Organic Fertilizer or Toxic Sludge?

SLUDGE-free San Francisco Campaign

Tell the "World's Greenest Mayor" to Stop Poisoning His City with Toxic Sludge!

In 2008, Organic Style Magazine called San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom the World's Greenest Mayor, complementing his initiatives on recycling, green building, low-emission vehicles, and energy audits, among many unique innovations he has brought to the city.

But the true test of a green city may be what happens to its toxic sewage sludge. San Francisco, like just about every other city in the country, contracts with a sewage sludge disposal company, Synagro, to take its sludge away, and, now that it can't be dumped in the oceans, most of it is dumped on farmland.

The thing that distinguishes San Francisco from other cities dumping sludge on farmland is that it is the first and only city to launch an aggressive PR offensive around getting their citizens take some of their toxic sludge back. The way they manage to do this is by giving it away to San Francisco's gardeners, claiming that it is "high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic Biosolids Compost."

If the World's Greenest Mayor can get away with this, watch out, because there's no telling what the toxic sludge industry will do in your town!

That's why we're putting out a national call to all of our members and readers to encourage organic consumers across the country to help us stop San Francisco's toxic sewage sludge giveaways. Please take action today!

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The People Who Want You to Believe Toxic Sludge Is Good for You

Members of the Organic Consumers Association staff went undercover to a meeting of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) employees and the toxic sewage sludge industry last week.

What we found surprised us. We figured, in such a green city, that SFPUC employees would keep an arms length distance from for-profit sludge companies like Synagro that make their money dumping city sludge on rural lands. We thought that they would be trying to figure out green alternatives to flushing waste away with clean drinking water.

Little did we know. SFPUC, Synagro and the California Association of Sanitation Agencies (CASA), the state's chief industry PR group, are mounting a coordinated effort to salvage the business-as-usual practice of flushing household and industrial waste away with clean water and contaminating farmland with the toxic sludge that's leftover when the water is removed. They see San Francisco's sludge giveaway program as an essential component of their national campaign to build public acceptance for the disposal of toxic sewage sludge on yards, gardens and farms. They will fight any effort to shut the program down, and specifically named OCA allies the Center for Food Safety and RILES, who filed a legal petition with the San Francisco to stop the sludge giveaway, as enemies of their campaign.

The scary thing is, this public-private trifecta is well-resourced and unscrupulous. The Synagro rep boasted of earning the support of a local university for a toxic sludge project by promising a $25,000 yearly donation. The CASA rep talked about using "Congressional funny money" to fund studies that would provide science that backed up the industry. And, the SFPUC rep, the public employee, stood by them smiling and nodding as they applauded her for not backing down in the face of public opposition to the contamination of San Francisco's green space with toxic sludge.

History of OCA's Toxic Sludge Campaign

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) emerged out of a massive 1998 grassroots campaign called "SOS-Save Organic Standards," spearheaded by Ronnie Cummins and an alliance of organic activists.

SOS mobilized thousands of organic consumers to stop corporate agribusiness, the sewage sludge industry, Monsanto, and the USDA from degrading organic standards and opening the door for an agribusiness takeover of the organic food and farming sector.

After months of grassroots pressure, the USDA agreed to ban GE crops, irradiated foods, and municipal sewage sludge from organic production. Unfortunately, these practices have become the norm in industrial agriculture and conventional food processing.

If you read the essays and articles on this page, you'll understand why OCA is concerned and alarmed about sewage sludge, and why we're mounting a campaign against the sewage sludge industry to replace sludge with truly organic composting practices.

OCA will educate and mobilize its national network and call on federal and state governments to classify sewage sludge as hazardous waste, to ban its application on farms and ranches, and stop allowing sludge companies to market it as "organic" fertilizer.

As an alternative to sewage sludge and climate destabilizing chemical fertilizers, OCA is determined to make safe, productive, greenhouse gas-sequestering organic composting the norm in agriculture and gardening, and not simply the green alternative.