Sludge Watch ==> Ontario - Recycled Paper Sludge Leaching into Environment

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

There is alot of interest in using some of these nasty sludges for biomass 
energy production.
I called Atlantic Packaging to see how well their new paper sludge energy 
equipment is working in the plant in Scarboro, Toronto.  When they 
answer..I'll let you know.

The Minister of Environment, seems to have let the sludge issue drop off her 
radar, turning a deaf ear to her own experts who told her to manage the 
sludge as waste under waste permits.

In the meantime, rural residents are expected to live with these berms 
leaching cyanide, petroleum and E.coli into their drinking water wells.
.......................................................


Recycled Paper Sludge Leaching into Environment
Watchdog group says berms causing problems throughout Ontario
By Lishanti Caldera
Epoch Times Toronto Staff
	Aug 09, 2007


When a 36,000 tonne mound of recycled paper sludge was deposited at Fenwick 
farm in Ontario a year ago, concerned neighbours were assured it was safe.

But the paper sludge berm produces an odour when wet that has been described 
as resembling vomit or sewage, and leaches chemicals into a nearby municipal 
drain during heavy rain. It also does nothing at all for the view.

There are more than 30 such berms across Ontario, in places such as Oshawa, 
Orillia, Flamborough, Port Colborne and Peterborough. The sludge, which is 
mixed with other products, is used as berms on farms and at gun clubs to 
create sound barriers. It is also used as fertilizer.

The communities where berms are located are concerned about the lack of 
research regarding the effect the various chemicals in the paper sludge have 
on ground water, the environment and people's health, says Deb Vice, 
co-chair of Protect the Ridges, an Oshawa community group advocating for the 
safe disposal of paper sludge.

"Once those trucks roll into your community you have no idea how helpless 
you feel," says Vice. "The people of Ontario should not be made to feel 
victims of industry. We should be protecting everything we have in 
Ontario—our water and our farmlands—and that should be our priority."

Paper sludge is an end product of the paper making process from recycled 
paper. Once the pulp is taken out, what remains is paper sludge or biomass, 
which is laced with inks, dyes, clays and glues, as well as whatever 
chemicals are used in the recovery process.

In 2004, a 70,000 tonne berm built in an environmentally sensitive area near 
Hamilton was ordered removed when it was proven that leakage from it was 
contaminating the surrounding environment.

Protect the Ridges is pushing for the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) 
to regulate the disposal of paper sludge and classify it as waste.

"We want the Ministry to tighten the regulations around it so that people 
know that when this material comes rolling in truckload after truckload into 
their community, they know that it is being monitored and watched by the 
Ministry of the Environment," says Vice.

Currently, the companies that produce the sludge are responsible for testing 
and monitoring the berms, which Vice says is like "letting the fox watch the 
hen house."

Starting in 1991, paper sludge was given to farmers for use on their farms 
with MOE supervision. But many farmers didn't find it beneficial and quit 
using it. In 1999 the industry came up with a solution: they mixed paper 
sludge with sand and marketed it under the name Sound-Sorb. They also mixed 
it with fertilizers and called it Nitro-Sorb.

Once the sludge is mixed with sand or fertiliser, it is no longer classified 
as "waste;" it becomes a "product" and is therefore exempt from regulations 
and monitoring by MOE.

Vice says this exemption is a concern on many levels, including the fact 
that any kind of waste matter can be legally mixed into the sludge. Another 
concern is that the recycled paper does not all come from Ontario's blue 
boxes; over 70 per cent of it is imported, and it is unknown what kind of 
inks are used in the imported paper.

While MOE did not return calls requesting comment by press time, its website 
states that in response to public concerns regarding berms built of 
Sound-Sorb, the ministry tested a berm in 2002 for over 90 different 
elements and compounds.

"With the exception of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), toluene, free 
cyanide and chloride, all parameters measured were present in concentrations 
lower than those found in soils in Ontario that have not been subject to 
contamination by commercial or industrial activity," said MOE.

The ministry stated that the risks to human and environmental health 
associated with the TPH levels in the berm were "currently being addressed" 
in a Site Specific Risk Assessment.

In a 2003 Annual Report, the Ontario Environment Commissioner, Gord Miller, 
stated that MOE has "mishandled the Sound-Sorb issue repeatedly since 1999, 
when questions first arose about the status of this material." "This is an 
issue I've talked about for five or six years. It's a mystery to me why the 
ministry doesn't regulate [Sound-Sorb] as it does other industrial wastes," 
stated the commissioner in a 2006 report. In Ontario, Atlantic Packaging and 
Abitibi-Consolidated are the two main producers of paper sludge. Atlantic 
Packaging, with plants in Whitby and Scarborough, is estimated to produce 
700 tonnes of paper sludge a day, 365 days a year.

All that waste has to go somewhere. Debbie Johnston, spokesperson for 
Abitibi Consolidated, says re-using the waste keeps it out of the landfill.

"We believe that we give value to a waste through a practice of land 
application that allows it to be utilized as a fertilizer, and as a fuel in 
boilers located at our facilities. Previously this material had been 
land-filled. It is now a valuable product that is called biomass" British 
Columbia is also having its problems with paper sludge disposal. In 2005, 
the B.C. Ministry of Environment announced its intention to allow 
landspreading of pulp mill sludge with no requirement for permits and with 
minimal monitoring, according to a report by Reach for the Unbleached 
published in the Watershed Sentinel. However, the new Soil Amendment Code of 
Practice met with such "great public concern" that it is now being 
reconsidered. Secretary of Reach for the Unbleached, Tammy Morris, who lives 
near Catalyst Paper's mill in Crofton, B.C., says she was disturbed to find 
that dredged sediment from the "heavily industrially contaminated" Crofton 
harbour has been classified as residential quality soil without having been 
tested.

"This is placed in the lime recaust waste area of the mill's landfill which 
is approved for landspreading under the new code of practice," says Morris.

Morris says CBC Radio has been reporting on the landspreading code of 
practice, and concerns are being voiced by everyone from local residents to 
organic farmers to First Nations, who are worried about the lack of 
consultation regarding landspreading on Crown Lands that may be under treaty 
negotiations.

"There are no provisions in the code to inform neighbours until after the 
fact," she says.

Each year, B.C. pulp and paper mills create over half a million tonnes of 
sludge from secondary treatment plants, power boiler ash, chemical 
processing, waste fibre, sawmills, and other sources, according to Morris.

The sludge is disposed of by burning it in power boilers (when mixed with 
salty hog fuel, coal, tires, demo waste, etc), as landfill on mill property, 
as landspread on agricultural and forest land, and as a "soil amendment" 
product for turf. Vice hopes to see the day when the technology is developed 
to "incinerate the waste and use the energy." In the meantime, she wants the 
government to manage and regulate the sludge as it would any other waste 
"rather than using rural Ontario as an unregulated dumping ground for 
industry."

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