Sludge Watch ==> Baltimore: A sludged park nightmare along the Susquehanna

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

It is not at all clear to me that "treated" sewage  sludges have lower 
levels of pathogens than fresh sewage influent into the sewage plant.  
Indeed, it seems much of the sludge that is put on farmland - or public 
parks - has more pathogens gallon per gallon than the influent into the 
sewer system.

This may be because many (some say most) viruses and parasitic eggs pass 
right through the sewage system and concentrate in the sewage sludge.  Even 
the E. Coli levels of many sewage sludges that go to land application often 
appear to be much higher in the "treated" sludge than in the raw sewage that 
goes into the sewer plant.

The City of Hamilton Ontario has Ecoli levels in finished sludge as high as 
11 million E.coli per gram.  Most of the research I could find placed it at 
10,000 to 500,000 E. coli / gram in the influent to sewage treatment plants.


I encourage people to call their local sewage treatment plant and get the 
actual lab reports on the levels of Ecoli in the influent and in the treated 
sludges. If you send them into Sludge Watch we can pull together a data 
base.
Sludge Watch welcomes a dialogue and data on this issue.


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http://www.examiner.com/a-1345612~A_sludge_nightmare_along_the_Susquehanna.html


BALTIMORE Examiner
A sludge nightmare along the Susquehanna


Lin Eyer, with her horse Jumping Jack Flash at Freedom Run Farms in Joppa, 
blames sludge for her illness last summer.
2008-04-17


BALTIMORE -
Lin Eyer, of Havre de Grace, didn’t know she was riding her horse through 
a field of freshly spread sewage sludge last summer in Susquehanna State 
Park along the Susquehanna River in Harford County — one of more than 300 
sites around the state where the treated waste is spread.

A week later she was confined to her bed, shaking with chills, worn down by 
migraines. A dentist pulled out all her teeth in an effort to stop 
infections, all while she was on antibiotics.

Eyer, 51, already had a compromised immune system. But she insists she had 
never experienced weakness and chills as severe as the ones in the days 
after her contact with sludge. Still, doctors could not pinpoint the cause 
of her illness.

Texas-based Synagro Technologies Inc., which has regional offices in 
Baltimore City and is the country’s largest sludge-spreading company, had 
gained a lease from the state Department of Natural Resources to farm hay on 
the parkland, but the state permit to spread sludge requires people to stay 
off the land for a year.

For Eyer and her neighbors, restricting them from using public land was too 
much to ask, and the more they researched sludge, the more it stank.

Jeff Lawson’s family lives less than a quarter-mile from the park. 
Initially, nobody living near the park even knew what sludge was, and they 
got no answers from state officials or Synagro, they say.

“In the beginning it came into our neighborhood like an invasion,” 
Lawson said.

“It’s been an education, and our kids have learned a lot, too,” 
Katharine Lawson, Jeff’s wife, said of their children, 13-year-old Troy 
and 11-year-old Elizabeth. “But if it’s in your community, you want to 
know.”

Maryland has seven sludge-site inspectors and 314 sludge permits, according 
to the Maryland Department of the Environment. Last year, those inspectors 
performed 511 inspections and spot checks at 217 sludge sites during and 
after sludge spreading. The state’s sludge fund generates about $750,000 
each year through permit and generator fees, said Robert Ballinger, a 
department spokesman.

In their fight against sludge, the Susquehanna neighbors won the support of 
state and county lawmakers.

Harford County Councilman James McMahan publicly questioned how safe the 
fertilizer could be if people were barred from the land for a year, as state 
regulations require. And Sen. Barry Glassman, R-Harford, introduced bills in 
the General Assembly that would have banned companies from leasing parkland 
to spread sludge.

“Susquehanna State Park is being used as a pawn,” McMahan wrote in an 
Aug. 6, 2007, letter to the Department of Natural Resources. “We are 
taking public land, putting an arbitrary label of agricultural on it ... and 
denying the public use of the land for hiking, trailing and horseback riding 
for 12 months from the day the sludge is spread.”

In an interview about state regulation of sewage sludge, McMahan added: 
“One of the things I noticed right up front was sewage sludge will be 
treated to reduce disease-causing organisms. Reduce. I would be much more 
secure with the word ‘eliminate.’”

Glassman’s bills failed, but his concerns about sludge led to DNR’s 
agreement to conduct an internal investigation to review what companies 
lease state land and how they use it.



TAKING ON THE EPA

>From suburban neighborhoods to the labs of top Environmental Protection 
Agency scientists and university researchers, sludge has started to come 
under close scrutiny. Even Congress has jumped on board — after Tony 
Behun’s death (Story on Page 13) — by holding hearings in 2000 on 
sludge’s health effects.

Initially, spreading sludge looked like an environmentally friendly and 
profitable answer to where to put more and more sewage with a decades-old 
ban on ocean dumping and the high costs of landfilling. Treat it at 
wastewater plants, and offer it to farmers as free fertilizer.

Today, local governments say they’ve saved untold millions of dollars by 
recycling the human waste. In the private sector, the bottom line is much 
more tangible: Synagro makes more than $300 million in revenue each year, 
helping to spread about 440,000 tons of sludge yearly in Maryland.

That’s a lot of sludge, but government and industry officials are quick to 
say that researchers have yet to prove that sludge causes illness.

David Lewis, a former top EPA microbiologist who linked sludge to Behun’s 
death, claims in a lawsuit against the EPA and the University of Georgia 
that top government and university officials forced him out of the agency 
because his research criticized sludge.

At the time, Lewis claims he made a deal with the EPA’s acting 
administrator for research and development, Henry Longest, to leave the 
agency and work at the university without government interference. But, 
Lewis says, the EPA paid the school to cover up the dangers he was 
investigating.

“I refused to resign after Longest failed to keep his end of the bargain, 
but employees working for Longest terminated me anyway,” Lewis said. “I 
could call it something else besides firing, but I’m not sure hoodwinking 
is officially recognized as a personnel action in the federal government.”

The EPA denies retaliating against Lewis, but officials declined to 
elaborate because of the pending lawsuit.

THE NEED FOR STANDARDS

A federal judge, in a February ruling, supported Lewis’ claim while 
chastising the EPA in a case involving hundreds of dead cattle in Augusta, 
Ga., where soil tests turned up highly elevated levels of toxic metals in 
sludge. U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo devoted four pages to Lewis, even 
though the scientist was not a party in the case.

“The administrative record contains evidence that senior EPA officials 
took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent and any questioning of 
the EPA’s biosolids program,” Alaimo wrote in his 45-page ruling.

(Biosolids is the term that the supporters coined to phase out the phrase 
“sewage sludge.”)

Alaimo ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to compensate Andy 
McElmurray for crops and cattle destroyed by the sludge after he spread it 
on his farm for 11 years.

Land samples taken eight years after the last sludge dumping showed that 
levels of cadmium, which can lead to flu-like symptoms and, at worst, cancer 
in humans; and molybdenum, which can irritate people’s eyes and skin, were 
37 percent to 1,400 percent higher than permitted, according to the ruling.

Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the EPA, said the 
ruling shows the need for the federal government’s oversight.

“The recent court ruling underscores the significance of strong national 
standards,” Grumbles said. “This unfortunate instance of poor 
record-keeping and biosolids sampling techniques on the part of one plant 
reiterates the importance of our national biosolids program.”

Alaimo wrote that two to 2,500 times the level of heavy metals considered 
toxic to humans had been found in sludge spread on the farm in Augusta, Ga..

THE FIGHT CONTINUES

The EPA and sludge industry have criticized Lewis, who worked at the agency 
for 31 years, saying he was driven by a personal, anti-sludge agenda.

“I’m not going to publish data that support a certain viewpoint,” 
Lewis said. “I think the EPA should encourage its scientists to publicly 
express a diversity of scientific opinions. It’s the best way to build 
public trust and eventually get the science right.”

Lewis has been unemployed for the past five years and has funded his own 
research over the past 10 years, said his attorney, Edwin Hallman.

The EPA and sludge industry have continued to reject his research.

“The facts made available by EPA and Dr. Lewis indicate inconsistencies 
between Dr. Lewis’ biosolids pursuits and his obligations to the 
agency,” Synagro Chief Executive  Officer Ross Patten wrote to EPA 
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman in February 2002. “This appears to be 
improper and unfair to Dr. Lewis’ targets, such as Synagro, and to the 
thousands of professionals at EPA who work to support the agency’s mission 
rather than their personal agendas.”

The agency’s stated mission has been promoting the spreading of sludge 
since the early 1990s. That’s when the EPA launched its “National 
Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign,” which encouraged sludge to be 
called “biosolids” and pledged to resolve any controversy about 
spreading sludge by 2000.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection also disputes 
Lewis’ report on Behun’s death and said in its own report that there was 
no medical or scientific evidence linking Behun’s death to contact with 
sludge.

But Lewis’ report on Behun’s death, conducted with four other 
researchers, studied 48 people at several other sludge sites throughout the 
country. Published in 2002 in the peer-reviewed journal BioMed Central, it 
found that Staphylococcus aureus infections were about 25 times more common 
among those people than among hospitalized patients, a known risk group for 
the virus.

About half the neighbors in Lewis’ study had contracted viral or fungal 
infections within a month of when sludge was spread, and similar symptoms 
continually ravaged people at each site. More than half experienced 
coughing, burning throats and irritated eyes within an hour of spreading, 
according to the report.

In response to questions from The Examiner, Grumbles said the agency 
continues to study sludge but believes it is safe under current regulations. 
In Maryland, animals are barred from grazing on land coated with Class B 
sludge — which is treated to reduce, not eradicate, pathogens — for 30 
days, and people are restricted from setting foot on the land for a year.

“EPA believes the current regulations for biosolids are protective of 
public health and the environment,” Grumbles said. “We are continuing to 
advance the science related to biosolids with the goal of further 
strengthening the biosolids’ use and disposal program. We are also 
committed to learning more about emerging contaminants such as 
pharmaceuticals and are conducting a national survey on their possible 
presence in biosolids.”

Researchers at the University of Toledo supported Lewis’ reports in 2007, 
when they concluded that people who live within a mile of farms permitted to 
receive sludge are nearly twice as likely to contract bronchitis, pneumonia 
and respiratory infections.

“Of course, it’s been hard on me and my family,” Lewis said, “but I 
would make the same decision today.”