One of my most intense articles: The Perils of Biosolid Waste in Rural Central Virginia

At the start of 2016, a woman whose mother was part of a citizen's coalition to stop the encroachment of bio-sludge in Louisa County, tweeted to several reporters who'd written in the Richmond area. I had no idea what she was talking about but I e-mailed her asking to deliver this issue in a one-paragraph summary and I'd sent it on to my editor. 

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-65^th) 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.”