EPA: Missouri firm needs OK before using sewer sludge

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EPA: Missouri firm needs OK before using sewer sludge

ST. LOUIS (AP)--The Environmental Protection Agency said July 31 it will regulate a Missouri company's use of sewage sludge to clean up toxins at an old lead mine after nearby residents complained of foul odors.

The EPA is overseeing work at the Leadwood Mine Tailings Superfund Site, considered one of six major mine waste areas in eastern Missouri. The Doe Run Co., based in St. Louis, owns the old mines and is responsible for the cleanup.

The EPA said its order was prompted by concerns from people living in Leadwood and surrounding St. Francois County, once the heart of Missouri's Old Lead Belt region that supplied much of the nation's lead. Left behind are tons of debris known as tailings, some standing 30 stories high, others spread out over several acres of land.

The tailings are contaminated with lead. Exposure to lead can cause stunt growth of children, result in lower IQ and cause other developmental problems.

The EPA's order addresses hauling materials to clean up the site, public trespassing and the company's use of treated sewage sludge to grow grass at the site.

Since the tailings pile is too big to haul away, the goal is to cover it with grass so that the tailings don't blow in the wind into neighboring yards or wash into streams or rivers. The treated sewage sludge is used as fertilizer, but residents complain it seeps into their yards and emits an unpleasant odor.

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Reader Comments

Joe Newberger — 08/08/2009 10:08:32

The comments made to this article detail a very small portion of the overwhelming number of incidents I have read about and have observed first hand. Sludge is incidious. The damage it does is often slow, and when it is detected the EPA has to defend the perpetraitor because they issued the permits that allows it to happen. President Obama has promised to extract the bullmanure from the EPA, and restore it to its original promise which was to protect the environment. As it is now, they simply regulate how the damage is accomodated and how the denial process can be managed by bureaucratic red tape, and Govspeak.

Reader Comments

Jim Bynum — 08/08/2009 09:08:48

EPA Region 7 has known for 10 years that E. coli and Salmonella wash off sludge sites. Our farm in Kansas City was destroyed for all practical purposes when E. coli and Salmonella washed off Kansas City's sludge farm. A year after the last disposal we found both bacteria at over 800,000 each per 100 grams of soil. EPA claimed it was not a problem because it has never established a standard for pathogens, even though we were selling contaminated crops. More recently, E. coli and Salmonella are what EPA call fecal coliform. More recently, E. coli washed off the sludge sites around the Lake of the Ozarks and DNR refused to release the test results until the levels in the Lake went down. The folks around Leadwood can expect to see more diseases if toxic sludge is used to cover up toxic lead.
http://thewatchers.us/deaths/disease/tables.html
For these reasons, an internet petition has been stated to stop using sludge on agricultural land or anyplace were children may be exposed.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/help-ban-sludge
www.thewatchers.us
www.deadlydeceit.com

Reader Comments

Susan Fox — 08/07/2009 07:08:30

I really wonder if the EPA has any idea what they are doing at all. They do not have a treatment process that takes out the myriad of toxic chemicals in sewage sludge and to AGAIN spread it on top of a hazardous pile of lead just adds insult to injury. WHEN will our leaders and lawmakers wake up and realize the poisin we are spewing across America using this unknown brew of toxic material. Basic common sense needs to start being used here. Tell a lie long enough and you will believe it, that is what the EPA has been doing with the sludge. It is time to STOP LAND APPLICATION!!!!

Reader Comments

hshields — 08/07/2009 07:08:50

Typical government lunacy: spread toxic sewage sludge to "remediate" toxic lead mine tailings!.

Landspreading sewage sludge is just another form of hazardous waste disposal. In 1972 when the Clean Water Act was adopted, Congress mandated that industrial chemicals should be dumped into publicly owned sewage treatment plants to be mixed with domestic wastes, because they needed the domestic (residential) sewage to DILUTE the hazardous industrial wastes.

Based on information in the US EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, billions of pounds of poisonous industrial chemicals are discharged to public sewage treatment plants each year, where the wastewater process reconcentrates the pollutants in the sewage sludge.

In the summer of 2007, Class A sewage sludge "Milorganite" contained such high levels of dangerous PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) that they exceeded US EPA Superfund limits. The toxic mess had to be stripped off 30 Milwaukee public parks and ballfields and hauled to an out-of-state EPA licensed hazardous waste landfill for disposal, which cost the taxpayers >$4.7 million.

In February 2008, District Court Judge Alaimo ruled that Georgia farmers were entitled to compensation because toxic sewage sludge destroyed their dairies. "According to test results provided to the AP, the level of thallium — an element once used as rat poison — found in the milk was 120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency."

In 2006, research by prestigious Cornell University Waste Management Institute found that some sewage sludges have such high levels of toxic industrial pollutants that they exceed the US EPA’s Superfund Soil Screening Limits; http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/sludge/organicchemicals.pdf

A few years ago a Missouri dairy farmer won a settlement in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, when his dairy was destroyed by sewage sludge runoff from a neighbor's land. The judge ruled " . . . the sludge contained "substances and compounds, toxic to humans and animals, i.e., fluoride, cadmium, lead, mercury, iron, arsenic, aluminum, selenium and molybdenum." Said substances and compounds migrated from Bradens' land to Rollers' farm, causing damage including diminished milk production, death of cows and loss of breeding opportunity.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=mo&vol=/appeals/081999/&invol=180810_99

In May 2009, a Missouri legislator called for testing of tannery sludge being spread as "fertilizer" to determine if it contained toxic hexavalent Chromium VI.
"Environmental activist Erin Brockovich told citizens in Cameron last month that sludge from a St. Joseph tannery could be linked to brain tumors and other health problems in the area." *
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2009/may/14/rucker-wants-dnr-test-sludge/

In February 2009, farmers in Franklin County, Alabama, filed a Class Action lawsuit against sludge company Synagro and local industries because (perfluorooctanoic acid ("PFOA"), perfluorooctane sulfonate ("PFOS") and other perfluorochemicals were dumped in local sewage plant and produced toxic, carcinogenic sewage sludge which poisoned land, water, livestock and people..

Many of us who have been calling for an end to the land application of toxic/pathogenic sewage sludge "biosolids", support clean, non-polluting thermal and other technologies that convert sludge from a contaminated waste to a renewable resource. Europe is way ahead of the US in using biogas and other methods to generate heat, power, and electricity from wastewater sludge, thereby protecting farm land from degradation and reducing both greenhouse gases and their dependence on costly imported foreign oil and gas.

MISSOURI sludge victims: http://www.sludgevictims.com/States/Missouri_sludge_victims.html

Helane Shields, PO Box 1133, Alton, NH 03809 Sludge researcher since 1996 http://www.sludgevictims.com

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