Apparently it has caused at least one death.

Here is a link that might be useful: health watch

perhaps we should consider what would be an acceptable alternative method of disposing of sewage sludge. shall we landfill it - bury it in a hole and cover it with dirt? where should it go? unless you are a person who never flushes your toilet - these are very important questions.

there is a huge industry for using wastewater sludge as fertilizer. It is an excellent way to recycle and place nutrients back into the soil where they belong. granted, there can be problems when people abuse or neglect to follow regulations. but to blindly say that is its bad to reuse sludge is shortsighted. if you dont want to reuse sludge, then you should reuse your own waste on your own property on not send it down the toilet.

-deb, an environmental engineer who totally believes the best place for most, not all, wastewater sludge is to be properly applied back to the land.

"if you dont want to reuse sludge, then you should reuse your own waste on your own property on not send it down the toilet."

Well, I live out in the country and kinda do that already.
Imagine all the chemicals and such that go down tha drains in the cities......eeek.

When the city of Muncie wanted to start a landfill about 2 and a half mile away, we fought and won that one. Then when that city wanted to dump their municipal sludge out near me, we rose up again. I do not appologize.

so Wayne - what do you do with the stuff that is pumped out of your septic tank? have you ever had your septic tank cleaned.... do you know what the regulations in Indiana are for private sewage disposals systems? generally it is required that septic systems be pumped out every several years to avoid polluting the well water....

JPW,
I anticipated your question...not intimidated.

I last had it pumped out in 1990. I believe that it was not heavily loaded with toxic chemicals and heavy metals.
Joe,....I recyled recently my glass, cardboard, newspapers, miscellanious paper, steel cans, aluminum cat food cans, and not plastics [not enough yet]. I recycle my oil, don't treat my lawn, drive less miles anymore, and so on. Therefore, I don't feel obliged to take all you want me to accept.

I don't have the answers for all that waste, but am trying to manage God's little acre here.

Regards, Way e

i wasnt trying to be intimidating at all. but when you did have your tank pumped, 15 years ago, where did the contents go? i wasnt trying to be curt or negative, i was just wondering. and i think that its important for people to be aware of these things.

my main point was that sewage sludge is NOT someone else's problem. its everyone's problem. almost everyone purchases goods and services that are dependent upon the availablity of modern sewage disposal. i think that sludge is an excellent agricultural fertilizer...and instead of bashing its reuse on an environmental forum, we should be applauding it when it works, and coming up with ways to make it work right when something goes wrong.

reduce, reuse, recycle, right?

have you seen the humanure handbook? what a great book.

JPW,
I just don't have the confidence that this sludge is healthy in many cases. .......that is the problem, see. I don't have a problem so much with the "pure" thing but with all the other goop poured down drains across the land.

I'm with Wayne on this one. Household sewage sludge is less likely to contain dangerous chemicals than sewage systems linked to industrial and commercial facilities.

Deb, most "iputs" processed to make the sludges do not come from nearby farm land. You would have us take the food products from around the world but apply the waste locally; in other words overfertilize while adding potential air and water pollution.

first of all, i think we can agree that is the best from an sustainable viewpoint to eat locally and dispose of waste locally.

unfortunately that is not the reality. the reality is that we have large municpal centers and we have large rural areas. the rural areas feed the municipal centers and municipal centers manufacture products used by everyone. they are not seperate - they are intertwined.

do people on this forum believe that most municipal sludge is best landfilled? keeping in mind that not all sluge is appropriate for land application... land applied sludge is required by law to be tested and applied according to regulations. the sludges that people fear would not pass the testing requirements for land application...

Here is a link that might be useful: sludge regulations

A few points...

The management standards for biosolids (and animal manures used for off-farm composting) in California and some other States are a lot more stringent than those of the EPA. Let's consider the EPA rules as minimum ones and always a moving target, often downward.

I am an organic farmer adverse to the direct application of biosolids on farmland. I even deplore lot of the "farm" manure management practics allowed by the same EPA. The costs of soil remediation at some future are sure to be substantially greater (and resented by our children having to lay out taxes for such remediations.)

I support a program of tertiary treatment and in-vessel composting. Such processes will yield energy in the form of methane, a stable organic material more appropriate for farm applications, and proper monitoring of heavy metals and other problems. Batches containing limits above standards might be mixed/diluted with cleaner compost or be disposed as more hazardous waste.

yes, state standards are more stringent. the only reason EPA targets move downward is due to the policy of elected officials.

you seem to be seeing the disposal of wastewater treatment plant sludge as the same as animal waste from farm operations. wastewater sludge is stable and generally digested. wwtp sludge is not raw like animal waste. many wastewater treatements are required by law to have tertiary treatment.

sludge regulations treat its disposal just like stated as acceptable. those sludges that are very clean can be land applied. those sludges that are marginally can only be land applied if done with monitoring to keep key contaminant levels under certain limits. sludges with high concentrations of the bad stuff are landfilled.

i totally agree that the way animal waste is handled today is awful. the agricultural industry has been exempted from many requirements of the clean water act, due to lobbying by the farm industry. regulation and enforcement of large manure generating facilities is totally lacking. its been in the news alot these days that large manure piles burning, large manure ponds dumping into streams and wreaking havoc on the area. do not confuse animal operations with wastewater treatment facilities.

I don't think I am confused; I've been involved in these matters for decades. I've been involved in the development of compost quality standards (and composting technologies) both at the State and local levels. I was also involved when our last major drought promoted the use of treated effluent for irrigating public landscapes. Our coastal communities still dump the bulk of municipal waste stream into the Pacific or in landfills. Few authorities are willing to face potential liabilities arising from direct land applications.

You are right about the standards and approach to bio-solids differing from those for animal confinement operations. They should only be treated differently in relation to potential contaminants.

Some facilities do yield relatively clean bio-solids based on upstream contributors. Several companies have long used these bio-solids in co-composting operations, usually involving forest product wastes, and sold bagged and in bulk. Kellogg used to even sell composted bio-solids as Nitrohumus to be used in non-food horticulture. Milwaukee had/has a similar product on the market.

From my experience the land applications of sewage waste involve slurries or somewhat de-watered bio-solids with limited tertiary treatment. The material is injected or knifed into the soil, not spread, to minimize odor and other negatives, like runoff. I've read a bit about the complaints associated with surface applications, not just odors but also loss of volatile N.

re-use of treated effluent for irrigation is little different that re-using biosolids for fertilization. they are both excellent ways to re-use the waste stream. its unfortunate that more effluent irrigation systems are not in place.

Waste water(effluent) is very hard on many landscapes, and in the absence of fresh watering, leads to build up of salts. We lost most plants in a replanted bird refuge to the effluent. Nearby cooperating golf courses complained about the excessive build up of thatch and damage to mowers. I ran trials on blocks of citrus and avocado and recorded excessive growth and fruit crop.

Maybe you heard of the 70's slogan: Dilution is the solution? Excessive nutrient loads and adverse bio-oxygen conditions will need to be managed whether we apply solid or liquid.