, with the least amount
of control.
Environmental groups have also been approached to become
stakeholders. This stakeholders group, for the most part, is
a very biased group with a vested interest in promoting the
beneficial sewage sludge use and covering up any damages
caused by sewage sludge as evidenced from their debunking
actions.
In reading the correspondence between EPA and the WEF,
it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly who is in
charge. In one letter, Robert Perciasepe, Assistant
Administrator of EPA's Office of Water, had expressed to
stakeholders of the WEF's executive committee the desire for
WEF assistance in getting States to accept responsibility for
Part 503. EPA had already set up an inter-agency loan of Dr.
Al Rubin to WEF, to assist WEF and States to understand
technical aspects of Part 503. His role at WEF was to get
States to accept the technical requirements of Part 503.
In a March 13, 1995 letter to Perciasepe, WEF President
Michael R. Pollen acknowledged Perciasepe's request for
assistance in getting the states to accept responsibility for
sludge enforcement. Pollen boasted that:
The WEF's highly successful partnership with EPA to
develop and implement a national campaign for gaining
public acceptance of biosolids recycling demonstrates
the viability of such a partnership effort. The recent
positive modification of the ABC TV PRIMETIME LIVE show
because of our proactive cooperative efforts was most
gratifying.
The story that was modified concerned Mount San Diego,
which is a mountain of San Diego, California sludge dumped on
an Indian reservation. The sludge disposal contractor was
supposed to compost the sludge and sell or give it away as a
fertilizer. However, that did not happen and the pollutants
from the mountain of sludge have contaminated the reservation
and the groundwater. Now no one wants to accept
responsibility for the clean-up because it is on an Indian
Reservation.
In spite of EPA initiating the partnership, in a May 15,
1995 letter, Perciasepe, thanked Pollen for suggesting the
EPA/WEF partnership. He wrote, "we need to explore ideas...to
develop an innovative relationship... to streamline
authorization process." An EPA team, for the partnership WEF
had in mind, had been assembled, and John Walker had been
appointed the biosolids team leader.
Furthermore, Pollen acknowledged that it was EPA's
Walker and Dr. Albert Grey, Deputy Executive Director of WEF,
"who was instrumental in creating this and other proposals
for joint WEF/EPA cooperation."
In 1995, a special committee, the Biosolids Public
Acceptance Subcommittee was created and entrusted with a two-
fold task...to gain public acceptance of sludge use and to
convince states to accept delegation, that is, to take
responsibility for administering the Part 503 rule. This
committee was composed of various stakeholders, 1) John
Walker, of EPA's Office of Water, 2) state
representative, Lisa Rogers of Utah. Div. of Water
Quality, which was the first state to accept delegation
for Part 503), 3) municipalities' representatives, Steve
Frank of Metro WW Reclamation District of Denver (who is
now accepting radioactive hazardous waste leachate from
the Lowery superfund site, which will be included in the
sludge used on Denver's 50,000 acre farm, where wheat is
grown for human consumption), George Hall of Metro
Reclamation of Greater Chicago and Mike Moore of Orange
County Sanitation Dist.,
4) Sludge Disposal Companies' representatives, Jane Forste of
Bio Gro Systems, Inc, and Scott Wienands of Nutri-jet
Systems, Inc., (Nutri-jet was fired by Kansas City, Missouri
for applying excessive amounts of sludge at its sludge site),
and 5) associated groups who also profit from biosolids
(engineering)--Lynn Green of Black & Veatch, and
(agricultural studies)--Billie Harrison of The Ohio State
University. According to a memo dated July 28, 1995, Pete
Machno of the King County Department of Metropolitan Services
(Seattle) is directing the Biosolids Committee.
In a 1995 letter, Walker explained the focus of the
biosolids acceptance committee:
EPA has a mandate to promoting the beneficial use of
biosolids. For this to occur States need to understand
the risk assessment/science basis of the Part 503 rule
so that their rules will not be overly stringent and so
that state authorities can knowledgeably recommend to
their public that alternatives which make beneficial use
of biosolids are safe and desirable. (John Walker's
confirmation letter to Tanya Moll, Manager, NBMA. June
1995).
Sam Hadeed, director of technical services and
legislation for the Association of Metropolitan Sewage
Agencies (AMSA) noted in the August 1, 1995 issue of SLUDGE,
"If the EPA structures the recordkeeping requirements so they
are not onerous or cumbersome, violations are not likely to
be widespread. I think the states should pick up on that
message."
If there are no rules or accurate records it is self-
evident that there will not be any violations. Most states
did not pick up on that message. However, many states like
Missouri, quit making any attempt to protect the health of
their citizens, arbitrarily turning over the responsibility
to EPA's Regional sludge coordinators, who are promoting
sludge use. As most states have not assumed delegation, the
monitoring and enforcement requirement of Part 503 sludge
rule are still the responsibility of about 10 Regional Sludge
Coordinators at the EPA.
In a personal conversation with Ken Arnold of Missouri's
Department of Natural Resources (DNR), he told me that
Missouri does not have the people to enforce the sludge
rules. According to Arnold, the Missouri Department of
Natural Resources cut 20 staff positions from the
department's Water Pollution Control effort in the last half
of 1997. This included the sludge coordinator position which
had been vacant since July 1, 1997.
I was astonished to find that, according to Arnold,
until 1997, EPA had funded the State Sludge Coordinator
positions to monitor the sludge application projects. Since
EPA cut the funding, the State of Missouri does not now have
anyone responsible for inspecting the sludge disposal sites
or enforcing the State rules concerning the sludge sites.
Why was EPA paying the State Sludge Coordinators' salary
and what was EPA paying them to do? In an inspection report
to Kansas City, dated June 23, 1994, Ellen J. Dettman, DNR
Water Pollution Unit Chief, stated, "These inspections did
not address compliance with EPA sludge regulations under 40
CFR 503. These regulations are self-implementing and
directly enforceable without being included in your state
operating permits." In a letter dated December 18, 1997,
Arnold said, "Issues regarding 503 rules are referred to John
Dunn at the EPA Region VII office. When state issues overlap
with 503 rules, EPA normally takes the lead."
The fact is the federal government has never enforced
any State rules. The States are actually responsible for the
safe disposal of solid waste. Where sludge is concerned EPA
doesn't have the people or the desire to enforce any rules
that would limit sludge use.
John Dunn, EPA's Region VII sludge coordinator, is
responsible for monitoring and enforcement in four states.
An impossible job for one person, since Missouri alone has
3,000-4,000 sites and 1,000 facilities which are not
permitted, as well as the 1,000 which are permitted.
According to 1995 notes from a National Sludge Coordinators'
meeting, Dunn, stated, "I am part time on sludge for 1/3 of
my time for the States; Nebraska won't come in for delegation
so I have to cover all of those state facilities; I only have
one AARP to help me for the next two years." Now he has
Missouri too who has refused to accept delegation.
At the same sludge coordinators' meeting, Washington
State revealed that it also like Missouri had cut back on its
solid waste and biosolids (sludge) monitoring and enforcement
program. It started with 117 full time employees in the
solid waste program and 6 in biosolids. By 1995, it had
downsized to 50 full time employees for solid waste and 2.4
employees for the biosolids program.
On July 4, 1995, SLUDGE reported the concern of J.
Patrick Nicholson, chief executive officer of N-Viro
International Corp [a stakeholder] about the lack of
enforcement of the sludge rule by the states. In a letter to
EPA Administrator Carol Browner, he wrote "Inadequate state
enforcement [of Part 503] exists in almost every state in the
union." He continued, "Yet, EPA is hanging its reputation on
a regulation that totally relies on state enforcement, and
EPA is planning a reduction in its federal program."
The Truth Emerges
On August 14, 1996, SLUDGE reported that EPA's proposed
amendments to Part 503 included reduced responsibilities and
monitoring at the sites. According to the article, monitoring
would be left up to the permitting authority.
Since Part 503 is self-permitting, the permitting
authority for sludge disposal is the treatment plant. Sludge
disposal is not a part of the current NPDES (National
Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit program. For
the most part, the state issued NPDES permits concern the
operation of the treatment plant and the amount of pollutants
in effluent which are permitted to be discharged into surface
water. The effluent is the treated water generated by the
treatment process. There are isolated instances where ground
water monitoring may still be included in NPDES permits, even
though the state has no control over the sludge site.
Because there has been minimal to almost no enforcement
of the Part 503 sludge rules in EPA's 10 Regions, many
treatment plants have ignored the state NPDES permit
requirements and there have been numerous violations which
have the potential to cause serious adverse health effects
and environmental damage.
SLUDGE has reported several instances of "non-
compliance" and other questionable practices. The extent of
the treatment plant violations that are occurring all over
the United States was revealed in an April 24, 1996 issue of
SLUDGE. According to SLUDGE, the GAO (General Accounting
Office) accused EPA of failing to appropriately classify
NPDES violations. The GAO said that one out of six of the
7,053 major regulated facilities had significant violations
in 1994.
The October 6, 1997 issue of SLUDGE reported, Warner
Lambert, in Puerto Rico, was fined $3 million for violating
its waste water discharge permit 347 times between 1992 and
1995 by releasing excessive amounts of pollutants. The
Plant's supervisor had falsified reports on the 34 different
pollutants that were required to be analyzed. He could be
sentenced to 27 months in prison.
The February 27, 1997 issue of SLUDGE reported pathogen
violations in Washington DC. According to the article, A
National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) witness, Senior
Attorney Erik Olson, testified before a House Panel February
23, about "acute" bacteria violations and other recent
incidents" he claims resulted from improperly treated sewage
contaminating the water supply. The pathogens,
Cryptosporidium and Giardia have been found in untreated
water. "You can ask the district if they test their sludge
for Crypto, but I can tell you what their answer's going to
be," he said.
The January 26, 1998 issue of SLUDGE reported that
Kansas City, Missouri violated NPDES permit requirements at
its 1,200 acre sludge application site. There was a 100,000
gallon sludge spill at the site as well as ground water
contamination from high levels of nitrogen, aluminum,
arsenic, and fecal coliform. The Birmingham Treatment Plant
in Kansas City has repeatedly violated its state issued NPDES
permit. According to Missouri records, Kansas City had
reported 5 recent NPDES violations, some of them more than
once, and no one in the state DNR even acknowledged it.
The ground water monitoring system was installed when
the sludge site was created under the solid waste rules in
Part 257. The State has retained the monitoring wells under
the NPDES program for the plant because, according to the
Environmental Assessment Reports, the soil was never suitable
for the construction of sludge lagoons or landfills.
As a Trustee for the Alice Minter Trust, I discovered
that no inspections had been done for the Kansas City sludge
application site. I also discovered the NPDES threshold
concentrations have been exceeded at the Kansas City sludge
disposal site a number of times. In December of 1997, it was
revealed by state records, there was ground water
contamination both on and off Kansas City's sludge
application site.
An examination of the state records revealed that by the
second quarter of 1997, Kansas City was requesting a permit
modification because it could not meet the permit limits for
nitrogen and aluminum in the ground water monitoring test
wells. All fourteen test wells were above the limits for
nitrogen and many of the test wells were above the permit
limits for aluminum. One well was above the NPDES limit for
arsenic.
One of the reasons for the permit modification,
according to Kansas City, was that the soil was naturally
high in aluminum. Actually the reason for the high aluminum
content in the soil, according to a 1987 EPA sludge analysis,
was that the Kansas City sludge was being disposed of with
7,100 mg/kg (ppm) of aluminum in it. Aluminum is not
regulated under Part 503.
In the past aluminum has been thought to be relatively
safe in the environment even though aluminum dust is known to
produce a lung disease in workers. Aluminum is now known to
cause a type of dementia in people undergoing kidney dialysis
when regular tap water is used in the dialysis machine.
According to authors of Toxics A to Z, in recent years,
two major discoveries have caused a reevaluation of
aluminum's safety. High concentrations of aluminum have been
found in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease and
other brain disorders. It was also found that, "...acid rain
washes aluminum out of the soil and into freshwater, killing
fish and perhaps raising the concentration in drinking water
to levels that in combination with aluminum from other
sources, could become a health hazard." The author noted
that, "aluminum does not dissolve readily in water that is
neutral in acidity, but as the water gets either increasingly
acidic or alkaline, it dissolves more readily and therefore
becomes more mobile in the environment." (p. 210)
EPA's 1987 sludge analysis also revealed another major
concern. Kansas City has been disposing of the chemical
Thallium at up to 170.0 mg/kg. In the Cornell report, The
Case for Caution, it was reported that some European
countries, restrict Thallium to 1.0 mg/kg in the soil.
According to Webster's New World Dictionary, Thallium is a
"rare, poisonous, bluish-grey, soft, metallic chemical
element, used in making photoelectric cells, rat poison,
etc." It is classified under the Clean Water Act as a
hazardous substance. Yet, we can find no EPA funded studies
which mention Thallium in sludge. In fact, according to John
Dunn, there is no reliable method to test for Thallium in
sewage sludge.
According to the 1995 annual report for the site, some
permit violations were to be expected. Some sludge was
disposed of with arsenic levels of 105.263 mg/kg which is
considerable higher than the 75 mg/kg ceiling levels allowed
in the beneficial use section of Part 503. The same was true
for selenium which was disposed of at 157.895 mg/kg and
105.263 mg/kg versus a ceiling level of 100 mg/kg.
Furthermore, the records show some acreage received 20.056
pounds of arsenic and 34.711 pounds of selenium per acre.
The disposal level of 105.263 mg/kg for arsenic was
extremely high when compared to the 30 mg/kg allowed within
30 meters (approximately 75 feet) of a sludge only surface
disposal site boundary under Part 503 or even the 62 mg/kg
allowed within 150 meters (approximately 375-450 feet) of the
disposal site boundary. Yet, after 10 years of beneficial
sludge disposal at this site, Kansas City writes, "This limit
for arsenic [in ground water] appears to be very low and
would be difficult or impossible to meet."
Under the Part 503 monitoring requirements, Kansas City
is supposed to track all of the nine metals disposed of at
the sludge disposal site. Yet, according to the Missouri DNR
Form SD, for Cumulative Metals Loadings For Land Application
of Biosolids, sludges that do not exceed the low metals
concentration limits for EQ or PC aren't recorded. In
effect, the EPA's crap game is getting more serious for the
consumer and general public.
One example of this discrepancy is the land loading
records for Site No. LFF1P1, which indicated that no arsenic,
selenium, mercury or molybdenum had been applied to the site
prior to 1995---in spite of the 177 pounds of lead which had
been applied to the site. The fact is the sludge was just
too contaminated to keep records on. In 1995, disposal rates
were, Arsenic--20.056 lbs. per acre, selenium--34.711 lbs.
per acre, and lead was 51 lbs. per acre. By 1996, the
record for this site showed that all but a few pounds of the
three toxic metals had disappeared. The record indicated the
toxic heavy metals had never been applied to that site.
Kansas City claimed it could not be responsible for the
arsenic ground water contamination. However, the records show
that Kansas City's Blue River wastewater treatment plant
sludge was piped to the Birmingham site for disposal in 1994,
with arsenic levels as high as 589 mg/kg vs the 75 mg/kg
allowed for beneficial use. Where did this sludge go?
Arsenic is of particular concern, Part 117.3 and other
federal regulations show a reportable quantity of one (1)
pound of arsenic, (Part 117.1) that may be harmful to public
health and the environment, and the discharge of which is a
violation of section 311(b)(3) and requires notice as set
forth in Part 117.21 and other federal regulations. Yet, it
was being dumped at 20 pounds per acre on food crop
production land.
Two years later, in December 1997, there were no records
in the State files to indicate Kansas City had even been
questioned about the Part 503 violations by either the State
or EPA. In September 1997, it was reported that the
monitoring well, which exceeded NPDES limits for arsenic, had
done so a number of times in the past. In spite of the high
levels of arsenic disposed of on the site, Kansas City wrote,
"It is our feeling that the Birmingham land application
program did not cause this violation."
The most interesting part of the Kansas City's 1995
sludge report was a comment by Kansas City explaining, "We
will be working with our laboratory in the future to obtain
lower detection limits for arsenic and selenium." Apparently
Kansas City's laboratory did comply with the wastewater
divisions request and it obtained much lower detection limits
in 1996. For the 12 months of 1996, there was a dramatic
drop from the 105.263 mg/kg arsenic levels in 1995.
According to the reports, during 1996, the arsenic levels
only ranged from 1.23 mg/kg to a maximum of 5.261 mg/kg with
an average of 3.02 mg/kg. However, molybdenum levels in the
sludge ranged from a low of 51.02 mg/kg to a high of 263.16
mg/kg with an average of 185.64 mg/kg. It would appear that
someone forgot to tell Kansas City's laboratory that the
regulated ceiling level of molybdenum for disposal was only
75 mg/kg.
One of EPA's many claims for the safety of sludge used
as a fertilizer is that the regulated metals do not move
through the soil. The Kansas City test well reports for 1996
and 1997 appear to bear this theory out, until we look at
other metals which EPA does not regulate. As noted, arsenic
and aluminum were above the permitted level in a number of
the test wells. But other chemicals of concern, iron,
magnesium, Manganese, silver and sodium appear to move
through the soil very quickly. The levels varied from very
low to very high levels in the 14 wells. Total nitrogen
(TKN) was above the permit limits in all 14 monitoring wells.
In the June 1997 report one well had a nitrogen level of
63.76 mg/l vs the regulated level of 10 mg/l.
In 1997, when the farm manager of the Alice Minter Trust
sent four soil samples (from the four quarters of the 80
acres adjacent to the sludge site) to the University of
Missouri's Extension Service Soil Testing Laboratory in
Portageville, for a test report on the nutrients and metals
which effect crop growth, he asked for, and expected to
receive, a full report on all the nutrients, especially
nitrogen. Without the full test, he would have no idea of the
required fertilizer composition needed. However, he did not
receive a report on nitrogen, which was contaminating the
ground water monitoring wells on the property, or sulfur,
zinc, manganese, iron, or copper. He only received a partial
report on phosphorus, potassium, calcium and manganese.
According to the University's soil test reports on
calcium, the calcium varied by 3000 lb per acre between the
four samples. The lowest exposure to runoff from the sludge
site was recorded as 3,428 lbs. per acre, while the section
with highest exposure to run-off from the sludge site was
recorded at 6,703 lbs. per acre. The high levels of calcium
in surface water run-off could be expected since, according
to EPA documents, Kansas City has been disposing of sludge
with calcium levels at 28,000 mg/kg since 1988. When I
talked to the University's laboratory manager several days
later, he tried to convince me the additional tests were not
needed. However, he assured me that if we wanted the
additional testing, the soil samples were still available and
the tests would be done that day. When I requested the
additional tests, the samples could not be found. It would
appear that the University of Missouri's Laboratory
recognized a potential sludge problem with some of the
nutrients and heavy metals and did not want to get involved.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Kansas City 1997
second quarter report was that permit numbers for fecal
coliform were exceeded in 4 of the 14 test wells. According
to a conversation with John Bozarth, Kansas City's sludge
coordinator, one of the test wells, which exceeded the fecal
coliform numbers was only a few feet away from the Alice
Minter Trust property line. Kansas City claimed the
violations were caused by improper sampling, which may have
contaminated the original samples.
By the third quarter of 1997, there was no question
about the ground water contamination; the groundwater
contamination had spread and permit limits for fecal coliform
were exceeded in six of the fourteen test wells. Kansas City
did not even bother to re-sample the test wells for this
report.
As adjoining landowners, we first became concerned with
possible ground water contamination as well as storm water
runoff, when we saw runoff from the sludge site ponding in
our field in 1989. According to a letter dated January 22,
1996, from Daniel R. Schuette, Chief of Permits Section for
the DNR, to Terry McQuerry, Manager of Kansas City,
Missouri's Wastewater Treatment, our concern was justified.
In the letter, which was in answer to McQuerry's request that
storm water sampling requirements in the NPDES permit for
its sludge application site be eliminated, Schuette wrote "We
believe that there will still be discharge of storm water
from the land application site." Missouri's Water Quality
brochure (WQ 427) explains the need for a storm water
management plan, "Intense storm water runoff occurs several
times each year at random intervals in Missouri."
Although Mcquerry answered Schuette by stating that,
"The stormwater from the treatment plant site does not flow
to any water courses, but discharges onto the land
application site, owned and operated by the City," he was
very much aware of the storm water runoff onto the adjacent
Minter property. The Alice Minter Trust has been complaining
about the run-off since 1989.
In reality, part of the storm water discharges onto the
adjacent Alice Minter Trust property, and part of the storm
water is discharged into the Missouri River. However, when
McQuerry sent in the storm water management plan, it only
covered the treatment plant itself, not the sludge
application site as required. Apparently Schuette's
requirements that Kansas City follow the 1989 state rules
were too stringent, as he is no longer Chief of Permits
Section.
While there are existing laws against the sewer
overflows (stormwater) through the treatment plants, they are
still permitted by Missouri. According to an article in the
SLUDGE Newsletter, Missouri acknowledges, "They're illegal,
but we turn our heads unless there's a problem," said Ed
Knight, Director of the Missouri Department of Natural
Resources' Clean Water Commission. Politically, our hands
are tied unless there's a national policy." [3]
It would appear that if the storm water overflows are
illegal, there is a national policy covering them. However,
it is difficult to tell exactly who is responsible for
enforcing the rules. According to Ken Arnold of the DNR,
stormwater runoff from the Kansas City sludge site is a
federal, not a state problem. In a letter dated December 18,
1997, he states:
The Kansas City Birmingham permit does not require
monitoring or limitations of the storm water runoff from
the agricultural crop land fields where biosolids
(sludge) are being spread at beneficial use rates. Storm
water runoff from these agricultural crop fields is
considered a non-point source under State rules as is
the storm water runoff from agricultural fields where
commercial fertilizers and pesticides are applied. The
storm water runoff onto the Alice Minter Trust property
is from an agricultural crop land field where biosolids
are subsurface injected into the soil at beneficial use
rates. The potential impact of this storm water runoff
onto the adjacent farm land would need to be addressed
under the federal rules at 40 CFR 503.
The problem is that 40 CFR 503 does not address storm
water run-off from a sludge site even though storm water
runoff from agricultural land has long been recognized as a
major source of water pollution by the EPA. While Part 503
does include a 20 foot buffer zone requirement, both EPA and
the State claim this is not to prevent pollutants from
leaving the site. What is the buffer zone for then?
The EPA Journal of April, 1984 reported that "National
studies suggest that agricultural nonpoint source pollution
adversely affects portions of over two-thirds of the nation's
river basins." According to the article:
About 63 percent of non-federal land in the United
States is used for agricultural purposes, including crop
and livestock production. It is not surprising,
therefore, that agricultural activities constitute the
most pervasive cause of water quality problems from
nonpoint sources. Indeed, it is considered the most
serious cause in most EPA regions." (p. 28)
When we complained to the state DNR about our most
recent concern of possible ground and surface water
contamination of our land, James Macy, the new Regional
Director of the DNR, convened a meeting of the City, State
and EPA officials involved. The meeting was held with us on
May 6, 1998. While Macy has no control over sludge disposal,
it was Macy's stated intent that he wanted the contamination
issue resolved.
During the meeting, Kansas City's Sludge Manager, John
Bozarth and EPAïs sludge coordinator, John Dunn, agreed to
conduct tests to determine if the toxic heavy metals
regulated under Part 503 were contaminating the 80 acres.
Both also agreed to test for possible pathogen contamination.
It was agreed that our 50 acre site could be used as a
control site, since neither sludge or manure had ever been
applied to it, nor was it near any site where sludge had been
applied. A comparison of test results of the 80 acres
adjacent to the sludge site with the 50 acres should show
whether there was surface stormwater contamination from the
sludge site.
In addition, because of high fecal coliform levels in
ground water only a few feet from the property line, a ground
water monitoring test well was to be drilled on the 80 acres.
Apparently, it was Macy's intent to include the monitoring
well in the NPDES permit. All testing was to be completed by
September 15, 1998.
However, when Macy followed up with the City and the EPA
on the date and time for obtaining the samples for testing,
some two months after the agreement, neither the City nor the
EPA replied to his letter. It appears that they already knew
there was contamination on the 80 acres. Why else would the
City have fired its Sludge Manager, John Bozarth, who agreed
to the test? Why else would the EPA have refused to conduct
the tests that it had so readily agreed to do at the May 6th
meeting?
Due to the strange turn of events, the Alice Minter
Trust trustees decided it might be worthwhile to do some
pathogen testing on the Trust property. Four different soil
test samples were taken on Trust property that had been
subject to surface water run-off. All four samples were
tested for fecal coliform bacteria. The test results
revealed coliform bacteria levels of 3000, 9000 and one with
650,000 per 100ML. The samples with the lowest fecal
coliform bacteria levels had also been tested for Salmonella
and E. coli. To our astonishment, the results of those two
tests revealed levels of both Salmonella and E. coli at
800,000 units per 100ML.
Those numbers along with the ground water violation
reports were enough to get Investigative Reporter Denny Brand
of KSHB 41 TV station, an NBC Affiliate, interested in the
story of ground water and food contamination. When Brand
tried to talk to Kansas City's Water Services Department, all
officials refused to talk to him. However, the State DNR
Regional Director, James Macy, assured Brand the State would
be testing the Trust property for surface run-off of
pollutant contamination from toxic heavy metals.
Our own personal experience with the various government
entities (City, State, and EPA), who are supposed to be
monitoring and overseeing the safe disposal of sludge,
confirmed what Persiacepe, Assistant Administrator for the
EPA's Office of Water, wrote in two confidential January 1998
draft statements (original & final) received from Washington
that there hasn't been any monitoring or compliance
enforcement. In these two drafts, Persiacepe revealed that
EPA has never adequately monitored or enforced the Part 503
regulation. Perciasepe admits in a statement to Steven
Harman, Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and
Compliance Assurance, that "Our limited biosolids staffing
has crippled our ability to oversee the quality of biosolids
being land applied and to assure that the regulations
governing land application are properly enforced."
In the draft statement, Perciasepe requested support
from Harman in "implementing a strategy for biosolids
compliance and enforcement; and providing training for
persons involved with biosolids inspections; enforcement;
compliance assistance; and technical assistance."
These statements acknowledged what many people in and
out of government already knew, the EPA has not overseen the
safety of sludge disposal. Since States with the exception of
Utah have not accepted delegation of Part 503, the oversight
and compliance for land application of sewage sludge is an
EPA problem.
In Perciasepe's Statement to Harman, he requested
financial assistance in excess of $3,780,000 above his budget
for two years. The two year request for funding included:
1) Research and Technical Support ($1.6 Million),
2) Stakeholders Partnership with AMSA and WEF ($500
thousand), 3) Biosolids Quality Survey ($325 thousand),
4) Biosolids Data Management System ($350 thousand), 5) Code
of Good Practice and Third Party Verification ($200
thousand), 6) Booklet Explaining Quality Control ($80
thousand), 7) Expand Training ($130 thousand), 8) Enhance
Oversight and Compliance ($150 thousand) and 9) Technical
Support for Pathogens & Vector Attraction Equivalency
Committee ($50 thousand) and the Incidence Response Team
($120 thousand).
According to the budget outlay request there still would
not be adequate compliance and oversight. Compliance and
oversight was only going to cost $100 thousand the first year
and $50 thousand the second year. The Incidence and Response
Team was cheap at $60 thousand a year. This budget request
was just another way to fund the public relations program.
A closer examination of Perciasepe's draft statements
reveals the real reason for the additional outlay of money is
to counteract the growing opposition of the public to
biosolids use. Perciasepe wrote:
Because the public perceives that risks are high, we
need to reinvest in biosolids to address the public's
concerns. Specifically, the public believes that
biosolids qualities are poor, that the science behind
the rule is suspect, that emerging potential problems
with the use of biosolids are equivalent to a new "Love
canal," and finally that EPA does not know what is going
on.
He added further that, "the public's poor perception of
environmentally sound land use practices is severely
impacting EPA's ability to successfully implement the
beneficial use policy. The poor public perception may force
municipalities to spend unnecessary expenses to manage
biosolids."
Perciasepe uses the same tired old line used by most
regulatory agencies who fail to fulfill their assigned
functions-- we don't have enough money, or enough people, or
enough power to do the job. So, they receive more taxpayer
dollars to hire more people and get more power to cover up
their misdeeds. It is evident from Perciasepe's Statement,
the real purpose of the request for over 2 million dollars
annually was to cover up the brewing scandal CNN exposed. He
has a right to be concerned with public perception. As was
pointed out by Powell Tate, this is a major problem for the
EPA/WEF partnership.
However, the real problem is not public perception, it
is the damage done to the public's health and the
environment.
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