Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Hopkins Sewage Proposal Dropped
Firm's plan to bury sludge met with public resistance
By James Bruggers
jbruggers@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
Blaming "environmental hysteria in the media," the company that wanted to
truck 500 tons a day of Nashville's sewage sludge to Hopkins County in Western
Kentucky has withdrawn its proposal for the project.
In an April 5 letter to Kentucky regulators made public yesterday,
BioReclamation LLC manager Charles W. Martin said the company feared that the
Kentucky Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet was going to "proactively
scrutinize" the proposal in ways that exceed state requirements.
Martin declined to elaborate in a telephone interview. State officials also
would not comment.
But late last month, after word of the proposal leaked out of Frankfort and
created an outcry in Hopkins County, state officials said they would solicit
public comment if their review determined the plan had merit. That review was
never completed, said Chuck Wolfe, cabinet spokesman.
At issue was a proposal to bury partially treated sludge for up to 120 days in
unlined trenches. There, bacteria that do not need oxygen would have digested
unwanted pathogens. The material then would have been used to help reclaim
damaged strip-mine sites.
Public officials and residents in Hopkins County were celebrating yesterday,
while also saying that they expect their Fiscal Court to proceed with an
ordinance that could prevent similar proposals from catching them unaware.
Many had expressed concern about the large volume of sludge headed for Hopkins
County, and feared that its treatment in the unlined trenches would taint
groundwater, produce strong odors and attract swarms of flies.
"I don't think there's anyone in the state of Kentucky who would have wanted
this coming to their homes," said Patricia Hawkins, Hopkins County
judge-executive. "You can probably feel my smile through the telephone. I'm
delighted with this news."
She predicted that Fiscal Court will adopt an ordinance in May that "gives us
some kind of leverage and control if we are hit again with another attempt like
this."
Louisville environmental attorney Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky
Resources Council, had challenged the permit application in two letters to the
state and has been helping Hopkins County draft its ordinance.
"To suggest the outcry was preordained by a hysterical public is inaccurate," he
said yesterday. "Whenever you propose to bring 500 tons a day of active sewage
sludge into a community with no public hearing, no notice to local government
and no opportunity for local input, what do you expect?"
The proposal has been the buzz of Hopkins County since The Courier-Journal first
wrote about it March 19 and Western Kentucky news outlets picked up the story.
Local officials had heard about the plan two days earlier from what county
sanitation supervisor Broc Oglesby described as an anonymous tip.
"The public was so upset, and was doing some really good research," Oglesby said
yesterday. "I truly feel the voice of the public was heard, and everyone acted
accordingly."
Others reached yesterday afternoon agreed.
"How wonderful," Nortonville resident Mary Frances Miller said of news that the
application had been withdrawn. Miller had predicted earlier that there would
have been intense opposition in the region if the project had moved forward.
She said yesterday that she will continue to press for the local ordinance to
control sludge disposal, and she expects that opponents will keep their "Say No
to Sludge" bumper stickers and signs visible.
Robert Poole, a Nortonville mechanic who lives about a mile from the proposed
treatment site, said he is elated that the application has been withdrawn but is
wary of future efforts to revive it.
"I think they will rewrite it and submit it again," said Poole, who said he has
mailed 100 protest letters to Gov. Ernie Fletcher and plans to send 80 more.
"I think someone in Frankfort told him that boat was not going to float," Poole
said of Madisonville coal operator Don Bowles, on whose land the sludge
treatment would have taken place.
Bowles did not return a call seeking comment.
One of the most controversial provisions of BioReclamation's proposal was the
idea of treating the sludge for pathogens in unlined trenches.
Environmentalists and wastewater industry experts said that method could
potentially pollute groundwater and produce potentially dangerous levels of
methane gas and strong odors.
Louisville environmental engineer Sarah Lynn Cunningham, an expert in wastewater
treatment, reviewed several laboratory monitoring reports of Nashville's sludge
and said it appeared to be "clean enough for helping to stabilize strip-mined
land" -- a practice she said she strongly supports if it's done right.
But she said that she was troubled by this proposal's lack of groundwater
protection on the treatment site and that the proposed treatment process, called
anaerobic digestion, would produce methane gas "very possibly at dangerous
levels."
The proposal did not meet voluntary industry standards for best management
practices and reflected poorly on legitimate programs for applying treated
biosolids to land, said Gordon Garner, former head of the Metropolitan Sewer
District.
Garner is active with the National Biosolids Partnership, an alliance of the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, the Water Environment Federation
and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The proposal's shortcomings are unfortunate, he said, because applying biosolids
to strip-mined land is an "ideal match" by using waste to return life to ruined
landscapes.
Five hundred tons of sludge would be about 20 truckloads, a spokesman for BFI,
the company that handles the sludge for Nashville, said last month. That would
be enough to pile up about 3 feet high on a regulation college basketball court
each day.
Madisonville, the largest city in Hopkins County, produces a fraction of that --
about 5,500 tons per year.
The proposal for treating the sludge involved three well-connected men: Martin,
a former deputy secretary of Kentucky's environmental cabinet; Greer Tidwell, a
former EPA regional administrator; and Bowles, the owner of the Charolais Corp.
mining company, who owns thousands of acres in Western Kentucky.
In an earlier interview, Bowles said the sludge is not toxic, that they would
take steps to reduce odors, and that they would follow all environmental
regulations.
Nashville wastewater treatment officials have distanced themselves from the
controversy, saying that BFI is responsible for getting rid of what the city
produces.
But both BFI and Nashville officials have acknowledged that Nashville's sludge
has caused odor problems elsewhere. Several years ago, it was the subject of a
lawsuit at a composting facility in Simpson County, Ky., where residents won
small settlements. The sludge was diverted elsewhere.
Nashville is building new sewage treatment facilities so that, instead of
sludge, it will produce dried pellets that it hopes can be used as fertilizer.