Sludge Watch ==> Assoc Press - Sewage Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted

[Maureen Reilly]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbpCMPX9_kRtYkL1Yv9-OzuVxFfQD8V863181

Photo 1 of 4

Farmer Andy McElmurray inspects a dead patch of a field he owns, Monday, 
Oct. 15, 2007, in Hephzibah, Ga. McElmurray says the patches are from 
fertilizer that contained industrial sludge given to him by the city of 
Augusta. A federal judge is challenging the validity of data behind the 
government's assertion that converting industrial pollution and raw sewage 
into free fertilizer for farmers poses no health risk. U.S. District Judge 
Anthony Alaimo last week ordered the Agriculture Department to compensate a 
Georgia farmer because his land was poisoned by a sewage treatment plant's 
sludge containing levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs two to 
2,500 times federal health standards. His ruling raises new doubts about a 
31-year policy of encouraging farmers and landscapers to spread millions of 
tons of sewage sludge over thousands of acres each year as a safe, 
nutrient-rich alternative to commercial fertilizers. (AP Photo/Rainier 
Ehrhardt)






Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted
By JOHN HEILPRIN and KEVIN S. VINEYS – 1 hour ago

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — It was a farm idea with a big payoff and supposedly no 
downside: ridding lakes and rivers of raw sewage and industrial pollution by 
converting it all into a free, nutrient-rich fertilizer.

Then last week, a federal judge ordered the Agriculture Department to 
compensate a farmer whose land was poisoned by sludge from the waste 
treatment plant here. His cows had died by the hundreds.

The Associated Press also has learned that some of the same contaminants 
showed up in milk that regulators allowed a neighboring dairy farmer to 
market, even after some officials said they were warned about it.

In one case, according to test results provided to the AP, the level of 
thallium — an element once used as rat poison — found in the milk was 
120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental 
Protection Agency.

The contaminated milk and the recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Anthony 
Alaimo raise new doubts about a 30-year government policy that encourages 
farmers to spread millions of tons of sewage sludge over thousands of acres 
each year as an alternative to commercial fertilizers.

The program is still in effect.

Alaimo ordered the government to compensate dairy farmer Andy McElmurray 
because 1,730 acres he wanted to plant in corn and cotton to feed his herd 
was poisoned. The sludge contained levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and 
PCBs two to 2,500 times federal health standards.

Also, data endorsed by Agriculture and EPA officials about toxic heavy 
metals found in the free sludge provided by Augusta's sewage treatment plant 
was "unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, fudged," Alaimo wrote.

EPA-commissioned research by the University of Georgia based on the Augusta 
data was included in a National Academy of Sciences report and served as a 
linchpin for the government's assertion that sludge didn't pose a health 
risk.

In his 45-page ruling, Alaimo said that along with using the questionable 
data, "senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific 
dissent, and any questioning of EPA's biosolids program."

Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water programs, said 
Thursday that the judge's order underscored the significance of what he 
called strong national standards on sludge rather than undercutting the 
giveaway program.

"This unfortunate instance of poor recordkeeping and biosolids sampling 
techniques on the part of one plant reiterates the importance of our 
national biosolids program," Grumbles said in a written response to AP 
questions about the ruling.

About 7 million tons of biosolids — the term that waste producers came up 
with for sludge in 1991 — are produced each year as a byproduct from 1,650 
waste water treatment plants around the nation.

Slightly more than half is used on land as fertilizer; the rest is 
incinerated or burned in landfills. Giving it away to farmers is cheaper 
than burning or burying it, and the government's policy has been to 
encourage the former.

Alaimo's decision was a bittersweet victory for McElmurray, whose silos and 
dairy barns sit mostly empty since his herd was wiped out. He contends the 
cows were done in by grazing on sludge-treated hay for more than a decade, 
beginning in 1979.

Interviewed before the ruling, McElmurray crossed his arms, scowling at the 
empty pastures and idle equipment where his prize-winning herds once grazed 
here in eastern Georgia. "This farm never would have looked like this if we 
hadn't used the city's sludge," he said angrily.

The city of Augusta recently settled a lawsuit with him over the dead cows 
for $1.5 million. Another nearby dairy farmer, Bill Boyce, won a $550,000 
court judgment against the city on his claim that sludge was responsible for 
the deaths of more than 300 of his cows.

The deaths of McElmurray's and Boyce's cows in the 1990s and their suits 
against Augusta raised a red flag with officials at EPA, which since 1978 
had been promoting the use of sludge as a fertilizer.

In 1999, the agency awarded a $12,274 grant to the University of Georgia to 
study the problem. That research would result in a study published in 2003 
in the Journal of Environmental Quality finding that the city's sludge was 
safe and that EPA's regulations were working.

Cities' sewage and industrial pollution had spewed untreated into lakes, 
rivers and oceans until 1972, when Congress passed the landmark Clean Water 
Act.

Back then, cleaning up waterways was the first target of the newly created 
EPA. The agency oversaw a multibillion-dollar grant program that Congress 
set up to help cities and counties build wastewater treatment plants that 
would filter out pollutants.

Alaimo, citing data from an environmental engineer hired by McElmurray, 
found that the Augusta plant was sending out hundreds of truckloads of 
sludge daily with dangerously high levels of cadmium, molybdenum and 
chlordane.

The engineer, William Hall of Atlanta, had been a project manager at seven 
Superfund cleanup sites and had extensive experience with toxic chemicals 
and heavy metals. His tests found polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs in the 
Augusta sludge at levels 2,500 times higher than the EPA standard, thallium 
levels 25 times the legal limit, and arsenic levels twice the government's 
health standard.

William Miller, a University of Georgia soil scientist who co-authored the 
2003 study commissioned by EPA, stands by the conclusions it drew on how 
much sludge had been applied to McElmurray's and Boyce's land and the 
composition of it.

But in a draft of the paper obtained by The Associated Press, he wrote a 
note by hand saying the authors should "fess up" that they didn't know those 
things.

"Now, we didn't really know exactly how much sludge and we didn't know the 
quality of sludge," Miller told the AP in an interview. Despite the 
discrepancies, he maintained the study was valid. "It does not include fake 
data," he said.

Boyce told the AP that in January 1999 he informed Georgia dairy regulators 
and EPA that tests he had ordered on the milk from his cows had come back 
showing high levels of thallium, molybdenum and cadmium.

A top state official alerted the Food and Drug Administration, but Boyce 
said no one ever told him to stop selling his milk or mentioned a possible 
threat to public health.

"We were a little startled," Boyce recalled. "They concluded that our permit 
was good, and we could continue to sell milk. So we did."

EPA lists thallium as a toxic heavy metal that can cause gastrointestinal 
irritation and nerve damage, but the agency has no standard on the metal's 
presence in milk. Neither does the Agriculture Department, even though it 
regards thallium as one of the most dangerous agents of potential 
bioterrorism against the nation's food supply.

State and EPA officials followed up by testing Boyce's milk, but he said 
they wouldn't share all their results with him or McElmurray. There is no 
evidence that those officials took any further action. Boyce said he decided 
finally to reveal the milk contamination to the AP to illuminate a broader 
issue.

"The real problem was the state and federal regulatory agencies did not do 
their jobs," he said, adding that EPA and Augusta officials "tried to say we 
were just a disease-infested herd. Well, that's just a bunch of bullhockey."

Charles Murphy, then head of Georgia's dairy program, said he notified FDA's 
Administration's office in Atlanta of Boyce's contaminated samples. "I know 
I talked to them some, shared some of that information with them," he 
recalled. "I don't think they sent anybody out."

Murphy said he was persuaded by evidence provided to him by Boyce and 
McElmurray to seek broader state testing of dairy cows, but there wasn't 
enough money.

FDA officials in Atlanta and Washington said they had no record of Murphy's 
account.

But over the Super Bowl weekend in 1999, two senior EPA officials, Robert 
Bastian and Bob Brobst, huddled with the two dairy farmers and their lawyer, 
Ed Hallman, to talk about sludge.

"They showed us some data," Bastian recalled. "I don't ever remember seeing 
any milk data."

Boyce and McElmurray insist they shared all of their data with the two EPA 
officials, including separate tests they ran on milk pulled from store 
shelves in Charleston, S.C. That milk, which came from other farms in the 
Southeast, suggested more widespread contamination, they said. It had heavy 
metals similar to those found in Boyce's milk.

There are no records that anyone became ill because of milk tainted with 
heavy metals or other contaminants that could have come from sludge.

On the Net:
http://www.ag.auburn.edu/aaes/communications/highlights/fall96/cattle.htm


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Here is a page of linked research best accessed at the original webpage..so 
you can read the tables.


http://www.ag.auburn.edu/aaes/communications/highlights/fall96/cattle.htm

Volume 43 Number 3 Fall 1996


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CORN SILAGE is an excellent forage source, but silages are often inadequate 
for Alabama dairy farms. Therefore, dairy producers must find alternative 
forage sources that are economical, easy to mix in total rations, and 
support satisfactory milk production. AAES research indicates that 
cottonseed hulls may provide an economical and effective alternative for 
dairy producers.

Typical forage sources used by dairy producers include alfalfa and grass 
hat. The availability of alfalfa hay, however, is limited, expensive to 
import, and it must be chopped if used in total mixed rations (TMR). Grass 
hay quality often is low, the supply may be limited, and it also must be 
chopped if used in TMR. Cottonseed hulls, byproducts of the region's 
thriving cotton industry, are often an economical source of roughage and mix 
well in TMR.

Protein sources also are of interest because milk yield may increase if cows 
are fed certain feed combinations. Best results are often obtained with 
protein sources that are partially digested in the rumen with the remainder 
undigested in the rumen (UIP) but digested in the lower gastrointestinal 
tract. To get such digestion, a mixture of protein sources such as soybean 
meal and various byproduct protein supplements are considered advantageous. 
However, forage sources may affect the protein digested in the rumen, and 
therefore affects the value of protein sources.

To learn more about the value of cottonseed hulls in dairy cattle diets and 
their effects on protein sources, two studies were conducted at the E. V. 
Smith Research Center Dairy Unit in Shorter. In the first study, 72 
early-lactation Holstein cows were fed diets (1) corn silage as the only 
forage, or diets in which (2) cottonseed hulls, (3) coastal bermudagrass 
hay, or (4) alfalfa hay replaced 10% of the corn silage on the dry matter 
(OM) basis. All diets were equal in crude protein (16.5%), net energy for 
lactation (NEL, 0.74 Mcal per pound), and mineral contents.

For each forage source, nine cows were fed either soybean meal as a low UIP 
supplement or a soybean, feather, and blood meal combination as a high UIP 
supplement. Milk, milk composition, feed intake, body weights, and metabolic 
compound data were collected for 10 weeks.

Forage and protein sources had little if any effect on body weight and rumen 
pH indicating that the rumen function of cows fed these diets was normal. 
Effects of dietary treatments on milk production and feed intake are 
presented in Table 1. Cows on the low UIP diets ate more feed than cows on 
the high UIP diets regardless of the forage source.


Cows on the cottonseed hull diets ate more feed than those fed diets 
containing all com silage, 10% alfalfa hay, or 10% bermudagrass hay. Cows 
consuming cottonseed hull diets produced more milk when they were fed high 
UIP than low UIP sources. This did not occur for other forage sources. 
Although there were some variations, neither forage nor protein supplement 
had a clear effect on butterfat content. The high UIP sources caused a 
depression of milk protein when cows were fed diets with 10% hay or 
cottonseed hulls.

Because the addition of 10% cottonseed hulls with the high UIP diet enhanced 
feed intake and milk production, a second study using 54 mid-lactation cows 
was conducted to evaluate the effect of higher levels of cottonseed hull 
with low or high UIP sources. Dietary treatments were (1) 10% cottonseed 
hull and 36-38% corn silage, (2) 20% cottonseed hull and 16-19% com silage, 
and (3) 30% cottonseed hull and no corn silage. All diets were equal in 
crude protein (16.0%), energy (NEL, 0.74 Mcal per pound), and mineral 
contents. As in body weight or rumen pH; however, they did affect dry matter 
intake, milk yield, milk composition, and blood urea nitrogen (Table 2). As 
the amount of cottonseed hulls in the diet increased, dry matter intake 
increased, but there was no increase in milk production. Cows on high UIP 
diets consumed less feed than those on the low UIP diets, yet they produced 
more milk than those fed low UIP sources. Cows on high UIP sources produced 
milk with lower butterfat content and depressed milk protein when cows were 
fed diets with 30% cottonseed hulls. The lower blood urea nitrogen values 
for the cows on high UIP diets may indicate better utilization of the 
protein fed.



Based on these results, it appears that cottonseed hulls provide several 
advantages for dairy producers. Data indicate that cows may produce as well 
when receiving cottonseed hulls as corn silage if the diets are well 
balanced. Feeding high UIP sources, such as feather or blood meal, with 
cottonseed hulls produced more milk than only soybean meal when fed with 
cottonseed hulls. Therefore, producers should consider feeding some 
cottonseed hulls with higher amounts of UIP.

Gu is a Graduate Research Assistant, Moss is a Professor and Lin is a 
Research Associate of Animal and Dairy Sciences.