Sludge Watch ==> University of Georgia faces claim over sewge sludge research

[Maureen Reilly]

UGA faces claim over sewage sludge research
Data allegedly 'fudged'

The Athens Banner Herald
By Lee Shearer     lee.shearer at onlineathens.com
Monday, May 19, 2008


Months after a federal judge said the city of Augusta used "fudged" data to 
show that spreading sewage sludge on dairy pastures is safe, the University 
of Georgia faces a separate lawsuit in Athens over the safety of the sludge 
applications.

Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist David Lewis, along 
with two Augusta area dairy farmers, say UGA scientists used false data in 
research that showed applying sludge should not pose a threat to the 
farmers' dairy cow herds.

Lewis is suing EPA officials as well as UGA scientists and the UGA Research 
Foundation.

UGA could be forced to return EPA grants and pay civil penalties if a 
federal jury agrees with Lewis' claims, according to Lewis' lawyer, Edwin 
Hallman of Atlanta.

The UGA research was part of an orchestrated campaign by EPA administrators 
who wanted to justify a federal policy that allowed sewage sludge to be 
spread on farm fields and to discredit farmers' claims that the sludge was 
poisoning their cows, according to Lewis.

The campaign also discredited Lewis' own research into the safety of sewage 
sludge, the semi-solid material left over after wastewater is treated in 
municipal wastewater treatment plants, he said.

MULTIMEDIA PDF: Read a copy of the lawsuit filed by David Lewis:

View document (488k):
http://www.onlineathens.com/multimedia/pdfs/051908_sludge_suit.pdf


Lewis says he was forced out of the EPA and denied a chance to be hired at 
UGA when his research suggested EPA safety standards for sludge might not be 
strict enough to prevent human health problems.

"It's just left a cloud over my reputation," he said.

In the Augusta lawsuit, a dairy farming family claimed that hundreds of 
their cows died after sludge from an Augusta wastewater treatment plant was 
spread on their land in a program promoted by the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture.

The sludge contained high levels of heavy metals and other dangerous 
pollutants, they claimed.

In February, U.S. Southern District of Georgia Judge Anthony Alaimo ruled in 
favor of the dairy farmers, a family named McElmurray that maintained the 
sludge contained dangerous pollutants like chlordane and metals such as 
thallium and arsenic.

Alaimo said sludge application records from the city of Augusta were 
accepted by the USDA and EPA even though they were "unreliable, incomplete 
and in some cases fudged," and that when the dairy farmers showed federal 
officials evidence their land was contaminated, the evidence was ignored.

Alaimo also wrote in his February ruling that "senior EPA officials took 
extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent and any questioning of the 
EPA's biosolids program."

Lewis, in his separate lawsuit in Athens' Middle District federal court, 
claims some UGA researchers became part of those extraordinary steps to 
quash dissent.

Julia Gaskin and three other UGA scientists used the flawed Augusta data to 
show the city's land application complied with federal law and was safe, 
according to the lawsuit.

The EPA funded UGA scientists' research - after the dairy farmers filed 
earlier lawsuits - in order to generate data that would justify an EPA 
policy that said sludge application is safe, according to legal documents 
filed by Lewis.

Gaskin has stood by her research, and lawyers for the defendants have denied 
wrongdoing.

However, in September, federal Judge Clay Land denied a motion to dismiss 
the case against the UGA scientists and EPA administrators.

Land agreed to dismiss the University System of Georgia Board of Regents as 
a defendant, however.

Land has not yet ruled on a later motion to dismiss the UGA Research 
Foundation and former UGA Vice President for Research Joe Key as defendants.


Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 051908


http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/051908/uganews_20080519040.shtml