This fat tub of lard raises a stink wherever he "goes". Lookout!! He's about to blow!
Posted on 08/07/2005 12:08:26 PM PDT by Our_Man_In_Gough_Island
Dawn and Marvin Hamrick's dreams came true three years ago when they finished building a two-story Colonial-style home in Spotsylvania County.
But they got a shock this spring when a rotten-egg odor settled over their Catharpin Road property.
Their son, J.R., first noticed it one morning while walking to the school bus stop.
"He thought something had died on the side of the road," Dawn Hamrick recalled. "He thought he was going to get sick."
The stench seemed to dissipate during the day, but returned one evening as the family tried to enjoy their new deck.
"It was that night when it about knocked me over on the back porch," Dawn Hamrick said. "It was awful. We couldn't even sit outside."
The source of the odor was the treated human waste and other processed sewage being applied by Synagro to a 290-acre tract of farmland just across Catharpin Road near Todds Tavern.
The Hamricks' experience is an example of how in portions of once-rural Virginia, such as Spotsylvania, Orange and Louisa counties, suburbia and agriculture are increasingly colliding.
Farming and forestry operations are looking for new means of fertilizing crops, and processed human waste is an attractive--and free--alternative. But residents, many of them new arrivals with no previous contact with farming, see the practice as a smelly, and perhaps unhealthy, intrusion into their bucolic life.
Dawn Hamrick didn't express anger toward Synagro or the landowner, Buddy Gillman. But she would prefer that sewage sludge--also called biosolids--not be spread on land near homes.
"It's not like a place where there are only farms," she said. "There are houses all up and down this road."
Officials with Synagro, a waste-management company based in Champlain, say sludge is safe. The company says it works closely with the Virginia Department of Health to prevent excessive odors.
"I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it doesn't have an odor," said Synagro manager Lee Rosson. "But within one or two days, it's gone. It may linger, depending on the weather conditions, but it's not in-your-face-odor."
Synagro employees were hard at work last week, spreading sludge over 21 acres of the Louisa County cattle farm owned by Brent Whitlock. A pungent aroma of biosolids and diesel fumes wafted through the air.
Whitlock, whose home sits next to the field, said the smell hasn't troubled him.
"It's manageable," he said. "I think the biggest problem is the first three days. There is some odor, but it's tolerable. After about three days it dissipates."
Indeed, on a field on U.S. 250 in Louisa sprayed with biosolids early last week, very little odor could be detected by Thursday.
But the debate over sludge doesn't involve just smell. Supporters defend the practice as a safe way to dispose of treated waste and enrich depleted soil. But others worry that it will contaminate nearby streams--and eventually the land it is suppose to restore.
The case for sludge Whitlock said he turned to Synagro last year, having previously used commercial-grade fertilizers on his pastures.
"It's providing all of the nutrients that you need to produce the grass or commodity that you're trying to grow," he said. "The better quality grass you have on your farm, the better your cows are going to gain, and the better product you can provide the consumer."
Synagro provides the biosolids free to farmers. Wastewater-treatment plants pay the company to dispose of the sludge they produce.
"Something has to be done with this waste," Whitlock said. "If we don't use it one way, it's going to have to go somewhere else, and that may cause a bigger problem environmentally."
The spreading of the sludge is tightly governed by federal, state and even local government regulations. Rosson had to carefully plan the application to Whitlock's property.
Tiny orange flags marked 100-foot buffers around the farmer's drinking-water well and farm well. Regulations also require buffers of at least 10 feet near roads and at least 100 feet from property lines unless adjacent landowners sign a waiver.
Rosson and his crew applied 70 percent of the sludge they were allowed to put on the field. He predicted it would be at least two years before more is needed.
An age-old problem Disposal of human and household wastes is an age-old problem, said Cal Sawyer, director of Virginia's Division of Wastewater Engineering. Until recently in the United States, processed sewage was simply dumped into the oceans, a practice now banned by the federal government.
The waste now can be buried in landfills, incinerated, spread over fields and forests or turned into compost. Spotsylvania has gone the compost route to dispose of sludge from its Massaponax Wastewater Treatment Plant.
A company wanting to spread sludge must get a state permit for each site where it will be applied. The company must hold a public information session about its operations before the permit can be approved.
Since 1996, slightly more than a dozen firms have obtained a total of 136 permits to apply biosolids in Virginia. All told, sludge is applied annually to about 50,000 acres in the state.
Synagro does the most work in Virginia, with 43 permits. Recyc Systems of Remington and Nutri-Blend of Richmond follow with 25 permits apiece.
Since the state grants the permits and regulates the application, localities cannot ban the practice, no matter how much it bothers residents. Sawyer, however, said his office works closely with localities to address concerns.
"The local governments can provide us with specific information on sites with regard to water quality and health concerns that can lead to the approval of restrictions above and beyond what normally might be imposed," Sawyer said. "Our basic concern is, is this site being used properly for agriculture?"
Concerns about biosolids
Biosolids contain organic matter, bacteria, some viruses and some trace elements such as lead, copper, zinc, nickel, mercury and cadmium. It's the possible presence of those trace elements that worries Woodrow Chewning, who lives on Catharpin Road with his wife, Jeanne.
"There's a stream that comes down through that property, and it runs across the road and down toward [State Route] 649," he said. "My concern was if it was going to get into the water of the stream."
Lee Daniels, a professor of soil environmental sciences at Virginia Tech, said strict adherence to state and federal regulations should leave "a very minimal threat of leaching of nutrients or contaminants."
But Robert Hale, a professor of marine biology at the College of William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science, worries that the heavy metals and other industrial pollutants in modern sludge will contaminate the farmland it is intended to enrich.
"If you keep applying the stuff and it causes a [chemical] buildup, you can't go out there and remove it from the fields because of the large area you've contaminated," he said.
Those pollutants, he argues, make modern sludge a far cry from the "night soil"--waste removed from outhouses and primitive indoor toilets--that was spread on fields in Europe 200 years ago.
"The nature of sludge has changed over time," Hale said. "A lot of the folks who are very strong advocates of land application will say, 'We've done this for hundreds of years,' but they don't factor in the fact that the nature of this material has changed."
The biggest complaint local governments receive about sludge operations is, of course, the odor.
"Once the odor becomes an issue with somebody, they say, 'Well, if it smells like that, how can it be good for me?'" Daniel said.
He noted that a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences suggested that the odors, while unpleasant, aren't indicators of toxic substances.
"I do not see it as a direct human health risk nor a water quality risk when handled appropriately--meaning you use the right materials, you apply them appropriately and then vegetate them appropriately," Daniels said.
Striking a balance
Virginia regulators do listen to the concerns of residents living near sludge-using farms and try to address specific problems, Sawyer said.
He noted, for example, a case in which state inspectors discovered that a particular type of biosolid was causing more odor than normal. The inspectors then worked with the applicant to clear the air around the site.
"It is their right under the permit to operate on that site until they have applied the material to all of the area that they're permitted to," Sawyer said. "But normally we get good cooperation."
Officials with Synagro and the Maryland Environmental Service noticed unusually strong odor from loads of biosolids produced in early May by the District of Columbia Wastewater Treatment Authority. They alerted the authority, which began diverting loads of sludge to a landfill until a way could be found to reduce the smell.
That action occurred at the same time residents of Catharpin Road noticed the odor, but it is unclear whether the biosolids applied in Spotsylvania came from D.C.
Daniels predicts that new techniques for treating and applying the waste product will eventually eliminate many smell problems.
"I think within a few years, the application of odorous materials is going to drop, and you'll see more of the composted or heat-treated materials being applied," Daniels said.
Odor or no odor, Hale argues there needs to be more study of the potential contaminants in the sludge applied to farmland. But he concedes that completely banning land application of biosolids would cause "a train wreck" for the waste-processing industry.
"I'm a person who looks at toxic chemicals, so I don't like to see toxic chemicals distributed throughout the environment," he said. "But you also are talking about what is practical. What do you do with the material?"
Green Acres is the place for me.
This fat tub of lard raises a stink wherever he "goes". Lookout!! He's about to blow!
We need the picture, "Ah, not this ____ again."
He and his wife moved, but were able to make bills because she still had her job. The newsletter, critical of the county supervisor, fell by the wayside.
Apparently you speak without having smelled the odor. I have, and it is not a farm odor.
As to the safety of the material, I am not a scientist, but I did observe a truck carrying such waste which had crashed onto it's side under a freeway overpass. The contents were spilled out on the ground and the cleanup crews were all in full hazmat gear.
Draw your own conclusion.
Concerning your comment, "it smells like I'm surrounded by farms.", you would be more accurate if you had wondered who had dumped the outhouse on your porch.
FMCDH(BITS)
As one who lives in the country and rides a motorcycle, I'll tell you that a freshly-manured field has one smell, and a freshly-sludged field has a different smell, and I prefer the former. But as one who lived for years in Philadelphia, I'll take either of the rural smells over that of the city ANY DAY!!
Farm manure may be potent at times but human waste is truly obnoxious. It is said that Woodstock stank of human waste for several years after that glorious festival.
They must have clapped often after every musical rendition!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.