Prof. Caroline Snyder speaks at the House Democratic Policy Committee
Re: Public Hearing on sewage sludge
From: Caroline Snyder
Date: August 29, 2016
To: PA House Democratic Policy Committee
Re: Public Hearing on sewage sludge
From: Caroline Snyder
Date: August 29, 2016
My name is Caroline Snyder. I am emeritus professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology where I designed, administered, and taught interdisciplinary environmental science courses and chaired the Department of Science, Technology, and Society. In 2001 I founded the nonprofit group, Citizens for Sludge-Free Land.
I appreciate the opportunity to submit written testimony at this public hearing. A re-evaluation of the Commonwealth’s biosolids policies is long overdue. HR 60 is a good first step.
Land-applied municipal sewage sludge (biosolids) is a highly complex and unpredictable mixture of biological and chemical pollutants. Most of the 90,000 man-made chemical compounds in commerce today - with 1000 new ones added annually - end up in sewage, and many of those, concentrate in the resulting biosolids .107 They include carcinogens, mutagens, neurotoxins, endocrine disrupters, solvents, pharmaceuticals, radioactive waste, leachates from landfills and superfund sites, as well as disease causing and antibiotic resistant pathogens. 52,61,66,79,87, 97,104, Upgrading and building improved treatment plants that will remove more pollutants from sewage, will cause sludge to become even more contaminated. Biosolids generated in our large industrialized urban centers - and 84% of landapplied sludge originates in those centers - is very likely the most pollutant- rich waste mixture of the 21st century.
The US EPA Office of Water (OW) regulates biosolids. The regulations, 40 CFR Part 503, are usually referred to as the 503s. Despite the agency’s claim to the contrary, OW also promotes land application. This is a gross conflict of interest. Government agencies should not be in bed with the industries they are supposed to regulate 82 As a consequence of this industry-government alliance, the 503s are full of loopholes. The most damaging loop hole of all is the so-called "Domestic Sewage Exclusion" which permits every industry connected to a sewer to pipe its hazardous waste into POTWs. A partial list of those pollutants is posted on our webpage 106 When these hazardous chemicals are mixed with sewage, they become exempt from RCRA ‘s solid and hazardous waste laws. Industries and municipalities benefit from the Domestic Sewage Exclusion in several ways: they can avoid the expense of properly treating pollutants or refrain from piping hazardous waste into POTWs in the first place; and once these two waste streams mix, industries are no longer liable for any damages that might result from this toxic mixture., especially when it is processed and land applied. In an unpublished and un-dated document, titled Gatekeepers: Who are They? What They think about Us? And What can we do about it? Bill Toffey, a spokesperson for the biosolids industry and advocate of land application, tells his audience in no uncertain terms how important it is for industries to support the Domestic Sewage Exclusion:
You may have missed the proposed rulemaking to change the reporting requirements for lead as a "persistent and bioaccumulative toxic." The proposal would reduce from 10,000 to 10 the number of pounds annually that an entity can dispose without reporting, and the de minimis lead concentration for reporting would be eliminated. At first reading, it seemed to me that this reporting rule would capture most of Philadelphia’s recycling programs. But apparently all other POTWs and we are saved by the fact that the rule doesn’t apply to POTWs . This is one case where being a POTW making a fertilizer is preferred to being a manufacture [sic] making a fertilizer; we are in the right SIC code. But this is cold comfort. Some folks in Congress, in the environmental community and in EPA itself believe it is in the public’s and environment’s best interest to track the lead that is spread on land. Someday they will get us, and we need to be prepared. Fighting changes to the Domestic Sewage Exclusion may haunt us as an
example to the environmental community that our claim to being concerned for the environment is a sham.
After ocean dumping was banned, land application increased, as did the reports of serious health, livestock, and environmental damage. The first comprehensive scientific appraisal of the 503s was published in 1999 by internationally renowned soil scientists at the Cornell Waste Management Institute (CWMI) - whose teams have been researching biosolids since the 1970s. Aptly titled The Case For Caution the report warns that the 503s do not protect human health, agriculture, or the environment 23 Around the same time a team assembled by David Lewis - formerly a senior level EPA research microbiologist - documented human and animal sicknesses and deaths linked to land application under the 503 rule, the first scientist to do so. 35, 36, 37, 84 Because of increasing concerns about health impacts, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was asked to examine the scientific basis of the 503s. Its 2002 report, Biosolids Applied to Land, questioned the science and risk assessment models of the rule and urged EPA to implement health studies of neighbors who lived adjacent to sites that had been treated with sludge. NAS panel members had available not only the work of Lewis’ team and that of the CWMI, but also a 382 page document put together by sludge activist Helane Shields listing sludge "incidents" that had occurred in virtually every state of the union. 54 Particularly worrisome where the many reports of sicknesses and several deaths. 90 To include published papers that documented these incidents in the scientific literature would hurt the land application program. So industry-friendly NAS panel members deleted all references to David Lewis’ papers in the published report, which includes the statement that there is "no documented evidence" that anyone was ever harmed by sludge. In the absence of any credible science that supports land application, industry and government agencies continue to cite the "no documented evidence" claim, making sure the evidence is not documented, or, if it is, to ignore or discredit it. 92
Yet people are not easily fooled. Every week there are reports of sludge battles, especially in the heavily populated areas of the country where most sludge is produced and spread. Residents who believe they have been or will be harmed are pitted against government and industry officials who assure them that the practice is beneficial and safe. For example during a 2014 Town Meeting in Bell
County Township, Clearfield County PA angry residents demanded an end to sludge spreading in their community because it was making some of them sick. Despite the usual misleading assurances by state officials that biosolids will enrich the soil and improve the overall health of land and animals, residents wanted the practice stopped. One neighbor who lives close to the permitted site was hospitalized with bronchial spasms when the spreading began. Her doctor said that such spasms, which resemble a heart attack, can be caused by air borne irritants. Other people attending the meeting complained of headaches and nausea. 96
Government and industry representatives at these meetings usually assure affected residents that their health problems or their contaminated wells were caused by something else. For example, a few years ago, when an astute NH property owner learned that his neighbor uphill was about to use sludge, he decided to have his well water tested before and after the spreading. Not surprisingly, test results taken after the application showed high levels of pathogenic bacteria. After he complained a representative of the sludge company visited his home, looked around, and stated that the well must have become contaminated by his bird feeder!
However when deaths are linked to sludge-exposure, bird feeder explanations do no longer work. Two of those deaths occurred right here in the Commonwealth. The PA DEP and the company that spread the sludge went through extraordinary lengths to cover up the cause of these deaths. For a summary see Appendix A.
Evidence keeps piling up that there is something seriously wrong with the 503s. Why, many people ask, are EPA and USDA - agencies whose mission it is to protect human health, promote sustainable and productive agriculture, and protect the environment - why are these agencies not substantially tightening the current land application rules, or better yet, why are they continuing to spend our tax dollars on a million- dollar Public Acceptance Campaign, when, instead, they should be using those funds to invest in safer and more sustainable alternatives?
One part of the answer is simple. Top managers at EPA’s Office of Water and a highly influential agronomist at the USDA wrote the 503s. They decided that it would be acceptable for biosolids to contain hazardous waste, reasoning that small amounts do not matter, that the waste stream is getting cleaner, and that pretreatment of industrial waste is working. None of those assumptions proved to be true. Even very small amounts - parts per trillion - of some pollutants can harm developing organisms, and instead of getting cleaner, the waste stream is getting more complex and more polluted. Several recent EPA Inspector General Reports, indicate that hundreds of priority pollutants discharged by industry are showing up in effluent and sludge. But the individuals who wrote the rules are still in charge of the nation’s biosolids policy and have staked their reputation on the adequacy of the 503s. Apparently no amount of evidence will persuade them that they were wrong. 92
The other part of the answer is also simple. Not only the sludge brokers who are paid for every ton of sludge they remove from sewage treatment plants, but also - as we explained earlier - industrial users and municipalities save substantial sums by continuing this inexpensive method of sludge disposal. Communities are learning more about what biosolids are, and what they do when land applied. They are experiencing first- hand the resulting harm to their health, 51, 55, 68, 71, 108, 109 their drinking water, 12, 71, 77, 99, 101 and their animals. 74,79,83,94,105 To counter this new awareness, government agencies and the sludge industry are spending millions to rev up their PR campaign to convince farmers, the media, legislators, and the public that spreading this incredibly complex contaminated mixture on land is sustainable., beneficial and safe.
A key flaw of the 503s is that they depend on Quantitative Chemical-by-Chemical Risk Assessment (QRA) to assess health and environmental impacts. QRA works for calculating how strong a bridge must be to withstand the weight of daily traffic on a particular highway, but QRA cannot be used to assess the health and environmental impacts of such a complex and unpredictable mixture as land applied sewage sludge. See Appendix B
Instead of calculating health and environmental risks using QRA models, the NAS panel recommended a different approach:
"Even if a summary index of an adverse response to mixtures was available, it would not necessarily reflect the total hazards of exposure to biosolids because of the inability to identify all of its hazardous constituents and their potential for interaction in vivo . . . thus it is not possible to conduct a risk assessment for biosolids at this time (or perhaps ever) that will lead to risk-management strategies that will provide adequate health protection without some form of ongoing monitoring and surveillance . . . the degree of uncertainty requires some form of active health and environmental tracking."
A number of the biosolids incidents might have been prevented had there been exposure studies and health and environmental tracking.
Many serious health impacts have been linked to Class B sludge exposure, especially when this material is stockpiled and top dressed rather than incorporated into the soil. Sludge advocates are now promoting a material that is deceptively referred to as Exceptional Quality (EQ) Class A sludge. Many people do not realize that Class A EQ sludge contains just as many persistent toxic chemicals as Class B. When sludge is further processed to reduce indicator pathogens, it turns into Class A. However as the more
vulnerable indicators are deactivated, much more robust pathogens survive and evolve. In the absence of microbial competition, they multiply and thrive, especially in in cool and moist climates. Some of the treatment methods prescribed to reduce the level of indicators are not working, so Class A sludge is often Class B sludge or turns into Class B sludge after it is spread or stockpiled. Further processing also appears to encourage the growth of superbugs which explains why many neighbors exposed to sludge contract MRSA infections. The question arises, why, if all of this is true, are industry and government agencies encouraging the production and use of Class A materials?
Again, the answer is simple. Under the current rules, Class A is virtually unregulated. As long as it contains some nitrogen, it can be spread anywhere - including on home vegetable gardens - during any weather, at any time during the year, in any amounts, and does not require public notices, public hearings, or the expense of getting a permit. Also Class A products can be sold in garden centers, often misleadingly labeled. But are they really safe? Consider two incidents. One took place in the summer of 2007 in Milwaukee, where sludge is used to make the Class A product Milorganite. Sewer workers dislodged large amounts of PCBs during a routine sewer cleaning operation. This resulted in thousands of tons of contaminated sludge - some containing superfund high levels of PCBs - to be spread on dozens of school playgrounds and parks. When the problem finally was discovered, the contaminated material had to be removed and shipped to out-of-state hazardous waste landfills. The entire incident cost the city millions. 104
Consider another incident that happened in Shirley MA . In January of 2014 a farmer spread Earthlife on his frozen snow-covered field. Earthlife is a Class A product made by Casella Organics and fully approved and registered for use in MA, CT, and VT. Three weeks later, after a thaw, residents living next to the field on 15 and 20 Bumpus Road turned on their faucets and out came diluted sewage. Both families got their water from shallow wells. Earthlife apparently had leached into the water table and contaminated their wells. I was invited to attend a February 28 meeting of concerned neighbors and provided information and hand-outs. Appealing to the town for help was useless because what the farmer had done was legal under the 503s. Despite conclusive test results that the contamination was caused by Earthlife , the homeowners could not afford litigation. A month went by and I did not hear from the affected home owners. So I contacted them to see how they were doing. During that interval Casella had paid for drilling a bedrock well at one home and had paid for a filtration system for the other family. In return, the home owners were put on a gag order and told never to discuss the case or share test results. Settlements like these explain why many sludge incidents remain unknown or are underreported.
The practice cannot be banned overnight. Something needs to be done with the millions of tons of sludge produced every year. Until more sustainable waste-to-energy technologies are in place to handle this volume, states might want to encourage increasing disposal in well sited subtitle 2 landfills with methane capture for energy and heat. Reclamation of contaminated land may also be an option as long as the site is securely fenced and signed, to prevent another Tony Behun tragedy. It is absolutely crucial that we preserve our dwindling productive farm land for future generations. We must not apply sewage sludge and other industrial waste on the land where we grow our food and forage.
Meanwhile, states, counties, and towns can put in place more protective inexpensive management practices that will at least reduce some of the risks. These would include permanently prohibiting land
application on grazing fields to prevent contamination of meat and dairy products; immediate incorporation of sludge into the soil to prevent pollutants from moving off site; prohibiting stockpiling; permanent pH management to prevent metals and other contaminants from becoming bioavailable; much more protective horizontal and vertical buffers from occupied buildings; and limiting the acreage and frequency of application.
The number of individuals and organizations that oppose land application is growing. There isn’t a community in the country that welcomes the arrival of sludge trucks. Many farmers are no longer taken in by the brochures and videos that promise instant savings and high yields from this free mislabeled "natural organic" fertilizer. Over a hundred environmental organizations - many supporting sustainable farming practices - oppose growing food and forage on biosolids-treated land. Among them are the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rodale Institute, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Western Growers, the National Farmers Union, the Food Rights Network, and the Organic Consumers Association. All of these organizations depend on impartial scientific information to form their policy positions.
In conclusion PA legislators might be interested in the recommendations of Professor Jordan Peccia, Associate Professor of Engineering at Yale University and Professor Paul Westerhoff, Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University in their paper titled,
We Should Expect More out of Our Sewage Sludge: The culmination of previous incremental technologies and regulations aimed at solving a current treatment problem, rather than developing the practice for the higher goals of sustainability have resulted in sludge becoming an economic and social liability. Sludge management practice must shift from treatment of a liability toward recovery of the embedded energy and chemical assets, while continuing to protect the environment and human health. This shift will require new research, treatment technologies and infrastructure and must be guided by the application of green engineering principles to ensure economic, social and environmental sustainability. 103
We Should Expect More out of Our Sewage Sludge
Jordan Peccia*† and Paul Westerhoff‡
† Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale University, Mason Laboratory, 9 Hillhouse Avenue, P.O. Box 208286, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States
‡ School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment, Arizona State University, Box 3005, Tempe, Arizona 85287-3005, United States
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (14), pp 8271–8276
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01931
Publication Date (Web): June 24, 2015
Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society
*Phone: (203) 432-4385; fax: (203) 432-4387; e-mail: Jordan.Peccia@yale.edu.
Biography
Jordan Peccia is an associated professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University. His research interests lie at the intersection of engineering and microbiology and include human exposure to and risk of infective agents produced during the land application of biosolids.
Paul Westerhoff is a Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Build Environment and Vice Provost for Academic Research Programming at Arizona State University. He is interested in the physical and chemical characterization of water and wastewater treatment systems, including the fate of nanomaterials in biosolids.
Synopsis
Sewage sludge and biosolids production and management are a central component of water and sanitation engineering. The culmination of previous incremental technologies and regulations aimed at solving a current treatment problem, rather than developing the practice for the higher goals of sustainability have resulted in sludge becoming an economic and social liability. Sludge management practice must shift from treatment of a liability toward recovery of the embedded energy and chemical assets, while continuing to protect the environment and human health. This shift will require new research, treatment technologies and infrastructure and must be guided by the application of green engineering principles to ensure economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
Abstract
Sewage sludge and biosolids production and management are a central component of water and sanitation engineering. The culmination of previous incremental technologies and regulations aimed at solving a current treatment problem, rather than developing the practice for the higher goals of sustainability have resulted in sludge becoming an economic and social liability. Sludge management practice must shift from treatment of a liability toward recovery of the embedded energy and chemical assets, while continuing to protect the environment and human health. This shift will require new research, treatment technologies and infrastructure and must be guided by the application of green engineering principles to ensure economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
