Activists are crying foul over plans to ship Vermont sewage sludge to a rural town in New York.
The Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) currently dumps its sludge in the Coventry Landfill, but it’s been making plans to start exporting it to a Casella-owned facility in Chateaugay, N.Y., that will market the treated product as fertilizer to the town of about 2,500 people.
Citizen activist Kai Mikkel Forlie has denounced the plan as “unethical, immoral and unjust.” The battle that’s brewing is, in a sense, an upturned NIMBY debate. Forlie says CSWD is shirking its responsibility by sending potentially toxic sludge to an “unsuspecting” community.
CSWD contends that using sludge as fertilizer is a common practice, authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and it makes more sense than disposing of a nutrient-rich material.
The substance at stake is human sewage. Once it undergoes a pasteurization process to remove pathogens, it’s no longer considered sewage and is instead referred to as “biosolids.” Biosolids can be marketed to the general public as fertilizer for use on anything from gardens to golf courses. On the EPA website, it states, “the use of these materials in the production of crops for human consumption when practiced in accordance with existing federal guidelines and regulations, presents negligible risk to the consumer, to crop production and to the environment.”
Tom Moreau, CSWD general manager, and Ernie Kelley, manager of the wastewater program in Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, say they don’t see a need to stop the practice unless they see evidence showing that its detrimental.
“Certainly if the science were overwhelming that it shouldn’t be done, we would stop doing it, no question, but the science out there doesn’t support that action,” Kelley said.
But both Kelley and Moreau concede that the EPA hasn’t been able to keep pace with the proliferation of chemicals, and its regulatory standards leave something to be desired. It currently regulates only a handful of metals and pathogens.
Right now, about 60 percent of the state’s sewage gets sent to the Coventry Landfill. The remainder is sent to out-of-state incinerators or used as fertilizer on Vermont fields. There are 17 municipalities in Vermont that apply biosolids to land, but the state has shied away from the option in recent years, and the total surface area amounts to only several hundred acres, according to Kelley.
Critics of sludge as fertilizer often point out that the EPA only regulates about 1 percent of the chemicals that can find their way into sewage. Kelley says that, in practice, only a small portion of those chemicals end up in the sewage system and treatment procedures eliminate most of them anyway, but certain chemicals do give him pause.
They are what’s called “chemicals of emerging concern” — a catch-all phrase that currently includes endocrine disruptors, pharmaceutical products, and personal care products like deodorant and hair spray — and refers to chemicals that the EPA hasn’t been able to determine if their presence in sludge could pose an environmental or health risk.
“The laboratory capabilities are just starting to catch up. As that information becomes more available, I expect you will see more regulations and more chemicals added to list,” Kelley said.
But activists and wastewater officials disagree about the wisest way to proceed in the absence of better guidance from the EPA.
Forlie says CSWD should take a precautionary approach. “The solid waste district is doing a disservice to the resident by continuing down the status quo path and not preparing us for what’s coming. I thinks there is fiduciary responsibility that CSWD is not meeting by keeping their heads in the sand,” she said.
The nonprofit organization, Lake Champlain International, has taken a similar stance. Its executive director, James Ehler, urged CSWD on Thursday to at least allow residents to vote on the fate of their sludge. Ehler outlined Lake Champlain International’s position in an email.
“… (G)iven CSWD’s intent to potentially burden the taxpayers of its member communities with this unknown liability, CSWD, at the very least, should provide for public debate of all the issues involved, particularly with respect to endocrine disruptors. Then each member community should make it a ballot item. CSWD should only proceed if a majority of communities support a decision to spread sludge in any community. This is issue is too important, with potentially generational impacts, to be left to a few self-interested parties.”
CSWD has two other options for disposing of the stuff — dump it in a landfill or burn it in an incinerator. Incineration is expensive: “To truck 800,000 gallons to Glens Falls [N.Y.] gets to be cost-prohibitive pretty quickly,” Kelley said. And now that the state only has one functioning landfill, space there is limited.
Forlie would prefer for CSWD to continue using the landfill. “At least the landfill is lined and at least they are monitored, and at least we have a regulatory process surrounding the landfills.”
Moreau said CSWD will look into the issues around “chemicals of emerging concern” before signing off on the contract with Casella, but he doesn’t think it’s their “primary responsibility to do the research.” And, he is reluctant to throw out a nitrogen and potassium-rich product that’s got a practical application. “I suspect we are going to get to the point where it’s a judgment call. The hard science is not there.”
