Why are biosolids and septage used on agricultural land?
The answer with regard to the nature and use of biosolids is misleading and deceptive. Biosolids are not just nutrient rich human waste, but also pollutant rich industrial waste. Biosolids generated in industrialized urban centers contain thousands of pollutants, some of which are highly toxic and persistent and can be absorbed by crops. In the US every industry, institution, and business is permitted to discharge 33 pounds of hazardous waste, every month, into sewers. These pollutants, as well as disease causing pathogens and thousands of other man-made chemical compounds are REMOVED from the waste water and end up, by necessity in the resulting sludge/biosolids. Biosolids are most likely the most POLLUTANT-RICH waste created by modern society.
Sewage sludge was never meant to be a fertilizer. It is spread on farmland because at one time this was the least expensive way to dispose of sludge. Does it really make sense to spend billions of dollars to remove pollutants from waste water, so the cleaned water can be returned to rivers, lakes, and oceans, but then to return the removed pollutants to the environment?
The US National Farm Bureau does not think so; neither do major food processing companies, like Heinz and DelMonte. Nor farmers whose cattle have died after ingesting forage grown on land treated with sludge; which permanently poisoned their land, nor neighbors whose wells became polluted and whose children became sick after sludge-exposure?
For factual information about the risks associated with sludge use visit
www.biosolidsfacts.org
Municipal sewage treatment plants in Ontario produce about 300,000 tonnes of treated sewage or biosolids every year. There are three possible options for disposal – incineration, landfill, or spreading on agricultural land and land farms. Currently, less than half is incinerated or sent to landfills. Most of it is spread on land. Because the options of incineration and landfill are more expensive, municipalities are increasingly choosing to apply sewage sludge to land. Septage can be disposed of through municipal sewage treatment plants, in waste stabilization lagoons, sent to waste disposal sites such as landfills that are approved for septage, or applied to land. Moreover, biosolids and septage can be beneficial to soil. Both contain nutrients – such as phosphorus and nitrogen — that can be used by farmers as fertilizer. However, like animal manure and other nutrients, they can degrade the environment if they are not properly monitored and controlled. Pulp and paper biosolids and ot
