Homeowners Worried About Chemicals Being Spread In Sewage Fertilizer

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Rural landowners say America’s farms have become dumping grounds for sludge from the wastewater treatment plants of larger cities. They complain of foul odors, contaminated soil, health problems, and stormwater runoff contaminating streams, lakes, and groundwater with possibly dangerous chemicals.

The treated sewage sludge—known as “biosolids”— is the solid matter left from the wastewater treatment process. The sludge is removed from the bottom of the sewage plant tanks then treated to reduce pathogens for use as a soil amendment or fertilizer.

The biosolids industry promotes the treated sludge as an environmentally friendly way to recycle waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill while saving farmers money on fertilizer. Critics believe the less tangible costs of the sludge far outweigh any benefits.

Luther, Oklahoma, property owners Walt and Saundra Traywick, say they were first introduced to biosolids by a sickening stench outside their home in 2018. They say they have been dealing with the impact of the treated sewage and the PFAS chemicals they carry ever since then.

“It’s that rotting carcass smell, but more metallic,” Walt told The Epoch Times.

Saundra Traywick said a neighbor was spreading biosolids from wastewater treatment plants in Oklahoma City and Tulsa on his land. She and some of her neighbors were able to get the practice banned in their town of Luther. And the company spreading the materials agreed to include buffer zones around their work area.

But, when she contacted the cities to complain, she was told “you shouldn’t have moved here if you didn’t like it, because we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

Using biosolids as fertilizer has been controversial since the early part of this decade when per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also called forever chemicals, were found in the sludge. The state of Maine has banned the practice over public health and safety concerns.

PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade easily and can remain in soil, air, water, plants and animals even years after exposure.

The controversy was further heightened when the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced he was tapping the brakes on a regulatory process begun under former President Joe Biden.

On May 14, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency is maintaining its current guidelines for levels of PFAS in drinking water.

The EPA set drinking water limits of 4 parts per trillion for Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) in March 2023. The agency also proposed a non-enforceable Maximum Contaminant Level Goals of zero for the chemicals because “there is no dose below which either chemical is considered safe.”

The EPA is also extending the deadline for water utilities to comply with the guidelines from 2029 to 2031.

“[Extending the deadline] will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants. EPA will also continue to use its regulatory and enforcement tools to hold polluters accountable,” Zeldin stated in the press release.

It is up to each state to regulate the use of biosolids using the EPA regulations as a guide. Only the state of Maine bans the practice.

Julie Lay, of Guntersville, Alabama, said she got her own rude awakening in June 1019.

That is when she and her family also noticed a bad smell coming from a neighbor’s property. The wife and mother had worked in agribusiness for years. She had never encountered an odor like the one surrounding her home.

“It was an awful smell,” her husband Keith told The Epoch Times.

As she researched the source of the odor, Lay found that state agencies and agricultural groups she thought would oppose spreading sewage on farms were supportive of the practice as a cost-effective alternative to commercial fertilizer.

She said the people she spoke with repeated the claim that the biosolids were “nutrient-rich” and beneficial to the soil. They shrugged off any possible danger because no one could say for certain there is a problem, Lay said.

She is concerned that by the time a solid link between biosolids and disease is found, the damage to the land and the people who eat the food grown on it will already be done.

“So they used the land as a guinea pig and they used all of us as guinea pigs,” she told The Epoch Times.

The EPA reports that PFAS are found in all 50 states.

The chemicals make their way from manufacturing plants, industrial sites, and military installations, to wastewater treatment plants where they mix with residential sewage and wastewater.

The chemical bond is so strong that they survive the wastewater treatment process and remain in the sludge that is eventually sold as fertilizer.

3M, one of the largest makers of PFAS, agreed to begin phasing the chemicals out in 2000. However, since the chemicals have been around since the 1940s, a majority of Americans have likely already been exposed, the EPA reported.

A 2016 study published by the Department of Health and Human Services found evidence that chemicals in the PFAS family could disrupt the human immune system. Research also shows possible links to cancer.

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