Before I knew it, I took a weekend trip to Louisa County, Virginia where I was attending a community meeting about biological waste. The people were extremely passionate and before I knew it, I found myself talking to everyone from industrial spokesmen, to county board members to state senators to the executive branch of the state government. I'd worked in local politics but something this complex was a first for me at the time and I had never reported for this industry.
After several hurdles, I got paid handsomely for the story but certain external circumstances with the Virginia Legislature's votes cancelled out some of the key details of my story and it couldn't be published. However, the issues are still relevant. As a tribute to the people of Louisa County who advocated for better and cleaner lives for themselves, I am simply publishing this on my own blog:
C.W. Williams’s origin story as one of the state’s biggest
environmental activists began on a summer night in 1999 when he was awakened in
his Louisa County home at 3:30 in the morning by a stench. When he inquired to
the workers on the neighboring property what they were applying and why, they
responded “because we can and it’s legal.”
Williams would
soon discover that the source of the stench was a classification of pollutants
known as biosolids that originated in wastewater treatment plants and ended up
on the farmland of Williams’ neighbors where it was offered as a makeshift
fertilizer of sorts.
“I wasn’t
originally a tree hugger by any means,” said Williams. “I can’t turn my back on
my friends and my neighbors, and I’m of a firm conviction that to have a good
neighbor, you must be a good neighbor”
After serving
on two government sponsored advisory committees and spending two years
criss-crossing the state on his own dime to collect the accounts of over fifty
biosludge victims, CW reconvened the BioSolids Information Group (BIG) this
past January after a two-year hiatus.
“We have a
right to not be exposed to toxic substances either in the water or in the air”
said CW Williams to a group of nearly twenty-five Central Virginia residents at
the group’s inaugural meeting. “This isn’t policy, it’s life or death.”
The goal of
BIG according to council member Kama Allen is to “know that what is placed upon
the land is safe to all life and the environment.” The group aims to accomplish
this through public awareness, educating healthcare professionals and
influencing legislative activity.
While
Allen is acting on behalf of neighbors, nearly all of
the attendants of the inaugural BIG meeting counted
themselves
among firsthand victims or know someone who has suffered.
BIG council
member Ray Harlow has been advocating against biosludge as an ally to Williams
for nearly sixteen years. To him the fight is unavoidable because, “they’ve
wrapped it around the area where I live.”
Harlow’s
concern for the issue has increased since he had a heart attack four years ago
as it affects his respiration. “It’s very hard to breathe in the cold weather
in winter and this makes it much more difficult.”
Since the
biosludge has been applied to his area, Harlow has seen everything from tampons
to syringes in the
fields.
“If you can
flush it down a toilet, you can find it in a field,” added Williams.
In the
first-hand accounts that Williams collected, many of the victims were unaware
of what was happening to them while they were being afflicted by the
pollutants. One field account was of a woman in Loudoun County who lived
adjacent to a plot that received biosolid applications. Her medical bills
skyrocketed to $17,000 because the doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing
her illness.
In the eyes of
the BIG, the problem is compounded by the fact that the farmers are doing much
of this voluntarily.
Activist Kat
Walker of Spotsylvania County compared the problem to the 1930’s film “Arsenic
and Old Lace” in which two elderly women kill off visitors to their house by
offering them elderberry wine laced with poisonous arsenic.
“You could say
that they were offering something nutritious in the wine but it also had poison
in it,” explained Walker. “It’s the same with biosolids. It can function as
fertilizer but it also has poison in it.”
At the
meeting, the group organized a letter writing campaign to alert citizens that
biosolids were going to be spread in their neighborhood with numbers to contact
B.I.G. as well as contacts of local health officials.
“We are
attempting to stimulate public discourse as well as alert folks with medical
conditions,” said Allen after the meeting.
Biosolids are
a classification of industrial residuals
emanating from treated wastewater (more commonly known as sewage) that is
chemically and physically processed for reuse.
Although
farmers have been practicing bisolid application in some form for ages, its
application on farm lands accelerated as a practice in the late 1980’s when the
Clean Water Act made it illegal to dump the residuals of waste water in
neighboring bodies of water.
Under the new
regulations, local governments have three options with treated wastewater: They
can recycle it as biosolids, bury it in a landfill or incinerate it.
Many
industrial entities have opted to offer the biosolids for free to farmers as
fertilizer. For a number of farmers, the application of biosolids has been
beneficial in reducing runoff and unproductive farmland.
“For farmers
or tree farmers who choose to use biosolids it will enhance the productivity of
their farm or forestland and improve the quality of the soil,” said Virginia
Biosolids Council spokesman Robert Crockett. “That’s why biosolids is very much
in demand by farmers throughout Virginia today. Not every farmer and landowner
chooses to use it and that’s okay.”
The problem,
according to the opposition, is that the health problems created by biosolids
are imposed upon others in a manner to similar to second hand smoke. Williams
claimed in an interview with a Charlottesville radio station last year that
biosludge samples collected throughout Virginia has over 56 heavy metals along
with over 49 pathogens. Additionally, studies by Cornell University and the
University of Arizona have found that the resulting toxic emanations can travel
up to 1.5 miles through the air.
In Louisa and
Spotsylvania Counties where the vast majority of BIG members live, there are
two existing industrial entities with permits in Spotsylvania and Louisa
Counties (where the vast majority of BIG members live). They are
Baltimore-based waste water recycling company Synagro and Virginia-based
agricultural and biosolid disposal company RecycSystems. In addition, Louisa
County’s own water department has a permit to apply biosolids in Louisa County.
Before 2008, the application of biosolids was administered
by the Virginia Department of Health but they were criticized by a number of
citizen advocates including Williams for making biosolids a low priority. A
2005 study found that the DOH had only inspected 19 sites out of over 1,000
applicants.
With the
testimony of Williams and others, the Virginia General Assembly was convinced
to transfer the administrative duties of biosolid regulation to the Virginia
Department of Environmental Quality.
Most members
in the BIG believe this step has been an improvement as the DEQ got more
funding and has a budget for monitoring. However, there is still a lack of
oversight and resource the monitoring of biosludge application is largely left
to local governments but only 25 counties in Virginia have passed an ordinance
to appoint a monitor.
“A total of
six state agencies plus testing comprise this mammoth program with no apparent
end in sight,” said Allen. “The program is so split that I doubt one hand knows
what the other is doing.”
A fee of $4
per dry ton of applied waste is collected by the state to fund county
governments in hiring local monitors.
“That’s the
money that’s available, not that’s applied,” said Spotsylvania County
Supervisor (for the Berkeley District) Greg Cebula who was in attendance at the meeting. “But it’s
peanuts. We would have to hire a full-time person and that money is not enough
money to do that.”
Neighboring
Louisa County is one of the few that has hired monitors. According to County
Administrator Christian Goodwin, Louisa County checked 29 sites in Louisa and
local monitoring was performed for 26 of them. Williams alleges Louisa’s
resources are strained and that the county’s sole enforcement officer only uses
5% of her time monitoring sludge because she has so many other duties.
Cebula has
wanted to be active about doing more but his hands are tied because of the
Dillon Rule which prohibits county officials from exercising power reserved for
the states. He hopes that the state will pass legislation granting the county
the right to limit pollutants to just Class A which are less harmful though
more costly. The Blue Plains Waste Water Treatment Plant inWashington DC is one
of the few plants that deal in Class A.
Synagro
spokesman Layne Baroldi said in a later interview that the safety of the material
is equivalent to Class A when class B is land-applied in conjunction with
existing regulations. Baroldi cited the Washington State Department of Ecology
as a citation.
“Basically, these bills [to change the situation] will not pass. It
will be defeated by the farm bureau lobby, because they feel that they need
this free fertilizer. Well, they don’t. But if they get free fertilizer, it’s
money that’s out of the farmers’ pockets, it’s economics,” said Harlow at the
inaugural BIG meeting..
The current
regulations on biosolid application were created from 2007 to 2013. In
compliance with the Administrative Process Act, a regulatory advisory panel was
convened from all the stakeholders including three citizen representatives.
All three of
the citizen representatives resigned over the course of the six-year process.
According to DEQ spokesman Neil Zahradka, those seats were never refilled which
meant that they were unable to find the citizen representation they hoped to
achieve.
One of the
main points of contention of the BIG is the influence of the waste industry on
the state agencies is still continuing.
“It is so
rampant that is it beyond control of the individual citizens or people like
myself at the local level. The whole industry is embedded with the DEQ,” said
Cebula.
Williams
alleges that the DEQ is overly promotional of the biosolids program and has
pointed out DEQ’s listing of the benefits of biosolids on their website.
“It's a legal
activity and if the waste water treatment plant chooses to do this, we inform
them of the rules and regulations.” Zahradka said in response. “If there is
anything we're promoting, it’s the protective nature of our rules.”
This past
legislative session, the Virginia Legislature unanimously passed HJ 120 which directed the joint legislative audit and review
commission to analyze scientific literature on the health effects of biosolids
and evaluate the feasibility of requiring municipal facilities to generate
“Class A” material.
HJ 120 passed
after Delegate R. Lee Ware (R-65th) sponsored a house joint resolution (HJR 56) that failed to
pass in the past two congressional sessions. Ware also failed to get a house
bill out of committee (HB 17) that would require disclosure of
biosolid-afflicted properties to future land buyers.
“There are
widely differing views of the safety—from entirely safe to unsafe—among
stakeholders. For example, the Farm Bureau understandably supports the
application of both biosolids and industrial wastes” said spokesman David
Bovenizer in response to a question about why the process has been so lengthy.
While Cebula
calls it a step in the right direction, Allen sees the influence of the real
estate in HB 17’s failure to clear committee.
“Depending on
the information they get, it will likely be a whitewash,” said Williams on the
new legislation. “It’s a reiteration of the past”
While they
differ from the BIG’s views on the safety of biosolids, the industrial entities
involved have also encouraged the further study of biosolids on the issue.
“What we’re
doing has been one of the most thoroughly studied subjects by the EPA,” said
Synagro spokesman Layne Baroldi, “We believe that the science is very
supportive.”
“Farmers by
their very nature are cautious-- and care more about the environment and
stustainability than any other segment of our population. They tend to study
and research everything they put on their land,” said Crockett. “I’ve found
that many, when they have an opportunity to consider the facts, conclude that
the beneficial use of biosolids is a win/win for everyone.”
As C.W.
Williams prepared to leave his Louisa County home
where he held the Biosolids Information Group’s inaugural meeting, he remarked
that he and his wife bought the estate because they once dreamed of owning a
country home.
Spending so
much time in toxic zones to collect his stories caused him to developed
hypetension and artery enlargement. He eventually moved to his current home in
Richmond to preserve his health.
Whether
Williams has accomplished much, he has picked up allies to his cause.
“Once I
retired I had time to address the situation, and once I got involved, it just
swept my husband and myself away and we’re very very involved at this point,”
said Allen. “[This is] not as much for ourselves but for our neighbors that
have COPD (a respiratory disease) who still work for a living and
can’t be involved with their time.”
As for the
information war, Williams and his colleagues were able to score a major victory
as the legislative season wrapped up this Spring.
This past
April 1st, Synagro applied with the State Water Control Board to expand their
permit in Louisa County from 76 to 90 sites (a total land area of 16,790
acres). As they had done at the hearings before the Lake Anne Advisory
Committee and SWCB’s Spotsylvania hearing this past Spring, the BIG testified
and showed up at the hearing with the goal of impeding the permit.
Allen and her
colleagues knew it would be an uphill battle because no land application permit
has been denied by the DEQ to date. Although, the permit still passed (on
a 6-1 vote), Williams’ video documentation of the ill effects of biosolids
with accompanying waivers of the victims were officially entered into the
public record.
“That is the
key,” said Williams. “They can no longer deny that evidence exists.”
“Friday's
hearing is no way an 'end game' for us,” said Allen before the meeting. “We
will continue to push forward, gather momentum, address each county's issues as
they arise. And one day the tide will turn. The fight is a long one and
the stakes are high.”
