FYI: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to export sewer sludge to Antelope Valley.

As SLO County considers importing sewer waste for ag use, some people are making a stink

BY ANNE QUINN

You could say David Broadwater knows the difference between shit and Shinola.

Although this colorful phrase is used figuratively when describing someone savvy enough to distinguish between the real thing and the patently bogus, in Broadwater’s case it’s literal.

Since 1998, Broadwater has been studying the difference between human waste and sewer sludge–and what’s behind the gussied up, PR word for the latter, "biosolids." Unfortunately, both terms will soon become more familiar to SLO County residents.

The expertise of people like Broadwater will be needed as the Board of Supervisors creates a county ordinance about sludge. All of us in SLO County may soon be seeing, touching, breathing sludge–and perhaps even one day eating it. So it might be a good idea to understand exactly what sewage sludge is–and why SLO County may be importing plenty of it.

Broadwater, a psychiatric technician at ASH, first heard about sewer sludge when Bio-Gro, a division of Wheelabrator Water Tech Inc. (WMX) of Riverside applied for a permit to spread 50,000 tons of the stuff each year over 1,044 acres in rural San Miguel, saying the proposed sludge was going to be used to grow alfalfa.

Broadwater says that at first his reaction was positive, thinking like an environmentalist.

"After all," he says, "cows do it, goats do it–and if you think about it, we’re the only animals that don’t return our waste directly to the soil."

But the more he read about land applications of sludge, the more horrified Broadwater became.

"It’s really a method of disposing of hazardous industrial waste," he says.

That’s because sewer sludge–the end product from wastewater treatment plants–isn’t all poop.

Sludge consists of remnants of everything that goes down the sewer, including industrial and medical waste, gasoline by-products, pesticide run off–even radioactive material. Since sludge is the end product of complex municipal treatment systems designed to both clean sewage and reduce it in volume, it is highly concentrated, and as the nutrients become concentrated, so do the toxins.

Broadwater was not alone in his outrage over the situation three years ago in San Miguel.

According to "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry," a book about how PR firms spin the facts, "Newspaper reports and San Miguel Advisory Committee minutes show that the project was promoted as a SLO City-to-San Miguel ‘recycling’ plan, and that concerns about the effects were downplayed, with comparisons to ‘compost’ and ‘potting soil.’

"Once the residents of San Miguel learned what sewage sludge really is, they realized they’d been duped by the sludge-slingers’ propaganda campaign. That’s when the sludge hit the fan in San Miguel."

Locals also discovered that despite statements to the contrary made to the press by industry executives, the actual application submitted by WMX showed that the company planned to bring sewage from sites outside the county to San Miguel. Scrutiny of the documents also convinced the opponents that this was the first battle in a dirty war.

"From the beginning and throughout the process," says Broadwater, "it was obvious that WMX had plans for the entire county and the Central Coast Region–not just the San Miguel site."

When WMX was told that a complete Environmental Impact Report would be required, it withdrew its application. But the San Miguel battle had revealed that SLO County’s sewage sludge policy had loopholes the size of LAX’s restrooms.

What the opponents didn’t know was that WMX had already spread 700,000 tons of the stuff on another parcel in San Miguel. According to the county’s existing regulations, if sludge is spread "agronomically," meaning only as much as plants will eat with no leftovers, the practice is not regulated.

The first beneficial outcome of the San Miguel battle was that SLO County got serious about sludge and formed the SLO County Health Commission Task Force to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

This committee later evolved into a larger committee, the SLO County Treated Sewage Sludge/Biosolids Land Application Task Force, which included representatives from waste water treatment plants, ECO-SLO, the SLO County Farm Bureau, and Broadwater, who had by then founded his own company known as CSI, or the Center for Sludge Information.

The HarperCollins Dictionary of Environmental Science defines sludge as a "viscous, semisolid mixture of bacteria- and virus-laden organic matter, toxic metals, synthetic organic chemicals and settled solids removed from domestic and industrial waste water at a sewage treatment plant."

But the Environmental Protection Agency defines it quite differently. It prefers the word "biosolids," which it defines as "nutrient-rich organic materials resulting from the treatment of sewage sludge."

The EPA goes on to say that "When treated and processed, sewage sludge becomes biosolids, which can be safely recycled and applied as fertilizer to sustainably improve and maintain productive soils and stimulate plant growth."

"There lies the whole controversy," says SLO County’s Environmental Health Director, Curt Batson, referring to the difference between these two definitions.

Is it toxic or not?

"Sludge has pollutants, but not toxins," says David Hix, waste water division manager for the city of SLO. Hix says the levels of pollutants in sludge as regulated by the EPA are okay. Like most executives in his industry, he thinks sludge is safe.

The whole reason the issue of land application came up in the first place was because in 1989 the Federal Government banned the ocean dumping of sewage sludge because of the Clean Water Act. The government’s reasoning for this was simple: The sludge was considered too toxic for waters and streams.

Now that sludge can no longer be dumped into the ocean, "something has to be done with it," Batson points out. "It can be added to landfills, burned or applied as a soil amendment."

Home gardeners may be shocked to realize that many of the bagged soil amendments they bring home from the nursery contain municipal waste.

If it makes you feel any better, there are different ratings for sludge and only the top two EPA rating levels (those with the lowest levels of pollutants by EPA standards) are allowed to be included in soil amendments, which are bagged and sold commercially at your local hardware and garden store–but it’s understandable if you don’t feel any better.

Despite being highly controversial, "land application" has become the method of choice for disposing of municipal sludge. According to the SLO County Health Commission Task Force’s findings, in 1997, 7 million dry tons of sludge were produced nationwide–and 54 percent of it was spread out on land.

In what the EPA calls Region IX–which includes California, Hawaii, Arizona and Nevada–820,000 dry tons were produced that year, with 51 percent of it tilled into the soil.

The report also shows that SLO County produced 10,734 dry tons that year. Most of it was shipped out to Merced and Kern counties. The remainder was buried in the landfills at Cold Canyon, Chicago Grade and Paso Robles, and Camp Roberts.

If land application continues to be the most common method of getting rid of sludge, rural counties like SLO will be under increasing pressure from cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles to accept it. Those cities lack the open land needed to disperse their sludge. And, given the large number of industries found in cities, this kind of imported sludge could potentially be much more hazardous.

It could contain high concentrates of metals that affect human health and the environment, such as copper, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, nickel and arsenic. These are commonly found in varying amounts in sludge. And, says Batson, "Metals do not compost away."

The EPA requires that sewage sludge, or biosolids, as the EPA prefers to call it, must be tested by certified labs for pathogens and for heavy metal levels before it is rated by the agency. There are four ratings ranging from "exceptional quality" down to "cumulative pollutant loading rate."

Critics, however, contend that the numerical limits in the EPA’s regulation are highly controversial. American limits for dangerous metals in sludge, for example, are more lax than Europe’s. The EPA’s allowable limit for a toxic metal like mercury is eight times higher than what the French government allows, and its limit for cadmium is 20 times higher.

Worse, sludge concentration limits in the United States are 76 times the allowable concentrations in the Netherlands, and 100 times what’s allowed in Denmark.

The EPA has still not yet decided whether to regulate dioxin levels in land-applied sludge.

Sludge with the EPA rating "exceptional quality" can be put anywhere in the U.S. It’s considered so safe that its application doesn’t have to be regulated by the EPA at all.

The San Joaquin Valley has banned land application of all sludge, according to Batson. Kern County is in the process of banning all but this "exceptional grade" of sludge. Merced County is more relaxed and accepts all the ratings under the EPA rules.

SLO County Supervisors recognized that current regulations would permit land applications that they didn’t want, and this week decided to create a new ordinance. While Pinard and Bianchi favored a total ban, they were overruled. Achadjian, Ryan and Ovitt voted to direct county counsel to craft an ordinance that would limit the type of sludge accepted here to better than "exceptional quality"–meaning only the finest crap would be allowed in SLO County.

The proposed ordinance would also limit sludge amounts to "historic levels"–what’s been spread around before–meaning 2,500 yards annually.

Batson says that the Board cannot make a separate ruling for sewage sludge generated here and imports from elsewhere because that violates trade laws. The supes hope by limiting the type and quantity they will discourage big cities from dumping their sludge here.

"It’s not just waste," explains Batson, "it’s a waste product, so the laws of commerce apply. If the Board of Supervisors tries to restrict sludge from coming in from other areas, they could be accused of restraint of trade–whatever we do will apply not only to our own [sewage sludge] but everybody else’s."

As far as Broadwater is concerned, calling sludge "biosolids" and defining it not just as waste, but as a waste product so it can be hawked on the market and even protected by trade laws is where the shit turns into Shinola.

The EPA’s turnaround from banning the dumping of sludge in the oceans because it was too toxic to its present stance of allowing it to be spread on land–and promoted as a soil amendment with a fancy new name–has generated a lot of ridicule elsewhere.

As recounted in "Toxic Waste is Good For You," when the EPA first used the label "biosolids" for sludge in 1991, it provoked sarcastic comment from the Doublespeak Quarterly Review, edited by Rutgers University professor William Lutz. He predicted that the new name "probably would not move into general usage. It is obviously coming from an engineering mentality. It does have one great virtue though. You think of biosolids and your mind goes blank."

The name change was the result of a contest launched by a Name Change Task Force–yes, there really is a such a task force–from the Water Pollution Control Federation, the sewage industry’s main trade, lobby and public relations arm.

According to "Toxic Waste is Good for You," the contest was the brainchild of Peter Machno, manager of Seattle’s sludge program, who faced an uphill public relations battle when he tried to spread sludge on local tree farms.

"If I knocked on your door and said I’ve got this beneficial product called sludge, what are you going to say?" Machno is quoted as saying.

At his suggestion, the book reports, the Federation’s newsletter challenged members to come up with alternative names and got 250 responses. Biosolids won out over "all growth," "purenutri," nutri-cake," "bioslurp" and others.

Always a trendsetter, the city of San Luis Obispo last year opted out of land application of its sludge altogether, choosing instead to compost it with agricultural waste through a Santa Maria company, Engle and Gray Inc.

Bob Engle says his company offers a range of composted products, some of which contain biosolids and others which do not. Besides, he says, "when you compost something, it’s really not considered biosolids anymore."

But until more is known about sludge, advocates like Broadwater will continue to think that’s a lot of crap. Æ

Anne Quinn is a ‘New Times’ staff reporter. Comments or questions can reach her at [email protected].