Hephzibah Sludge

Been following the sludge story from Hephzibah, Ga.? If you work in support of biosolids, like I do, you should be.

Andy McElmurray, a farmer in Hephzibah, Ga., fed his dairy cows silage that had been fertilized with sewage sludge laced with heavy metals. More than 300 of them died.

In February, a federal judge ordered the Department of Agriculture to compensate McElmurray for losses incurred when his land was poisoned between 1979 and 1990 by applications of Augusta, Ga., sewage sludge. That sludge contained levels of arsenic that were two times higher than EPA standards allow; of thallium (a heavy metal used as rat poison) that were 25 times higher; and of PCBs that were 2,500 times higher.

What's more, milk from his neighbor's dairy farm was sent to market with thallium levels 120 times higher than those allowed by the EPA in public drinking water.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo was particularly critical of the EPA and the University of Georgia for having endorsed "unreliable, incomplete and, in some cases, fudged" data about the Augusta sludge. That corrupt data was presented to the National Academy of Sciences, which then cited it in their July 2002 assertion that sewage sludge does not pose a risk to public health.

Alaimo wrote, "Senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of EPA's biosolids program."

Our biosolids have incredible fertilizer value in terms of phosphorus and nitrogen, which is what pulls me into the mix. But it is valuable only to the degree that it can be trusted. Some biosolids can be trusted, some cannot. Let's do this thing, people.

Stop Polluting My Biosolids

We would be well served if we stopped manufacturing unnecessary body soaps and scents. They end up in sludge, er biosolids and, as is necessary, on the land, where they can have unintended consequences. Let's just stop manufacturing the offending molecules.

La Paz Loses Yakima Case

Little La Paz County, AZ, has failed at great cost in putting biosolids drier Yakima Company out of business. Jim Willett, owner, told me years ago about the bizarre goings on that precipitated his 2004 claim for damages of $20M, the amount he would lose over a 25 year period as a result of the County terminating its contract. The contract was for providing space for the drying operation, and to secure additional space for future expansion in exchange for a $/ton fee. The contract encouraged volume and, in hopes of generating County revenues as quickly as possible, the County allowed Jim to start operations on condition of working up a closure plan and bonding for the closure costs. Then something went sour, and the county stalled beyond reason their acceptance of first the plan and then the bonding. When they did accept, they didn't inform Jim.

It was a pretty simple business model: truck the solids in from LA, lay it out thin and dry it in the wind and sun, windrow it to finesse stabilization, pick it up and truck the now Class A fertilizer-esque material a few miles back to California to needy farmers. With the right combo of clients, farmers, and truckers, it was clean, simple, satisfying, and profitable in what can be a complex, and low margin business.

Last week a La Paz County jury awarded Jim $9.2M plus legal expenses. Jim regrets the process and takes no joy in the results. It is not the life, and not the legacy, that he wanted.

The local rag has posted several articles on the trial (1, 2, 3). The newspaper, which gamely supports comments on articles, was unprepared for the outpouring of vigorous support for the jurors courageous decision, and the level of outrage directed towards the County Board of Supervisors for their mismanagement of political power. The paper clearly slants its writing in support of the BoS, adding to the intensity of the backlash. The editor, John Gutekunst, selectively deletes comments but even at that the longest set of comments now prints out to 33 pages even when ported to Word in 10font.

According to comments, the County's $1.5 million in legal fees are not covered by insurance, and the County determined this early on in the process. Comments characterize the legal effort as a personal vendetta against Jim by Supervisor Gene Fisher. This vendetta included asking the sheriff to arrest Jim's clients at the drier site for trespassing on County property, and coaching employees against their better judgment to the point that one County employee quit their job. Word gets out fast on that type of work place abuse. Tossing aside the potential of $1-200K/yr in much needed tax free revenue for personal reasons has added to local dissatisfaction.

Despite a lack of public support, or financial capacity, it is clear that the County will appeal. A reinvigorated recall effort is mounting to pull the plug on this monster.

Triclosan Update

I've posted on my concern for triclosan-containing products before. I think far too much of it is being land applied in our biosolids:

It makes little sense to land apply recalcitrant compounds that needlessly get rid of soil microbes. Fomenting the growth of resistant strains of disease organisms is only one concern. Soil functional capacity is largely mediated by living processes. It is the height of folly to jeopardize those functions for a useless consumer item.

How much effect does it have on biosolids-applied soil? Probably it is only slight at any given site. It is the total mass involved and the extent of the impact that has me uncomfortable.

Being soil-aware, I have also come to appreciate that our skin, like soil, hosts a diverse population of bacteria that when in balance, works in our favor. Part of our disease protection comes from that community. If we kill off the easy ones, we are left with the toughs who can now move into the colonization sites left vacant. That's how it works on the skin of the earth, anyway. I'm not saying that we should avoid washing our hands, just that acting on simplistic thinking can expose us to risks greater than the ones we act to avoid.

For example, the latest concern with triclosan use is that when exposed to warm (100 deg F) tap water containing chlorine, a common scenario for use, it breaks down after less than a minute of exposure. The breakdown products include chemicals of concern to skin care including chloroform. This may better explain reports that triclosan-containing products induce dry skin, eczema, and, under conditions of high use (20-25 times per day), open sores. Open sores and a tough crowd of bacteria is not a good combination.

This observed rapid breakdown of triclosan does not negate previous observations of recalcitrance in the treatment process, in the soil, and in our waterways. The wastewater treatment processes that produce biosolids do not employ chlorine, or any equivalent chemical oxidizing agent. To shock the process with chlorine would kill the bugs doing the work.

I am sure there are some good uses for triclosan. Maybe a place in the acne control tool box is one. The majority of this product is sold for normal household use. The casual use of triclosan needs to end.

Image Source: Neil Duazo

My Interesting Experience With Biosolids

It's May 5, 2005 on a biosolids research plot somewhere between Kennewick WA and Umatilla OR . If you can use either a link to Google Maps or a Google Earth kmz file, the plots start 250' S, 150' E of the fence line and extend to 650' S, 425' E. The aerial photos Google has up as I post this were evidently taken before our field visit, probably in late winter (January?) 2005. The dark E/W swaths Google shows would be annual ryegrass (Lolium multifloruminvasive winter rye (Secale cereale) growing better than normal in areas which received aggressive application of municipal biosolids. Application was in April, 20042003.

The fellow in the distance is Tom Duebendorfer (Elmira, ID), botanist extraordinaire. Tom is carrying the quadrat to the west end of the application swath south of the one I am in. I am following about 20 minutes behind him. The wire flags (pink) are randomized sample points down the middle of the application swath. That's my soil sampler in the foreground, a Viehmeyer probe. It's a lot easier to get in than it is to get back out. The astute observers among you will have already noticed that the grass in the plot isn't looking so good: it is thick, brown and stubby whereas Tom is walking in a taller but thinner stand of green grass.

The biosolids killed the grass, but how? My thinking is that it is not a simple toxic effect. Impaired growth or necrosis would have expressed itself soon after the April 20042003 application, or prevented stand establishment at the beginning of the 2004 and 2005 season. Instead we had brief lush growth, almost like a growth hormone effect. 2,4-D works that way, but not on grasses.

My conclusion is that the effect is due to abundant nutrient availability and complex weather patterns unique to 2005. The application rate was designed to promote biomass gains. It worked, and as a result, the grass grew lush and depleted the soil moisture. With abnormally low rainfall in March, by April it had run out of moisture and had to close up shop for the year. April rains came too late for this brown grass, but helped relieve drought stress in the normal areas.

Soil nitrate levels were elevated in the brown areas but not to an alarming degree. Tom didn't see any application affect on the plant species composition, but then we have not formally analyzed the data. Composition effects are probably going to occur after 2005, beyond the scope of the study. I expect we would see an increase in annual ryegrassinvasive winter rye at the expense of other species.

Look close and you will see the ryegrass was still able to produce a fair amount of seed. L. multiflorumS. cereale is an invasive species, and was the only component in the system that really seemed to benefit from the aggressive biosolids rates to a degree that increased it's longterm competitive potential. I can think of any number of invasive species that would respond similarly.

As an aside, it is unlikely that Tom and I will be preparing a formal report based on the data. The sludge hauling client went bankrupt shortly after that May 2005 sampling. The study was a condition of satisfying a permit violation. Outside of that original context, it falls off both our urgency/importance project matrices.

Corrections: Application was in 2003, not 2004. Ryegrasss is winter rye, secale cereale, not annual ryegrass lolium multiflorum.

Technorati Tags: biosolids fertility research sample soil

Triclosan, Triclocarban Concern

Triclosan and triclocarban are small organic molecules that give antimicrobial properties to personal-care products such as soap, deodorant and toothpaste as well as durable goods such as cutting boards, baby carriers and socks. The environmental persistence of these compounds is remarkable. More than a million pounds of these chemicals flow into the nation's sewers every year. Recently improved laboratory analysis demonstrates that 50 percent of triclosan and 76 percent of triclocarban remain unchanged by aerobic and anaerobic digestion in a typical wastewater facility, where most of it is retained in the solids fraction. We can assume that the same can be said of breakdown in the septic systems that 25% of us use in the USA. Most of these solids get spread on land to fertilize pasture, forest, biomass, fiber, feed and food crops.

Triclocarban has been determined by the FDA as having no verifiable benefit. Despite a lack of evidence that these compounds accomplish anything beneficial, usage rate is very high among consumers. Among the households I have surveyed, it approaches saturation.

It makes little sense to land apply recalcitrant compounds that needlessly get rid of soil microbes. Fomenting the growth of resistant strains of disease organisms is only one concern. Soil functional capacity is largely mediated by living processes. It is the height of folly to jeopardize those functions for a useless consumer item.

US-EPA, which has oversight on land application of biosolids, is studying the situation. More work is needed, but everyone writing on this issue seems to get it: this is not an arrangement that we want to sustain.

Sources: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)

Update: The American Medical Association took an official stance against adding antimicrobials to consumer products in 2000 and has repeatedly urged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to better regulate these chemicals. (Source)


Photo: hand sanitizer
Originally uploaded by chewywong.

Technorati Tags: soil science biosolids microbiology health

Biosolids, Politics and Character

Biosolids, aka domestic wastewater (sewage) treatment solids, is pretty interesting stuff, to me anyway. From a soil scientist's perspective it is chock full of good stuff: Essential plant nutrients and humic substances (humic acid, fulvic acid) beneficial to soil quality. Biosolids is superior to chemical fertilizers from both a crop production perspective and an environmental protection perspective.

This is not raw sewage solids or raw septic tank solids. This is the microbial biomass solids produced during the time the sewage is being treated, usually a 20-30 day process, prior to the treated liquid being discharged to a surface water body. These solids have about the same ratio of N:P:K:S present in soil microbial biomass.

Since the 1972 Clean Water Act, USEPA has been encouraging treatment facilities to give preferential consideration to recycling the soil property enhancing constituents in biosolids. These constituents were originally derived from crops grown on agricultural land and federal legislative intent is to see these materials recycled and put to beneficial use at their source. At the basis of this intent is a conviction that the overall benefits of beneficial use exceeds the added economic and regulatory burden placed upon the local and regional taxpayer and the wastewater treatment ratepayer.

Because of costs to transport material beyond the reach of urban sprawl, it would be cheaper to dispose of it in the ocean, or, for interior cities, in a landfill.

The constituents within biosolids are derived from nonrenewable resources and energy intensive processes and, being a regulated material under the authority of the federal government, cannot responsibly be allowed to be simply discarded when the opportunity for beneficial use is available. This policy makes more sense with each passing year.

Critics and skeptics of beneficial reuse on farm land abound, but fears of environmental degradation have yet to be borne out by events.

Once I had the opportunity in the 1980's to ask the then-President of the Washington State Farm Bureau why the American Farm Bureau Federation had a policy in opposition to land application of biosolids on farmland. He was a respected, retired soil scientist, and I asked for a science-based explanation. Instead, he explained that the national Farm Bureau was using their opposition to biosolids to persuade legislators to address burdensome regulation of farmers related to wetlands and surface water quality. They correctly recognized that Farm Bureau support was valuable and wanted a quid-pro-quo accommodation or to at least be able to make a statement.

You have to respect this point of view. It may not be science-based but its not off base either. That Farm Bureau fellow was just staying in character.

Technorati tags: Soil science Biosolids