Questions about the safety of applying waste
solids to farmland near schools reached the Burlington City Council
this week, along with a request for the city to voluntarily stop
shipping sludge to those fields.

The council didn’t take
action on the request to nix the land application of the solids —
often called sludge or biosolids — within a 1.5 mile radius of Sylvan
Elementary, B. Everett Jordan Elementary and Pleasant Grove Elementary.
Instead, members listened to information from environmentalist Sue
Dayton and to responses from city staff and a leader in the state’s
biosolids land application division.

During her
presentation, Dayton — a member of the Blue Ridge Environmental
Defense League — said children at three elementary schools are being
exposed to bacteria, viruses, toxic metals and chemicals because of
nearby waste spreading.

“There’s no way to know what’s in
it. It changes with every tanker that goes out,” Dayton told the
council, after listing some of the possible contaminants in treated,
land-applied waste. “Winds transfer particles during spreading for
miles. Airborne bacteria are spread on buildings, trees, playgrounds
and (other surfaces).”

The league disputes the state- and
Environmental Protection Agency-sanctioned practice of spreading the
waste solids on land, and has lobbied the state for changes to its
permitting requirements for several years. Dayton and league members
admit they don’t have a preferred alternative to land application, but
they at least want the EPA and state to test and control what’s in the
remnants of human waste that’s applied to farmland.

Eric
Davis, the city’s water and sewer operations manager, says the city
follows state guidelines when it spreads between 22 and 24 million
gallons of sludge on about 1,000 acres each year. Burlington is
permitted by the state to land-apply the waste solids and contracts
with Synagro to transport and distribute the material to farms.

“Biosolids are the necessary result of every waste water treatment
process. Land application is the only beneficial re-use of them. It’s
also the best economic process for Burlington,” Davis said.

Jon Risgaard, the state’s land application supervisor, attended
Tuesday’s meeting. He says Burlington is following the state’s rules.
He told the council he appreciates the league’s work for “letting us
know the concerns of the public.”

“The state continues to
look at studies and will modify the rules as needed,” Risgaard said.
“So far, there are not conclusive studies that would cause changes.”

Due to budget constraints, the state mostly relies on universities to
conduct those studies. After the meeting, Risgaard said land
application deserves to be studied more because of advances in science
and new chemicals possibly being introduced into waste water systems.

“I would encourage more studies,” he said.

THE COUNCIL HAD little to say Tuesday after Davis and Risgaard
established that city employees are complying with state regulations.
Mayor pro tem David Huffman told Dayton her work would be more
beneficial at the state level because Burlington follows those
regulations to dispose of waste water by-products.

Mayor
Ronnie Wall said Wednesday that he wants to hear more from the city’s
water employees and ensure they’re following state rules. He couldn’t
say whether the council might make a decision to stop spreading in the
1.5-mile radius around the three schools.

“We’re still in
the process of reviewing all of the information. There’s a lot of it,”
Wall said. “I also need to have more dialogue with other council
members about it.”

Dayton didn’t leave the podium before
accusing Synagro of misleading farmers about the safety and contents of
waste solids. At least one employee of the Texasbased company, which
contracts with municipalities nationwide to land-apply waste solids,
was at Tuesday’s meeting. That employee did not respond to the claims
and left before she was able to be interviewed.

As discussion around land-application has increased, even the words used to discuss waste solids have become politicized.

Environmentalists refer to the product as “sludge.” Private companies,
the state and municipalities prefer the term “biosolids” to refer to
treated waste solids. That term came about because the industry needed
a term to distinguish between treated and untreated sludge and
biosolids was agreed upon, Davis said.

Environmentalists contend “biosolids” is a euphemism meant to allay concern about the waste product’s origins.

TUESDAY’S DISCUSSION was sparked by the Oct. 23 land application on fields near Sylvan Elementary.

Members of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League contacted
Alamance-Burlington Schools that morning to request that the scheduled
application be postponed until after children left school, even though
the fields there were beyond the state-required, 400-yard distance from
an occupied building.

School officials contacted City Manager Harold Owen, who then notified staff to cancel the spreading.

The message didn’t get to Synagro employees before they’d begun
applying about 12 loads of waste solids to the fields. The spreading
was stopped by about 9:30 a.m. that morning, the city says.

The spreading was caught on video by environmental activist Mike
Holland, who posted his footage on You-Tube, an Internet video site.
That video has since been removed from YouTube.