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Bio-solids anything but green |
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Response to: Column: Not Your Garden Variety Bio-solids
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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