From: Ned Beecher, NEBRA [ned.beecher@nebiosolids.org] Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 11:01 AM To: NEBRA Subject: NEBRAMail NEBRAMail “essential news only...” September 11, 2008 ------------- * This occasional email newsletter from NEBRA is provided as a service to members and contacts. * Feel free to forward in entirety to interested parties. * To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send a "reply to" email stating your request. If your address changes, please let us know. * Significant past NEBRA news articles are available at http://www.nebiosolids.org/news.html . ------------- Contents * NEBRA, NHWPCA, and MWWCA Present “Celebrate Clean Water” Open Houses & Tours of Wastewater and Biosolids Management Around New England * U. S. Senate Environment Committee Cancels Biosolids Hearing, Then Briefing ---------- NEBRA, NHWPCA, and MWWCA Present “Celebrate Clean Water” Open Houses & Tours of Wastewater and Biosolids Management Around New England It started yesterday in Hanover, New Hampshire - a series of 25 open houses and tours at wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) and biosolids management sites around New England. It continues this Saturday, with open houses at the WWTF and biosolids composting operation at Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. Each event is open to the public and is an opportunity to learn the basics and/or the complexities of wastewater and biosolids management in this region. A full listing of tours, dates, and times is available at http://www.nebiosolids.org (click the Calendar listing). The United Nations has declared 2008 “The International Year of Sanitation.” Here in North America, people take for granted toilets and wastewater treatment infrastructure. Elsewhere, there are 2.6 billion people without adequate access to sanitation. One of the reasons for the “Celebrate Clean Water” series of tours is to recognize what we have and the importance of improving sanitation worldwide. Last year, a BMJ (British Medical Journal) poll found that sanitation is the greatest medical advance since 1840. Modern wastewater treatment systems have made it possible for millions of people to live in cities free from common waterborne diseases that once decimated populations. In New England, a variety of individual and group septic systems and small and large centralized wastewater treatment facilities clean water day-in, day-out. Every city, town, neighborhood, and household is served by this infrastructure. A significant part of any clean water program is managing the septage and solids (sewage sludge) that are a natural byproduct of treating wastewater. Several of the “Celebrate Clean Water” tours will focus on biosolids management. Biosolids management is becoming an increasingly important practice worldwide, as new wastewater treatment facilities are built. In recognition of this, and as part of The International Year of Sanitation 2008, the United Nations Habitat program has just released a new Global Atlas of Excreta, Wastewater Sludge, and Biosolids Management, an international project contributed to by NEBRA members and staff. As Chairman of the Greater Moncton, NB Sewerage Commission Ronald LeBlanc notes in the Atlas introduction: “The construction of a wastewater treatment system is the easy part, and only the start, when dealing with wastewater. Operating wastewater treatment systems, and the management of the solids created by the treatment processes, is where the challenges and the real work begin.” Meeting these challenges is featured in the “Celebrate Clean Water” tours. On September 19th, New England’s largest compost facility – the Hawk Ridge Compost Facility in Unity, ME – will provide tours and samples of compost. The Yarmouth, ME composting facility will host tours September 22nd. Other tours will feature the land application of biosolids at farm sites where biosolids are used to fertilize feed corn and hay crops in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Biosolids are also made into fertilizer products: Boston’s MWRA and the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District (GLSD) heat-dry their solids to make pelletized slow- release fertilizer that is used, for example, on citrus groves in Florida. GLSD and New England Fertilizer will host a tour of their facilities in North Andover, MA on September 26th. Some facilities generate heat and electricity from biosolids; examples are the GLSD facility and the Nashua, NH WWTF – which holds an open house September 25th. Other new biosolids management technologies are featured at some of the open houses. Next Tuesday, the 16th, the Seabrook facility will show off its new BioTech sludge reduction system. At Newport, NH on September 17th, you can see geotextile biosolids dewatering bags in operation. The new centrifuge dewatering system will be featured at the Manchester, NH open house on Saturday, the 20th. The “Celebrate Clean Water” series is free and open to the public and is presented by the North East Biosolids and Residuals Association (NEBRA), NH Water Pollution Control Association NHWPCA), the Maine Wastewater Control Association (MWWCA), and participating public agencies. For directions and details, see http://www.nebiosolids.org, call the facility you wish to tour, and/or call NEBRA at 603-323-7654. Special needs provided for; please call ahead. NEBRA is a non-profit association of water quality professionals, environmental consultants, engineers, farmers, and interested citizens. The memberships of NHWPCA and MWWCA are public works staff, wastewater operators, and engineers. For more about The International Year of Sanitation, see http://esa.un.org/iys/. ---------- U. S. Senate Environment Committee Cancels Biosolids Hearing, Then Briefing Since the spring, the the U. S. Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), Chaired by California Senator Barbara Boxer, has been considering holding a public hearing on biosolids recycling to land and related U. S. EPA policy. Earlier this month, a date for the hearing was announced on the website “sludgenews.org,” a relatively new website created by the Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems (RILES), but was never formally announced by the EPW. Late last week, the hearing was downgraded to a briefing with four witnesses: Georgia Farmer Andy McElmurray, former EPA scientist David Lewis, former director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute Ellen Harrison, and Leland Myers representing the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA). A briefing does not involve sworn testimony and can be held by a sub-set of a Committee – in this case, some of the Democratic members. This morning, the scheduled day of the event, the Senate Committee’s website notes the briefing is canceled, but that “additional EPW hearings and briefings on EPA’s wastewater programs will be announced at a future date.” The reason for the cancellation was noted in an E & E Daily story: “Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Democrats canceled this morning's briefing on U.S. EPA's sewage sludge program late last night after learning witnesses scheduled to testify were using it as leverage in a court case. A Sept. 3 letter obtained by E&E Daily reveals lawyers for Georgia dairy farmer Andy McElmurray and David Lewis, a visiting scientist at the University of Georgia, urged the University of Georgia Research Foundation and individual University of Georgia defendants to settle a case related to the program before a planned Sept. 11 hearing.... In their letter, lawyers for McElmurray and Lewis asked that the university provide Lewis with temporary employment in its Marine Sciences Department ‘to help restore his reputation at UGA.’ They requested the defendants pay McElmurray and another farmer, G. William Boyce, $100,000 each for a total amount of $200,000. They also asked a university researcher to provide a letter stating she agreed with the federal judge's conclusion last spring.... If all terms were met, the lawyers pledged to dismiss the research foundation and University of Georgia individuals from the lawsuit.” All summer, the “sludgenews” website has been encouraging those who believe they have been affected by biosolids land application programs to write letters to the EPW Committee. Several are posted on the website, as is a letter from Abby Rockefeller, President of RILES, a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), and a leader of Clivus Multrum, a composting toilet company. RILES is a Boston-based organization that promotes low-tech solutions for sanitation, such as composting. It is directed by Laura Orlando, who, with Rockefeller, were organizers of the November 2001 “sludge conference” at Boston University, at which David Lewis spoke. RILES and CFS were the lead organizations on the 2003 petition to U. S. EPA requesting a moratorium on the land application of biosolids (which U. S. EPA rejected with a strong letter rebutting all allegations). In their news release today, Orlando says: ““Five years after the first sludge petition was delivered to the EPA, this horrible practice continues,” said Orlando. “It is a dangerous and reckless disposal of hazardous waste. The result is that, throughout the country, our food is being grown on toxic waste.” RILES has long opposed biosolids recycling and centralized treatment systems; Rockefeller wrote in 2007: “Sewage treatment is at best a dreadful mistake, at worst a vast scam serving the engineering corporations that lay the pipes and the development interests that follow on the heels of the pipers.... The Clean Water Act is a sewering act, not an act to protect water... Therefore #1: don’t sewer.” The recent RILES media campaign has led to publication of several news stories today about the canceled Senate Committee briefing (http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1046986420080910, http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/122112452267510.xm l&coll=3). RILES had scheduled a press conference at 9:15 this morning at the Senate office building. Publications, records, and details of all events discussed above (e.g. BU conference, CFS petition and EPA response, etc.) are available from the NEBRA office. Additional information about events and court cases in Georgia is available in other news stories at http://www.nebiosolids.org/news.html. -------------- North East Biosolids and Residuals Association (NEBRA) P. O. Box 422 / 85 Main Street Tamworth, NH 03886 phone 603-323-7654 fax 603-323-7666 www.nebiosolids.org