Banning Biosolids

A state Supreme Court Justice has upheld Wheatfield's ban on using biosolids as fertilizer.

And what are biosolids?

Take sewage, strip out the water, use microbes to turn the sludge into methane (a greenhouse gas that pollutes the air and contributes to global warming and climate change), and look at what is left. That crap (quite literally) is what is called biosolids.

And Wheatfield has won a court case that allows it to ban the use of biosolids as fertilizer.

The companies that promote the use of this crap are a little upset that they have this byproduct that they can do nothing with. They are promoting it for use as fertilizer, but what the town is concerned about (and the companies can not prove) is that it is safe to use as a fertilizer.

And no harm proven yet does not mean safe in the eyes of the community.

Key fact: It has been shown that waste treatment plants can not filter out medication from the water.

So, someone takes a statin, birth control pill, or other drug, it goes through their digestive tract and they excrete out a portion of that drug. Undigested.

Now the waste treatment plant filters out the crap, treats the water, and sends it out into the watershed. And it has been tested and found contaminated with prescription (and other) drugs. (A little speed with your night time sleeping pill? Or maybe some birth control medication with your Viagara or Cialis?)

OK. What about the crap? It's literally what is left behind. In a semi-liquid form.

And the companies that are extracting the methane have to do something with the waste, which is nitrogen rich. So they want to treat it like cow manure and spread it on crop land as fertilizer. (I mis typed that as crap land. But that is pretty much what it turns into. And having lived in the country, you can tell when it is being spread. No one likes to be outside at that time. Especially if it is hot.)

Better yet, sell it as a fertilizer and make a profit off of it,

First the people of Wheatfield want to know that it is safe to be used as fertilizer.

And the company that is producing it locally can not do so.

Never mind that the nitrogen that runs off of the farms to the west of Lake Erie are what produced the toxic algae blooms.

Never mind that the nitrogen runoff from farms around the Mississippi River watershed are what produced the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. (The water is so contaminated and oxygen dead that nothing can live in it.)

And the biosolid companies want us to think that the byproduct of their greenhouse gas producing process is safe.

Try again.

Environmentalists and socialists demand:

1. An end to the production of greenhouse gas production.

2. A state wide ban on the use of biosolids as fertilizer

3. The implementation of higher water filtration and quality standards for wastewater treatment

4. Sustainable and non-polluting farming and fertilizer practices implemented