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Bio-solids anything but green |
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Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The promotion of sludge as a "soil amendment" with barely a reference to the potential consequences of spreading waste on farms and fields neglects the serious impacts of using sewage sludge as fertilizer. The spreading of sludge is a dangerous experiment conducted only because it is an expedient way to get rid of the huge quantities of contaminated material generated by industry and our sewage treatment processes.
Sewage sludge is a mix of everything flushed into the system from
both domestic and urban industrial sewers. It can include PCBs,
chlorinated pesticides, bacteria, petroleum products, industrial
solvents and dioxin.
Now industry, with our government in line,
is rebranding the toxic sludge as "fertilizer" and a "soil amendment"
and spreading it on food-producing, animal-grazing, wildlife-supporting
farms and fields.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. The B.C.
government has just passed its highly controversial Soil Amendment Code
of Practice, facilitating the spreading of both industrial and domestic
sludge in B.C. farms and fields. A practice that should be banned
completely has now been removed from the Ministry of Environment permit
process and has no provisions for monitoring, compliance or enforcement
of its extremely limited testing requirements.
Rob Wiltzen,
Saltspring Island.
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