Free Republic

When First Lady Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn in March 2009, she hoped to both set an example of healthy eating and to grow tasty edibles for her daughters and husband. But Michelle's organic dream has been dashed by a nasty toxic legacy lurking in the soils of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It turns out that a previous Presidential gardening team had used sewage sludge for fertilizer

Reports: Wife of Rep. Conyers threatened with indictment @ 3:42 pm by Michael O'Brien Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, the wife of longtime Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) received a letter Tuesday indicating a pending indictment from federal authorities on corruption-related charges. Conyers received a pre-indictment letter instructing her to reach a plea deal with prosecutors by the end of the week or face charges, according to Detroits two papers, the Free Press and News. The investigation involves whether Conyers took bribes to switch her vote on a $1.2 billion contract with Synagro Technologies to handle disposal of Detroit's sludge. Conyers,...

For decades, Vivian Milligan complained that the government ignored the Ramapough Mountain community when Ford Motor Co. dumped a sea of waste in their Upper Ringwood community.   Longtime environmental activist Vivian Milligan says her heart was "pounding" when former state DEP chief invited her to Washington D.C. for her senate confirmation hearing as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.  On Wednesday, Milligan, who rarely ventures out of the area, plans to make her first trip to Washington D.C. – at age 57 — as a guest of former DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson.  The U.S. Senate is expected to confirm...

Our reporting partners at the Detroit News are reporting that the FBI has electronic surveillance that links Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers to the Synagro scandal. The evidence reportedly proves that Conyers received either a payment or payments in connection with the city-approved sludge contract.

BALTIMORE — Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients. Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

That's it. Nothing following.

Want to purchase some locally produced, organic fertilizer for you garden? Unfortunately it contains arsenic, lead and mercury amongst other interesting additives. And it may spontaneously explode and burn while in storage. Not interested? Then how about buying acclaimed Foodland Ontario vegetables and fruit, grown on a less refined version of the same ‘natural’ fertilizer? These are not available at present, as Toronto’s sewage pelletizer, which made the fertilizer, burned down in July 2003. And biosolids ‘cake,’ the less processed poop, is not exactly popular with the province’s farmers. But they could be coming soon to a store near you,...

Hundreds of photographs have been taken of British servicemen mistreating Iraqi civilians, it was claimed tonight. Troops serving in southern Iraq have been swapping the pictures among themselves, said the unnamed soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment who sparked furore over the weekend by releasing photos apparently showing UK personnel abusing an Iraqi prisoner. The potentially explosive claims, if proven, would contradict Prime Minister Tony Blair's assurance that any misconduct in British ranks was "exceptional" and limited to a handful of servicemen. Doubts were cast today on the authenticity of the photos, published in the Daily Mirror yesterday, which appeared...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former government scientist accused the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday of knowingly using unreliable data when it denied a petition to halt the use of sewage sludge for fertilizer. The microbiologist, David Lewis, testified at a House subcommittee hearing that the EPA used data about sludge quality at two Georgia dairy farms that had already been rejected by Georgia state officials as "completely unreliable, possibly even fraudulent." He asked the House Resources Committee's subcommittee on energy and mineral resources to call on the EPA for an internal investigation of the moratorium and other matters. Lewis, a...

E.P.A. to Study Use of Waste From Sewage as Fertilizer By JENNIFER 8. LEE The Environmental Protection Agency will sponsor a series of scientific and public health studies on the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer, including nationwide chemical tests and building a human health complaint database. The studies, in combination with the agency's announcement on Wednesday that it will more closely regulate 15 chemicals found in sewage sludge fertilizer, are part of the agency's efforts to address public concerns about an agricultural practice that has grown rapidly around the country over the last decade. The announcements also reflect...

can anyone confirm this? Their heads are exploding.

Potomac Sludge We often write about Washington dirt, but it turns out we had no idea. Listen to this tale about the water pollution our nation's capital suffers, and all because its residents won't follow the laws they wrote. We're talking about the Washington Aqueduct, a treatment facility that provides drinking water to about a million residents. In purifying that water, the Aqueduct creates thousands of tons of chemically treated sludge a year. What happens to that goo? Well, the Army Corps of Engineers dumps it into the storied Potomac River, in the dead of night, including via the C&O...

Sewage Sludge Linked to Illnesses ATHENS, Georgia, August 2, 2002 (ENS) - A study by researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) links the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer with a host of health problems. Burning eyes, burning lungs, skin rashes and other symptoms of illness were found in the study of residents living near land fertilized with Class B biosolids, a byproduct of the human waste treatment process. Researchers found that affected residents lived within about one kilometer (0.6 miles) of land application sites and complained of irritation after exposure to winds blowing from treated fields. Staphylococcus...