- Subject: Part 4 -- It began in New York
- From: T*@aol.com
- Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 14:39:33 EDT
- Full-name: TheBynums
Before we look at the EPA/WEF "Fact" Sheet for New York City's 128,000 acre
sludge dump site in west Texas, we have a South Bronx update by Ms X. Three
years ago, 25% of the children had asthma. Now over 60% of the children have
asthma. By any measurement, that is a plague.
Ms X said, "Yes, DEP under the past commissioner, Marilyn Gelber, redirected
the traffic so that the sludge and transportation trucks do not go by the
school. NYFCO did repair the stack emissions so that the heavy "upsets" did
not occur. Now there is only the faint smell of sewage sludge for briefer
periods. But, we still have a calling committee who call the DEP hotline
whenever the odor is there. The DEP is supposed to take a complaint number.
The problem is that in the spring, summer, and fall, the wind and air shift
and the odors are far more discernible. When I walk to my car on some days,
my throat starts to hurt and then I get nauseas. Then I am aware of the
odor. Last October, I wrote a letter to the DEP asking for the number of
complaints against NYOFCO, citations, and fines. The court ordered a $1200
fine every time there was a citation. I received a letter back in March
stating that according to the Freedom of Information Act, no information
about NYOFCO has been given. Couldn't get another job because of my field
and that I am too old. Don't know why I am still there. The bottom line is
that now over 60% of the children have asthma, according the assistant
principal. I am seeing thyroid problems: hyperthyroid and hypthyroid.
Heart problems affect young people. I feel like a total failure in this fight
and got burned out."
That is heartbreaking, but these people have no mercy. Make no mistake, I'm
not talking about the New York Fertilizer Company. I'm talking about the City
who pays the Corporation to do a dirty job, and the State who has a
responsibility to protect its citizens from harm by enforcing the
environmental laws, rather than accepting EPA's policy and saying, its EPA's
problem. The same can be said for most sludge transporters and dumpers, they
are only doing what the government wants them to do. For the most part, they
may not know or care what the environmental laws demand. However, all of
these people have forgot the basic premise of society's rules, Ignorance of
the law is not a defense.
Now lets look at where the sludge train stops. Number 1 on the list to debunk
was the Merco/NYC biosolids TV expose with EPA's Bob Bastian as the contact
person. The first WEF/EPA fact sheet focuses on Sierra Blanca, Texas where
national attention was drawn by TV Nation's program which followed a Merco
sludge train from New York to Sierra Blanca. What worried WEF and EPA most
about the Sierra Blanca incident was the effect on the audience of the
appearance of EPA's own senior hazardous waste expert, Hugh Kaufman, who said
on the program:
What you have here is an illegal `haul and dump' operation
masquerading as an
environmentally beneficial project, and its only a masquerade---The
fishes off New
York are being protected, the citizens and land of New York are being
protected,
and the people of Texas are being poisoned. Something is rotten in
Texas.
(Stauber, John, & Rampton, Sheldon, (1995) Toxic Sludge Is Good for You
(p.
118)
An irate Merco sued Kaufman and TV Nation's producer, Sony Entertainment
Pictures, as well as Bill Addington, a local merchant, accusing them of
"defamatory and disparaging statements....made with actual malice and
reckless disregard
for truth" (Ibid, p. 118). Addington was dropped from the suit at the last
moment, mainly because he had nothing they could take after his lumber yard
was burnt. Addington's activities in opposing the sludge dumping also cost
him his wife and adopted son because of the threats and their fear of harm.
Since June 1992, New York sludge has been transported by rail to a 128,000
acre ranch in Sierra Blanca, Texas owned by Merco Joint Venture.
Approximately 80 tons a day of Class B sludge is spread on the ranch to
fertilizer the grass. Due to local opposition and national attention, EPA and
WEF had to create a public relations fact sheet extolling the Merco project
as an example of a successful beneficial sludge use project.
Excerpts from a few of the WEF/EPA major contentions have been selected and
answered with the rest of the story, which was not told in the fact sheets.
EPA / WEF Biosolids Fact Sheet 1
BIOSOLIDS RECYCLING IN WEST TEXAS
EPA/ WEFStatement:
Detractors have expressed concerns that the quality of the
biosolids may be poor or even hazardous.
Answer:
The fact is that New York City sludge is hazardous. The disease
organism alone would cause it to be classified as a hazardous waste under
federal law.
However, there is more reasons, according to a New York City study (Wat.
Sci.
Tech. (1987) Vol. 19, No. 9.p. 133, pretreatment by industry would not help
New
York City control the toxic metals. They say, "The 1970 to 1972 study of the
sources of these heavy metals in New York City waste-water concluded that
even with zero discharge by industry, 94 percent of the zinc, 91 percent of
the
copper, 84 percent of the cadmium and 80 percent of the chromium being
discharged would continue to be discharged by sources virtually immune to
treatment (Ref. 1)."
Furthermore, the study found p. 142), "For land application, the Task 4
Report used NYDEC criteria (Table 5). It concluded that because of metals
concentration, 94% of New York City Sludge is presently unacceptable for land
application. After pretreatment, either through local limits or categorical
standards, 83% to 84% of New York City Sludges would still be unacceptable
for land application. The reason for this is that non-domestic sources of
pollutant loading, not industrial sources, are primarily responsible for
interfering
with this sludge use.
According to information furnished to the Texas Department of Natural
Resources
in 1992, New York City did have a major sludge problems: 1) 12 of 14 treatment
plants failed copper limits; 2) 1 plant failed the cadmium limit; and 3) 3 of
14
plants failed arsenic limits.
New York City had a much greater problem under the proposed regulation with
organics: 1) the sludge was so contaminated that 11 of the 14 plants failed
on
PCBs because they could not get a clean sample. The test equipment
detection levels were well above the proposed regulated level in part 503; 2)
the
same was true for Toxaphene at 4 of the 14 plants; 3) 1 plant failed on
Diemethyl Nitrosamine because of the detection level; 4) 9 of 14 plants
failed
on DDT/DDE/DDD levels because of very high equipment detection limits.
Yet, Texas still welcomed the sludge which was too contaminated to be used
as a fertilizer in New York State. In fact, according to the fact sheet, by
the
time the sludge got to Texas it was magically transformed from an extremely
hazardous waste into Exceptional Quality (PC) Biosolids.
What actually happened was that EPA/WEF's Alan Rubin and Writer/Coordinator,
Dave Trouba, did a little creative writing in the fact sheet. There is little
doubt Alan Rubin was involved because he was on loan to WEF from EPA for two
years just to train the WEF members in how to circumvent the environmental
laws. From the first statement, it would appear that neither one of them had
the slightest clue about EPA test procedures.
EPA/WEF Statement:
Biosolids are analyzed and tested routinely for pollutants and
disease causing organisms using Toxicity Characteristic Leachate Procedure
(TCLP) tests.
Facts:
The TCLP test method can only be used to detect a few of the
estimated 500,000 chemicals which can be found in sludge. The TCLP test
method can not be used for detection of disease causing organisms in sludge.
The TCLP test simulates, in a laboratory, the potential for a small
percentage of a hazardous substance
to leach out of a given sample under mismanaged landfill conditions. There
is no direct correlation between TCLP test results used in the Fact Sheet and
the Total Metals Test used for the Part 503 regulation. In fact, based on the
problems New York City had with the detection limits, there may be no
relationship between the Total Metals Test results and the actual quantity of
a pollutant in the sludge.
The Total Metals Test, which is normally used by POTWs, is a cheap test. It
supposedly measures the total amount of metals in a given sample. As an
example, in column 1 of Table 1, in the fact sheet, the EQ or PC federal
limit for lead is 300 ppm which is derived from the standard Total Metals
Test methods. The lead level of 193 ppm in column 2, for Merco, according to
the fact sheet, is derived from the TCLP hazardous waste test method. The
193 ppm is only that small part of the lead which would supposedly leach out
of the hazardous waste under mismanaged landfill conditions at a rate of
about 1 part in 20.
This indicates that had the total metals test method been used, the Part 503
EQ limits of 300 ppm would have been exceeded by approximately 3,560 ppm.
This would also have exceeded the New York State ceiling limit of 840 ppm for
lead by approximately 3,020 ppm.
Actually the numbers indicate that New York City's pretreatment program must
have improved the quality of the sludge at least by half since the Water
Science Technology study of 1987, which showed the average level of lead
in the NYC sludge was 6,400 ppm.
If this sludge was so clean, as the fact sheet indicated, why wasn't it
spread on farmland in New York State? Why did New York City have to pay
Merco $800 a ton to take sludge out of State when the average instate cost
(according to a Pima Gro Systems letter to Imperial County, dated May 17,
1996), for municipalities to
recycle sludge in a comparable State like California ranges "from the high
teens and low twenty dollar per ton for biosolids?"
The disturbing fact is that this Class B sludge sent to Texas may be the
least hazardous portion (27%) of the NYC sludge. The major portion (67%) is
processed into Class A sludge by the New York Organic Fertilizer Company
where there are no records or labels required to leave a paper trail when the
product leaves the plant. Not only that, but no politician or "regulator" is
really concerned about the odors and the dust carrying pathogenic bioaerosols
off the site.
The Biosolids Fact Sheet 1 noted that, "Merco handles 27% of New York City
biosolids. About 67% goes to the New York Organic Fertilizer Company, where
they are pelletized. According to the Fact Sheet, pelletized biosolids have
been used on dry wheat farms in Colorado, irrigated cotton and grain farms in
Arizona, and Citrus orchards in Florida. The remaining six percent is
landfilled." (p.5)
EPA/WEF Statement:
After treatment in New York City, Merco voluntarily tests the
biosolids to further ensure compliance with metal and pathogen requirements
before they are loaded into sealed containers for shipment to Texas. The City
of New York also conducts its own tests.
Questions:
In spite of all these tests, according to their own Fact Sheet, In
September 1993, a series of human errors in New York City and in Texas led to
the application of
nine rail containers of biosolids that had failed to meet the detention
requirement for PSRP (time for pathogen reduction) . (p. 3)
Regardless of what the cause was, it was still put on the land
without meeting the Pathogen reduction requirements in Part 503. The EPA/WEF
fact sheet
claimed tests for pathogens done on the soil showed the pathogen levels had
dropped to acceptable levels. The problem is that while there is an
acceptable level pathogen standard for sludge and water, there is no pathogen
standard for soil. The acceptable level for fecal coliform in sludge is two
million (2,000,000) units per milliliter of sludge vs unacceptable level in
water (for boating) of twenty (20) units of fecal coliform per milliliter. A
milliliter is one gram. Oh, and the acceptable level for Class A sludge is
one thousand (1,000) units of fecal coliform per milliliter.
According to their own fact sheet, pathogen reduction has been a
problem, especially pathogen regrowth. The fact sheet says, "In Texas, the
regular
testing for the presence of pathogen indicators has occasionally revealed
varying levels above the federal and state regulatory limits, causing concern
about pathogen regrowth during transport." The excuse for the regrowth,
which the fact sheet claimed was verified by an independent analysis by
Alternative Resources, Inc., of Stroudsberg, Pa., was "variations were most
likely caused by inconsistencies in the sampling and analytical methods at
the five separate labs conducting the analysis. (p. 3)
We are supposed to believe that five separate laboratories, who
follow approved EPA procedures, can not perform a simple fecal coliform test,
which is done routinely by municipal treatment plants. If these
inconsistencies are occurring in five separate laboratories how can we place
any confidence in any of the results of tests done to detect pathogens? Who
are Alternative Resources, Inc.? Is it a laboratory? Was any pathogen test
actually performed by Alternative Resources for comparison, if not, why not?
EPA/WEF Statement:
Several stricter-than-normal measures, either imposed by Texas or
volunteered by Merco were implemented. These included: a biosolids
application rate at less than agronomic rate; an initial 2-year delay before
grazing cattle on biosolids-applied land.
Answer:
An agronomic rate as defined in the fact sheet is "the rate of
biosolids application that is designed to provide the amount of nitrogen
needed by a crop or vegetation to attain a desired yield by minimizing the
amount of nitrogen that will pass below the root zone of the crop or
vegetation to the ground water."
Questions:
If the agronomic rate is needed to provide the right amount of nitrogen to
the crop, why have they applied the sludge at levels below the agronomic
rates? How will the sludge applications benefit the soil if they fail to meet
the nitrogen requirements? For what reason have they chosen to apply at
these rates? Is it because they fear acute adverse health effects or
environmental damage at even agronomic rates?
If sludge is as safe as they claim and if the test results show the sludge to
be so `clean' as indicated in the Table 3 on page 4 of the fact sheet, why
are they preventing cattle from grazing on the sludge site for 2- years?
EPA's Part 503.32(b)(5)(v) says, Animals shall not be allowed to graze on the
land for 30 days after application of sewage sludge. It would appear someone
knew disease organisms such as Salmonella could live in the environment and
infect cattle for well over a year.
EPA/WEF Statement:
Texas A & M research indicates that there is no significant
airborne movement of organic material from the biosolids site (such as
pathogens and/or plant materials) and particulate matter (other organic
matter and inorganic matter, such as dust or metals). The University of
Arizona recently did a study on bioaerosols to prove the public at Sierra
Blanca had little to fear from bioaerosols. The computer
modeled a 100 square yard sludge disposal site, 10,000 yards from the
community.
However, the computer model still came up with the conclusion that within
1600 feet of the site, there would be a extremely high infection rate.
Questions:
Was it possible that the reason for the low application rates were to prevent
the pathogens from leaving the site during the air sampling period? No
mention is made of volatile compounds in the samples collected. Is that just
an oversight or was it possible they were not testing for the
chemicals--dioxins, Furans, PCBs which are detected at low levels.
Dioxins have been detected even in the parts per quadrillion. Is it probable
that no tests were conducted on any organic chemicals because they are not
regulated
in Part 503 or anyplace else?
Two recent studies show that anyone living close to a sludge work site could
be exposed to serious health problems from odors and bioaerosols transported
off the sites. NIOSH has found that there is a connection between sludge and
workers on theses site. The CDC recently assigned a Hazard Class 10 to the
sites and suggested strict safety measures to protect the municipal sludge
worker. Unfortunately, these warnings and safety measures are not required
for private farms, their works, and their neighbors. To see how the current
system works all we have to do is look at the second debunking fact sheet
against Linda Zander of Washington State.
Number 2 on the EPA list for WEF to debunk is Linda Zander. The Zanders
did own a dairy farm until the cattle started dying, as well as some of their
friend who lived on the farm. The worse part was when her children and
grandchildren were infected by strange diseases. Linda, a very caring and
compassionate person, created a non-profit organization called Help For
Sewage Victims to offer any victims of sewage sludge--advice, information, a
data base, and a sympathetic ear. Since its inception, Help for Sewage
Victims has been very effective in combating the spreading of sewage sludge.
As of 1998, Zander's story and stories of others harmed by sewage sludge have
been reported in over 30 mostly small newspapers and 4 farming magazines
since 1991 as well as in John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's book, TOXIC
SLUDGE IS GOOD FOR YOU! (1995)
Through Zander's efforts and those of other tireless workers in grassroots
movements across the United States, who have banded together to form the
National Sludge Alliance, the harmful effects of land application of sewage
sludge, sewage sludge composting and pelletizing are coming to light. Also
through their efforts, a blinding light is being focused on a corrupt
political and legal system.
Seeking recompense for the harm done them, Linda and Ray and their family
filed suit against the sludge hauler, Western Services Inc., the district of
Birch Bay, the towns of Lynden, Everson, Nooksack, and Sumas, Whatcom County,
and Van Dalen in 1991. When Linda went to the courts seeking justice for the
terrible wrongs that were done to her and her family, she learned the painful
truth that the justice system in the United States can be subverted by legal
and procedural issues, especially where environmental issues are concerned.
State Environmental Departments (and federal) are at the top of the pecking
order. No other entity in federal or state government has the authority to
investigate any problem attributed to sludge without their approval.
The suit against Whatcom County and the municipalities were dismissed under
the Public Duty Doctrine by summary judgment. The Whatcom County Superior
Court on October 8, 1993, held that the county had no duty to protect the
Zanders, only a duty to the general public and they were individuals. The
Zanders' claim against the various municipalities was dismissed when their
attorneys, Bricklin and Collins, failed to comply with the municipal claims
statute 40 CFR Part 135 which states a 60 day notice has to be given before a
suit can be filed under the Clean Water Act. When the Zanders appealed the
decision to the Washington Court of Appeals, the Court affirmed the trial
court decision on July 31, 1995. The Zanders' legal battle was halted when
the Washington Supreme Court refused to review the decision.
When they brought a malpractice suit against Bricklin and Collins, the
Superior Court of the State of Washington granted summary judgment of
dismissal to the defendants, Bricklin and Collins. Although the judge noted
that the state did have a responsibility to protect the individuals, the
cities involved had a duty to dispose of the sewage sludge--and they were
only doing their job. The Zanders' are appealing the decision of summary
judgment based on malpractice which the judge concurred with, nuisance,
trespass, inverse condemnation and damage to property and persons.
After 12 years of fighting, the Zanders have never had their day in court
where they could address the sludge issues. Powerful entities (Washington
State Department of Ecology and King County Department of Metropolitan
Services, the EPA, AMSA and WEF) have conspired to prevent this from ever
happening. According to documented evidence, on February 22, 1993, two State
Department of Ecology Representatives, Al Hanson, and Kyle Dorsey, four King
County Metro representatives, Mark Lucas, Carol Ready, Steve Gilbert, Dan
Sturgill and their legal counsel, Salley Tenney, of the Metro Legal
Services,.Mel Kemper of the City of Tacoma, Hal Thurston, an attorney
representing the cities that were involved in the Zanders' lawsuits and four
individuals also associated with the Zander law suit, met in a closed meeting
to discuss the Zander Case.
According to Keith A. Bode, as recorded in the Zander Action Summary, the
legal cost to stop her will exceed $500,000 dollars. Bode warned those in
attendance at the meeting that Zander had to be stopped. He said that she had
identified 18 medical experts (including physicians, immunologists,
toxicologists, and nutritionists), 9 veterinarians, 2 property
valuation/devaluation experts, 3 soil/hydraulic/geologic experts and 1
testing lab who would testify about the dangers of sewage sludge use to
humans and animals. Bode warned that there would be extra-regional impact and
"This action must not be settled". He reminded those present:
The public persona of biosolids is precarious, at best,
and each member of WEF and AMSA can be assured that
Zander appears dedicated to capitalizing on every
available opportunity to publicize her scare story...and
remember, with respect to land application, the farming
community comprises less than 2% of the population, so
she need only reach a narrow population to cripple land
application. It is essential that her soapbox be removed
and her credibility challenged before our regional
problem has any more effect (than she has now)
nationally or internationally on land application of
biosolids.
Aren't these lovely people? Does any politician really think this is in the
public's best interest?
Jim Bynum
PO Box 34475
N. Kansas City, Mo. 64116
