Sludge Watch ==> Amish wing balks at obeying sewage laws

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

You don't have to be Amish to put septage (or outhouse  tailings) on fields 
in Ontario.
The Walkerton Inquiry recommendations said that the practice should stop, 
but the province has not built facilties needed to 'treat' the material.  
Most sewage treatment plants in Ontario are at or over capacity and many 
cannot take the 'overproof' material which can kill off the bacteria in the 
sewage lagoons.

Funny how the Amish outhouse sewage is said to threaten the water supply. 
All land applied sewage sludge would equally threaten the water supply even 
more so...since sewage sludge contains much more in the way of surfactants 
and toxins from industrial wastes that are drained into public  the sewers.

Lets see..Toronto sends its sewage sludge into Ohio.
Maybe Ohio should send Amish outhouse waste to Ontario.

.......................................


Amish wing balks at obeying sewage laws
Waste dumped on fields threatens water supply
Genaro C. Armas ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, May 31, 2008

EBENSBURG, Pa.

Amish farmer Andy Swartzentruber is determined to live the simple life of 
his forefathers, plowing his field with a horse-drawn tractor, getting 
around in a horse-drawn buggy and selling eggs to help support his family.

But now he and a school elder in his Amish settlement are being compelled to 
defend their religious beliefs over an unlikely issue: sewage.

The two say they will not comply with state code that governs how they 
handle waste from two outhouses at their community's schoolhouse. The men 
are members of the Swartzentruber Amish, one of the Christian group's most 
conservative wings. Their only Pennsylvania settlement is the one here, 
about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Their refusal to budge has left officials in a quandary: They are not eager 
to throw the offenders in jail, but also believe they need to apply the law 
uniformly and prevent contamination of water supplies.

Waste from the outhouses has been collected in plastic buckets, then dumped 
onto fields. The county is demanding the Amish install a holding tank and 
contract with a certified sewage hauler for disposal.

"I'd rather go to jail, and abide by our religion," Mr. Swartzentruber said 
recently, while taking a break from tilling a field.

A district judge last month found Mr. Swartzentruber, on whose land the 
outhouses sit, and school elder Sam Yoder, in violation of state sewage 
disposal law.

A Tuesday deadline to appeal the ruling, or face more than $500 each in 
fines, passed without any action on their part. District Judge Michael 
Zungali, who issued the original ruling, notified them to appear at a June 
12 "payment determination" hearing, his office said Wednesday.

Local officials say putting the men in jail won't solve anything.

"That's a huge sacrifice. I believe in their sincerity," said William 
Barbin, attorney for the Cambria County Sewage Enforcement Agency. "But I 
still have to find a way to solve the problem."

Mr. Zungali has said he hasn't decided what to do if the farmers don't 
comply - but might impose community service instead of jail time.

"It's the judge's call," Mr. Barbin said Wednesday. "Whatever the judge says 
is fine with us."

Mr. Swartzentruber and Mr. Yoder represented themselves in court, where Mr. 
Yoder also said he would not pay the fine or appeal, county officials said. 
Because the Amish do not have phones in their homes, he could not be reached 
for comment.

The Swartzentrubers relocated about a decade ago from Ohio, a relatively 
recent community compared with the much larger and more well-known Amish 
population in south-central Pennsylvania. Their settlement is home to just 
30 families.

Permit disputes with the Amish are most common in areas where they are 
relative newcomers, but usually get resolved, said Herman Bontrager, an 
insurance company executive from Lancaster County who is a member of the 
National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom.

"The position of not wanting to abide by code and cooperate with legal 
authority, that's a pretty rare position," he said. "Most Amish find ways to 
do that."

The Swartzentrubers number only about 8,000, or fewer than 5 percent of the 
roughly 220,000 Amish in the U.S., according to Donald Kraybill, an Amish 
expert at Elizabethtown College. More than half of their settlements are in 
Ohio.

While all Amish shun the modern world, the Swartzentrubers are known for 
their tighter restrictions on technology, more severe limits to interaction 
with the outside world and more rigid notions of the separation of church 
and state, Mr. Kraybill said.

Mr. Yoder and five other Amish men laid out their beliefs in a handwritten 
letter to the sewage enforcement agency in January.