Sludge Watch ==> Virginia - New Anti-Sludge Group Starts

[Maureen Reilly]

Biosolids group forms


By Sarah Watson
swatson at newsadvance.com
December 27, 2006



Jennifer England signs her e-mails “Not an activist, just a mother.”

“A lot of people have called me as of late an activist but I think that’s 
how activism starts,” she said. “It’s just people waking up one day and 
realizing that there’s something (wrong).”

England calls herself the “reluctant leader” of a rapidly growing citizen’s 
group that has sprung up in just a few weeks to protest a request to spread 
biosolids on 3,100 acres in Campbell County.

The group, which calls itself Citizens Against Toxic Sludge, or CATS, is in 
the process of applying for state and federal not-for-profit tax status. Its 
last meeting drew more than 200 people. Another is planned for Friday.

England, a mother of five who moved to Gladys from New Jersey three years 
ago, lives across the road from one of the 36 tracts targeted to receive the 
treated sewage sludge.

Campbell County officials learned last month that a biosolids company had 
applied to dramatically expand their permit to spread the sludge. When 
England heard the news, she started contacting county officials and 
environmental organizations trying to find a way to stop sludge from being 
spread in the county.

She soon realized she might need funding for environmental studies, so she 
started e-mailing numerous environmental groups, including the Community 
Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a group dedicated to providing free or 
low-cost legal services to community-based groups and local governments.

Tom Linzey, a Pennsylvania lawyer and co-founder and executive director of 
the fund, contacted her and said he could help, free of charge.

Linzey, along with Shireen Parsons, a Christiansburg writer and 
environmental activist who has worked with Linzey for more than 10 years, 
asked England to gather a group of citizens to gather to discuss their 
concerns.

“We were originally going to have the meeting in my home,” England said. “We 
quickly realized it wouldn’t hold as many people” as we were expecting. 
About 70 county residents showed up at the Dec. 4 meeting at the Gladys 
Community Center.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. Normally it’s a few people around a 
kitchen table,” Parsons said. “Four days after they learned this was going 
to happen, they gathered 70 people together in opposition, which is pretty 
amazing.”

Chris Snyder was told by England that his property was downstream from 
fields included on the permit expansion. “She called me and said, ‘Chris, do 
you know what they’re doing?’” he said. “She told me and I said, ‘Wait just 
a damn minute. No!’”

Snyder, a mechanical engineer who has designed parts of several municipal 
wastewater treatment plans, quickly lent his support to the group, which he 
said formed by accident. “Everybody got together at the first meeting and a 
couple of people said we need to form an organization,” he said. “I said 
‘let’s do it.’ (England) just rolled with it.”

“I think I’ve become the reluctant leader,” England said. “It’s a little 
uncomfortable for me because I feel like it’s the natural progression for a 
mother trying to protect her children.”

Less than two weeks after the first meeting, more than 200 area residents 
gathered Dec. 16 to hear England’s concerns and Linzey’s concept of turning 
what has traditionally been fought as a regulatory and land-use battle into 
something unique - challenging the constitutional rights of corporations.

“People are concerned and they are disheartened and I think the overwhelming 
feeling is that this really isn’t the way a democracy runs,” England said. 
“When the vast majority of the people in a community don’t want something, 
it shouldn’t be forced on them by the state and any corporation.”

Initially England was trying to figure out a way to find funding for what 
could be a long and expensive legal fight. After hearing about Linzey, “the 
more I had hope that the citizens in the county could have a say in what 
happens here.”

“I am not a tree-hugging liberal nutcase,” Snyder said. “I … am an American 
that believes we haven’t had our due course in justice.”


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