Land Application of Sludge Raises Serious Concerns

Paul J. Solomon
Shrewsbury Township Supervisor
York County, Pa.
This letter is a response to the article on the front page of last Saturday’s Lancaster Farming, by Chris Torres, regarding the spreading of sewage sludge (biosolids) on farm land. My comments reflect my concerns as a supervisor in Shrewsbury Township, York County, Pa., where the application of sewage sludge (biosolids) on farmland has impacted the quality of life, health and property values of our residents. In addition to being a township supervisor, I am a semi-retired farmer and a graduate of the College of Agriculture at Penn State.
Seven million dry tons of sewage sludge are produced annually in the U.S. by sewage treatment plants, which operate around the clock. This sludge contains a substantial, yet not fully determined, array of biological and chemical substances, which are dumped down the drains of industrial, institutional, commercial facilities and residential units.
Sewage sludge is disposed of by incineration, land-filling or spreading on land, including farmland. The latter is the most prevalent means of disposal only because it is the least expensive or expedient mode of disposal. Of the three alternatives, it presents by far the greatest health risk and environmental risks. Sludge is an equal opportunity pollutant — it impacts or degrades the air, water and land, all of which we rely upon to sustain our very existence.
Both the USEPA and the Pennsylvania DEP claim that sewage sludge is a “fertilizer,” primarily because it contains levels of nitrogen and phosphorus as well as organic material. However, the Federal Clean Water Act defines sewage sludge as a pollutant. In fact, sewage sludge falls under Pennsylvania DEP’s own definition of a pollutant. The Harper-Collins Dictionary of Environmental Science describes sludge as “a viscous semisolid mixture of bacteria and virus-laden matter, toxic metals, synthetic organic chemicals and settled solids removed from domestic and industrial waste water at sewage treatment plants.”
If any lingering doubts exist — why do sewage treatment plants have to pay $40 a ton more or less to entice sludge disposal corporations to haul sludge away, and why do these corporations have to pay unsuspecting farmers to accept it? In order to make sludge more palatable to the public, sludge brokers and government officials have invented a new name for this material — biosolids.
The end result is that the sludge spread on farmland is assimilated by farm crops and ingested by livestock, and thereby presents a potential public health risk in spite of the governmental requirements regarding displays in harvesting. Sludge is so toxic that public access to sludge sites is required to be restricted up to one year following application.
A significant and growing number of respected scientists and agencies or organizations have raised serious concerns regarding the spreading of sludge on farmland. For example, the Cornell University Guide for Integrated Field Crop Management said that heavy metals, toxic organic chemicals (PCB’s for example) and the pathogens contained in sludge are “particularly toxic to both animals and humans.” The U.S. Geologic Survey Scientists found that “a variety of pharmaceuticals and household chemicals are contained in sewage sludge.”
The same agency recently found 25 chemicals in earthworms collected from sludge fields. Caroline Snyder, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has concluded as a result of her studies that “serious illness, including deaths and adverse environmental impacts have been linked to land application of sewage sludge.”
Pennsylvania DEP has assumed sole permitting and managing authority in regard to land application of sludge. Unfortunately, the State of Pennsylvania through the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection refuses to permit local governments any authority to enact local regulations to govern sludge application. The more stringent standards Shrewsbury Township had enacted had to be expunged for this very reason.
The Pennsylvania DEP’s regulation and overall management of sludge on land is woefully inadequate to protect the citizens of Pennsylvania. For example, of the many thousands of pollutants contained in sludge, only 11 are required to be tested for by the sewage treatment plants.
And then, to make matters worse, the testing schedule at the sewage treatment facilities, which in some cases is only once a year, is flawed since each load delivered to the spreading site needs to be tested since the constituents or components of raw sewage flowing to the sewage treatment plants varies appreciably from hour to hour and day to day.
Local governments should request that the state of Pennsylvania, through action by our legislators, grant local communities the full authority to control sludge in our community as we do for other land uses. We are willing and quite able to assume this responsibility. It is recognized that the sludge industry is a formidable opponent, but we are hopeful that our legislators will grant us to do what is in the best interest of the health, safety and general welfare of local residents.