Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
EPA Draft Strategy for Managing Sludge
Called Inadequate in Comments to Agency
The draft response provided by the Environmental Protection Agency in April
to a National Research Council report on the management of sewage sludge is
inadequate and supports the status quo, a member of the committee that wrote the
report said in comments July 8.
EPA fails to address such NRC recommendations as a call for studies of possible
health impacts from the land application of biosolids where people have reported
illnesses, Ellen Z. Harrison, director of the Cornell Waste Management
Institute, said. She is a member of the research council's Committee on
Toxicants and Pathogens in Biosolids Applied to Land.
The research council published a report in July 2002 calling on EPA to do more
studies on the impacts to health and environment from the land application of
treated sewage sludge, also called biosolids (128 DEN A-10, 7/3/02).
EPA issued a draft plan to respond to the NRC recommendations in April and asked
for comment (68 Fed. Reg. 17,379; 66 DEN A-2, 4/7/03 ). The comments were due
July 8.
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, whose members include large
municipal wastewater treatment plants that generate most of the sludge in
question, supported the agency's strategy for responding to the research council
recommendations, saying the plan mirrors the organization's own priorities for
"strengthening the biosolids program."
Updating Science
Specifically, the EPA strategy calls for updating the scientific basis of the
regulations for managing sewage sludge. The standards for the use or disposal of
sewage sludge are issued under Section 405(d) of the Clean Water Act, which
directs EPA to set numeric limits and management practices that protect human
health and the environment from the impacts of toxic pollutants in sewage
sludge.
The research council report found no documented evidence that the sludge rules
fail to protect public health, but said research is needed to address concerns
raised by individuals, scientists, and environmental groups regarding the
potential of adverse human health risks occurring from exposure to biosolids
applied to land as fertilizer.
In its draft response, EPA said it would:
update the scientific basis of the regulations by conducting research into
priority areas,
strengthen the biosolids program by evaluating studies being done both inside
and outside the agency, and
continue activities for enhancing communication with outside associations and
the public.
The agency laid out specific research programs it is pursuing, some of which
have already been in the works. However, EPA proposes no health studies and no
surveillance of health around land application sites, as the research council
report recommended, Harrison said.
AMSA said the agency's research efforts should include exposure assessment
studies "to directly assess potential health impacts, especially those
associated with pathogens, and to amass additional data on exposure." The agency
also should study the issue of odor associated with biosolids management and
ways to mitigate it.
ORD Involvement Needed
Harrison said one problem with the agency's strategy is that it relies too much
on the Office of Water staff. She said the EPA Office of Research and
Development should have the lead on the matter.
"This would both help to involve people with a fresh perspective, but would also
involve people with greater expertise in risk assessment," Harrison said. The
agency should also form an independent body to investigate claims of harm caused
by the application of treated sludge, she said.
Research projects described in EPA's draft strategy did not provide enough
detail to ascertain how well they would address the recommendations in the
research council report, Harrison said.
A project being conducted in Pennsylvania by EPA and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, for example, has acknowledged limitations, Harrison said, and only
helps "shape future needed studies."
EPA must develop and validate methods for measuring viruses and bacteria, an
idea the agency is considering. However, methods that would be used in the
Pennsylvania study "are totally inadequate."
AMSA said exposure-assessment studies currently underway by the Water
Environment Research Foundation, a municipal-backed research organization, and
other groups look at "the makeup of emissions from biosolids at land application
sites, measure the exposure potential for workers, such as appliers and farmers,
as well as nearby communities, and assess the potential nexus to human health
impacts."
Public Education
The agency should also focus on improving communication and public education,
AMSA said, because "unsubstantiated claims of adverse health effects" from
biosolids are more damaging to the management program than anything else.
To address this problem, EPA should develop "a process for timely notification,
recording, and tracking incident reports in collaboration with other federal
agencies."
EPA's research efforts should focus in those areas where there are data gaps,
AMSA said.
"AMSA suggests that EPA's efforts to understand the potential risks associated
with biosolids focus primarily on those areas where there are perceived
weaknesses in the current regulations, specifically pathogens in biosolids and
bioaerosols," the comments said.
The Sierra Club was critical of the agency's draft response, saying EPA "does
not even acknowledge any environmental or public health problems associated with
land application of sewage sludges."
More Protective Standards Needed
EPA should promulgate more protective standards instead of putting the onus on
local governments to do so, the Sierra Club said.
One such locality is Solano County, Calif., which submitted comments saying its
board of supervisors had to adopt more stringent local regulations governing the
land applications of biosolids after finding shortcomings in the science and
application guidelines.
The Solano County Department of Environmental Management said the county board
of supervisors approved amendments to its code authorizing a fee to pay for
research into the regrowth and mortality of pathogens in biosolids and other
issues.
The Sierra Club said EPA has a history of concealing, dismissing, and ignoring
the problems that have been documented about the land application of treated
sludge.
"It is ludicrous for EPA, which is charged with protecting public health and the
environment, to develop a policy that converts America's farmland into managed
hazardous waste sites where farmers must carefully maintain soil pH and other
environmental conditions within certain bounds to prevent heavy metals and toxic
organic chemicals from mobilizing," Caroline Snyder, who heads the Sierra Club
Sludge Task Force, said in comments. "The short-term benefits of this cheap
means of disposing of hazardous chemical wastes will quickly vaporize when
efforts to immobilize toxic wastes in the land on which we grow our food fail."
The Sierra Club also criticized EPA's public education efforts, saying funding
should not be spent trying to convince communities that land application of
treated sludge is safe, but should be spent trying to make the practice safer.
The Solano County Department of Environmental Management generally supported
EPA's recommendations, but provided comments on how to focus research efforts,
including strengthening the EPA study on the potential aerosol transmission of
pathogens, odorants, toxic compounds, and particulates.
In addition, EPA should look at the movement of contaminants and nutrients
"through the environment in relation to the nitrate and total metal loading rate
as well as pathogen and organic or non-organic chemical content."
The county also recommended human health surveys on potential health effects
from land applied biosolids and epidemiological studies.
States Call for More Resources
Several state environmental protection agencies said EPA needed to increase
funding and resources to improve the biosolids management program.
Comments from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said that while
it may be more appropriate for state and local governments to set more stringent
management restrictions based on the site, EPA rules should still provide
minimum protections.
Since the regulations have been in place for 10 years, EPA should review them to
determine "the adequacy of current site restrictions as well as consider the
recommendations by the NRC to evaluate potential new restrictions for various
site-related factors such as site slope and depth to ground water," Florida DEP
said.
Jim Johnson, the biosolids coordinator at the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality, said increased funding and resources is critical.
"Inadequate biosolids planning has caused ongoing operational headaches for a
significant number of wastewater treatment plants and those plants turn to the
states and EPA for guidance," he said. "In many cases the biosolids support
staff needed have simply not been present."