Sludge Watch ==> Virginia sludge fight heats up - who is in charge?

[Maureen Reilly]

It's All On Hold in the Sludge Fight


Lynchburg News & Advance
March 8, 2007



The fight over sludge is far from over in Central Virginia; in fact, it 
seems to be heating up.

It’s been a good few weeks for local opponents of the industry, especially 
looking back on the recently concluded General Assembly session. Just 
consider these few highpoints:

• A storage site in Bedford County will be closed in just under a month and 
another won’t be opened at all;

• Oversight of industry will probably pass to the state Department of 
Environmental Quality in 2008 with fees rising to the point of covering the 
permitting costs; and

• Counties will probably have the ability to regulate storage sites in their 
borders.

Still, between now and the point in time at which Gov. Timothy M. Kaine 
signs all the relevant legislation that passed the legislature, things are 
proceeding as before. And that’s a less-than-satisfying situation.

In late January, Campbell County Administrator David Laurrell wrote the 
state health department to request a morartorium on processing permit 
modifications for spreading in Campbell due to the then-pending, now passed, 
legislation transforming regulatory powers to the state DEQ.

More than a month later, the health department responded, stating that it 
would be business as usual for them, as there’s nothing in the legislation 
on the governor’s desk that would authorize any such suspension.

Still on the docket for the health department is a request from Dr. Kathryn 
Nichols, director of the Central Virginia Health District, for a review of a 
sludge permit in Bedford County because a 2-year-old child with severe 
medical problems lives near the site. Nichols sent that precedent-setting 
letter to Richmond in mid-January and said late last month she doesn’t 
expect a reply until mid-March.

The child, born with a rare condition known as omphalocele in which portions 
of the liver and intestines develop outside the body, and his family deserve 
a prompt response from state health officials, not the dragged-out approach 
Nichols’ request has received thus far.

>From the health department’s refusal to suspend permit-modification 
processing to foot-dragging on a request from the region’s top public health 
official, you have to wonder who’s in control of the department and sludge 
process: businessmen and government lawyers or doctors and scientists.

It makes you wonder.

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